Homeless man found dead in Jaffa park - hypothermia

The body of an apparently homeless man was found in the "Groningen" park next to Jaffa's music center this afternoon. It appears the man, probably in his thirties, died from hypothermia.
The as yet unidentified body has been sent to the Abu Kabir criminal pathological lab for further investigation. It appears no direct violence had been involved.

But a society in which there is no space for its weaker members, is a violent society, violent to its weakest members. The right to a roof above your head is a basic human right, but not here. I'm upset.

Police brutality against a Jaffa teenager

Yesterday the police stopped a teenage boy close to his home in Jaffa's Karem Dalek neighbourhood and asked for his ID card.
The kid was just hanging around close to home and said he would pop over to his home and bring it, as it was not on him when they stopped him.
As an answer the police beat him up badly and left him wounded.

Keeping the organizers under arrest

There were some 30 of us, standing at the entrance of the Jalame prison in the ice cold rain, shouting slogans for the release of all political prisoners.
Jalame is an old English (implying constructed during the British mandate) prison somewhere quite in the middle of nowhere in the north of the country. Rain, ice-cold winds at at some point a dramatic rainbow formed the drizzled backdrop for our demo.
The public: some 15 prison guards and some visitors on their way to visit their loved ones, also imprisoned inside. It's reportedly an ancient prison with very bad conditions, like many of the country's "establishments".
Since the onset of the the war on Gaza, several demonstrations have taken place against that war and against the continued blockade of the Gaza strip since the violence stopped.
Many of the organizers have been arrested and interrogated. Almost all of those arrested have been Palestinians. Samih Jabareen, a Jaffa based theatre student, is still under arrest on some cooked up charges of "participation in an illegal demonstration and attacking a policeman". Sandard charges faces by many of us at one time or another. Bullshit charges, made to threaten us and "keep us under control". Until now files have always been closed. The police knowing we are not criminals abnd they have nothing to go by, nor was a crime committed.
But Samih has been in prison for almost two weeks now. The prosecution want to keep him under arrest until the end of the procedures against him, which may take months. And that is new. From a legal point of view they have nothing to stand on. Yet for some reason the judge is going on with it.

This is a very new development. Until now that kind of "treatment" has been "reserved" for Palestinians from the occupied territories, no longer so.
The cooked up charges against Samih have all the looks of the fake trial Tali Fahima went through. It looks as if we are at the beginning of a more sinister era. Is the l;aw being abused to limit the right to protest and to criticize?
All Samih did was protesting, shouting, screaming in Um El Fahm (his town of birth) on election day. Democracy or farce?

Samih Jabareen still under arrest, demo on saturday

Samih Jabareen's arrest was prolonged yesterday.
Samih, a theatre student living in Jaffa, but originally from Um El Fahm, was arrested on February 10th during a demo in Um El Fahm, against the arrival of right wing extremists who, intent on provoking for the sake of winning another few votes for their cause came to Um Al Fahm.

Samih is outspoken, witty and sharp, charismait, if you like, able to inspire others.
I do not always agree with his views, but i very much respect his freedom to epxress what he believes in.
His arrest should worry us all.

A demo will be held outside the "Jalameh" prisn this saturday (February the 21st) at 12.00

The sea, the lovely sea

Huge waves crash onto the beach, strong winds and grey storm clouds above, drama.
Yet reality is slightly less pleasant. Since yesterday the Tel Aviv Jaffa municipal sewage company allows raw sewage to flow directly into the sea. Signs have been put up along the beaches to warn potential swimmers against it, "for the sake of their health".

The fish are reportedly very happy too.

So....is this what is it going to be like?

Quite obviously, even more right wing than before, the Israeli government to be.

There will be even less liberty, less democracy. And they probably will not care very much to even make it look like a democracy.

And a fair example is the arrest of Jaffa based activist Samih Jabareen. Originally from Um El Fahm, Samih is a clever, communicative and outspoken theatre student living in Jaffa.

He was arrested on election day in his home town after having demonstrated against the visit of ultra right wing politicians in his home town, which he felt was no more than a cheap trick to gain attention at the cost of the people from Um El Fahm.

He is still under arrest and will be kept imprisoned at least until this coming Monday when he will appear before a judge at the Hadera Court of Justice. Apparently they are accusing him of disturbing the peace and that kind of charges. Normally not something one is arrested for, at least not for more than 1 night.
The prosecution are demanding full arrest until the end of the procedures against him. There appears to be no sound legal reason for full arrest.
Yet home arrest was refused.
One wonders if this is a new stage in the rather quick erosion of what appeared to be a democratic society up to a degree. Is it against Samih personally or are they trying out just how far they can go in arresting those protesting, as "border check" as it were.

