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Over the past four years, the Trump administration has enacted major long-term changes to US policy with regard to Palestine. With US elections looming, in this episode of the Palestine Podcast, we hear from Al-Shabaka analysts Hatem Bazian and Nadia Hijab who join host Nur Arafeh to discuss what possibilities lie ahead for the next administration to either expand or reverse this trajectory, and how can Palestinians leverage their power to influence future decision-making?

About the speakers

Hatem Bazian is co-editor and founder of the Islamophobia Studies Journal and director of the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, and a senior lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley. He is founder and chair of American Muslims for Palestine.

Nadia Hijab is co-founder and board president of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She served as its Executive Director between 2011 and March 2018. She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East magazine before serving at the United Nations in New York. She is a co-founder and former co-chair of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and now serves on its advisory board.

Nur Arafeh is conducting her PhD in Economic Development at the University of Oxford. She previously served as Al-Shabaka’s Palestine Policy Fellow from 2015 – 2017.

This audio is courtesy of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network – an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law. You can donate to their work here: https://al-shabaka.org/donate

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In this episode of the Palestine Podcast, we feature an important discussion that took place as part of the 2020 Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival concentrating on the increased targeting of Palestinian and Palestine solidarity human rights defenders, both in Palestine and around the world.

About the speakers

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American attorney and human rights activist. Over the past two decades, Huwaida has been involved in a number of legal and grassroots initiatives for Palestinian rights, including the co-founding of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Dima Khalidi is the founder and director of Palestine Legal, overseeing the organization’s array of legal and advocacy work to protect people speaking out for Palestinian freedom from attacks on their civil and constitutional rights. 

Mahmoud Nawajaa is a human rights defender and youth organiser from Hebron. He is General Coordinator of the Boycott National Committee (BNC and board member of the Stop the Wall campaign. He was recently imprisoned without charge by Israel for 19 days as a result of his human rights work.  

Majed Abusalama is a PhD candidate in Critical Human Geography and Regional Studies at Tampere University (Finland) and a contributing writer to Jadaliyya, Aljazeera English, MiddleEastEye and others. He grew up in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza and is now based in Berlin. He serves as an international director of We Are Not Numbers organisation in Gaza.

Frances Black is an independent Irish Senator, singer and founder of the RISE Foundation, a charitable organisation working with people with a loved one in addiction. A strong advocate for social justice and equality, she was elected to the 25th Seanad in 2016 and initiated the Occupied Territories Bill.

We would like to thank our colleagues in the Front Line Defenders  for granting us permission to use the audio of this webinar which was organised by them as part of the 2020 Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast reflect the opinions of the speaker(s) only and do not reflect the views of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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In this episode of the Palestine Podcast we feature a discussion on the impact and legacy of British imperialism on Palestine, from the Balfour declaration, to the Mandate period and the Nakba, until he present day.

About the speakers:

Prof. Karma Nabulsi is a Palestinian academic, organiser and author, and Patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Karma is currently Professor of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University, and Fellow in Politics at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford.

Dr. Bernard Regan has been publicly campaigning in support of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination since 1982, for much of that time as an executive member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. He is author of ‘The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine’ and currently a Visiting Research Fellow at St Mary’s University.

We would like to thank our colleagues in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in England and Wales for granting us permission to use the audio of this webinar which was organised by them.

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Have Arab states abandoned the Palestinian people? 

In this episode of the Palestine Podcast, Al-Shabaka analysts Tareq Baconi and Ibrahim Fraihat join host Nur Arafeh to weigh in on the historical understanding of normalization, implications of Israel’s agreements with the UAE and Bahrain, and other normalization developments across the region, and ways forward for Palestinians in light of these changing dynamics. 

About the speakers

Tareq Baconi served as Al-Shabaka’s US Policy Fellow from 2016 – 2017. He is currently the Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict Analyst at the International Crisis Group. His book, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, was published by Stanford University Press.

Ibrahim Fraihat is a professor of international conflict resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and Affiliate Scholar at Georgetown University. He previously served as Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and taught international conflict resolution at George Washington University and George Mason University. His latest book is Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring​ (Yale University Press, 2016).

Nur Arafeh is conducting her PhD in Economic Development at the University of Oxford. She previously served as Al-Shabaka’s Palestine Policy Fellow from 2015 – 2017.

This audio is courtesy of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network – an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law. You can donate to their work here: https://al-shabaka.org/donate

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For the Israeli State, its settlement project is not merely an ideological and political project, but an economic one. In this episode of the podcast we focus on the settlement economy, and the human rights abuses resulting from business activities with the Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine.

The discussion provides insights into the human rights implications of doing business with the settlements, and way ways to end the complicity of European economic and political actors with the settlement economy.

Speakers

Maha Abdallah, International Advocacy Officer at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights

David Kattenburg, Canadian educator, journalist and activist

Valentina Azarova, International legal academic and practitioner, Visiting Academic at the Manchester International Law Centre (MILC), University of Manchester

Giovanni Fassina, Director of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC)

Introductions by Thomas Van Gool, Middle East Project Officer at PAX, Gerard Jonkman, Director of The Rights Forum, and Pauline Overeem, Senior Researcher at SOMO
We would like to thank Oxfam Novib, PAX, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and The Rights Forum for organising this webinar and for permission to use the audio. You can follow their great work on their respective websites.

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In this episode of The Palestine Podcast, Israeli human rights activists Michael Sfard and Sharona Weiss speak about the findings and conclusions of a landmark legal opinion on Apartheid in Palestine, and Palestinian human rights lawyer Munir Nuseibah gives his view on what the findings mean.

Apartheid is a name for a type of regime and an international crime. The crime of apartheid has a clear definition, and although its origin is historically linked to the racist regime in South Africa, it is now an independent legal concept.

In 2020, Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation commissioned human rights lawyer Michael Sfard to produce a legal opinion on the prevailing in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The conclusion of this legal opinion is that the crime against humanity of apartheid is indeed being committed by the Israeli state, and the victims of this crime are the indigenous Palestinians.

About the speakers

Sharona Weiss is Head of International Advocacy Department with the Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din.

Michael Sfard is an Israeli lawyer with expertise in international humanitarian law and international human rights law.

Munir Nuseibah is a Palestinian academic expert on transitional justice and humanitarian law, and Director of the Community Action Center at the Al-Quds University.

We would like to thank Oxfam Novib, PAX, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and The Rights Forum for organising this webinar and for permission to use the audio. You can follow their great work on their respective websites.

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This episode features a fascinating and timely discussion of Apartheid Israel’s use of illegal collective punishment as a tool to dominate and control the Palestinian people, while utilizing so-called “security” pretexts and rhetoric to justify its inhumane policies.

The speakers address aspects of Israel’s illegal policies, including the withholding of bodies, arbitrary detention, collective punishment against Palestinian prisoners, detainees, and their families, residency revocation, and punitive house demolitions. They also highlight Israel’s use of various forms of collective punishment with the intention of maintaining an apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole. One of the contributors, UN Special Rapporteur, Prof. Michael Lynk, introduced his report to the Human Rights Council, which report focuses on the illegality of collective punishment. In his presentation, Prof. Lynk, warned that “like torture, there are no permissible exceptions to the use of collective punishment in law. And, like torture, the use of collective punishment flouts law and morality, dignity and justice, and stains all those who practice it.”

Speakers:

Michael Lynk – UN Special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine

Rania Muhareb – Legal Researcher and Advocacy Officer, Al-Haq

Munir Nuseibah – General Director, Community Action Center in Al-Quds University

Budour Hassan – Legal researcher, Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center

Sahar Francis – General Director, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Moderator: Nada Awad – International Advocacy Officer, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies 

We would like to thank our friends in the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) for permission to use to the audio of this webinar. You can follow their amazing work here.

