Collecting pledges for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital

So, here’s the deal.

Kasia and me at the St. Jude's marathon/5k in December 2009

I will walk in St. Jude’s 5K race the first weekend in December. Actually, the marathon is St. Jude’s premier event, but for me finishing the 3.2 mile course is like finishing the Iron Man.

That’s because eight years ago this month, I underwent serious surgery to repair an odd condition that caused bones in my cervical (neck) vertebrae to grow into my spinal cord. Recovery was difficult and long; I could not walk the length of one block and I couldn’t run. I climbed stairs like a toddler, one step at a time.

Back then, I had promised my 8-year-old daughter that after the surgery and as soon as it snowed, we’d go cross country skiing together. It took me two years to fulfill that promise.

I’ve had a lot of ‘firsts’ again since then and I’ve use them to count my progress: First time swimming a lap; first time around the block; first time on ice skates; first time on a horse.

So two years ago, I registered for the 5K that would run concurrently with the marathon my oldest daughter was running. It was my first 5K – ever.

I know for many of you this is silly; you could run 3 miles in mere minutes with barely breaking a sweat. But for me, that ridiculously short distance was one of my most memorable accomplishments. And I did it in the top half of the pack, leaving hundreds of women — some decades younger than I — in the dust!

I could have been a quadraplegic lying in a rehab center; at least that’s what my doctor told me when my whining during an appointment must have pushed him past endurance. That gentle rebuke was actually an act of kindness because it reminds me still to be grateful every day for the simple fact that I am still able to put one foot in front of the other to get from point A to point B.

This condition, though, doesn’t go away. The latest MRI showed seven areas along my entire spine where these rogue bone spurs may be sprouting their way into the spinal canal again. In a not so subtle hint, my doctor encouraged me to make Hajj soon while I still can.

So why am I telling you all this and why St. Jude’s 5K when there are so many worthy races in the Chicago area?

The St. Jude’s marathon event is stellar; and its purpose is just as lofty — to raise money to support the only pediatric cancer research center that does not turn families away for their inability to pay. And for me, my personal accomplishment would be hollow if I didn’t also use it to help others. We are stewards of one another and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital provides vital care to critically ill children.

Please help me help St. Jude continue its mission of conducting research that one day, God-willing, will eradicate cancer. Your donation will go a long way in helping this research center bring life-saving treatments to the tender patients in their care. Your donations could help a child grow up to realize her own aspirations and make her own memorable achievements.

Thank you for your generosity.

Chicago students walk out on Israeli apartheid

Students and community members stage simultaneous walkouts of Israeli political events at Northwestern and DePaul Universities

(CHICAGO 11/11/11) — On the evening of Nov. 10, students and community members staged two simultaneous walkouts at events promoting Israel’s narrative of its history and politics. At Northwestern University’s Evanston campus, demonstrators held a silent walkout during a presentation by Gil Hoffman, an Israeli military reservist and journalist. Meanwhile, on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus, students and community members used the “People’s Mic” technique – popularized by Occupy Wall Street – to disrupt a presentation sponsored by the organization Stand With Us. Organizers say that they protested because the presentations omitted the disturbing reality of Israel’s repeated violations of international law and countless human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.

At DePaul, a group of about thirty concerned individuals “fact checked” an event called “Israel 101,” sponsored by Stand With Us, an organization that seeks to brand Israel in a friendly and positive light. Watch the video. Demonstrators interrupted the presentation, stood up, and announced a statement about Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. According to one of the participants, University of Chicago student Ishan Chakrabarti: “We used a version of the ‘People’s Mic’ technique, recently utilized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. We challenged Israel 101’s propaganda and selective history and spoke truth to power by amplifying our voices.” The “fact check” was followed by a walkout and teach-in.

At Northwestern University, around thirty students and community members protested a presentation entitled “63 Reasons to Like Israel: Why American Jews should be Optimistic about Israel,” featuring Gil Hoffman, a reserve soldier and spokesman for the Israeli military as well as the chief political correspondent/analyst for The Jerusalem Post. Watch the video. Co-sponsors of the event included the Coalition for Accuracy of Middle East Reporting in America and the Zionist Organization of America. The university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter staged a walkout on Hoffman’s speech, inspired by the example of other student groups around the Midwest, including The University of Michigan, Benedictine University and Wayne State University. Outside, a diverse crowd demonstrated in support of the walkout.

