Sayem Nasser Udine

Beste mensen,

De ellende in de PvdA hebben we op tv kunnen volgen, maar waar we niets van horen is hoe het momenteel in de realiteit gebeurd. Het onderstaande mailtje kreeg ik vandaag binnen, ik kan het me niet over mijn hart krijgen om hier niets mee te doen. Verspreid dit mailtje onder uw netwerken, bekende politici, de media. Maakt niet uit, maar VERSPREID het:

Het is een beetje saai dat moet ik toegeven, maar Sayem heeft inmiddels 6 dagen niet gedronken als een van de  hongerstakers uit het vreemdelingendetentiecentrum Rotterdam. Het is iets dichterbij dan Palestina. Waarschijnlijk gaat hij dood en hij is gisteren overgebracht naar Scheveningen. Hij heeft van het begin af aan gezegd dat hij niet gedwongen wil worden vocht of voedsel te krijgen. Het is wat mij betreft een heel moedige strijd tegen een afschuwelijk systeem. Wanneer gaat hij en de andere hongerstakers in godsnaam steun krijgen van de Paulus kerk en andere organisaties die beweren het beste met hun medemensen voor te hebben.

Met o.a. mensen van Occupy wordt er elke dag solidariteitsgedemonstreerd bij het detentiecentrum van 15.00 uur tot ongeveer 16.00 uur. Waar the fuck is iedereen?. Moeten deze mensen dan maar gewoon dood gaan.
Ik doe niets, maar dan ook helemaal niets meer voor de Palestijnen omdat ik jullie echt maar dan ook echt niet geloofwaardig meer vind.

Succes met de voorbereiding van het feestje voor de opening van de Paulus kerk

E. (naam bij redactie bekend) 

Racist thug held a knife to Muslim woman’s throat and demanded she remove her hijab

A Muslim woman in a hijab, similar to the one that angered racist thug David Norris

A racist who held a knife to a Muslim woman’s throat and demanded she removed her hijab has walked free from court.

David Norris, 39, approached Farduja Jama as she walked with her eight-year-old son and said:  ”Take the hijab off. This is England, you are not allowed. Take the hijab off before I stab you.”

The thug then pointed the six-inch kitchen knife at her throat before running away when a man in a car rumbled him and took a picture.

Later that day Norris approached a second woman, Iqbal Osman, who was watching her four-year-old play in a park.

He asked her why she was wearing too many clothes and accused Muslims of “taking over” his country, before waving the knife around and leaving.

Norris admitted two counts of religiously aggravated harassment and two counts of possession of a bladed article at Bristol Crown Court.

Recorder Nicholas Rowland sentenced him to a two-year community order with two years supervision and a six month alcohol treatment requirement.

He said: “The reason I am doing this is so that any sort of repetition of his behaviour or if he fails to comply with the order he will be brought back before this court and the court’s hands will not be tied.”

Both incidents happened in the Barton Hill area of Bristol on September 3 last year.

Sam Jones, prosecuting, said: “Miss Jama was walking to a cash dispenser on Church Road with her eight-year-old child.

“She heard shouting from behind in a loud and angry voice. She then heard ‘Off with the hijab.’

“She was then approached by the defendant who was holding a knife in his hand.

“He said ‘Take the hijab off. This is England, you are not allowed. Take the hijab off before I stab you.’

“He then pointed the blade of his knife and put it the left and right side of her neck. It was witnessed by a man in a car who took a photo of the defendant.

“At 12pm a Mrs Osman was watching her four-year old play in the Urban Park in Barton Hill.

“The defendant approached her and asked why she was wearing too many clothes and why she had ‘that thing’ over her head. He then said ‘F***ing Muslim people, you are taking over my country.’

“He produced a knife from within his coat. She grabbed her bag and her child and left quickly.”

After he was arrested, alcoholic Norris chillingly told cops “I’m a killer, that is what I do.”

