Planned Detention Center for Refugees
Huge detention centre to be Israel’s latest weapon in migration battle
17 April 2012 (The Guardian)
A vast detention complex is rising from the sandy grounds of Ktzi’ot prison in the Negev desert, close to Israel‘s border with Egypt, which will become the world’s largest holding facility for asylum seekers and migrants.
[…] Oded Feller, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, is among the activists opposed to the construction of the Ktzi’ot complex. Detention centres, he argues, are places where asylum applications are processed and people should be held only for a matter of months.
“It doesn’t matter if they have places to learn and play, they will be held there,” said Feller. “It will be a prison for people from Africa. The Israeli government is building a refugee camp, not a detention centre.”
Settlements and Outposts: a False Distinction
Defense Min. admits it ‘never intended to carry out’ settler evacuation
22 April 2012 (972 Magazine)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has until the end of the month to try and solve the political crisis over the evacuation of Ulpana Hill, a neighborhood built on private Palestinian land in the settlement of Beit El.
[…] The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) issued a letter to Justice Levy’s committee against the flawed distinction between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements, claiming that both types “constitute clear and blatant violations of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which concerns the protection of civilians during war.”
Street Named after Former ACRI President
Tel Aviv chooses which dignitaries to memorialize
23 April 2012 (Haaretz)
The Tel Aviv municipality’s names committee on approved 14 new names to be memorialized on the city’s streets, squares, parks and school buildings, out of 132 nominees.
The 14 are: Arieh Elhanani, the architect who planned the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds, among other sites; pianist Pnina Zaltzman; Justice Haim Cohn, who had been justice minister, state attorney and president of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel; journalist and author Adam Baruch; engineer Simha Blass, founder of the National Water Carrier and one of the inventors of drip irrigation; Chaim Alperin, the first Tel Aviv police chief; Yusuf Dik, head of the Arab community of Jaffa; Justice Dov Levin, who presided over the trial of John Demjanjuk; Zvi Lavon, a Tel Aviv city councilman; Yehoshua Margolin, a nature researcher and poet; archaeologist Jacob Kaplan, who founded the Jaffa Museum of Antiquities; Holocaust survivor Lena Kichler, who saved children and infants from the Nazis; painter Aviva Uri; and Maj. Gen. Israel Tal, who was deputy chief of General Staff and the father of the Merkava tank project.
Petition against Housing Discrimination in Acre
Appeal against Acre housing for religious Jews fails
24 April 2012 (Haaretz)
The Haifa District Court on Monday denied a petition to revoke the tender for a housing development in Acre because it was being marketed exclusively to religious Jewish families. The petition was filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Al-Yater, an Acre civil rights group and Haifa University’s legal clinic for human rights. Judge Ron Shapiro ruled that the petition was “theoretic and academic,” and was based on assumptions that were insufficient to call off the tender. He also said that because the petition was submitted very late, a revocation would infringe on the interests of the associations marketing the apartments.
[…] ACRI attorney Gil Gan-Mor, who represented the petitioners, said yesterday the Acre project was built on public land and should serve the entire public. Instead, he said, the project was advertised and marketed solely to religious Jews, contrary to the clause in their tenders.
Gan-Mor notes that Israeli law, in the footsteps of American law, recognizes that discriminatory advertising is sufficient proof of discrimination, as a person would be unlikely to risk humiliating rejection or go to live where he is clearly unwanted. “Regrettably, the court did not accept our argument that the discriminating marketing in this case justifies canceling the tender,” he said.
Bassem Tamimi Released from Prison
Israel court bails Palestinian activist ahead of verdict
25 April 2012 (AFP/Jordan Times)
Almost all demonstrations in the Palestinian territories are defined as “illegal” under Israeli military law, which states that any gathering of 10 or more people requires a permit.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) the ban on demonstrations and the forced dispersal of peaceful protests represent “a clear violation of the rules of international law that are incumbent on the occupying power”.
Police Prevents Protest Action on Independence Day
Israeli left-wing activists held indoors by police during Independence Day event
26 April 2012 (Haaretz)
Israel Police prohibited members of a left-wing NGO from exiting a Tel Aviv building on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, activists said, claiming that the lockdown was meant to prevent them from distributing postcards concerning the displacement of Palestinians during the War of Independence in 1948.
[…] The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) called the incident political persecution with the aid of the police, adding that, “needless to say, the police’s activities had no legal grounds.” “Freedom of speech isn’t suspended for Independence Day,” ACRI spokesman Hagai Elad said.
Israel Independence Day: Israeli activists “falsely imprisoned” for passing out fliers
26 April 2012 (Global Post)
A group of left-wing Israeli activists said that police prevented them from leaving their office building Wednesday night. Their offense? Passing out fliers.
[…] The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said that the NGO members were victims of political persecution. “What we sought to do was to hand out postcards, not anything violent,” a Zochrot spokesman told Haaretz. “There were people threatening to beat us, and they weren’t arrested.”
Anti-Democratic Knesset Legislation
Israel in Power Struggle with Top Court
29 April 2012 (The Forward)
The current Knesset has already passed several pieces of nationalist legislation and attempted to push through even more. Proposals passed into law in this Knesset term include the so-called Boycott Law, which penalizes individuals who voice support for campaigns to boycott West Bank settlement businesses. Another recently passed law protects the right of communal villages of 500 or fewer families to select residents on the basis of “social suitability.” While the law bars making this selection directly on ethnic grounds, some decry it as a carte blanche for discrimination.
Both laws are being challenged in the Supreme Court, and lawyers at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel are preparing to challenge another, the Infiltration Law, a four-month old law that it claims applies “Draconian” measures against asylum seekers.
Meeting the demands of the occupation in the UK
17 April 2012 (Palestine Chronicle)
Well when one looks at the legislation before the Knesset with its introduction of loyalty oaths, community residence laws and a whole host of other discriminatory and anti-democratic legislation – over twenty bills recently passed or proposed according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, it is clear which track Israel’s politicians have opted for. Yet surely, destructive as this is of Israel’s own so called democracy, this need not concern us in the UK, after all Israel is a far away country, its problems domestic?
