Violence

Being Human Matters, For People Of Gaza And World

August 4, 2014 Stephanie Van Hook, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Gaza, PalestineI, Violence

Dr. Mona El-Farra, medical doctor and associate of the Middle East Children’s Alliance recently made headlines on Democracy Now! with her plea to end the military assault on Gaza with one powerful statement: “We are human beings.” She is, of course, absolutely right. Human beings live in Gaza, and it seems like nothing could be more obvious — if not human beings, then who or what does? And why are we paying attention? Of course, what she is really saying is something much deeper. She’s saying, that to the people in Gaza, it seems like we have somehow forgotten that human beings are there — and that raises more questions. For example: How could one forget the humanity of another and what does it tell us about who we really are? For insight into these questions, we might first explore the basic dynamic of conflict escalation. Conflict, in itself, is not at issue — it’s the image we have of the human beings with whom we engage in conflict. Michael Nagler, president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence, maintains in his 2014 book, The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action, that conflict escalates — that is, moves increasingly toward violence — according to the degree of dehumanization in the situation. Violence, in other words, doesn’t occur without dehumanization. Nagler’s thinking about violence was partially influenced by sociologist Philip Zimbardo, who famously conducted an experiment in controlled dehumanization at Stanford in 1971. What happened? He and his students created a prison scenario where some students took the role of the guards and the others as the prisoners.

Will This Homicide Result In A Prosecution?

August 3, 2014 Ben Mathis-Lilley, www.slate.com Educate! Law, NYPD, police brutality, Violence

New York City's medical examiner has ruled that Eric Garner—the 43-year-old Staten Island man who died after being put in a chokehold by an NYPD officer in an incident caught on video—was the victim of a homicide. Eric Garner's death ruled a homicide by medical examiner. "Cause of Death: Compression of neck (choke hold)" during restraint by police — jdavidgoodman (@jdavidgoodman) August 1, 2014 Goodman is a New York Times police reporter. From the New York Daily News: A spokeswoman for the medical examiner said Friday that Garner died from compression of the neck, which the office labeled a chokehold, and compression of the chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by cops. The Pix11 TV station reported this week that a police report on Garner's arrest did not mention that he was put in a chokehold. The NYPD's guidelines prohibit the move's use.

International Campaign To Expose And Document Israeli War Crimes

August 2, 2014 Occupied Palestine, www.occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com Resist! Israel, Palestine, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Solidarity activists have launched in London a new international media campaign to expose and document Israeli war crimes in Gaza. The London- based Academy of Refugee Studies has declared a media campaign under the title “Zionist Terrorism” aiming to expose and document Israeli war crimes and violations of the international laws and conventions. The campaign includes daily updates on Facebook and social media networks to shed light on Israeli crimes in Gaza and attract the world’s attention to the war on Gaza. The campaign came as the Israeli aggression on Gaza entered its third week. 1050 Palestinians have been killed while around 6,000 others were injured so far. How many more dead corpses of Palestinians does the international community need to see in order to act? How many more cruelties and violations of Human Rights, Regulations and International Law will be needed to intervene so this ongoing warcrime is being stopped once and for all.

Artist Sculpts Own Son Into Gaza Chaos: ‘If It Were Zack’

July 31, 2014 Creative Resistance, www.creativeresistance.org Create! Arts, Children, Creative Resistance, Gaza, Violence, Wars and Militarism

This article is from our associated project, CreativeResistance.org. The Israeli assault on Gaza December 27, 2008- January 18, 2009, or “Operation Cast Lead,” resulted in hundreds of innocent civilians being killed and thousands injured and left homeless. The number of children who were killed ranges between 300-350. At that time, in reaction to the horrifying stories of children dying, I made an artist book, In Memoriam. During the last few days of 2009, in solidarity with the Gaza Freedom March, I made the sculpture If It Were Zack. I am chilled by arguments rationalizing the brutal, violent killing of innocents. I cannot fathom the wretched abyss of hatred that feeds such an intellect. When I hold my son Zack, my heart breaks imagining these hundreds of children. When he laughs, I think,”That child once laughed, too, delighting his mother.” My grief in this time feels near intolerable–and this is just pain imagined. I don’t know what the answer is to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But I do know that the military-minded adults on both sides of the Wall have to begin with the premise that there is no cause worth the torment of children–the children of Gaza live in fear, sleeplessness, boredom, frustration, anxiety, depression, hunger. And there is surely no cause worth the killing of children.

