View the Zoom gathering on Palestinian Prisoners Day when people gathered virtually to show solidarity with the prisoners whose incarceration puts them at extreme risk for coronavirus infection.
By Jewish Voice for Peace | JVP Facebook | Apr 17, 2020
I am heartened by the work of so many who are making the connections between the need to free prisoners here and in Palestine. —Stefanie Fox, Executive Director, Jewish Voice for Peace
Zoom Rally to Free Prisoners from Rikers Island to Palestine. JVP’s Executive Director, Stefanie Fox hosted an incredible lineup of speakers at a Zoom Rally of more than 500:
An Easter message that violence, resilience, steadfastness and compassionate agape will have the last word over hate, racism, discrimination, violence, war and occupation.
By Zoughbi Zoughbi | HolyLandJustice | Apr 11, 2020
‘I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out’ [Luke 19:40] It is a warning. This statement still speaks loudly and is directed toward leaders and institutions. Whether leaders of an institution, or government, or state, or the world, there will be a driving force challenging all establishments and perpetuators of injustice and oppression.
Yesterday [Apr 10] we celebrated Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified, died and was buried. Let us contemplate, while on this road to resurrection… Jesus was born in a cave warmed by animals….Herod was in Jerusalem conspiring to kill him… The Angels helped the Holy Family flee to Egypt, escaping Herod and the Roman Occupation.
Palestinians gather for a demonstration to demand coronavirus protection for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, Gaza City, Gaza, March 19, 2020. (photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
As Palestinians commemorate Prisoners’ Day on April 17, the biggest demand appears to be how to safeguard prisoners from the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
By Daoud Kuttab | Al-Monitor | Apr 17, 2020
‘The White House and State Department have called for the release of US citizens around the world due to the coronavirus, but the consular officials in Jerusalem have not followed up on these guidelines from Washington,’ — Hind Shraydeh, American Palestinian researcher
Hind Shraydeh is very worried about her husband. Ubai Aboudi, an American-Palestinian researcher and director of the Ramallah-based nongovernmental organization Bisan Center for Research and Development, was arrested by Israeli forces at his house in Jerusalem’s Kufr Aqab neighborhood on Nov. 13, 2019. Aboudi was initially held in administrative detention at the Ofer detention center, and Amnesty International and Nobel Prize scientists around the world circulated a petition calling for his release.
Shraydeh told Al-Monitor her husband had breathing problems before his imprisonment and expressed worry about the potential spread of the coronavirus in the overcrowded Israeli detention centers. “Ubai is held in unit 22 at the Ofer detention center near Beitunia, where eight people are kept in a small room within an unhealthy prison environment and where at least one coronavirus case has been [confirmed].”
Friday, April 17, 2020 marks Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. This year, Palestinian prisoners and detainees face the additional threat of a COVID-19 outbreak in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
By Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association | Apr 16, 2020
According to Addameer’s statistics, the number of Palestinian prisoners at Israeli occupation prisoners reached around 5000 prisoners as of April 2020.
As we mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day this year, Palestinian prisoners and detainees face the additional threat of a coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in Israeli prisons and detention centers. The Israeli occupying authorities have taken no steps to release Palestinian prisoners and detainees or to adequately mitigate and prevent a COVID-19 outbreak in prisons. Instead, mass arbitrary detentions and arrests, a staple of Israel’s prolonged military occupation and widespread and systematic human rights violations against the Palestinian people, have continued during the pandemic. According to Addameer’s statistics, the number of Palestinian prisoners at Israeli occupation prisoners reached around 5000 prisoners as of April 2020. This number also included 432 administrative detainees, 41 female detainees, 7 PLC members and 183 child detainees among them 20 under the age of 16.
Israeli police check vehicles at a checkpoint in the ultra Orthodox near Tel Aviv, on 3 April, 2020 during the novel coronavirus pandemic crisis. (photo: Jack Guez / AFP via Getty Images)
Efforts to contain the coronavirus are complicated by deliberate attempts to infect Palestinians.
By Ramzy Baroud | Middle East Monitor | Apr 14, 2020
…the deliberate attempt at infecting occupied Palestinians with the coronavirus is beneath contempt, even for a settler-colonial regime.
Spitting at someone is a universal insult. In Israel, however, spitting at Palestinians is an entirely different story.
Now that we know that the deadly coronavirus can be transmitted through saliva droplets, Israeli soldiers and illegal Jewish settlers are working extra hard to spit at as many Palestinians, their cars, doorknobs, and so on, as possible.
If this sounds to you too surreal and repugnant, then you might not be as familiar with the particular breed of Israeli colonialism as you may think you are.
Palestinian artists work on a sand sculpture depicting the earth with a message reading “Stay Home” along a beach in Gaza City on 31 March (photo: AFP)
Levelling the playing field requires critically urgent measures, such as lifting the siege on Gaza and ending sanctions on Iran
By Nada Elia | Middle East Eye | Apr 15, 2020
Levelling the playing field requires that we demand critically urgent measures, such as lifting the siege on Gaza and ending the sanctions on Iran.
When Chris Cuomo, the popular news anchor on CNN, tested positive for Covid-19, his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, stressed that the virus is a “great equalizer” that knows no age, gender or race.
“Everyone is subject to this virus. It is the great equalizer,” the governor told reporters. “I don’t care how smart, how rich, how powerful you think you are; I don’t care how young, how old. This virus is the great equalizer.”