The main stream press are silent. And that is scary as well.

Is this the beginning of what awaits us all? So much for Israeli democracy.

Counting the votes

I've just come back from supervising the votes in a voting station in Ajami's "Yud Bet" Comprehensive High school) . If only all of the outcome would like that....

The police on my head

There is this police helicopter doing rounds above my flat with a strong projector.
Are they looking for the sock that the wind blew from the laundry drying thingy?
It's rather noisy and interferes with Bach's "Art of the Fugue" (Glenn Gould) i am listening to.

Temporary victory for Itidal

The municipal court judge granted Itidal another month in her home in Karem Dalek (Jaffa) today.
During this month voluntary architects from "Bimkom" will try to make a few additional steps towards legalizing her home.
The municipal lawyer was against granting Itidal more time and really wanted to destroy the home of this poor one-parent family, but for now we are winning.
I really wonder about those municipality people. Have they no heart.
After all bureaucrats have their bureaucratic means to provide a solution. Were i working at the city building engineer's office, Itidal's file would have been buried deeply at the bottom of a very high stack of files. but then there are reasons why i am not a bureaucrat.

Images of Itidal's neighbourhood

Tiny victory for Itidal

The emergency judge postponed the planned demolition of Itidal's home until 14.00 o'clock this Sunday, so we can appeal the case in court (once again) early Sunday morning.
So, no demolition yet.
But those of you willing to assist: don't go to sleep, the real fight has not yet been won, keep in touch. We may need you on Monday.

Itidal's home: waiting for the court desicion

Lawyer Rasha Asaf of the Popular Committee Against Home Demolitions has appealed to the emergency judge to make a temporary ruling against the demolition of Itidal's home this coming sunday.
Although an appeal has been filed some days ago, to ask the judge responsible for the case, for more time, this judge selected not to make a decision.
As the demolition is planned for Sunday, making no decision is in fact, making a decision and telling the demolishers to go along and carry out their ugly job: destroying the home of a gravely ill mother and her two school age children, who have nowhere else to go.

Rasha is doing all she can to prevent the demolition of the home. We hope the emergency judge will make a favourable decision, which will at lest buy Itidal and her kids some time.
Yet, if necessary, we may have to barricade. Those of you in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, stay in touch.

The background story:
Karmeh Dalek is the site of an ancient orange grove in Jaffa, owned by the Dalek family. The ownership of the land is private today, although complicated as a result of all kinds of actions carried out by various entities to whom the different members of the Dalek family own money or do not own money. (imagine a plate of legal spaghetti). There is no actual municipal building plan for the area. The general idea is to demolish and rebuild, yet the municipality never bothered to carry out an actual city plan. As a result, it is impossible to obtain a building permit. The city's building department has no organised file for the various buildings on the site and their documentation is less than sparse. Over time, rooms have been added, porches closed off and who knows what else.
The place looks like a refugee camp consisting of hovels and temporary buildings added to older existing structures, but no one exactly knows when what was constructed. An no one includes the municipality. They cannot actually prove which building exists since when. the buildings have no actual addresses, nor home numbers. This burocratic disregard should actually buy Itidal some time, as it is unclear the demolition order really relates to her home. The technical details could well relate any other house in the area.
Why they selected her is not clear. Legally speaking the municipal case is weak, as they have little actual proof.
The people living in the Dalek grove are poor. They cannot buy or rent housing elsewhere. And as they "have housing", they are not eligible for public housing or rent assistance in quite a few cases.
So people added rooms, made doors or windows where there were none, added a roof here or there. By the city books these are "crimes".
By those same city books, terminally ill Itidal is a criminal, who "needs to be punished" for illegally providing a home to herself and her kids.

Yet the true criminal is the municipality, whose negligence and disregard for Jaffa's poor population has created a situation in which they CANNOT get building permits to build on their own land, because that very same municipality has not bothered to make a housing plan for the area, thereby creating a burocratic cycle from which escape is impossible.

Home demolition this coming sunday

Although we're still fighting it in court, this Sunday (February 8) they may try to demolish Itidal's home in the "Dalek" orange grove in Jaffa.

We'll need you all there, in order to save the home of Itidal and her two school-age children.
The one parent family has nowhere to go. Itidal is seriously ill (just back from the hospital) and has no help from anywhere.

