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feature
 Tuesday November 18, 2003 22:06 by Indymedia Ireland Editorial Group - Indymedia Ireland
 Firsthand Reports from an Irish International Solidarity Movement Volunteer Aron Baker, an Irish Volunteer working with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine has, since September, been publishing a remarkable series of snapshots of life and protest in the West Bank on IMC Ireland. Collected together his vivid first-hand reports present a unique ground level view of the harshness of everyday life for the Palestinians under Israeli Occupation.
Aron Baker, an Irish Volunteer working with the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine has, since September, been publishing a remarkable series of snapshots of life and protest in the West Bank on IMC Ireland. Collected together his vivid first-hand reports present a unique ground level view of the harshness of everyday life for the Palestinians under Israeli Occupation. The reports are compiled below in the order in which they were published. The most recent report is first in the list below.
"5 out of the last 6 days soldiers and border police, more feared than soldiers by Palestinians for their ruthlessness and brutality, have imposed curfew in the town of Asira, north of Nablus. The soldiers and border police drive around in jeeps terrorising the 12,000 people who live there, occasionaly leaving their jeeps to do a foot patrol through narrower streets.
People hide in their homes wondering how long the army will remain, and when a silence descends and people think the jeeps are no longer there they begin to venture out, many to buy bread and food, some to disobey and break the curfew. Yesterday the soldiers weren't here in the morning so people attempted to continue their lives, children went to school and people attempted to leave the village for work, etc, only to find the last remaining road leaving the village, which has recently been blocked with an earth and rock mound, manned by soldiers who will not allow people out of the village."
Introduction from Aron My name is Aron Baker, I'm 26 from West Cork and living in Limerick for the past 8 years. I first came to the West Bank for 3 weeks last October, a self financed trip taken on my summer holidays from work. I became interested in the situation here because a friend's father is Palestinian and like millions of others, he no longer resides in Palestine because of the situation there. He started to send me updates on the situation and the horrific nature of the occupation became obvious to me. After my first trip, I was determined to go back for a longer period to work more and assist in any non-violent manner I could to help a people who need help in order to help themselves.International volunteers have a unique role in helping people in so many ways in the West Bank as unfortunately Palestinians cannot do for themselves. This is because foreigners in Palestine have more human rights than Palestinians. It is much easier for me to move around, enter situations where Palestinians can not, or cannot go alone, or would not because it is too dangerous for them, and communicate with the occupation forces where others may not. The presence of internationals can have a subtle but important impact. I feel it is also important to relay the information and scenes I witness here to others as the international world and media have sadly let them down, categorising people here as terrorists and fundamentalists which is a gross and repulsive distortion of the facts and the situation. Until you've been here it is hard to imagine and impossible to understand the living conditions for every man, women and child in the West Bank and Gaza strip. Even internationals working here cannot fully understand the situation as we can always leave, always have more rights, and don't experience the loss of life experienced by many families here. During the second Intifada, just over 3 years old now, there have been approximately:
During my time here, I have seen all manner of mundane and extraordinary measures, usually labelled as security, inflicted on Palestinians. The term security is used to justify virtually any action taken by military, settlers or by civil administration. Often these actions contadict international law, the Geneva Convention and hence Israeli law. They take forms such as collective punishments in the form of curfew on towns and cities, checkpoint closure, land stealing in several forms, crop stealing, denial of basic human rights, arrest and imprisonment without trial, for up to 6 months, which is then renewable, extra judicial executions (Targetted assasinations), shooting and killing of Palestinians, beatings etc. The list is far too long to list fully. The manner in which these incidents are reported - if reported at all - is equally disturbing. Most media outlets take only the Israeli occupation force media office version of events and having been present at several incidents about which media has taken press releases from this source I can honestly say much of it is outright lies. When my friends got shot several weeks ago, during which time the army stopped the ambulance with them inside afer they had shot, and checked on the occupants and spoke with them, they then released a statement claiming there were no injuries. They frequently come into Nablus, drive around or park and when boys start to throw stones at the armoured vehicles, which can not possibly do any real damage, they respond with live ammunition, often injuring or killing people, when this esculates to the point where someone throws a molotov cocktail at their vehicles, which again rarely does any real damage the press office releaes a statement claiming the army was attacked by terrorist throwing explosive devises at them. They often shoot people without knowing who they are or for any reason, this has happened twice around Nablus in the last 2 weeks to children. Even the term terrorist is misused as under UN law and definition these people are entitled to resist like this and are merely resisting occupation. Other particular issuses I could write about are things like the apartheid wall, checkpoints and roadblocks, home demolitions, lack of freedom of movement, curfews, refugee camps, army operatrions and incursions, settlers and settlements. As an ISM activist here I am usually involved with Palestinians in some of the following tasks, we always work with Palestinians and take our lead from them:
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11Maybe Palestinians should call off the terrorist intifada and stop waging war on Israel, then?
