Jerusalem Is Burning
RHR was formed in 1988 and though the work of the organisation is broad its current focus is on the situation in East Jerusalem, in particular the events unfurling in Sheikh Jarrah.
The struggle for justice in Sheikh Jarrah
Maya Wind is the RHR press officer and every week she has been coordinating demonstrations across Jerusalem to expose and protest the injustices occurring in Sheikh Jarrah.
Sheikh Jarrah is one of the most contentious neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem with 28 properties embroiled in a legal battle between fundamentalist Israeli settlers and the Palestinians who live there. Maya describes the atmosphere as “extremely, extremely explosive. There are constantly violent outbreaks (…) settlers are provocative on purpose.”
The silencing of protest
- Israelis from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv gather in Sheikh Jarrah in support of the evicted Palestinian families
- Photo: Brady Ng
The protest in Sheikh Jarrah has begun to build a self sustaining momentum, with regular crowds of hundreds turning out. Last week two coach loads of activists drove up from Tel Aviv: it was the largest demonstration yet in Sheikh Jarrah. But as the demonstrators grow in number and the media start to cover the event extensively, so do Israeli security forces attempts to shut the protest down. Last Friday the police refused to grant the permit for marching from West to East Jerusalem and stormed the crowd of demonstrators, arresting 22 of them. The human rights community in Israel has moved quickly to condemn this cynical attempt to silence legitimate protest.
- Israeli police cracking down on the demonstrators
- Photo: Brady Ng
- Holding back the demonstrators
- Photo: Brady Ng
- As the demonstration continued through the afternoon, the israeli police called for reinforcement for crowd control
- Photo: Brady Ng
"The police are calling us outlaws and anarchists, despite the fact that the crowd here is mostly composed of professors from the Hebrew University and Jerusalemite teens who sing protest songs to the sound of drums," said Avner Inbar, a left-wing activist. "While the officers suppress our protests, sometimes violently, haredim and settlers riot unhindered in the neighborhood and attack Palestinian residents – sometimes to the point at which they require medical treatment."
- Israeli police clear a path for Jewish settlers who are entering Sheikh Jarrah
- Photo: Brady Ng
Apathy and dissent
Security tactics are getting more extreme and so to are the reactions ordinary Jerusalemites are having to the demonstration as it weaves from the predominantly Israeli West to the Palestinian East of the city. Maya reports, “We’re called traitors, cursed at, eggs are thrown at us. But that’s only positive, it shows we are having an impact, that we are making people outraged and that’s important because I’m equally outraged by what’s going on here.”
Maya works throughout the week to engage ordinary Israelis with the issue of Sheikh Jarrah, in particular targeting young people through flyering universities and nightclubs where the main obstacle she faces is not opposition but indifference.
“People are just very apathetic; they can’t be bothered to find out what’s happening in East Jerusalem. For many Jerusalemites East Jerusalem might as well be another country, they never venture here.”
With a wisdom that belies her 19 years, Maya joined RHR after being released from Israeli prison last March having served time following her refusal to serve in the Israeli Army. Four years ago a conversation with a Palestinian girl turned her life around.
“I was 15 and I had one conversation with a Palestinian girl who told me one story about something soldiers did to her father and that was the burst of my bubble.”
As a young teenager Maya had to reeducate herself about the reality of the Israeli Occupation and she is now an active member of the peace movement. Alongside the demonstration Maya regularly stays over with families under eviction orders. Her aim is to bring these human rights violations to the attention of the world and to show solidarity with the families under threat, “for the morale of the family it’s very important for them to feel, in this case, that the occupiers care and that there are Israelis who are opposing this.”
To find out more about Sheikh Jarrah on Palestine Monitor
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spi...
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