Activists Fighting To Protect Environment — And Their Lives

July 31, 2014 Gerry Hadden, www.pri.org Resist! Activism, Brazil, Environment, Violence

908. That’s the number of environmental and land-reform activists assassinated worldwide between 2003 and 2013, according to a study by the NGO Global Witness. The number might shock you, but perhaps even more shocking is that nearly half of those murders — 448 — took place in one country: Brazil. What is it that makes Brazil the most dangerous place in the world to be an activist? You’ll find clues in the story of Guarabana Bay. The bay, just minutes from downtown Rio’s world famous beaches, is a study in pollution and filth. Dark sludge cakes the shoreline. Garbage floats everywhere. It’s so bad that some sailors set to compete here in the 2016 Summer Olympics are warning colleagues not to let this water touch their skin. The sailors' worries do not surprise local fisherman Sandy Anderson de Souza. He said he was out in his boat in 2001 when Brazil’s state-run oil giant Petrobas accidentally dumped 1.3 million tons of oil into the waterway. “There was so much oil it looked like there was no water at all,” he said during a recent tour of the coastline. “A year later we noticed that many species of fish were disappearing and we started to catalogue this. There are 46 species of fish and shrimp that are no longer here.”

Palestinian Protesters Occupy BBC Bristol’s Front Lawn

July 29, 2014 Christopher Brown, www.bristol247.com Resist! Israel, Journalism, Media, Palestine, Protest, Violence

Palestinian supporters set up an ‘Occupy’ style protest camp on the lawn of the BBC in Bristol this week. The campaign group calling itself “Bristol Friends of Gaza” occupied the front lawn in front of the BBC headquarters on Whiteladies Road, unveiling a 50ft-long banner. The group declared they would occupy the area “until the BBC tells the real truth on Palestine”. Pro-Palestinian protesters have been out in force this week, as the Israeli army launch a new offensive in the Gaza Strip. On Saturday, hundreds of people marched through Bristol to highlight the cause. On Tuesday meanwhile, there were protests at City Hall at the same time as a protest against residents parking zones in the city, which was largely good-natured despite a scuffle on a tank used by the RPZ protesters to draw attention to their cause. Last night, at least two Palestinians were killed and 200 wounded in the West Bank during protests against Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

Make A Pledge To Right The Injustice Of Gaza

July 29, 2014 Ilan Pappe, www.electronicintifada.net Resist! Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Violence

To the family of the one thousandth victim of Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza: I do not know yet who your loved one was. She might have been a baby a few months old, or a young boy, a grandfather or one of your children or parents. I heard about your loved one’s death from Chico Menashe, a political commentator on Reshet Bet, Israel’s main radio station. He explained that the killing of your loved one, as well as turning Gaza neighborhoods to rubble and driving 150,000 people from their homes, is part of a well-calculated Israeli strategy: this carnage will destroy the impulse of Palestinians in Gaza to resist Israeli policies. I heard this while reading in the 25 July edition of the supposedly respectable Haaretz the words of the not so respectable historian Benny Morris that even this is not enough. He calls the genocidal policies so far “refisut” — feebleness of mind and spirit. He demands far more massive destruction in the future with the knowledge that this is how you behave if you want to defend your “villa in the jungle,” as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Israel.

