ISM Reports: Midnight Victim / No School Today

ISM Reports: Midnight Victim / No School Today

1) Link to radio interview with Anne Gwynne, shot at and injured in Nablus while talking to KPFK

2) Gaza/Bethlehem + report "Midnight Victim"_Kristen + Neda

3) Hebron: No School Today _ Art Gish

4) Right to Education Campaign

1) KPFA Flashpoints radio interview with Anne Gwynne, shot while talking to Flashpoints producer (his voice mail) in Nablus

http://flashpoints.net text summary with audio link direct audio link: http://flashpoints.net/realaudio/fp20030219AnneGwynn.ram

2) Gaza prison / Bethlehem nabbing

Date: 19 February, 2003 Author: Kristen Ess Area: Gaza City / Bethlehem

The Israeli military murdered 11 Palestinians last night. They invaded Gaza City and Jabalia (the refugee camp just north of the city). It was about 10pm. US donated Apache helicopters fired into the city while 60 Israeli tanks crushed through the streets. They targeted infrastructure and industry, the police, houses and cars, things that keep the Palestinian people and economy functional. There was no way for anyone to get away, to hide from the missiles and shelling. Gaza is a prison. The dead are:

Munthir as-Safadi, 27 Ala’ al-Hilu, 22 Saeed al-Hilu, 28 Abdul Rahma al-Qasas, 27 Tamir al-Qataa’, 27 Muhammad al-Sahlub, 22 Ali Abu al-Khair, 30 Iyad Abid, 27 Abdul Karim Bakrun, 24 Amir ad-Dayeh, 19 Abdul Rahim Abu an-Naja, 30

Bethlehem

Yesterday Israeli soldiers were standing in the middle of baba skak (the main intersection in Bethlehem) pointing guns at school children and screaming at them to go home. All the little kids here wear uniforms to school, and all the kids are just so short in these little dresses and sweaters. A foreigner who lives in Hebron told me he asked Israeli soldiers why they were pointing guns at school girls the other day, preventing them from going to their elementary school. They answered him, "because they're terrorists." A young women named Neda wrote the following after talking to her friend just now, the girl in Beit Sahour who just got out of Israeli jail. Israeli soldiers abducted 3 young women from Bethlehem--one from Deheisha Camp, one from Beit Jala, and one from Beit Sahour--two nights ago.

Kristen Ess Occupied Palestine 011.972.(0)67.341.268 011.972.(0)59.357.526

MIDNIGHT VICTIM by Neda

It could happen very simply to any girl of us, and without any consideration to any international law or any humanitarian sense, one girl of my classmates was arrested while she was drowning in her innocent’s dreams, and has not any single political relation, in the middle of the night a tremendous number of Israeli soldiers, tanks and all kinds of weapons swept over Fida’s house. FIda’ which her mother died many years ago and living with her old father, were arrested in justification that she is planning to a suicide bombing, they searched the house and made upside down while there is nothing to find accept some canned food which kept for war, Fida and her old father were blind folded in a very windy night and it was raining very hard, they didn’t allow her to take any jacket or blanket, they didn’t take care about anything and treated her like animals, she couldn’t hold on all that awful things that happens to her and her old father, after they put her in Jail with other two girls with same reasons, they Neda, Beit Sahour 19 February, 2003

3) HEBRON: No School Today

Date: February 17, 2003

Author: Art Gish

Area: Hebron

After a short break for the Feast of the Sacrifice, school began again on February 15--at least for some children. Other children never got to school again, because the 15th was the 93rd day of curfew in the area around the Old City of Hebron. Soldiers chased some children who slipped around the corner to get to school in the curfew area. They frightened some children enough to send them back home.

I accompanied two groups of girls past the soldiers. I also helped three women teachers to get into the school after soldiers told them they could not go. The Ibrihimi boys' school was locked shut, so those boys had to go back home. Three soldiers sat in a jeep and watched as two mothers accompanied their children up the street toward the school. When the mothers and children got near the school, the soldiers suddenly sped toward them in their jeep. One soldier jumped out, pulled out a pistol and aimed it at the women, forcing them back down the street. I asked why the children could not go to school. "It's because they are terrorists", they said. Soldiers told me that I was looking only at the local situation. If I looked at the big picture, I would see that keeping children from going to school does help make peace. A soldier told my teammate that if we were Israelis we would want all of these children to be dead. One soldier told us he was born without a heart.

It seemed that the longer we were in contact with the soldiers, the more relaxed and less aggressive they became. The problem is not with these soldiers, however. The problem is with the orders they receive. The problem is the occupation itself, which must be ended for peace to be possible here.

Christian Peacemaker Teams is an initiative among Mennonite and Church of the Brethren congregations and Friends Meetings that supports violence reduction efforts around the world. Contact CPT, POB 6508 Chicago, IL 60680; Telephone: 773-277-0253 Fax: 773-277-0291.

4) Friends,

The International Solidarity Movement is urgently trying to get international volunteers to come to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to stand with Palestinians against attacks on their very existence.

Throughout the current intifada school age children have suffered from increasing exposure to violence, trauma and poverty as well as from confinement and a lack of educational, social and cultural outlets due to the closures and curfews. Palestinians' right to education has been violated through Israeli military curfews and closures, which prevent students and teachers from reaching their schools as well as the destruction and closure of some schools by the Israeli military. School children have been attacked by the Israeli army and illegal Jewish settlers while traveling to and from their places of study.

Please consider joining us in Palestine for the "Right to Education Campaign" - March 14 - April 30, 2003. For more information, please see: www.palsolidarity.org

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INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

http://www.palsolidarity.org

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