YA THINK?
Wonder why Israel has not been able to negotiate a permanent peace with the Palestinains? Because the Islamic extremist culture that most Palestinians practice makes them fairly insane.
Read the latest from the Seattle Times. Notice the credible reporters pointing out that this sort of thing is done by Palestinians "almost every week."
Combine this type of religious extremist lunatic behavior with hamas suicide bomber culture who think dying and taking innocent people with you is an act that God supports, and it's much easier to understand why Israel wants no part of these people.
Israel is packed with educated, well-meaning, good people, some overly religious, some not, and a few jerks, but mostly the same as the average person in Australia or New York or London or Paris or anyplace else.
Palestinian land is packed with crazed religious extremists who act like the most insane lunatics you can possibly imagine.
If you were Israel, you'd build a damn wall, too. You'd probably build 10 of them.
Read and try to understand the mentality of the nutcase Palestinians who live this type of culture:
Link is at the bottom.
Palestinian Mother kills raped daughter to restore 'honor'
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
Knight Ridder Newspapers
SHARON PERRY / KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud is charged in the death of her 17-year-old daughter, Rofayda. "This is the only way I could protect my family's honor," says the mother of nine.
ABU QASH, West Bank — Raped by her brothers and impregnated, Rofayda Qaoud refused to commit suicide, her mother recalls, even after she bought the 17-year-old a razor with which to slit her wrists.
So Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud says she did what she believes any good Palestinian parent would: restored her family's "honor" through murder.
Armed with a plastic bag, razor and wooden stick, Qaoud entered her sleeping daughter's room last Jan. 27. "Tonight you die, Rofayda," she told the girl, before wrapping the bag tightly around her head.
Next, Qaoud sliced Rofayda's wrists, ignoring her muffled pleas of "No, mother, no!" After her daughter went limp, Qaoud struck her in the head with the stick.
Killing her sixth-born child took 20 minutes, Qaoud tells a visitor through a stream of tears and cigarettes that she smokes in rapid succession. "She killed me before I killed her," says the 43-year-old mother of nine. "I had to protect my children. This is the only way I could protect my family's honor."
The guilty brothers are in jail.
Qaoud's confessed crime, for which she must appear before a three-judge panel Dec. 3, is one repeated almost weekly among Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel. Female virtue and virginity define a family's reputation in Arab cultures, so it's women who are punished if that reputation is perceived as sullied.
Victims' rights groups say the number of "honor crimes" appears to be climbing, but at the same time, getting little attention. Israelis and Palestinians are too busy with political and military issues to notice what they dismiss as domestic disputes, says Suad Abu-Dayyeh, who works for the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling in East Jerusalem.
Poverty and war have exacerbated the problem, says Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a social work and criminology professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an expert on violence against women. "Men do not have any power except over women," she says.
Palestinian police reported 31 cases in 2002, up from five during the first half of 1999, according to the center's study. Police in Israel investigated at least 18 honor killings in the past three years.
But the number of killings is likely higher, given that Palestinian police investigate only crimes that have been reported, said Yousef Tarifi, the Ramallah prosecutor assigned to Qaoud's case. Shalhoub-Kevorkian says her research showed the likely number to be 15 times higher than the number of reported cases.
Qaoud says her husband, Abdul Rahim, 52, told her the Quran forbade such killings. But neither his pleas nor those of Palestinian crisis counselors swayed her.
According to court records, Rofayda was raped by her brothers, Fahdi, 22, and Ali, 20, in a bedroom they shared in the family's three-room house. On Nov. 26, 2002, doctors at a nearby hospital who were treating Rofayda for an injured leg discovered she was eight months pregnant.
Palestinian authorities whisked her off to a women's shelter in Bethlehem, where she gave birth to a healthy boy Dec. 23. He has been adopted by another Palestinian family, court records show.
Rofayda, meanwhile, wanted to return to her parents in the Ramallah suburb of Abu Qash. Ramallah Gov. Mustafa Isa called a meeting with the family and village elders, demanding they pledge in writing not to harm the girl.
"He asked me if everyone in the family and the village would promise not to bother this girl, but I told him I couldn't give him a guarantee," Abu Qash Mayor Faik Shalout says.
Rofayda returned home in late January without notifying the authorities.
The shame was unbearable, Qaoud said. Relatives and friends refused to speak to her family. Her elder daughters' husbands wouldn't allow them to visit because Rofayda had returned home.
On Jan. 27, Rofayda sent word that she was in danger to counselors at Abu-Dayyeh's center in East Jerusalem. They, in turn, called Palestinian police in Ramallah, who have jurisdiction over Abu Qash. The police said they couldn't get to the Qaoud home because of Israeli checkpoints.
