PSG Chicago

Petach Tikva: Community School – or Ethiopian Ghetto

[original published here http://www.mynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3943586,00.html ]

All 400 students of the Ner Etzion school in Petach Tikva will be from the Ethiopian ethnicity. Council-woman Sarah Oren: they won’t be able to integrate into Israeli society this way.

by Nitzan Yanko

Published 29 August 2010, 07:52

The “Ethiopian Ghetto” is expected to continue in the coming school year, too, at the Ner Etzion school in Petach Tikva, after 100% of the students at this educational institution (approximately 400 children) will be members of the community. However, the chairman of the school’s parents committee, Yoav Talala, actually sounds pleased. “We receive unique benefits,” he explained.

In the last two years the state saw stormy discussion of the issue of absorbing the students who emigrated from Ethiopia into the religious [state] schools in the city. The main problem is that in those educational facilities, the students were required to undergo a process of conversion to Judaism – and in contrast, there was unwillingness to accept them to the public-secular schools.

One of the solutions that was found was to place as many as possible members of the community to the Ner Etzion school, [as] most if not all of them live near it. The fact that most of the students at the educational institutions are from Ethiopia cause parents outside of that community, who live nearby, to refrain from sending their children to it.

“The situation where all of the students are from Ethiopia is not bad at all,” said Talala. “We’re talking about an elementary school, and the educational level is identical to other places. The children get a long study day, until six pm. Additionally, they bring them food to school, and they get assistance and enrichment in the various fields of study. The children also get enhanced education, such as music.”

Don’t you think that the situation will hinder the students socially? What about integration?

“They learn at a regular school, with teachers who teach properly. I don’t think it matters what population is in the school. As soon as they’re done with elementary school, they go to the middle school and high school with students from all communities, even now. We’ll see how it is this year. The parents want the children to study quietly, and they don’t want to get into wars. In the meanwhile, it is good. When it comes down to it, a person goes to where things are good for him.”

Gadi Yaffe, chairman of the central parents’ committee, supports the Ner Etzion Committee: “the story of this school is unique,” he explained. “On the one hand, we don’t want this to be the situation. But on the other hand, the school’s parents’ committee prefers to study this way. They claim that they get better achievements this way. I know that there is a plan of the municipality that will change the character of the school over the coming three years, including its population.”

In opposition, city council member Sarah Oren (‘Yerukim Ir Hofshit’ [greens - liberal city]) demands that the situation be changed, urgently: “they won’t be able to integrate into Israeli society this way,” she explained. “The municipality should disperse them in the public schools, even if this means building religious classrooms. It can’t go on like this. For good [cultural] absorption you need no more than 20 percent of immigrant students and the rest having been here a long while.”

Moti Zefet [?], who is in charge of religious education in the municpality, stated in response: “last year and two years ago the situation was similar there. The school in question is a regional one, as is customary in all public secular and public religious schools. It is not customary to send children who live in a particular area to elementary schools far away. Whoever lives in that area, learns there.”

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Join the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago to say NO CHICAGO TIES WITH ISRAEL!

WHEN: Monday August 23rd at 11:00am

WHERE: Millennium Park, corner of Michigan and Monroe

Protest Israel’s participation in the Chicago Sister City
International Festival!

On Monday August 23rd, the city of Petach Tikva in Israel will be
officially represented at the Chicago Sister City International
Festival in Millennium Park.

The Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago demands an end to the Chicago
Sister Cities International (CSCI) program’s relationship between
Chicago and Petach Tikva. Petach Tikva’s inclusion in the CSCI
promotes Israel-US business ties while it whitewashes Israel’s
occupation and human rights abuses. Indeed, the chairperson of the
Petach Tikva committee of the CSCI is also an executive of the America
Israel Business Chamber of Commerce, so it’s clear what this Sister
City relationship is really about.

After remaining silent for more than one year, the board of the CSCI,
responding to PSG’s persistent protests, finally responded with a
letter dated 20 July in which they renew their refusal to meet with us
to learn about Petach Tikva’s role in the continued dispossession of
the Palestinian people and Israel’s repression of their struggle for
self-determination. We will keep our call to drop Petach Tikva and end
business-as-usual loud and clear and on August 23, we will remind the
CSCI that apartheid Israel has no business participating in the
International Festival at Millennium Park.

About Petach Tikva:

The first Jewish-only settlement in historic Palestine, and known in
Israel as the “mother of all settlements,” Petach Tikva symbolizes the
dispossession and colonization of the Palestinian homeland. Petach
Tikva is built on the remains of depopulated Palestinian villages
whose descendents are denied the right to return home. Petach Tikva is
also home to one of the largest interrogation and detention centers in
Israel, where Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
are illegally transferred and routinely subjected to ill treatment and
torture.

