On Friday, December 30th, 2011, several dozen Palestinians in Nabli Saleh, supported by Israeli and international solidarity activists, demonstrated during the villages’ weekly protest. This week the activists released hundreds of black balloons with the names of Palestinian children killed in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. Several Palestinian and international activists were arrested by Israeli Forces, and soldiers shot tear gas into the crowd in addition to spraying them with skunk water.

The following day, two hundred activists in Chicago also released 344 balloons, one for each of the children killed three years ago. The action was organized by the newly formed Chicago Movement for Palestinian Rights, a primarily youth-based organization. Palestinian-American activists gave speeches decrying the continued Israeli siege and sporadic bombardment of the Gaza Strip before the balloons were released in symbolic solidarity to lift the spirits of Palestinians who continue to live under a brutal occupation.

20th August – Residents of Beit Ommar, supported by Israeli and international activists, gathered for a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Gaza, following the recent Israeli airstrikes there which killed 14 people, including 13 year old Mahmoud Abu Samara.

As the demonstration attempted to march through Beit Ommar fields towards the illegal settlement of Karmei Tsur, the Israeli military responded with extreme violence. Live ammunition was fired at protestors, and concussion grenades were thrown, setting fire to the surrounding grass.

Soldiers arrested a total of five demonstrators, including Yousef Abu Maria, a member of the Beit Ommar popular committee and PSP organising committee. He was thrown to the ground, breaking his arm (photo above) for the third time this year. Soldiers then tried to place Yousef in handcuffs, despite it being clear that he was in agony. Majde Za’aqiq, another member of the popular committee, and organising committee at the Center for Freedom and Justice, was also arrested, alongside two Israelis and one international.

At the time of writing, all five were still in police custody.

This brutal violence is indicitive of a trend being seen across the West Bank and Gaza, as Israeli violence is escalated in the run-up to September’s UN vote on Palestinian statehood.

This week has seen the killing of yet more Gazans at the hands of the Israeli military, as the brutal seige imposed on over one and a half million people continues.

While the world busily talks about the UN general assembly in September, the situation on the ground deteriorates, as Israeli escalates its attacks on towns in the West Bank and Gaza.

In the latest Israeli attack, apache helicopters fired rockets into densely populated areas of Gaza, killing 14 people, including 13 year old Mahmoud Abu Samara (pictured above).

We would like to extend solidarity to Gaza and its children, who live in constant fear of such attacks.

PSP activist from Chicago Max “Jeff” Suchan sent the following message at 9:30pm Palestine time:

As we tried to leave the port of Athens on the Audacity of Hope, we were blocked by the Greek coast guard and after a standoff, we have been ordered to dock in what has been called a military area of the port. No one is allowed off the boat and it is unclear whether we are currently being detained.

The U.S. Boat to Gaza is calling on supporters to contact their local Greek Embassies and demand that the Audacity of Hope be allowed to sail and not allow Israel to export its siege.

Below is the contact information for the Greek Consulates and Embassies in the United States, please contact either your closest consulate, or the one in Chicago, and demand that PSP activist Max Suchan, and all the rest of the U.S. Boat to Gaza be allowed to sail!

U.S. Boat to Gaza boarded by Greek Forces. Photo: Debra Ellis

New York:
nycons@greekembassy.org

Consulate General – Chicago
650 North St. Clair Street
Chicago , IL 60611
Telephone: 312.335.3915
Fax: 312.335.3958
Web Address: http://www.greekembassy.org/chicago/
E-mail: chicago@greekembassy.org

Consulate General – San Francisco

2441 Gough Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
Telephone: 415.775.2102
Fax: 415.776.6815
Web Address: http://www.greekembassy.org/sanfrancisco
E-mail: sfgr@greekembassy.org

Consulate General – Los Angeles
12424 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 800
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Telephone: 310.826.5555
Fax: 310.826.8670
Web Address: http://www.greekembassy.org/losangeles/
E-mail: lagr@greekembassy.org