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In this episode of The Palestine Podcast we hear an urgent, informative and disturbing discussion between Nadia Abu El-Haj, Johanna Fernández, Maha Nassar and Nahla Abdo about racial policing, systemic racism and settler-colonial repression in the United States and the Apartheid state of Israel.  

Recent police violence in the US has sparked anti-racism protests around the world and ignited a discussion of systemic racism within many societies and political systems. Despite major differences in the regimes of oppression and discrimination in the US and Israel, certain parallels exist and serve to shed light on both systems. In the case of the US and Israel, the connections go beyond analogies and extend to material links between the respective security states and policing practices, including what has been called the “Israelization” of policing.

About the speakers

Nadia Abu El-Haj is the Ann Olin Whitney Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Chair of the BoD, SOF/Heyman Center for the Humanities, and Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. She is the author of two books and several journal articles published on topics ranging from the history of archaeology in Palestine to the question of race and genomics today.

Johanna Fernández teaches at the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY). She is the writer, producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Her Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the NYPD, led to the recovery of the largest repository of police surveillance records in the country.

Maha Nassar is an Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona and the author of Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017).

Nahla Abdo is a Palestinian-Canadian political activist and Professor of Sociology at Carleton University. She is the author of several publications, most recently Captive Revolution: Palestinian women’s Anti-Colonial Struggle Within the Israeli Prison System.

This event was co-hosted wonderful folks at the Center of Palestine Studies at Columbia University and the Institute of Palestine Studies, and we thank them for allowing us to use the audio of this webinar.

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In this episode of the Palestine Podcast we look at ways women are leading the resistance to the Israeli apartheid and occupation in Palestine, and discusses the many ways women are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine, to help achieve freedom, justice and equality for everyone.

About the speakers

Samia Al-Botmeh – Assistant Professor in Labour Economics and the Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Birzeit University, Palestine

Lee James – Equalities Advisor at ASLEF

Zita Holbourne – National Vice President of PCS Union and Co-founder and Chair of Barac UK

Chaired by Louise Regan, Vice-Chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

We would like to thank our colleagues in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in England and Wales for granting us permission to use the audio of this webinar which was organised by them.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast reflect the opinions of the speaker(s) only and do not reflect the views of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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In November 2019, Trade Union Friends of Palestine and a number of Irish trade unions hosted a two day conference in Dublin on the situation of Palestinian children under Israel’s Apartheid regime. In this week’s episode of the Palestine Podcast, we hear from three speakers in a session focused on the arrest, trial, imprisonment and traumatisation of children in Israel’s military detention regime.

About the Speakers

Khaled Quzmar is General Director of Defense for Children International – Palestine. He specialises in issues of juvenile justice and grave violations against children during armed conflict, and since 1995 has represented Palestinian children in Israeli military courts.

Nery Ramati is an attorney and partner in Gaby Lasky and Partners Law Office, a leading human rights office in Israel, specializing in freedom of expression and protests. He has represented Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights and anti-occupation activists in Israel’s courts for a decade.

Eamon McMahon is a founder member and secretary of Trade Union Friends of Palestine and has been a leading voice for justice in Palestine in the Irish trade union movement. A retired NHS psychotherapist, he has a special interest in the traumatisation of Palestinian children under the Israeli occupation.

With thanks to Trade Union Friends of Palestine for permission to use the audio.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast reflect the opinions of the speaker(s) only and do not reflect the views of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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In this episode of the Palestine Podcast, Sawsan Zaher, Amir Abo Kweder and Omar Shakir discuss the experience of the Palestinian Citizens of the Israel. They are those who managed survive the 1947-49 Nakba and stayed inside what would become the Apartheid State of Israel and their descendants. They make up some 20% of the population of Israel today.

These Palestinian communities have faced decades of ongoing and systematic discrimination and dispossession, with dozens of laws curtailing their basic freedoms and human rights, all of which were strengthened and constitutionally legitimised by the Jewish Nation State Basic Law passed less than 2 years ago.

About the speakers

Sawsan Zaher is a senior lawyer and has been working with, and since 2018 has been the deputy general director of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Amir Abo Kweder is a social and political activist from the Naqab, founder and spokesman of the local committee of the Azzarnug village. 

Omar Shakir is the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, and investigates human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

We would like to thank our colleagues in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in England and Wales for granting us permission to use the audio of this webinar which was organised by them.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast reflect the opinions of the speaker(s) only and do not reflect the views of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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During the coronacrisis, one thing that has not been on lockdown is Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid. On the contrary, the threat of annexation of part of the West Bank, arbitrary arrests of students and human rights activists, destruction of homes, fields and health centres, murder of young Palestinians in the streets, have all continued apace.

In this episode of the Palestine Podcast, Fayrouz Sharqawi and Alys Samson Estapé discuss the impact of the coronavirus in Palestine, how the Palestinians are organizing themselves during to continue resisting the occupation, and how can we help to put an end to international complicity with the Israeli apartheid regime.

About the speakers

Fayrouz Sharqawi is the Advocacy Coordinator at Grassroots Jerusalem, a platform for Palestinian and international activists and organizations in occupied Palestine.

Alys Samson-Estapé is the European campaigns coordinator of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the leadership of the BDS Movement.

We would like to thank Intal – Globalize Solidarity in Belgium for kindly granting permission to use the audio of this webinar.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast reflect the opinions of the speaker(s) only and do not reflect the views of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to begin annexing parts of the West Bank as soon July 2020. What are the implications of such a move, and what can be learned from Israel’s previous illegal annexations of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights?  

In this Policy Lab hosted by Palestinian think-tank Al-Shabaka, Yara Hawari and Rania Muhareb join host Nur Arafeh to weigh in on what annexation means, its significance within Zionist thought and Israeli history, and potential avenues to push back against future land grabs.  

About the Speakers

Rania Muhareb is a legal researcher and advocacy officer with the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq. She holds an LLM in international human rights and humanitarian law from the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) and a BA in political science from Sciences Po Paris.

Dr. Yara Hawari is a writer and senior policy analyst for Al Shabaka. In addition to her academic work which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is also a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Al Jazeera English. She frequently documents and reports on abuses committed by Israeli occupation forces in Palestine.

This audio is courtesy of Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network – an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law. You can donate to their work here: https://al-shabaka.org/donate

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast reflect the opinions of the speaker(s) only and do not reflect the views of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign unless otherwise explicitly stated.

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This seminar was hosted and organized by our Dutch friends in Diensten en Onderzoek Centrum Palestina (DocP), BDS Netherlands, The Rights Forum and Palestine Link.

When it comes to resisting and overcoming Israel’s apartheid regime in Palestine, what lessons can we learn from other movements for justice, such as the anti-apartheid South African freedom struggle and the fight against antisemitic hatred?

Prof. Ilan Pappe speaks on ‘Lessons from Jewish activism’, while Ronnie Kasrils talks about ‘Lessons from anti-apartheid activism in South Africa’.

About the speakers

Ronnie Kasrils is a Jewish South African anti-apartheid struggle veteran and a former South African Government Cabinet Minister. He is author of the award-winning book ‘The Unlikely Secret Agent’ about the anti-apartheid underground.

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian. He is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter and author and editor of many books, including ‘Israel and South Africa: The Many Faces of Apartheid’.

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This seminar was hosted and organized by our Dutch friends in Diensten en Onderzoek Centrum Palestina (DocP), BDS Netherlands, The Rights Forum and Palestine Link.