Victim impact statements from both women outlined how they now felt anxious when they left home.

The court was told that Norris, of Barton Hill, had been on remand for seven months awaiting sentence.

Robin Rowland, defending, said: “Mr Norris does not remember the incident but accepts that it must have been terrifying.

“He deeply regrets his actions.”

(Source / 20.04.2013)

Muslim Woman Describes Assault, Harassment near Malden Center

The victim of an apparent hate crime motivated by the Boston Marathon attacks said she loves Boston’s diversity, even if the episode left her shaken Wednesday.

  

A Palestinian woman said she was assaulted and aggressively harassed while walking with her infant daughter and friend near Malden Center late Wednesday morning, in an apparent hate crime motivated by Monday’s attack at the Boston Marathon.

Malden resident Heba Abolaban said she and her friend, both wearing hijabs, were walking with their children on Commercial Street when a man forcefully punched her left shoulder and began shouting at them.

“He was screaming ‘F___ you Muslims! You are terrorists! I hate you! You are involved in the Boston explosions! F___ you!’” Abolaban remembered. “Oh my lord, I was extremely shocked.”

She said the man – described as a white male in his thirties wearing dark sunglasses – kept shouting and walking toward her as she backed away.

“I did not say anything to him,” she said. “Not even that we aren’t terrorists…he was so aggressive.”

After about two minutes, Abolaban said the man continued his brisk walk toward Malden Center. Shaken, Abolaban called her husband in tears, and then 911.

“The police came and were so kind and helpful,” she said, though no suspects were arrested in the incident.

“I love Boston and its people”

Abolaban and her husband, Ahmad Almujahed, are doctors who came to the United States from Syria to develop their specialties.

Last year, she did her six month observership at Mass General Hospital in the Clinical Genetics Department. While she was the only woman on staff to wear the Islamic hijab, she said she never felt singled out by her peers.

“I really do love the beautiful diversity of Boston (and its) people,” she said. “What happened to me yesterday saddened me a lot.”

Abolaban described Islam as a “religion of peace,” noting she spent the day before the attack handing out hot meals with her mosque.

“Our [Mosque] cooked food for the homeless regardless of their religion, ethnicity or race,” she said.

“Even if a Muslim man was the one behind the Boston Marathon blasts, he does not represent our beautiful and peaceful religion,” she later added.

Mayor: City will “not tolerate this type of behavior.”

She noted that she also appreciated a phone call from Mayor Gary Christenson, who reached out to the family after the police report was filed.

“I am simply outraged that such an act has occurred in Malden, a community that takes pride in its diversity and embraces people of all cultures and backgrounds,” Christenson wrote in an e-mail when asked for comment. “I have been in contact with Heba and am relieved that she and her child were not seriously injured.

“Police Chief Kevin Molis and members of his department responded quickly and are diligently proceeding with the investigation to find who was responsible for this heinous act.

“In the meantime, I have assured Heba and her family that Malden does not tolerate this type of behavior and that the acts of one despicable individual will not stop our community from moving forward together.”

(Source / 18.04.2013)

Settlers spray graffiti on Bethlehem-area mosques

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Settlers sprayed racist graffiti on two mosques in a village near Bethlehem early Sunday, locals said.

The graffiti on the Tuku village’s Bilal bin Rabah mosque included a threat that Palestinian stone-throwers would “pay the price” unless they stopped. They sprayed similar slogans on the Salah al-Din al-Ayoubi mosque.

Settlers also slashed the tires of two cars that were parked in the street, locals said.

Residents also said Israeli soldiers had guarded the settlers who participated in the vandalism.

An Israeli military spokeswoman did not say if troops were present in the area at the time of the incident, but she said security forces were looking into the attack.

She confirmed that graffiti was found and the tires of two cars were slashed.

The mayor of Tuqu, Taysir Abu Mfareh, told Ma’an that the Israeli side informed Palestinian workers in the nearby settlements that they would be banned from working in Israel if Israeli cars continued coming under rock attack.

