IcACBI | July 2010

Photo Graffiti writing on Israeli apartheid wall in Palestine.

Both the academia and the arts are profoundly rooted in the values of democracy, equality and justice, and the pursuit of excellence in both these fields has meaning only if it is imbued with conscience. As Indian academics, intellectuals and artists in the decolonised world, we have historically played a crucial role in the liberation of our peoples, and to this day continue to lend our voices in support to all those who are struggling to be rid of the yoke of colonialism and foreign domination.

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Lorraine Guay, Juillet 2010

Photo MaanImages Thaeer al-Hassany: Jeunes Palestiniens renferment des chandelles à d’une manifestation pacifique, dans la ville de Gaza.

Dans un récent reportage à TV5, un habitant d’une colonie de peuplement juif, installée illégalement en plein cœur du territoire palestinien, traitait de « terroristes » de jeunes palestiniens faisant du porte-à-porte auprès de leurs concitoyens pour leur demander de boycotter les produits fabriqués dans cette colonie en guise de résistance pacifique à l’occupation/colonisation dont ils sont victimes depuis plus de cinq décennies.

Ces jeunes marquaient à leur manière le 5e anniversaire de l’appel lancé en juillet 2005 par plus de 170 organisations de la société civile palestinienne invitant les sociétés civiles du monde entier à initier des campagnes de Boycott, Désinvestissement et Sanction contre les politiques israéliennes, comme celles appliquées à l’Afrique du Sud à l’époque de l’apartheid. Des personnalités aussi peu « terroristes » que Mgr Tutu et l’ex-président Carter n’hésitent pas d’ailleurs à qualifier la situation globale qui prévaut en Palestine de véritable apartheid.

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Monday, August 02, 2010 Al Jazeera

Photo Palestinians inspect ground after Israeli bombing in Gaza.

A global treaty banning cluster munitions has gone into force.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which became binding international law on Sunday, prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of the weapon, which is blamed for killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians.

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Independent Robert Fisk, Saturday, 31 July 2010

Photo Israeli air force cadets at military training.

The death of five Israeli servicemen in a helicopter crash in Romania this week raised scarcely a headline.

There was a Nato-Israeli exercise in progress. Well, that’s OK then. Now imagine the death of five Hamas fighters in a helicopter crash in Romania this week. We’d still be investigating this extraordinary phenomenon. Now mark you, I’m not comparing Israel and Hamas. Israel is the country that justifiably slaughtered more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza 19 months ago – more than 300 of them children – while the vicious, blood-sucking and terrorist Hamas killed 13 Israelis (three of them soldiers who actually shot each other by mistake).

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Defence for Children International – DCI Palestine – July 30, 2010

Photo Palestinian child in Gaza collects water.

On 29 July 2010, the UN Human Rights Committee (the Committee) issued Concluding Observations after reviewing the State of Israel’s compliance with the Convention on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR) earlier this month. Compliance by parties to the Convention is reviewed every four years by the Committee, which consists of 18 independent and internationally recognised experts. During its 99th Session in July, the Committee also considered compliance with the Convention by three other states under the periodic review process.

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Open letter, 29 July 2010

Photo Prison window on cracked wall.

following letter was sent to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 26 July 2010:

As human rights advocates and representatives of nongovernmental organizations working to promote internationally recognized human rights standards in the US and around the world, we welcomed the important message you delivered to the Community of Democracies in Krakow on 3 July 2010. We wholeheartedly agree that civil society is an essential element in a free nation and plays an important role in identifying and eradicating injustices. As you rightly noted, it was through the critically important work of human rights activists and civil society that the US was able to be put on the path of racial equality.

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010 by Elie Nasrallah Daily Star

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi Sky over sea, Beirut, Lebanon.

Canada has always been a favorite destination for many Lebanese emigrants. However, the country is now changing its immigration policies and is beginning to resemble a club open to a chosen few who possess the required skills, education and selective criteria to enter.

Last June 26, Jason Kenney, Canada’s minister for citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism, announced that to be eligible to apply as a federal skilled worker, immigrants must either have a job offer from a Canadian employer or experience in one of just 29 in-demand occupations.

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open letter from Palestinians, 29 July 2010

Photo Dome of the Rock at Al Aqsa mosque compound under open sky in Palestine.

The following open letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose elected mandate expired in July 2009 and who has remained in power under controversial emergency laws, was issued on 22 July 2010:

We are Palestinians of diverse perspectives and affiliations — scholars, intellectuals, artists, activists, trade unionists, human rights advocates and civil society leaders, inside historic Palestine and in exile — who are united in our commitment to the fulfillment of the fundamental rights of all Palestinians, particularly our inalienable right to self-determination. This universally sanctioned right encompasses, at a minimum, freedom from occupation and colonization in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem; full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

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Andrew Bacevich July 29th 2010 Huffington Post

Photo Palestinian UN school bombed by Israeli military in Gaza.

“In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history.” This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama a household name, commands renewed attention today, albeit from a different perspective.

Developments during the 1980s, above all the winding down of the Cold War, had convinced Fukuyama that the “end of history” was at hand. “The triumph of the West, of the Western idea,” he wrote in 1989, “is evident… in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.”

Today the West no longer looks quite so triumphant. Yet events during the first decade of the present century have delivered history to another endpoint of sorts. Although Western liberalism may retain considerable appeal, the Western way of war has run its course.

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mondoweiss by Hatim Kanaaneh July, 2010

Photo Palestinian boy views photos of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.

I have known Ameer Makhoul since the day he came to my office at the Galilee Society to be interviewed for the position of director of our then new and ambitious project called ITTIJAH, the Arabic acronym for Union of Community-Based Arab Associations. I knew of him before as another troubled Arab student at Haifa University who couldn’t square away Israel’s bogus claims to democracy, as in ‘the only democratic state in the Middle East,’ with his experience as a member of a minority gagged and shackled by draconian security-based regulations.

This had led at the time to his dismissal from his studies and banning from entering the university campus as another ‘trouble maker.’ Ameer went on to obtain his Bachelor’s degree through the accumulation of credits in after-hours and off-campus courses. Two decades later the administration of Haifa University was still formally advising its foreign students and other international guests against visiting Arab communities for their own safety. In1964-6, during my own university studies, I had rented a room in Vermillion, South Dakota from an old lady that warned me daily against the ‘wild Indians’ in the Prairies. I could relate to the deep-seated apprehensions of the aggressor.

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