Diana Buttu: “Law and Apartheid Inside Israel”

Diana Buttu is a Ramallah-based lawyer, analyst and commentator, a former legal advisor to Palestine Liberation Organization, and Policy Advisor to the Palestinian thinktank Al-Shabaka.

Kholoud al Ajarma: “The Jewish National Fund as an Instrument of Apartheid”

Kholoud Ajarma is an Palestinian photographer, film- maker, anthropologist and refugee-rights activist.

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This seminar was hosted and organized by our Dutch friends in Diensten en Onderzoek Centrum Palestina (DocP), BDS Netherlands, The Rights Forum and Palestine Link.

Prof. John Dugard, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine and South African professor of international law discusses: “The Crime of Apartheid: South Africa and Palestine”.

Prof. Virginia Tilley, political scientist, co-author of the UN ESCWA ‘Apartheid Report’, and editor of Beyond Occupation: Apartheid, Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories discusses: “The Relevance of the Concept of Apartheid to the Case of Israel and Palestine”.

Note: There were some slight technical difficulties during Prof. Dugard’s talk which led to him being cut off mid presentation. However he returned to finish after Prof. Tilley, and took part in the Q&A.)

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On 21st May 2020 Michael Lynk, Clare Daly, Tom Moerehout and Ann Kdair held a friendly discussion and debate about accountability and obligations of companies and governments towards trade with Isreal’s illegal settlements, and wider issues of how we in Europe and beyond can help to achieve justice for the Palestinian people.

About the speakers:

Michael Lynk – the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in occupied Palestine

Dr Anna Kdair – Legal Researcher and Advocacy officer, Al-Haq

Prof Tom Moerenhout – Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs

Clare Daly – member of the European Parliament (Ireland)

INFO:

To mark Nakba Day 2020, on Wednesday 13^h May the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign was honoured to host an online public meeting with Palestinian legal expert and political analyst Diana Buttu.

About the talk

Ms. Buttu discussed Israel’s latest plan to illegally annex large areas of the West Bank in the context on the ‘Ongoing Nakba’ which has seen the Palestinians subjected to seven decades of dispossession, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, mass incarceration, illegal annexation and racist apartheid.

72 years on from the violent colonial partition of Palestine in 1948 and the forcible expulsion of two thirds of its indigenous people, she will also discuss what Palestinians, internationals and the international community can do to prevent this new Nakba, and how we can effectively support the Palestinian people’s struggle for freedom, justice, equality and return.

About the speaker

Diana Buttu is a Ramallah-based lawyer, analyst and commentator, a former legal advisor to Palestine Liberation Organization, and Policy Advisor to the Palestinian thinktank Al-Shabaka.

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On Thursday 21^st November 2019, acclaimed anti-Zionist Israeli journalist Gideon Levy spoke in Trinity College Dublin. The subject of this talk was the prospects and practicalities of the two-state and one-state models for ending colonialism and apartheid in the Palestine-Israel region. The talk also looked at the situation on the ground for Palestinians today, and traced the terrifying growth of extreme anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic racism under the Trump-Netanyahu axis.

The event was hosted by Academics for Palestine.

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On Wednesday 6th November 2019 in Trinity College Dublin, ‘Palestine +100: Stories From a Century After The Nakba’, the first ever anthology of Palestinian science fiction, was launched by Palestinian writer Selma Dabbagh and editor Basma Ghalayini.

The book poses a question to contemporary Palestinian writers: what might your home city look like in the year 2048 – exactly 100 years after Nakba, the displacement of more than 700,000 people? The result: contemporary Palestinian writers offering their own spin on the science fiction and fantasy genre.

Covering a range of approaches – from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine.

Hear one of the contributors to this groundbreaking new collection of science-fiction stories, British Palestinian writer, Selma Dabbagh and the editor, Basma Ghalayini, as they discuss an anthology that uses possible futures as a vehicle for exploring the politics of the present.

Hosted by Academics for Palestine and the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign was honoured to launch the paperback of Ilan Pappe’s new book, The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories (Oneworld, 2019) on 12th October 2019 in Dublin. This podcast is a recording of the talk by the acclaimed Israeli historian where he discussed a book which has been called “critical for understanding the present situation and looking forward to possible solutions”.

About the Book

Shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards 2017

From the author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine – the seminal study of the 1948 Nakba and the violent creation of the State of Israel – comes an incisive look at the Occupied Palestinian Territories, picking up the story where that book left off.

In this comprehensive exploration of one of the world’s most prolonged and tragic conflicts, Pappe uses recently declassified archival material to analyse the motivations and strategies of the generals and politicians – and the decision-making process itself – that laid the foundation of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. From a survey of the legal and bureaucratic infrastructures that were put in place to control the population of over one million Palestinians, to the security mechanisms that vigorously enforced that control, Pappe paints a picture of what is to all intents and purposes the world’s largest ‘open prison’.

About the Author

Ilan Pappe is Professor of History at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter, and the author of over a dozen books including the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, A History of Modern Palestine, The Idea of Israel, Ten Myths About Israel and The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel. In 2017, Pappe was awarded the Middle East Monitor’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Palestine Book Awards.

Hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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As part of Israeli Apartheid Week 2019, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Academics for Palestine were proud to host acclaimed journalist and author Ben White for an evening of discussion about his latest book Cracks in the Wall: Beyond Apartheid in Palestine/Israel (Pluto, 2018). The event took place on 28th February 2019 in Dublin.

About ‘Cracks in the Wall’

After decades of occupation and creeping annexation, Israel has created an apartheid, one state reality in historic Palestine. Peace efforts have failed because of one, inconvenient truth: the Israeli maximum on offer does not meet the Palestinian minimum, or the standards of international law.

But while the situation on the ground is bleak, Ben White argues that there are widening cracks in Israel’s traditional pillars of support. Opposition to Israeli policies and even critiques of Zionism are growing in Jewish communities, as well as amongst Western progressives. The election of Donald Trump has served as a catalyst for these processes, including the transformation of Israel from a partisan issue into one that divides the US establishment. Meanwhile, the Palestinian-led boycott campaign is gathering momentum, prompting a desperate backlash by Israel and its allies.

With sharp analysis, Ben White says now is the time to plot a course that avoids the mistakes of the past – a way forward beyond apartheid in Palestine. The solution is not partition and ethnic separation, but equality and self-determination – for all.

About the Author

Ben White is a journalist and analyst, who has been visiting and writing about Palestine for over a decade. His books include Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy (Pluto, 2011), Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide (Pluto, 2014), and Cracks in the Wall: Beyond Apartheid in Palestine/Israel (Pluto, 2018). His articles have been published by the Guardian, Independent, Newsweek Middle East, and many others. Ben is a frequent guest expert on Al Jazeera, and is a contributor for Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.

Hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign in association with Academics for Palestine.

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On Thursday 15th November the IPSC hosted Aida Touma-Sliman MK, a Palestinian member of the Israel parliament. Ms. Touma-Sliman discussed the passage of Israel’s new apartheid ‘Nation State’ law in the context of the growth of rightwing extremism in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy, and the efforts to resist this trend.

This was a rare opportunity to hear first-hand from someone who opposes Israeli state racism, apartheid and militarism from within the very corridors of power.

In July 2018 Israel passed the so-called ‘Nation State Law’, a racist law designed to officially assign second class status to Palestinian citizens of Israel, and to deny their claim to their homeland. It has been widely described and decried as enshrining apartheid inside the state of Israel, where previously Israel had sought to hide official discrimination behind a liberal veneer.

