A View to the Middle East

After bin Laden, al-Qaeda in Iraq Looks for a Leader

2011-05-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

Iraqi men read newspapers in Baghdad on May 3, 2011, displaying front-page headlines and photographs in response to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a day after he was killed in a U.S. raid at his compound in Pakistan.

Ali Al-Saadi / AFP / Getty Images

By Nizar Latif and Sarah Price / Baghdad

TIME Magazine

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The death of Osama bin Laden comes at a time when al-Qaeda in Iraq has been shifting strategies in an effort to recover from years of setbacks. A source within the security department of the Iraqi government tells TIME that according to Baghdad's intelligence work, "al-Qaeda is setting up new plans in Iraq — changes in their leadership and locations, moving them from south to north, from one city to another. That makes us more worried that they could carry out successful attacks — and maybe a very big attack or revenge attacks for the death of bin Laden. Al-Qaeda promises to do these things, and I'm afraid that with all the added support they have now, they will be able to." Recent bombings, he says, prove they are still able to hit out at practically any moment.

After 9/11, when the U.S. war on Afghanistan destroyed bin Laden's ability to run al-Qaeda as a centralized organization, the terrorist leader anointed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq to lead the campaign to take over the country in the post-Saddam era. But al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, and so were his successors: first Abu Ayub al-Masri, then Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. As a result, al-Qaeda in Iraq adopted new tactics, says Mutlak Ak-Aljbori, a former al-Qaeda fighter turned U.S. ally in the Awakening movement that was key to the success of the 2007 surge. The embattled group kept its choice of new leadership a secret and changed the way it communicated with adherents. Instead of making physical contact, group members corresponded through encrypted text messages and the Internet. They also started wearing Western attire and shaving their beards so they would not stand out to the Americans or the Iraqi government.

But bin Laden always remained the inspirational core of the al-Qaeda ideology. He put his directives and vision of al-Qaeda leadership into a manifesto that spread across terrorist sites on the Internet, engendering like-minded organizations in Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, European nations and Russia. Even without a central command, these various al-Qaedas could connect with one another to conduct attacks or train new fighters in safer environments. The test now is whether the various al-Qaedas can continue their informal linkages without the unifying symbol (and facilitation) of bin Laden, who, according to what U.S. sources describe as his diary, remained keenly interested in approving his distant lieutenants as well as fomenting attacks against the West in spite of his fugitive status.

Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, retains seniority in the organzation, but although al-Qaeda in Iraq has formally pledged support to him, most of the al-Qaeda leaders do not want to replace bin Laden with al-Zawahiri. First, they see the Egyptian physician as too old; second, many of them do not agree with his leadership methods; and third, they don't see eye to eye with him in his interpretation of the rules of Islam. TIME's sources were unwilling to detail these differences of opinion.

If anyone emerges as the new symbol of al-Qaeda ideology, it may be Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born Yemeni cleric who is the constant object of drone attacks in his ancestral country, one as recent as May 5. In contrast to al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda adherents in Iraq see al-Awlaki as young and sharp. He has charisma and a strong personality that al-Zawahiri lacks and at the very least has inspired a number of attacks against Americans. Al-Qaeda sources see him as determined, even savage. Among Iraqis sympathetic to al-Qaeda, al-Awlaki possesses the traits of courage, leadership and manhood that they look up to. "In the end, I expect the one who will lead al-Qaeda after bin Laden will be Anwar al-Awlaki from Yemen," says Sadoun al-Mayahi, a political analyst and specialist in al-Qaeda and extremist groups in Iraq. "He is a young man and fresh, with a strong personality like bin Laden."

The only thing that appears to be in al-Awlaki's way is that he does not appear to have had bin Laden's approval. A story in ProPublica cites U.S. sources familiar with the documents found in Abbottabad saying bin Laden rejected the offer of the al-Qaeda leader in Yemen to step down in favor of the more popular al-Awlaki. The story also said bin Laden disapproved of the content of al-Awlaki's online magazineInspire.

Los Angeles Protests Support Middle East Revolutions

2011-03-11T08:53:00.000-08:00

By Sarah Price
Guest Writer
The Independent Monitor, March 2011

The January 2011 uprising in Tunisia and removal of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali opened the door to citizen self-empowerment across the Middle East. But before the eruptions of the current revolts in Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, Iran and Yemen, Egypt led the way with its example of peaceful protests winning over violent government reactions.

Protests in support of the Egyptian people spread quickly across the world, largely being organized the same way: not by organized religious or idealogical groups, but by individuals, drawing people of all backgrounds together for a united cause, utilizing the fastest and most widespread forms of global communication: Facebook and Twitter.

Organizers of the February 5 protest at the Federal Building on Wilshire Blvd, Mohamed Kolkela, Amr Elshennawy, and Tamer Abdelrahim live in Los Angeles, but are all native Egyptians, and unaffiliated with any group, used the same methods to bring several hundred people together to voice their support.

Kolkela is from Mahalla El Kobra and has been in the United States for nine years.

“We can’t guarantee the result,” he said. “The people’s movement is the important part. They know they will lose their lives. They have no problem with that. If [Mubarak] stays, it will be chaos. When you kill the hope, you can’t get it back.”

Supporter Mazen Al Moukdad is from Syria, and has lived in the US for 32 years, and knew that the toppling of Mubarak was imminent and unavoidable.

“It’s a matter of time,” he said. “The revolution is going peacefully. The people organizing the protest have no desire for bloodshed. They speak for 85 million Egyptians. They will do whatever it takes. This corruption has been happening for 30 years. My prediction is he will be out by next Friday (February 11 – the day Mubarak did step down). I had a good feeling this was coming. It was a matter of time.”

He added that family and friends in Syria had suggested that there were similar stirrings happening there, and that there were issues beyond the obvious oppression in Egypt that needed to be addressed.

“There are more Egyptian doctors in the US than in Egypt,” he said. “It’s draining the resources, when you create intellectuals and they leave the country. But they had no option but to leave. [Mubarak] doesn’t care. That’s the problem.”

Addressing the crowd, Sarah Knopp, an American supporter from the International Socialist Organization, said, “We have a responsibility to get the boot of our government off the necks of the oppressed people around the world. We don’t just want [Mubarak] to go, we want him to give the money back to the Egyptian people, that he stole from them.”

Within hours of his resignation, the Swiss government moved to freeze any funds and assets in their banks that may belong to him or his family.

“Thank you to the Egyptian people,” Knopp said, “for setting the example of peace to the rest of the world.”

Unfortunately, the peaceful protests in Bahrain and Libya, in particular, have been met with extreme violence from police and military units. Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi, proclaiming that he is not going anywhere, has asserted his authority by claiming he would crush those opposing him, and has followed through on his threat by using warplanes and helicopters to fire on his own people. Soldiers who have refused to kill the protesters have been killed themselves.

In Bahrain, authorities unleashed a brutal attack on sleeping protesters in Manama’s Pearl Square, using live rounds and tear-gas canisters, killing two and injuring more than four dozen, including children.

In Sana’a, Yemen, protesters demanding the immediate resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh have been energized by the attacks on them, making them more resolute to remove Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years, and had previously announced that he would not run again when his term ended in 2013. On February 23, seven members of parliament resigned in protest of the government’s violence against the demonstrators.

Currently in Iraq, protesters are taking to the streets in cities across the country to protest the lack of leadership and action, and continued corruption in the government. They want this parliament thrown out and an actual democratic election to follow – one with leaders they can hold accountable, and whom they can believe have their best interests at heart. Several large protests are planned, despite numerous deaths and injuries at previous protests.

In Iran, despite government-voiced support for the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings, days after Mubarak’s ousting, protesters in Tehran’s Enghelab (Revolution) Square were fired upon by police, and motorcycle police were reported to be chasing protesters through the streets. Later, the announcement of further protests caused the government to shut down phone service. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had even taken credit for the peaceful protests in Egypt, claiming the Egyptians were taking their inspiration from the 2009 demonstrations in Tehran. Demonstrators at that time were protesting what they believed was a corrupted election, leaving him in power. The activists were met with violence during the demonstrations and even imprisonment and torture after they had left, as police would go into their homes to arrest them.

This year’s widespread protests have been compared to the Eastern European revolutions of 1989/90, but it remains to be seen where these uprisings will lead. Despite the seeming victories of the activism in Tunisia and Egypt, and the resoluteness of the protesters across the Middle East, there is an aftermath that has to be dealt with – holding elections whose outcomes citizens feel they can trust; building an economy based on a new form of government; and electing a government that can help a country hold its own in a changing national landscape and foreign policy. But for those who are putting themselves in the way of danger or even death to make a change, these new problems are far more desirable than one more day with the old ones.

President Obama in Cairo – “A New Beginning” … or the Same Story?

2009-07-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Price and Nizar Latif
July 2009, The Independent Monitor

The run-up to President Barack Obama’s first Middle East address, entitled “A New Beginning,” was wrought with curiosity and speculation. His views on the Middle East during his campaign and early presidency had been difficult to pin down, and reactions to his statements were, thus far, polarizing. He had made outreach to the Muslim world a top priority, releasing aid to Gaza and appearing on Arabic television within days of taking office; but he had also stayed quiet about his Muslim roots and his level of support of Muslims during his presidential campaign, even failing to speak out against negative comments referring to him as an Arab – and by extension, a negative view of Arabs in general – on Arizona Senator John McCain’s campaign trail. His comments to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in June 2008 were also unsettling to the Arab and Muslim world, as they seemed to exhibit a bias toward Israel – even claiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel – and therefore potentially another four-to-eight years of difficulties and disappointments for them.

His address in Cairo focused largely on cases of Muslim extremism; Israeli and Palestinian peace talks; and Pres. Obama’s efforts to remake the image of Islam in the West. But one subject that was largely absent from the speech was that of the current state of, and military pull-out from Iraq.

He made a point of stating that Iraq was a war of choice – a choice made by the previous administration – and that his philosophy was to “leave Iraq to the Iraqis,” claiming that he would stick to the current plan of removing troops from Iraqi cities by July 2009, combat brigades by August 2010, and all remaining troops by December 2011.

In Iraq, a referendum to be held in July 2009 would decide whether U.S. troops should leave sooner than the previously agreed-upon dates. The referendum was expected to pass, with many in Iraq eager to see U.S. troops leave, as they believe that will bring some normalcy to their lives. Still, there is fear that U.S. troops leaving too soon would only open the door to further takeover by militia groups, an increasing Iranian influence, and the collapse of an already weak government and under-trained security forces.

And there was mixed reaction from Iraqis about his motives and true intentions, as well as the tone of his address to the Muslim world.

"Obama said that the war on Iraq was [the U.S.’s] will, and this fact is undisputed, as they came to occupy Iraq for oil and energy, not to liberate the Iraqi people,” said Sheik Saleh Mohammed, a Sahwah (Awakening) Council leader in Saab Al Bour, in northern Baghdad. “I don’t think they will develop Iraq. These are just empty promises. I think that he will withdraw troops in 2012 because he promised the American people and he will fulfill his promise. But he will not withdraw all the troops. He wants to ensure control over oil and energy from Iraq. He said he will make Iraq a real partner and friend, but I ask, why do they have to stay in Iraq? Why do you want a strong relationship with us, if not only for our resources?”

Sheikh Mohammed al-Khafaji, a leader in the al-Sadrist movement, agreed that Obama’s words were empty and, at times, misused, pointing out his apparent misunderstanding of Islam.

"I would disagree with Obama that Islam is an integral part of America,” he said. “It would have been better to say that Muslims are an integral part of America. The establishment of Islam is imposed on Muslims; while in America, there is freedom of religious observance. And it sounds like Obama doesn’t know much about Islam, as he interpreted the claims of Islam wrong.”

In his speech, Pres. Obama said, “The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.” Al- Khafaji feels that he missed the point.

“The verse cited by Obama allows the killing of Obama himself, because his forces in Iraq kill innocent people and steal public money,” he said. “This is the interpretation of that Quran verse.”

He also thought that such a short timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq would cause problems not only for the country, but for the troops as well, stating that he believed there could be violence toward them during the pull-out.

But Dr. Ismail Haddad, a political analyst from Baghdad, was encouraged by Obama’s choice of words.

“He didn’t mention the word terrorism,” he said. “He replaced it with the words extremism and violence, which indicates a change in American policy towards the war on terrorism, focusing on Afghanistan and Pakistan, home to al Qaeda activity, and not focusing only on the military aspects of the fight against extremism and violence. Obama's policy is based on the side of military force to aid the development of areas of activity to undermine the chances of extremism, because extremists use those conditions to recruit new members."

"The world waited a long time for Barack Obama's speech; it was truly unprecedented,” said Dr. Rahman Alkurani, a professor of politics at Sulaymaniyah University in Iraqi Kurdistan. “He wanted to send a message, to launch a new phase of friendly relations between his country and the world – the Arab and Muslim relationship based on mutual trust, respect and common interests – and work to end the conflict between the peoples of the region, and to guide the energies of the development and evolution, rather than being squandered in wars and destruction. He has achieved significant success in winning the hearts and minds of this segment and, in particular, young people.

”We have achieved a victory with President Obama as a senior diplomat, and his country as a superpower, and managed to pull the rug from under the feet of extremists,” he added, “creating a civilization that can accept the ideas of pluralism and a spirit of tolerance and peaceful coexistence between followers of different religions and sects.”