The Palestinian Islamic-Christian commission denounced the incident.

It called the attack a “flagrant violation” of international law, freedom of worship, and the obligations of Israel as the occupying power in Palestine. Israel should respect places of worship, it said.

Israel returns land to Palestinians

Also Sunday, Israeli media reported that a Tel Aviv court ordered 100 dunams of land within the illegal Alfei Menashe settlement to be returned to their Palestinian owners.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said the court ruled that the contracts purportedly documenting the sale of the land were forged.

The land originally belonged to Palestinians who fled to Jordan when Israel entered the West Bank in 1967, and the territory was catagorized as abandoned, according to the report.

The judge in the case sided with the Palestinian owners and said it should be re-registered under their names, Haaretz said, basing the decision in part on the Civil Administration’s lack of approval.

The verdict was considered significant because the main organization representing settlers in the occupied West Bank do not typically receive Civil Administration approval for outposts they later seek to convert to “legal” under Israel’s law.

(Source / 08.04.2013)

Israeli settlers deface two mosques in West Bank

 

A Palestinian looks at Hebrew graffiti sprayed on the walls of a mosque on 7 April 2013 in the West Bank village of Tuqua.

Two mosques in a West Bank village were defaced with racist graffiti, a local official said on Sunday, marking the latest hate crime by suspected Jewish settlers.

“Settlers came in the middle of the night and wrote threats in Hebrew on the walls of two mosques and slashed the tires of a car,” said Adel al-Shaer, a councilor for Tuqua, a village east of Bethlehem.

At one site in Tuqua, the attackers scrawled: “Adele Biton’s revenge” – an Israeli toddler injured during a stone-throwing incident in March – and “Price tag for throwing stones,” and drew two Stars of David around the front entrance with the words: “Regards from Adele,” an AFP correspondent said.

Similar slogans were tagged on another mosque in the village.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri confirmed details of the attack, adding that two cars, not one, had had their tires slashed.

Residents told Ma’an news agency that Israeli soldiers had guarded the settlers who participated in the vandalism. A military spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Villagers threw stones at police and troops sent to the village to investigate the crimes, damaging some of their vehicles, she added.

Such incidents are known as “price tag” attacks, a euphemism for hate crimes against Palestinians by Israeli extremists.

The attacks began in response to Israeli government moves to dismantle settler outposts in the West Bank – which are deemed illegal under international law – but over the past 18 months they have targeted anyone seen as hostile to Jewish settlers.

Perpetrators of such crimes are rarely caught.

In late March, Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet said it had arrested five teenagers over the March 14 attack which caused a woman in a car with her three young daughters to lose control and crash into a parked lorry.

(Source / 07.03.2013)

Paris court fines Air France for following Israeli order to interrogate passenger whether she was Jewish

An Air France jet at Nice airport.

On 15 April 2012, Horia Ankour, 30, a French nursing student, boarded Air France flight 4384 from Nice to Tel Aviv. She was traveling as part of a solidarity initiative called “Welcome to Palestine.”

Just minutes before the aircraft was scheduled to take off, a cabin attendant approached Ms. Ankour, took her to a corner and asked her whether she had an Israeli passport. When Ankour answered “no,” the cabin attendant demanded to know whether she was Jewish. When she also answered negatively, Ankour was thrown off the flight.

Ankour was given a written statement from Air France documenting the incident and stating that the questions were asked at the direct behest of Israeli authorities.

“Today they ask you if you’re Jewish, tomorrow if you’re Muslim…”

Today a court in the Paris suburb of Bobigny found Air France guilty of illegal discriminationagainst Ankour and fined the airline 10,000 euros ($13,000) in damages and another 3,000 euros ($3,900) in costs.

“The court declares Air France guilty of the crime of discrimination,” Judge Nabila Mani-Saada said in her ruling.