Israeli Extremists Sing Gaza Is A Graveyard

July 29, 2014 The Electronic Intifada, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Violence

Video from the extreme-right demonstrarion in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv. The demonstration was held across the square from a much bigger pro-peace demonstration that took place at the same time In her latest post, my colleague Rania Khalek makes reference to “a new racist chant mocking the more than two hundred children slaughtered by Israel’s merciless bombing campaign in Gaza: ‘Tomorrow there’s no school in Gaza, they don’t have any children left.’” This video shows an Israeli mob actually singing in celebration of children’s deaths in the style of a soccer fans’ song: “In Gaza there’s no studying, No children are left there, Olé, olé, olé-olé-olé.” The mob also incites directly against Ahmed Tibi and Haneen Zoabi, two prominent Palestinian citizens of Israel who are members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. The video of the 26 July event in Tel Aviv was published by Israeli journalist Haim Har-Zahav. The words of the repulsive song have been translated for The Electronic Intifada by Dena Shunra

Protect Bystanders Who Record Police

July 28, 2014 Debra Goodman, www.nydailynews.com Resist! NYPD, Police, Violence

Let no one forget: If not for the fact that a bystander with a camera phone captured Eric Garner’s confrontation with cops — and that the video then found its way to the Daily News — Garner’s death might have ended up like most all of the other approximately 1,000 complaints of chokeholds filed at the Civilian Complaint Review Board over the last five years: unsubstantiated allegations of police abuse. Instead, the officer who placed Garner in an apparent chokehold had his gun taken away and was placed on modified duty; another police officer was placed on desk duty, and four paramedics and EMTs were placed on modified duty. Moreover, the CCRB is revisiting those 1,000 “unsubstantiated” chokehold complaints, and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has pledged to overhaul police training. It all happened because we could see, with our own eyes, a deeply disturbing, violent encounter between cops and an unarmed man. Yet, amazingly, the constitutional right of the bystander who recorded Garner’s death to have done so is not acknowledged in New York. In fact, the NYPD routinely arrests and threatens to arrest people who are filming them but not interfering with police activity. They did it to me. This unconstitutional practice needs to stop. That’s why, last week, I filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to confirm and enshrine this right to film or record the police.

Horrifying Details Continue To Emerge Of Massacre In Khuza’a

July 25, 2014 Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Yesterday we published a brief account of an apparent massacre in the Palestinian village Khuza’a, a village east of Khan Younis and close to the Israeli border in Gaza. That had been sent to Felice Gelman over Facebook and today, Yamen Radwan sent Gelman another brief message: “#Massacre_Khuza’a: stilling going on until now executions of civilians and wounded by Israeli forces in the streets of Khuza’a.” News reports of what happened, or is happening, in Khuza’a remain vague. Above, from Al Jazeera, is the only video news report we’ve been able to find. National Public Radio’s Emily Harris just now reported a telephone conversation with a woman who escaped the village after two days in a basement and who said that snipers were shooting people in the streets. The Gaza NGO Palestinian Centre for Human Rights included these details from Khuza’a in an daily report it issued today covering events from yesterday: At approximately 12:30, Israel forces that had moved into Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis, fired bullets and artillery shells at hundreds of Palestinian civilians who attempted to leave the village as there were reports about a one-hour coordination to evacuate casualties. Israeli forces fired also at ambulances and prevented them from entering the village.

Cecily McMillan On Brutality And Humiliation On Rikers Island

July 25, 2014 Cecily McMillan, www.nytimes.com Educate! Cecily McMillan, Prison, Rikers, Violence

I RECENTLY served 58 days of a three-month sentence on Rikers Island. I was convicted in May of assaulting a New York City police officer as the police cleared Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2012. (I am appealing my conviction.) I got a firsthand experience that I did not seek of what it is like to live behind bars. Rikers is a city jail; it holds some 11,000 inmates who are awaiting trial or sentencing, or who have been convicted and sentenced to a year or less of time. During my incarceration, two correction officers were arrested on charges of smuggling contraband, including drugs, to inmates. The week after I was released, two more correction officers and a captain were arrested on charges of having beaten a handcuffed prisoner into unconsciousness in 2012. Last week, The New York Times reported on the “culture of brutality” on Rikers. The city is now investigating more than 100 reported violent assaults on inmates. None of this would surprise the inmates of the Rose M. Singer Center, the women’s barrack on the island, who routinely experience or witness brutality of all kinds. On one day in May, I was waiting outside the jail pharmacy for my daily A.D.H.D. prescription. A male officer began harassing me, and when I made the mistake of looking at his badge to get his number, he slammed his body into mine and shouted a sexual slur at me.

