Israel is not a guest of honour! Free Palestine!
assemblea free palestine | 04.05.2008 21:11 | Palestine
“Gaza will sink – has declared the president of the Popular Committee against Blockade, Jamal al-Khoudari – and the whole world bears responsibility for this. Immediate actions must be taken to put pressure on the occupation, in order to end this crisis”.
The situation of the Palestinian population is getting worse day by day. From the blockade/embargo against the Gaza strip and the land-and-air raids performed by the Israeli army in all the Palestinian occupied territories to the building of the Apartheid Wall and the living conditions of the refugees and the Palestinian residents in Israel, the Israeli authorities are persistently committing war crimes and violations of the civil rights, ignoring dozens of UN resolutions and forcing millions to live in disastrous conditions.
Every day, at every check-point, the soldiers humiliate elderly people, women and children, robbing the Palestinians of their daily life and of the time necessary to work, study, participate in politics, plan their future. Scarcity and even sheer lack of food and fuel produce a situation of intolerable poverty, while the sanitary conditions in the refugee camps remain appalling.
What Israel is performing is literally a politicide – the deliberate attempt at destroying the social and political subjectivity, also by means of episodic ethnic cleansing – against the dismembered, humiliated, oppressed and occupied Palestinian people. All forms of organization, resistance, dissent and demonstration are forbidden for Palestinians. Even the most peaceful protest causes the Israeli army to employ tear-gas or to shoot the crowd, while every militant action is punished by means of mass retaliation. This is the macabre and racists bookkeeping of the XXI century wars: for each single Israeli dead or prisoner, hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese are killed or arrested.
In this context of brutal misuse of power, the international institutions remain silent, the western press censors and minimizes, the European and North American governments stipulate and tighten economic, diplomatic and military alliances with the Israeli government. Even the use of non-conventional weapons and the devastation caused by the war against Lebanon in 2006 did not prevent all the G8 governments from proclaiming their faithfulness to their best ally in Middle East.
With the same logic, the Italian institutions are openly aligning themselves with Israel at all levels: from the President of the Republic to the governments of the recent years, from the local institutions to the military and commercial ones, the strategic alliance with Israel is never discussed, in spite of the bloodshed the Palestinians must endure. From Silvio Berlusconi to Walter Veltroni, from Sergio Chiamparino to Giuliano Ferrara, from Gianfranco Fini to the most influential television and press journalists, nobody avoids paying the ritual homage of unconditional solidarity with the politics of the great ally, and the most conformist intellectuals are no exception. A radiant Berlusconi announced right after his election success that the first diplomatic journey of the new government will take place in Israel.
As a further insult, this year − which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the 1948 war and which the Palestinians live as a symbol of mourning, both in their memory and in their present lives − one of the biggest cultural initiatives in Europe, the Turin International Book Fair, has chosen to invite Israel as the “guest of honour”, like the Paris Book Fair. In spite of the plea, signed by international writers and intellectuals from all over the world − among them Palestinians and Israeli − for the cancellation of such invitation and in spite of their demand that it be replaced with a dedication to a just peace, the City of Turin has decided to endorse the invitation.
This is a clear choice. It is a political choice, a one-sided choice: not only in the light of what is currently happening in Palestine, but also because the memory of 1948 is treated as a “celebration” in spite of the Nakbah, the “catastrophe” of the Palestinians. 850,000 refugees on the run, 531 villages razed to the ground, tens of thousands of dead, a dreadful legacy of blood and violence. Countless appalled people, from the Arab society and from the whole world, are asking: what is there to celebrate, to make a “showcase” of, what is there to be happy about?
In our world of global and permanent war, also culture is militarized, and writers must put on their helmet too: such is the price asked by the institutions of the war-waging countries in exchange for a career, fame and money. For those who have neither fame nor money, for the landless and without peace, where is hospitality? Where is honour? For the memory of the losers, the persecuted and oppressed, in Palestine as elsewhere, what high-backed chairs have been prepared?
Once again it will be up to the social and internationalist movements, the citizens, the workers and the students, also in response to the pleas coming in from Palestine, to side with those who bear the brunt of the barbarous wars and the acts of infamy of the global capitalist domination. The time has come to surge out onto the streets of Turin and reach with our protest the Lingotto, the seat of the Book Fair, in order to demand:
– the end of the Israeli embargo and the US and EU sanctions against the Gaza strip;
– the end of the military occupation of the territories;
– that the Apartheid Wall be destroyed;
– that the dignity and the rights of the Palestinians living within the Israeli borders be respected ;
– the right to return for all refugees;
– that all Palestinian political prisoners be set free.
While we denounce the authoritarian and militarist politics of Israel and the difficulties that, in that country, plague whomever shares a political culture or a historical memory different from the official one, we demonstrate for:
– the end of the diplomatic, economic and military alliance between Italy and Israel;
– cultural policies which take into due account the memory and the reasons of the oppressed and criticize the oppressors;
– a full political freedom, in Israel, for the movements against the war and the occupation;
– a full and effective lack of restrictions on historic research within Israeli universities;
– the release of all Israelis who refused to report for military service.
