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Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak sentenced to 3 months in pr
gar - 27.12.2010 23:43
Prominent Israeli activist, Yonathan (Jonathan) Pollak has just been sentenced to 3 months prison for participating in a Critical Mass bicycle ride protest against Israel's 2008 all out assault on the people of Gaza. Yonathan's arrest was politically motivated, as his lawyer Gaby Lasky has outlined. Yonathan has been a leading activist involved in the the joint Palestinian-Israeli popular struggle against Israeli occupation and apartheid for a number of years. He is one of the founders of the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall and active in the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC) Please find below the media release issued by the PSCC on Yonathan's sentencing. Also included is Yonathan's speech to the court about his arrest and sentencing.
Prominent Israeli activist, Yonathan (Jonathan) Pollak has just been sentenced to 3 months prison for participating in a Critical Mass bicycle ride protest against Israel's 2008 all out assault on the people of Gaza. Yonathan's arrest was politically motivated, as his lawyer Gaby Lasky has outlined. Yonathan has been a leading activist involved in the the joint Palestinian-Israeli popular struggle against Israeli occupation and apartheid for a number of years. He is one of the founders of the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall and active in the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC) Please find below the media release issued by the PSCC on Yonathan's sentencing. Also included is Yonathan's speech to the court about his arrest and sentencing.
Pollak was sentenced to three months imprisonment this morning at the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court for his participation in a 2008 bicycle in protest of the siege on Gaza. He will begin serving his sentence on Januray 11th.
Tel Aviv Magistrates court judge Yitzhak Yitzhak convicted Pollak of illegal assembly for his participation in a January 2008 Critical Mass ride against the siege on Gaza and then sentenced him to three months imprisonment that will begin on January 11th, 2011. Pollak was the only one detained at the said protest, and was accused of doing nothing other than riding his bicycle in the same manner as the rest of the protesters. The conviction activates an older three-month suspended sentence, imposed on Pollak in a previous trial for protesting the construction of the Separation Barrier. An additional three months prison term was also imposed for the current conviction, which will be served concurrently.
On his conviction, Pollak argued for his sentence, saying "I find myself unable to express remorse in this case [...]. If His Honor decides to go ahead and impose my suspended prison sentence, I will go to prison wholeheartedly and with my head held high. It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that ought to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza's inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation." See Pollak's full statement bellow.
On January 31, 2008, some 30 protesters participated in a Critical Mass bicycle ride through the streets of Tel Aviv in protest of the siege on Gaza. During the protest, Pollak was arrested by plain-clothes police who recognized him from previous protests and because, as claimed in court, they assumed he was the organizer and figurehead of the event. The protest was allowed to continue undisturbed after Pollak's arrest and ended with no further incidents or detentions.
The arrest and consequent indictment appears to be the result of police vindictiveness, rather than of Pollak's behavior at the time of the event; Pollak was but one in a group of protesters who behaved exactly like him, yet he was the only one to be singled out. Moreover, environmental Critical Mass events take place in Tel Aviv on a regular basis, but have never been met with such a response. Other protests, which have caused far more sever obstruction of traffic (e.g. the motorcade protest of thousands of motorcycles) did not result in arrests, and surely did not lead to the filing of criminal charges and imprisonment.
Adv. Gaby Lasky, Pollak's lawyer: "The police not only singled out Pollak from a crowd of people who all did exactly as he did, but also singled out the entire protest for no reason other than its political alignment. Similar events regularly take place in Tel Aviv without police intervention, let alone arrests and indictments.”
Pollak at a demonstration in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Pollak's sentencing argument:
Your Honor, once found guilty, it is then customary for the accused to ask the court for leniency, and express remorse for having committed the offence. However, I find myself unable to do so. From its very beginning, this trial contained practically no disagreements over the facts. As the indictment states, I indeed rode my bicycle, alongside others, through the streets of Tel Aviv, to protest the siege on Gaza. And indeed, while riding our bicycles, which are legally vehicles belonging on the road, we may have slightly slowed down traffic. The sole and trivial disagreement in this entire case revolves around testimonies heard from police detectives, who claimed I played a leading role throughout the protest bicycle ride, something I, as well as the rest of the Defense witnesses, deny.
As said earlier, it is customary at this point of the proceedings to sound remorseful, and I would indeed like to voice my regrets regarding one particular aspect of that day's events: if there is remorse in my heart, it is that, just as I argued during the trial, I did not play a prominent role in the protest that day, and thus did not fulfill my duty to do everything within my power to change the unbearable situation of Gaza's inhabitants, and bring to an end Israel's control over the Palestinians.
His Honor has stated during the court case, and will most likely state again in the future, that a trial is not a matter of politics, but of law. To this I reply that there is hardly anything to this trial except political disagreement. This Court may have impeded the mounting of an appropriate defense when it refused to hear arguments regarding political selectiveness in the Police's conduct, but even from the testimonies which were admitted, it became clear such a selectiveness exists.
