Israeli Peace Activist Faces Jail Over Homes Demolition Protest

The sad news comes thick and fast from Palestine and Israel. Before the seizure of the ship reported on below, we received news of the arrest and impending sentencing of Ezra Nawi, a much loved and respected peace activist who have worked with "vulnerable Palestinian families in the hills around Hebron "struggling to keep their homes from being bulldozed." (The Guardian, June 30,2009) A plumber by trade, Nawi, born to a Jewish Iraqi family from Basra, speaks Arabic: "I have seen the checkpoints, the barriers. I've seen everything with my own eyes and I think any decent cannot sit indifferent to this. It is beyond the issue of Arabs and Jews..." And then I read that Ezra Nowi is a gay man with a Palestinian lover who has been imprisoned for entering Israel without a permit to be with his partner and all my issues come together--how is it that peace and those who stand against the rule of the gun are seen as dangers to the state; in this sense, we are all queer who refuse the dehumanization of whole peoples, the deliberate delight in causing pain and loss of hope that comes with an occupying force with the power to demolish homes and personal and communal dignity--"His trial has sparked a broad campaign of support from academics, musicians, artists. 'You have here the whole misery and cruelty of the occupation in a nutshell,' David Shulman, a Hebrew University professor and activist with the Israeli-Palestinian peace group Ta'ayush, wrote in Ha'aretz newspaper.'

Only the peace movement is all its forms can save Israel from itself. Or as Nawi said, "all that will be left is hate." Please find a way to be involved, to make your voice heard.
Joan