“The Achille Lauro is back in the news. Most of us know that a Palestinian, Mohammed Abu Abbas, is believed to have planned the 7 October 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. His group, the Palestinian Liberation Front, demanded that Israel free 50 Palestinian prisoners. An American Jewish passenger in a wheelchair, Leon Klinghoffer, was shot and thrown into the sea. While Abbas was not on board the ship, the hijacking, taking of hostages, and killing of Mr. Klinghoffer were heinous crimes for which he should be brought to justice.” Daniel Jacob Quinn writes about another, forgotten event that happened one week prior to the hijacking. Read more about The Achille Lauro hijacking: Selective memory does none of us justice
This speech was written by the family of Rachel Corrie and read on Saturday, April 12, 2003 at numerous peace rallies around the world. Read more about "Rachel had dreams" speech
Joseph Massad, in this contribution to EI, writes about an intense campaign by supporters of Israel against academics who criticize Israel and against academic freedom itself. While the pro-Israel lobby’s campaigns to discredit people who criticise Israel had decreased in relative terms after Oslo, they were revived after the failure of the Camp David talks and the eruption of the second Intifada. The lobby and its individual manifestations have become rabid in their campaigns of discrediting offenders to the point that they have become embarrassing to many Americans who support Israel. Read more about Policing the academy
“[Tom and I] even had a conversation that day about the dangers of this place, and how none of us really understood them or we wouldn’t be here. I said that I still felt confident with my international status even after the recent violence against us. I believed that it was not a calculated targeting of internationals, just an increased amount of recklessness and hostility brought on by the increased effectiveness of our work. I said I wouldn’t really be intimidated until they openly target an obvious international. Not until they very intentionally kill one of us would I feel the terror experienced by Palestinians. Fate works in mysterious ways.” Joe Smith writes from Rafah about Israel’s shooting of Tom Hurndall. Read more about "Not again": Eyewitness Joe Smith writes about the shooting of Tom Hurndall
“Yesterday was marked by what I call a “mini action”. We very loudly moved into a house in which we will now have a constant presence. It’s a four-story building in the Rafah neighborhood called Yebne, a refugee camp right on the Egyptian border victim to significant amounts of shooting and demolition. This house belongs to the Jaber family, and contains around 35 people, four families with loads of children. Its located right across from two Israeli security towers, and an area where an Israeli tank often sits.” ISM activist Joe Smith writes from Rafah. Read more about Protecting Palestinian families in Rafah
“At about 5pm, we received a call from a Palestinian journalist friend of ours with information that bulldozers were working in the Tel Zorob area, the western-most refugee camp next to the Egyptian border. We were actually in the middle of a meeting, so within minutes all eleven of us were geared up and out the door. Five English, two Scottish, two Americans, and two Italians piled into a large taxi and headed to the scene.” Joseph Smith, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, based in Rafah, Gaza writes about the first major ISM action against bulldozers since his friend Rachel Corrie was killed on 16 March 2003. Read more about First major ISM anti-bulldozer action since Rachel Corrie killing
On 5 April 2003, Israeli troops in Jenin shot International Solidarity Movement activist Brian Avery. Avery, a 24-year-old American from Albuquerque, New Mexico experienced serious wounds to his face after Israeli troops shot at him with heavy machine gun fire from an armoured personnel carrier. In this coverage trend, EI co-founder Nigel Parry examines some of the misrepresentations in initial reports, and lists what we do know, uncomfortable facts which would seem to preclude the event being an ‘accident’. “For those of us who have lived as eyewitnesses in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, it is not news that Israeli troops regularly shoot at people without there being clashes or any threat to the soldier. This is one of the consequences of maintaining a military occupation for over one-third of a century, the dehumanisation of the occupied people by the occupying army. Increasingly during the Intifada, we have observed that internationals have been targeted by the Israeli army.” Read more about The Brian Avery shooting: When will we realise that there can't be this many "accidents"?
“Dear reader, as Israel slides ever deeper into a morass of racism and ethnic solipsism, please do not rely too heavily on Haaretz to understand how or why this ‘light unto the nations’ has grown so dim.” Jonathan Cook examines the politically significant differences between the English and Hebrew versions of a newspaper thought to be the conscience of Israel. Read more about The two faces of Ha'aretz
The UK treasury will introduce in line with EU policy customs duties on Israeli goods produced in settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Treasury reaffirmed that the Occupied Palestinian territories are not part of the State of Israel, that Israel routinely and repeatedly fails to answer the direct question regarding the origin of goods, and that Customs & Excise have begun issuing duty demands to UK importers where goods are suspected to be have originated in the settlements. Read more about UK to impose duties on Israeli goods from Israeli settlements
