Middle East

In April last year, many Palestinian political prisoners in Israel went on hunger strike calling for rights to family visits and the end of solitary confinement. Israel eventually conceded their demands. But now Israel says the deal did not apply to the Palestinian political prisoners who held Jordanian citizenship. These prisoners are still prohibited from family visits and various other basic rights.

A member of Israel's cabinet has declared his backing for killing Palestinian prisoners, rather than bringing them to trial, 972mag.com reported on July 29. The Huffington Post said on July 29 that Israel announced it would release 104 Palestinian prisoners, as part of the US-brokered plan to renew peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Towards the end of 2008, I joined thousands in Toronto to protest Israel’s attack on Gaza. At York University, where I was a student, we mobilised the campus to defend Palestinian rights. A few months later, bombs were falling on my own people ― in the predominantly Tamil Vanni region of northern Sri Lanka. And once again, we hit Toronto’s streets in protest. I realised then that even though our homelands are oceans apart, Palestinians and Tamils have much in common. Through the “war on terror”, the Israeli and Sri Lankan armies have waged war on civilian populations.

The Israeli Law Centre, Shurat HaDin, has filed a complaint under the Racial Discrimination Act with the Australian Human Rights Commission against the Sydney Peace Foundation’s Stuart Rees and Sydney University's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies’ Jake Lynch. The complaint claims Rees and Lynch are supporting racist and discriminatory policies through their support for the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the Israeli government. It is the first time Australia’s anti-racism laws have been used against people involved in the BDS campaign.

Palestinian teacher and activist Sireen Khudiri, 25, was released from an Israeli prison on July 15 after two months in jail. A court decision was made to release her on bail worth 7000 shekels ($2483). Khudiri is now home with her family. Many people wrote letters and signed petitions to protest Khudiri’s jailing, promoted awareness of her situation or posted or wrote messages of support. It is likely these efforts had an impact in helping free Khudiri.

Since it was founded in 1948, the Israeli state has neglected the rights of Palestinian children, who have been deliberately ill-treated. Many Palestinian children have been killed, injured, jailed, tortured or used as human shields by Israel.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza. The next year, democratic elections were won by Hamas. Since voting the “wrong way”, the Palestinian people in Gaza have been subjected to a siege by Israel. Gaza is blockaded by land, sea and air by the Israeli Defence Force. The International Red Cross and the United Nations have found the Israeli government's siege of Gaza to be illegal under international law.

Israel and Australia’s joint projects normalising Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity have sunk deeper in the degenerate mire of hasbara — propaganda and lies. Australia Post and Israel Post collaboratively issued two stamps last month commemorating the Australian Light Horse and the World War I Battle of Beersheba in Palestine.

Sireen Khudiri is a 24-year-old Palestinian teacher, human rights activist and political prisoner. She studied computer science at the Open University in Tubas, on the West Bank. Khudiri is an advocate of the rights of children in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank to have a decent education and has been active in non-violent campaigns against the abuses imposed by the Israeli occupation authorities. Khudiri also writes to publicise the struggle of the Palestinian people for their rights.

Dr Mona El Farra, Vice President of the Red Crescent Society for the Gaza Strip, answers questions at a forum hosted by Friends of Palestine WA on 4 June 2013 and was part of a national tour by Palestine solidarity groups in Australia.

Nothing is more exciting that a field trip when you are a schoolchild; a temporary escape from the classroom to a field or a forest, enjoying (hopefully) the sunshine and the outdoors. Growing up in Israel, the only downside to the whole experience was the talks. Every so often (too often, if you ask kids as sugared-up as we were), we would all have to sit down and hear a long explanation from a guide or a teacher, about the trees, flowers, rocks and the occasional heroic war story of the Israeli army.

In February 2011, the Deputy Engineer of Gaza’s only electricity plant, Dirar Abu Sisi, travelled to Ukraine, his wife Veronika’s native country, to seek citizenship after Israel’s 2008-09 attack on the Gaza Strip. The ferocity of that war made him fear for the safety of their six children and he decided to leave the besieged Gaza Strip. Not long after Abu Sisi’s arrival in Ukraine, he disappeared while on a train. His distraught family had no idea what had happened to him.