The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), strongly condemns the recent abduction of the Arab-Israeli CNN producer and translator Riad Ali. Last night at about 18:30, Riad Ali was abducted just outside CNN's offices in Gaza City.

CNN reported that Ali, a veteran producer for the station, was seized at gunpoint from a car he was riding in with other CNN colleagues, including correspondent Ben Wedeman. In an interview on CNN, Wedeman said that five armed Palestinians jumped out of a white Peugeot, approached the CNN team, and demanded to know which of them Ali was. After the CNN producer identified himself, he was taken from the car by the gunman. Wedeman said the kidnappers did not try to conceal their identities, nor did they say why they were abducting Ali.

Journalists and media workers must be protected as stated under Articles 19 and 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Articles 50 and 51 of the “Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions”, which emphasize the protection of civilians, which includes journalists and media workers in times of war. Article 79 of the “Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention” further stipulates that: “journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians within the meaning of Article 50, Paragraph 1. They shall be protected as such under the conventions of this Protocol, provided that they take no action adversely affecting their status as civilians.”

In a statement released by the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Ann Cooper said, “We call on Riad Ali's abductors to release him immediately and unconditionally.” For the past four years CPJ has placed the Palestinian Occupied Territories as one of the six worst places in the world to be a journalist or media worker.

MIFTAH unequivocally condemns the group responsible for the kidnapping and deems such measures as extremely harmful and counterproductive in promoting the just Palestinian cause on the international arena, such conduct distorts the essential integrity of the plight of the Palestinian people. Hence, MIFTAH views such actions as utterly unacceptable and dangerous, calling on the kidnappers to release Riad Ali immediately and unharmed. Finally, MIFTAH urges the abductors to refrain from any such cruel and inhumane methods in the future.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), strongly condemns the shooting of Majdi Jamil al-'Arabeed, a Palestinian cameraman for the Israeli Channel 10, and the director of the local Al-Horriya radio station, in Gaza on the 2nd of January, 2005. This act by the Israeli army marks the first press freedom violation to take place in the world in the new year of 2005.

Al-'Arabeed and a number of other journalists were covering an Israeli military incursion into Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. The journalists were filming the incursion close to Israeli tanks. According to another Channel 10 journalist, quoted by the news agency AFP; “The Israeli unit knew perfectly well that we were journalists and that did not stop them from shooting at a time when the area was calm,” said Schlomi Eldar. However, Israeli tanks opened fire at the journalists, who were wearing clearly identified press suits and holding cameras, without any prior warning. It was then that Al-'Arabeed was seriously wounded by a live bullet to his side and another to his pelvis. According to another report, by the Palestine Monitor, he was shot in the stomach and leg and critically wounded. Al-‘Arabeed was evacuated to the Kamal ‘Edwan Hospital in Jabalya, where he underwent surgery. His condition remains critical.

Attacks on journalists, such as this latest incident, come as part of an apparently concentrated campaign of targeting journalists carrying out their profession, ultimately hindering them from reporting repeated attacks on Palestinians, including attacks on civilians, which constitute war crimes. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) in the year 2004 alone, 56 media workers were killed throughout the world. Furthermore, a report compiled by the International Press Institute (IPI) shows, that in this ongoing Palestinian uprising a total of 562 press freedom violations have been committed, with Israelis bearing the responsibility for 88.4% of all violations.

Hence, MIFTAH urges the international community to pressure the Israeli government and its occupying forces to strictly abide by legally binding International Law, which states that journalists and media workers must be protected as stipulated under Articles 19 and 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Articles 50 and 51 of the “Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions”, which emphasize the protection of civilians, which includes journalists and media workers in times of war. Article 79 of the “Protocols Additional to the 1949 Geneva Convention” further states that: “journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered as civilians within the meaning of Article 50, Paragraph 1. They shall be protected as such under the conventions of this Protocol, provided that they take no action adversely affecting their status as civilians.”

MIFTAH unequivocally condemns the Israeli Army for its recent conduct, and calls on the army to refrain from targeting journalists in the future.

This is an urgent and repeated appeal to the world to immediately intervene, in light of the recent stories of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women by Israeli occupation forces during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Palestinian women are being displaced, tortured, killed and forcibly disappeared, while the world sits idle. Silence and inaction in the wake of these horrifying crimes amount to complicity.

Over the past few days, more horrifying testimonies and stories have emerged from Gaza of sadistic acts by Israeli soldiers, including torture, rape, and mass field executions at hospitals where civilians are seeking shelter, medical treatment and refuge.

Palestinian civil society and UN experts have sounded the alarm multiple times and reported cases of rape and sexual violence before and during this genocide. These reports continue to be deliberately and inexcusably ignored, including by prominent and otherwise vocal feminist organizations and figures.

The deafening silence of “Western” feminists and mainstream media in particular is deliberate and inexcusable, as opposed to their earlier outrage over Israeli allegations and misinformation, used to justify this genocide.

Many Palestinian women and girls who are survivors of rape and sexual violence are hesitant to come forward, due to the social stigma in a conservative society and the belief that Israel will not be held accountable for such crimes.

Israel is committing the most horrific war crimes, and weaponizing rape and sexual violence against Palestinians as part of its genocide in Gaza and assault on the Palestinian people as a whole, throughout all of Palestine. This is the result of decades of impunity, preferential treatment and lack of international accountability by the international community. Words are not enough to describe or stop this horror; action is needed.

We conclude this SOS appeal by reminding our sisters and allies around the world that our rights, our dignity, and our humanity are indivisible. Forsaking Palestinian victims now for political convenience would be an unforgivable betrayal to decades of sacrifice and feminist struggle.