He said he believed Pres. Obama exhibited strength and wisdom, and repeated the words of Thomas Jefferson, that he had cited in his speech: "I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

Iraq’s Poorest Finding it Harder to Survive

2009-07-15T00:09:00.000-07:00

Huda, in the cast, will lose her arm if she cannot get treatment soon. (Photo: N. Latif)

By Sarah Price and Nizar Latif

IRAQ, July 15, (Pal Telegraph) - Asime is 13 and lives in east Baghdad. He has lost both his parents in the last two years, and is now taking care of a sick uncle. With no job opportunities and insufficient help from the Iraqi government, he has had to turn to crime to survive. He hates to steal, but knows that without this, he and his uncle will starve.

"My father died two years ago and then my mother died six months later, so my uncle took me in," he says. "He is poor, but said he wanted me with him because he doesn't have any children, and he knew the orphanage couldn't care for me well. But now, my uncle is seriously ill and cannot work. So, now I have to steal - from shops, or from older people. I steal valuable things, because they can be sold for money.

"I hate to steal. It's bad and I don't have the right to do it. But I have the right to life, and the government doesn't provide enough for me and my sick uncle, so I am compelled to steal, for money and food. My uncle doesn't know what I do. I told him I clean up some of the shops in the market for the money."

But he has been offered work - as part of a gang, which is very active in eastern Baghdad and is known for abducting children of the rich.

"I felt very scared, because this work is very dangerous," he says. "It is reasonable to steal and get the money, but it is not reasonable to engage in terrorist acts for it."

But while he will not turn to kidnapping, he cannot stop stealing. He says he will stop when he can earn enough from a job, or when the Iraqi government will provide enough money to allow him to. But he knows his days are numbered. The Iraqi police will catch him eventually.

Asime is one of approximately 2.5 million children in Iraq who have lost one or both parents due to the war, or sectarian or militia violence. The lack of available work and support from the government or humanitarian organizations has led many children to theft, and some of their mothers to prostitution, just to have food. Those who cannot buy food sift through garbage to find something to feed their families, leading also to health problems that they cannot afford to treat.

Umm Ali lost her husband three years ago. She lives in a very old building in a poor and dirty district in the city of Kut, in southern Iraq. Her apartment has no furniture, does not contain electrical appliances, or cold water to drink to endure the deadly heat of the Iraqi summer.

"My husband was working in the men's clothing store in downtown Kut, when a clash between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military broke out in the market center of the city," she says. "He was killed in the crossfire. Since then, I have tried to make a better life for my children, but life is very difficult and I cannot provide them with the most basic requirements of life. Sometimes we do not have food for days, and the children have to search for food from the garbage."

Umm Ali talks about the death of her son, Ali, in the photo behind her (Photo: N. Latif)

Sometimes she gets temporary work, which helps feed her six kids, but when she can't work, they find themselves begging for money and help. What money she does get from work lasts only long enough to feed the family for a few days.

In addition to the daily struggles of raising her children alone, she is dealing with a new family tragedy: her son, Ali, 13, was killed by a guided missile that fell near their house, and her daughter Huda, 7, injured by the shrapnel in it, while they were playing outside one day. She could not afford to bury Ali, and had to rely on the help of neighbors and friends. And she has not been able to get medical care for Huda. As a result, Huda's arm is infected, and without prompt medical attention, she could lose it altogether. She says that due to the lack of adequate medical treatment in Iraq, the care Huda has been able to get has not helped her. Her flesh is rotting, and every day that passes without medical attention makes her prognosis worse.

"Our lives were much better when my husband was alive," says Umm Ali. "He was very involved. He provided food and clothing for the family, and solved the problems of my sons, and he was interested in all the details, large and small. But since his death, I think I've lost control of my family, and I worry that they could become criminals and dangerous when they grow up, because I couldn't give them a decent life."

She does get help from some humanitarian organizations, she says, but it's not enough.

"My wish was to see my children get a good education and study in universities and become important people in their community," she says. "But instead they are beggars on the street, and they hardly have any food to eat. They could lose their future and become dangerous to people in their community."

Nisreen al-Musawi, director of the Anwarul organization, which takes care of widows and orphans in Wasit Province in southern Iraq, says, "Widows and orphans suffer total neglect by the Iraqi officials, and the problem has increased significantly over the past three years, especially after the events of community violence, which affected all segments of Iraqi society and the increased numbers of widows and orphans across Iraq."

She points out that while some organizations are trying to help, it is not nearly enough to curb the problems caused by this epidemic:

"We're getting support from some international organizations such as the United Nations and other groups that attempt to provide assistance to widows and orphans," she says, "as well as some support from the Iraqi government, some Iraqi officials, the American forces, and some support from the rich, but the Iraqi support is not sufficient for the needs of this large army of widows and orphans."

She feels that there could have been preventative measures taken to stop this situation from occurring, but that the government did not take care of it when it should have. She fears for the future of these families, as well as the impact it could have on the country.

"Terrorist organizations, militias and al-Qaeda are trying to recruit the largest possible number of widows and orphans to their side in the fight against the U.S. military or Iraqi security forces, and they have succeeded in that because widows and orphans are suffering from neglect in Iraq and suffering from hunger and difficult living conditions," she says. "This is what makes them easy targets for al-Qaeda and militias. There is a huge number of widows and orphans at their disposal."

Umm Mohammed is a widow who lives next door to Umm Ali. The fatigue her life causes her shows on her face and can be heard in her voice. She is the mother of four young boys - Mohammed, 12, Ahmed, 10, Mazin, 8, and Moualk, 3. She has a job cleaning a school nearby so she can provide for them, but comes home so tired she finds it hard to do much more. She is considering taking them out of school so they can work and help her, as school and living costs have risen steeply, and state funds don't cover enough of the expenses.

"The state provides less than $100 per month, which is not enough to take care of the family for three days," she says. "Iraq is a country very rich in resources, sufficient to provide a decent life for all Iraqis. The Iraqi officials should stop the theft of Iraqi funds and channel these funds for the widows and orphans, because we are ready to do anything to get food and clothing."

But she is concerned that her children will also be willing to do anything for money, including turning to crime, and she is very concerned about their future.

"I have many friends who are widows, and they are all suffering from ill-treatment by the Iraqi government," she says. "There are no jobs for them or their children, and they are living in very difficult circumstances. Some of them have to work as prostitutes.

"We do not have the simple necessities of life. We live in apartments built in the sixties, and these apartments may collapse at any moment. We do not have any furniture in my house, and we eat very bad food. Perhaps some animals eat better meals."

With tens of thousands of families living below the poverty level in Wasit Province alone, and no government solution on the horizon, al-Musawi fears the humanitarian crisis will only worsen.

Sameh Habeeb: A Voice from Gaza Speaks to the World

2009-06-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Price
July 2009 (The Independent Monitor)

It’s January 2009, and Israeli bombs have been devastating the besieged Gaza Strip for days. Hundreds are dead and injured; thousands are homeless; and the UN school in Gaza City, where civilians have been told to go for shelter, has just been bombed.

23-year-old journalist Sameh Habeeb is looking for a way to tell the world. But it is not easy: the power remains out in most of the strip, and as he searches Gaza City for somewhere to connect to the internet – often his only link to life outside Gaza – bombs fall around him.

When he finally manages to transmit his daily reports over a slow and unreliable dial-up internet connection, his words are picked up by friends and readers waiting to hear the updates, but more importantly, waiting to see if he has made it through the night. From his blog – Gaza Strip, the Untold Story – and his Facebook page, his words spread like wildfire throughout the internet:

“Day 9 of Israeli War On Gaza - Death toll 470, injured 2600, disastrous humanitarian situation. The operation started Saturday 8pm accompanied by heavy coverage from
artillery machine, naval gunboats and Air Force. Five key access witnessed the advancement of Israeli army. In the north, a group of tanks and soldiers advanced from Erez crossing and another group from Beit Lahia…”

His reporting began immediately after the bombing started on Saturday, December 28, 2008, as children were walking home from school.

“I was outside with my friends when the bombing started, and we went quickly to our houses and our families,” he recalls. “But it was very sad for the children that were killed that day, because the children were killed and no one knew about them. When they were going out from their schools, the schools were hit, because some of their schools were beside the police stations.”

At the Islamic University in Gaza City – one of the schools bombed during the war – he had studied English Language and Literature, but with the effects of the siege and what he perceived as an international blackout of news from Palestine, especially in English-language news outlets, he knew he needed to find a way to transmit word of Gaza’s suffering to the world. So, two years ago, he began to use his English skills to become a journalist. His experience, contacts, and growing readership helped support his efforts during the war, but it was still a challenge.

“It was very complicated. You had to write, you had to collect news and information about the war, and you had no power, no internet connection, and all these things you need for journalism were not available in the Gaza Strip - especially the power,” he explains. “So, when you are able to collect the news, you are not able to send the news. This is what happened to me.”

His family worked together and became a media unit, gathering news and calling hospitals and ministry departments, then translating the news into English and finding a way to transmit the details. Sameh also gave phone interviews around the clock to outside news agencies.

His family survived the onslaught, but some of his friends did not.

“Some friends of mine were killed, and I witnessed how they were killed,” he remembers. “I witnessed all the suffering. I witnessed how the people were scattered and their bodies were amputated. I saw the blood flowing in the streets near Shifa Hospital. I saw the children crying, fleeing to their houses when the bombing started that Saturday.”

His daily updates on the war brought him international attention, and when the war was over, those who had followed his reports wanted to meet him, and he accepted several European invitations to speak and give presentations about the war and on life in Gaza. Securing a visa to the UK was an ordeal in itself, but he finally made it out of Gaza through the Rafah border to Egypt in early March. He has spoken in more than 15 cities in England, and conducted meetings with parliament members, some of whom have responded very positively to his message. He has also toured Holland and France, and has more trips planned for Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Greece. He is also trying to obtain a student visa, so he can stay and earn his masters degree in England.

But where he really wants to make an impact is in the United States. He believes it is important to show the reality of this life to Americans who may only hear Israel’s side of the story.

“Imagine if Americans were living in the situation we are living in,” he says. “Imagine if you had in Florida, or in Texas, a separation wall in the neighborhoods. Imagine if you had in Washington, DC, 600 checkpoints. Imagine if you could not travel from Miami to Oregon. This is what the American people should be aware of - that we are suffering, we are under occupation, and we are being killed and massacred. We’re not trying to be victims. This is the truth. This is a fact being sent out by Desmond Tutu, by Jimmy Carter, by John Ging, the UNRWA field operations director, all these guys and many others. The American people should change the mentality. Not only listening to Ha’aretz, and not only listening to Fox News, and Israeli-controlled media.”

But, he says, he strives to keep his reports unbiased.

“I am a citizen journalist. I don’t want to be one-sided; I want to be fair in my points. I believe what I do is sacred, because I send out the suffering of the people. I am speaking on their behalf, and no one is doing this mission. I’m not being paid by the government, I’m not being paid by an organization. What I do is personal. I just narrate the stories and accounts from the ground, and let them judge.”

On President Obama’s recent assertions about Palestine, he said he gives him credit for talking about a Palestinian state when so few before him have done so, but he doesn’t want to get his hopes up.

“I want to be realistic about Obama. I don’t want my aspirations to reach the sky, out of nothing,” he says. “Obama is saying there should be a Palestinian state, but he is saying it in an abstract way. He won’t be able to stop the settlements, I’m sure of this. They have continued to build the settlements, despite the Oslo Agreement.

“In Netanyahu’s speech, he was talking about a Palestinian state in which we won’t have control of the borders, we don’t have an army, we don’t have control over the sea or the airspace, we have nothing. So, Obama is positive when he is talking about a Palestinian state, but he is negative when you go into the details about the meaning of the Palestinian state.”

Sameh hopes to make it to the U.S. in the next few months, and is currently accepting invitations from organizations here. He would also like to work in the U.S. as a journalist, translator or interpreter. But his mission remains one of education – the education of a world that has been told that Palestinians are terrorists and undeserving of a homeland of their own, and who will remain without one, if those who know better don’t continue to stand up and be heard.

Iraqis Fear an Uncertain Future

2009-06-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Mohsen Ali sleeps on a Baghdad street corner (Photo: Nizar Latif)

By Sarah Price and Nizar Latif
July 2009 (The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs)

As June 30 nears, Iraqis are waiting to see whether Washington will observe the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraqi cities. According to the agreement, all U.S. troops (except for an estimated 70,000 who will remain in Iraq as trainers and advisers) are to be withdrawn from the country by December 2011.

Under Sunni President Saddam Hussain, Iraq’s minority Sunnis were favored over the majority Shi’i. Even though Shi’i Iraqis are now more proportionately represented in government and other sectors, however, Sunni and Shi’i Iraqis alike expressed mistrust of U.S. intentions. None of the Iraqis interviewed for this article seemed to feel that their lives had improved since the U.S. invaded in 2003.

“U.S. forces entered Iraq six years ago and have not improved my life—ever.”

Mohsen Ali, 50, is a former teacher in Baghdad who now calls the city’s streets home.

“Saddam Hussain executed my two sons in 2000 after they refused to join the Ba’ath party. They cursed the party and said bad things about it in public, so Saddam executed them,” he explains. “After their death, my wife left me. Now I’m homeless. I sleep in the streets and public squares every day and ask people to help me, so I can live a normal life. This was my life prior to—and since—the arrival of U.S. forces.”

Ali, a Shi’i Iraqi, believed his life would improve greatly after the fall of Hussain’s regime. “I thought it would be possible to live in a house, even get a small stipend of aid from the new Iraqi government or from the Americans,” he says, “but the truth is that my life has not changed. President Bush, before he entered Baghdad in 2003, promised the Iraqi people a better life and a better future.”

That future now seems uncertain.