DePaul student Agnieszka Karoluk explained, “At DePaul, we made up about three-quarters of the audience. At Northwestern, they filled a third of the room. We made it obvious that the community at large does not tolerate the promotion of Israel at the expense of Palestinian human rights.” A handful of protesters at both events decided to stay behind to engage in civil debate and discussion.

Organizers say these actions are part of the recent rise of a new global political consciousness about Palestine. This is reflected not only through non-violent protests and walkouts, but also through the growing “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) movement, which reuses the methods that helped dismantle apartheid in South Africa. For the third year in a row, international solidarity activists non- violently challenged Israel’s six-year blockade of Gaza. These events reflect the success of civil disobedience in achieving concrete political change across the world, from the US civil rights movement to the South African anti-apartheid struggle. Palestinians and their supporters are part of this history.

U.S. cuts off UNESCO funding after Palestinian vote – YouTube

U.S. cuts off UNESCO funding after Palestinian vote – YouTube.

Israeli-American rabbi pleads guilty to organ trafficking

(CHICAGO 10/28/2011) — An Israeli-American Orthodox rabbi pleaded guilty in US District Court in New Jersey Thursday to illegally selling human kidneys for huge profits. Rabbi Levi Izhak Rosenbaum is the first person ever convicted in the United States for engaging in organ trafficking, according to published reports.

Prosecutors alleged Rosenbaum charged Americans $160,000 or more for kidneys he obtained by paying “vulnerable Israelis” $10,000 to give up the organ. Rosenbaum pleaded guilty to three counts of organ trafficking. He also agreed to forfeit the $420,000 he got for the illegal kidneys.

In court records obtained by AMP, Rosenbaum said he’d been “doing this a long time.” According to the criminal complaint, an undercover FBI agent approached Rosenbaum and asked about the procedure for purchasing a kidney for a sick uncle. Rosenbaum said a vial of the patient’s blood would be sent to Israel to find a matching prospective donor. When the informant balked at the asking price of $150,000, Rosenbaum answered, “There are people over there hunting … one of the reasons it’s so expensive is because you have to schmear (meaning pay various individuals for their assistance) all the time.”

Rosenbaum was apprehended in July 2009 in a New Jersey statewide sweep that arrested 44 individuals – included 5 rabbis, the mayors of three large cities, and other state officials – on charges of public corruption and international money-laundering. Rosenbaum was the only one charged with organ trafficking. His arrest came just a few weeks before Sweden’s largest daily newspaper – the Aftonbladet – ran a story by Daniel Boström that alleged Israeli Occupation Forces kidnapped and killed young Palestinian men then culled their organs for the black market.

The article created an uproar with charges of anti-Semitism and “Blood Libel” against the newspaper. However, in December 2009, the former head of the Israeli Ministry of Health testified before the Knesset to answer questions that arose after a pathologist admitted he harvested organs from Palestinians and others without family consent.

In a report on Israeli Channel 2, pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss said he harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of dead Palestinians, Israeli soldiers and foreign workers without permission in the 1990s. When doctors feared their actions would be discovered, they would cover up the evidence, oftentimes gluing shut eyes to hide the missing corneas, he said.

That admission is eerily similar to what the Swedish reporter Boström said he saw in 1992 on the body of the deceased Bilal Ahmed Ghanim. Israeli soldiers shot and killed the 19-year-old Ghanim then took his body away. It was returned five days later at night and in a “shroud of secrecy,” writes Boström.  He took pictures of Ghanim’s torso, which had been cut from the groin to his chin and then sewn up.

After Boström’s article was published, he received numerous death threats, the Aftonbladet reported. Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu tried to pressure the Swedish government to condemn the newspaper, but it refused to interfere with the freedom of the press. The newspaper stood by the story.

Boström later said he did not know if the family’s claims their son’s organs had been removed were true but he wrote the story to raise the issue of Israel’s involvement in organ trafficking.

While many question the veracity of Boström’s article, at least one expert in international organ trafficking raised concerns about Israel’s involvement in the black market trade for years. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, the founder of Organs Watch, which documents cases of international organ trafficking, told reporters in 2009 she gave Rosenbaum’s name to the FBI  “years ago.”

“’Rosenbaum was part of an extensive underground transplant trafficking network centered in Israel that is responsible for buying and selling thousands of kidneys around the world each year,’ said Scheper-Hughes, a professor of medical anthropology at Berkeley,” told the North Jersey News in July 2009.

