As a grassroots leader, this chills me to the bone. Like Mohammad, my colleagues and I spend a great deal of time talking - talking and thinking about how nonviolent peace activists can halt Israel's relentless expansion into our agricultural land. If talking is a crime, if urging the international community to hold Israel accountable for theft of our land is a crime, then we all are vulnerable.
Law, which on paper protects the rights of the occupied, seems powerless to stop Israel in practice.
For the last month, Israel has inveighed against the UN's Goldstone report, which meticulously documents Israeli war crimes during its assault on Gaza. The "new" U.S. of Barack Obama has unfortunately reverted to looking very much like the Bush administration by backing down on demands that Israel freeze construction of its illegal settlements and its vigorous effort to kill the Goldstone report. Brutalized Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be forced to swallow a bitter pill in forgoing the protections offered by international law and the slim satisfaction of a measure of justice.
Israel, for its part, has with single-minded intensity sought to bury the message and attack the messenger, notwithstanding the fact that Judge Goldstone is Jewish and a committed Zionist.
But attacking a messenger like Goldstone is not new for Israel. Israeli authorities are increasingly imprisoning and abusing Palestinians - not just Mohammad Othman - for speaking out abroad about hardships faced by Palestinians.
Mohammad Omer, a journalist from Gaza, was severely beaten by Israeli intelligence officials on his return from Europe last year. Just prior to his return, he had received a prestigious award for his reporting. During a ferocious interrogation, Omer, like Mohammad Othman, was told that he was talking too much (to the outside world). He answered, "Well, it's my job to talk, and I want that, and it's my choice. I want to get the message out."
In June this year, Mohammad Srour, from Ni'lin, another village whose lands are confiscated by the illegal barrier, was arrested on his way back from Geneva, where he had testified before Goldstone.
Many anti-Wall activists with ties to the international community have been imprisoned by Israel on non-existent or trumped-up charges. It's the Jim Crow South in the wild West Bank. There are more than 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are held for months or years in administrative detention without charge or trial. Twenty-eight Palestinians from the West Bank village of Bil'in - also losing land to the apartheid barrier - have been arrested in night-time raids since June and 18 of them remain detained.
As for my friend, Mohammad Othman, he has spent much of his time since September 22 in solitary confinement. His detention has already been extended four times and an appeal rejected. Most recently, his detention was extended another 13 days on October 27 (with an appeal expected October 29). Mohammad spent his birthday enduring interrogation behind bars as a political prisoner charged with no crime and unable to see any "evidence" against him. Strikingly, Israeli authorities have yet to bring evidence or charges against him in the military court. Perhaps this is because, as the soldier at the checkpoint admitted, Mohammad is guilty only of talking; of speaking out against injustice.
Mohammad hails from the impoverished village of Jayyous. He speaks tirelessly about the high-tech fencing that steals his family's land. Nearly 20 years ago the world cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall yet today Israel constructs an even more massive wall to enclose tens of thousands of human beings in isolated enclaves. And rather than build its barrier on the Green Line, Israel has used the wall to seize more Palestinian property.
Mohammad has chosen against great odds to speak out because the life of his community is at stake. He has discovered he has a powerful voice. International visitors are riveted when Mohammad describes how Israeli diamond mogul, Lev Leviev, is building an illegal settlement on his village land. Our American colleagues tell us that The New York Times opinion page regularly runs Leviev's diamond advertisements; visitors who have discussed Leviev's expansionist politics with Mohammad, however, will likely not be buying his tarnished goods.
Mohammad, who is mostly self-educated and only recently started traveling to Europe, met last month in Norway with the Finance Minister and representatives of the Norwegian State Pension Fund to convince them to follow their own human rights guidelines for investment. Less than two weeks before Mohammad's arrest, the Finance Minister announced the Pension Fund's $5.4 million divestment from Elbit, an Israeli company that provides security equipment for the Wall and builds the drones that have killed innocents in Gaza.
To date, this was one of the greatest successes of the campaign to divest from Israel for failing to abide by international law. Mohammad was a national hero returning home, only to be intercepted by an Israeli government that while losing the moral battle abroad still exercises ultimate control over our lives.
If President Obama is to live up to his Nobel Peace Prize, then he should ensure that Israel releases political prisoners such as Mohammad and insist that trapping Palestine's emerging Gandhis and Mandelas behind walls, electrified fences, and segregated roadways is incompatible with a peaceful and just future.
Lloyd Greif: Israel Stands Alone
Obama has shown far more concern for strengthening ties with authoritarian regimes on the Arabian Peninsula than to maintaining the historically close alliance with the region's only true democracy.
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I have said before that Occupation not only harms the occupied-- as this column clearly shows; abolished rights, no habeas corpus, torture, demolished homes, seized lands, -- does anyone know how many Palestinia
But this column also shows the harmful effects of Occupation on the Occupier. Israel used to be proud of the fact that it is a democracy with Western values.
This shows the transforma
And as FDR once observed, when some people's freedom is taken away, ALL of us have our freedom threatened
Indeed there is another story here on HP about a Jewish Holocaust survivor and Peace activist who was attacked and nearly killed by a settler extremist: http://www
As I said on another thread, the biggest threat to Israel is its own extremists
Meanwhile my thoughts and prayers will be with Mr. Othman and his family and friends.
Maybe the writer should take a minute and look at recent history, the fence was built to keep suicide bombers out of Israel. No bombers, no fence. The same with the check points. With the relative quiet, the Israelis are dismantlin
The fence has been successful
Incidental
The wall in Bil'in is not built between the Occupied West Bank and Israel, but between the village of Bil'in and its land, which is also in the Occupied West Bank.
I wonder if Misaacm is familiar with the concept of "collectiv
I wonder if Misaacm is familiar with rule of law? The Israeli (ISRAELI) Supreme Court has ruled that the route of the wall in Bil'in is illegal, that it was built for advancemen
The Internatio
He seems to have a more accurate sense of how they work than you do.
And has been said many times before, the Wall would have no objections had it been built on the Green Line.
Word is also getting out about the theft of Palestinia
http://www
Israel may arrest thousands, but it cannot suppress this shameful truth.
As an American, I am becoming convinced with every passing day that we need to stop financing this injustice.
Read the story of Mohammad Othman, the first prisoner of BDS in comic-book form here:
http://ada
Free Mohammad Othman, the nonviolent activists and organizers of Bil'in, N'ilin, and Jayyous, and the 11,000 other Palestinia
Boycott, divest, sanctions against Israel until Palestinia