Persecuting Mazin Qumsiyeh

[IndianaGreen]

Persecuting Mazin Qumsiyeh

Stanley Heller is chairperson of the Middle East Crisis Committee, a human rights organization based in Connecticut. Here, he reports on the Israeli government's attempts to imprison Palestinian rights activist Mazin Qumsiyeh.

March 19, 2010

AT 1:30 in the morning on March 2, the military surrounded his house and blocked off all the streets in his neighborhood. Soldiers knocked on the door with the demand that Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh show himself.

When told that he had left the country a few days earlier to go on a U.S. speaking tour, the soldiers demanded that Qumsiyeh return and report to a military office. His family feared he would be put in administrative detention--many months of grueling imprisonment without charges or trial.

Mazin Qumsiyeh, a geneticist formerly on the faculty of Duke, formerly head of the Cytogenetics Department at Yale, author of Sharing the Land of Canaan and a frequent writer for newspapers around the world, was "wanted." The Israeli military operation took place in the Palestinian West Bank town of Beit Sahour, next to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Qumsiyeh, an American citizen who was born in Beit Sahour, is now living there again and is teaching at Bethlehem University. Why are the Israeli authorities after him?

He's been an activist for Palestinian human rights for decades, but apparently, they're particularly angry at him because he's a leading member of a committee trying to get a children's hospital built on a hill in Beit Sahour, as opposed to the settlers, who want the land for another Jewish-only settlement.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/03/19/persecuting-mazin-qumsiyeh

[Jefferson23]

1. Stanley Heller is a good guy, you reminded me of this OP he wrote

last year. I believe his advice is still applicable today.

Time to Play Hardball
Why It's Useless to Lobby Congress on Gaza
By STANLEY HELLER

The U.S.A. is reportedly a democracy. It just had an election so Congress candidates made some effort to take the public pulse. And there are the polls. The Rasmussen poll on Dec. 31 reported that only a bare plurality of Americans supported Israel’s all out war on Gaza. Less than 1/3 of the triumphant Democratic voters support the attack and Rasmussen reports only 55% of them consider Israel to be a U.S. ally at all.

Given this we would expect that when AIPAC told its attack dogs in Congress to sponsor the usual fawning resolution of support for Israel there would be heated debate and open opposition. But no, the spineless bottom feeders declared their “unwavering commitment to Israel” and to its “right to self-defense”. There was not a word about the siege, not a word about sewage flowing in the streets, not a word about the five sisters slaughtered while they slept, not a word about the bombing of the UN school, and not a mention of the children starving alongside the corpses of their parents.

The vote in the Senate was said to be unanimous. It was just a voice vote. No senator asked that the vote be recorded. In the House five voted, “No”. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Ron Paul ( R-TX), Nick Rahal (D-WVA), Maxine Waters (D-CA). 390 wretches voted “Yes” and 36 others voted ”Present” or “Not Voting”.

The election of Obama has not meant one iota of difference. Bush at his zenith didn’t get a stronger vote for Israel. One call from Obama to Pelosi or Reid and the resolution would have been shelved, but he didn’t lift a finger for the Palestinians. Instead he “monitored” the situation. Can we impeach him before he takes office?

Blessed by the new administration the Israeli Air Force Saturday dropped leaflets warning the Palestinian population to await heightened levels of war crimes.

When I think of all the millions of dollars that people wasted on “change” I want to vomit.

Peace groups, don’t tell me to write or call these unspeakable political lowlifes. Start thinking up ways to disrupt their lives and the lives and fortunes of all the self-satisfied racists who make life hell for Palestinians.

Some suggestions:

http://www.counterpunch.org/heller01132009.html