Taking Bullets For Palestine

Wednesday, May 11, 2011, at UC Irvine.

At 11:30pm, I walk by the Administration building to see a protest rally. Many Mexican workers, who work for ABLE, were holding picket signs and chanting to get Chancellor Michael Drake’s attention. They are fed up of being outsourced, and they are demanding to be treated with respect and equality as full-time employees for the university. They also want adequate insurance and benefits to better care for their family.

Then, at 12:00pm, I sit at the steps, by the flagpoles, to wait for an outdoor seminar, “Taking Bullets For Palestine.” The guest speaker, Matan Cohen, is an Israeli Student Activist. When Matan Cohen introduces himself, a group of people, holding American and Israeli flags as well as picket signs with “We Support Israel” printed on them, started parading in a circle, around the audience. Some of these people were wearing t-shirts that support Israel. Many people had a video camera to record this event. There were also many police officers surrounding the event.

Matan Cohen is half Iraqi Jew, and he is a co-founder of Anarchists Against The Wall. He refused to join the Israeli military. As he talked, the “tea party” group continued parading around the event, which was a little distracting. I suddenly notice four UCI students who joined the little parade, but they were holding American and Palestinian flags as well as wearing black t-shirts with "FREE PALESTINE" in white print.

In the Palestinian villages, ninety-eighty percent of the land was annexed. There is senseless violence by the Israeli soldiers. Israeli soldiers shot him with four rubber bullets while he was protesting with the Palestinians and other nonviolent activists. Many Palestinians have died in this way, and the media refuses to cover it.

He describes some of the unfair ways that the Palestinians are treated, which is evidence of the inequality and injustice. Israeli laws are only democracy for Jews. If a Palestinian throws rocks at an Israeli soldier, then they get one to three years in prison while an Israeli will get out of prison for doing the same thing. Furthermore, Palestinians are invisible in Israel because Israelis refuse to engage with any Palestinian. There is a “Buffer Zone” area, where Palestinians are not allowed to enter. He mentions that an injured Palestinian is “collateral damage.” After Oslo, Israel increased its tactics. He continues to protest with the Palestinians against Israeli apartheid in order to continue the resistance and end the occupation.

In the Question and Answer session, he mentions that Jews under thirty years old want the separation and ethnic segregation between Jews and Non-Jews in Israel. Therefore, it is important to put more pressure, in the form of resistance, on Israel. Change is more likely to happen when there is pressure on Israel to end its policies and rid ethnic cleansing. He defines apartheid as the segregation of people, according to ethnicity, and each group gets different rights. But the Palestinians don’t get any rights so that the Israelis can better control all of them.

He has been doing nonviolent protests for the past eight years to oppose and resist the occupation, liberate the Palestinians, and fight against inhumane conditions and Israel apartheid.

Israelis claim that the wall was created for security so that they can expand settlements. He feels that this doesn’t make sense because there are still Palestinians living on both sides of the wall. So, he is not sure why this “wall” is a form of security for Israel.

He is a democrat, interested in creating a one-state solution, in which each person votes in a democracy system as one nation.

During this Question and Answer session, many people, either Zionists, Tea Party people, and/or Americans who follow the American Zionist media, became quite hostile, arguing with him and claiming that he was lying as well as his lecture was one-sided in favor of the Palestinians.