freepalestine
17th April 2012, 10:47
Press Release: "50 Peace Activists In Israeli Jails Decalre Hunger Strike"
Monday April 16, 2012 23:29 by WELCOME FRANCE PALESTINE MISSION - Press Release
http://www.imemc.org/cache/imagecache/local/attachments/apr2012/460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_latuff_ben_gurion_frenc h8ebe2.jpg
50 international peace supporters and peace activists detained by Israel and imprisoned at the Givon Prison, near Tel Aviv, declared hunger strike in support of the Palestinian political prisoners and rejecting the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
About forty French participants of the mission Welcome to Palestine, and a dozen other internationals, were jailed Monday morning at Givon (near Tel Aviv), because they refused to be deported on their arrival, and not because they committed any offense or crime, quite the contrary.
According to the score that we could perform on the night of Sunday to Monday, there were 27 men and women who arrived in Tel Aviv on an Easyjet flight from Geneva, and 10 or 11 others arrived on board an Air France flight from Nice.
Some have managed not to get caught with their mobiles, and were able to sendto the outside world (to us, to relatives in France) a few new SMS: the morale is high. They maintain their right, elemental, to be able to travel in occupied Palestine and they are prepared, if necessary, to declare hunger strike, especially because this Tuesday April 17th is a day of general mobilization of thousands Palestinians languishing in the jails of the apartheid regime.
Example of an SMS received on Monday morning at 10 h30
“We are 13 girls in Lyon, Scottish 4, 2, Nice, Marseille 2, 3 in Paris, one of Quebec, one of Corsica, and they still don’t let us call without giving us any explanation. We all go on a hunger strike as long as we cannot call. And tomorrow we will all go on a hunger strike with the Palestinian women prisoners.”
Already, the draconian measures taken by the government and the Israeli secret service to prevent the thousands of volunteers to reach Palestine (only half a dozen have managed to win Bethlehem, to our knowledge) has turned into diplomatic and political disaster for Netanyahu and his clique.
We owe this to the overzealous Secret Service which have been unable to determine with any credibility in what the volunteers were “dangerous extremists pose an existential issue for Israel,” have raked wide, very wide, in the composition of their blacklists.
Haaretz reveals that for hundreds of passengers whose identities have been stalked for weeks, the Shin Bet has not been able not only to establish that they represented any “danger” to Israel, but even in some cases any militant activity in the service of the Palestinian cause!
The sweep operation did not spare a member of the Board of Directors of the powerful German pharmaceutical company Merck (Merck Darmstadt) who came in Israel in order to sign an agreement for scientific research! He found himself black-listed!
Better, a French diplomat and his wife who must start working at the French consulate in Jerusalem this summer. The couple was planning to look for an apartment in Jerusalem, but the night before their departure, they received an email from the airline, Lufthansa, saying that their tickets were canceled because they were banned from enter Israel!
In fact, what happened Sunday with a passenger on Air France, puted off her flight from Nice to Tel Aviv because she had responded negatively to a questionnaire from the airline asking if she was “Jewish” or ” Israeli “, gives a fairly clear picture of the exclusionary strategy developed by the Israeli spy agencies. When the passenger is not “racially pure”, is eliminated.
Even if it means to go after passengers with the “right profile”. Still in Nice, Sunday, members of our delegation witnessed the misadventures of a transient non-member of the mission who have been inquisitorial questioned by the Air France staff. Her crime? This woman, Jewish French citizen, had the air of an Arab, because of her surname and the complexion of her skin, which is not surprising since that many of the Jews in France are from the Arab world, especially North Africa. And when the employees of Air France have sought to hide behind the racial instructions they had received from Israel, the Jewish passenger replied indignantly, “Well, now I do not like this country.”
Wherever passengers, hundreds, were denied boarding, there were vigorous protests, , Brussels, Geneva, Mulhouse, Rome, Paris, Nice, etc. … We report the news on these sites http://www.bienvenuepalestine.com and
http://www.europalestine.com, as well as our twitters @touspalestine, @Europalestine1, and on the Facebook page
http://www.imemc.org/article/63317
--------------------------------
470 Of Passengers Marked As Activists, Had Nothing To Do With “Welcome To Palestine”
Monday April 16, 2012 09:50 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that 470 of the 1200 persons that Israel labeled as “pro-Palestinian”, part of the Welcome To Palestinian Flytilla, were not activists, two of them were a French diplomat and his wife.
http://www.imemc.org/cache/imagecache/local/attachments/apr2012/460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_welcome_to_palestine.jp g
Haaretz said that %40 of those marked as part of the Flytilla were just added to the blacklist of the Shin Bet intelligence agency without any proof that they were connected in any way to the Welcome To Palestine campaign.