Denial Of 1st Amendment Rights Won’t Halt Nonviolent Resistance

July 24, 2014 Hendrick Voss, www.soaw.org Resist! School of the Americas, Torture, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Thousands of human rights activists have gathered every November for the demonstration since the first anniversary of the 1989 SOA graduate-led massacre of 16-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos and six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America in El Salvador. The November Vigil commemorates those who have been killed by SOA/WHINSEC graduates, and calls for the closure of the institute, which perpetuates coups, torture, extrajudicial killings, and human rights abuses in the face of social and political problems. The SOA/WHINSEC made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released SOA training manuals that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among its graduates are at least 11 dictators as well as leaders of infamous Central American death squads. Currently, SOA graduates are linked to the Honduran military coup and the repression campaign against social movements there, among other humanitarian crises.

FAQ On Failed Ceasefire Between Israel And Hamas

July 16, 2014 IMEU, www.imeu.org Educate! Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Q - Why do you think Hamas didn't accept the terms of the ceasefire? RK - "Hamas has insisted that there be a lasting resolution of the basic problem of Israel's siege of Gaza, as was promised as part of the 2012 cease-fire, but never implemented in spite of Israel's recognition that Hamas scrupulously maintained the cease-fire until quite recently. The Egyptian proposal makes lifting of the siege conditional on Israel's approval, which means never." MR - "Hamas, and with it other Palestinian organizations such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have indicated that they were not consulted on the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, and that it has not been formally presented to them but rather released to the media after its terms were agreed with Israel.

Foreigners Serve As Human Shields In Gaza Hospital

July 16, 2014 Palestine Solidarity, www.palsolidarity.org Resist! Israel, Palestine, Violence, Wars and Militarism

Israel’s army fired four ‘warning’ missiles at the roof of El-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in Gaza City, Gaza. International volunteers now staying in the hospital in solidarity, have said they, “can hear missiles falling close by”. “The civilian population of Gaza is being bombed. We will stay with them in solidarity until the international community and our governments take action to stop Israel’s crimes against humanity.” States Swedish International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist, Fred Ekblad. The volunteers are citizens of USA, Spain, Sweden, Venezuela, France, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The first barrage of missiles hit the fourth floor of the hospital at 2:00AM. At approximately 17:00 a fifth missile hit the fourth floor of the hospital. “Windows and doors were blown out, broken glass everywhere, damage to the stairs, there’s a big hole at the impact area and the wall is burnt,“ reports Joe Catron, ISM activist, from the U.S. At around 20:00 Basman Alashi, executive director of the hospital, received an unidentified call from a person with a, “heavy Israeli accent”, asking if there were any injuries, whether there was any one in the top floor, and whether they were planning to evacuate the hospital.

Treat Immigrant Children As Refugees?

July 15, 2014 Anna Lekas Miller, www.wagingnonviolence.org Organize! Children, Immigrant Rights, Refugees, Violence, War On Drugs, Wars and Militarism

Last week, the news broke that another wave of unaccompanied migrant children crossed the border, which brings the number of unaccompanied minors that have attempted to escape into the United States since October to more than 52,000. Most of them are fleeing escalated gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Unlike many migrants from Central America and Mexico, coming to the United States to escape economic hardship, this new wave of migrants is escaping brutal drug-related violence plaguing the region. For this reason, both immigrant justice activists and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees are calling upon the U.S. government —which has already allocated $116 million to process the deportations and pay the transportation of the most recent wave of children — to treat these migrants as refugees, allowing them to seek temporary or permanent asylum in the United States. Political instability and corruption in Central America allows drug trafficking gangs fighting for control of key smuggling routes to grow unchecked. The resulting violence has been called an undeclared war, with murder rates in Honduras being the highest in the world.

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