FYI: Three Palestinian lawyers seized by Israeli occupation

From: Torres, Azalia
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2017 11:37 AM
Subject: FYI: Three Palestinian lawyers seized by Israeli occupation

Please read carefully. This is another attack on lawyers who, like us, stand up for human rights. Let’s show our support!

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Three Palestinian lawyers seized by Israeli occupation

4 December 2017

Israeli occupation forces seized three Palestinian lawyers well-known for their involvement in defending Palestinian human rights and particularly the rights of Palestinian prisoners in armed, overnight, pre-dawn raids. The three lawyers are:

• Khaled Zabarqa, seized from his home in Lydd in Palestine ’48 and a defense lawyer for imprisoned Sheikh Raed Salah
• Iyad Misk, seized from his home in Kufr Aqab in Jerusalem and legal director of the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission
• Firas al-Sabbah, seized from his home in the city of Jerusalem and director of the al-Meethaq Foundation for Human Rights

All three of the lawyers’ homes was stormed at night by police and intelligence agents who ransacked the home before taking him. The three were taken to the Petah Tikva interrogation center.

Zabarqa is one of the most prominent lawyers defending Palestinian political detainees and prisoners in occupied Palestine ’48. Most recently, his advocacy on behalf of imprisoned Sheikh Raed Salah has highlighted the sheikh’s solitary confinement and political targeting. Zabarqa has been targeted in the past, barred from entering Jerusalem in 2015. Misk is also the former legal director for Defence for Children International – Palestine and, as current director of legal work for the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, has a leading role in defending many Palestinian prisoners before Israeli occupation courts.

Al-Sabbah is the director of al-Meethaq Foundation, which offers public legal services to the Jerusalemite population, including dealing with Israeli occupation entities like insurance officials, the municipality, and the interior department. The foundation also works together with Physicians for Human Rights to document abuses against child prisoners and support parents in filing complaints about their children’s treatment.

The targeting of the three lawyers comes hand in hand with the ongoing attacks on Palestinian human rights defenders such as Salah Hamouri, new Palestinian lawyer and field researcher for Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; Hasan Safadi, Arabic-language media coordinator for Addameer; Issa Amro, al-Khalil organizer against settlements; Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian parliamentarian and Addameer board member; Abdallah Abu Rahma, coordinator of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements.

“Human rights defender” is a term used to describe people who, individually or with others, act peacefully to promote or protect human rights. These three Palestinian lawyers are human rights defenders who serve as a first line of defense for Palestinian civilians under occupation targeted for arrest, detention and persecution by Israeli occupation forces.

This is also a specific and targeted attack on Palestinian legal work and Palestinian lawyers, in what appears to be an attempt to deprive Palestinian prisoners of even the barest legal representation which is in and of itself frequently barred from providing any meaningful defense in a colonial system meant merely to legitimize the ongoing detention of Palestinians. It also appears to be an attempt to intimidate and suppress Palestinian lawyers from engaging public work to defend Palestinian political prisoners and people under attack.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges international organizations, especially lawyers’ and legal organizations, to take a stand and pressure the Israeli state and international governments to take a stand against the escalating attacks on Palestinian lawyers and other human rights defenders

Tonight FYI: The Criminalization of Home: Organizing to Protect Communities from NYC to Palestine

From: Letwin, Michael
Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2017 10:49 AM
Subject: Tonight FYI: The Criminalization of Home: Organizing to Protect Communities from NYC to Palestine

Moderated by Bina Ahmad (CDP Manhattan). Sponsors include the Center for Constitutional Rights.

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The Criminalization of Home: Organizing to Protect Communities from NYC to Palestine

https://www.facebook.com/events/513700239003246/

Wednesday, November 29 at Verso Books, 20 Jay St., Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY
Doors open at 7 p.m., panel begins at 7:30

With
Sahar Francis of Addameer
Darializa Avila-Chevalier of Black Youth Project–100
Mujahid Farid of Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP)
And moderated by Bina Ahmad

This panel explores the different ways criminalization fractures communities and separates people from the place(s) they call home. Bringing together activists from New York City to Palestine, it looks at how state violence enforces a system of racialized dispossession, whether through eviction, deportation, incarceration, or colonization and ethnic cleansing. We’ll also learn how people are protecting their communities by fighting back against the increasingly militarized policing of their neighborhoods, supporting prisoners’ rights, and advancing a vision of freedom and self-determination.

DARIALIZA AVILA-CHEVALIER is an organizer with the NYC chapter of Black Youth Project 100, a member-based organization of radical 18-to-35-year-old people that work toward the liberation of Black people. BYP100 works to center the most marginalized, which includes incarcerated people and trans/gender non-conforming people. Their work is done via direct action, political education, and internal leadership development. Their current long-term project is Campaign H.O.M.E. (Housing Over Monitoring and Evictions), which seeks to end the racist NYCHA policy of Permanent Exclusion. Before joining BYP100, Darializa organized with Students for Justice in Palestine and helped launch the Columbia University Apartheid Divest campaign.

MUJAHID FARID is the lead organizer for the Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPP), which aims to decarcerate US prisons by accelerating the release rate of elderly people. Farid himself was confined for 33 years in New York State and released in 2011, after entering the system in 1978 with a sentence of 15 years to life. While confined, Farid earned four college degrees, including two Master’s, and was part of a trio that created the first HIV/AIDS peer education program in NYS prisons, which later developed into the widely acclaimed PACE (Prisoners AIDS Counseling & Education) program. In 2013 he was awarded an Open Society Soros Justice Fellowship, a joint NYS legislative commendation, and a Citizens Against Recidivism, Inc. award for social activism. In 2016 RAPP was awarded the New York Nonprofit Media’s Cause Award.

SAHAR FRANCIS has been the director of Addameer (Arabic for conscience), a prisoner support and human rights advocacy organization, since 2005, and has been a human rights legal advocate since 1994. She specializes in issues of Palestinian political prisoners, including ill treatment and torture, administrative detention, prison conditions, and prisoners’ rights. She has extensive litigation experience in the Israeli military court system as well as in Israeli civil courts.

Co-organized by Adalah-NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, Addameer Prisoner Support & Human Rights Association, BYP100 NYC chapter, and the Center for Constitutional Rights

Verso Books is wheelchair accessible.