commentary from Israel & the West Bank
Posts tagged ezra nawi
A Blast from the Past: Clip about Ta’ayush and Ezra Nawi from 2004
Jul 19th
The Land of the Settlers is a five part documentary series created by Chaim Yavin, who was described by the Arab News as “the Israeli version of America’s Walter Cronkite”. With a handheld camera, Yavin traveled throughout his homeland of Israel and interviewed a range of Palestinians and Israelis in order to document the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Released in 2005, his series was too controversial to air on Israel’s public TV station, Channel 1, despite the fact that he had helped to create the station and served as its lead anchorman. It ran instead on Channel 2, creating a stir for its sympathy towards Palestinians.
The below segment chronicles the early years of actions by Ta’ayush and Ezra Nawi in the South Hebron Hills. One can see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The beginning of the clip shows life in the contested city of Hebron in 2004-2005.
Ezra Nawi To Be Jailed For Non-violent Resistance to the Occupation
May 11th
On Sunday 23rd May 2010 Ta’ayush activist Ezra Nawi will be jailed for a month in consequence of his protest against demolitions in the Palestinian village of Um al-Chir (Please see video of the action below). As openly stated by his judge, the sentence is meant to deter him and others from such actions of protest. On the same day, their will be a protest meant to support Ezra and show commitment to continue the protest against the occupation and the oppression of Palestinians. This protest will be organized by Ta’ayush and be held in Jerusalem.
Ezra Nawi has been active for years in the area known as South Mt. Hebron. The Palestinians in this small desolate area in the very south of the West Bank have been under Israeli occupation for almost 43 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services, and are continuously harassed by the Jewish settlers who constantly violate both Israeli and International law, and are backed by a variety of Israeli military occupation forces, all of which operate in an effort to cleanse the area from its Palestinian inhabitants and create a new demographic reality in it.
In March 2009, the judge Eilata Ziskind of the Jerusalem Magistrate’s (Peace) Court found Ezra Nawi guilty of assaulting a police officer and participation in a riot during a house demolition of a tin shack in the West Bank Palestinian village of Um el-Hir in the South Hebron hills, back in 2007. Nawi protested against the demolition by lying in front of a bulldozer, and later running into the shack before its demolition. Although throughout the whole incident Ezra kept to his principle of non-violent protest, in the end, he found himself arrested and charged with the aforementioned accusations that eventually led to his conviction based on the sole testimonies of two police officers who claimed that Nawi attacked them inside the shack. In addition, the judge Ziskind ruled that Ezra’s behaviour exceeded the limits of legitimate protest and therefore convicted him of rioting.
For more information about Ezra please visit his website Support Ezra.
Peace Court in Jerusalem
Jul 1st
Ezra Nawi waiting for his verdict outside the peace court in Jerusalem
More than 70 people gathered outside the Peace Court today to support Ezra in his sentencing.
Only a few of us managed to get in. At first, Ezra requested that everyone be permitted to enter and
that the sentencing will take place in a larger hall, but his request was denied, and therefore the hearing
did not start on time. As a result, the judge decided to postpone the sentencing to August 16, 8.30 AM.
When told about the amount of letters sent on behalf of Ezra (more than 15,000 signatories through the
Jewish Voice for Peace campaign — we brought a stack of 100 papers with a list of names), the judge
said, “Wow, that much…”
Ezra’s lawyer, Lea Tzemel, is convinced that the international campaign has a positive impact on the
case. Please continue to spread the word, tell your friends and family to sign the letters in the campaign
JVP is running (http://www.freeezra.org
Ezra Nawi Sentencing Tomorrow in Jerusalem
Jun 30th
Tomorrow, July 1, Ezra will be sentenced according to his conviction
of assaulting a police officer and participating in a riot. The
sentencing will take place at 15.00 at the Peace Court of Jerusalem by
judge Eilata Ziskind. Those who wish to show their support are very
welcome.
Ezra has written a letter that was placed on The Nation
As mentioned in his letter, the international pressure did not fall on
deaf ears, as the Israeli Ministry of Justice and other governmental
bodies have responded to our letters with confused and irrelevant
statements such as “Mr. Nawi provokes the local residents. [ie. Jewish
Settlers]” or “…Mr. Nawi who has often uses insults…”; the
official response can be found here and on my response here
see recent reports on the case in:
New York Times
YNET
We still demand the complete exculpation of Ezra, and the
investigation of his continual harassment by the Israeli police,
Israeli army and the civil administration.
Please post and forward his letter to your friends; as Ezra says “What
strengthens me and gives me energy is the widespread and constant
support I have always received.”
Thank you,
"Where peaceful protest begets jail"
Jun 19th
Ezra Nawi is going to be sentenced for a crime he did not commit on 1 July 2009. Our friend and fellow member of Ta’ayush David Shulman has an excellent opinion piece in Haaretz today about Ezra. Please visit Support Ezra for more information on his trial.
Where peaceful protest begets jail
By David Shulman
Bad times bring out the best in some people. Most of us remain passive, even willfully blind, in the face of great crimes that we see perpetrated on others, whether they are strangers or our next-door neighbors. But there will always be someone, probably just an ordinary decent person, to whom this rule doesn’t apply – someone who will try to do the right thing at any cost, risking his or her well-being or even, perhaps, life itself. Ezra Nawi is such a man. He’s a plumber by profession, a Jewish Jerusalemite, and he is also the unsung hero of the Israeli peace movement in the south Hebron hills. It’s largely thanks to him that the Palestinian farmers in this area are still living on their land. Unless something happens to change the current prognosis, an Israeli court will sentence Nawi to jail on July 1.