“We cannot tolerate this kind of conduct on our territory,” state prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini had said during the trial. “Today they ask you if you’re Jewish, tomorrow if you’re Muslim, after tomorrow if you’re homosexual or a trade unionist.”

Fabrice Pradon, the lawyer for Air France, had told the court that the demand to ask Ankour the questions about her religion had come “directly from Israeli authorities.”

Several other airlines were complicit in Israel’s effort to stop the Welcome to Palestine initiative by barring passengers on Israeli orders.

Israeli “airline security” a front for Shin Bet secret police

The incident is reminiscent of a row that broke out between Israel and South Africa in 2009 after Jonathan Garb, a former security official with the Israeli airline El Al told the South African investigative television program Carte Blanche that the airline’s security had been a front for Israel’s Shin Bet secret police for years and that it used explicitly racist tactics against black and Muslim travelers at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport.

“What we are trained is to look for the immediate threat – the Muslim guy,” Garb claimed. “The crazy thing is that we are profiling people racially, ethnically and even on religious grounds … This is what we do.”

After Carte Blanche sent in an undercover reporter whose experience confirmed the differential and unconstitutional treatment of Muslims, South Africa protested to Israel and deported an El Al security official.

While it is unclear whether French authorities will take similar steps to prevent Israel from exporting its racism onto French territory, it appears that it is still possible for citizens like Horia Ankour to receive vindication in French courts.

(Source / 04.04.2013)

US MUSLIMS SACKED FOR PRAYING AT WORK

A US Muslim advocacy group has filed federal complaints against an American company for sacking eighteen Muslim workers for performing prayers at work.

“They wouldn’t even discuss any type of accommodation,” Jennifer Nimer, legal director for the Ohio branch of the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, toldColumbia Dispatch, according to OnIslam.net report monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

“They said, ‘You pray at a scheduled break, and that’s it.”

The umbrella group has filed a complaint earlier this week against Exel Inc., a subsidiary of Deutsche Post DHL, for sacking 18 Muslim workers from e Westerville-based logistics company.

The workers, of Somali origin, were fired because they prayed twice during work hours for about 10 minutes each time.

The complaint accuses the company of denying requests to adjust break times for the workers to allow them perform their prayers.

Though previous managers had made modifications to the break schedule, new supervisors refused to do so.

“It’s not accommodating when they were aware the break times made them miss the prayer,” Nimer said.

Company officials, however, deny any wrongdoing, saying that Exel is dedicated to ensuring its workplaces are sensitive and respectful to employees’ religious and ethnic practices. ”The allegations … neither conform nor align with the way we do business in any of our sites,” Exel officials said in a statement.

“Rather, Exel goes to great lengths to ensure employees’ religious practices are understood and, as appropriate, accommodated.  “In both policy and practice, Exel has established a culture in which discrimination of any kind is not tolerated.”

Discrimination

The sacked workers complain that the company has a history of discrimination against Muslims. ”This company has a history of discriminating against Muslims, especially Muslims of Somali origin,” Nimer said. ”This type of blatant discrimination cannot be tolerated,” he added.

The workers said they were initially denied access to the company’s human-resources department. One manager is also alleged to have told employees to pray in a restroom so they would not be seen.

The Muslim advocacy group said the sacking of some workers prompted a Feb. 8 meeting at which a manager told other employees that policies would not be changed. As workers insisted on performing their prayers, more employees were subsequently fired.

Nimer said the accusations come on the heels of complaints filed last year by two other fired Exel employees, both Muslims.

One man said he was fired after requesting the continuance of prior accommodations that allowed him to attend mandatory Friday prayer services while another said he was fired for praying during a break.

The United States is home of a Muslim minority of between six to eight million.  State and federal laws require employers to accommodate the religious practices of workers unless they unduly burden the company.

(Source / 31.03.2013)

Growing numbers of Druze refuse to serve in Israel’s army

Samer al-Sakleh is a Palestinian Druze who has refused to serve in the Israeli army.