Consulate General – Tampa
601 Bayshore Blvd., Suite 800
Tampa, FL 33606
Telephone: 813.865.0200
Fax: 813.865.0206
Web Address: http://www.greekembassy.org/tampa
E-mail: grgencon.tam@mfa.gr

Consulate – Atlanta
Tower Place, Suite 1670 3340, Peachtree Rd., N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30326
Telephone: 404.261.3313
Fax: 404.262.2798
Web Address: http://www.greekembassy.org/atlanta/
E-mail: atlanta@greekembassy.org

Consulate – Houston
520 Post Oak Blvd., Suite 450
Houston , TX 77027
Telephone: 713.840.7522
Fax: 713.840.0614
Web Address: http://www.greekembassy.org/houston/
E-mail: houston@greekembassy.org

In the past few months, my family and friends keep asking me why I am participating in the Freedom Flotilla as a passenger on the US boat, the Audacity of Hope. As part of this initiative, 40 of us have gathered in Athens in the hope of sailing towards Gaza in the coming days to challenge the Israeli naval blockade. We will join ten boats in international waters consisting of hundreds of passengers from 22 countries around the world. This second Freedom Flotilla comes a little over a year after Israeli commandos killed eight Turkish and one Turkish-American activist as they were attempting to deliver humanitarian aid on-board the Mavi Marmara when the ship was about 70 miles from Gaza City’s port.

I have little doubt we will be intercepted by Israeli Forces, who have threatened to attack our ships with snipers, attack dogs, and water cannons. I also expect that after we are boarded, we will be arrested, held in Israeli jails, and deported back to the United States. In light of these risks, many of those who are close to me want to know why we are sailing on anyways.

I am sailing because the people of Palestine have the right to determine their own future free from military occupation, economic control, and imposed restrictions. I am sailing because the Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza is part of a wider siege of one of the most densely packed areas in the world in which Israel controls the sea, air space and land crossings, crippling the economy and effectively turning the Strip into an open-aired prison. This siege can only be understood as an act of collective punishment, prohibited by international law under the Fourth Geneva Convention. I am also sailing because as an American, I am painfully aware that my government funds the occupation and directly supports Israeli policies that are designed to strip Palestinians of their basic civil rights. Where our government has failed to act for justice, ordinary people must step up to fill this void.

I am also sailing because the tide is turning, and we as Americans are again presented with a precious opportunity to join with others around the world to challenge oppression. I am inspired by the spirit of Tahrir, of Majdal As Shams, and the popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere as ordinary people catch courage from each other across borders to take their destiny in their own hands. I have seen that spirit here in Athens too, as those facing years of severe austerity measures occupy public spaces to look to each other for alternatives.

I have never been to Gaza, but I have spent more than a year in the occupied West Bank working to support Palestinian communities organizing in unarmed, popular resistance to occupation. While Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza may be geographically separated, and subscribe to a full spectrum of political persuasio1ns just like any other people anywhere around the world, they do consider themselves part of the same struggle for national liberation. I am also sailing because I know that as an American, I have more access to basic rights and resources that Palestinians living under occupation are denied. It is my hope that we can use our voices to transmit to the media the experiences of ordinary Palestinians, in Gaza and elsewhere, as we know their narrative has been routinely ignored and marginalized.

I am sailing for Ahmed Nasser Samouni, who was around 11 years old, the same age as my younger sister, at the time when he was badly wounded and most of his family were killed by Israeli Forces during the murderous assault on Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009. Reema Abu Lafi, one of the nurses who treated him in Al Quds hospital in Gaza City, recounted his ordeal;

“One of the Samouni family children Ahmed Nasser, 10 or 11 years old, came to us at Al Quds hospital in a very bad condition on January 6th. He had been shot in the chest and needed test tubs. He told us that all of his family had been taken into a room by the soldiers when they came to their house. When missiles hit the house, most of the family was killed. Ahmed’s father is alive, but his mother, sisters and brother are all dead. Ahmed stayed with the bodies of his family members for four days before he was found and brought here. The first thing he asked for was for bread and water. Many family members are still missing but today we will know for sure when all of the bodies come in.”

