October 13 with Tiina Rosenberg, Professor of Gender Studies. Från protest till motstånd: Utgaångspunkt Ulrike Meinhofs text Vom Protest zum Widerstand. Seminar is in Swedish. October 13. Wednesday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419.

October 28 with Salka Sanden, author. 1990-talet och den autonoma rörelsens framväxt i Sverige. Seminar is in Swedish. October 28. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419.

November 11 with Daniel Hjalmarsson, Akademikerförbundet SSR. På jobbet är väl alla hetero…?: Öppenhet och stängda dörrar på sveriges arbetsplatser. Seminar is in Swedish. November 11. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419.

November 25 with Mats Adolfsson, historian. Svenska uppror: bondeuppror och gatukravaller. Seminar is in Swedish. November 25. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419.

December 9 with Mattias Gardell (or another member of) Ship To Gaza. Seminar is in Swedish. December 9. Thursday 15:15-17.00 at the Annedalseminariet at Room 419.

After the seminar there is a post-seminar gathering at restaurant Gyllene Prag (Sveag. 25) from 17:00 and onwards. We eat, drink and continue the discussions from the seminar in a more informal way. You are welcome to attend even if you was not at the seminar!
Annedalsseminariet, Seminariegatan 1A, close to Linneplatsen. see description how to find at: http://www.globalstudies.gu.se/kontakt
Welcome!

An Israeli military court convicted Abdallah Abu Rahmah, the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, of incitement and holding illegal demonstrations. The eight-month long ordeal, during which the peaceful activist was imprisoned, also ended with his acquittal on two other charges: stone-throwing and possession of arms.

Abu Rahmah gained international attention for his leading role in the growing nonviolent protest movement in occupied Palestine. His central West Bank village is the site of weekly protests against the encroachment of Israel’s wall and other occupation policies. The wall was considered illegal under international law by the International Court of Justice in a 2004 advisory opinion.

Quite often, Israeli military forces use violence and coercion against unarmed protesters there. Last week, Israeli soldiers in riot gear injured several of them, as well as a journalist. They detained two activists, one Palestinian and one foreign.

Increasingly, Israel criminalizes Palestinian protest, thereby reaffirming its cause and giving way to only more nonviolent opposition.

His conviction through the machinery of the laws of occupation highlight the fact that he, and other Palestinian prisoners, are processed by an illegitimate court administering an occupation and apartheid structure that contravenes international law and norms of justice. Legal prohibitions and enforcement against nonviolent resistance illustrate the inherent criminality of the system, a point made by purveyors and practitioners of civil disobedience, from Thoreau to Gandhi and King Jr.

Civil disobedience, as suggested by the philosopher John Rawls, is a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. The organizers of protests in Bil’in, as well as in Nilin, Budrus and other Palestinian areas, are working in the spirit of this definition.

The severity of the case against him demonstrates Israel’s official fear of nonviolent resistance. Abu Rahmah, himself, believes that this illegitimate campaign against him and the Bil’in activists will only inspire further activism:

Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our non-violent struggle is effective….Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the Apartheid Wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the occupation….This year, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee will expand on the achievements of 2009, a year in which you amplified our popular demonstrations in Palestine with international boycott campaigns and international legal actions under universal jurisdiction…

Elements of the conviction indicate the political motivations behind his arrest. The indictment cited this as evidence of indictment: Abu Rahmah collected spent Israeli tear-gas projectiles and bullet cases from the sites of demonstrations to prove that the violence was being used against demonstrators.

Israel’s military authorities effectively prohibit the collection of evidence against their policies and practices.

Under military law, incitement is “The attempt, verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order” (section 7(a) of the Order Concerning Prohibition of Activities of Incitement and Hostile Propaganda (no.101), 1967), and carries a 10 year maximum sentence.