The subject of my alleged offense, as well as the motivation behind it were political. This is something that cannot be sidestepped. The State of Israel maintains an illegitimate, inhuman and illegal siege on the Gaza Strip, which still is occupied territory according to international law. This siege, carried out in my name and in yours as well, sir, in fact in all of our names, is a cruel collective punishment inflicted on ordinary citizens, residents of the Gaza strip, subjects-without-rights under Israeli occupation.
In the face of this reality, and as a stance against it, we chose on January 31st, 2008, to exercise the freedom of speech afforded to Jewish citizens of Israel. However, it appears that here in our one-of-many-faux-democracies in the Middle East, even this freedom is no longer freely granted, even to society's privileged sons.
I am not surprised by the Court's decision to convict me despite having no doubt in my mind that our actions on that day correspond to the most basic, elementary definitions of a person's right to protest.
Indeed, as the Prosecution pointed out, a suspended prison sentence hung over my head at the time of the bicycle protest, having been convicted before under an identical article of law. And, although I still maintain I did not commit any offense whatsoever, I was aware of the possibility that under Israeli justice, my suspended sentence would be imposed.
I must add that, if His Honor decides to go ahead and impose my suspended prison sentence, I will go to prison wholeheartedly and with my head held high. It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that ought to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza's inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation.
 Website: http://garizo.blogspot.com/2010/12/israeli-activist-jonathan-pollak.html
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| Lees meer over: anti-fascisme / racisme | | aanvullingen | | uit dit artikel zijn aanvullingen verplaatst naar de ruispagina | | | Bilin protest: killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah | Ranja - 06.01.2011 03:47
From Bilin to Tel Aviv, outrage at killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah
Joseph Dana, The Electronic Intifada, 3 January 2011
A photograph of Jawaher Abu Rahmah hangs at her funeral on 1 January. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
"I am in shock, we are in shock," Hamde Abu Rahmah told me as we stood outside the small cemetery in Bilin where 36-year-old Jawaher Abu Rahmah was buried on Saturday. One day earlier, on 31 December, Jawaher was killed after inhaling US-made tear-gas fired by Israeli soldiers at demonstrators in the occupied West Bank village. Jawaher's brother Bassem was killed by Israeli occupation forces in a similar manner in 2009.
"We simply did not think that this would happen. We deal with tear-gas on a regular basis but the amount that they used and the strength was something we have not yet seen," continued Hamde, Jawaher's cousin who has reported on and photographed Bilin's regular demonstrations against Israel's wall and occupation since 2008.
Friday's demonstration, on New Year's Eve, was enormous. Over 1,000 people -- Palestinians, Israelis and internationals -- joined villagers in Bilin to call for an end to Israel's wall. Israel tried to stop the demonstration before it even began by creating a ring of military checkpoints on roads encircling the village to prevent non-villagers from attending. However, their strategy failed as hundreds of activists trekked through the rolling hills to reach the village.
Even prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, briefly joined the demonstration leading from the village center to the area of the wall. How Fayyad reached the village and why he left so quickly was unclear to everyone, some joked that the soldiers let him through the checkpoints because they consider him a Zionist.
Once the demonstration reached the village's agricultural lands, which are bisected by the wall, Israeli soldiers fired tear-gas in every direction including directly at protesters. Wave after wave of tear-gas surrounded demonstrators leaving nearly everyone gasping for air. One of the demonstrators was Jawaher Abu Rahmah, who lost consciousness from gas inhalation and never recovered.
Jawaher was a veteran of the Bilin demonstrations attending every one for the past four years, even after Israel shot and injured her handcuffed and bound brother Ashraf in the neighboring village of Nilin with rubber-coated steel bullets in July 2008, and her other brother Bassem was shot and killed with a tear-gas canister in April 2009.
Bassem was killed when an Israeli soldier fired a high velocity tear-gas canister directly at his chest at one of the weekly demonstrations in Bilin. Despite clear video documentation of the murder taken on three different cameras, justice has yet to come for the Abu Rahmah family for Bassem's death and Israeli soldiers have repeated their deadly repression of occupied Palestinians in Bilin with impunity. Now, an already grieving family has had to bury another one of their relatives after Jawaher's shocking death on Friday.
Israeli soldiers firing tear-gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at protesters in Bilin on the day Jawaher Abu Rahmah was killed, 31 December. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
Violent repression of unarmed demonstrators
Unarmed resistance to Israeli occupation in West Bank villages like Bilin, whose land Israel is stealing to build the wall, has almost always been met with violent repression by the Israeli military. Since 2005, 21 unarmed demonstrators, 10 of whom were children, have been killed in demonstrations throughout the occupied West Bank ("Under Repression," Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee, September 2010).
Israel has developed a three-pronged strategy of military repression of Palestinian non-violence which includes the negligent use of firearms such as in the case in Bassem's killing, cover up of criminal misconduct, and the use of the occupation's legal system to crush Palestinian freedom of expression as in the case of Bilin leader Abdallah Abu Rahmah who has been sentenced to a year in jail for his role in organizing non-violent demonstrations.