This slipping of the mask is just the latest in a long line escalating measures designed to marginalise Palestinians, whichever side of the Green Line they live on – from the shooting of unarmed protestors in Gaza, to the demolition of villages in the West Bank and Negev, to the crackdown on anti-occupation civil society groups. Meanwhile there has been an uptick in Israeli airstrikes in neighbouring countries and sabre-rattling against Iran and Lebanon. All of these are a legacy of the exponential growth of far right political parties and movements inside Israel over the past two decades, and the continued impunity which Israel enjoys abroad, something now amplified by Trump’s rise to power in the US.

About the speaker

Aida Touma-Sliman MK is a Palestinian member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) where she heads the Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. She was elected in 2015 for the Joint List, the coalition of Arab and leftwing parties. She was born in Nazareth into a Christian Palestinian family and earned a B.A. in psychology and Arabic literature from the University of Haifa. Touma-Sliman founded the Arab feminist group Women Against Violence in 1992.

She joined the Hadash party, later becoming editor-in-chief of Al-Ittihad, an Arabic language newspaper. She became the first female member of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel and co-founded the International Women’s Commission for a Just Palestinian-Israeli Peace. In July 2018, following the passage of the ‘Nation State Law’, she penned an article for The Guardian newspaper entitled ‘Netanyahu will be known as the first prime minister of Israeli apartheid’.

Hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, with the assistance of the Global Campaign Against US/NATO Military Bases.

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In 2017, Benjamin Ladraa left his home in Sweden and started walking southeast. He recounts incredible adventures on the road to Palestine, his brush with Israeli secret service in Prague, his quest for unconditional human rights for all people, his thoughts on the brutal conflict there and the nature of activism and how collective actions can have a lasting impact.

Music by KarismaBeatz & EzY – Arabic night

Dan Spanner – Long Live Palestine

About the speaker

Benjamin Ladraa is a Swedish human rights activist known for advancing awareness of human rights violations in the Palestine. In 2017 he embarked on a solo 4,800km trek from Sweden to Palestine, via thirteen countries: Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

About the podcaster

Shaun O’Neill is an Irish podcast-maker who holds a Masters Degree in theology from Uppsala University in Sweden. He has a keen interest in The Middle East, humanitarian work and social justice.

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On 13^th June 2018, in this timely and important talk, preeminent Palestinian human rights defender Shawan Jabarin addressed recent developments in Gaza: the remarkable mass movement that emerged in the form of the Great March of Return, and the response of the Israeli military – including the use of lethal force and explosive bullets against civilians, as well as open-fire rules of engagement that have been approved by the Israeli Supreme Court. Jabarin also talked about the diverse range of ongoing attempts to hold Israel to account for its violations of international law in the Palestinian territories – from potential war crimes investigations by the International Criminal Court to forthcoming proposed legislation in Ireland to ban trade with illegal settlements in occupied territories.

About the speaker

Shawan Jabarin is the General Director of Al-Haq, the largest, oldest and best known human-rights organization in the Palestinian territories. In 2011 he was appointed to the Human Rights Watch Middle East Advisory Board, and in 2013 he was elected as a Commissioner for the International Commission of Jurists. In 2016 he was elected Secretary-General of FIDH: International Federation of Human Rights.

After studying sociology at Birzeit University in the 1980s, Jabarin later studied law in Ireland. He is a graduate of the Irish Centre of Human Rights, NUI Galway, where he completed the LL.M programme in 2004-05, supported by a grant from the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs Irish Aid programme. In 2010, the Irish Centre of Human Rights presented him with its first and only distinguished graduate award.

Jabarin began volunteering with Al-Haq while he was a student at Birzeit University. He joined Al-Haq as a field researcher in 1987. He became its director in 2006. He has been subject to administrative detention without trial, travel bans and death threats for his work as a human rights defender, and has been supported in campaigns by Amnesty International, Front Line Defenders, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, and others. He was awarded the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1990 for his defence of freedom of expression and human rights, and has been received numerous other human rights awards since, personally and on behalf of Al-Haq.

Organised by Academics for Palestine and the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

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On Wednesday 18th April 2018 – to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day – Israel human rights lawyer Nery Ramati spoke in Dublin about the situation of Palestinian children under Israel’s apartheid military court system.

Every year, hundreds of Palestinian minors undergo the same scenario. Israeli security forces pick them up on the street or at home in the middle of the night, then handcuff and blindfold them and transport them to interrogation, often subjecting them to violence en route. Exhausted and scared – some having spent a long time in transit, some having been roused from sleep, some having had nothing to eat or drink for hours – the minors are then interrogated. Completely alone, cut off from the world, without a lawyer or other guardian present they are interrogated in manner that often involves threats, verbal abuse and physical violence. Its sole purpose is to get the minors to ‘confess’ or provide ‘information’ about others.

They are then taken to the military court for a remand hearing. In the vast majority of cases, the military judges approve remand, even when the only evidence against the minors is their own confession. These military courts, which are only used to try Palestinians, have a 99.7% conviction rate and have been repeatedly criticised by human rights groups as failing to meet international standards for a fair trial. The facts and figures all demonstrate that the rights of Palestinian minors’ are being regularly and systematically violated by Apartheid Israel.

About the Speaker

Nery Ramati is an attorney and partner in Gaby Lasky and Partners Law Office, a leading human rights office in Israel, specializing in freedom of expression and protest, and Ahed Tamimi’s lawyers.

He has been representing Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights and anti-occupation activists in Israel’s military (Occupied Palestinian Territories) and civil (State of Israel) courts for almost a decade. Mr. Ramati has been representing leading human rights defenders and activists from the Palestinian villages of the popular struggle movement, such as Bi’ilin, Nabi Saleh, Beit Ummar, Qadom and others.  One of his most important achievements is raising the awareness worldwide on the issues of the ill-treatment of the Palestinian minors (children) in the military court system.

Organised by Dublin branch of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign

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In the first of the XBorders: Accord seminars, David Landy presents his seminar, Jerusalem, the Eternal Undivided City.

Jerusalem is a city with one of the most disputed international borders in the world running through it. Nevertheless, it has been proclaimed as both the undivided, eternal capital of Israel and of Palestine. However, while ‘Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian people’ is a rhetorical phrase, ‘Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people’ is not simply rhetoric, but the lived, concrete reality which Palestinian Jerusalemites must navigate through.

This seminar examines how Jerusalem, contrary to the lived reality, is imagined as unitary and how it is presented as such to the international community. It looks at how tourism and archaeology have been used to create myths and to practice unseeing and denial of the very real borders within Jerusalem. It particularly examines how they have been used in the ‘City of David’, a tourist site which was the original site of Jerusalem. Finally we ask what these myths mean to those Jerusalemites considered a ‘demographic threat’ to the imagined city.

About the speaker:

David Landy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Trinity College and director of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity and Conflict. His main research interests are in race & ethnicity, and transnational social movements, particularly with regard to Israel/Palestine. He is the author of “Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel’, and recently organised a conference in Trinity College on ‘Freedom of Speech and Higher Education: The Case of the Academic Boycott of Israel’.

This event was hosted by Xborders: Accord.

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Join podcast-maker and student Shaun O’Neill on a journey around Jerusalem and the West Bank – Bethlehem and Ramallah – undertaken in Dec 2017 just days after Donald Trump’s illegal decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy there. He speaks to locals and reflects on how life plays out there these days, in a place under brutal military occupation. The piece includes a short interview with Usama Nicola from Palestinian NGO Wi’am in Bethlehem (the Palestinian Conflict Transformation Center) about their peaceful work in the region.