Those of you living in the area, please stay tuned in and ready for action!

Gaza in the heart of Jaffa

Horses, border police, loads of other police and the usual police camera crew were there when some hundred people from Jaffa gathered today in the Gazan'z Park to protest the continued closure of the Gaza strip as well as have a memorial for Gaza's over 400 murdered children.
Rappers "System Ali" (from Jaffa, rap in Arabic, Hebrew and Russian) set the tone.
Placards with the names and ages of some of the children were attached to the trees as were rather macabre shrouded dolls.

Event at 15.00 o'clock today: Gaza in the heart of Jaffa

Today at 15.00 o'clock in Gan HaShnayim (which will from now onwill be called "Gan Ha'azatim" (Park of the people form Gaza) at the corner of Ehrlich and Yefet Street.

In the past the taxis from Gaza used to stop at this corner to let of passengers from Gaza and take on passengersform Jaffa. In 1948 many of Jaffa's 120.000 Palestinians were expelled to the Gaza strip. As a result, there are exetensive family ties between the two places.
After 1967 trffic became possible and people came and went. There were many marriages in both "directions", which led to even more family ties.

The horrid war on Gaza left Jaffa in pan as well: the Jaffa based Samouni family lost some 30 of its family memebers in Gaza, and they are not the only family to have suffered awful losses.

Today we will return the park's old name in memory of the murdered children from Gaza.
System Ali will perform as will many other perfomrance artists from Jaffa and beyond:

No against the conltinued closer of the Gaza strip
Yes to peace and cooperation

We don't want to be enemies!

No to the continued blockade of Gaza

Some 30 activists gathered today in Jaffa protesting quietly along clock tower square, against the continued blockade of the Gaza strip and demanding that the Israeli commanders and soldiers behind the horrid warcrimes committed by the IDF be brought to trial.

The dust storm kept many people closed in their homes and the usually very busy square was very quiet this time. Most of te cars passing by had their windows closed because of the cold and the dust, but the expressions on the faces of the drivers and passengers, not to mention their gestures said it all. some opened their windows to shout and swear at us and some stopped for discourse.
It doesn't stop to amaze me how easily the Israeli people have been duped into justifying the most atrocious acts by the all encompassing propaganda machine. Some made statements such as "a pity they didn't kill more children" and that sort of comments. Israeli society is very sick.

Send the Israeli war criminials to court and stop the blockade

Today at 12.00 at the clock tower square in Jaffa there will be a demo to protest the continued blockade of the Gaza strip and to demand a criminal investigation of the Israeli war criminals

Arabic? Nah... Arabs? Nah.... Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East" after all

In the course of the first municipal council meeting of the newly elected Jaffa-Tel Aviv municipal council member and Jaffa resident, Omar Siksik, decided to address the council in Arabic. Arabic and Hebrew are both official languages of the State of Israel. By law all official signs etc should be bi-lingual and the state is supposed to provide services in both languages.

A week prior to the meeting Omar had informed the council's secretary of his intent to speak in Arabic and that it might be a good idea to provide simultaneous translation during the meeting, as perhaps not all council members are able to understand Arabic. A day before the Jaffa list offices sent another reminder to the municipality.
The answer came by phone: the legal counsel of the municipality said there was no need to provide Omar with translation, as he knows Hebrew, obviously completely missing the point, that indeed, Omar knows both languages, but not all council members know Arabic.

Of course there was no simultaneous translation during the session and the meeting protocol only stated that Omar had spoken in Arabic, but there was no translation nor any other relation to the content of what he had said during the meeting.

In fact Omar stated in Arabic that the citizens of Jaffa, when they come to receive services from the municipality, they cannot do so in Arabic, although many of them have problems reading and understanding Hebrew bureaucrateese, that very special language developed by burocrats for their various darkish purposes.
Omar sent a letter of protest to Ron Huldai, the mayor and the council members, informing them the protocol did not represent what he had stated.
After an article was published in Ynet (in Hebrew) about the event a few days ago, all hell broke loose: some 300+ "talk backs", most of them of a blatantly racist nature and very few remarks really dealing with the topic.
But ex-minister of education, Limor Livnat, intends to take things even a little further, stating she wants to make a new law according to which Arabic will no longer be an official language of the state, next to Hebrew.

Statistics

Sometimes numbers say a lot:

Gaza 1.300 dead as of today
Israel 13 dead as of today

Each one has a name.
Each one is missed by family, friends, neighbors

They all have the same red blood.