During this three week assault, over 1400 Palestinians were killed, thousands of houses destroyed, and economic and civil infrastructure deliberately targeted in this war of attrition. I am sailing because I know that as an American, my tax dollars paid for the weapons that were responsible for so much destruction and death.

I am sailing for Yousef Ikhlayl, a youth from the village of Beit Ommar in the southern West Bank. Yousef was just 17 when he murdered by Israeli settlers as he was working his family’s land on January 28, 2011. I had met Yousef on several occasions as he was a participant in programs organized by the Center for Freedom and Justice, a center in the village that works to empower community organizing and unarmed struggle against the occupation. Yousef was an enthusiastic participant in photography classes I helped translate on several occasions. The settlers who killed him showed no regard for his humanity and to date none of his killers have been prosecuted by Israeli authorities. It is my hopes that as I sail, it can open up new opportunities to reach more people in the United States, to share stories like Yousef’s and work to ensure that the occupation will never claim another life again.

I sail because the risks I face are nothing compared to what the average Palestinian in Gaza, the West Bank, and elsewhere faces on a daily basis. Palestinians, in their courage and steadfastness, are the real heroes. And I am certain, just as others have overturned their oppression before, that one day they will be successful in defeating occupation. The global tide toward justice is rising, and its time for us to get on board.

Max “Jeff” Suchan is a long-time volunteer with Palestine Solidarity Project.

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Ministry of Interior in Gaza said early Friday that an abducted Italian solidarity activist was found dead hours after being kidnapped by radical Islamists.

The government in Gaza “condemns the heinous crime that does not reflect our values, our religion or our customs and traditions,” a statement from the ministry said vowing to hunt down those responsible.

Local sources told Ma’an that Vittorio Arrigoni’s body was found in an empty home northwest of Gaza City in the Mashrou Amer area.

In a statement, the Hamas government press office said Arrigoni “was found by security hanging in an abandoned house in northern Gaza.”

“When news of the kidnapping of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni became known security services went on general alert and the investigation has led to a member of the group who gave away the other members and showed the place where the activist was kept,” Hamas government spokesman Ihab al-Ghoussein said in a statement read on television.

“The security services moved competently and quickly and found the body of the hostage who had been killed several hours earlier in an atrocious way according to a forensic doctor.”

Salafist radicals in Gaza were suspected in the kidnapping of Arrigoni, an activist for the International Solidarity Movement, last seen alive in a video posted online Thursday.

“We kidnapped the Italian prisoner Vittorio and we call on the Haniyeh government … to release all our prisoners,” it said, referring to Hamas Premier Ismail Haniyeh and naming an imprisoned jihadi leader called Sheikh Hisham Su’idani.

In March, sources close to the Salafists told Ma’an that their leader, Hisham Su’idani, 50, was arrested from his home in the Shati refugee camp.

The kidnappers identified themselves in the video as belonging to a previously unknown group called The Brigade of the Gallant Companion of the Prophet Mohammed bin Muslima.

The group described Arrigoni as a “journalist who came to our country for nothing but to corrupt people — from Italy, the state of infidelity, whose armies are still in the Muslim countries”.

The Salafi Jihadi group had threatened to kill Arrigoni unless Hamas released Salafist prisoners by Friday evening. Before the deadline passed, however, Hamas said his body was found.

Huwaida Arraf, a co-founder of the ISM, confirmed that Vittorio’s body was identified by staff in Gaza City. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “He was more Palestinian than the criminals that killed him.”

Arraf added: “He’s very well-known, he lives among the people. He’s just got this dynamic, humanitarian personality.