Thanks go out to Usama for giving his time and energy to a stranger who walks in off the street and starts snooping around his NGO, also Khalid for his excellent tour of Aida and Dheisheh refugee camps and for keeping us safe.

And to the wonderful people of Palestine who we met during our trip. This podcast is dedicated to them.

Some names have been changed to protect interviewees from potential reprisals.

About the podcaster

Shaun O’Neill is a final year Master’s theology student from Uppsala University in Sweden with a keen interest in The Middle East, humanitarian work and social justice.

Correction: The maker of this podcast incorrectly mentioned the term border wall during his interview with Wi’am. He would like to apologise for misusing this term and correct this error by stating that this is not a border wall but instead is a separation wall.

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A recording of the launch of Irish journalist David Cronin’s new book, ‘Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel’ (Pluto, 2017) in Dublin on Monday 23rd October 2017.

About the Book

“His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

This is the infamous Balfour Declaration, which began one hundred years of conflict with the Palestinian people. Penned in 1917 by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, these words had an immense impact on history that still emanates a century later. In the controversial, fast-paced Balfour’s Shadow, David Cronin traces the story of the rhetorical and practical assistance that Britain has given to the Zionist movement and the state of Israel since that day. Skillfully and engagingly written, Balfour’s Shadow uses previously unreleased sources and archives to reveal a new side to an old story. Cronin focuses on important historical events such as the Arab Revolt, the Nakba and establishment of the state, the ‘56 and ‘67 wars, the Cold War, and controversial public figures like Tony Blair. Marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Cronin provides a fascinating take on this oft-maligned, important history.

About the author

David Cronin is an Irish journalist and author who reports on the EU from Brussels. He has written for The Irish Times, The Guardian, Inter Press Service, TheJournal.ie, Electronic Intifada and others. His previous books include Corporate Europe: How Big Business Sets Policies on Food, Climate and War (Pluto, 2013) and Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation (Pluto, 2010).

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On Thursday 9th November the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) was proud to host an important public forum featuring four well-known Irish public figures who discussed their experiences of four separate fact-finding trips to Israeli-occupied Palestine.

The meeting saw former-RTE broadcaster Mike Murphy, actor Neilí Conroy, and journalist and lecturer Dr. Harry Browne in conversation with Betty Purcell, TV producer and Irish Human Rights and Equality Commissioner. It took place on Thursday 9th November in Dublin.

About the panellists

Mike Murphy is a retired and legendary RTE broadcaster, who is well known to generations of Irish people for shows such as The Live Mike, Winning Streak, The Arts Show and The Big Interview. In September 2017 Mike travelled around the West Bank visiting Hebron, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and other areas.

Neilí Conroy is stage and screen actor known for her roles in Love/Hate, Trial of the Century, Intermission, and The Van as well as numerous theatre appearances. In April 2017, Neilí visited The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp to work with young Palestinian actors.

Harry Browne is Lecturer in the School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology, as well as an activist and journalist. His journalism has appeared in numerous publications, including the Irish Times, Sunday Times, Irish Daily Mail, Evening Herald, Sunday Tribune and Sunday Business Post. Harry has written two books, most recently The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power) (Verso, 2013). Harry visited the Gaza Strip in January 2013 and saw the aftermath of the November 2012 Israeli attack.

Betty Purcell, who moderated the proceedings, is an Irish Human Rights and Equality Commissioner, freelance television producer and media consultant. Previously Betty worked as a Senior Television Producer with RTE and over 33 years has produced countless radio and television programmes. Betty has written a book on broadcasting Inside RTE (New Island, April 2014) and on Nicaragua Light After Darkness (Attic Press, 1987). In October 2015 Betty visited the West Bank on an olive harvesting trip.

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The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in association with Academics for Palestine, were honoured to present a public talk by renowned Palestinian-American author and intellectual Steven Salaita. The event took place on Tuesday 12th September 2017 in Dublin.

In his talk, Steven Salaita explored why Palestine is one of the world’s most pressing moral issues and argues that a liberated Palestine is everybody’s concern.

About the speaker

Steven Salaita is an American scholar, author and public speaker formerly the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut. His books include Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader’s Guide (2011), Israel’s Dead Soul (2011), Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom (2015), Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine (2016).

INFO:

This lecture was part of the TCD MPhil in Race Ethnicity and Conflict conference Freedom of Speech and Higher Education: The Case of the Academic Boycott of Israel, Trinity College Dublin.

About the Speaker

Steven Salaita is an American scholar, author and public speaker formerly the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut. His books include Modern Arab American Fiction: A Reader’s Guide (2011), Israel’s Dead Soul (2011), Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom (2015), Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine (2016).

Recording courtesy of Paul Reynolds.

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PP#21 – Kholoud Ajarma on ‘Inheriting Nakba: Four Generations of Palestinian Refugees’ [2017-05-17] – (Download here)

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To commemorate the 69th anniversary of the Nakba, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign was honoured to present Palestinian academic and refugee rights activist Kholoud Ajarma, who spoke in the Academy Plaza Hotel in Dublin on Wednesday 17th May 2017.

Kholoud’s talk, ‘Inheriting Nakba: four generations of Palestinian refugees’ was a first-hand account of the key issues regarding Palestinian refugees, from the 1947-49 Nakba (Arabic for ‘Catastrophe’) when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly dispossessed and exiled from their homeland to facilitate the creation of the state of Israel up to the refugee crisis of the present today.

Today there are more than five million Palestinian refugees, many who are refugees for a second or third time, all denied their international law-mandated Right of Return by Israel.

About the Speaker

Kholoud Ajarma is an award winning Palestinian photographer, film- maker, anthropologist and refugee-rights activist. She is a graduate of International Studies, Conflict Resolution and Anthropology and Development Studies and has experience working with Palestinian refugees in Palestine, the MENA region, Europe and Latin America. In Palestine, she leads projects in the field of refugees and youth empowerment creating platforms for active youth participation within human rights research, media, conflict resolution, and social justice. The event was hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (www.ipsc.ie)

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On Thursday September 8th 2016 we spent an unforgettable evening with acclaimed Palestinian author, academic and activist Ghada Karmi as she launched her latest book, ‘Return: A Palestinian Memoir‘ (Verso, 2016).

The event was jointly hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Academics for Palestine, and took place in the Ballroom in Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin. Ghada Karmi was in conversation with well-known academic and journalist Harry Browne, and there was time for questions from the audience.

About the Speaker

An extraordinary memoir of exile and the impossibility of finding home, from the author of ‘In Search of Fatima‘ (Verso, 2002) and ‘Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine‘ (Pluto, 2007)

“The journey filled me with bitterness and grief. I remember looking down on a nighttime Tel Aviv from the windows of a place taking me back to London and thinking hopelessly, ‘flotsam and jetsam, that’s what we’ve become, scattered and divided. There’s no room for us or our memories here. And it won’t be reversed.’”

Having grown up in Britain following her family’s exile from Palestine, doctor, author and academic Ghada Karmi leaves her adoptive home in a quest to return to her homeland. She starts work with the Palestinian Authority and gets a firsthand understanding of its bizarre bureaucracy under Israel’s occupation.

In her quest, she takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the heart of one of the world’s most intractable conflict zones and one of the major issues of our time. Visiting places she has not seen since childhood, her unique insights reveal a militarised and barely recognisable homeland, and her home in Jerusalem, like much of the West Bank, occupied by strangers. Her encounters with politicians, fellow Palestinians, and Israeli soldiers cause her to question what role exiles like her have in the future of their country and whether return is truly possible.