The sentencing of Abu Rahmah, which begins next month, will be premised on the absurd argument that documenting Israel’s use of force against unarmed demonstrators disturbs the public peace. Public order in the case means the security of the military occupation. The prosecution is expected to recommend a two-year imprisonment sentence.

Beyond the criminality of the charges, the evidence presented against him should raise eyebrows. The prosecution presented the testimonies of minors who were arrested in the middle of the night and questioned without access to legal counsel. Under fair judicial systems testimonies by children made under duress would be inadmissible as evidence. The trial itself is testimony to the police state nature of the occupation.

Abu Rahmah’s case harkens back to the intifada that began in late 1987. This prosecution was the first use of the organizing and illegal demonstrations regulations since then. Military ordinances define “illegal assembly” in a much stricter way than Israeli law does (another example of the apartheid-nature of the occupation). It forbids any assembly of more than 10 people without a permit from the military commander.

The hidden charge, the one not expressly conveyed, is that Abu Rahmah was gaining international visibility, and was rising as a powerful voice of conscience against the forty-three year-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Israel is well aware of what damage a Palestinian figure of international stature could cause to Israel’s status quo.

After all, how often have western commentators criticized the Palestinians for lacking a Gandhi? This question was more often a function of the questioner’s ignorance than a reflection of the state of Palestinian nonviolent resistance — which has always been ubiquitous. From circumventing checkpoints, to refusing to pay fees to Israel, to building without permits, Palestinians fundamentally disobey Israel’s overbearing authority on a nearly continuous basis.

It is when leaders emerge that Israel targets them. In 2008, exactly a year before the Israeli military arrested Abu Rahmah in the middle of the night, he received the Carl Von Ossietzky Medal for Outstanding Service in the Realization of Basic Human Rights, which was awarded by the International League for Human Rights in Berlin.

The delegation of international figures and statesmen known as The Elders — including Mary Robinson, Fernando Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and others — visited the memorial of the fallen Bil’in organizer, Bassem Abu Rahmah, in August 2009. Abu Rahmah accompanied them, and is pictured with them in the photo to the left. After his arrest in December, 2009, the South African former archbishop and anti-Apartheid Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu called for his release.

As with other nonviolent political prisoners, such as Mohammad Othman and Jamal Juma’, Abu Rahmah is intended to be made an example. Mubarak Awad was when he was deported by Israel in 1988 for organizing nonviolent resistance campaigns. However, Abu Rahmah’s case is an example of the excesses and authoritarianism of an occupation regime, one that suffers declining political support and increasing international ostracism.

The occupation is so rooted in violence and coercion that its only answer in the face of nonviolence is more of the same repression that inspires the protests. Because Israel’s occupation runs on force, it cannot distinguish physical and ideational threats by criminalizing them both. Its legal system punishes both through detentions, stripping what few freedoms there are, and through programs of state-sanctioned violence. Knowing that nonviolence has a powerful potential to politically shatter the occupation, the authorities see a need to punish it ruthlessly.

The ideological aims of occupation and settler-colonialism are embedded in this legal administration, making the system morally bankrupt.

For more information on Abu Rahmah, see the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee’s website.

Full text.

West Bank settlement of Ariel

On Wednesday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the center was nearing completion, after two decades of delay, with construction “going on by night, to allow the Muslim construction workers to fast during the Ramadan month.” A slate of eight plays, to be performed by four theater companies starting in November, was also announced.

Yousef Sweid, an Arab Israeli who is in the cast of “A Railway to Damascus,” one of the plays Israel’s national theater said it would take to the settlement from Tel Aviv, told Israeli television on Wednesday night that he was surprised to hear of the plan and would refuse to take part. According to Haaretz, he said:

I would be glad to perform in settlements in several shows that have messages I’d like to deliver in many communities. But settlers and settlements are not something that entertains me, and I don’t want to entertain them.

