by Simona Sikimic & Wassim Mroueh Daily Star Tuesday, November 16, 2010.

Photo Beirut skyline view from civil war destroyed building.

People across the country prepared for three days of relative calm as they planned to gather with family and friends Tuesday to celebrate Eid al-Adha.

The break is viewed by many as much-needed reprieve from the heated political rhetoric that has raged over the impending indictment from the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) and engulfed Lebanon in a spiral of mistrustful bickering, threatening to reignite sectarian strife.

(more…)

Report Defence for Children International – DCI Palestine October 2010 download PDF

Photo Israeli occupation forces patrol the Old City of Hebron, in occupied Palestine.

In October, DCI-Palestine collected information relating to the arrest of 17 children from the Silwan neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, although lawyers and fieldworkers for DCI-Palestine estimate that the overall number of children arrested in the Silwan neighbourhood in October is considerably higher.

(more…)

photos from Artists Against Apartheid feat. Obsesión @ BDS Quebec conference.

Photo Mickey Boston Cuban hip-hop group Obsesión at Artists Anti Apartheid.

Photographer and artist Mickey Boston captured a couple striking portraits of celebrated Cuban hip-hop group Obsesión performing at Artists Against Apartheid during the Quebec/Canada-wide BDS conference in Montreal on October 23 2010. Obsesión performed along side members of Montreal hip-hop group Nomadic Massive, also taking the stage during the concert was Detroit based hip-hop artist Invincible and celebrated Montreal MC The Narcicyst, who performed to a packed house with hundreds gathering for the rising Artists Against Apartheid concert series.

(more…)

by Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk Wednesday 10 November 2010

Photo Palestinian boy holds national flag during rally in occupied Palestine.

In a quiet street in the Sheikh Jarrah district of occupied East Jerusalem 88-year-old Rifka al-Kurd is explaining how she came to live in the house she and her husband built as Palestinian refugees in the 1950s. As she speaks, three young ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers swagger in to stake their claim to the front part of the building, shouting abuse in Hebrew and broken Arabic: “Arab animals”, “shut up, whore”.

There is a brief physical confrontation with Rifka’s daughter as the settlers barricade themselves in to the rooms they have occupied since last winter. That was when they finally won a court order to take over the Kurd family’s extension on the grounds that it was built without permission – which Palestinians in Jerusalem are almost never granted. It is an ugly scene, the settlers’ chilling arrogance underpinned by the certain knowledge that they can call in the police and army at will.

(more…)

Haaretz Nov. 2010

Photo Richard Wainwright Residents and protesters gather in the village of Nil’in to demonstrate against land confiscation and the Separartion Barrier running through their land.

A group of leading Israeli film and television artists have signed onto an online petition supporting the right of theater actors to refuse to perform in the newly opened arts center in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

“A number of Knesset members and ministers from Yisrael Beitenu and Likud and other right-wing figures are calling for cutting off funding to artists that this week called for a boycott of the cultural center in Ariel,” the online petition said.

(more…)

BDS Quebec conference final statement Nov. 2010

Photo Palestinian flag flying in sky at demonstration against Israeli apartheid.

As part of the growing global movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, grassroots organizations in Montréal successfully hosted a conference aimed at moving forward the BDS movement in Québec. The conference, which took place October 22 to 24 at the Université de Québec à Montréal, brought together hundreds of people concerned about social justice and human rights from across Canada and around the world.

(more…)

Allan Boesak and Farid Esack | 10 November 2010

Photo Israel’s apartheid wall from above.

In the opening lines of an open letter to Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, leader of the South Africa’s Orthodox Jews, makes a plea that: “Without truth there can be no justice, and without justice there can be no peace.” If ever there was a case of a single swallow not heralding summer, alas, this is it. The rest of his article bears little relationship to the truth:

(more…)

Thursday 11/11/2010, Ma’an news

Photo: Christian Als. A young man looks for his mother’s grave in a cemetery in Beit Lehia that was destroyed by tanks in January 2009. Israel’s three-week-long attack has given rise to charges of war crimes on both sides.

Gaza City – Israeli warplanes bombed a residential area Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip.

Injured Palestinians were stranded at the site of the blast in the Absan village east of Khan Younis, witnesses said.

Warplanes targeted two houses with four air strikes. The homes are owned by Naji Abu Hashem and the Al-Qara family, locals said.

(more…)

Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements Nov. 10th 2010

Photo Oren Ziv ActiveStils Palestinians, international and Israeli activists attended a night demonstration in Bil’in protesting ongoing recently nightly invasions to the village by the Israeli army.

The Israeli Army raids Bil’in the fourth time in three days Today, the 10 November a raid happened again in the village of Bi’lin. The Army entered at around 8 pm for the second time that day. In the morning, at around 3.00 am, they had already entered the village with five jeeps and searched Ashraf al-Khatibs home.The soldiers broke down the door of the neighbor’s house, and went in. However, they were not able to find who they were looking for in neither of the houses. When people from the village arrived, the 20 soldiers pointed their guns directly in the face of the people, and acted very aggressively. They also broke the door from al-Khatib’s house when they entered.

(more…)

by Rebecca Manski Mondoweiss on November 9, 2010

Photo Oren Ziv / Activestills Demolition of Al-‘Araqib village, Palestine.

Picking up a passenger by the hot, treeless roadside, Bedouin advocate ‘Ali Abu Subayh wheels his Fiat around onto a path, spitting rocks and coating the windows with dust, headed toward an “unrecognized village” in southern Israel. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the Israeli government displaced the Bedouin of the Negev desert into a sliver of land less than 2 percent the size of their former range. The government built seven townships for the Bedouin, and simultaneously declared all existing Negev Bedouin villages to be illegal. Today, Abu Subayh and 80,000 other Bedouin citizens of Israel born in one of these 45 “unrecognized” villages are threatened with further displacement. More than once, Abu Subayh, a field worker with the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages, has himself returned home to find a piece of paper flapping on the post at the entrance to the goat pen—a demolition order.

(more…)