“I even thought that whoever has him is going to see his humanity and just let him go so when I heard what happened to him I was totally shocked.”

Two suspected kidnappers were arrested and security forces are looking for accomplices, officials said.

The West Bank-based Palestinian leadership earlier called for the “immediate and unconditional release of this foreign activist who is working in support of the Palestinian cause and people”.

“This action does not help the just cause of the Palestinian people. On the contrary, it harms it,” a statement said.

Before the death was announced, Palestinians had planned to meet in Gaza City’s central Jundi square on Friday at 4 p.m. The protest was to demand Arrigoni’s release, the Gaza Youth Breaks Out group said.

Arrigoni held honorary citizenship for his work in the occupied territories, “a hero of Palestine,” said Khalil Shaheen of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in an ISM statement.

Rome on Friday denounced “in the strongest manner the act of vile and senseless violence committed by extremists who are indifferent to the value of human life”, a statement said.

The foreign ministry expressed “its deep horror over the barbaric murder and its most sincere condolences to the family.”

Hamas security forces have in recent years taken a hard line against Salafists in Gaza.

There are five major Salafist groups in Gaza, all of which espouse an austere form of Sunni Islam that seeks a return to practices that were common in the early days of the faith.

Their religious observances and refusal to abide by various ceasefires have set them on a path of confrontation with Hamas.

Though small in numbers, the groups have had a disproportionate impact.

By launching hundreds of crude rockets from the coastal enclave into Israel, they have attracted the wrath of both Israel and Hamas.

The history of bad blood between Hamas and the Salafists goes back to 2007, when a Salafist group called the Army of Islam claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston.

Hamas severed ties with the group and helped free Johnston after four months in captivity.

Tensions boiled over in August 2009, when Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Partisans of God) announced the creation of an Islamist “emirate” in Gaza, during a sermon at a mosque in the southern city of Rafah.

That prompted a furious response from Hamas, whose forces stormed the mosque, prompting clashes which left 24 people dead.

[PSP Editor note: the fabricated video and the original video are available below. Both from the IDF Youtube channel.]

Today, Israel released what it claimed to be the audio of a conversation between Israeli naval vessels and the Turkish-owned ship Mavi Marmara which occurred prior to the Israeli assault that killed at least 9 passengers and injured dozens more in the early hours of 31 May in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean. This audio clip, which the Israelis titled “Radio Transmission from Mavi Marmara to Israeli Navy” appears to be fabricated.

The following is a transcript of the audio:

ISRAELI SHIP “This is the Israeli Navy, you are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade”

MAN’S VOICE 1 “Shut up, go back to Auschwitz.”

WOMAN’S VOICE “We have permission from the Gaza Port Authority to enter.”

MAN’S VOICE 2 “We’re helping Arabs go against the US, don’t forget 9/11 guy”

On hearing the recording Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, identified the woman’s voice as that of his wife Huwaida Arraf, chair of the Free Gaza Movement. However, Arraf was not aboard the Mavi Marmara. She was aboard one of the small passenger vessels in the six-boat flotilla, called Challenger 1. She recounted what she experienced on Russia Today, among other major media outlets (video below). It would appear that Israel has once more been caught fabricating evidence in its desperate effort to justify its violent assault on the Free Gaza Flotilla, a civilian convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Thanks to Marian Houk (http://twitter.com/MarianHouk ), I have learned that the Israeli army originally uploaded a video (below) in which the same naval officer in the video above has an innocuous conversation with a ship in which the only reply from the ship is “Negative, Negative, our destination is Gaza.” There is no “anti-Semitism” or anything that paints the Flotilla passengers as raving bigots. The earlier video actually shows the officer moving, whereas in the previous video in which a speaker allegedly says “Go back to Auschwitz” we simply see a still picture of the same naval officer while the audio plays. This is further evidence of complete fabrication.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cQ69oKFtVg