On Thursday, Haaretz explained that another member of the company, Rami Heuberger, who is not in any of the plays currently scheduled to be performed in the center, said, “if I am asked, I believe I would have a problem with performing there.” Last year, Mr. Heuberger wrote in an open letter in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in support of Samieh Jabbbarin, an Arab Israeli actor who had been placed under house arrest after protesting against Israel’s Gaza offensive:

Samieh and I are both Israeli citizens. If the State of Israel maintains that an action by a theater person democratically demonstrating against wrong doings turns him into a security risk and makes it necessary to lock him up at home for almost a year under surveillance, than I, too, should wear an electronic shackle. A different theater person, like myself, a non-Arab, would not have been treated this way for taking political action.

Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist and blogger, suggested that there is some “irony” about the fact that one of the first plays announced for the new theater is “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” Bertolt Brecht’s reworking of an ancient parable about the claims of two competing groups to the same piece of land.

Brecht’s play, written near the end of the Second World War, begins with a prologue in which two groups of idealized Soviet peasants argue over which of them should be allowed to farm a valley recently liberated from the Nazis. One group of goat-herders presses the claim that “The valley has belonged to us for centuries,” while a second group, which moved there during the war and cultivates crops more suited to the land, lays out ambitious plans to grow fruit there.

After some debate, the prologue ends with general agreement that the newcomers, who will use the land better, should be allowed to live on it for the greater good, because, one of them says, “As the poet Mayakovsky said: ‘The home of the Soviet people shall also be the home of Reason!’”

The two groups then perform a version of the ancient parable of the chalk circle — itself very similar to a story about the wisdom of Solomon — which is about settling a dispute between two women over who is the real mother of a child: the one who gave birth to him but abandoned him, or another who fostered him but is not related by blood.

In Brecht’s version of the story, the child is placed in a circle drawn on the ground between the two women, and each is asked to take one of the boy’s arms and try to pull him out of the circle. The judge says that the true mother will have the strength to pull the child from the circle. When just one of the women refuses to pull — because she fears that the child will be torn in two — the judge announces that she is boy’s the real mother (despite not having given birth to him) because she cares the most for his well-being.

King Solomon’s test is quite similar. He tells the women that he will simply cut the child in two and give half to each of them — prompting one woman (in that case, also the biological mother) to say that she prefers to give the child away than to see it killed.

Quite what all this might mean to the competing claims of Israeli settlers and Palestinians to the Israeli-occupied West Bank is not clear, but it seems likely that Brecht’s idea — that land should go to the people who will make the best use of it, rather than to the people who have the most long-lasting or deeply emotional connection to it — might not fit well with the national narratives of either group.

The conclusion from this counting is that direct & indirect deaths adds up to something between 14,643 and 34,240 since the last period of occupation started 2001.

Most probably a more careful study of the material from Wikileak will add to these figures.

And as a comparison:

Updates on the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan:

The strategy used by the Indian liberation movement had two main components: Noncooperation and Constructive Program. The Noncooperation included strikes, refusal to follow orders, civil disobedience, refusal to pay taxes, and many other forms of noncooperation with the Viceroy, his administration and supporters. The argument was that the British colonisers were dependent on many different kind of support from the Indian population. And noncooperation with them will weaken the occupiers control over the Indian people. One important campaign was to disobey the law that gave the Brits control over the salt production and distribution. When 80 000 was arrested for illegally picking salt at the beaches the Viceroy had to withdraw the law and let the salt be free for anyone to produce.

The other part of the strategy was Constructive Program. This is the twin-part of the struggle without which the noncooperation will be reduced to symbolic activities. The main idea behind the Constructive Program was to replace all services, products, and structures provided by the Brits. Most famous was the Khadi Campaign that asked all Indians to produce their own cotton textiles by spinning two hours a day. This way they could stop buying British textiles and hence reduce their dependence. This way they started to build the new independent India long before the colonisers left the country. The Constructive Program aimed at preparing the society for the day of Independence and at the same time was a crucial part of the struggle for freedom.