“I do not believe the U.S. troops will get out of Iraq at all,” says Mazen Shojaa, 33, “because the goal of America is to control the wealth of Iraq. The U.S. claims that it will leave in 2011, but this is merely an anesthetic for the Iraqi people. They are lying to themselves and the world.”

Shojaa, a Sunni from the area of Ghazaliya, west of Baghdad, was unhappy with the entry of U.S. troops into Iraq, because he opposed the country’s rule by a foreign force that cared nothing about his people.

“Prior to the occupation,” he recalls, “we had a good and normal life, despite some difficulties brought on by the economic blockade imposed by America, and we had freedom, safety and stability.”

Shojaa says he now fears for his life every day. While he once hoped that U.S. troops would leave soon, with the emergence of Iranian intervention in Iraq and what he sees as the hegemony of some of Iraq’s ruling parties, Shojaa has changed his mind. He now hopes U.S. troops will stay to help Iraqis ward off Iranian influence and interference.

Jamal al-Din Yassin, 56, a grocer from the Karrada district in east Baghdad, disagrees that the U.S. will remain in Iraq past the SOFA deadline, and feels more hopeful about Iraq’s future.

“[They will leave] because the U.S. has suffered much from the occupation of Iraq and has had many of its soldiers killed and wounded,” he argues.

Like his fellow Shi’i Mohsen Ali, Yassin’s life before the occupation was difficult.

“I was bitter and there was a lot of poverty,” he says. “We thought the arrival of U.S. troops could change the reality of the situation, but now I’m afraid for myself and my family because of the loss of security and stability in Iraq.”

Unlike Shojaa, however, Yassin believes Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made great strides in rebuilding and strengthening Iraq’s security forces, enabling them to take a leadership role in establishing stability in their country.

“I feel that the exit of U.S. troops will not affect the security on the ground much,” he explains, “because Iraq in two years will be far more powerful than it is now.”

Muhammad Ali Ghani, 36, a Shi’i schoolteacher from Sadr City, also had high hopes for what the U.S. troops could do for Iraq, but disagrees that al-Maliki’s government is ready to take over.

“We were pleased with the entry of U.S. troops in Iraq, because we thought America would save Iraq from the dictatorship and abuses of Saddam,” says Ghani. “I was one of the first ones running to welcome the U.S. forces.”

But it soon became apparent that the U.S. didn’t know much about occupying a country, he continues, and the mistakes made in disbanding the Iraqi security forces opened the door to lawlessness, benefitting al-Qaeda and other militia groups.

“The loss of security in Iraq and the spread of corruption in the country and the decline of industry and agriculture all made me feel scared in Iraq,” Ghani says. “I don’t know where to go or what to expect in the future. The Iraqi government’s performance so far is weak. If Iraq doesn’t help itself with national political reconciliation, and by building strong army intelligence and security forces that can function on their own when the U.S. leaves, it could lead to renewed instability. Iraq may disintegrate and become subject to the small neighboring countries.”

Samah Moueen, 48, a Shi’i widow from the new Baghdad district, lost her husband in the Iraq/Iran war. She supports her two daughters by working as a cleaner in a small school in east Baghdad.

In Moueen’s opinion, “It would be very difficult for the U.S. troops to leave Iraq; I think they will stay more than a hundred years. American policy will not change with the Democrats in power. It won’t change no matter what the circumstances. The Americans have been planning to occupy Iraq for more than 40 years. They waited patiently for Iraq to be weak so they could have control over oil resources. America obtained the Iraqi cake and the victim is the Iraqi people, who have suffered the terrorism of al-Qaeda and the militias because of the U.S. occupation.

“I imagine that Iraq will be a real battlefield when the U.S. troops leave, because it doesn’t currently have security forces that can take control,” she worries. “And we also have Iran, which carries a significant weight. Its influence is strong and plays a very negative role in Iraq. So, I hope that the U.S. troops do not leave in 2011. The worst thing for women in Iraq would be if the party that took control was from Iran, or the Islamic government in Iraq.”

As for Mohsen Ali, he says he will continue to hope for the best.

“When the U.S. troops leave Iraq, I hope to find a safe place to live away from the fighting, because I expect that there will be a very bloody sectarian war,” he says. “I will stay sleeping on the streets for the rest of my life, and I have to find a street where I can sleep better. I dream for a good future, either by the Americans or the Iraqi government.”

As Temperatures Rise, Iraq Faces Continued Power Outtages

2009-06-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Price and Rawsam Latif
June 12, 2009 (The Palestine Telegraph)

Yasser Rahman extends wires from a large generator in a neighborhood to surrounding homes, whose families, without his help, would spend a lot of time in the dark.

"The work is very serious but we have to work to live," he says. There are few job opportunities in Iraq right now, he explains, and even fewer for those, like him, who lack a degree. So, he takes the work he can get - powering homes and government buildings by extending wires from large generators to the waiting buildings. In addition to extending power from his own generator to houses and government buildings in the area, he also extends power lines from other districts. But it is a rigged operation, and things could turn dangerous for him at any time during the process.

"I know that this work may put my life in danger," he says, "but it's better than being out of work."

With the continuing problem of dropped electrical service in both the public and private sectors, there is an increasing demand for those with Yasser's talents. The labor sector in Iraq is growing jobs and businesses associated with this crucial occupation. Workers earn an average of $50 a month per home for their effort.

"The work I am doing is a kind of humanitarian service to the citizens," says generator owner Omar Rafed Maamuri, who has been unable to get a government job for the past five years. This work, he says, allows him to provide for his family, while making life a bit easier for his fellow Iraqis, who are displeased with the government's lack of service and solutions to the ongoing electricity crisis, and the fact that the citizens have had to take this job on themselves. But the generators are no long-term solution, he says. "They are expensive, unreliable, and use a lot of fuel."

"It's not a process that is fully adequate, but it is better than nothing, with the scarcity of the national power supply," says Abu Ala Al-Zubaidi, 44, from the Noaab Zbbat neighborhood, east of Baghdad. It is not a perfect solution, he explains, but it at least allows them to run a fan and have cold water in the hot summers.

"The Iraqi government must work hard to repair the electrical energy and rehabilitate the dilapidated infrastructure," he says. "We rent electricity from those big generators and we spend so much money. When the summer comes, it's hell for us. Iraqis can't continue to cope with these large and frequent interruptions of power."

However, according to Iraq's Aswat al-Iraq news agency, an official from the Ministry of Electricity announced on June 10 that electricity production has increased by 25% in 2009, and that "this year's production will provide two-thirds of the country's electricity needs... A fair distribution will supply all citizens with electricity for 12 hours a day."

But according to Sultan Aziz, Director of the Media Office of the Ministry of Electricity, the efforts are marred by a lack of funding by the prime minister. The ministry has contracts in place with companies that would facilitate providing the services, but they are awaiting funding from the prime minister towards the signing of the contracts.

There is also a dispute over the division of duties. "We bear the burden of providing fuel for power plants, but this work is the prerogative of the Ministry of Oil, and we need to protect the power lines, and that is the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior, not us," says Aziz. "The road has been difficult for the Ministry of Electricity of Iraq to keep the electric system alive, but we are optimistic about a prosperous future."

In the meantime, Iraqis face months of temperatures expected to be upward of 110 degrees, and in some areas of the country, no more than an hour of electricity a day.

Al-Qaeda Preys on Iraqi Widows and Orphans for Suicide Missions

2009-05-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Price and Nizar Latif
Tuesday, 05 May 2009 (The Palestine Telegraph)

WASIT, IRAQ - The number of widows in Iraq due to the war has now topped 2,100,000, according to Iraq's Women's Rights Organization. The Ministry of the Interior estimates that approximately 100 of those recruited by al-Qaeda have carried out suicide bomb missions."

Al-Qaeda uses them for military operations because it's a weak point in Iraqi society; women can pass through without inspection checks at military checkpoints due to Islamic rules, which forbid men to touch women. If they do, they'll be punished," says Samira Mohammed Al Shammari, director of the Office of Women's Rights in Wasit Province in southern Iraq. "Therefore, al-Qaeda personnel, taking advantage of this point, have been successful in the recruitment of dozens of these women to carry out suicide attacks against the Iraqi army and the U.S. military, especially women who have lost their husbands during the fighting, because these women are very sad and hopeless, and they are easier to influence."

According to Al Shammari, widows who have lost their husbands due to violence account for an estimated 40% of the women of Iraq.

Umm Nahla's husband joined al-Qaeda in 2004, under the threat of death. They lived with their daughter in Diyala, in northern Baghdad, and the organization had a stronghold in the region then, making resistance very difficult.

"Al-Qaeda was supported by Arab tribes in Diyala to fight the Americans out of Iraq. They organized several attacks each day in Baghdad, Diyala, Mosul, Tikrit and other cities," she says. "Al-Qaeda threatened to kill him if he didn't join, and said they would kill me and our daughter. So my husband joined them, fearing for his family. He became involved in many attacks on the U.S. military and Iraqi army, and he was absent sometimes for days."

In 2007, he was among a group of 100 fighters in an attack against the U.S. military in northern Baghdad, and was killed in the battle. The group was led by Prince Ameer, a military leader who trained with the Republican Guard under Saddam Hussein.

"The prince told me that he wanted to take care of me and my daughter, and that his wife would provide us with money and food and everything we needed," she said. "I began to fear for the future, and the future of my daughter. Not only did I not know how to find a way after the death of my husband, I did not have any idea how I would continue life and get back any pleasure and happiness. It had been hell since the arrival of the base to our city, especially when my husband joined al-Qaeda."

But the support of Prince Ameer and his wife was not to come without a great cost.

"One day, the prince's wife came to my house and she told me that she would take care of me and my daughter and we started to talk, and I started to complain to her about our future, and she told me to not be worried, and that she and her husband would support us," she says. "We became friends, and she talked about my husband and how he had fought bravely, and that it was now in the hands of God, and how he is in the right place now, because he fought and died for Islam, religion and principle.

"Then she invited me to her house to visit her, and she had invited all the wives, mothers or sisters who lost their husbands, sons or brothers, fighting the U.S. military or the Iraqi army. She said that your husbands have their rightful place with God, and you should get the right place for you, and she started to recruit us to be suicide bombers."

She asked what would happen to their children, should they die as suicide bombers, and was told that they would be taken in by the prince and his family, and cared for as if they were their own children.

"Most of the wives who lost their husbands are unhappy in their lives and have lost hope in life, and you see the misery and unhappiness in their eyes as well," she says. "One of the widows, Umm Mohammed, was always telling me that she wants to die and get rid of this miserable life. She says she has always been eager to bomb herself, as revenge for the death of her husband."

But Umm Nahla was not satisfied with this option. She felt that al-Qaeda had destroyed Iraq and taken it backwards. "I was more concerned about the future of my daughter. I wanted her to get a good education and a great future and a happier life than mine. So I waited for the opportunity to run with my daughter to the south, in order to be safely out of the hands of al-Qaeda, and when I had the chance, we fled to Wasit, for a better life and a happier future."

Al Shammari says, "The Iraqi government should be very serious about the development of the lives of these widows, and provide them with protection and the amount of money they need to live, and provide them with programs to develop skills and find employment for them, because these widows may constitute a significant risk to the Iraqi people, if they are being used by militias or al-Qaeda."

Wasit Province is currently the home of an estimated 1500 Iraqi widows.

However, widows are not the only group still targeted by al-Qaeda for suicide missions; orphans are not immune, either.

19-year-old Zahra's parents were killed in an air strike during an army attack. She lived with her family in Diyala City. Soon after her parents' death, she was taken in by women with connections to al-Qaeda, who later recruited her for a suicide mission.

Wearing a bomb belt and approaching an Iraqi checkpoint in Baquba City, she panicked and wanted out of the mission. Crying, she called over an Iraqi soldier, and told him she was wearing a bomb belt. He calmed her down, telling her everything would be OK, as other soldiers removed the belt from her. She is currently being detained in a women's prison in Baghdad. Women's Rights Organization is arguing on her behalf, that since she was forced into the mission by al-Qaeda, she should not be imprisoned. But the government wants to keep her in the facility until they feel it is safe for her to be out.

According to Ali al-Dabbagh, an official spokesman for the Iraqi government, there are an estimated 2.5 million orphans in Iraq, and, he says, it's more than the Iraqi government can handle. There has been great interest internationally in adopting the orphans, but for many reasons, it is not allowed.

So, with few options for these children, and a government that can't provide for them, they are prey to al-Qaeda and other militia groups who have a use for them. And those who have already lost the most - the widows, the orphans, and the mothers who no longer have children - are still those who have the most to lose.

As U.S. Troops Prepare to Leave Iraq, Who Will Take Control?

2009-04-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

By Sarah Price and Nizar Latif
April 22, 2009 (The Palestine Telegraph)

BAGHDAD - The current U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) dictates that U.S. troops must vacate Iraq by December 31, 2011, although it is understood that there may be as many as 70,000 troops left behind as "advisers and trainers;" and a referendum is expected in Iraq in mid-2009 that may require U.S. troops to leave 18 months earlier. Nevertheless, however the U.S. occupation ends, it is expected that this is when the next battle for control of Iraq will begin.

Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (Jaish al Mahdi) was formed in Iraq in June 2003, but came to prominence the following year, after a major military conflict with U.S. troops in the Battle of Najaf.

The Sunni paramilitary force has maintained its influence in Iraq, and has been a factor in ameliorating the level of violence through al-Sadr's cease-fire declarations.