The number of refuseniks is growing within the Druze religious minority in Israel, according to Samer al-Sakleh, a 20-year-old who has refused to serve in the Israeli army.

“Around 70 percent of the Druze men in my village go to the army,” said al-Sakleh, who hails from Meghar, a village in the Galilee. Yet he is hoping that his protest and that of other Druze will encourage more young people to become conscientious objectors.

Meghar is also home to Omar Saad, a Druze musician who received international attention last year for his decision not to undertake military service.

Like Saad, al-Sakleh grew up in a household that rejected the notion of unshakeable Druze loyalty to a state that systematically discriminates against Palestinians. “I come from a communist family. My father studied in the Soviet Union, and we were raised in a leftist environment that rejects militarism like Israel’s,” al-Sakleh told The Electronic Intifada. His father spent four months in an Israeli jail for refusing to serve in the army.

“I consider myself Palestinian. I am Palestinian, of course, and I am part of Palestinian culture, society and civilization, and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip are part of my people. I will not serve in a military that continuously kills them.”

“We identify as Palestinians”

Unlike many young Druze conscientious objectors, al-Sakleh was not imprisoned. Rather, he purposely failed a mandatory recruitment test and the state afforded him an exemption on the assumption that he was mentally unfit for military service. “I pretended that I was crazy, in other words, but I did it for moral and political reasons,” he explained.

Mandatory military service for Druze men is the result of a 1956 agreement in which the community’s leaders sought to improve conditions for the tiny minority and the Israeli government sought to control Palestinians by manufacturing strife within different sections of the Palestinian minority in present-day Israel. There have always been objectors, however, who have seen it as a one-sided deal that costs more than it pays.

“For the most part, we face all the same economic and political barriers as the rest of the Palestinian minority in Israel,” al-Sakleh said. “We are mostly poor, and our villages, often shared with Christian and Muslim Palestinians, lack sufficient infrastructure” as a result of the government’s unwillingness to invest in non-Jewish areas.

The state has subjected Druze refuseniks to harsh punishment. Nonetheless, “a growing number of us understand that we identify as Palestinians — more than five or ten years ago, for sure,” said al-Sakleh.

This perception is shared by Samer Swaid from the Druze Initiative Committee. Established in 1978, that committee became “a home for youngsters who regretted the historical pact made with the Jewish state and in particular the obligation to join the compulsory service in the military,” the historian Ilan Pappe wrote in his book The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (165).

Jail sentences

Swaid referred to a 2010 study conducted by Haifa University, which found that more than two-thirds of the Druze minority would not serve in the military if it wasn’t compulsory. “Druze refusers have been given prison terms double and more than those of other refusers,” he said.

Despite the marked increase in abstainers, many choose not to define themselves as refuseniks or to publicize their case, fearing repercussions.

“At any given moment, there are between three and five Druze refusers in prison … the vast majority [of Druze who do not serve] do not want to define themselves as refusers and don’t want to be part of public campaigns,” Swaid said. “This is due to the fact that they are a minority group, and most people think it will hurt their family and they’ll be targeted by the establishment and punished. Right now we know of at least four guys in prison.”

In Buqeia, a northern Galilee village with a 70 percent Druze majority, “the young men … spent a total of 540 years in military prison over the years,” said Swaid.

In June 2012, Omro Nafa (son of a Druze former member of Israel’s parliament Said Nafa) was imprisoned for a third time for not serving in the military (“For the third time, son of Arab MK imprisoned for refusing military service,” International Middle East Media Center, 14 June 2012).

A recent poll conducted by Mada al-Carmel Arab Center for Applied Social Research found that 71.5 percent of Palestinian citizens of Israel between 16 and 22 years of age reject national service “because it is a way to legitimize discrimination and inequality,” (“71.5 % of young Israeli Arabs oppose national service,” Haaretz, 12 February).