The paper said that the latest information was provided by a senior Israeli source, and that the Israeli Shin Bet did not have solid grounds that the 470 internationals intended to do anything that violates Israeli laws.
The source said that Israel placed names on the list despite the fact that they have nothing to do with any “anti-Israel” activity, adding that Israel just offended hundreds of foreign nationals due to unfounded suspicions, adding that this act “gave the other side a victory in a silver platter”, Haaretz reported.
Despite Israeli claims, and unfounded accusations, the Flytilla activists intended to head directly to the West Bank, starting in Bethlehem, to express solidarity and support to the internationally-guaranteed rights of the Palestinian people living under illegal Israeli military occupation.
A French activist told Haaretz that Israel’s security forces and the security forces in France treated her, and the other nonviolent activists, as criminals, adding that France just fell for Israel’s propaganda.
An official at the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the list of banned names was expanded over the weekend, an issue that made it easy for tourists to be labeled as activists.
Yet, Haaretz said that a French diplomat and his wife were preparing to fly to Tel Aviv as they were supposed to work at the French embassy this summer, but Lufthansa German Airways cancelled their tickets, similar to dozens of tickets that were cancelled due to Israeli pressures.
The diplomat and his wife intended to look for an apartment and settle in before they start work in the summer.
Lufthansa sent them an email telling them that their tickets have been canceled due to the fact that they are banned from entering Israel.
Lufthansa was not the only airlines that surrendered to Israeli pressures to void tickets of dozens of hundreds of passengers as 20 airlines, most of them based in E.U. countries, received direct threats from Israel to impose sanctions on them should they allow the activists to fly.
Several Israelis, including an Arab-Israeli woman, were also prevented from flying as their names were blacklisted by the Israeli intelligence.
Israel placed the names of 730 persons on its initial blacklist claiming that they are flying to the country to participate in protests; they were banned from entering the country.
Another 270 persons, believed to be part of nonviolent protests, were not only blacklisted, but were also banned from entering the country for 10 years.
According to the Israeli Police, many of the foreign nationals have been previously arrested by the Israeli army during protests in the West Bank, and that their names were found online connected to several pro-Palestine groups, Haaretz said.
It is worth mentioning that Israeli peace activists were arrested by the police for protesting in solidarity with the Welcome To Palestine campaign. Israel deployed more than 650 policemen at the Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv.
international | israeli politics | news report saed at imemc dot org
http://www.imemc.org/article/63315
Monday April 16, 2012 23:29 by WELCOME FRANCE PALESTINE MISSION - Press Release
http://www.imemc.org/cache/imagecache/local/attachments/apr2012/460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_latuff_ben_gurion_frenc h8ebe2.jpg
50 international peace supporters and peace activists detained by Israel and imprisoned at the Givon Prison, near Tel Aviv, declared hunger strike in support of the Palestinian political prisoners and rejecting the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
About forty French participants of the mission Welcome to Palestine, and a dozen other internationals, were jailed Monday morning at Givon (near Tel Aviv), because they refused to be deported on their arrival, and not because they committed any offense or crime, quite the contrary.
According to the score that we could perform on the night of Sunday to Monday, there were 27 men and women who arrived in Tel Aviv on an Easyjet flight from Geneva, and 10 or 11 others arrived on board an Air France flight from Nice.
Some have managed not to get caught with their mobiles, and were able to sendto the outside world (to us, to relatives in France) a few new SMS: the morale is high. They maintain their right, elemental, to be able to travel in occupied Palestine and they are prepared, if necessary, to declare hunger strike, especially because this Tuesday April 17th is a day of general mobilization of thousands Palestinians languishing in the jails of the apartheid regime.
Example of an SMS received on Monday morning at 10 h30
“We are 13 girls in Lyon, Scottish 4, 2, Nice, Marseille 2, 3 in Paris, one of Quebec, one of Corsica, and they still don’t let us call without giving us any explanation. We all go on a hunger strike as long as we cannot call. And tomorrow we will all go on a hunger strike with the Palestinian women prisoners.”
Already, the draconian measures taken by the government and the Israeli secret service to prevent the thousands of volunteers to reach Palestine (only half a dozen have managed to win Bethlehem, to our knowledge) has turned into diplomatic and political disaster for Netanyahu and his clique.
We owe this to the overzealous Secret Service which have been unable to determine with any credibility in what the volunteers were “dangerous extremists pose an existential issue for Israel,” have raked wide, very wide, in the composition of their blacklists.
Haaretz reveals that for hundreds of passengers whose identities have been stalked for weeks, the Shin Bet has not been able not only to establish that they represented any “danger” to Israel, but even in some cases any militant activity in the service of the Palestinian cause!