The event was hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (www.ipsc.ie) and Academics for Palestine (www.academicsforpalestine.wordpress.com)

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What is antisemitism? What is anti-Zionism? Are they the same thing as many apologists for the crimes of the Israeli state would have people believe? This meeting with Ronit Lentin, Harry browne and David Landy, held in the Teachers’ Club, Dublin on 7th June 2016 explored these issues in depth and argues that not only are they two concepts radically different, but also that antisemitism has no place in the Palestinian solidarity movement, which is an anti-racist liberation movement.

About the speakers:

Ronit Lentin is an Israeli-Irish Jewish political sociologist and a writer of fiction and non-fiction books. She was born in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine in 1944, she has lived in Ireland since 1969. She has retired recently as Associate Professor of Sociology from Trinity College Dublin where she served as director of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict for 15 years and as Head of Department for three years, and was a founder member of the Trinity Immigration Initiative. Lentin has published extensively on racism and immigration in Ireland, Israel and Palestine and on gender and genocide and the Holocaust. Among her latest books: Thinking Palestine (2008), Co-Memory and Melancholia: Israelis Memorialising the Palestinian Nakba (2010) and Migrant Activism and Integration from Below in Ireland (2012). She is the chair of Academics for Palestine.

Harry Browne is a lecturer in the School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology, as well as an activist and journalist. He is the author of Hammered by the Irish (CounterPunch/AK Press, 2007), The Frontman (Verso Books, 2013, also translated into Spanish and Italian editions) and the forthcoming Public Sphere (Cork University Press). His journalism has appeared in numerous publications, including CounterPunch, the Irish Times, Village magazine, the Sunday Times, and Great Irish Reportage (Penguin Ireland, 2013). He served on the steering committee of the Irish Anti-War Movement in 2003-04 and is a member of Gaza Action Ireland and Academics for Palestine.

David Landy is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, and active in the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign. His social movement activities inform his research and vice versa – he has published on various Irish and international solidarity movements. He is author of Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel.

The event was hosted by the Irish Anti-War Movement (www.irishantiwar.org)

INFO:

This PodCast is also available as video – see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g8NGhk1_w8

As part of PalFest Ireland 2016 festival, Irish poets read in solidarity with Palestine, and Palestinians living in Ireland read their favourite poems. The event took place on Friday 15th July 2016.

The five featured poets, who read from their own work as well as  Palestinian poems of their choice, were Moya Cannon, Seamus Cashman, Catherine Ann Cullen, John Ennis and Adam Wyeth. Fatin Al Tamimi, chair of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a photographer who has lived in Ireland since 1988, along with Palestinians Abdalluh Al Bayyari and Amany Yahia also read favourite poems from their literature.

The venue was Jerusalem restaurant at 77 Camden St, Dublin, run by acclaimed Palestinian-born chef Basil Ziadeh (thanks Basil! – http://www.jerusalemrestaurant.ie).

The event was hosted by PalFest Ireland (www.palfestireland.net)

INFO:

To mark Nakba Day 2016 the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign was honoured to present Lubna Shomali from BADIL, Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. She spoke on Wednesday 11th May in The Academy Plaza Hotel in Dublin.

Lubnah’s talk was a first-hand account of the key issues regarding Palestinian refugees, from the 1947-49 Nakba when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly dispossessed and exiled from their homeland to facilitate the creation of the state of Israel up to the refugee crisis of the present today.

Today there are more than five million Palestinian refugees, many who are refugees for a second or third time, all denied their international law-mandated Right of Return by Israel. Come along to find out more, and to see what we can do to help them get home.

About Badil

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights  BADIL is a Palestinian human rights organization established in 1998, dedicated to defending  and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), regardless of their geographic location, according to the frameworks of international  humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. BADIL is one of the leading and respected  resources on historic and contemporary forcible transfer and the Palestinian refugee and IDP  issue. BADIL has special consultative status though a partnership framework with UN ECOSOC,  allowing it and its partners to engage regularly and assertively with all UN mechanisms. BADIL works to engage and empower Palestinian and international civil society to advance a  rights-based solution according to international law.

About the speaker

Lubnah Shomali is BADIL’s Administrative and Financial Affairs Manager. She is a Palestinian human rights defender and activist who focusses on a comprehensive rights-based approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with a focus on forced  population transfer, refugees and internally displaced persons, according to international  humanitarian and human rights law. Ms.Shomali relocated with her family to her hometown in the West Bank in the summer of 2008. She worked with Beit Sahour Municipality for three years as their International Relations Officer before signing on with BADIL Resource Center in 2012.

Organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (http://www.ipsc.ie)

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To mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day 2016 the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign was honoured to present Palestinian-Israeli lawyer Aouda Zbidat from Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association who spoke on Wednesday 20th April in The Academy Plaza Hotel, Dublin. Her talk was be a first-hand account on the key human rights violations facing Palestinian Political Prisoners in occupied Palestine.

Some of the issues that Ms Zbidat addressed in her talk will were:

– The issue of child prisoners and the abuse of children within the system – UNICEF has stated that Israel’s child prisoner “practices are in violation of international law”
– The issue of torture in Israeli prisons.
– Hunger strikes in Israeli prisons.
– Denial of prisoners rights and violations of international law in Israel’s prison system.
– Administrative detention – A form of internment without trial, which Amnesty says is used “to suppress the legitimate and peaceful activities of activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.
– The 99.7% conviction rate for Palestinian security prisoners, tried before Israeli military (non-jury) courts “whose proceedings do not meet international standards for fair trial”, according to Amnesty.
– The detention of Palestinian parliamentarians and civil society leaders.

About the speaker

Aouda Zbitdat is a Palestinian-Israeli lawyer at Addameer (Arabic for conscience), a human rights organization based in occupied Palestine who campaign for the rights of Palestinian Political Prisoners. Aouda has, for the past three years, worked in Israel’s military courts representing Palestinian detainees and has closely worked on Addameer’s various campaigns to end policies of arbitrary administrative detention, and campaigns in support of hunger striking detainees.

Hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (http://www.ipsc.ie)

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Professor Jeff Halper launched his new book, ‘War against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification’ in Dublin on Thursday 21st January 2016. It was hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign as part of the End The Irish Arms Trade With Israel campaign (see http://www.ipsc.ie/noarmstrade).

Prof. Halper provided a survey of Israel’s weapons technology and population subjugation/control methods, for which the occupation of Palestine an Israeli live-testing facility, Halper says, thus allowing it to export high-tech weaponry that has been tested in ‘pacifying’ a population under occupation. Halper argues that this allows Israel to thrive in the global arms market, winning under-the-counter support from many governments that crtiticise it publicly, while buying and investing in its technology of repression.

This is a matter of vital importance in our increasingly surveilled, militarised and repressively policed world, and this book is an eye-opening and sobering read.

About the Book

Modern warfare has a new form. The days of international combat are fading. So how do major world powers maintain control over their people today?

This book is a disturbing insight into the new ways world powers such as the US, Israel, Britain and China forge war today. It is a subliminal war of surveillance and whitewashed terror, conducted through new, high-tech military apparatuses, designed and first used in Israel against the Palestinian population. Including hidden camera systems, sophisticated sensors, information databases on civilian activity, automated targeting systems and, in some cases, unmanned drones, it is used to control the very people the nation’s leaders profess to serve.

War Against the People represents a new stage in Halper’s thinking. He explains, “This book began with a question that many activists like myself have asked over the years: How does Israel get away with it?”