Last November, he demanded that all U.S. troops leave Iraq unconditionally, or he would lift the cease-fire and "support the resistance against the occupier." However, last summer al-Sadr announced plans to expand the army into a social, political, and religious organization, while still maintaining the militia.

He has left Iraq to study in Iran, raising questions about his continued authority, and whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seeking to bring his own influence to the new Iraq. Who has the power now, and who will have it later, is debatable.

Abu Raed, 44, is a former commander in the Mahdi Army, in the al-Ameen district in east Baghdad. He recently left the militia and is now a member of the Sadrist Independent Liberals political bloc.

He believes the U.S. made its first mistake in Iraq when it invaded and occupied a country it didn't understand.

"Their worst failure was when they tried to divide Iraq into three states: northern, southern and middle, in order to weaken and control Iraq," he says, adding that Bush wasn't expecting the level of resistance that came from the various militias that rose up in Iraq, following the invasion.

"We have not benefited from the occupation - we only got killing, displacement, and robbing Iraqi money and oil," he says. "I believe life will improve greatly with the exit of the American occupation."

He also believes the Mahdi Army is the solution for improving Iraqi lives: "The Iraqi people are currently waiting for relief, and we find the Al-Sadrist line is the salvation and sanctuary to the Iraqi people because it is a line of Arabic people. Many of [al-Sadr's] followers have been thrown into prison, but we won in the last election in many Iraqi provinces, and we have the ability to return to the political arena in the next elections."

28-year-old Malik al-Mohammadawi is a former Mahdi Army fighter who now works in a milk factory in east Baghdad, and is married with children, but still holds the beliefs of a Sadrist follower.

"When the Americans leave, life will become normal, business will return, and Iraq will become more secure than ever before, because the cause of evil and chaos is the U.S. occupation, which wanted to make Iraq a client state. The Americans tried in various ways to eliminate the Mahdi Army, but they failed in their efforts, despite the support of police forces and the Iraqi army. To the U.S. forces, we were still strong."

But, he says, when al-Sadr called for a cease-fire and asked his militia to stop all military operations against U.S. troops, it opened the door wide for the U.S. forces to hunt down the Sadrists, but says they did what they could to ensure that not all of them would be caught, and he still believes in al-Sadr's influence over the Iraqi people.

"I have a great belief that al-Sadr can keep the unity of Iraq and its people, and he can stop the calls for dividing Iraq, and stop the spirit of sectarian division."

But Dr. Malik al-Noimee, a specialist in the study of the militias in Iraq, disagrees about al-Sadr's power in the communities. He believes that with al-Sadr's decision to expand the Mahdi Army from a militia into an organization that also has social, religious and political sects, he is trying to imitate Hassan Nasrallah, commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"The power of the Mahdi Army in the community is close to zero," he says. "There is no effect and a lot of militia members in the past are now wearing uniforms and they were forbidden to, before. I am afraid that leaving the Mahdi Army without observing and without control measures by the government will not lead to canceling this phenomenon, and we must exploit this situation. The Iraqi government has to establish new values to replace the sense and ideas belonging to the militia in the Iraqi community, because now militias are closer to death than life."

He also doubts al-Sadr's influence at election polls. "The election results gave a clear size of the popularity of Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq, although there is a part of those who elected [The Independent Liberals] who are not necessarily in favor of Moqtada al-Sadr; in their eyes, they made the situation worse and there were a lot of missed opportunities for the people of the southern region, in the field of construction and progress."

A U.S. study in 2007 estimated the Mahdi Army force was about 60,000 strong. But al-Noimee believes if al-Sadr called his militia to action today, only about a quarter of that number would show up.

"If Moqtada al-Sadr ordered them to fight, not more than 15,000 fighters would show on the scene." He also notes that the leaders of the Mahdi Army are driven much more by money than by religious ideology, and that an improvement in Iraq's economy could actually hurt the Mahdi Army's popularity and influence.

"The first factor is the strength of the central government, and the prestige of the government in a citizen militia, and then across the country in general; the second is the economic factor: if the government immediately improves the economy of the individual and the national economy, then Moqtada al-Sadr will never get people who listen to him from the communities that are considered the source of militias, such as the poor communities." He claims that many of the Mahdi Army leaders have links to Iran, and that it is having a source of money that really keeps them invested in the cause. "[There are] a very few who are driven by religious passion."

With al-Sadr now living in Iran, there are questions as to his continued influence - but also to Ahmadinejad's increasing persuasion - in Iraq, as Ahmadinejad tries to widen his power across the region.

Abu Raed thinks this is a temporary situation, and one that will be alleviated once the U.S. troops leave: "Iran has very clear power on the Iraqi arena by virtue of its relationship with some Islamic parties, which found Iran to be a safe haven, when they were being pursued by Saddam Hussein. Therefore, those parties have roots and links with Iran one way or another.

I think that after the departure of U.S. troops, Iran would be a stronger influence on the Iraqi arena, by virtue of being a neighbor, an Islamic state, and as a Shiite sectarian. But, Iraq remains an independent, free country.

"There is a difference between Ahmadinejad, who is the leader of a political and military fields and al-Sadr, the religious and spiritual leader for most of the Shiites in the region. I do not think there will be conflict between them."

Al-Mohammedawi agrees: "I imagine that Iran has a major intervention in Iraq by virtue of their many parties on the Iraqi arena, as well as their relationship to those who are of Iranian origin in Iraq, and who are not ashamed, and they do not hide their links to Iran," he says. "But after the departure of the Americans, I believe that the Iranian influence will be less than ever before, because Iran now interferes because of their fearing that U.S. troops should stay close to its borders.

If the U.S. troops are gone, Iran will pull its hands out of Iraq, and its relations will remain good, based on good-neighborliness."

But independent Iraqi Parliament member Dr. Haider Al-Sewedi is not so sure.

"The Iranian influence is very significant," he says. "There is a hidden conflict between al-Sadr and Ahmadinejad, because Ahmadinejad is trying to strengthen Iran's influence in the region, but al-Sadr doesn't accept any external interference in the Iraqi affairs, even if it is a Shiite state like Iran. Al-Sadr sought asylum in Iran in terms of security, only to save his life from the U.S. military. Now al-Sadr has little effect in the Iraqi arena."

With so many disparate opinions about who holds the power now in Iraq, only time will tell who will step forward as a leader after the pullout of U.S. troops in 2011 - or whether anyone will have enough power to step forward at all.

2009-01-20T23:15:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Protests Gaza Massacre

By Sarah Price

The Independent Monitor, February 2009

Since the beginning of the Israeli offensive in Gaza on 27 December, there have been hundreds of protests, with hundreds of thousands of participants, staged worldwide. The first two in Los Angeles were held on 30 December.

The first was organized by LA Jews for Peace and was held at the Federal Building at Wilshire and Veteran in Westwood; the second, organized by the ANSWER Coalition, was staged in front of the Israeli consulate at Wilshire and San Vicente. Unlike demonstrations in protest of previous Israeli sieges on the Gaza Strip, these ones are garnering a lot of attention from local and national media, and many of them have been present for the protests that have been occurring since the start of the war.

There were many supportive car horns, but one protester at the Federal Building held a sign that read, “Honking is not enough” on one side, and “Stand with us” on the other.

The demonstration attracted protesters who were a mixture of Jews, Arabs, and other backgrounds. As well as standing together in protest, many of them found themselves in discussion with each other, until one man approached them to make his own message clear: he claimed the Palestinians could have shared in the prosperity, but chose not to, so they now have what they wanted.

“They just hate Jews and want to kill them all,” he shouted, “so they have to have a wall to keep them out. If they didn’t follow the Quran so much, they could live in harmony with them. But they don’t look at Jews as human beings – they look at them like a space alien would look at a human.”

One journalist, a young Muslim woman, asked for his name, but he refused to give it.

“You don’t want your name associated with your comments?” she asked.

He replied, “No, not really.”

Code Pink representatives were there collecting signatures for a petition they intend to deliver to Condoleeza Rice at the State Dept. At the time of the protest, they had collected more than 3000 names. They have been involved with protests all over the country, including one in front of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s house in San Francisco. But, says one organizer, it isn’t just about the current situation.

“Our call is bigger than this moment,” said Code Pink’s Jodi Evans. “Israel is unconscionable and we need to speak to that.”

She is just back from Iran and says that Palestine is the big issue there. “This started with the way we have treated human rights. Allowing people to be kept in a prison affects our relationships in the Middle East. The US leadership has corrupted the leadership in the Middle East with its ‘you’re with us or against us’ policies. Leaders in the Middle East who want a relationship with us are forced to turn a blind eye to what’s happening. That this can happen in the 21^st century is unconscionable. They haven’t learned that the more you kill, the more you foster hate.”

Jerry Rubin, a Jewish protester, said that whenever he speaks out, he’s called a self-hating Jew. “As a Jew, it is incumbent on us to speak out for peace and that’s what I’ve been doing for decades. People say if we don’t live in Israel we shouldn’t have an opinion, but I don’t agree. The heartbreaking thing is that the closer we get to peace, there are always people there to ruin it. This is the time we should be doubling our efforts.”

He was planning a Bye-Bye Bush Fast for Peace and Positive Change, to last from New Year’s Eve until Inauguration Day.

An Arab protester who identified himself as Hamoud said, “the American media is very selective. In the international media you see more reason. The US government unconditionally supports Israel, right or wrong. All Americans, whatever their background, are for justice, but they are not well informed about the Palestinian people. Our government is always supposed to be for justice, human rights and respect for international law, including the UN resolution related to the Palestinian issue, number 338 [UN Security Council Resolution 338, passed in October 1973, for a ceasefire in the Ramadan War]. But there is no justice applied to them. Hamas elections were monitored and democratic. You have to deal with the whoever the people choose. You have to deal with your enemies, not just your friends. When you bomb and kill women and children and call it collateral damage, you dehumanize them.”

At the Israeli consulate, thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters were challenged by a few hundred pro-Israel demonstrators, kept separate, and on opposite sides of the street, by police in riot gear. Rush hour traffic was backed up for a mile, approaching the site. Crowds were loud and passionate, but peaceful and caused no problems. Despite a large police presence, there were few incidents. One man was arrested after a scuffle with an officer, reportedly because the officer had asked his wife to move back, putting his hand up and inadvertently touching her. The man was offended by this and reacted physically to him. The organizers saw the arrest, made an announcement about it to the crowd and got the crowd chanting, “Let him go!” He was later released and returned to the protest site, to the cheers of the crowd.

Carlos Alvarez, a 22-year-old legal assistant running for mayor of Los Angeles in March 2009, spoke to the crowd. He is very pro-Palestinian, and says Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is absolutely not, and should be removed from office immediately for his blind support of Israel. Mayor Villaraigosa has recently defended his support of Israel, saying, “If someone was launching rockets at us, do you think we would wait for 6,000 rockets to respond? Of course not. We would respond almost immediately.”

At the time of the protests, the bombing campaign was entering its 5^th day in Gaza, and the death toll had reached 400, with nearly 2000 injured. Due to the lack of medical equipment, supplies and medicine, and space and medical personnel in the hospitals, many of the injured were not expected to survive. An aid boat carrying needed medical donations, as well as doctors who planned to stay and help in the hospitals, was intercepted by the Israeli navy, rammed three times by one of the vessels, and forced to dock in Lebanon.

At the time of press, two weeks later, there were more than 900 dead and nearly 4500 injured. More than 1300 of the dead and injured were children.

Former Soldier Works for Peace in Israel/Palestine

2008-09-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Refusing the occupation: an interview with Rotem Mor

Sarah Price, The Electronic Intifada, 13 October 2008

Rotem Mor leading a tour group through occupied East Jerusalem. (Photo courtesy of Rotem Mor)

Like most Israeli youth, at age 18, Rotem Mor readied himself for military conscription. In the army, he was a liaison soldier with foreign armies at the Port of Egypt, but was kicked out of the unit for under-performance. After that, he was a soldier-teacher working with civilians, and spent a year in Jerusalem, working with disadvantaged kids. But he wasn't happy.

Mor began to have misgivings about the army even before he joined. He felt he had a responsibility to himself and his society. "I stopped blaming the army for my misery and took a stand," he said. He began serving in February of 2000, but by August 2001, he knew the army was not the place for him, and he sent a letter requesting exemption for reasons of conscience.

In the two weeks between his refusal and discharge, he tried to prepare himself for prison, where he knew he would be sent for refusing, but he had no regrets. "I went from a depressed soldier to attention and exposure," he says. "I worked a lot harder trying to get out of the army than I ever did while I was in it."

But there was a lot of uncertainty in standing up to a system with more power than he. "They could hold me in prison for a long time," he says. "The main thing that scares people away [from refusing], is not knowing what will happen to you. You can be tried again, once you get out of prison." In the end, he spent 28 days in jail.

"More people are speaking out," he says, "but it's still quiet. Not like it was 10 years ago, though. There's a lot more support now. In some places, refusing is the norm, in others, not, and those places can be right next to each other."

According to Sergeiy Sandler of New Profile, a movement working to demilitarize Israeli society, it's difficult to determine how many refuseniks are ideological, because there are so many other ways of avoiding service that don't lead to prison sentences.

"Some are not called up to begin with -- even though by law they are supposed to be," Sandler says. "Those are most of the members of the Palestinian minority among Israeli citizens, making up roughly 20 percent of the relevant age group among Israeli citizens. Religiously observant Jewish women are exempted upon submitting a simple declaration often made by not-so-observant women as well; about one-third of all Jewish women are exempted on these grounds."

