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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Justice for Jenin.
Wednesday 12 June @ 12:46:33 |
 In front of the Minneapolis Federal Court Building on May 15, 2002 at 3:30 p.m., the Anti-War Committee began its demonstration in response to the Israeli’s military actions in the Jenin refugee camp in the early weeks of April. This demonstration, which contained the usual message of terminating aid to Israel for their numerous human rights abuses with respect to the Palestinian people and for their disregard for numerous U.N. resolutions requiring Israel to abide by the Geneva Conventions and to withdraw from the occupied territory, had another aspect to it. This aspect of the demonstration was an act of civil disobedience that showed the determination of the Anti-War Committee (AWC) to oppose the utter barbarity of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the inhumane attitude of the Israeli government, and the complicity of the US government in Israel’s actions.
On our way to participate in a national anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. on April 20, we started hearing the first descriptions of the horrifying events that took place during the Israeli military offensive into Jenin and other Palestinian areas. The indiscriminate destruction of homes, the inexcusable civilian casualties, the mass burial of these casualties, the transportation of dead to undisclosed locations, the forcing of Palestinians to be human shields, the obstruction of medical assistance to the wounded, and the interference of the press and human rights workers by the IDF. It was these unimaginable offenses by the IDF that compelled the AWC to decide at its next meeting to make the strongest nonviolent statement the group could make against the atrocities perpetrated by the IDF.
During the weeks that followed, the details of the May 15 demonstration were worked out, and the volunteers that would lay siege to the Federal Building by blocking its entrances, to symbolically present our resolve to oppose the use of U.S. taxpayers’ money to aid the Israeli’s oppressive actions, prepared signs, bloody sheets, and bloody hand prints that were used to symbolically represent U.S. complicity in the actions of Israel. It was during the funeral procession for the Palestinian casualties that the civil disobedience group of 16 individuals broke off and took their places. At first we stood our ground at the Federal Building’s entrances, and we waited for the arrests to begin, but we had to escalate our activities to bannering the overhang of the building’s entrance and to finally sitting in the middle of the nearby intersection. As we were arrested and while we sat in the vehicles waiting to be transported, we continued our call for “the end to US/Israeli aid and long live Palestine.”
From the scarce evidencethat has been collected from the Jenin refugee camp by the Human Rights Watch, it is clear that severe abuses have been committed by the IDF, and these incidences need to be investigated by the U.N. Fact Finding Team. One of the abuses specified in the report presented by Human Rights Watch was the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the IDF. “U.S.-supplied helicopters fired anti-tank missiles and other ordnance into the camp, in some cases making insufficient efforts to identify legitimate military targets and avoid hitting civilian houses.”
Other incidents listed in the report are as follows:
• Fifty-seven-year-old Kamal Zghair, a wheelchair-bound man who was shotand then run over by IDF tanks on April 10 in Jenin.
• Thirty-seven-year-old Jamal Fayid, a paralyzed man, who was crushed in the rubble of his home on April 7 after IDF soldiers refused to allow his family the time to remove him from their home before a bulldozer destroyed it.
• Fourteen-year-old Faris Zaiben, who was killed by fire from an IDF armored car as he went to buy groceries when the IDF-imposed curfew was finally lifted on April 11.
• Fifty-two-year-old ‘Afaf Disuqi, who was killed on April 5 by an explosive charge that IDF soldiers had placed at her front door as she went to open it for the soldiers.
The full text of the report from Human Rights Watch can be viewed and downloaded at the web address http://www.hrw.org/mideast/is-ot-pa.php. The Anti-War Committee states, “We hope it is clear that in the same light that the UN General Assembly condemned the Israelis for interfering with the Fact Finding Team, we, the Anti-War Committee, condemn not only the barbaric acts of the IDF and the Israeli Government but also implicate our own government with complicity in the crimes against humanity committed by the Israelis, and this is due to the fact that U.S. taxpayer money assists the Israelis to carry out their acts of terrorism.”
Roger L. Morgan Jr.
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