Qaoud, meanwhile, sent her husband, who suffers from heart disease, to a doctor in the nearby village of Bir Zeit. Her three youngest children went to a cousin's house.
At 11:30 p.m. she killed Rofayda, court records show. Tarifi, the prosecutor, says he's convinced Qaoud had an accomplice, but Qaoud insists she acted alone.
Qaoud turned herself in and, after four months in jail, was released pending the resolution of her case.
While honor killings committed in the heat of the moment — for example, by a husband who catches his wife in bed with another man — generally carry a six-month to one-year jail term, Qaoud will likely be sentenced to three to five years in prison, Tarifi says.
The fact she is a mother who was trying to protect her family's honor mitigates the crime of premeditated murder, which is punishable by death under Palestinian law, he adds.
The brothers are serving minimum 10-year sentences in a Palestinian jail in the West Bank city of Jericho for statutory rape of a relative, Tarifi says.
No trace of Rofayda or her brothers remains in the family home. Qaoud says she ripped up all of their photographs and burned their clothes. The bedroom in which she killed her daughter is now a storeroom.
Erasing the memories is harder, she admits. She eases her pain by doting on her three children still living at home, especially the youngest, Fatima, 9, whom she lavishes with kisses. The children say they've forgiven Qaoud and return her affection.
"My mother did this because she does not want us to be punished by people," Fatima explains with a shy smile. "I love my mother much more now than before."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001793273_honorkilling17.html
The above post by 'CallOffTheIntifada' contains blatant racist abuse and is therefore in violation of the guidelines on Irish Indymedia:
"...the Islamic extremist culture that most Palestinians practice makes them fairly insane"
&
"Palestinian land is packed with crazed religious extremists who act like the most insane lunatics you can possibly imagine."
Racist nonsense like that has no place on Indymedia. Please remove.
If an Indymedia reader sees something they disagree with they immediately brand the author a racist or a fascist.
"Honour Killings" happen all the time in Islamic societies. If I were in Israel I'd be building a wall too. If these people want to live in the 9th century, fine, just don't go bombing my people because we want to live in our own way.
Islamic religious leaders are the biggest fascists of the lot.
So-called "Honour Killings" -- whether its a mother killing her daughter, as above, or Tony Blair sending working class Brits across the world to "pay a blood price" (his words) for America's imperialism -- they're all wrong.
The person identified as "Call of Racism" simply makes the point however that the article posted here is loaded with racist comments. Similarly racist generalisations about Jews have also been removed from the newswire.
If the person identified as "CallOffTheIntifada" could make her/his points without the racist comments, they'd probably provoke an interesting discussion here about the issue of so-called "Honour Killings".
As usual your powers of logic are subnormal.
1. Those who went to Iraq signed up and knew they might get into lethal combat. They made that choice, they could have stayed on the dole or worked in McDs if they didn't want that.
2. The girls killed in honour killings often get pregnant through rape, in which they have no choice.
See??
Aron is doing an excellent job in exposing how Zionist expansionism, punctuated by a litany of killings, woundings and petty abuses of power by Israeli kapos guarding the concentration camp the West Bank has become, unreported and ignored by mainstream media, functions in the West Bank.
Combined with systematic rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners in facility 1391, assassination and torture of political opponents and the internment of prisoners of conscience such as Mordechai Vannunu this shows that Israel is a state rotten to it's core, and a very long way from being the democratic state it claims!
Crude attempts to deflect attention from Israels criminal abuse of human rights will fail, and the EU sees through the Zionist somkescreen.
Hopefully the Irish presidency of the EU will lead to increased pressure and economic action against the Israeli terror state!
The Zionist 'answer' to the feature is interesting as it is openly based on the same official logic as apartheid. The wall is defended not on the ususal security grounds but because of the supposed depth of cultural/religous differences between Jews and Muslims. What this say about the future of the minority Muslim and Christian population inside the wall is worrying, not just the villages caught on the wrong side of it but also the million or so Israeli citizens who are also Palestinians.
The article posted is also interesting because it contradicts why the zionist posted it. Rather then presenting all Palestinians as religious zealots it shows that so called 'honor killings' are opposed by the Palestinian authorities and that an infrastructure exists to help women threatened by them. In the case discussed this failed for a number of reasons but the immediate one quoted is revealing "Palestinian police in Ramallah ... have jurisdiction over Abu Qash. The police said they couldn't get to the Qaoud home because of Israeli checkpoints."
So in this case at least it seems it was the Israeli army that created the conditions in which this killing happened. A reflection of the deeper tragedy under which both the US and Israel spent years backing Islamic fundamentalists in order to undermine more secular Arab nationalists.