Medical discharges, and especially psychiatric ones, he adds, are quite common, especially for those who've already been enlisted and have decided then to opt out. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, who decide to be full-time students of religious colleges, or yeshivoth, get a complicated scheme of deferral of military service. Declared conscientious objectors are a relatively very small group to be added on top of that.

"There are negative consequences," says Sandler, "but they are usually not very substantial. There is a considerable deal of discrimination against those who have not served in the military in the labor market, for example, but most of it is due to the large proportion of security jobs in the general job market in Israel, and a lot of it is just a thin disguise for ethnic discrimination against Palestinians."

But the public condemnation for avoiding military service is far more pronounced, although it has decreased in recent years.

"Up to some 20 years ago," says Sandler, "military service was considered some sort of sacred duty by most Israelis. It often still is, but overall, as the numbers of those deciding not to serve rose, the decision to avoid military service was beginning to be considered increasingly more legitimate. Nevertheless, the pressure to enlist is still exceptionally high, and includes an enormous amount of military presence in culture and education, from kindergarten on."

Rotem Mor

This is an action that Mor has taken issue with. In a letter to foreign organizations, asking for their help to further his case, at the time of his refusal, he wrote, "questions began arising long before I was recruited. They stemmed from information I had been acquiring about the Israel-Arab conflict and the discovery of the disinformation I had been subjected to over the years about it. I found that the more I educated myself, the less I believed the 'official' Israeli version of events. This point of view is the moral premise on which most Israeli youths justify their army service. I had begun to realize how much hate and fear were instilled in me from a very young age. I found that I do not believe in the existence of an 'enemy,' but of people of another culture who were just as scared and angry as I was."

Increasing attitudes like Mor's among Israeli youth has caused the government to take action to renew public dedication toward service.

"The recent year saw a concentrated public campaign by the military itself and some civil-society groups sponsored by it to restore the old attitude," says Sandler.

"It is too early to judge how effective this campaign will turn out to be," he adds. "My own guess is that they won't be able to turn the clock backwards after all."

"The message from the government about service is that it's your national duty, it builds the country, and it's good for your career," says Mor. "But they skew the messages based on the class of people they are talking to. If you are in the lower echelon, it's a lot harder."

He feels that Israel's classification of itself with Europe and the US, and its attempt to remove itself from identification with the Middle East, as well as determined separation from Palestinians, has a lot to do with the state of conflict today.

"The overall opinion about Palestinians seems to be getting worse, and I feel it is because of more separation," he says. "People in Israel are recognizing more political rights for the Palestinians, but they are afraid to speak out."

"There are very few initiatives inside Israel [directed toward unity]. If there is going to be a peaceful Jewish existence, they have to be part of the Middle East, and not so aligned with Europe and the US. Israel is portrayed as a united society, but has a lot of small subgroups with a lot of different opinions and experiences. In a broad sense, the US is seen as protector and ally, but also as someone telling Israelis what to do and how to do it."

On the subject of the Israel lobby's influence in the US, he says, "Each side can use the other to blame because they can say they are being told what to do. It's very convenient to have someone to blame."

He adds: "I think we need to learn more about where we live."

To that end, he has headed up a number of initiatives in the seven years since his refusal and discharge.

After his release, he spent a year traveling to different countries, meeting with political activists and talking to them about his experiences. Upon his return to Israel, he began running seminars for young people who were contemplating their own refusal. "These two-day seminars created a safe space for young people to contemplate their army service and refusal," he later wrote. "The seminars also provided youth with a variety of information and strategies for carrying out their decision to refuse."

He also worked with the American Friends Service Committee to strengthen the Israeli conscientious objector movement, including organizing meetings between Israeli conscientious objectors and Palestinians, living both in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In addition, he was involved in the nonviolent movement against Israel's wall in the West Bank.

Currently, he is studying Middle Eastern classical music through a program at the Center for Middle Eastern Classical Music in Jerusalem, called Promoting Middle East Culture through Peace, which he describes as "a project acting to empower and promote Middle Eastern culture in Israel as a means of integrating Israeli society into the Middle East. Despite the seldom-mentioned fact that the majority of Israel's population (Jewish, Muslim and Christian) is of Middle Eastern origin, Middle Eastern culture (in all its expressions: music, cinema, theater, religion, history and heritage) has only a marginal space in Israeli society and mass culture."

"In school, there is a lot of racism and prejudices present, but I think it opens up a lot -- learning about another culture opens you up to them," he says. "Some of the students, even though ideologically they stood with the Palestinians, there was still a divide. Learning about another culture is like learning another language and speaking the same language brings people together."

In the meantime, Mor continues to spread his message of unity in any way he can, believing that this is the only way to really have peace. He is currently writing a book about his experiences, which he hopes to finish next year.

Sarah Price is an American freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, CA. She recently visited the occupied Gaza Strip.

The Silencing of Journalists

2008-09-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Silencing of Journalists: Its Harm to All of Us
By Sarah Price

When 24-year-old Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London on June 16, he accepted it on behalf of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, his home. He had decided at the age of 17, even before the loss of his home to house demolitions and his brother to sniper fire, that he would be their voice. But upon his return from Europe on June 26, his own voice was nearly silenced. Eight armed Israeli security agents were waiting for him at the Allenby Crossing between Jordan and the West Bank. They strip- and cavity-searched him and beat him unconscious. He survived, but has sustained broken ribs, a damaged trachea that kept him on a liquid diet for over a month, possible sterility from one kick, and pain in his legs and hands. With physical difficulty, he is writing again and continues to be a voice for Gaza, but he wonders for how long. Despite international media attention and calls from the Dutch and British parliaments for formal investigations into the attack, as well as compensation for Omer’s medical expenses and help getting surgery he needs and cannot get in Gaza, his case remains largely untouched. An investigation report released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry in late August claimed his allegations were false. However, the investigators failed to interview Omer or his doctors, and requested no medical records for review. Robert Dekker, spokesman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry, said they are not satisfied with the report, and have requested an independent investigator. "I can inform you that Mr. Omer's account and the Israeli report differ in conclusion on what exactly transpired," he said. "The Netherlands has urged Israel therefore to initiate an independent investigation to find out the exact course of events." The Israeli Foreign Ministry offices in London and Jerusalem have failed to provide a copy of the investigation report.

Almost 200 Palestinian journalists have been injured and nearly a dozen killed since September 2000, including Fadel Shana, a 23-year-old Reuters cameraman who was killed in Gaza on April 16 by an Israeli tank shell – the final images from his destroyed camera showing the shell aimed at and flying toward him. The results of an investigation released in August cleared the soldiers of any wrongdoing, but Reuters slammed the claims, pointing out that the markings on his flak jacket and his vehicle clearly identified him as a journalist, and the wire service is considering legal action. The Israeli Foreign Press Association fears that the probe’s conclusions could cause worse consequences for journalists in the region, if soldiers take the lack of disciplinary action as a green light to fire on members of the press.

The silencing of journalists is not a new practice, nor is it confined to any one region of the world. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), 15 have been killed worldwide so far in 2008, 13 more are suspicious deaths under investigation, and at least 82 reporters have been exiled in the past year.

In China, tough restrictions on foreign journalists were eased in an attempt to garner good press during the Beijing Olympics. On December 1, 2006, China's State Council issued a decree granting foreign journalists more freedom in reporting in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games, from January 1, 2007 through October 17, 2008 (one month after the end of the Paralympics). Foreign journalists would not be required to be accompanied by a Chinese official, would be allowed to engage in independent reporting in all localities without permission and could hire Chinese citizens to assist them.

But there are concerns for what happens after October 17 for foreign journalists, and what happens in the meantime for members of the Chinese media. China still remains the largest jailer of journalists in the world, with 26 currently imprisoned. According to CPJ, China has held this distinction for nearly a decade. The longest-held journalists in China, Chen Renjie and Lin Youping, have been jailed since July 1983. The two have been sentenced to life in prison for writing and distributing all of 300 copies of a pamphlet called Ziyou Bao ("Freedom Report"). Their colleague, Chen Biling, was executed.

Even within the allotted months of reporting leniency, there have been violations. In July, the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association and the International Federation of Journalists condemned Beijing police for a number of recent incidents against Hong Kong reporters covering pre-Olympic activities, citing police brutality and negligence, detention, and deliberate misinformation to allow for further attacks. Some reporters were assaulted by police when they were told they had strayed out of the reporting area, but the situation was confusing, said journalist Felix Wong, because “the police kept changing the so-called reporting area.” Others had their cameras confiscated, were ordered to delete footage, and pressured to sign documents saying their matter was closed, so they could take no further action against the police.

However, we needn't look so far to see such violations against free speech. On Monday, September 1, in St. Paul, MN, "Democracy Now!" host Amy Goodman and two of her producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, were arrested on riot charges as they interviewed protesters outside the Republican National Convention. Goodman received a call that her producers had been "bloodied by the police," and she ran to where they were. By the time she arrived, they had been put into police vehicles. Asking officers if she could just see them, she was immediately arrested, too. The incident was caught on tape and was the most-watched video on YouTube the next day. Like Shana, all three were clearly marked as members of the press.

For whatever complaints there may be about the mainstream media and its collective complacency, there are untold numbers of journalists risking, and sometimes losing, their lives to bring the truth about the injustices around them to light. In an article for The Nation, Omer wrote, “The might of the Israeli military will not silence my pen or darken my camera lens.” But if these voices continue to be silenced, whether through maiming, intimidation, censorship or death, there will soon be no one to speak for any of us. "When the press is shut down", Goodman told the Los Angeles Times, "it's closing the eyes and ears of a critical watchdog in a democratic society."

Gaza Journalist Assaulted by Shin Bet

2008-07-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

Gaza Journalist Assaulted by Shin Bet
By Sarah Price

The Independent Monitor, July 2008

The last words in his acceptance speech were, I can’t wait for the day I retire as a war correspondent. Then he came home to a whole new battle.

This was originally going to be a profile of young Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer, called “Gaza’s Best Hope.” I was going to write about his rise from the poverty-stricken refugee camps of the Gaza Strip to international readership and acclaim; the murder and maiming of family members and demolition of his home by the Israel Occupation Forces that have only served to fuel the fire of his mission: to get the word out about the truth of life in Occupied Palestine; and of his peaceful nature, despite years of tragic loss – his own and that of his homeland. He wants peace on both sides, and admonishes violence toward Israeli citizens as much as he does that toward Palestinians. He made a choice, in his words, “not to pick up a gun, but to pick up a camera,” because he knew the only solution was to document the truth of what is going on, and he has done so diligently for the last seven years.

But since the events of June 26, 2008, the focus has changed.

On Saturday, May 17, I received an excited e-mail from Mohammed: he had won the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize, an award given “for journalism that exposes establishment propaganda,” and would be sharing it with his friend, Dahr Jamail, an American journalist celebrated for his independent reports from Iraq. He had just received the news from John Pilger, an Australian-born, UK-based journalist and former war correspondent who sat on the judging panel, and had come to admire Mohammed for his work. At age 24, he would be the youngest journalist ever to have won it.

He was due some good news. He was still recovering from the loss of two close friends one month earlier: Gazan Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed by an Israeli tank shell on April 16; and Palestinian rights activist Riad Hamad, the news of whose suicide circulated a day later. The previous four months had been hell for Gaza, in general. An Israeli siege hit the small strip of land in January, two months after peace talks had begun between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Over 120 Palestinians were dead – most of them civilians, and dozens of them children, and several hundred more injured. A small number of their most critical cases were being sent to Egypt for treatment, but only about one-third were being granted entry. “The rest of the cases,” said Dr. Medhat Abbas, Director of Crisis Management at the Gaza Ministry of Health, “will continue receiving the new formula of PFU in Gaza (‘pray for us’).”

Mohammed had been working constantly through fear, fatigue, and close calls on his own life to keep up with his reports about the siege for the number of publications for whom he writes: The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) in Washington, DC, New Statesman in the UK, Inter Press Service (IPS) in Italy, and several publications throughout Europe, for whom his articles are translated into various languages, as well as maintaining his own website, RafahToday.org, named for his hometown, located on the Egyptian border. He also regularly works to help patients who can’t get the treatment they need in Gaza, to get out and get what they need from Israeli hospitals – an almost impossible feat that he attempts for one patient after another, taking each case personally. He supports his parents and six siblings, and has done so since the beginning of his father’s 12-year imprisonment in an Israeli jail. He found work in a factory, which he would do every day after school, and late into the night. He would come home around 11pm, exhausted from school and work, sleep until about 5am, and get up and do it all again, still barely making enough to feed his family. And he was six years old.

His dream growing up had been to work as an interpreter for the International Red Cross. He loved languages, and even in grade school, taught himself new words in English when he came across them, getting so far ahead of his classmates that they accused him of having an American mother. By his mid-teens, he was already taking courses in international public relations, photography and journalism, and translation. In 2006, he graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a BA in English.

But by the time he was 17, his dream of being an interpreter had been replaced by what he saw as an obligation to become a journalist. He was seeing bloodshed on a daily basis – his town being bombed; people being shot by soldiers in the street; and the homes of his relatives and friends being bulldozed with no warning in the middle of the night. And yet, there seemed to be no coverage of this anywhere in the press. No one else is documenting this, he thought, so I need to. He started with just a notepad, writing every day what he saw. After a while, he put together a website, documenting with his words and photographs, life in Gaza.

In 2003, he began keeping a journal regularly on RafahToday. But he was not yet aware of the terrible year he was soon to document.