For Gandhi it was just as important to have a good and reliable alternative to replace the foreign rulers as to get rid of the occupiers. In his own evaluation he said that they should have put even more emphasis on the Constructive Program than on the noncooperation activities. Both of them were important but without being able to prove that you can run your own country the victory could be short lived. And he concluded that it was obviously easier to remove the old system than to create a good alternative.

In the present struggle for a free Palestine the Karama Fund has taken up the Gandhian strategy in their work to replace products and services from Settlements with Palestinian alternatives.

Al Karama Fund

The National Dignity & empowerment fund (Al Karama Fund) was established early in 2010 to support the Palestinian people in their struggle against settlement products and services, and lead an international campaign to raise public awareness about the political implications associated with accepting Israeli settlement products in international markets.

In the context of the Palestinian government’s plan for the coming two years, and the Palestinian Authority’s vision in building an Independent state, this National campaign comes as practical translation towards that end. It comes to translate what is mentioned in the government’s document: ‘Ending occupation and establishing a state’, and the government’s attempt to build national capacity, and empower Palestinian economy, and consolidate its steadfastness. All in a way that would encourage other countries to take a strong position against settlements, as Palestinian national policy is seeking. The Palestinian Authority gives special priority to Palestinian products in local markets. This is in addition to its attempts in replacing settlement products with Palestinian ones in international markets. Freeing local and international markets from settlement products is a collective responsibility which requires aligning all efforts at all levels, and the Palestinian Authority is of course the biggest catalyst for these efforts.
Many nations around the world have already imposed restrictions to end importing settlement products along with forbidding any investment in settlements. The Palestinian authority has taken this strict decision against settlement products out of these settlements’ illegality, therefore anything produced in them is illegal.

Regarding trade with Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Economy confirms continuing its cooperation as it was agreed at the Paris summit, although it is aware of its unfairness since Israeli products stream into our markets while Israel forbids any of our products from reaching its markets. In addition, Israel places many obstacles that face Palestinian products waiting to be exported to foreign countries, thereby; Israel is even denying Palestinian rights which were agreed in the Paris agreement.

The Goals of Al-Karameh National Fund:

-To self empower : by building and consolidating individual capacity, and depending on national efforts and human resources in meeting local product requirements.

- Liberating Palestinian markets from Settlement products,

- Encouraging Palestinian production

- Providing job opportunities for those unemployed.

- Developing the national industry and alleviates it to stage where one is easily convinced that it is an alternative for settlement products, and that it in fact enjoys better quality than that produced in Israel and in Settlements.

To execute this idea the Ministry of National Economy held a launching ceremony, through which it gathered 2 million Dollars in donations made by public figures, private sector representatives, along with contributions from the president’s office and the Palestinian government.

The Palestinian council for consumer protection supervises this Fund, and it is directed by an executive council that functions in accordance with measures of accountability and transparency. This council is made up of representatives from both the private and public sectors, and will provide its regular reports on financial contributions and expenditure to its supporters and contributors, in addition to publishing financial and work reports on its website.

Financial contributions made to the Fund are allocated for marketing and media campaigns along with raising public awareness to combat settlement products and clean local markets from it. It will also fund regular field research on what the portion that settlement products occupy in local markets, and provide this information for Palestinian, Arab, and International consumers. Also, Al-Karameh  national Fund is building a coherent database of settlement products, and will be made available for people with information on the product, its ingredients, where it was produced, where it is marketed, and which Palestinian products it competes with.

Individuals assigned to clean out markets from settlement products are financed through Al-Karameh national Fund. It will provide incentives to merchants who voluntarily stop dealing with settlement products. Palestinian consumers will be encouraged to replace settlement products with Palestinian ones through the different consumer protection organizations that will be supported by the fund.

The Fund will also support activities that build Palestinian consumers’ trust in local products, and anything that contributes towards further improving the standards and quality of Palestinian products.