Rosenbaum faces 20 years in prison. He will be sentenced on Feb. 2, 2012.

Where are the children?

167 children have not been released and remained jailed in Israeli prisons

(CHICAGO 10/19/2011) – No Palestinian children were among the 477 political prisoners released from Israeli jails on Tuesday and it is no longer certain whether they will be part of the deal to swap 1,027 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier, who was returned to his family this week.

An official from Ramallah-based Defence for Children International – Palestine Section confirmed to AMP this morning that 164 Palestinian children still are behind bars.

“So far, Israel didn’t release any children,” said Ayed Abu Qtaish, DCI accountability programs director. “One-hundred-sixty-four Palestinian children are still in prison and their rights are being violated during their arrests, during their interrogations and during their court proceedings.”

Abu Qtaish said he did not know whether the children, some as young as 12 years old, will be included in the second prisoner release, expected in about two months.

Earlier media reports had indicated all children would be released, along with all women and elderly.

According to the latest figures released by the Israeli Prison Service and DCI-Palestine, at the end of September there were 164 Palestinian children, aged 12 to 17 years in Israeli detention facilities, including 35 kids between the ages of 12 and 15.

Each year, Israeli military courts prosecute about 700 Palestinian children from the West Bank, according to DCI. Since the year 2000, the Israeli military occupation authorities have detained about 7,500 kids, who are often harassed or tortured.

TAKE ACTION
Call your elected representatives in Congress and demand they pressure Israel to release the children. Find your representative here.

TALKING POINTS

• Holding Palestinian children in Israeli prisons violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring the population it is occupying to its own territory.
• Incarcerating minors, especially holding them without charge in administrative detention, violates the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• Continuing to support Israel with more than $3 billion in military aid and loan guarantees while it continues to violate international law is not in our best interest. This weakens the U.S. stance throughout the Arab and Muslim world, threatens our national security and calls into question our role as the ‘honest’ broker in the Middle East.

For more information on Palestinian child prisoners, please click here.

The American Muslims for Palestine is a national grassroots organization, whose mission is to educate the public and media about Palestine and its rich, cultural heritage. For more information, go to www.ampalestine.org.

 

Anti-Defamation League attempts to marginalize pro-human rights activities

(CHICAGO 10/13/2011) – The American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is a key focus in a new report released by the Anti-Defamation League, which labels AMP as an “extreme anti-Israel organization.” The report goes on to call all activism that raises awareness about Israel’s continuous violations of international law and deprivation of Palestinians’ human rights as “anti-Israel.”

The report, which was released just days before Students for Justice in Palestine chapters convene their first national conference in New York, appears to be a desperate attempt to shut down the event and smear everyone involved with it. The ADL, furthermore, tries to link AMP to this conference and decries AMP’s outreach to college students.

Framing human rights advocacy for Palestinians as “anti-Israel” completely ignores Israel’s occupation, its siege on Gaza and its ongoing and flagrant violations of international law, quite an irony for an organization that says it protects rights for all people.

“We reject the ADL’s attempt to frame this discussion in such a way that ignores Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians and instead tries to demonize those who raise awareness about Israel’s violation of international law and human rights abuses,” said Dr. Hatem Bazian, AMP chairman and professor of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “Trying to label activists is a typical MO for the ADL. We at AMP are actually heartened by their scurrilous report because it shows that our work is effective and is starting to make a difference.”

Dr. Bazian co-founded the first SJP chapter on the Berkeley campus in 2001. However, each chapter is an autonomous unit and none is associated with AMP, which acts as a resource for students by providing speakers and materials.

The ADL’s report is actually just one component of a widespread network of tactics employed by Zionist organizations to shut down all Palestinian human rights activities on college campuses. Other tactics have included sending letters to hundreds of college presidents, threatening the loss of federal funding if they allow Palestinian advocacy – or even instruction – to take place; the training of Hillel students to conduct “pro-Israel” educational activities; and the funding of the “Israel Action Network,” an offshoot of the Israel Advocacy Initiative, a blatant public relations plan to sell the occupation to the American people.

“The ADL has a long history of questionable activities, which fly in the face of their moniker of standing for civil rights for all people,” Dr. Bazian said, “They’ve been caught spying on nearly 2,000 American citizens and organization, have worked against Affirmative Action, and employed stringent censorship tactics to try to keep the truth about the occupation from the American people. We are heartened by this new report because it shows our work is being effective and making a difference on the American landscape.”