In January, Israeli forces destroyed two water wells and demolished more than 50 homes in the last week alone, in order to make room for a wall between Rafah and Egypt, its neighbor to the south; between March and May, peace activists Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, and filmmaker James Miller were killed by Israeli forces in Rafah. In March, his own home was demolished by an Israeli bulldozer, with his mother and sister inside. They managed to get out through the kitchen window as the walls and roof fell in, but his mother still suffers from the leg injuries she sustained from her escape.

But by November, things were much worse.

In late September, Mohammed’s younger brother Issam was shot in the leg, which had to be amputated; and on October 18, his younger brother Hussam was shot seven times and killed by an Israeli sniper. Trying to bring his body out of the street, their next door neighbor was also killed, and trying to save her, her husband was injured – all in full view of their small children. “The moments can't be described when my mother got the news of the murder of my brother,” he wrote. “They were the worst in my whole life.”

But through it all, he persisted. Within a year, he was contributing to WRMEA, Morgenbladet newspaper in Norway, Agence France Presse, and the BBC, as well as several newspapers across Europe. In November 2006, he was awarded his first journalism prize, New America Media’s Best Youth Voice Award, but because of the difficulties getting permission to leave Gaza, he missed the ceremony, but was able to embark on a 15-city tour of the US, to give his presentation of life in Gaza, Gaza on the Ground, to thousands of people. Six months later, he was doing the same thing in Europe, but he had updated it, calling it Welcome to Hell. Days earlier, just before his 23rd birthday, he had survived an encounter with militants in Gaza who had cornered him on a dark street when he was trying to make his way home to Rafah from his work in Gaza City. The three gunmen surrounded him, discussing with each other where to shoot him, and whether or not to just kill him. He talked to and pleaded with them until they tired of him and let him go.

But with great struggle and work has come great admirers. The growing popularity of his writing spread to include international dignitaries and well-known writers. Soon, he was in touch with the likes of Noam Chomsky and Norman Mailer, who, before his passing in November 2007, was helping Mohammed write a book about his life; and had more requests from Europe and the United States for personal appearances. But the ongoing siege in Gaza made leaving even more difficult, so the news of his award in May was tempered with caution – he wanted to combine his visit to receive the award in London on June 16 with the opportunity to accept the invitation to speak to press and parliament members in Greece, Holland, France, and Sweden; and address the House of Commons in London, but didn’t know if he would make it out. The Dutch Foreign Ministry stepped in on his behalf, but Israel was making it very difficult to get the green light. Mohammed had been frustrated in Gaza for some time and was desperate for a chance to get away from the death and destruction he not only had to see every day, but as a journalist, had to seek out. By the end of May, he felt certain he would not get to go. “I am rejected and imprisoned in this hell,” he wrote.

But then the call came that he had been granted exit, and he rushed to get ready to go.

The three-week whirlwind tour of Europe was a great success. The opportunity to meet and speak with so many government and press representatives energized him, and gave him new contacts and notes for future articles. In his acceptance speech on June 16, he thanked his supporters, but said that he looked forward to the day that he could retire as a war correspondent.

Mohammed with co-recipient Dahr Jamail (left) and John Pilger in London, June 16 (Photo: Paul de Rooij)

In trying to get him permission to leave, they had been careful to do everything correctly, so that getting back in would not be a problem. He was trying to get back to Gaza for his brother Fadi’s wedding, and expected to be home on Sunday, June 22. But upon his arrival in Amman, Jordan, he received the news that Israel was not granting him re-entry. Between Saturday, June 21, and Wednesday, June 25, the Dutch Foreign Ministry worked frantically to convince Israeli officials to let him cross back home to Gaza. John Pilger urged Mohammed to go to the press, but he preferred to handle it diplomatically, and failing that, would go public. But he wanted to see if they could do it quietly first.

He was concerned about his status, because upon returning from his US tour in December 2006, he had been stuck in Cairo, trying to get back in, for three weeks, and he had already met people in Jordan who had been stranded there for months. But he hoped that since he had more diplomatic help this time, it wouldn’t take too long. On Wednesday, they finally got word that he would be allowed back in the next day. “Why can’t I go today?” he asked. “We don’t know,” was the response. “They just said tomorrow.” The answer made him suspicious and nervous.

He passed through the Jordan side of the Allenby Bridge crossing early the next morning, but when he came to the Israeli side, there was trouble right away. He gave his passport to the woman at passport control and she asked where he was going. When he answered, “Gaza,” she asked “what?” in Hebrew several times as he tried to make her understand. Finally, he answered her in Hebrew, “Azzah.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Actually, according to my computer, you have no coordination.”

He did have coordination, he protested, but she told him to wait at the side, where he stayed for the next 90 minutes, until someone came to get him and told him to bring his bags. He had been through x-ray by this time, and his bags had already been searched and were ready to be picked up. He was made to wait at the Shin Bet office, and could see that there were two cameras on him, on either side. Then he saw two Palestinian men coming out from other offices and they were dressing themselves. He knew then that these were rooms for strip-searching, and that he was probably in trouble.

A young blond Shin Bet agent told him to come with him, collecting his bags from the holding area, where they had been searched already, and demanded his cell phone. Mohammed was going through the Allenby Bridge crossing under diplomatic escort from the Dutch embassy, as he had left, and asked if could call his escorts to let them know what was happening. The young man barked at him that no, he could not.

After a few minutes, another agent, an investigator in his forties referred to as “Avi” by the other agents, entered and started going through all his belongings, along with another interrogator who had joined him. After searching through everything and dumping all his notes, cell phone, and memory cards into a box, they demanded to know where the money was. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but told them what traveling money he had on him – various amounts in British pounds, Euros, Israeli shekels, and Jordanian dinars. They demanded he put it all on the table, which he did, thinking maybe this was a shakedown – they would take the money he had and then let him go. But they were still dissatisfied. They asked again about the English pounds he had, and he realized then that they were looking for the prize money. The Martha Gellhorn Prize, since it was shared, would come out to roughly $5000 USD. But he had felt it safer to have it transferred to his bank, rather than carry it with him. When he told them this, he said, they were visibly irate and called him a liar.

By this point, the room had filled with more agents and he was outnumbered eight-to-one. They were angry and wanted money he didn’t have. And they were armed. When he repeated that he had shown them everything he had on him, Avi escorted him to an empty room.

“Take off your clothes,” he ordered him. Mohammed refused. He had already been through x-ray, and a pat-down would have revealed anything he might have been hiding.

“Take off your clothes,” he demanded again. So, he stripped down to his underwear.

“Take off everything,” he pressed.

Mohammed refused again. “I am a journalist,” he said, “and I have an escort from the Dutch embassy waiting for me. Call them and tell them what’s happening and that you want me to take off my clothes.”

Avi retorted that he knew all this, and insisted again that he take off his underwear. By this time, Mohammed was frightened. “Why are you treating me this way?” he asked.

“This is nothing compared to what you will see now,” Avi replied, putting his hand on his revolver, pressing his weight against Mohammed’s hip and forcibly pulling it off. He then patted his body down, “up one side and down the other,” Mohammed said later, and he was subjected to a cavity search. He then demanded he move to the left and right, in some kind of dance. When Mohammed refused, Avi pulled him left and right.

He had held his composure as long as he could, and started to cry. Avi backed off at that point.

“He looked satisfied,” he said. “He just wanted to humiliate me. He didn’t care about what I had; the intention was not to bring me to Gaza.”

He ordered him to get dressed and come back into the other room, where another of the intelligence officers was still going through his belongings.

The agent shook his head at Mohammed. “You are a crazy man,” he said. “I can’t understand why someone who has traveled to Sweden, Holland, Greece, London and Paris is coming back to Gaza. Gaza is a dirty place with dirty people. I thought the dream of those people is to leave Gaza and live in Europe. Why do you want to go to Gaza? There’s nothing in Gaza – no food, no fuel, no clean water. There is darkness. Go live in Paris; it’s beautiful there. Or do you like to be around the Hamas system in Gaza?”

Goading him, and not really looking for a response, he continued: “Aren't you ashamed to have your name and reputation associated with such a dirty place as Gaza?”

Mohammed answered, “No, I want to be there because I want to be a voice for the voiceless. I want to get the truth out. I have no affiliation with Hamas; I don’t even think they like me.”

“Then you choose to suffer.”

“No,” Mohammed said, “I choose to tell the truth.”

They continued to go through his luggage, taunting him about various items he had come home with:

“What are the perfumes for?”
“My friends and family, people I love.”
“Oh, you have love in your culture?”
“Of course.”

“What is this?” they asked, referring to a trophy he was given by the Greek Union of Journalists. When he told them, Avi replied that Greece was not a friend of Israel, only of the Palestinians.

“I don’t know,” Mohammed responded, wondering how Greece would feel about that, “it’s not my business.”

He had been standing for quite some time by then and had been without food, water, or a toilet for several hours. The stress and abuse caused him to feel faint, and he vomited and collapsed. A doctor said later that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. He was unconscious for nearly an hour and a half on the floor, he estimates, but could hear what they were saying, and feel what they were doing to him.

“They didn’t believe I had really passed out,” he said, “so they were out to make me react to their pressure.”

One agent dug his nails into the skin under his eyes and behind his ears, pinching him. Another pressed his shoe hard enough against his neck, that Mohammed could feel the outline of it. Another used two fingers to press into the space between his neck and chest, cutting off his airway. Mohammed remembers feeling himself choking. The damage to his trachea was so severe that even weeks later, he could not swallow anything but liquids. Finally, another pressed his hands into his chest with all the weight of his body, which eventually resulted in several fractured ribs, and breathing problems. They also continued to taunt him, saying, “Come on, Mohammed, we’re going to take you to Rafah now!,” expecting that would cause him to suddenly recover.

They eventually realized the severity of the situation and began to panic, calling for an ambulance, and an Israeli doctor checked his heart and performed an EKG. He was still unconscious in the ambulance, but Shin Bet agents continued trying to revive him – calling his name, forcing open his eyes, and spraying a sort of smelling salts into his face. But the efforts were not out of concern for his health: they needed him to sign a waiver, releasing them from all responsibility. Fortunately, the Palestinian ambulance driver, Mahmoud Taraira, intervened. He cannot sign that, he protested, he’s unconscious. He added that anything signed in that state of mind is non-binding.

They finally made it to the Palestinian doctors in Jericho, who were reassuring him he would be OK now.

At last able to call his escorts, after at least five hours, he found his cell phone amongst his belongings, but then he noticed his mobile was acting strangely – it was dialing numbers and sending messages by itself. The agents had told him earlier to give it to them and take out the battery. He believes that they used that opportunity to put something in it to track him. For days, it would only work off and on. Sometimes people could get through, others times, not at all. So he borrowed a phone and called the Dutch embassy to come get him. He arrived home safely, but by the next day, he was back in the hospital with breathing problems and chest pains. Due to the damage to his trachea, he couldn’t swallow, and spent six days in European Hospital in Khan Younis, being fed and medicated through an IV drip.

He discovered later that although all the money had been returned, an expensive watch and some other items had not.

In his bed at European Hospital in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip (Reuters)

Israel’s immediate responses ranged from being completely unaware of the incident to washing their hands of the actions of Shin Bet.

Lisa Dvir, from the Israeli Airport Authority (IAA), the body responsible for controlling Israel’s borders, told IPS, “We would like to know who Omer spoke to in regard to receiving coordination to pass through Allenby. We offer journalists a special service when passing through our border crossings, and had we known about his arrival this would not have happened.”

The truth is that Palestinian journalists have been targeted for some time.

Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana, 23, had shown up at the site of an air strike on April 16, 2008, to film the outcome of the incident, when he was killed by an Israeli tank shell, filled with small metal darts called flechettes, in full view of the soldiers operating the tank. His car was clearly marked “TV” and “Press,” as was his bullet-proof vest. The blast also injured his soundman, and killed two children in the area instantly, and two more from their injuries days later. He was filming the tank when they fired at him. The tape from his destroyed camera shows the shell coming at him.

Al-Aqsa TV cameraman Imad Ghanem, 21, was shot while he filmed a clash between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers on July 5, 2007. As he fell to the ground, he held up his camera to show he was unarmed, but a tape filmed by a colleague shows that he continued to be fired upon. He survived, but lost both legs.

On July 8, 2006, photojournalist Mohammed al Zanoun, 20, was shot by a helicopter as he documented Israeli attacks in Gaza City. As paramedics rushed to save him, he pleaded with them to save the camera, so that what he saw would be documented. He has sustained permanent damage to his head and chest.

Omer had recently reported, after Shana’s death, that “journalists have long been targeted in the region. Since September 2000, Israeli forces have killed nine journalists, and have wounded at least 170 others.”

The news of Mohammed’s attack started to spread on Friday, June 27, as friends and colleagues were in touch with him from his hospital bed.

Hans van Baalen, a member of the Party for Freedom and Democracy in the Dutch parliament, who had been personally responsible for arranging his exit from Gaza both for this European tour and his previous one, in June 2007, said, “I cannot understand it because Israel wanted him to travel through Israel. The Dutch embassy escorted him a year ago and this time, so they should have known he is decent journalist and should have treated him in a decent way, they should also treat other innocent Palestinians and other travelers decently. But this did not happen.”

He filed a protest with the Israeli government and asked that Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen do the same, demanding “an investigation with public conclusions.”

“We will monitor this,” he said. “If we don’t like [the results of the investigation], we will speak out.”

Harry Kney-Tal, the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, assured them that if the claims were accurate, that this act was not according to official procedure. In response to a claim reported by Reuters that an Israeli official said that no rules were breached and that Omer had fallen somehow on his own, breaking his ribs, Kney-Tal said that was not the official response, and that there was a full investigation in progress and he expected results shortly.

