Schotse Vakbondsfederatie steunt Palestijnse vrijheidsstrijd

Ingekomen: 

From: Scottish PSC [mailto:secretary@scottishpsc.org.uk]
Sent: 25 April 2012 16:03
To: 'Scottish PSC'
Subject: Scottish TUC delegates join Palestine freedom struggle – unanimously!

Scottish TUC delegates join Palestine freedom struggle – unanimously!

The delegates to the Annual Conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the umbrella group for every trade union in Scotland, today voted unanimously and repeatedly against Israeli apartheid. The 450 delegates voted to:

• campaign to expose the role of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) in the Israeli apartheid system
• support the participants in the Welcome to Palestine initiative who tried to travel peacefully to Palestine via Tel Aviv Airport
• fully support the Palestinian-Brazilian call for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine in Brazil in November
• support the Palestinian hunger strikers and the work of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organisation.

Congress delegates congratulated the students for their work organising Israeli Apartheid Week 2012 events, and who initiated action in support of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, and called for support for the Scottish demonstration this Saturday 28th April in Edinburgh.

These decisions of the Scottish TUC in support of the Palestinian freedom struggle, by a union confederation representing half a million organised workers in every sector of the economy, will be widely seen as a continuation of the international solidarity the STUC also provided to the liberation struggle in South Africa. Glasgow, Scotland's biggest city, named a city centre street after Mandela in 1986 while he was still on Robben Island. How long till there is a Palestine Square or Palestine Street in our major cities?

 
The full text of the resolutions – all passed unanimously: http://t.ymlp270.net/bheaoamwujakaqmazabyms/click.php
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zie in Presidents Address de speech van Mike Kirby, STUC-president.
En tevens Scottish Secretary of UNISON the public services trade union. 
 
… There is a growing apartheid elsewhere, in Palestine. …

 
… And whatever the challenges we face at home, these will not find resolution in a narrow national or domestic context. e European Trade Union Movement could play a critically important role, and we could play a greater role in that movement, in combating xenophobic nationalism.

 
By providing a clear vision, by organising, by arguing that good and fair employment rights, a well trained, competent, confident and valued workforce can benefit business, and in the sector which gave me employment for thirty six years, can put the ‘public’ in Public Services, that’s the type of place this labour and Trade Union Movement strives for, because we know that there Is A Better Way. …

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Decent Work en Decent Life verwoest door Israelische leger

Lees over een actuele casus uit de Jordaanvallei. Over hoe Israel Palestijnen verdrijft en zo hun leven en werken daar onmogelijk maakt.

De internationale vakbeweging voert campagne voor Decent Work en Decent Life, inzake de Palestijnen gebeurt dat wat weinig.

Verslag: the family of 7 stood 20 meters back as the soldiers ripped bags of lentils and rice and destroyed their house

Palestijnse vissers uit Gaza worden aangevallen door Israelische marine

The siege in the sea: Accompanying Gaza’s fishermen under attack by the Israeli Navy, Rosa Schiano19-4-2012.

To accompany the fishermen of Gaza on their boats, as human shields to protect them, it provides not only an account of human rights violations by Israel, but also the feeling of what it means to live under siege in the Gaza Strip.

Since January 2009 Israel has unilaterally imposed a travel limit of three miles inside the waters of Gaza, which , according to the Jericho Accords, should extend up to 20 nautical miles from the coast. A 3 miles limit is actually illegal.

Israeli navy seals are stationed along this 3 mile boundary, attacking anyone who attempts to go beyond and often attacking the fishermen’s boats well within this limit.

As international observers of the boat “Oliva CPS Gaza”  monitor the human rights violations by the Israeli army in the waters of Gaza, we have witnessed many attacks which took place also within two miles from the coast.

Within three miles the fish are not enough, and the waters are often contaminated.
The fishermen, especially all those who sail with the “hasakas,” or local small boats, come back often with nearly empty coffers.

Voor meer zie The siege in the sea accompanying Gazas fishermen under attack by the Israeli navy

Massa-hongerstaking Palestijnse gevangenen en ander Palestijns nieuws

Lees in massa-hongerstaking Palestijnse gevangenen

• over 3500 Palestijnse gevangenen in hongerstaking,
• over gevangenen zoals Bassam Tamimi waarvoor Amnesty International actie voert, zie
  Palestinian prisoner of conscience on trial for defending right to protest

en over de verwoesting van Palestijnse eigendommen (bestaansmiddelen):

• 'Israelische militairen hebben maandag irrigatiereservoirs, en terrasgewijs opgebouwde landbouwgrond in het gebied al Majnouna bij Al-Dura in Zuid-Hebron met de grond gelijkgemaakt. Daarbij werd een veld van 2000 vierkante meter beplant met tuinbonen, komkommer, tomaten en bloemkool weggebulldozerd. Behalve reservoirs en irrigatiewerken werd ook landbouwgereedschap vernield.'

VN-rapport veroordeelt Israelische segregatiepolitiek

UN body "appalled" by Israel’s racial segregation policies

Adri Nieuwhof and Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, 16 March 2012

Israel is criticized for violating the right to equality in a new report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

An advance version of the CERD report indicates that racial prejudice can be found in almost every facet of Israeli life (“Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination,” 9 March 2012 [PDF]).

CERD is a body of legal specialists who monitor the implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which states that any doctrine of superiority based on racial differentiation is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous.

Zie verder UN body appalled by Israels racial segregation policies

VN-rapport over Israelische roof van Palestijns water

Israel actively supports theft of Palestinian water, says new UN report

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours 19 March 2012

The Israeli government has turned a blind eye — and often actively supported — the illegal takeover of water springs located on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers, according to a new report released by the United Nations’ leading humanitarian body.

“All the development of these tourist sites is being done with the support of [the] state budget. The main mechanism is funds that are being allocated primarily, but not only, by the regional councils of the settlements,” explained Yehezkel Lein, head of the Research and Analysis Unit at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), during a media briefing on 13 March.

Zie verder Israel actively supports theft of Palestinian water, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours19-3-2012

Internationale Vrouwendag in Palestina: Women at the heart of struggle

Despite the establishment of stale Orientalist campaigns created in the name of women’s liberation in the Middle East and North Africa, the existence of enduring, self-sufficient women in the region has far-reaching historical context.

The search for female Middle East voices among pundits in the mainstream media echoes the same tired “Palestinian Gandhi” cliche; analysts have long used Lawrence of Arabia-esque exoticism as a means to portray the women of the Arab world, in that if they are not subservient housewives they are coy and reserved daughters, sheltered and locked away by the domineering male figures in the household. These conjectures are not false in their entirety, but they are also not unique to one specific region, culture, religion or people.
 
The pervasive Western tradition of characterizing an entire community by certain traits, which their Western audiences can ooh and ahh at, has helped manufacture a plethora of distortions.

History confirms that Arab women have long played an active political role in their societies, from Egyptian women who demonstrated alongside men during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, against British occupation of Egypt and Sudan, to resistance fighter Jamila Bu Hreid of Algeria. Bu Hreid was nearly tortured to death by French occupation forces during the Algerian revolution and independence movement which lasted from 1954 to 1962 and resulted in Algeria gaining its independence from France.

South Lebanon, liberated in 2000 after nearly 22 years of Israeli occupation, was also home to female political action. Lebanese women would quietly supply resistance fighters with ammunition, often wrapping them across their stomachs before passing through Israeli checkpoints unnoticed.

Zie verder Women at the heart of struggle, 8-3-2012 Roqayah Chamseddine