Feature Archives

In the fall of 2009, a group of war resisters and veterans from San Francisco traveled to Israel and Palestine to meet with their Israeli counterparts in an effort to strengthen connections and share experiences. The group, calling itself Dialogues Against Militarism (DAM), partnered with David Zlutnick, a Bay Area filmmaker, to ensure that the voices and stories of those they spoke with would be captured and return with them to the United States. The new documentary, Occupation Has No Future, premieres in San Francisco on February 3rd and San Rafael on February 10th.

Dave Id writes: My traveling partner Tangle and I had the privilege of visiting Jerusalem and Palestine in December 2010. We met many kind and courageous people in the West Bank. We witnessed the hardships Palestinians face daily under the Israeli occupation. We saw how the Israeli Defense Forces react to those who dare to stand up, even peacefully, for the rights of their families and fellow villagers. We met Israeli and international solidarity activists willing to risk arrest and injury themselves. And we documented as much as we could during our relatively brief stay in the West Bank.

Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) is an Israeli direct action group established in 2003 to resist the Annexation Wall being built by Israel on Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank. They support Palestinian civilian resistance to massive confiscation of land and denial of freedom of movement caused by construction of the Wall. AATW activists have joined thousands of demonstrations against the Wall and against the Occupation in dozens of villages throughout the West Bank. They are currently touring in the US, including giving several presentations in Northern California.

On the morning of September 22nd, settler security personnel in Silwan in East Jerusalem shot and killed Samir Solhan. Solhan, a father of four, was a well known figure in Silwan. The Palestinian residents of Silwan rioted in the following days protesting the murder. Although the police readily accepted the settlers' security personnel's version that he was in fear of his life, testimonies and video tell a different story.

On the morning of September 24th, FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas and raided the homes of several anti-war and social justice activists in Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois. The federal law cited in the search warrants prohibits, "providing material support or resources to designated foreign terrorist organizations." The Supreme Court recently rejected a free speech challenge to the material support law from humanitarian aid groups.

A protest took place in San Francisco on Tuesday, September 28th at the Federal Building at 7th St. and Mission St.

On Thursday July 22nd at 6pm at the Louden Nelson Center in Santa Cruz, the Resource Center for Nonviolence & the Palestine Israel Action Committee, will host a Gaza teach-in to discuss solidarity with Palestine, including what happened during the Peace Flotilla. Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege of Gaza, will be one of the featured speakers.

On Sunday, June 27, Yonatan Shapira, an Israeli military refusenik, and Eaw Jasiewicz, a Polish activist sprayed "Liberate All Ghettos" in Hebrew, followed by "Free Gaza and Palestine" in English on a wall of an original block in the Warsaw Ghetto. In an interview with an Indybay reporter, Shapira states, "In our act we tried to separate between the actions of the Israeli Government and Jews.... the lesson that should be learned from the holocaust are resistance to any form of racism and ethnic cleansing."