However, on July 9, The Israeli Government Press Office released a statement on the incident, discrediting Omer. In it, they claimed that he and his baggage were searched, “due to suspicion that he had been in contact with hostile elements and had been asked by them to deliver items to Judea and Samaria.” (“Judea and Samaria” is a phrase commonly used by the Israeli right wing to dismiss the existence of the West Bank and to claim the area as exclusively Israeli), although he had been x-rayed and his baggage searched before the interrogation occurred. The press release went on to point out several points in Omer’s claim that they said contradicted their investigation, but it failed to cite the sources of their research, and often quoted him out of context.

When the Dutch Press Office became aware of the press release, they were surprised, said spokesman Robert Dekker, and they confronted Ambassador Kney-Tal about it. “He confirmed that this is not the official report, and that it is still expected in the next few days,” he said.

News of Omer’s attack spread quickly across the blogosphere and alternative news sources, as well as media outlets across the Middle East, but getting into the mainstream media in the West has been difficult. Concerned friends and colleagues deluged CNN, BBC and AP offices with requests that they cover the story, to no avail. When it was mentioned by the BBC and the New York Times, it was to say that Israel was denying the charges. But when Karin Laub, from the AP Jerusalem bureau published an article also disputing Omer’s claims, yet also failing to cite sources, it was the story that spread across American news websites. While she was interviewing him, Omer said later, she continually cut him off while he tried to give her his account of the incident, and although in her article she stated that strip-searching was not the norm in Israeli security procedure, when he was telling her about his, she said that that was normal.

More respected writers in the US have also had trouble getting the US press to pay attention.

“I've been following it closely, signing petitions, joining in protests,” said author and political activist Noam Chomsky. “I've brought it to the attention of the very few journalists with whom I still have contact. It will, I'm afraid, be very hard to get the US media to pay any attention, or even to believe the facts.”

Omer’s Martha Gellhorn Prize co-recipient Dahr Jamail has also faced difficulty in getting the news published.

“I'm doing all I can to get it out,” he said. “Nada in the US mainstream, which is no surprise. The only response I got was an email from someone at CBS asking to be removed from my dispatch list when I sent out the press release about his torture. Doing all I can....but of course we know that they will censor this the best they can.”

Omer’s editors at the Washington Report circulated a petition protesting the abuse, which they planned to hand-deliver in a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, garnered approximately 3600 signatures; Israeli civil rights group New Profile also circulated a petition calling for the just treatment of journalists, citing Omer as one of many recent abuses, which had an additional 1000, and British Member of Parliament Colin Breed brought a measure to the Parliament House Assembly, calling on an official criticism of Israel’s torture of Omer, and for Israel to compensate him for his medical costs.

But despite the efforts, Omer is not optimistic. They have committed one crime after another that they have not had to explain or pay for, he says, and he doesn’t believe his case will be any different.

In his article for the Guardian, John Pilger quoted former Dutch ambassador Jan Wijenberg, who said: "This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life ... I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future."

Omer has no doubt that could happen, but is not letting it deter him.

"The Israelis were trying to punish me for the work I am doing and getting the message out," he told IPS from his hospital bed. "But they won't break me. As soon as I am better, and my limbs are working properly, I will be back on the beat and reporting what is happening. They have made me more determined than ever."

Mother Teresa once said, “I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.” It would not be surprising if the same thought crossed Mohammed Omer’s mind once in a while. With his astonishing rise from poverty and tragedy to success and acclaim in his short 24 years, he may very well be Gaza’s best hope. Not merely because of his success, but because of what it took to get it – diligence, hard work, and a daily show of courage that most will never be forced to display; but above all, a belief in his fellow human beings that keeps him going – through the imprisonment of his father, the murder and maiming of his brothers, the demolition of his home and the loss of everything he had, and the brutal attempts to silence him. Gaza’s best hope is that there is still hope.

Barely out of the hospital, still on a liquid diet and unable to breathe comfortably yet, Mohammed is already hard at work, writing again.

Gaza Protest - February 2008

2008-06-04T10:30:00.000-07:00

In Anaheim, Hundreds Protest Gaza Siege

The Independent Monitor, February 2008

On Saturday, January 26, as 2000 Arabs and Jews made their pilgrimage across Israel to bring three tons of humanitarian relief to the Gaza Strip, their efforts were supported by dozens of protests in cities around the world, including London, New York, Paris, Glasgow, Washington, DC, Melbourne, Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Anaheim, CA, as part of the End the Siege on the People of Gaza International Day of Action.

The protests were held in response to the Israeli siege in Gaza, which has killed 76 Palestinians and injured 293 – at least 80% of whom are civilians – since January 1; and to the blockade of the borders, which has prevented food, fuel, medicines and other humanitarian needs to pass through, causing long outages of electricity in the strip, affecting hospitals, sewage systems, and heating.

In Anaheim, the number of protesters grew quickly to over 500 in the first hour of the demonstration. Police surrounded and closely monitored the situation, as a counter-protest of Israel supporters gathered across the street. The two dozen demonstrators carried signs that read, “Israel Wants Peace;” “Stop the Qassam Rockets;” and “How many people have your pals car bombed this week?” Some waved large Israeli and American flags, the street dividing the two protests like the border separating the two worlds.

Asked why she was there to support Gaza, one Muslim American woman who asked to remain anonymous said, “I usually don’t like this type of protest, because it has a negative energy to it, especially since today we have counter-protesters across the street – we have two groups shouting at each other. I prefer to follow Mother Theresa and go to something positive. But sometimes it becomes necessary – when mothers are being clubbed for trying to break into Egypt to get food for their children. It’s wrong and our voices have to be heard.”

Some of the voices heard that day came from various activist groups, who had come together to hold the protest; others were demonstrators with microphones and bullhorns, leading chants for the crowd, whose voices were often drowned out by the sound of supportive car horns.

“We’re all Palestinian until we have a free Palestine,” said Sana Ibrahim of the Palestinian American Women Association. “But in this country, we are also Americans. It is our right and responsibility to speak out against injustices.”

Shakeel Syed, of the Islamic Shura Council, announced to the crowd: “I have 3 messages today – to George Bush: Shame on you for kneeling and still massacring people all over the Middle East; to Ehud Olmert: It doesn’t matter if it has been sixty years or six hundred years, we will continue to fight for our land; and to the leaders of the Middle East: Shame on you for dancing with Bush [during his January 2008 Middle East tour] while he murdered your people! May we continue to fight for our rights!”

Zahi Damuni, of Al-Awda, added, “There has been total silence since the siege, which started after Hamas was democratically elected. We have the right to elect who we want. Mahmoud Abbas must go!”

“We cannot wait while the occupiers give us crumbs off the table of justice,” announced Muna Coobtee, a representative of the ANSWER Coalition, one of the organizers of the Anaheim protest.

At the New York rally in front of the Israeli consulate, representatives of Neturei Karta International, an Orthodox Jewish, anti-Zionist organization stated in a speech to demonstrators, “We of Neturei Karta International have been in the forefront of the battle against Zionism for over a century. Our presence here today is to refute the base lie that the evil which is Zionism in some way represents the Jewish people. The reverse is true. We are saddened day in and day out at the terrible toll of death emanating from the Holy Land. Most of these deaths have been Palestinian. Not one of them would have occurred if Zionism would never have unleashed its evil energies upon the world.”

In Israel, the convoy brought to Erez Crossing was stopped at the gate by the army, despite Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s promise that the goods would be allowed to pass through. Representatives at Erez said they would be allowed in the following Monday. As of a week later, they remain stored in a nearby kibbutz.

Representatives of Gush Shalom – one of 26 Israeli peace groups to join the convoy – have said they “have prepared an appeal to the Supreme Court, but still hope to save the money it would cost and instead buy more water filters and add these to the convoy. But if all other means would fail we are prepared to go to court.”

(Note: the goods were allowed through the crossing about two weeks later - SP)

Obituary - Riad Hamad - May 2008

2008-06-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

In Memoriam
Riad Hamad: 1952-2008

The Independent Monitor, May 2008

To answer the call to Palestine – to stand up against the injustice inflicted upon the region and to give your life to helping its people live a dignified, peaceful, prosperous life – is to accept heartbreak into your own life, often and in great magnitude. For some, the mission ends far too early, because the fight and the heartbreak are just too much to withstand any longer.

Riad Elsohl Hamad died on April 14, 2008, of an apparent suicide. He was reported missing by his family after he had gone out to pick up a prescription and never returned. His body was found floating in Lady Bird Lake in Austin, TX, on Wednesday, April 16. When his body was fished out of the lake, he was found to be gagged with duct tape, and his hands tied. Police investigators said the positioning of the tape were consistent with him “having done it to himself.”

Hamad was well known to many activists in Palestine and the United States, as well as amongst Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. His work was tireless and for the benefit of the families suffering under the effects of occupation: poverty, sanctions, and a lack of health care and education. But mostly, a sense of imprisonment in this life that leads to despair and sometimes self-destructive behavior, especially amongst the children.

His fight was as much about stopping this result of occupation as it was about stopping the occupation itself. His organization, the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund (PCWF), helped kids by sponsoring them and their families with monthly donations, microfinancing programs, food and medicine, and gifts during Muslim celebrations, when they would otherwise have nothing. He also helped the communities by donating books, computers and money to programs meant to enrich the children’s lives and education.

One such program is the Afaq Jadeeda (New Horizons) Cultural Center in central Gaza, which was started mainly to help kids have something to go to, to keep them in touch with their cultural roots and continued education, and to keep them from following a dangerous and increasingly common path: turning to violence. Education was of utmost important to him, as someone who had earned several degrees, and was a teacher by trade. He donated computers and used English school books so they could have classes for the kids who attended the center from the Nuseirat refugee camp in which it was founded. Since his passing, the English and Computer Center has been named in his honor.

But such involvement and activity for people who are generally regarded as terrorists by one’s government will often attract unwanted attention. After years of surveillance, Hamad had been expecting government intervention, and in February 2008, it came bounding through his door. On February 28, agents from the FBI and IRS raided his home in Austin, TX, “leaving with more than 40 boxes of tax returns, forms, documents, books, flags, cds etc. The special agent said that they have a probable cause for money laundering, wire fraud, bank fraud, etc and I think that all of it stems from more than 35 years of watching me,” he wrote in an e-mail to friends. The investigation failed to find any wrongdoing on the part of Hamad or PCWF, but he knew he continued to be watched. In the months before and after the raid, e-mails from friends would disappear from his computer, even as he was reading them.

As soon as the news of his death started to circulate, so did the rumors. He had been found gagged and bound, and had been under surveillance and investigation for years, so the conclusion that he had been murdered by government operatives came naturally to many who had known him. Also suspicious was the changing reports from the Austin police: when it was announced that an unidentified man had been found in Lady Bird Lake in that condition, murder was the first assumption; but when, the next day, the police announced that they had changed the conclusion to suicide, as the positioning of the duct tape looked like he could have done it himself, the blogosphere came alive with conspiracy theories. Adding to them was the report from Dr. Ibrahim Dremali, who had washed Hamad’s body at the Islamic Center of Greater Austin. He recounted on the Alex Jones Radio Show the condition of the body, and how he had no doubt that something suspicious had happened to him.

But sources close to the family maintain that this was suicide. He had been despondent for some time, had turned over accounts to friends, and had admitted to a few people that he could no longer support himself or pay his legal fees. They say there are other reasons as well, but they are being kept private. In regards to the duct tape, family and friends believe he did do it, to keep himself from changing his mind and swimming to safety, and that his body was probably in the condition it was in, because it had been in the lake for three days before he was found.

However, while he was not physically murdered by the government, there is no doubt that had he not endured years of harassment by government agencies and investigations which, although they never were able to indict him of wrongdoing, were nevertheless very costly to defend himself against, he would still be here.

Friends reacted to Hamad’s death with shock and grief. A message on the PCWF website read, “We cannot begin to express our sorrow at the death of this fine man who has helped so many and asked for so little. Many of you have written to tell us how much he has done and how much he will be missed. We are grateful for the outpouring of affection, and we want to assure everyone who has been a part of PCWF that its mission will continue.”

Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and peace activist who lives in Gaza and worked with Hamad and PCWF for many years, in conjunction with the Middle East Children’s Alliance (Gaza) wrote, “I am speechless, shocked and do not know what to write. How can I pass this piece of sad news to thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza that he supported and opened a window of hope and love to them and their families?”

One of his middle school students wrote:

they make him sound so unreal.
like he wasn't really an intellectual man.
a loving man.
like he didn't have thoughts and ideas, different interests and hobbies,
like he's just another headline.
how can they do that?
he is so much more. so much more than that.
he had a family, a story, a life.
he had pets, his cats, and of course, his camels.
he had a sense of humor.
he was an activist.
he wanted to help people, help children.
he was wrongly accused by the government.
multiple times
yet he did nothing wrong.
he's one of the greatest people i've knownand will ever know.
and, i regret not knowing him better. he will be missed.
dearly.

