“Your visit takes place at a particularly sensitive time, when every action has most serious long-term ramifications. Precisely because of the importance of your visit here, the choice to include certain sites on your itinerary and exclude others is crucial…In particular, we wish to stress continuing construction of the so-called “Separation Wall.” All across the West Bank, entire communities are being cordoned off, many losing their land. Palestinian towns, especially around Jerusalem are being cut down the middle or surrounded and made into isolated enclaves, with a massive dislocation of trade, education, health services, access to religious sites and every facet of normal daily life.” Read more about Open Letter to Kofi Annan
March 15, 2005, New York, NY — The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and partnering law firms today filed a federal lawsuit against Illinois-based Caterpillar, Inc. on behalf of the parents of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American peace activist and student who was run over and killed by a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer on March 16, 2003. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western Federal District of Washington, alleges that Caterpillar, Inc. violated international and state law by providing specially designed bulldozers to Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that it knew would be used to demolish homes and endanger civilians. Read more about Family of Rachel Corrie files suit against Caterpillar, Inc.
Ramallah, West Bank, 14 March 2005 — While villagers were delayed, and in many instances barred entry at Occupation Checkpoints throughout the West Bank, a huge crowd of over 5,000 thronged the streets of Ramallah to protest at the gates of the Muqata’, the compound of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), where Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Annan was holding talks with Mahmoud Abbas. Deep hostility has been created by Annan’s refusal to visit any areas of the Apartheid Wall, or any of the refugee camps which had invited him. Read more about Protesters blast Kofi Annan for refusing to visit the Wall
Budrus, Ramallah, 11 March 2005 — In response to an unprovoked military invasion in the West Bank village of Budrus, villagers, who have been struggling against the Wall for more than one year, tore down pieces of the Separation Fence which is built on their land. During a wedding celebration early Friday afternoon in Budrus, Israeli military and border police jeeps invaded the village. After the military left through the gate in the fence, villagers followed and forced the gate open. They then damaged several dozen meters of the structure while shouting “No to the fence! Yes to peace!” Read more about Budrus tears down the Wall!
On the 3rd of March 2005, I left my home in the United States for Israel. I was expecting trouble upon arriving at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, as I had been forcibly expelled by the Israeli Authorities one year before due to this same work against the occupation. My expulsion at that time was based on false charges brought against me by the Israeli Ministry of Interior stating that I had resided illegally in Israel. When I arrived to Ben Gurion on the 4th of March, I was pulled aside at passport control, as I had expected. Read more about Beating Israel's activist deportation system, this time
“Our Western culture is radically ethnocentric. This makes it difficult to widen one’s view. To use a phrase from Juan Rulfo, ‘The world is wide and belongs to no one.’ We have think tanks full of experts who tell us that the economy requires this or that, all of these things that are just assumed. This is a very narrow vision of reality. The problem is that if this reality doesn’t count — that is, if it doesn’t matter what people of color think, what Africans think, what Asians think — then we can just go on living in ignorance of them, constructing our everyday world and believing that we are the only thing that matters in the world.” Part 2 of an interview with award-winning Spanish journalist Teresa Aranguren. Read more about Spanish perspectives II: an interview with Teresa Aranguren (Part 2)
“I’m very conscious of the fact that everything having to do with the Arab world, viewed from the West, is shrouded in stereotypes. And virtually all of the stereotypes the West has of the Arab world are negative, because it’s our neighbor. The Chinese are far away, but the Arabs, we Europeans talk about them as if we knew them perfectly. We have this perception of a violent, intolerant, fanatic world, and we project all of this onto the Arab world. So I think it’s important for people who have been there, who have lived other experiences, to try to make clear that stereotypes can kill, that they end up killing, or justifying the killing.” John Collins asks award-winning Spanish journalist Teresa Aranguren about the meaning of solidarity in an age of fear. (Part 1) Read more about Spanish perspectives II: an interview with Teresa Aranguren (Part 1)
Amr Salah, a United States citizen living in Massachusetts asks for your help in demanding a formal investigation into the deaths of his father and brother at the hands of 1,000 Israeli troops. Dr. Khalid Salah, age 51, and his 16 year old son, Mohammed were shot and killed by Israeli Defense Forces on July 6, 2004 in their home in the city of Nablus in the Israeli Occupied West Bank. Throughout the hours of assault the Salahs were huddled together in a corner of the apartment, contacting relatives on a mobile phone for help. Despite an urgent call to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, Consul General David Pearce nor anyone else at the consulate intervened. Read more about Call for US investigation into lethal Israeli assault against Palestinian-American family
On the morning of Friday, February 25, 2005 a group of approximately 300 Israelis, Palestinian refugees and international activists gathered near the highway leading out of Jerusalem towards Tel Aviv. In the valley below lay the ruins of the ancient Palestinian village of Lifta. The event was part tour, part protest, and part homecoming. It had different meanings for each of the groups involved. The organization responsible for planning the event, Zochrot (Hebrew for “Remembering”) takes Israelis on tours of depopulated and partially destroyed Palestinian villages. They bring Palestinian refugees to tell the stories of their village and plant signs in Arabic and Hebrew that explain what happened there. This event, however, was also a protest aimed at stopping the impending demolition of what remains of Lifta. Read more about Ethnic Cleansing 101: The Case of Lifta Village
On 8 February 2005, Jewish Voice for Peace Co-director Liat Weingart and Israeli human rights attorney Shamai Leibovitz spoke to an audience of members of the Presbyterian Church in Chicago. JVP was the first Jewish group to publicly support the Presbyterian Church’s decision to investigate selective divestment. “There is a silent majority of Jews in the US,” said Weingart, “who feel completely alienated from mainline Jewish groups because those groups are no longer in line with their central beliefs of justice and equality.” Read the transcript. Read more about Speaking to the Presbyterians About Selective Divestment
