Jeff Halper, An Israeli Campaigner For Justice For Palestinians
with
Jeff Halper, famed author, and Coordinator, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

Since 1967, more than 24,000 Palestinian homes have been demolishedin the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza by the Israeli forces, bringing untold misery to countless Palestinians. Jeff Halper has led a campaign against this abuse through the organization ICAHD. As ICAHD witnessed the brutalities of the Occupation, it expanded its resistance activities to other areas – land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of “closure” and “separation,” the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees, the Separation Barrier/Wall, the siege of Gaza and more. Building Bridges hosts, in studio ICAHD’s Jeff Halper, an Israeli Jew who fearlessly criticizes the state of Israel and has, as a result, been arrested many times, including recently after he sailed into Gaza on a relief boat, for a discussion of ideas & international advocacy to end the Occupation altogether & for a “Free, Free Palestine.”

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Israel’s Building Boom Threatens Palestinian State
with
Richard Falk, prof. of international law emeritus, Princeton University and Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories for the United Nations Human Rights Council.

We’ll explore the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. And, we’ll examine the implications for Palestinian statehood of the Israeli settlement-building boom in the West Bank, in the months since the Palestinians were forced to withdraw from peace talks, and the construction of predominantly Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to make their future capital.
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Tell Israeli Diamond Merchant Lev Leviev, Financing Israeli Settlements Has Got To Go!
with
Adalah-NY

The heck with “chocolate” diamonds, there’s blood on Lev Leviev’s diamonds, the profits from which go to financing the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Leviev also continues to support human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola. So international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists against Israel led a protest against this international merchant of death, at Leviev’s diamond flagship store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
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A Mavi Marmara Survivor - The Next Steps Toward Victory
with
Rev. Herbert Daughtry, Pastor House of the Lord Pentecostal Church
and
Kevin Ovenden, a representative from Viva Palestina

When Israeli naval commandos stormed a Turkish ship loaded with humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. They murdered 9 unarmed passengers. The oldest, Ibrahim Bilgen, was 61. the youngest, Furkan Dogan, a U.S. citizen born in Troy , N.Y., was just 19. Kevin Ovenden, international organizer working to break the blockade of Gaza was an eyewitness to this horror and spoke at a packed meeting in Brooklyn’s historic House of the Lord Pentecostal Church, pastured by the Rev. Herbert Daughtry. He spoke not only about the horror he witnessed butabout the next strategic steps forward to ending the blockade and freeing Palestine.

On June 14, City Council speaker Christine Quinn, Reps. Jerry Nadler, Anthony Weiner, Carolyn Mahoney, Charles Rangel & Manhattan BoroughPresident Scott Stringer gathered in Times Square at the behest of the "Jewish Community Relations Council." They shamelessly demanded that the State Department investigate Kevin Ovenden and the other invited speakers for "ties to terrorism." As a result, another witness to the atrocity a former Turkish parliament member and human rights activist Ahmet Faruk Unsal, was not allowed to board a plane from Turkey to join the event at the House of the Lord Church. This was a clear attempt to not only deny the passengers' right to speak but to deny the people of the United States theright to hear their words.

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An Israeli In Palestine: Resisting Dispossession
with
Jeff Halper, Founder, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

The actions of the brave band of activists from the Freedom flotilla
to break Israel’s blockade of gaza has resulted in worldwide
condemnation of the blockade and the suffering it has caused. But
what of the wider apartheid policies of the state of Israel towards
the Palestinian people both within Israel and in the occupied
territories? Drawing on his many years of directly challenging Israel’s
treatment of the Palestinians, Jeff Halper offers one of the most
insightful analyses of the occupation you’ll hear. Halper discusses
how Israel can not maintain its exclusive Jewish character without
imposing on the Palestinian population policies of ethnic cleansing,
occupation and discrimination, expressed most graphically in its
ongoing demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, both inside
Israel and in the Occupied Territories. His voice cries out to be
heard as does the plight of the Palestinian people.

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On Breaking the Blockade Against Gaza: Viva Palestina
with
George Galloway, long-term member of the British Parliament,
and outspoken and well-recognized defender of human rights
and supporter of Palestine

Following the massacre in Gaza that began in December 2008,
Galloway called to action the world community to organize
convoys to distribute medical aid, to highlight the inhumanity
of the continued siege of this devastated area, and amplify the
shift in public policy and growing solidarity of people around the
world towards greater support of the Palestinian struggle. We
listen to Galloway, recently in Brooklyn as he speaks about the
blockade and prepares for his latest mission to send a flotilla of
boats to Gaza to break the blockade by sea.

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