If you want to support please sign the pledge.

 This declaration of purpose is the first thing you see when you go to www.urbanfarming.org . It is obvious that this movement has a wide range of activities, far beyond simply growing vegetables in someone’s back yard. It is not a “green” movement, it is a social movement.

I recently read an article in the Swedish magazine Ordfront about urban farming in Detroit, it was the first I had ever heard of it. However, this movement is old, and stretches around the world. In the book Cities Farming for the Future -Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities (2006) , edited by René van Veenhuizen, case studies from Beijing, Montevideo, Porto Alegre as well as Vancouver are used.  The organization in Detroit is called Urban Farming and founded in 2005 by Taja Sevelle with the purpose if making the world a greener place and putting an end to hunger. In other words, the purpose of this movement is both ecological and structural, as well as personal and economical.  Research about urban farming during the last 20 years indicates that it serves several purposes, such as:

o     enhancing urban food security, nutrition and health;

o     creating urban job opportunities and generation of income especially for urban poverty groups and provision of a social safety net for these groups;

o     contributing to increased recycling of nutrients (turning urban organic wastes into a resource);

o     facilitating social inclusion of disadvantaged groups and community development; and,

o     urban greening and maintenance of green open spaces.[2]

These areas are all addresses in Urban Farming, through a number of projects, such as “Environmental Justice and Green Collar Jobs”, “Youth/Adult Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy Program”,“The Urban Farming Health and Wellness” and “The Urban Farming Community Garden and Green Science Garden”.

Urban gardening has been more common in “developing” countries, which makes the movement in Detroit interesting. Especially considering that Detroit has been the capital of the car industry, the motor city of the world. However, as the car industry failed and was forced to fire people and reduce costs, the former motor city became more and more like a ghost city, with increasing poverty and abandoned houses. The population of Detroit has diminished by 50 % since the 1950’s and 46 % are unemployed.[3] And this combination of poverty and abandoned gardens made it possible to start growing food. Besides increasing poverty and access to land, there is another reason why the people of Detroit started growing in an urban environment. Detroit is called a “food desert”, the reason being that the large food chains have left Detroit. Without economically strong consumers, they see no possibility of profit in Detroit. There are also those who claim that if is a question of racism, as the population of Detroit is 90 % African-American.

This movement, and the act of urban farming, is a form of resistance. Resistance against poverty, class society, racism and capitalism. On the surface it might seem as though it is simply a part of a growing movement for a greener planet, but in reality it is mush more than that. It is of course a way of saying that the planet is in danger, that we need to be aware of the fact that the environment needs our attention and it demands a change if we want to continue to live on this planet. But, it is also I reaction to the logic of capitalism, a system which is concerned only about profit and surplus value. It is a reaction against the failure of the state, which seems unable or unwilling to address the injustice of society, regarding both race och class.  What started in Detroit as a necessity, a response to hunger, has developed in to a broad based movement, an organized form of resistance, a local reaction to national as well as global structures of inequality.

[2] Cities Farming for the Future -Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, René van Veenhuizen (red), (International Institute of Rural Reconstruction ; Ottawa [Ont.] : International Development Research Centre, 2006) , s x

[3] Mo(rot)town, Björn Forsborg, Ordfronf magasin, nr 1/2010

The report was published in July 2009 and is now online on the website of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, with a summary and in full, possible to download.

The occupations started at Vienna University the 22 Oct, and has since then spread throughout Austria, and to other countries. See some reports at sites like these: site 1, site 2. It is interesting to note that the occupations are not mentioned as far as I can find in New York Times or BBC …

Last time we did see a wave of student occupations were in connection to the Gaza massacre in January, and then that happend mainly in the UK.

Historically radical student activism has played an important role in the creation of broader social movements, e.g. in the 1968 world rebellion.

There is a map of presently occupied universities, occupations that the police brooken up and other forms of protests by students. See here.