ISRAEL IS NOT A GUEST OF HONOUR!
FREE PALESTINE!
MEETING POINT:
CORSO MARCONI, TURIN
10TH MAY 2008
H 14:00
Assemblea Free Palestine Torino
For adhesions:
adesioni10maggio@infoaut.org
Every day, at every check-point, the soldiers humiliate elderly people, women and children, robbing the Palestinians of their daily life and of the time necessary to work, study, participate in politics, plan their future. Scarcity and even sheer lack of food and fuel produce a situation of intolerable poverty, while the sanitary conditions in the refugee camps remain appalling.
What Israel is performing is literally a politicide – the deliberate attempt at destroying the social and political subjectivity, also by means of episodic ethnic cleansing – against the dismembered, humiliated, oppressed and occupied Palestinian people. All forms of organization, resistance, dissent and demonstration are forbidden for Palestinians. Even the most peaceful protest causes the Israeli army to employ tear-gas or to shoot the crowd, while every militant action is punished by means of mass retaliation. This is the macabre and racists bookkeeping of the XXI century wars: for each single Israeli dead or prisoner, hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese are killed or arrested.
In this context of brutal misuse of power, the international institutions remain silent, the western press censors and minimizes, the European and North American governments stipulate and tighten economic, diplomatic and military alliances with the Israeli government. Even the use of non-conventional weapons and the devastation caused by the war against Lebanon in 2006 did not prevent all the G8 governments from proclaiming their faithfulness to their best ally in Middle East.
With the same logic, the Italian institutions are openly aligning themselves with Israel at all levels: from the President of the Republic to the governments of the recent years, from the local institutions to the military and commercial ones, the strategic alliance with Israel is never discussed, in spite of the bloodshed the Palestinians must endure. From Silvio Berlusconi to Walter Veltroni, from Sergio Chiamparino to Giuliano Ferrara, from Gianfranco Fini to the most influential television and press journalists, nobody avoids paying the ritual homage of unconditional solidarity with the politics of the great ally, and the most conformist intellectuals are no exception. A radiant Berlusconi announced right after his election success that the first diplomatic journey of the new government will take place in Israel.
As a further insult, this year − which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the 1948 war and which the Palestinians live as a symbol of mourning, both in their memory and in their present lives − one of the biggest cultural initiatives in Europe, the Turin International Book Fair, has chosen to invite Israel as the “guest of honour”, like the Paris Book Fair. In spite of the plea, signed by international writers and intellectuals from all over the world − among them Palestinians and Israeli − for the cancellation of such invitation and in spite of their demand that it be replaced with a dedication to a just peace, the City of Turin has decided to endorse the invitation.
This is a clear choice. It is a political choice, a one-sided choice: not only in the light of what is currently happening in Palestine, but also because the memory of 1948 is treated as a “celebration” in spite of the Nakbah, the “catastrophe” of the Palestinians. 850,000 refugees on the run, 531 villages razed to the ground, tens of thousands of dead, a dreadful legacy of blood and violence. Countless appalled people, from the Arab society and from the whole world, are asking: what is there to celebrate, to make a “showcase” of, what is there to be happy about?
In our world of global and permanent war, also culture is militarized, and writers must put on their helmet too: such is the price asked by the institutions of the war-waging countries in exchange for a career, fame and money. For those who have neither fame nor money, for the landless and without peace, where is hospitality? Where is honour? For the memory of the losers, the persecuted and oppressed, in Palestine as elsewhere, what high-backed chairs have been prepared?
Once again it will be up to the social and internationalist movements, the citizens, the workers and the students, also in response to the pleas coming in from Palestine, to side with those who bear the brunt of the barbarous wars and the acts of infamy of the global capitalist domination. The time has come to surge out onto the streets of Turin and reach with our protest the Lingotto, the seat of the Book Fair, in order to demand:
– the end of the Israeli embargo and the US and EU sanctions against the Gaza strip;
– the end of the military occupation of the territories;
– that the Apartheid Wall be destroyed;
– that the dignity and the rights of the Palestinians living within the Israeli borders be respected ;
– the right to return for all refugees;
– that all Palestinian political prisoners be set free.
While we denounce the authoritarian and militarist politics of Israel and the difficulties that, in that country, plague whomever shares a political culture or a historical memory different from the official one, we demonstrate for:
– the end of the diplomatic, economic and military alliance between Italy and Israel;
– cultural policies which take into due account the memory and the reasons of the oppressed and criticize the oppressors;
– a full political freedom, in Israel, for the movements against the war and the occupation;
– a full and effective lack of restrictions on historic research within Israeli universities;
– the release of all Israelis who refused to report for military service.
ISRAEL IS NOT A GUEST OF HONOUR!
FREE PALESTINE!
MEETING POINT:
CORSO MARCONI, TURIN
10TH MAY 2008
H 14:00
Assemblea Free Palestine Torino
For adhesions:
adesioni10maggio@infoaut.org
assemblea free palestine
e-mail:
adesioni10maggio@infoaut.org