There is a general introduction to the ISM at http://struggle.ws/wsm/ws/2003/ws78/ism.html
Check out this link from al-jazeera. Basically there's a group of Jews in America who consider the Zionist project a threat to Jews worldwide.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B16CE799-DE50-4EEE-AD8A-0011B29DD465.htm
As we ALL know on both sides of this issue - There is only ONE CAUSE of all the slaughter in Palestine and Israel - and that One Cause was (as Al-Queida spokesmen have said repeatedly was) ALSO the cause of the attack on American Business on 9-11 - That CAUSE of ALL this carnage is :
ISRAEL'S INVASION, OCCUPATION AND THEFT OF THE PALESTINIAN'S HOME LAND.
Israel has driven Palestinians Off their land and SETTLED ISRAELI Families on that Palestinian Land - Then then Israelis cry and complain when Palestinian Freedom Fighters Kill Family Members of the Settlers who have STOLEN and taken Palestinian Land.
Get it Straight ZIONISTA'S on here - You don't make SAFE an Invasion and Robbery of another people's land - by just settling 'families' on that STOLEN Land and calling the THEIVING SETTLER'S 'innocent' - and the children of Settler's Theiving families 'innocent victims' - when the PEOPLE whose land was stolen try to get it back by suicide bombing and other types of Lethal force.
The Israelis who SETTLED their Families on the Stolen land of the Palestinians are the ones who have 'Victimized' their families.
If I put my young boy in a car that I have Stolen from you and he gets killed by you as you violently try to get Your car back - it is ME who has victimized that member of my family - not you when you killed him in the struggle to get your property back.
This WHOLE CONFLICT is CAUSED by the Theiving ZIONISTS trying to hang on to Palestinian LAND PROPERTY that they have STOLEN in War from the Palestinians - a people who never had an army.
If the British or the Israelis INVADED Ireland and then settled THEIR People on your home lots and farms - Would you "Negotiate!!" with them? Or would you drive them off your home property with the same killing force that they took it away from you with?
The Israelis are Occupying another people's land and believe that they won't have to GET OFF the Palestinians land - if they can just kill enough Palestinians little by little until they are worn out with the struggle .
These ISRAELIS ARE THEIVING OCCUPIERS Of Another People's Homeland. That is the entire cause of All this Mid-East slaughter. When the US continued to fund and Arm Israel in their slaughtering Occupation of Palestine, Al Queida attacked the US on 9-11.
Then those Zionists in Washington, Pearle, Wolfowitz, Weinberger, Rumsfeld and others who have influence, directed the Bush Administration into war against Afghanistan and Iraq - in order to destroy the Palestinians greatest allies.
But the EU knows this. In a recent EU pole Ariel Sharon was chosen the #1 danger to world peace and Bush and Korea's Sim Il Sung Tied for Second Place. OK Zionist Hypocrites on here....? Is the entire EU 'antisemitic' then? Or do they maybe just see through all your bullshit?
Check out what Israel Shamir (a Jewish reporter in Israel) has to say about Zionist Hypocrites in the US and throughout the world (yes meaning Zionist Hypocrites right here in Ireland too) on www.rense.com or check out the Israeli soldiers site of those Israeli soldiers who refuse Israeli Army orders to go to Palestine and commit any more killing atrocities at www.couragetorefuse.org .
Yes see what decent Israelis and Jews have to say about these Zionist Hypocrites. on www.couragetorefuse.org and on www.rense.com (who publishes Israel Shamir)
....got carried away with the internal 'shounds' of phonetic spelling. Well GBS said that we might as well change all our spelling to accord with the phonetic sounds of words - Perhaps I am unconsciously influenced by him :)
Honour Killings are not the issue which Aron raised.
Call off the Intifada says:
1 The Israelis are defending themeselves from terror.
2 Anyway the Palestinians are beastly savages.
That the Israelis are defending themselves is not in doubt. However the question is why such terror exists and what is legitimate to do in defense.
Can one defend the doctrine of proportionality?This says (if I understand it correctly); that because there are many fewer Jews in the Near East than Arabs many more Arab casulaties must be inflicted than Jewish if Israel is to survive.
It is a logical doctrine but is it morally defensible?
Those of us who accept and welcome the existence of a specifically Jewish homeland must also ask if the presence of Jewish settlers outside that homeland should be tolerated or encouraged. What about the need for security for the settlements?
The 'argument' (it isn't an argument but an irrelevant and indeed racist conflation) that because honour killings take place in Palestine the Palestinians are barbarians with whom no discussion is possible is an attempt to let the government of Israel off the hook.
Even if (as may well be true) those who carry out suicide bombings are not 'rationally' (and I mean that word literally) motivated, most Palestinians are motivated by rational concerns, and while Israel treats the bulk of Palestinians as it does at the moment she merely builds a rod for her own back and makes the peaceful solution that both peoples need less and less likely and further and further away.
Too long a response to this troll.