Freedom Rides in the 21st Century

As posted on Electronic Intifada

Western media lamentations of Palestinians needing figureheads such as a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King to effectively resist the Israeli occupation are self-righteous and uncalled for. An occupied people under international law can resist in any way they want. However, raising awareness and challenging the occupation in creative ways definitely doesn't hurt the Palestinian cause, and so a group of Palestinian youth announced that on Tuesday, 15 November (incidentally, the PA's self-designated Palestinian Independence Day) they will replicate the 1960s American civil rights movement, specifically the Freedom Rides --which celebrate its 50th anniversary this year.

Just as the American freedom riders -- black and white -- boarded segregated buses together, defying Jim Crow segregation, the Palestinian freedom riders will board segregated Israeli buses that pass through Jewish-only settlements.

This act will highlight the apartheid realities of Israel which govern the Palestinians, the same laws and practices that Judge Richard Goldstone so readily dismissed in his recent op-ed in the New York Times. By drawing comparisons with the US civil rights movement, the Freedom Rides of the 21st century will undoubtedly prove how all oppressed societies are ultimately connected. Palestinians on those buses risk putting themselves in danger, that is if the three-pronged fury of fanatical settlers, the Israeli army, and other Israeli citizens rains down upon them like the wrath of an exclusivist God. They also risk being arrested for days or months or years under Israel's military law. The press release is below:

7 November 2011

On Tuesday, November 15th, 2011, Palestinian activists will reenact the US Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Rides to the American South by boarding segregated Israeli public transportation in the West Bank to travel to occupied East Jerusalem.

Next Tuesday, Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli public transportation headed from inside the West Bank to occupied East Jerusalem in an act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s.

Fifty years after the U.S. Freedom Riders staged mixed-race bus rides through the roads of the segregated American South, Palestinian Freedom Riders will be asserting their right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience.

The Freedom Riders seek to highlight Israel’s attempts to illegally sever occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and the apartheid system that Israel has imposed on Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Several Israeli companies, among them Egged and Veolia, operate dozens of lines that run through the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, many of them subsidized by the state. They run between different Israeli settlements, connecting them to each other and cities inside Israel. Some lines connecting Jerusalem to other cities inside Israel, such as Eilat and Beit She’an, are also routed to pass through the West Bank.

Israelis suffer almost no limitations on their freedom of movement in the occupied Palestinian territory, and are even allowed to settle in it, contrary to international law. Palestinians, in contrast, are not allowed to enter Israel without procuring a special permit from Israeli authorities. Even Palestinian movement inside the Occupied Territories is heavily restricted, with access to occupied East Jerusalem and some 8% of the West Bank in the border area also forbidden without a similar permit.

While it is not officially forbidden for Palestinians to use Israeli public transportation in the West Bank, these lines are effectively segregated, since many of them pass through Jewish-only settlements, to which Palestinian entry is prohibited by a military decree.

Updated on November 8, 2011

Settlers Write Racist Graffiti on BZU Walls

On Friday morning around 2am, settlers made their way to up to Birzeit University and spray-painted racist slogans on the walls just outside the West Gate.

Below are the translated phrases under each picture, taken from the university's own Facebook page.

Jews: Let us win

Revenge

Ramat-migron, Revenge, Jewish underground

Wait for the revenge, murder.

Ramat migron, revenge is king, price tag, [a nasty word about the prophet Muhammad pbuh]

The miscreants also left their marks in the town of Birzeit, as they attacked and vandalized the main mosque with racist graffiti.

The university's website has condemned this "cowardly criminal" act. Students have questioned the presence of the university guards, but the guards reassured everyone that the culprits did not manage to get inside the campus itself, adding that the property remained untouched.

Having just got off the phone with one of the guards, it remains to be seen whether the culprits can be identified as settlers or not. The dean of the university has issued a gag order on the incident for the time being, meaning that all faculty members and employees within the university are not allowed to share any information they might have to avoid wild rumors from circulating. Whoever they are, they got into a single car and left the premises at around 2:30 am.

This act of vandalism has all the markings of a settler attack. It is is the latest in a series of upped settler antics anticipating the PA's nonsensical UN bid for statehood, after settlers torched a mosque in the village of Qusra near Nablus and attacked a faculty member of Bethlehem University with rocks while he was driving. A student from the same university was also attacked, and after escaping her car through the passenger door to appeal to the Israeli soldiers nearby for help, she was told to return back to her car. Today, settlers in Hebron attacked a family's tent and set it on fire, with the father still inside.

Israeli-American journalist Joseph Dana noted correctly, in light of a recent settler attack on the IOF's military base (which incidentally also had the words 'price tag' sprayed) that these transgressors are "one of the most dangerous and volatile elements on the ground" and that in order for the state of Israel to be taken seriously by the international community, it must curb its "rogue settlers." Yet the Israeli army only seeks to further fan the flames by training and equipping settlers with heavy duty weaponry in order to prepare them for any Palestinian protests that might turn 'violent', dubbing the move Operation Summer Seeds. It is no secret that settlers largely behave with impunity and have the assured protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces. Settlers are usually armed and harass neighboring villages, more often than not lands they've expropriated from the Palestinians, by setting olive groves and fields on fire or by physically assailing the villagers.

Not a word of condemnation either from Israel or its sycophantic brother the PA has been issued regarding these recent settler attacks. One thing is for certain though: these attacks will only increase throughout the month and with no accountability on the settlers' side, a simple 'heads-up' for the Palestinians simply won't do.

All settlements in the West Bank are illegal.
There are over 280,000 settlers in the West Bank (not counting East Jerusalem).
There are more than 180,000 settlers in East Jerusalem.
In total, that makes almost half a million settlers, a mammoth obstacle for any sustainable peace.

Young Settlers Terrorizing Palestinian Schoolchildren

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Sometimes we see shit that would be totally inappropriate for us to make some sarcastic comment because it would come off as being too crass. We're feeling pretty much disgusted right now, choked up to say anything caustic, ears still ringing with the feral yells and jeers and insults of settler children and the screams and cries of the Palestinian schoolgirls. They shouldn't be terrorized going to school. And those IDF soldiers...what a commendable model for restraint and keeping the order. Shit. FUCK. gah.

The words of Israeli novelist Amos Oz: “A messianic junta, insular and cruel, a bunch of armed gangsters, criminals against humanity, sadists, pogromists and murderers that exited out of some dark corner of Judaism…from out of cellars of bestiality and defilement in order to cause a thirsty and insane blood worship to rule!”

Nuff said. Bestial children. Haters.