Tag Archives: Delegation

Fall Olive Harvest Delegation to Palestine

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EyeWitness Palestine still has some openings available for their fall delegation. Scholarships are available.

The Environmental Justice and Olive Harvest delegation is your opportunity to visit Palestine during the olive harvest season — a culturally rich and important time. Hear from farmers and learn of the importance of agriculture to the economy and culture. Learn about threats to the environment, the exploitation of natural resources, and the struggle of Palestinian communities to maintain access to land and water.

There are folks from Wisconsin going who would love to have your company!

Congressmen are trying to stop Rep. Rashida Tlaib from leading a delegation to the West Bank

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Rashida Tlaib, elected to 13th Congressional District of Michigan, stands in front of US Capitol Building

Daily Kos, January 31, 2019

Every year, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC sponsors an all-expense paid trip for Congressional members, seeking to bolster support for Israel. In most recent years, the Democratic trip has been led by Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (MD-5). Incoming Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA-32) is expected to lead the Republican delegation.

These junkets gloss over the daily, decades-long pervasive violation of Palestinian’s rights by the Israeli government. They serve as a platform for the Israeli government to present its views unchallenged. AIPAC and the Israeli government prioritize new legislators, hoping to influence their formative views.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13), who is the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress announced last month that she will not participate in this one-sided propaganda trip. Instead, she plans to lead a competing delegation on a tour of the West Bank.

Well, it seems this is not sitting well with several of her colleagues, who consider it dangerously presumptuous of a Palestinian-American woman to lead a delegation to her family’s home.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., told Al-Monitor this week that he’s against a West Bank delegation.

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The Sumud Freedom Tour

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This is our moment of unity, of coalition building

Holy Land Trust

Mission

Holy Land Trust and Nonviolence International have partnered to develop a multilayered tour of peace and justice work in Israel and Palestine.

This tour unpacks the broad range of nonviolent resistance methods employed by Palestinians and their co-resisters throughout the region and internationally. From December 21, 2017 to January 3, 2018, you will meet with leaders of grassroots organizations, NGO’s, and agents of change in the community who are actively engaged in challenging the systems underpinning Israel’s prolonged military occupation.

This tour is designed for social activists who are committed to deepening their analysis of global oppression. Whether you are engaged in the movement for black liberation, entrenched in the battle for immigrant rights, or fighting for women’s equality, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can serve as an important theoretical and practical framework for nonviolent resistance.

This program is designed to promote an exchange of ideas between movements. Those who have little or no background in the history of the Palestinian struggle are encouraged to join, as the intersections between our movements will allow us to relate to and better understand one another. And as a result, this tour will help us lay the foundation for necessary relationships that lead to broad, diverse coalitions of change.

Who we are

Holy Land Trust is a Palestinian Non-Profit Organization (NGO), located in the heart of Bethlehem on Star Street. Our work is centered on strengthening communities to empower them to find nonlinear solutions to problems; solutions which are rooted in social justice, compassion, and love.

Nonviolence International (NI) is a decentralized network of resource centers that promote the use of nonviolent action. Founded by Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad in 1989, NI is a 501(c)(3) organization registered in Washington, DC, USA. NI is also a non-governmental organization in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

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Delegation on Incarceration, Detention, and Political Prisoners

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LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MAY 2017 DELEGATION!
May 13 – 26, 2017

Incarceration, Detention, and Political Prisoners
Interfaith Peace-Builders
Co-Sponsored by Defense for Children International – Palestine

This delegation is your chance to explore Palestinian and Israeli efforts to achieve peace with justice and delve deeper into the issues of detention and incarceration, the Israeli military court system, and political prisoners.

Connect with leaders of the No Way To Treat A Child Campaign and gain knowledge and resources to organize against child detention and related issues. As with all IFPB delegations, you will also meet additional Israelis and Palestinians working for peace and justice as well as visit many impotant historical sites.

Get updates about this delegation, including how to apply to join, financial aid, and how we’ll support your advocacy after this life-changing experience.

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Tsela Barr and Michele Bahl: Recent visit to Gaza heartbreaking

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TSELA BARR AND MICHELE BAHL | members, Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, Cap Times, Nov 22, 2012

Picture this normal scene: Teenage boys are playing soccer in front of their house on a sunny day in November. Just one problem: These boys live in the Gaza Strip. Suddenly a 13-year-old drops bleeding to the ground, shot by an Israeli soldier in a helicopter.

We were in Gaza at the time and paid a condolence call to the parents of the dead boy. The grief of his mother was unbearable to see.

A man at the funeral said, “We hope you will be strong ambassadors to reflect our message that we need protection. We are looking for freedom and peace.”

Since we left Gaza, over 149 people were killed and over 850 injured during “Operation Pillar of Cloud.” A majority of those killed in this eight-day assault were noncombatants including women, children and the elderly. The many hundreds more who were injured were overwhelmingly civilians.

We were in Gaza with a delegation organized by Inter-Faith Peace Builders. We met with human rights groups, women’s groups, fishermen, farmers, schoolchildren, refugees and other residents. Everyone we met has been severely impacted by Israel’s ongoing economic siege and by the destruction of “Operation Cast Lead” in 2008, when Israel killed an estimated 1,400 Gazans and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings.