I do not intend to minimize Cuomo’s concern for his brother, and wish the latter a speedy and full recovery. But I do disagree strongly with his description of the virus as an equalizer, simply because no one is immune to it.
A screengrab from the Zoom video meeting shows Rami Aman, left, one of the organizers of the event, who was later arrested by Hamas.
A video chat, intended to build bridges between Israeli and Palestinian strangers, led some in Gaza to label the conversation itself an act of treason.
By David M. Halbfinger / Iyad Abuheweila | The New York Times | Apr 10, 2020
‘Let’s create a new kind of Netanyahu, a new kind of Abu Mazen,’ — Rami Aman, Gaza Youth Committee leader
For five years, a small but feisty group of Palestinian peace activists in the blockaded Gaza Strip has been organizing small-scale video chats with Israelis under a bridge-building initiative it calls “Skype With Your Enemy.”
On Monday, the group, the Gaza Youth Committee, drew one of its biggest crowds yet — more than 200 participants — this time on Zoom, the newly popular teleconferencing platform.
But other Palestinians in Gaza, who took umbrage at the idea of befriending Israelis, were also listening in. And the resulting public uproar prompted Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, to arrest the youth committee’s leader and several other participants.
A snapshot of a weeks time in Palestine and the many violations of human rights that occur.
By Kate | Mondoweiss | Apr 11, 2020
Israeli gunboats stationed northwest of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza Strip chased Palestinian fishing boats sailing within the allowed fishing area (3 nautical miles) and opened fire at a fishing boat.
BEIT LAHIA 9 Apr — Israeli naval forces continue their attacks against Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Sea preventing them from sailing and fishing freely, accessing the zones rich in fish, despite the fact that fishermen posed no threat to the lives of Israeli naval forces deployed in Gaza waters … According to the investigations of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), at approximately 07:50 on Thursday, 09 April 2020, Israeli gunboats stationed northwest of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza Strip chased Palestinian fishing boats sailing within the allowed fishing area (3 nautical miles) and opened fire at a fishing boat. As a result, two fishermen, Obai ‘Adel Mohamed Jarbou‘ (21) and Ahmed ‘Abed al-Fattah Ahmed al-Sharfi (23), were shot and injured with rubber-coated steel bullets. The young men, from al-Shati’ [‘Beach’] camp in Gaza City, were taken to the Indonesian Hospital, where their injuries were classified as minor. It should be noted that Israeli gunboats conduct daily chases of Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip, and open fire at them in order to terrify them and prevent them from sailing and accessing the zones rich in fish.
Gaza, September 2019. This apartment block was destroyed by the Israeli military on 25 August 2014. Palestinian artists sought to highlight the plight of this displaced community. ( photo: Media 24 / Gaza
Does the current moment necessitate the consideration of civil disobedience and a mass nonviolent movement in the near future across the occupied Palestinian territories?
By Yaser Alashqar ] | Mondoweiss | Apr 8, 2020
Reaffirming international law and human rights for Palestinian people under occupation, the World Health Organization has emphasized that ‘Israel, as occupying power, retains the primary responsibility to respect, protect and fulfill the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health in the occupied Palestinian territory.’
As of April 5th, the occupied Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem, have registered 228 cases of Covid 19 (Coronavirus) and one death. While Covid 19 represents a difficult challenge to advanced nations and their strong healthcare systems, it poses a more complex and dangerous challenge to conflict zones and occupied territories, such as Palestine. Decades of displacement, dispossession, conflict, military occupation and blockade have weakened existing medical services and systemically disregarded Palestinian rights to life and health.
The Israeli occupation regime, including the checkpoints and permits system, has fragmented Palestinian towns and villages and impeded their access to healthcare. Palestinian communities in Area C, which comprises approximately 60% of the West Bank and includes the majority of Israeli settlements, suffer from deeper isolation and marginalization. They lack access and connection to the rest of the West Bank and they, unlike the Israeli residents of the nearby settlements, do not enjoy protection and healthcare support from the Israeli government.
Illustration: Leonardo Santamaria for The Intercept
A public records request provides a look into the FBI’s use of intelligence and national security powers to track domestic dissent.
By Chip Gibbons | The Intercept | Apr 5, 2020
‘These cases demonstrate the FBI’s unwillingness to distinguish non-violent civil disobedience protesting government policy from terrorism,’ — Michael German, former FBI agent
In 2006, ST. Louis-based activist and academic Mark Chmiel received a message on his answering machine from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI wanted to talk to Chmiel about trip three years ago that he and other St. Louis activists took with the International Solidarity Movement to the West Bank, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. When Chmiel’s attorney reached out to the FBI, they did not respond.
Chmiel later wrote that he was motivated to travel to the West Bank by Palestinians’ calls for volunteers, international organizations’ inability to deal with the occupation, and his own country’s complicity in Israel’s actions. The International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, which would be Chmiel’s vehicle, encourages international volunteers to come to the occupied territories and engage in nonviolent direct action against the occupation. During the delegation Chmiel was on, Israel soldiers opened fire on a Palestinian protest and injured one of the St. Louis activists. An aging Holocaust survivor who was also part of the delegation was subjected to a humiliating and invasive search when departing from Israel.
![Israeli police check vehicles at a checkpoint in the ultra Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, on 3 April, 2020 during the novel coronavirus pandemic crisis [JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/GettyImages-1209027740-scaled.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
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