We call for:

• The international community must employ all available tools of international accountability, including political and economic sanctions, to bring an immediate and lasting ceasefire and provision of unconditional humanitarian aid.

• States must immediately impose an arms embargo on Israel and honor their moral and legal obligations, including those pronounced in the Genocide Convention.

• States need to investigate and prosecute Israeli soldiers with dual citizenship implicated in these atrocities.

• The Special Representative of the Secretary General on Sexual Violence in Conflict must honor her mandate and launch an immediate investigation into the ongoing atrocities.

• Feminists around the world must sound the alarm globally on the unspeakable human rights violations taking place in Gaza, namely the sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian women and girls.

• Journalists and media outlets must do their due diligence in reporting on these stories through fair and unbiased coverage.

Signatories:

1. American Federation of Ramallah Palestine
2. Association of women’s Action
3. AWMR Italia - Donne della Regione Mediterranea
4. Bisan Center for Research and Development
5. Community Development and Media Center
6. Cultura è libertà una campagna per la Palestina
7. Enjaz Foundation for development
8. Filastiniyat
9. Human Rights and Democracy Media Center SHAMS
10. Institute of Women's Studies
11. Not to forget women society
12. Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)
13. Palestinian Women's Action committee
14. Rete Femminista Marche Molto+di194
15. Rural Women Development Society
16. Sinal do Vale
17. Singola
18. Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice
19. The center for defense of liberties and civil rights “Hurryyat”
20. The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - MIFTAH
21. The Palestinian Working Woman Society for Development-PWWSD
22. The Regional Coalition for Women Human Rights Defenders in Southwest Asia and North Africa (WHRDMENA)
23. Union of Palestinian Women Committees
24. Wattan media network
25. Women Media and Development
26. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
27. رابطة المرأة العراقية
28. شبكة المستقبل الديمقراطية العراقية

We, at the Palestinian NGO Forum to Combat Violence against Women and all Arab women’s and rights organizations raise our voices loud and clear on the eve of March 8, to say: “Stop the onslaught and crimes against women and children in Gaza. Stop the crime of genocide, the crime of starvation and forced displacement”. So far, this aggression has resulted in the killing of 31,000 Palestinians, over 70% of whom are women and children. Two women are killed every hour , in addition to many others still under the rubble. There are women whose fate is unknown, after being taken away by occupation forces.

Who will restore normalcy for us Palestinian women after these atrocities?

We have always held activities on March 8. We had a long list of rights we demanded and others we were able to achieve. However today, as the women of Gaza are being annihilated, we stand the length and breadth of our homeland and our Arab nations, angry, in a state of revolution and in deep mourning. Our demand today is to halt the genocide in the Gaza Strip and to halt the reproductive genocide against our women. We declare this day the day of Palestinian women, as they stand hungry in long queues, waiting for insufficient aid, terrified of the skies above them, filled with missiles of death. This is for the women whose bodies are exhausted, in camps for the displaced and in shelter centers, for those raped in prison and for their naked bodies stripped at checkpoints. It is for the menstruating women who cannot find sanitary products and for those with high-risk pregnancies who are starving, displaced and bombed. It is for the women whose wombs may be removed for the simplest of medical complications and those whose privacy has been violated because of overcrowded tents and displacement. It is for the mothers who could die at any moment and for all women whose Palestinianism has crucified humanity at the altar, amid deafening Arab silence, boundless American support and the complicity of several European countries.

Nevertheless, we continue to appreciate all forms of Arab and international support and solidarity with the Palestinian cause, which shows respect for our people’s dignity. Widening this solidarity will further reaffirm the justness of our cause. Hence, we await more action and movements in solidarity of our right to demand an immediate end to the genocide in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Jerusalem, to forge our way forward towards freedom, self-determination and the establishment of an independent and fully-sovereign Palestinian state.

Today, we Palestinian and Arab women, reaffirm the following on March 8 and every day forward:

- To put pressure on Israel to immediately halt its aggression and to hold its leaders accountable for their crimes in violation of international law, the Fourth Geneva Convention and all international laws and treaties, towards delegitimizing this occupying entity.

- To open the Rafah Crossing and all crossings to allow aid in and the wounded out for treatment

- To dismantle the land corridor linking Israel with some Arab countries supplying it with goods

Long Live Palestinian Women, who stand steadfast and resistant in the face of the Zionist aggression We speak in the voices of Gaza’s women and say:

Halt the genocide…halt the onslaught immediately!

In a recent statement, nearly five months into the Israeli genocide in Gaza, several UN experts confirmed the various reports and testimonies that have been coming from Palestinian women and human rights organizations for months now. In Gaza, women have been kidnapped and forcibly disappeared and placed in dire conditions in undisclosed locations. In the occupied West Bank, released prisoners testified on the horrific realities inside Israeli prisons and the widespread torture and ill-treatment where sexual violence is used as a weapon employed against both women and men. The targeting of women and girls with such atrocious crimes is targeting the most vulnerable, in an attempt to break and degrade the society as a whole.

The inaction and failure of the international community to stop Israeli crimes, namely the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and other heinous crimes all across Palestine for decades now has emboldened Israel to act with impunity. This allows Israel to continue committing horrific crimes against Palestinian women and girls, namely rape and other forms of sexual violence and torture.

The silence of “Western” feminists has also been appalling, given their earlier outrage about unsubstantiated Israeli allegations which were used to justify and commit the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

First and foremost, we demand an immediate ceasefire and the unconditional provision of humanitarian aid. In order to put an end to such heinous crimes and impunity, we reiterate the need for an independent international investigation into all crimes, especially sexual violence, followed by international accountability for the perpetrators.