The sweep operation did not spare a member of the Board of Directors of the powerful German pharmaceutical company Merck (Merck Darmstadt) who came in Israel in order to sign an agreement for scientific research! He found himself black-listed!
Better, a French diplomat and his wife who must start working at the French consulate in Jerusalem this summer. The couple was planning to look for an apartment in Jerusalem, but the night before their departure, they received an email from the airline, Lufthansa, saying that their tickets were canceled because they were banned from enter Israel!
In fact, what happened Sunday with a passenger on Air France, puted off her flight from Nice to Tel Aviv because she had responded negatively to a questionnaire from the airline asking if she was “Jewish” or ” Israeli “, gives a fairly clear picture of the exclusionary strategy developed by the Israeli spy agencies. When the passenger is not “racially pure”, is eliminated.
Even if it means to go after passengers with the “right profile”. Still in Nice, Sunday, members of our delegation witnessed the misadventures of a transient non-member of the mission who have been inquisitorial questioned by the Air France staff. Her crime? This woman, Jewish French citizen, had the air of an Arab, because of her surname and the complexion of her skin, which is not surprising since that many of the Jews in France are from the Arab world, especially North Africa. And when the employees of Air France have sought to hide behind the racial instructions they had received from Israel, the Jewish passenger replied indignantly, “Well, now I do not like this country.”
Wherever passengers, hundreds, were denied boarding, there were vigorous protests, , Brussels, Geneva, Mulhouse, Rome, Paris, Nice, etc. … We report the news on these sites http://www.bienvenuepalestine.com and
http://www.europalestine.com, as well as our twitters @touspalestine, @Europalestine1, and on the Facebook page
http://www.imemc.org/article/63317
--------------------------------
470 Of Passengers Marked As Activists, Had Nothing To Do With “Welcome To Palestine”
Monday April 16, 2012 09:50 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported that 470 of the 1200 persons that Israel labeled as “pro-Palestinian”, part of the Welcome To Palestinian Flytilla, were not activists, two of them were a French diplomat and his wife.
http://www.imemc.org/cache/imagecache/local/attachments/apr2012/460_0___10000000_0_0_0_0_0_welcome_to_palestine.jp g
Haaretz said that %40 of those marked as part of the Flytilla were just added to the blacklist of the Shin Bet intelligence agency without any proof that they were connected in any way to the Welcome To Palestine campaign.
The paper said that the latest information was provided by a senior Israeli source, and that the Israeli Shin Bet did not have solid grounds that the 470 internationals intended to do anything that violates Israeli laws.
The source said that Israel placed names on the list despite the fact that they have nothing to do with any “anti-Israel” activity, adding that Israel just offended hundreds of foreign nationals due to unfounded suspicions, adding that this act “gave the other side a victory in a silver platter”, Haaretz reported.
Despite Israeli claims, and unfounded accusations, the Flytilla activists intended to head directly to the West Bank, starting in Bethlehem, to express solidarity and support to the internationally-guaranteed rights of the Palestinian people living under illegal Israeli military occupation.
A French activist told Haaretz that Israel’s security forces and the security forces in France treated her, and the other nonviolent activists, as criminals, adding that France just fell for Israel’s propaganda.
An official at the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the list of banned names was expanded over the weekend, an issue that made it easy for tourists to be labeled as activists.
Yet, Haaretz said that a French diplomat and his wife were preparing to fly to Tel Aviv as they were supposed to work at the French embassy this summer, but Lufthansa German Airways cancelled their tickets, similar to dozens of tickets that were cancelled due to Israeli pressures.
The diplomat and his wife intended to look for an apartment and settle in before they start work in the summer.
Lufthansa sent them an email telling them that their tickets have been canceled due to the fact that they are banned from entering Israel.
Lufthansa was not the only airlines that surrendered to Israeli pressures to void tickets of dozens of hundreds of passengers as 20 airlines, most of them based in E.U. countries, received direct threats from Israel to impose sanctions on them should they allow the activists to fly.
Several Israelis, including an Arab-Israeli woman, were also prevented from flying as their names were blacklisted by the Israeli intelligence.
Israel placed the names of 730 persons on its initial blacklist claiming that they are flying to the country to participate in protests; they were banned from entering the country.
Another 270 persons, believed to be part of nonviolent protests, were not only blacklisted, but were also banned from entering the country for 10 years.
According to the Israeli Police, many of the foreign nationals have been previously arrested by the Israeli army during protests in the West Bank, and that their names were found online connected to several pro-Palestine groups, Haaretz said.
It is worth mentioning that Israeli peace activists were arrested by the police for protesting in solidarity with the Welcome To Palestine campaign. Israel deployed more than 650 policemen at the Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv.
international | israeli politics | news report saed at imemc dot org
http://www.imemc.org/article/63315