Palestine, the Raytheon 9 and the Belfast May Day Rally

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | feature

Wednesday May 07, 2008 23:33

by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

Prosecution Service: Any jury from Derry may be too sympathetic to the action

From Derry to Palestine

Last weekend, Belfast was graced with the presence of two strong Palestinian activists; George Rishmawi and Iyad Bornat (also spelled Eyad Burnat), the screening of Iyad's powerful documentary: Bil'in Against the Wall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy8-oxnZQJU in the Falls Road Cultural Center last Friday night and George's public address at the Belfast May Day Rally on Saturday.

The documentary is a powerful indictment of Israel and its use of murderous violence by its Occupation Army in beleaguered Bil'in against peaceful protestors to snuff out dissent against the expropriation of Palestinian land for the building of "settlements" for Jews only colonists.

Au fait with the action of the Raytheon 9 in Derry, George Rishmawi and Iyad Bornat, through the good offices of Kathleen O'Connell (IPSC) sought and found Eamonn McCann at the rally to express solidarity with the 9 and Pitstop Ploughshare success at their forthcoming trial.

The Raytheon 9 website http://www.raytheon9.org/home.html reports that: "The trial of Derry Anti-War Coalition activists, the Raytheon 9, is set to start on Monday May 19th. It is to be held in Belfast. The trial was moved to Belfast after the Prosecution Service applied to have it moved; it argued that the Derry jury pool is likely to know too much about the campaign against Raytheon, including the non-violent direct action taken on 9th August 2006 and that any jury from Derry may be too sympathetic to the action and/or intimidated by the level of support for the Raytheon 9 because of all the protests held outside the court over the almost two years since the nine were arrested. They have been charged with aggravated burglary and unlawful assembly. These are very serious offences that could mean the accused could be denied the right to trial by jury under British security legislation prevailing in the north of Ireland. ".

Their website further states that: "Raytheon is the fifth biggest arms manufacturer in the world. It manufactured the 100 GBU-28 bunker buster bombs urgently flown by the United States to Israel at the height of the destruction of Lebanon by the Israel Defence Force. Among the many services Raytheon has performed for Israel is supplying electronic equipment for the apartheid wall being built on Palestinian land. The National Lawyers Guild of the US has accused Raytheon of being 'implicated in the commission of war crime"'.

George Rishmawi is a Palestinian Christian from the Bethlehem area. George is Co-ordinator of the Siraj Center www.sirajcenter.org for Holy Land Studies in Beit Sahour, and is board member of the Network of Christian Organisations in Bethlehem. George has toured the USA speaking to churches about the indigenous Christians in Palestine, and encouraging Christians to visit the Holy Land.

Eyad Burnat is a Palestinian Muslim from Bil'in. He is founder of the Movement for Freedom and Justice in Bil'in - one of the most highly respected and well known non-violent movements in Palestine. Bil'in is a small village north of Jerusalem and is directly in the path of the obscenity called the Apartheid Wall being built by Israel - the wall has been declared illegal in the International Court, and the residents of Bil'in are joined by many Israelis in a peaceful weekly protest which has become synonymous with the non-violent movement against occupation in Palestine.

Last February, a group of 10 Irish people including three activists, on a solidarity visit to the West Bank http://www.indymedia.ie/article/86492 numbed to the point of fury (at least this one was) and outraged at what they witnessed during the previous week joined the Friday protest in Bil'in to be further outraged by the indiscriminate, totally disportionate violence visited on the peaceful protesters by the IDF: three Palestinians were downed with plastic bullets and stretchered away and many others were dowsed with tear gas, but then again, in comparison, it was small potatoes to what Iyad captured with his video camera and the fact that three local Palestinian farmers were shot dead previously and a Japanese protestor has his eye taken out by an Israeli plastic bullet the previous Friday.