The US-based company, Combined Systems, INC, is the leading American supplier of tear-gas used by the Israeli military against Palestinian protesters. Israel uses a type of tear-gas called CS, which has been blamed for a number of deaths and serious injuries, according to Haaretz ("Protester death shows IDF may be using most dangerous type of tear gas," 3 January 2011). The Israeli army has often responded to claims of negligent use of tear gas with repeated statements that the demonstration was violent because of stone throwing. They claim that the protesters "provoked" the use of the gas. However, such a claim cannot be made about Friday's demonstration since Israeli soldiers fired tear-gas from the moment protestors entered their sight. It is obvious that for the army, the mere presence of unarmed demonstrators is reason enough to use chemical weapons against them.
Israeli police make arrests at a protest in Tel Aviv against the army's killing of Jawaher Abu Rahmah, 1 January. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
Israeli solidarity with Bilin
In response to Jawaher's murder, on 1 January hundreds of people demonstrated across the street from Israel's ministry of defense in Tel Aviv. Protesters chanted "Israel is a police state" and called for an end to the occupation. For more than one hour, protesters successfully blocked a main street in Tel Aviv beside the ministry by sitting in it and blocking traffic. Eight protesters were arrested in the demonstration including Mossi Raz, a former member of the Israeli Parliament. All were later released without charge.
Later that evening, Israeli activists descended on the home of the US ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, in the northern Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya. The activists "returned" loads of spent tear gas canisters collected in Bilin by throwing them into the ambassador's front yard. They also chanted, waking up neighbors, to demand a halt in US military aid to Israel.
Eleven demonstrators were arrested, including two women over the age of 60. They have been charged with illegal arms possession and will remain in jail until their hearing on 4 January. More actions are being planned by Israeli activists in response to the army's killing of Jawaher and in solidarity with Bilin.
The mother of Jawaher Abu Rahmah (center) mourns during her daughter's funeral on 1 January. On the right is a poster of Bassem Abu Rahmah, her other son who was killed in 2009. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
A symbol of resistance
Jawaher Abu Rahmah's death is the latest evidence of Israel's full-scale war against the defenseless Palestinian people living under occupation.
Bilin has become an international symbol of Palestinian nonviolent resistance because of its six-year struggle against the Israeli wall in the West Bank. In 2007, villagers celebrated a small victory when the Israeli high court ruled that the route of the wall in Bilin was illegal and requested the army to change its path. However, the wall's route has not been changed and as a result the protests have continued.
In 2009, leader of the Popular Committee Against the Wall in Bilin, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, was arrested in his Ramallah home. Despite his recognition by the European Union as a "human rights defender," the Israeli occupation's legal system found him guilty of "incitement" and "illegal protest."
Abdallah has served his one year sentence in full, yet still sits in an Israeli jail cell because the state has filed an appeal asking for a harsher sentence. The judge has not given a date for his verdict on the appeal.
The sadness caused by yet another victim of Israel's occupation lingered in the air in Bilin on Saturday. However, the determination to continue the struggle was visible in the eyes of villagers as Jawaher Abu Rahmah was placed in the earth next to her brother. Leaders of various other popular committees in occupied West Bank villages like Budrus, Nabi Saleh and Nilin, attended the funeral in a show of support and unified solidarity to continue the demonstrations.
They vowed that the unarmed protests will continue despite knowing that the violent repression of the Israeli military will continue as well. The protesters of Bilin and other villages understand that both history and justice are on their side. They have embraced the tactic of unarmed resistance and have opened their struggle to any one willing to join in respect and solidarity, even to an increasing number Israeli Jews. Their moral clarity should be a model for international civil society, which now more than ever needs to support the popular Palestinian struggle.
Joseph Dana is a Media Coordinator of the Popular Struggle
Coordination Committee.
 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11710.shtml
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Eyewitnesses Describe Death of Palestinian Woman in Israeli Tear Gas Attack
January 04, 2011
A Palestinian woman died Friday after Israeli forces shot her with tear gas during a peaceful protest against the West Bank separation wall in the village of Bil’in. Israeli and Palestinian eyewitnesses, as well as staff at a hospital in Ramallah, say that Jawaher Abu Rahma died after inhaling massive amounts of tear gas fired by the Israeli military at the demonstration. She was 36 years old. We speak with an Israeli activist and an Israeli doctor who were at the protest. [includes rush transcript]
Filed under Israel & Palestine
Guests:
Jonathan Pollak, Israeli peace activist.
Daniel Argo, Israeli doctor who regularly takes part in the demonstrations against the West Bank separation wall.
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/1/4/eyewitnesses_describe_death_of_palestinian_woman
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EXCLUSIVE...Emily Henochowicz Speaks Out: Art Student Who Lost Her Eye After Being Shot by Israeli Tear Gas Canister in West Bank Protest Discusses Her Life, Her Art, and Why She Plans to Return
Emily Henochowicz. She’s the twenty-one-year-old American art student who lost her eye in May after being shot in the face by an Israeli tear gas canister at a protest against Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla that left nine people dead. "I’m not ashamed of the fact that I lost my eye. I’m proud of who I am. I believed in the cause, and that’s why I came to that demonstration on that day," Henochowicz says. "I’m not going to be the same person that I was before this happened." [includes rush transcript]
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/8/5/exclusiveemily_henochowicz_speaks_out_art_student
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