Farmers are not allowed to export their crops, the water and sewage system has been destroyed, no garbage trucks are allowed in, fishermen are continually shot at, and people are not allowed out for crucial medical treatments. And for years, Israel has struck into Gaza at will, killing and injuring ordinary Palestinians on a daily basis.

While every death or injury is a tragedy, the enormously lopsided casualty figures are proof that this is not an even playing field for both parties. Israel is the occupier, with the world’s fourth-largest army supplied by the U.S. government, provoking and relentlessly bombing a small strip of land that they have lain siege to for the past six years, to which they control nearly all entry and exit by sea, air and land.

Largely protected from Palestinian retaliation by its U.S.-taxpayer-funded “Iron Dome” missile defense system, Israel set in motion its pre-planned “do over” against Gaza. On Nov. 14 it broke a two-day ceasefire by assassinating perhaps the only man capable of maintaining that ceasefire, Ahmed Al-Jabari, the head of the Hamas military wing. Israeli peace negotiator Gershon Baskin reports that Al-Jabari had just received a proposal for an extended cease fire with Israel hours before he was killed.

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Stories of Peacebuilding in Gaza and the West Bank

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John Quinlan, WORT 89.9 FM – A Public Affair, November 19, 2012

On Monday November 19th, host John Quinlan was joined in conversation with visitors from a peace delegation sponsored by the Interfaith Peace-Builders.

The delegates just returned this past week from Gaza and and the West Bank. Permission for foreigners to obtain passage to Gaza is rare, and thus these interviews provided listeners with a vital opportunity to understand daily life in the Palestinian territories and how this existence is being affected by the current conflict. John spoke with Tsela Barr and Michele Bahl who just came back from a peace delegation to Gaza on November 12th. During the second half of the hour John spoke with Veena Brekke who recently returned from a peace delegation to the West Bank.

According to their website, “Interfaith Peace-Builders believes in the power of eye-witness experience and transformation. Given the opportunity to speak directly with Israelis and Palestinians, delegates return to the United States better informed, more energized, and with a deeper understanding of the possibilities for true justice in the Middle East.” Tsela, Michele, and Veena shared with WORT listeners their fascinating experiences from both Israel and Palestine.

Read more about Interfaith Peace Builders on their website: http://www.ifpb.org/

Listen to the entire show:

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Israel Attacks the Gaza Strip

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On the day that the Interfaith Peace Builders delegation (with four women from Wisconsin) safely left Gaza, Israel’s attacks began … please read the following message and watch the news. The great fear is a repeat of Operation Cast Lead, launched exactly four years ago following the U.S. presidential election … emergency demonstrations are being organized around the world. There may be one in Madison, possibly downtown in the late afternoon on Friday, details TBA.

In the meantime, the US Campaign to End the Occupation is asking people to call the White House.

Today, Israel launched a major offensive in the Gaza Strip, killing the Hamas leader nearby civilians, including two girls under the age of five. The death toll continues to rise. The US Campaign strongly condemns these brutal attacks, carried out with U.S. weapons given to Israel as military aid and paid for by U.S. taxpayers, and Israel’s ongoing, illegal siege of Gaza.

Please act now and call on the Obama administration to exert diplomatic pressure on Israel to bring about an immediate cease-fire and to initiate an investigation of Israel’s misuse of U.S. weapons against Palestinians in this and previous attacks.

White House: 202-456-1111
State Department: 202-647-6575

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An Ongoing Terror

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Michele Bahl, Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, November 14, 2012

Yesterday we visited the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Since the siege, which started in 2006 when Hamas won the election, there has been a medication shortage. Israel controls everything that comes into Gaza, and we were told that cancer medications are not allowed in. There are so many things that are not allowed into Gaza, such as materials to rebuild from the Israeli bombings, and utility vehicles to collect garbage. People are dying in Gaza not because there are a shortage of hospitals, but because there are a lack of supplies due to the severe restrictions that Israel imposes on the people of Gaza by this siege.

I haven’t seen one Israeli soldier here, but the population of 1.7 Gazans feel Israel’s presence here all of the time. It is a terrifying presence.

During Operation Cast Lead, which took place in Dec. ’08/ Jan. 09, Israel killed hundreds of innocent civilians. Over half of the population of Gaza is under 18 years old. There is no place that people feel safe in Gaza due to the reality that Israel can attack Gaza and cause widespread destruction at any time.

There is ongoing terror that people face every day, but Americans never hear about it. I believe if my fellow Americans were aware of the ongoing systematic violence that Israel carries out, they would be outraged and want to do something to stop it. If I didn’t believe this, I would have no hope.

Raji Sourani, the head of the Palestine Center of Human Rights, shared the following: “Never ever tell a free person what to do; a free person should know what to do.”

Through all of this disaster and trauma, the people of Palestine are incredibly resilient and will never give up their hope of having justice and being free. The many people we spoke with made it clear that the cause of the suffering of the Palestinian people is political, not humanitarian.

“We have the right to plan for our future, if even for one minute. It is a dream for us.”

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