AMP calls on all people of conscience to educate themselves about the how Zionist organizations function in this country and to expose their tactics that aim to maintain the occupation of the Palestinian people.

For more detailed information about the ADL, please click here.

Rejoice with prisoners’ release but remember the thousands left behind in Israeli prisons

(CHICAGO 10/11/2011) — The American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) hails the news that Israeli occupation forces will free more than 1,000 Palestinian political prisoners in return for the release of one Israeli soldier. Palestinian and Israeli officials announced the deal separately on Tuesday.

At the same time, we condemn plans to deport 40 Palestinians to an unnamed foreign country, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from deporting the people it occupies from their homeland. We must also remember that despite the release of 1,027 Palestinians from unlawful detention, thousands more are still languishing in Israeli prisons.

At the end of August, 5,204 Palestinians were incarcerated in Israeli prisons; and 272 of them were being held indefinitely without charge, according to Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem. Other human rights organizations have reported there are more than 6,000 Palestinians being detained. More than 200 prisoners have been on a hunger strike to protest the substandard conditions in which they are forced to live.

“These arrests and detentions are vestiges of Israel’s cruel and inhumane occupation of the Palestinian people,” said Dr. Hatem Bazian, AMP chairman. “Since Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine in 1967, they have incarcerated 20 percent of the Palestinian population, in direct contravention of international law. This is unjust and is a strong obstacle to achieving peace in the region.”

Among Palestinians to be released are at least 27 women, 180 children and those who have been given life sentences and/or have spent more than 20 years as political detainees in prisons within Israel, according to media reports.

AMP urges people to remember that the thousands of Palestinians left behind in Israeli prisons are more than statistics. They are human beings with names and families. They are people with lives full of stories and memories, hopes and fears, laughter and tears; and, like us, they have dreams of the future.

One of children being released most likely is 15-year-old, Ahmed D., who was violently yanked from his bed in East Jerusalem at 2 a.m. on Sept. 14, the Swiss-based Defence for Children International – Palestine Section wrote. Sameer S., 12, of Azzun village, is another child who was arrested recently, also at 2 a.m. And Ayed Dudeen is a father of six, who was released in June after being held without charge for 3 and a half years. He was rearrested in August and again is being held without charge, according to prisoner rights organization Addameer.

“Palestinian political prisoners are a byproduct of occupation, which is the source of all injustice and instability in the region,” Dr. Bazian said. “International laws guarantee all people the right to resist their occupation and to see their own freedom and self-determination.”

It is time for the last and longest occupation in the modern world to end. America was built on the universal values of freedom, liberty and dignity. We, Americans, have been fighting for these values around the globe for centuries.

AMP stands in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners. We continue to call on Congress to pressure Israel to release all political prisoners. Congress must also end military aid to Israel and continue to pressure Israel to end the occupation of the Palestinian people and lift the siege on Gaza. Congress, whose very existence is owed to the struggle for freedom, liberty and justice more than 200 years ago, must ultimately agree that Palestinians deserve these inalienable rights, too.

AMP slams media attacks against SJP national conference

(CHICAGO 10/12/2011) – The American Muslims for Palestine condemns in the harshest possible terms attacks made by the Anti-Defamation League against the organizers of the national Students for Justice in Palestine conference, which is taking place at Columbia University this weekend.

The ADL, which says it works to protect civil rights for all, instead works diligently to deprive Americans of their guaranteed right of free speech when that speech questions policies and practices of Israel that are illegal under international law and which deprive the Palestinian people of their basic human rights.

“SJP chapters across the country are autonomous student groups with no national structure,” said Dr. Hatem Bazian, AMP chairman and co-founder of the first SJP chapter at the University of California, Berkeley. “These students came together, on their own, to organize this conference. They need to be commended for their dedication and commitment, not vilified and threatened by a multi-million-dollar organization, which has a vested interest in conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.”

The ADL, along with other right-wing individuals, are spreading malicious, libelous and Islamophobic propaganda to smear these students and to pressure Columbia University to prohibit the conference from taking place. AMP calls upon Columbia President Lee Bollinger and his administration to stand firm against this pressure and to uphold his university’s commitment to the free exchange of ideas that have made our universities among the best around the world.

Columbia must stand behind these students because by doing so this venerable institution is also standing for the freedoms of speech and assembly, which are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights for all people.

For AMP’s newest booklet: The Anti-Defamation League: Protector of civil rights or silencer of free speech?, click here.