Palestinian civil society leader in Israel, and an advocate of the
Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, Ameer
Makhoul is the latest Palestinian grassroots leader to be detained and
tortured at Petach Tikva. Amnesty International has declared Makhoul a
prisoner of conscience as Israel tries to make an example of him and
try him on trumped up charges of espionage using “evidence” it
gathered through his torture at Petach Tikva.

About boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS):

Heeding the Palestinian call for BDS, the Palestine Solidarity
Group-Chicago rejects an official relationship between the City of
Chicago and the Municipality of Petach Tikva in Israel

We join the Palestinian call BDS on Israel; We demand that Israel ends
its occupation of Palestinian lands; We support self-determination for
the Palestinian people; and demand the Right of Return for all
Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

Take action:

Protest Chicago’s business-as-usual with Israel and demand that Petach
Tikva be dropped from the Chicago Sister Cities International Program!
Contact Leroy Allala – Sister City Program Executive Director
(leroy.allala@cityofchicago.org, 312.744.1372) and demand an end to
the Sister City partnership between Chicago and Petach Tikva!

Palestine Solidarity Group Chicago, www.psgchicago.org,
info.psg.chicago@gmaill.com

Endorsers: Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago, USPCN, 8th Day Center
for Justice, Jewish Voices for Peace, Chicagoans against Apartheid in
Palestine, Chicago Coalition against War and Racism, Students for
Justice in Palestine – DePaul, Students for Justice in Palestine -
IIT.

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JULY 14: CALL AND WRITE the Chicago Sister Cities International to say:

Drop Petach Tikva, Israel from Chicago Sister Cities!

No Israel participation in Chicago Sister Cities International Festival!

TAKE ACTION: contact Leroy Allala – Sister City Program Executive Director (leroy.allala@cityofchicago.org, 312.744.1372) and demand an end to the Sister City partnership between Chicago and Petach Tikva!

Join the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago (PSG) in calling the Chicago Sister Cities International (CSCI) to demand that they respond to our campaign by scheduling a meeting with us, and to say that Israel has no place at the Chicago Sister Cities International Festival, to be held in Chicago’s Millennium Park August 23-27. PSG and their allies and supporters have been calling for a meeting with the CSCI for more than a year and its director, Leroy Allala, refuses to hear about Petach Tikva’s role in the occupation of Palestinian lands and the historic dispossession and how a sister city relationship with the town whitewashes these human rights abuses.

We reject an official relationship between the City of Chicago and the Municipality of Petach Tikva in Israel. Under the guise of promoting cultural and education ties, and under the false premise of a people-to-people program, Petach Tikva’s inclusion in the CSCI promotes Israel-US business ties and the image of war-profiteering companies like Motorola and Boeing, whose executives are on the board of the CSCI.

Petach Tikva is the first Jewish-only settlement in historic Palestine, partly built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Mlabbes, depopulated and destroyed in 1948. An officially segregated city, Petach Tikva is also the site of a major detention center where Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip are illegally transferred for interrogation, which often involves torture. Arrest and detention has been a primary means Israel has employed in its attempt to suppress the Palestinian movement for self-determination.

Ameer Makhoul, a civil society leader and Israeli citizen, is the latest Palestinian grassroots activist to be held and tortured at Petach Tikva. It is bitterly ironic that the chairperson of the CSCI’s Petach Tikva program, Daniel B. Shure, is also president of the America Israel Business Chamber of Commerce, which earlier this year advertised a “Fight Back Against the Boycott” to undermine the movement grassroots Palestinian activists like Ameer Makhoul have been arrested and persecuted for leading.

At a national meeting earlier this year, Jewish United Fund – one of the racist Israeli government’s main champions in the US – identified the threat posed to Israel’s “legitimacy” by our campaign. Join our campaign and directly challenge Israel’s supporters in Chicago, and demand real policy change! Our campaign has been endorsed by pro-justice and community organizations such as the Chicagoans Against Apartheid in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace-Chicago, Chicago Coalition Against War and Racism, and the US Palestinian Communities Network.

Please email maureenclare@gmail.com to let us know the Chicago Sister Cities International’s response!

http://psgchicago.org/

Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Palestine-Solidarity-Group-Chicago/306556370889?ref=ts

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Chicago Sister Cities head refuses to discuss Israel’s Guantanamo

Chicago, IL, November 16, 2009 – Five activists with the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago (PSG) were removed by security from the office of Leroy Allala, Executive Director of the Chicago Sister Cities International Program, where they demanded a meeting regarding Chicago’s Sister City relationship with Petach Tikva, Israel.