Nawi was convicted on March 19 in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court of assaulting a police officer. Since I’ve known the man for decades and seen him in action in many extreme situations, I’m certain that the charge is untrue; but let’s look at the circumstances. On February 14, 2007, the Israeli authorities sent army bulldozers to demolish several Palestinian shacks in a tiny place called Umm al-Kheir, 25 kilometers southeast of Hebron. Umm al-Kheir embodies the everyday reality of the Israeli occupation like no place else: The 100 or so impoverished Bedouin who call it their home, eking out a livelihood by grazing goats and sheep on the dry, stony hills, live in rickety structures of canvas, tin and stone. The land is theirs: Originally refugees from Tel Arad in the Negev in 1948, they bought it for good money from its Palestinian owners in the early 1950s. Israel, however, has put up a large settlement called Carmel right next to Umm al-Kheir, and like all settlements, Carmel (founded in 1981) is constantly expanding, encroaching on the lands of its Palestinian neighbors. As documented in detail in police records in Kiryat Arba, settlers also regularly attack these neighbors, whom they would like to remove altogether from this area.
Read the rest here.
Refusing to Conform: On Veteran Activist Ezra Nawi
May 25th
Ezra is an example of those activists in Israel that refuse to conform to the notion that Israelis and Palestinians cannot forge and maintain friendships and work together. The government is trying to make him an example by throwing him in jail, to send the message that Israelis shall be punished for attempting to bridge the gap between Israelis and Palestinians. As Ezra has said, if these types of actions continue, only hatred will be left in this land. I feel privileged to count Ezra as one of my friends and am honored that he refers to me as “Yosef HaZadik.”
More at the Jvoices article, Refusing to Conform: On Veteran Activist Ezra Nawi
Hebron, Friday Morning
May 22nd
We arrived at the Jabari family home just outside of Kiryat Arba at about nine this morning. On our way there we could not help but notice that since last week, electrical poles have been added to Hilltop 26, the illegal settlement outpost we wrote about in our op-ed piece that appeared in the Haaretz English edition newspaper today.
Initially we had planned on helping the Jabaris farm their land, as we had done last week, but today Abu Enan, the patron of the family, was feeling under the weather. We decided to go meet with our friend and partner Issa Amro, who wrote an article in YNET about the restriction on Palestinian movement on the “Zion” route in Hebron.
Hebron is a ghost town, but one full of scattered pockets of Jewish life actively engaged in the oppression of Palestinian life. All of the Palestinians shops that once comprised a bustling market area are boarded up. Driving through the “Zion” route, one encounters checkpoint after checkpoint, soldier after wanton soldier, and since not a single Palestinian car is allowed on the road, one cannot help but feel that this city has essentially become a prison.
Hebron - Friday Morning
After parking the car, we were immediately flooded with threatening questions and comments from the soldiers, who are scattered throughout every corner of the city center: Where are you going? Why are you here? You can’t be here. Where do you live? We kept walking, well aware of our legal right to be there, but the soldiers stopped us, demanding to see our IDs, which would be a regular occurrence throughout the day. Since we don’t reside in Hebron, the soldiers wanted to see an order permitting us to be there, however we insisted that we, like other Jews there, were completely within our legal right and continued on our way. After meeting with Issa for a while undisturbed, a policeman approached us, asked for our IDs and informed us that the whole area was a closed military zone and that at any moment he was authorized to evacuate us. We were made to feel that it was a crime just being there to meet with a friend, although the policeman did allow us to conclude our meeting. It is clear that the IDF does not want Israelis and Palestinians meeting and uses any means at their disposal for preventing the maintenance of these relations.
As we were leaving Hebron, accompanied by police escorts both in back and in front of us, another policeman decided to stop us, gratuitously, right at the exit. Ezra got very angry about being stopped by this specific police officer, who has been known to repeatedly verbally abuse him. Today, Ezra’s frustration got the best of him and told the officer that he was “stupid.” This led to him and another Ta’ayush member (who defended Ezra) to be detained. Clearly it is extreme to be arrested for calling a police ‘stupid’. The remainder of the group was forced to leave the entire area of Hebron and Kiryat Arba under the authority of, you guessed it, a closed military zone order. The police escorted us out of the area under penalty of arrest. That was the end of our day.
Ezra after being arrested
Although we had planned on visiting Hilltop 26 to document the new additions constructed by the settlers, this was made impossible because the closed military zone order applied to this hilltop as well. As we drove out, beside the series of two-meter high electrical poles, we also saw an IDF jeep parked next to the outpost, clearly protecting the area. Issa informed me that the electric poles were put up within the last two days and that the settlers have been moving rocks making way for a mobile home. This is a major escalation in construction and exactly what we describe in our op-ed piece. The fact that the army has now stationed a jeep at the outpost is clear evidence of their intention to continue working together to create new facts on the ground in the southern west bank.
Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein
Ezra Nawi
May 6th
Posted by Joseph Dana in Unarmed Resistance
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Today, the Guardian has posted an op-ed piece by Neve Gordon about Ezra Nawi. Ezra is a member of Taayush and currently facing charges in Israel for running into a house that is about to be demolished by the IDF. Please see the video clips below. Please pass on his story as he needs all the help that we can get. There is a running joke in Taayush that he also needs a new car because the entire IDF can spot him from a mile away. Photo of Ezra by Mairav Zonszein.