They are all people

PLEASE, STOP THE WAR NOW, PLEASE

Thousands marched through Jaffa against the war in Gaza

"Brothers, it's burning"*, stated a placard carried by a Jewish woman in today's protest march, eerily referring to ancient days, when Yiddish was common amongst eastern European Jews and a shtetl had been torched.

Something happened in Jaffa today. Something which is beyond the thousands who marched to protest against the war in the Gaza strip.
In 1948 the very large majority of Jaffa's 120.000 people strong Palestinian population was expelled, many in fact to the Gaza strip, others to Lebanon. The 3.200 who stayed behind were pressured into a position of "being quiet", not raising their voices.

No longer so.

Today the people of Jaffa raised their voices, loudly and clearly. Many have not heard form their Gaza relatives for days, others received messages of how their Gazan family members have been butchered by the IDF. How the wounded cannot receive treatment because there is no way of getting them into a hospital. How the IDF shoots at medical crews and ambulances. How one of Gaza's few hospitals was bombed and burnt out, no longer functional. And in Jaffa we refuse to be silent. Thousands marched through Jafa's rainy and dark streets in protest against the war, from the Charles Clore Park to the HaShnayim park, where two minutes of silence were observed, chanting for an immediate stop to the war for the sake of the children of both countries.

And on a more ominous tone: Some of the police man guarding the demo were masked. I wonder what this implies. Trying to see how we react to it?

And towards the end of the demo something weird happened. A guy with a camera posing as a writer for the NYT tried to interview me. By his line of questioning and the way he formulated his questions, it became soon quite clear there is little connection between him and the NYT. It seems more like he's from arutz 7 or other ultra right wing rag, sort of "under cover in the dangerous streets of Jaffa". Pathetic.

*Our Town Burns
Author and Composer: Mordkhaï Gebirtig (1877-1942)

It burns, brothers, it burns!
Our poor shtetl pitifully burning,
Angry wind with rage and curses
Tears and shatters and disperses,
Wild flames leap, they twist and turn,
Everything now burns!

In Yiddish:

Es Brent!
עס ברענט (גיבירטיג)

Es brent! Briderlekh, s'brent!
Oy undzer orem shtetl, nebokh, brent!
Beyze vintn mit yirgozn
Raysn brekhn un tzeblozn
Shtarker nokh di vilde flamen,
Alts arum shoyn brent!

Municipal budget lies

The Hirsch Centre in Jaffa is a special early childhood development centre providing services to Jaffa's youngest: testing, communication and play therapy, parents' groups and more. The centre treats over 1500 young children from Jaffa annually.
The municipality has decided to cut its budget by 50%, stating the different health-funds will make up for the rest. During the preparatory budget meeting the municipal representative even stated they already had a contract with all major health-funds and were about to close contracts with the others.

If the municipality had a Pinocchio nose, it would be very long now indeed.

The municipality closed a contract with exactly ONE health-fund, the tiny "Leumit", which insures about 2-3 % of Jaffa's population and on average refers 1 child per year (out of 1.500 children treated annually at the centre) to the Hirsh Centre!.
They are not even close to making deals with the other centres who have stated they absolutely refuse to do so according to the centers general manager, Ms. Amal Tatour.
Moreover, if they refer a child the parents first have to pay a fee 0f 150 NIS per hour for which they will get, after payment, a partial refund of 100 NIS. Thus every hour will cost the parent 50 NIS, which is a lot when you raise 3 kids on welfare of e.g. 2000 NIS a month!.
In addition, the healthfund will limit the amount of sessions to about 10-15, even if the child needs more.

The implication is clear: poor parents cannot afford this kind of necessary service for their young children and will not take their kids under these circumstances. At an age when many development problems can be preveted Jaffa's young children from weakened families, will not receive the necessary treatment.
This by itself is a major infringement upon the human rights of these children.

But the danger is larger than that, amal Tatour pointed out: As the majority of the Jaffa population are poor, people wil stop coming to the center. The municipality will conclyude there is no need for the services, as their will be no clients and the center will probably be closed in another few years.

The municipality points out that in other neighborhoods the services in these centers are paid for by the health funds and the population, but Tel Aviv is rich, and Jaffa is poor. So that comparison doesn't go very well.
In Jaffa the drop-out rate from the Arab public schools is 53%. And preventing drop out starts at a young age: if dyslexia and attention span disorders etc. are detected and dealt with at a young age, much suffering at a later age can be prevented.
The proposed budget cut raises serious questions.
Perhaps the municipality LIKES to keep the Jaffa population poor and voiceless?