Five months prior, PSG sent a letter to the Chicago Sister Cities International board of directors calling on the committee to drop its relationship with Petach Tikva in support of the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions on Israel until it ceases its violations of Palestinians’ rights. Repeated attempts to schedule a meeting to highlight PSG’s concerns were ignored.

The first Jewish-only settlement in historic Palestine, part of Petach Tikva’s municipality is located on the lands of Fajja village, ethnically cleansed and destroyed in 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland. The city is also the site of a major Israeli military detention center where Palestinians are routinely tortured and detained indefinitely without charge — not unlike the conditions at Guantanamo.

Allala immediately acknowledged that the committee had received the group’s letter and stated that the committee’s board of directors was “very happy” with its relationship with Petach Tikva, and said that there would be no severing of ties with the city. Furthermore, Allala said he was unwilling to listen to PSG’s concerns and would not have or schedule a meeting.

After a robust exchange between Allala and PSG activists, Allala returned to his office and called security to have the five individuals escorted out of the building. On the way out a PSG activist slid a copy of the memo detailing human rights abuses connected to Petach Tikva under his door.

Since January 2009, during Israel’s massacre of Gaza, PSG has embarked on a campaign calling on Chicago Sister City International to drop Petach Tikva from its program. The campaign has been endorsed by social justice and community organizations such as the 8th Day Center for Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, CCAWR, Students for Justice in Palestine-DePaul chapter, and the US Palestine Community Network.

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An Open Letter to the City of Chicago’s Sister Cities Committee
June 15, 2009
To the Honorary Chairman of the Chicago Sister Cities Committee, Mayor Richard M. Daley
To all Members of Chicago’s Sister Cities Executive Committee and Board:

We believe that the relationship between the City of Chicago and the City of Petach Tikva, Israel does not adhere to the spirit and goals of the Sister Cities program. We therefore demand that Petach Tikva be dropped from the Chicago Sister Cities.
The mission statement of the Sister Cities International Program, to which the Chicago Sister Cities Program adheres, is to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation — one individual, one community at a time. In the spirit of President Dwight D. Eisenhower ‘s “People-People Initiative,” the Sister Cities program calls upon cities to unite with
communities around the world in building a solid structure of world peace. We applaud the Sister Cities Committee of the City of Chicago for becoming the most active sister cities organization in the world. Nevertheless, we deplore that one of the Chicago
partnerships includes the City of Petach Tikva, Israel. We believe that this relationship does not adhere to the spirit and goals of the program in promoting peace. First, the City of Petach Tikva carries a heavy symbolism with respect to the dispossession of the Palestinian people through the seizure and occupation of the Palestinian people’s historic homeland. Second, the City of Petach Tikva actively contributes to the occupation of Palestinian territories by hosting the infamous interrogation and detention center of Petach Tikva. This facility is widely known for its human rights abuses on Palestinians detainees, including torture.

Petach Tikva, known in Israel as the “Mother of all settlements,” is the very first Jewish- exclusive settlement established in Palestine, before the founding of the State of Israel, on the land previously owned by the Palestinians of Mlabbes village. To this day, Petach Tikva remains a symbol of the ongoing confiscation and occupation of Palestinian land, a practice recently
condemned by the Obama administration. As such, the Sister City partnership between Chicago and Petach Tikva is a slap in the face to the large community of Palestinian descent living in the City of Chicago.

In the Palestinian territories, Petach Tikva is best known for the infamous Israel Security Agency interrogation and detention center. Petach Tikva is one of the main locations used by the ISA to detain and interrogate Palestinians.  It is well-documented that Palestinians are routinely tortured and detained indefinitely without charge – not unlike the conditions at Guantanamo — in this facility.  As such, Petach Tikva actively contributes to the occupation of Palestine and oppression of Palestinians. The Sister City partnership between Chicago and Petach Tikva provides legitimacy to these practices and works against the goals of the Sister Cities Program in promoting peace. Instead of providing a veneer of legitimacy to a city that symbolizes and contributes to the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people, and where Palestinians struggling for freedom and national self-determination are detained and abused, we hope the Chicago Sister cities program will join the growing worldwide movement calling for the end of business-as-usual with the State of Israel until it ends its crimes against the Palestinian people.

Respectfully,
Palestine Solidarity Group
Chicago, IL

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