Few opportunities

Sahar Vardi from New Profile, an Israeli group opposed to militarization, said that the Druze and other Palestinians in Israel face “discrimination in all aspects of life: housing, budgets, land confiscations, and so on. That’s why less of the youth join the army now, and those who do simply do it as a career opportunity because there is nothing like employment equality outside [the army].”

In recent years, more organizations have sprung up to support conscientious objectors.Baladna, an organization that works on behalf of the Palestinian minority in Israel, has formed a Druze youth wing that works on military service as well as other issues.

February’s Knesset elections in Israel preserved a belligerent administration led byBenjamin Netanyahu, now backed by an even greater number of zealous politicians who regularly spout racist rhetoric and promote policies of forced population control to preserve a Jewish majority. In this political climate, more and more Druze Palestinians will question their role in a state that cynically considers them partial citizens at best.

As al-Sakleh said, “I am against the idea of an ethnic or religious state that comes at the expense of others — whether it be exclusively Jewish, Christian, Islamic or Druze.”

(Source / 20.03.2013)

Now it’s ‘Palestinians Only’ buses (60 years after Montgomery)

Shocking story, from Ynet: “Ministry Launches ‘Palestinians Only’ Buses.” In the occupied territories, so that Jews don’t have to ride on buses jammed with Palestinians. I believe this is worse than conditions in Montgomery that Rosa Parks felt intolerable in the 1950s. When will this make the New York Times? Or J Street’s blog?

The Transportation Ministry announced that starting Sunday it will begin operating designated lines for Palestinians in the West Bank.

The bus lines in question are meant, according to the ministry, to transport Palestinian workers from the West Bank to central Israel. The ministry alleges that the move is meant to ease the congestion felt on bus lines used by Jews in the same areas, but several bus drivers told Ynet that Palestinians who will choose to travel on the so-called “mixed” lines, will be asked to leave them..

The Transportation Ministry defended the plan, saying it was the result of reports and complaints saying that the buses traveling in the area were overcrowded and rife with tensions between the Jewish and Arab passengers.

A ministry source said that many complaints expressed concern that the Palestinian passengers may pose a security risk, while other complaints said that the overcrowded buses cause the drivers to skip stations.

(Source / 03.03.2013)

Palestinian co-director of ‘5 Broken Cameras’ detained at LAX: Moore

Palestinian director Emad Burnat is shortlisted for best documentary at the 85th Academy Awards on Sunday.

Palestinian director Emad Burnat was held briefly at Los Angeles’ LAX airport as he arrived for the Oscars, where his latest movie is nominated, filmmaker Michael Moore said.

Burnat, whose “Five Broken Cameras” is shortlisted for best documentary at the 85th Academy Awards on Sunday, was placed in a holding area with his wife and eight-year-old son for 1.5 hours, the activist filmmaker said.

“Although he produced the Oscar invite nominees receive, that wasn’t good enough & he was threatened with being sent back to Palestine,” Moore said on his Twitter feed of the incident Tuesday night.

“Apparently the Immigration & Customs officers couldn’t understand how a Palestinian could be an Oscar nominee. Emad texted me for help,” he added.

Moore, who won the best documentary Oscar in 2003 for “Bowling for Columbine” about gun control, said he called officials at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who called lawyers.

“After 1.5 hrs, they decided to release him & his family & told him he could stay in LA for the week & go to the Oscars. Welcome to America.

He quoted Burnat as saying: “It’s nothing I’m not already used to ..When u live under occupation, with no rights, this is a daily occurrence.”

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Jaime Ruiz, said the agency would shortly issue a statement on the incident, but otherwise did not comment when contacted by AFP.

A representative for Burnat, who co-directed “Five Broken Cameras” with Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Moore, a well-known activist for a variety of causes, added that the Palestinian filmmaker “was certain they were going to deport him. But not if I had anything to do about it.”

(Source / 20.02.2013)