Israeli security forces have closed off the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jersualem as more than 200 Palestinians stage a sit-in at the site.

Sporadic clashes broke out on Sunday as military and police checkpoints were set up around the site, known as the Haram al-Sharif to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews.

At least seven people were wounded and seven arrested as clashes broke out at the Lion’s Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, reporting from Jerusalem, said that the mosque was being protected by worshippers who wanted to stop Jewish hardliners from entering the compound.
“They are very keen that what happened in Hebron, where hardliners did in fact storm and take over a mosque there, doesn’t happen here in this very holy site,” she said.

She said that there was a lot of tension in the city because of the standoff.

“It could, of course, boil over if we hear of clashes between the police and those at the sit-in at the al-Aqsa compound,” she said.

Palestinian officials told Al Jazeera that Muslim worshippers entered the mosque late on Saturday to prevent a repeat of last Sunday’s clashes in the area.

In that incident, at least 13 Palestinians were injured and seven detained when fighting broke when Israeli Jews apparently attempted to enter the mosque.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of Palestinians, while stones, chairs and other objects were reportedly thrown.

Israeli version

Describing the latest clashes, Shmuel Ben-Ruby, the Israeli police spokesman for Jerusalem, said that about 150 demonstrators were dispersed from one area near the al-Aqsa compound on Sunday, but unrest was continuing in nearby East Jerusalem.

He said some had thrown bottles and rocks.

Micky Rosenfeld, another Israeli police spokesman, confirmed that the compound had been “shut to visitors” this week.

He said that Israeli authorities had also detained Khatem Abdel Khader, an adviser to the Palestinian prime minister on Jerusalem affairs, on suspicion he was trying to incite protests at the site.

Israeli security forces have said that the restrictions will stay in place until the Palestinian protesters turn themselves to authorities.

Israel captured and annexed the Old City with its holy sites, along with the rest of Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in the war of 1967.

The boat would take off from Sweden and travel during several weeks through a number of harbors (Glasgow, Amsterdam, etc.) and collect supplies to the people in Gaza, as well as hold political and cultural events in these towns. In order to get more media attention and to create a necessary protection against aggressive attacks from Israel there is a need to have a number of international VIP on board. If we would succeed to have e.g. Desmond Tutu on board the last part of the trip from Cyprus to Gaza it would be very, very difficult for the Israeli Navy to sink the ship. The broad civil society involvement created by various groups and the media attention created would hopefully help to create a pressure on the politicians in Europe. We have contacts in Gaza and Palestine and will collaborate with them in the work. Still, the Ship to Gaza is not an act of solidarity with Hamas. It is an act of solidarity with the people in Gaza. It is thought of as a political people-to-people solidarity act, against the inhumane and criminal acts of Israel as shown in several UN resolutions and by e.g. the UN Human Rights officer for Palestine, Richard Falk.

The “Free Gaza Movement” has already brought six smaller boats on such missions the last months. Five have reached Gaza despite threats from the Israeli Navy. The last one, “rammed a Israeli Navy ship which was damaged”, according to the spokes-woman from Israel…, i.e. the small Free Gaza boat was so badly damaged by the aggressive Navy attack that it started to leak water and had to turn to Lebanon. Now the Free Gaza Movement is asking for more international participants for coming boats in the near future.

Our idea of a larger boat with several containers with supplies to Gaza will take time, money, and a lot of organising.  We don’t know if we will find the needed interest and resources to make it happen. But in these days of the war crimes in Gaza it feels even more compelling to act.

At this initial stage we welcome suggestions, criticism, contacts, information, or volunteers who would like to join us. Please feel free to comment here or send an email directly to stellan.vinthagen[at]resistancestudies.org

There will be first meetings in Stockholm (11 25 Jan) and Gothenburg (18 25 Jan 8 Feb) in which it will become clear if enough people are willing to organise this needed resistance.