UPDATE + VIDEO+ Protestors shut Olmerts speech AGAIN in San Francisco. 4 articles

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See also here demonstration in Chicago

‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff

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Blog de Pro-Israel Lobby

Op 22 oktober 2009 in een hotel in San Francisco tijdens een conferentie van het World Affairs Council werden 22 mensen gearresteerd voor het eisen van recht.

Want dat is de staat van de democratie met zijn vrijheid van meningsuiting vandaag de dag: criminelen moeten tegen het volk beschermd worden, zodat ze hun rechteloze en bloedige pad kunnen blijven volgen. Met name Israël moet beschermd worden tegen het internationaal recht. Op drie andere universiteiten kreeg Ehud Olmert dezelfde oproep tot berechting te horen.

De World Affairs Council gebruikt de cynische slogan: “It’s your world”. Maar zodra je die verantwoordelijkheid echt gaat nemen wordt je afgevoerd en opgesloten.

Bron

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Political theatrics

23-10-2009
Bay Area residents attempted a citizen’s arrest of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while he gave a speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on 22 October 2009.

Twenty-two people were arrested for challenging Olmert directly and demanding he be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. Olmert has faced protests at Tulane University, University of Kentucky and the University of Chicago.

The recent International Independent Fact-Finding Mission, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found evidence that Israel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during a three-week long attack on the Gaza Strip last winter, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and destroying much of the area’s infrastructure. In 2006, similar Israeli attacks on Lebanon killed 1,200 people. Olmert has refused to be held accountable.



Ali Abunimah’s reply on why he disrupted Olmerts speech at the University of Chicago: Electronic Intifada

    “The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert’s three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion.“

See also here

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Electronic Intifada

Why I disrupted Olmert

By Ali Abunimah


Protesters demonstrated in the rain outside of the University of Chicago lecture hall where activists inside disrupted Olmert's speech, 15 October 2009. (Maureen Clare Murphy)

23-10-2009
If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his 15 October speech at University of Chicago's Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate (Noah Moskowitz, Meredyth Richards and Lee Solomon, "The importance of open dialogue," Chicago Maroon, 19 October 2009). Indeed, I experienced exactly such attempts when my own appearance at Mandel Hall last January, with Professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, was constantly interrupted by hecklers.

But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way.

The report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict last winter, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone, found that Israel engaged in willful, widespread and wanton destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, causing deliberate suffering to the civilian population. It found "that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions" and that many may amount to "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." If that proves true, then the individual with primary responsibility is Ehud Olmert, who, as prime minister and the top civilian commander of Israel's armed forces, was involved in virtually every aspect of planning and execution.

The killings of more than 3,000 Palestinians and Lebanese during Olmert's three years in office are not mere differences of opinion to be challenged with a polite question written on a pre-screened note card. They are crimes for which Olmert is accountable before international law and public opinion.

Israel, unlike Hamas (also accused of war crimes by Goldstone), completely refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Mission. Instead of accountability, Olmert is, obscenely, traveling around the United States offering justifications for these appalling crimes, collecting large speaking fees, and being feted as a "courageous" statesman.

In their 20 October email to the University of Chicago community, President Robert Zimmer and Provost Thomas Rosenbaum condemned the "disruptions" during Olmert's speech. "Any stifling of debate," they wrote, "runs counter to the primary values of the University of Chicago and to our long-standing position as an exemplar of academic freedom."

Was it in order to promote debate that the University insisted on pre-screening questions and imposed a recording ban for students and media? In the name of promoting debate, will the University now invite Hamas leader Khaled Meshal -- perhaps by video link -- to lecture on leadership to its students, and offer him a large honorarium? Can we soon expect Sudan's President Omar Bashir to make an appearance at Mandel Hall?

When I and others verbally confronted Olmert, we stood for academic freedom, human rights, and justice, especially for hundreds of thousands of students deprived of those same rights by Olmert's actions.

During Israel's attack on Gaza last winter, schools and universities were among the primary targets. According to the Goldstone report, Israeli military attacks destroyed or damaged at least 280 schools and kindergartens. In total, 164 pupils and 12 teachers were killed, and 454 pupils and five teachers injured.

After the bombing, Olmert and Israel continued their attack on academic freedom, blocking educational supplies from reaching Gaza. Textbooks, notebooks, stationery and computers are among the forbidden items. In September, Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, publicly appealed to Israel to lift its ban on books and other supplies from reaching Gaza's traumatized students.

Israel destroyed buildings at the Islamic University and other universities. According to the Goldstone report, these "were civilian, educational buildings and the Mission did not find any information about their use as a military facility or their contribution to a military effort that might have made them a legitimate target in the eyes of the Israeli armed forces."

Gaza's university students -- 60 percent of them women -- study all the things that students do at the University of Chicago. Their motivations, aspirations, and abilities are just as high, but their lives are suffocated by unimaginable violence, trauma, and Israel's blockade, itself a war crime. Olmert is the person who ordered these acts and must be held accountable.

Crimes against humanity are defined as "crimes that shock the conscience." When the institutions with the moral and legal responsibility to punish and prevent the crimes choose complicit silence -- or, worse, harbor a suspected war criminal, already on trial for corruption in Israel, and present him to students as a paragon of "leadership" -- then disobedience, if that is what it takes to break the silence, is an ethical duty. Instead of condemning them, the University should be proud that its students were among those who had the courage to stand up.

For the first time in recorded history, an Israeli prime minister was publicly confronted with the names of his victims. It was a symbolic crack in the wall of impunity and a foretaste of the public justice victims have a right to receive when Olmert is tried in a court of law.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

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YNet

San Francisco protestors call Olmert 'war criminal'

23-10-2009
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupt former prime minister's speech, week after similar incident in Chicago. Woman identified as a Jews shouts at him, 'No more genocide in my name'

Former prime minister under attack – again. Pro-Palestinian protestors disrupted Ehud Olmert's speech in a San Francisco hotel on Thursday night, exactly one week after the former Israeli premier was verbally attacked at the University of Chicago over alleged war crimes committed by the Jewish state during the Gaza war.
 
"You are a war criminal and a murderer," one of the protestors shouted at Olmert during the speech before being removed from the auditorium by security officers.

Another protestor shouted, "You are a war criminal. San Francisco should be ashamed to have a war criminal here."
 
A young woman, identified by the person who documented the incident as a Jew, stood up and shouted, "No more genocide in my name." Another woman waved her hands, which were painted red.
 
The people who documented the protest did it secretly using a cellular phone, as cameras were not allowed into the lecture, and posted the clip on YouTube.
 
As opposed to the disturbance at the Chicago speech, this time the guards appeared to have acted more firmly against the protestors. One of the demonstrators was even removed from the auditorium by policemen grabbing his arms and legs and carrying him out.
 
During the speech, one of the protestors screamed at Olmert, "A hospital has been destroyed," referring to the Israel Air Forces' air strikes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
        
The former prime minister appeared calm throughout the disturbances, and didn't stop speaking despite the commotion.
 
The clip's creators who documented the incident said they were proud to have managed to shut down Olmert's message through the protest inside and outside the auditorium. "We shall protest every speech until the war criminal is indicted," they wrote at the end of the clip.

Source

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