Drawing from years of research, as well as investigations and interviews conducted at international arms fairs, Halper reveals that this practice is much more insidious than was previously thought. As Western governments tighten the grip on their use of private information and claw back individual liberties, War Against the People is a timely reminder that fundamental human rights are being compromised for vast sections of the world, and that this is a subject that should concern everyone.

About the Speaker

Jeff Halper spent nearly 20 years as head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). His previous book, An Israeli in Palestine, opens with the destruction of his friend Salim Shawamreh’s home in Anata, a village near Jerusalem. This event forced Halper, who had been a committed Zionist, to confront what is happening in the West Bank and Gaza. He is the author of An Israeli in Palestine (Pluto, 2008) and Obstacles to Peace (ICAHD, Fifth Edition, 2013).

Hosted by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (http://www.ipsc.ie)

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Education in Palestine has been under systematic attack by the Israeli occupation.

This talk – held on Wednesday 14th October 2015 in the JM Synge Theatre in Trinity College Dublin – introduced the voices and experiences of Palestinian academics from Gaza.

It was introduced by Dr Iain Atack of the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin and chaired by Dr. Ronit Lentin, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology in TCD.

The speakers were:
Dr. Yaser Al Ashqar, Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin
Suha Shaheen, Lecturer in IT, Al Quds Open University, Gaza
Dr Ayman Shaheen, Political Science Al Azhar University, Gaza
and Malaka Mohammed, BA Islamic University Gaza, MSc Hons, Sheffield University, Member of the Executive of the National Union of Students, UK who joined via Skype.

The event was organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics (https://www.tcd.ie/ise/)  in association with Academics for Palestine (https://academicsforpalestine.wordpress.com/)

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On Wednesday 23rd September 2015 the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) hosted Riya Hassan, the European coordinator of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee in Palestine (BNC). The talk marked ten years since the BDS call was issued from Palestine by a huge coalition of civil society, trade union, faith and political organisations.

In those ten years the BDS campaign has gone from strength to strength (with the occasional setback) and become a major factor in the Palestine-Israel issue, so much so that Israeli officials have begun openly taking about the movement as an “existential threat” to Israeli apartheid. Riya Hassan spoke about about the unstoppable growth of this Palestinian civil society-led movement for freedom, justice, equality and a just peace in the Palestine-Israel region.

About the speaker

Riya Hassan is the Europe campaigns officer for the Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations that works to lead and support the BDS movement internationally. Riya is a Palestinian activist raised in the southern village of Laquia in the Naqab desert. She holds a degree in International relations and an MSc Middle Eastern politics.

INFO:

This discussion followed a screening of Canadian-Israeli journalist Lia Tarachansky’s documentary film ‘On The Side Of The Road’, an exploration of the power of denial. The film focuses on Israeli collective denial of the events of 1948 that led to the state’s foundation on the back of ethnic cleansing and the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. The discussion took the form of a question and answer session in which a wide range of topics were discussed.

About the speaker:

Lia Tarachansky is the Palestine-Israel correspondent for The Real News Network (TRNN) where she produces short, documentary-style reports exploring the context behind the news. In 2012 Tarachansky produced and co-directed a BBC-Arabic documentary about Israel’s Social Justice (J14) movement and the wave of self-immolations it sparked, in protest of the harsh economic reality many face in Israel. Her work is frequently featured in publications such as +972 Magazine, Mondoweiss, USA Today, Al Jazeera, and the Huffington Post; and her journalism was profiled in the renowned Max Blumenthal book, Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

The discussion took place in The Pearse Centre in Dublin and was organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign – http://www.ipsc.ie.

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In a short discussion following a performance of ‘The Luthier’ by Lucy Caldwell, composer Raymond Deane and singer Honor Heffernan discussed their support for the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel with Irish-Israeli academic Ronit Lentin.

The discussion took place in The New Theatre in Dublin, and was part of PalFest Ireland – for more details about PalFest see www.palfestireland.net.

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Irish human rights activist and academic Elaine Bradley gave moving eyewitness reports of Israel’s continuing war on the people of Palestine, and Palestinian resistance to these crimes in Dublin and Limerick, on Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th March respectively.

She spoke about the death and destruction wrought upon Gaza last summer, the ongoing illegal siege of Gaza and the systematic and structural violence perpetrated by Israeli occupation forces throughout Palestine. She also urged people to join the BDS movement as a means of applying pressure on both Israel and Western governments to respect international law and the rights of the Palestinian people.

About the speaker:

Elaine Bradley – former CEO of Volunteering Ireland and an Organisational Consultant who has worked with governments, the UN and the EU – is now an activist for human rights in Palestine and had just returned from 8 months in Gaza and the West Bank.

The meeting was organised by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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Dr. Yaser Alashqar, a Palestinian academic living in Ireland, gave an insightful, important and at times infuriating, eyewitness account of the destruction, and resistance, he observed when he travelled back to his native Gaza just days after Israel’s 2014 summer slaughter that killed over 2,100 Palestinians ended. The meeting will took place on Wednesday 29th October in Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin, and was chaired by Martin O’Quigley, chairperson of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Palestinian academic Dr. Yaser Alashqar went home to Gaza as soon as the Israeli slaughter there ended, and collected eyewitness reports from people on the ground, as well as himself bearing witness to the devastation wrought upon the population of 1.8 million people. In this meeting he presented images and testimony to the brutality of the onslaught, and discussed many issues from the politics of reconstruction and the seemingly treacherous role of the UN, to internal Palestinian divisions, to the new phenomenon of Palestinian families and individuals migrating from Gaza in large numbers.

Dr. Alashqar will also spoke about ways in which Palestinians are continuing to resist Israeli occupation, apartheid and colonisation, and how international civil society can help achieve justice and lasting peace in the region.

The recent Israeli attack, called Operation Protective Edge, killed over 2,000 Palestinians and injured thousands more. According to the latest UN report, of those killed, 69% were civilians including 495 children and 253 women. It is estimated that €8b will be needed to rebuild the infrastructure in Gaza following the six weeks or relentless bombing and shelling by Israeli occupation forces. This includes the many schools, hospitals and water and power plants that were destroyed or severely damaged.

About the speaker:

Yaser Alashqar is a Palestinian academic from Gaza residing in Ireland. His expertise includes conflict issues, human rights, Gaza and Israeli-Palestinian politics. He has taught courses in these areas at the Marino Institute of Education and Trinity College Dublin, and has also worked with various NGOs in Ireland and Britain.

The meeting was organsied by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

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This talk by author and activist John Rose, which took place on Saturday 13th September in Cassidy’s Hotel in Dublin, analysed the role of Israel as a watchdog and enforcer for the United States in the Middle East. Rose also talked about the meaning of the Israeli ‘Protective Edge’ summer attack on Gaza, the response from international civil society, and the growth of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign worldwide.

John Rose is the author of ‘The Myths of Zionism’ (2004), ‘Israel- the Hijack State’ (1986) and ‘Zionism’s Iron Wall’. He a lecturer in sociology in Lewisham and Southwark College and London Metropolitan University, and a respected crtiic of Israeli policies and the ideology Zionism.

The talk took place as part of a day school called ‘Palestine, War and Imperialism in the 21st Century‘ organised by the Socialist Workers Party.

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This lecture by Dr. David Landy, which took place on Wednesday 14th May 2014 in The Long Room Hub in Trinity College Dublin, investigated contested tourist discourses around the site of Silwan in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem.  Note: It may be useful to listen in conjunction with Dr. Landy’s PowerPoint presentation which he made available to us. Download it here.