For AMP’s letter to President Bollinger, click here.

For recent article about anti-Semitism charge against Columbia, click here.

The American Muslims for Palestine is a national grassroots organization, whose mission is to educate the public about issues related to Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage. 

If you remain silent, SHAME ON YOU

If after watching this video filmed during a home eviction in Jaffa and still remain silent, SHAME ON YOU.  We are paying for this brutality with more than $3 billion per year in unconditional aid to Israel and millions more to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, which follow the back and call of Israel.

How can you watch this and remain silent?

We have thousands marching in the streets right now, protesting  unemployement, lack of health care, people being forced out of their homes, our cities and schools running out of money. Yet we continue to fund the Israeli military occupation. I ask again, how can you watch this and remain silent?

Israeli occupation police brutally evacuating a…, posted with vodpod

Zionists ratchet up attack on campus free speech

By Kristin Szremski

(CHICAGO 10/06/2011) — Zionists have ratcheted up their attacks on free speech on America’s college campuses this fall by conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and then lodging – or threatening to lodge – complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

The Electronic Intifada reported in a blog post by Ali Abunimeh yesterday that an investigation has been launched at Columbia University in New York, two weeks before the first national conference for the Students for Justice in Palestine is set to begin there.

“Recently, The Electronic Intifada discovered that Israeli officials had even played a direct role in a planned civil rights complaint against another US institution, Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where students had passed a resolution supporting divestment from Israel,” Abunimeh wrote.

This is not the first time pressure has come from Israel. The Israel Law Center (Shurat HaDin) sent hundreds of letters to university presidents and chancellors in the United States at the start of the school year warning them their institutions could “fall foul of stringent U.S. laws,” if they allowed pro-Palestinian activism on campus, the Jerusalem Post reported on Aug. 9, 2011.

Israel’s supporters are exploiting the U.S. Department of Education’s re-interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which now allows Jewish students, as members of a religious group, to claim discrimination under a provision that previously applied only to racial and ethnic bigotry.

Major Zionist organizations such as the Zionist Organization of America and the Anti-Defamation League had lobbied the education department for at least seven years for the change, which finally came in October 2010. The reason why this re-interpretation has the potential to shut down pro-Palestinian activities on college campuses is because the institutions could lose their federal funding if they are found to be in violation of Title VI. In other words, universities may be less apt to allow events – including class lectures — that question Israel’s occupation of Palestine because they are afraid they could lose significant federal funding if someone complains.

AMP reported earlier this year, in an article first published on Electronic Intifada, that in March 2011 the Education Department’s civil rights office used this new interpretation to launch an investigation into charges of anti-Semitism filed by lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin against the University of California, Santa Cruz in June 2009.

Dr. Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian-American professor of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine there in 1993, takes issue with the amended understanding of Title VI. While he agrees that Jewish students, as well as Muslim students, should be protected from discrimination based on their religious identity under Title VI, he believes the reinterpretation is actually being used to silence debate about Israel.

“Attempts to silence opposition to the illegal Israeli occupation and policies is un-American and amounts to political and academic censorship,” said Bazian, who is also AMP chairman. In addition to the ongoing and pending investigations mentioned here, there have been similar warnings at Rutgers University and elsewhere.

In March 2011, the ADL, along with the American Jewish Committee and the Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council, protested an academic conference at the UC Hastings College of the Law in March titled “Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?” Their protest was so effective the university board voted to remove its name and endorsement for the event and it prevented university Chancellor Frank Wu from making opening remarks.

In perhaps the most chilling assault on free speech yet, 10 students from the University of California, Irvine and UC Riverside were found guilty in September of the misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to disrupt a public meeting and disrupting a public meeting for their role is protesting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren in February 2010.

Supporters and defense lawyers still contend the arrests, charges and trial were the result of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias. In fact, early in the proceedings an Orange County judge removed three districts attorney and the lead investigator from the case because of their anti-Muslim bias.

The students are appealing their convictions.

The pro-Palestine movement, particularly Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, is growing quickly throughout the nation’s universities, and Zionist organizations are working harder at combating the movement’s success. A 100-page booklet named, “The Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus,” first published in 2002, has been making the rounds again. And the Jewish Federations of North America, during its annual conference in November, will be promoting its newest campaign, the Israel Action Network, part of the Israeli Advocacy Initiative, which aims to garner support for Israel by creating networks with members of other faith communities.

This article was first published on the website for American Muslims for Palestine.