One of the attributes Hamad’s friends remember most was his sense of humor, which often came out in letters to the government in response to the harassment of his family and friends, which he had had to endure so much, he placed a sign on his yard warning his neighbors that he was under surveillance by the US government. One such letter was to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft: “My neighbor came up to me few weeks ago and informed me that an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation called him again regarding some information about my activities and other personal matters. (He) specifically told me that the agent inquired about the kind of car that I drive since your agents cannot find any records of car ownership for me in Travis county or the state of Texas. I was surprised to hear that from him since not even my closest friends know that I do not own a car or any property, fixed or mobile in the state of Texas or the United States. It was my choice at the age of forty to give up all material things and devote my life to something meaningful besides racking up dollars in my bank account. For your information I do not own a car, a house, a yacht and my bank accounts have less than one hundred dollars in them. Your agents should know the car that I drive since it has more than 20 bumper stickers in support of the people of Palestine, against the occupation of Palestine, against the war in Iraq and one that states "A village in Texas is missing its idiot," and I think he now lives on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

“Now, you know that piece. Anything else you want to know. Oh yes, I forgot, my personal attire. I own five shirts. One light pink shirt that I have had for over three years. One dark pink shirt that I have had for over three years. I use both often to show my feminine side because I know how much you and the rest of this administration hate gays…”

Perhaps as a final statement of defiance to the government, or as a wink to his friends, when his body was found, he was wearing one of his pink shirts.

The Hamad family planned a memorial on May 10th in Austin, to celebrate his life.

Anna Baltzer, author of Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories, wrote: “The last time we met was in Austin, where he hosted my father and me for a luxurious dinner. It struck me, since I knew how frugal he was with himself — sleeping in a car rather than paying for a hotel that would detract from the money he could send to Palestinians — but he was always generous with others. He sent me away with a full belly and 1000 bumper stickers that he'd bought himself to support my work. Soon thereafter he sent me dozens of purses embroidered by Palestinian refugees. Each purse bore the name of a destroyed village. These weren't your typical "Free Palestine" messages; Riad was encouraging the embroiderers to celebrate their history and connection to their villages — a kind of nonviolent resistance to Israel's policies of ongoing ethnic cleansing and denial of the inalienable Right of Return. May you finally find the peace you harvested for so long, Riad.”

In her blog post in his memory, Dr. El-Farra added: “Riad... you will stay alive inside all of us who have known you and share the same vision, working hard to change the world and give the less privileged a chance for a dignified life. Your kindness, your big heart, your strong will and your determination will stay alive in us. We will never surrender to oppression, injustice and occupation. We will never give up our right of return. And one day peace and justice will prevail.”

Setting Sail to Gaza - April 2008

2008-06-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

Volunteers Prepare to Set Sail to Gaza
The Independent Monitor, April 2008

In August 2008, 70-100 people from all over the world and from all ages and walks of life will set sail on the Mediterranean Sea. But this is no summer vacation outing; it’s a mission of mercy. Led by activist Greta Berlin, the volunteers will sail the 20-hour journey from Cyprus to Gaza to bring humanitarian and medical aid to Palestinians.

“We’re going to go between Cyprus and Gaza as much as we can,” says Berlin. “We have 4 doctors on board, and some want to stay and work at the clinics and hospitals. Others will stay to help the fishermen and schools.”

This is not their first attempt to make this journey: “We were supposed to go last summer, and then Hamas took over and then all our support was withdrawn. Within two days we lost all our funding, because they didn’t want to be affiliated with Hamas, and thought their support would mean they were.”

Their intent is to set up a ferry service between Cyprus and Gaza, and to go between the two as much as they can, to bring Palestinians what they need and bring more Europeans in to help. But part of why they’re doing it is because Israel says they don’t occupy Gaza anymore, and they want to challenge that.

“So we don’t need [their] permission to come then,” she says. “We have permission from several Palestinian NGOs. We are not going through Israeli or Egyptian waters. We are going straight from international waters to the Port of Gaza. We are challenging Israel to stop us. They have no right to stop us in international waters, and we’re not going to let them board us if they try.”

They are, however, considering what Israel might do.

“We have had a committee for the past year, that does nothing but work on contingencies. Other organizations, like Greenpeace, have been very helpful with it – bringing up problems and solutions we wouldn’t think of.”

They believe they are more likely to use sabotage, like planting bombs or arms on their boats, than an outward attack at sea, so they will have people with them who are solely there to inspect volunteers, equipment and vessels before anyone boards.

Tentative date to set sail is August 5. They want to sail sometime between Aug. 1-21, because that is when Europe is on vacation, there will be a lot of boats on the Mediterranean, and they may be able to get more boats to join them. Also, the weather is more permitting then, than it will be a couple of months later.

“I want it to look like the storm on Normandy!” she says.

The volunteers range in age from 20-85 and come from 13 different countries, including Israel and Palestine, with two survivors of Nakba and the Holocaust. They will also carry 10-12 journalists and documentarians from around the world. They currently have 70 volunteers on the list, most of whom are veterans of human rights activism and have been there before. But a lot will depend on how many boats they can get and how many people the boats can hold. Money is another issue.

“We’ve got about $70,000 raised but we need about $250,000. People can donate through the website (http://www.freegaza.org), and it is set up as a nonprofit organization now, so the donations are a tax write-off.”

Most of the donations have come from human rights grants, which is encouraging to her.

“By receiving these grants, not only are we recognized as being something worthwhile to do, we’re recognized as being credible.

“The majority of the money we’ve gotten has been from the non-Arab community,” she adds. “We think it’s mostly because they don’t really know we’re doing it. Once they do, we think they’ll be very helpful.”

Berlin, who was shot in the leg by Israeli soldiers in 2003, while trying to tear down the apartheid wall near Jenin with the International Solidarity Movement, is not deterred by the crises she knows she could face on this mission.

“People don’t understand that once you feel it, the calling to Palestine doesn’t go away. It haunts you and no circumstance is scary enough to keep you away,” she explains. “I’d rather die in Gaza, doing something that’s important to me, than safe at home in front of my TV, watching Law & Order.”

Op-Ed - November 2007

2008-06-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

OCCUPATION FAR MORE THAN JUST A 'CONFLICT'
South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
November 27, 2007

What's happening between Israel and Palestine is most often, and most erroneously, referred to as a conflict.

What's erroneous about the use of this term is that it implies two parties on equal footing who disagree with each other. That there is disagreement is correct. But it is not only that Israel wants to be recognized as a state and Palestine disagrees; it's that Palestinians believe they should be free to live their lives without occupation, sanctions, forced poverty and starvation, lack of health care, and constant fear of snipers and bombings... and Israel disagrees. In its silence and blind eye toward the actions of Israel, so, apparently, does the rest of the world.

Where the effects of the occupation are most concentrated is in the region's hospitals, which are struggling to support and heal their patients. At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, doctors have had to modify the treatment of their patients in order to give them any treatment at all, because of the depletion of drugs and malfunctioning equipment. They are so low on anesthesia, they recently had to cancel all surgeries, except for the most critical - and even those will not be possible for long.

Their 195 kidney patients have had to go from three dialysis treatments a week to two, because, of the 32 dialysis machines they have, only 25 work. The others need spare parts or to be replaced altogether. Compounding the problem is that they don't have the drugs they need to treat the patients for anemia in between visits, so even the dialysis they are able to get cannot do enough for them.

"We have to give the patients less treatment, which is a medical mistake, but we have no alternative," Dr. Medhat Abbas, general director of crisis management at Gaza's Ministry of Health, told me. "We have 13 new pieces of equipment and the spare parts we need waiting at the border, but the Israelis won't let them pass through."

Passage to Israel has been an ongoing struggle in Gaza's health crisis. Gaza does not have the money to have fully functioning hospitals and clinics and often needs to send its most dire cases abroad for treatment and surgeries.

Getting the permission, however, is an uphill battle - one often subject to costly fees the patients' families cannot afford; lengthy waiting times for approvals; the chance that even if they are allowed in for one or two treatments, they may not be allowed back for the rest; and the risk of being stuck at a closed border upon their return. If the patient is terminally ill, they are often classified as a security risk and not allowed into Israel at all because, they are told, if the patient has nothing to live for, they can't be sure they are not a suicide bomber. Better to leave them in Gaza to die, they tell them, than to take that risk.

But every day of life in Gaza is a risk. The snipers, the bombings from the F-16s and the infighting between family clans and political factions are only part of it, albeit a dangerous and tragic part of it. There is more to the occupation than the violence. There is what happens in the silence: constant fear, poverty, starvation, demoralized citizens who turn on each other, and forced lack of electricity and water, which can lead to contamination and disease. And the worst side effect of silence: implied consent.

The Gazan spirit is strong, and its citizens take it upon themselves to improve their lives, even with the few resources they have. Microfinancing programs have helped many refugees create work for themselves, ultimately bringing in more of an income than had been previously possible for them, and more importantly, restoring their dignity. Schools and humanitarian programs are also introducing creative outlets for the children, so they will find a way to act out that is productive and non-violent.

It would take so little to make such a marked difference for them. But the first difference that needs to be made is to pay attention and acknowledge what is really happening there.

"It is genocide," said Abbas. "What else do you call it when they attack you to force you out, and then forbid you to leave?"

And what, then, do you call it, when the rest of us stand by as it happens ... and do nothing?

Sarah Price is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. She was in Gaza in October.

Building Hope from Rubble - December 2007

2008-06-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

Building Hope from Rubble

ElectronicIntifada.net
Sarah Price writing from occupied Gaza Strip
Live from Palestine, 18 December 2007

Today's youth are tomorrow's leaders. They don't make the decisions today but will be shaped by ours and will in their turn shape successor generations. Now is our moment to influence not just the present but also the future. We won't have a second chance. It is an urgent and awesome responsibility with the most profound and far-reaching consequences.
- John Ging, director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) Gaza field office, to British parliament members, Nov. 2007

Three young boys from Nuseirat refugee camp say they consider Afaq Jadeeda Center their second home.

In the dirty streets of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the sparse fruit stands carry only rotten fruit, because it is all the market's vendors can afford to sell, and all the refugees can afford to buy.

"It will still be gone in an hour," says Dr. Mona El-Farra, "because they have to eat something."

Of Gaza's 1.5 million residents more than 60 percent are under 18. The effects of malnutrition are seen not only in the kids' hunger, but also in their brain function. They are unable to focus in school, and have become violent. Dr. El-Farra's organization, the Middle East Children's Alliance (Gaza), is the focal point of a network of organizations trying to help Gaza's children. They give food parcels to the families, which are aimed at the nutritional needs of the kids, and try to teach the parents how to feed them better.

"The lack [of food] here is all political, not from famine or drought," says Dr. El-Farra. "The kids are not hopeful. There is no safety or recreation. It's bad for everyone, but it is most profound when the kids are complaining and have no hope."

Humanitarian groups in Gaza are also trying to feed another hunger: keeping the Palestinian culture alive through teaching traditional dancing, music, and art. The Afaq Jadeeda (New Horizons) Center in Nuseirat, established in 1996, provides a creative outlet for more than 50 children daily, and holds summer and winter camps. The center also has a library, a stage for plays, a football team and a growing computer lab, and is in the process of funding English classes for kids ages 14-18. $50,000 would give them what they need for a fully functioning center, but they do what they can with what they have, as they work on bringing in more donations and money.

"The average family in Gaza has seven people," says Afaq Jadeeda vice president and schoolteacher Talal Abu Shawish. "In the refugee camps, families are trying to build up their own areas. That's why it is important to have the cultural centers: to bring the kids off the streets into something more positive."

But the problems are not only on the streets now; they are also in the schools.

"It's not easy for teachers to control the kids," says Abu Shawish. "There is violence at school -- the kids toward each other -- because of the bloody scenes they constantly see."

From left, Talal Abu Shawish, Dr. Mona El-Farra, and Hany El Sharif, who started with the association as a child and now volunteers as an activities guide for the kids. The sign reads "Palestine" in Arabic.

To help the kids channel their anger into a more positive outlet, many of the schools have formed human rights and tolerance committees with elected parliaments made up of students and teachers. The committee at Abu Shawish's school comprises eight teachers and 33 students and they concentrate on how to solve human rights issues with nonviolence. During their meetings, they define what the needs are at school and hold a workshop to come up with solutions, focusing on one human right per week. Students use scientific steps and written reports to present their ideas.

Most recently, he invited the school's human rights team to Afaq Jadeeda, where they held a workshop to discuss how the association could help the students. What resulted, with help from Afaq and the Middle East Children's Alliance headquarters in California, was a water purification system for the school that will provide healthy drinking water for 2,000 students. It is expected to be installed and functional by early December.

"The schools only have them for four hours a day, and the rest of the time they are exposed to their bloody society," says Abu Shawish. "The parents should continue this at home, so we try to coordinate with them, and we bring the parents into the meetings, too, once a month."

To help bring about this successful result, they organize trips to centers for human rights in the Gaza Strip. They also visit parliaments at other schools to discuss issues with them. He talks to other teachers about working human rights issues into their classes, and UNRWA visits him to see his plans.

The committee work is voluntary for him, he says, but necessary. These efforts are important, to combat the psychological effects of the occupation: "The Israelis mean to oppress the students. They form committees to make recommendations to the politicians on how to keep the society down, starting with the kids."

But a shortage of psychological support makes it difficult to fight the damage that is being done.

"At each school, there is one counselor -- a psychologist," he points out. "1,000 students and only one counselor."

So, again, he brings the community together to help, forming committees of teachers who have courses in guidance through UNRWA, and the committee coordinates with the counselor. They penalize problematic students and try to guide them to change their behavior. When they do, they give them awards. He also makes a list of kids who are emotionally and psychologically unhealthy and distributes it to the teachers and asks them to treat them nicer.

The organization tries to bring these practices to other areas of the society, so the nonviolent mindset is one they can carry with them through life: "We need to coordinate with other organizations to continue these practices, so they don't leave and forget what we taught them."

Sarah Price is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles. She visited Gaza in October 2007, and has written for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and KNBC Los Angeles, and has appeared on Lighthouse TV in Los Angeles, discussing the humanitarian crises in Gaza. All images by Sarah Price.