By examining how the tourist narratives of a specific contested site in Jerusalem represent both the site and the tourists themselves, the paper examines how tourism can serve to provide a discourse of disempowerment and even negation to those living in the destination country. Specifically the paper interrogates the power dynamics inherent in how ‘international’ activists and tourists relate to ‘local’ Palestinians.

The tourist site under investigation is narrated on the one hand as being ‘Silwan’, an ordinary East Jerusalem Palestinian neighbourhood under threat of destruction by an Israeli government intent on expelling non-Jews from Jerusalem. On the other hand, the site is narrated as ‘the historic City of David’ where excavations will prove the extent of the historic Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. How it is narrated depends on whether the tour of the area is organised by tourist and Zionist groups or by Palestine solidarity groups.

The lecture will draw on interviews, documentary analysis and participant observation of such tours. While on Zionist tours, the existence of Palestinians is effaced in their effort to portray Israel as the centre of diaspora Jewish existence, on the solidarity tours the presence of Palestinians is highlighted. However, it is open to question whether these Palestinians are accorded an equivocal status, that of ‘ordinary’ and ‘local’ figures, in contrast to the imagined figure of the transnational solidarity activist who, deriving their identity from the contrast, is then empowered to represent these ordinary local Palestinians.

About the speaker:

Dr. David Landy is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin. His main research interests are in transnational social movements, solidarity, and race and ethnicity. He is the author of ‘Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel’ (2011).

Organised by Trinity College Dublin Public Lecture Series

INFO: This public meeting saw the Irish launch of the international ‘Campaign for the Freedom of Marwan Barghouthi and All Palestinian Political Prisoners’. The meeting took place on Wednesday 7th May at 7pm in Wynn’s Hotel, Lower Abbey Street, Dublin and was addressed by Marwan’s wife Fawda Barghouthi and Neeshan Balton of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in South Africa.

This was the launch of the official Irish affiliate to the International Campaign, which itself was launched from Nelson Mandela’s cell in the apartheid-era prison on Robben Island in October 2013.

Who is Marwan Barghouthi?

Marwan Barghouthi is a Palestinian freedom fighter and political leader who has been imprisoned by Israel for the past 12 years. Among the over 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners held by Israel, his name has emerged, both nationally and internationally, as central for unity, freedom and peace.

Marwan is a symbol of the Palestinian people’s quest for freedom, a uniting figure and an advocate of peace based on international law. As international efforts led to the release of Nelson Mandela and of all the anti-apartheid prisoners, we believe that the international community must help to secure the freedom of Marwan Barghouthi and all Palestinian prisoners, as an integral part of its moral, legal and political responsibility to assist the Palestinian people in the realization of their rights.

Therefore the Campaign for the Freedom of Marwan Barghouthi and All Palestinian Political Prisoners has been launched to call and act for the release of Marwan Barghouthi and all Palestinian political prisoners. Until their release, the rights of the Palestinian prisoners, as enshrined in international humanitarian law and human rights law, must be upheld, and the arrest and detention campaigns must cease.

About the speakers

Fadwa Barghouthi is a Palestinian lawyer, activist and tireless campaigner for the rights and freedoms of Palestinian political prisoners. Fawdwa is a member the council of the Fatah Palestinian liberation movement, and together with Marwan has three children whom she has raised alone for the past 12 years.

Neeshan Balton is the Director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in South Africa, an organisation that has been central to the Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouthi and All Palestinian Political Prisoners. Kathrada was a cellmate of Nelson Mandela on Robben Island during the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, and the campaign was launched internationally from Mandela’s cell in October 2013.

Organised by the Campaign for the Freedom of Marwan Barghouthi & All Palestinian Political Prisoners – Ireland

There is more information about the international campaign here.

INFO: Mohammad Al-Azza is a 24-year-old photographer and award winning filmmaker and the Director of the Media Unit in the Lajee Cultural Center, Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem. Mohammed travelled to Ireland as part of the Lajee Cultural Tour and will spoke about life as a journalist in Palestine and the difficulties facing the community living in Aida Refugee Camp under the military occupation.

This was a unique opportunity for people in Ireland to hear about the daily struggles and violence facing those living in the camp and to witness the resilience and resistance of these communities through the work, images and words of Mohammed Al-Azza.

About Mohammad Al-Azza

Mohammad is a refugee from the village of Beit Jibreen who was born and lives in Aida Refugee Camp. In addition to his own video and photographic chronicling of events in his home community, he helps youth to produce photography and video projects. He began learning photography and documentary production as a teenager in the Lajee Center in 2005. His first documentary, Ali Wall, won the Global Jury Prize of the It Is Apartheid Film Contest (2010), and his documentary Everyday Nakba (2011) has mobilized an international movement to improve access to clean water in Aida Refugee Camp and other Palestinian communities.

On the 8 April 2013 Mohammad was shot in the face by Israeli forces as he photographed them engaging in clashes with young people in the camp. He has undergone several surgeries. On release from hospital both he and his family were targeted. He was violently arrested by the Israeli army in July 2013.

The event was organised by Lajee Cultural Tour Ireland in association with the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

INFO: Eva Bartlett is a Canadian activist and freelance journalist. Since November 2008 she has spent cumulatively 3 years in Gaza, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting the various facets of life under siege.

During this talk, which was organised by individuals in Dublin as part of a wider speaking tour,  Eva outlined the different Israeli policies on Palestinians in Gaza, including preventing farmers from farming and fishermen from fishing and enforcing this restriction through lethal means. She talked about the layered aspects of the blockade on Gaza, including: electricity outages, export restrictions, sanitation crises, water contamination, medicine shortage, educational obstacles, and manufactured poverty. She also discussed the 2008/9 and 2012 Israeli attacks on Gaza.

INFO: Randa Wahbe, Advocacy Officer of Addameer, the Palestinian Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association spoke in Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin on 5th March 2014 as part of Israeli Apartheid Week. Ms. Wahbe talked about the situation of the Palestinian political prisoners, of which there are now over 5,000 in Israeli jails, including 155 Administrative Detainees, 12 parliamentarians, 17 women and 154 children.

Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, between 750,000-800,000 Palestinians have been detained by the Israeli military. According to Amnesty, “many [have been] held incommunicado for prolonged periods”. This figure represents approximately 40% of the total male population in occupied Palestinian territory.

The issue of prisoners, particularly child prisoners, is one that is often overlooked in discussions around the Palestine-Israel issue, usually only mentioned when Israel releases prisoners as a so-called ‘goodwill gesture’. Yet the prisoners issue goes to the very heart of Israeli policy in Palestine – the decapitation of political movements, the criminalisation and ‘securitisation’ of young people who resist occupation, not to mention the psychological and traumatic effects detention and abuse has on young people who go through the prison system. Even NGOs who work with prisoners are targets of Israeli policy, with offices being raided and advocates themselves detained.

INFO: On the occasion of the launch of the Irish academics’ pledge to boycott Israel, Academics for Palestine hosted a meeting with Professor Haim Bresheeth and Dr Ghada Karmi to discuss the rationale behind the academic boycott of Israel, and what the boycott entails.

The speakers were Ghada Karmi (University of Exeter) and Haim Bresheeth (SOAS, London).

INFO: Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi is one of the most significant figures in contemporary Palestinian politics.  He is a  member of the Palestinian parliament; a 2005 presidential candidate; General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative and former Minister of Information under the first National Unity Government in Palestinian history. He has made an extraordinary contribution to initiatives which peacefully challenge the ongoing Israeli Occupation of Palestine, as well as efforts to build the institutional framework of Palestinian civil society and promote the principles of internal democracy and good governance.

This event, hosted by Sadaka, was a unique opportunity to gain an insight into the current political situation in Palestine from one of its most prominent politicians.