Bedouin & Brous & Bustan - Part 5

Today is Day 14,261 of the Maintenance of the Immoral (and Illegal) West Bank Settlements and almost the 40th anniversary of the start of the immoral (and illegal) occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Micah.6:8 “He has told you, O man, Only to do justice and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God

So much attention is appropriately devoted to the terrible illegal and immoral occupation and settlements and the terrible situation of the Palestinians. What is quite overlooked is the deplorable and shameful discrimination of the Israeli government towards the Bedouin CITIZENS OF ISRAEL LIVING IN ISRAEL.

AND NOW DEVORAH IS COMING TO THE UNITED STATES ON A FUND-RAISING TOUR. I HAVE REPRINTED HER SCHEDULE AND ENCOURAGE YOU TO EITHER HOST AN EVENT OR ATTEND ONE SO THAT YOU CAN HEAR HER DESCRIBE AND SHOW YOU SOME OF HER EXTENSIVE AND REMARKABLE HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVITIES IN WHICH SHE HAS BEEN INVOLVED.

Devorah Brous — Founder, Director BUSTAN
An American-Israeli, Brous graduated from the University of Vermont, and moved to Israel in 1993. She has spent the past 13 years catalyzing projects and designing, and running campaigns in Israel and the Occupied Territories to promote social and environmental justice. Devorah holds 2 masters degrees in Israel Studies and Peace/Conflict Studies, with a concentration in conflict transformation. In 1999, she founded BUSTAN. Brous is a writer, and an internationally-renowned speaker on the conflict between Israel and the Bedouin; Greenwashing; and the political and strategic aspects of environmental policies in the region.

BUSTAN is a partnership of Jewish and Arab eco-builders, architects, academics, and farmers promoting social and environmental justice in Israel/Palestine. BUSTAN cultivates sustainable models to effect change by combining advocacy and in-depth political analysis with strategic action. BUSTAN utilizes the principles of permaculture and non-violent direct action across ethnic divides.

Devorah will speak the unspoken and help us recognize what is 'unrecognized' in Israel's Negev - an area populated by Jews and Bedouin, rife with divisions. What can we do to catalyze and steward a healthy and sustainable connection with the Land, and all of its people? Is the future of the Negev a demographic battleground and a neglected, contaminated pocket of civil strife in the desert? Come and feel a gentle desert breeze and learn about BUSTAN, engaged as a vanguard of small-scale, local efforts to root social change.

TOUR SCHEDULE
May 5th - fly Tel Aviv to Newark
May 6th - Sonoma, CA - May 10th
May 10th - San Francisco, CA - May 15th
May 15th - LA - May 25th
May 25th - Maine
May 27th - Boston
May 28th - NJ, NY, PA - June 3rd
June 4th/6th - Lexington, Kentucky
June 6th - West Palm, Florida
June 9th - Newark to Tel Aviv

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SOLAR MEDICAL EQUIPMENT CIRCULATED
TO BEDOUIN CHILDREN DENIED ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY
April 20, 2007
(Jerusalem , Israel) – Israeli Environmental Justice NGO's Children's Power Project connects children of the Negev to electricity.

Recently, the Israeli NGO BUSTAN connected 2 year-old Mohammed Abu Kaf, suffering from severe apnea and unable to breathe through the night, with a solar-powered oxygen machine. Prominent UK physicians and top scholars and administrators at Ben Gurion University attended the unveiling of the solar unit by BUSTAN in association with our partner Gil Nezer of Interdan solar company. The move is part of a wider effort called the Children's Power Project.

The Children's Power Project involves the distribution of assorted solar-powered equipment to refrigerate medications, power oxygen machines, and heat the homes of premature babies. BUSTAN is circulating the equipment throughout villages remote from roads, public transportation, and health services. 45 unrecognized Bedouin villages, constituting roughly 80,000 people, have been denied electricity by the Israeli government. Yet even 'recognized' villages suffer lack of service and resource access: Mohammed's village, Umbatin has recently been 'recognized' by the Israeli government, yet still there is no electricity in the village.

Why is an NGO providing electricity instead of the government of Israel? In addition to working with citizens that fall through multilayered cracks in the social welfare and freemarket system, and seeking to save the lives of Bedouin children requiring access to electricity in order to recover from serious health conditions, BUSTAN's Children's Power Project is aimed at raising awareness of governmental neglect of the rights of Bedouin citizens of Israel to equitable services and a healthy environment.

BUSTAN Director Devorah Brous asserts: "Planning regulations in Israel are used in a political manner , to justify unequal provision of basic amenities and social services to its citizens. BUSTAN sees this as a manipulation of laws that should benefit all of Israel's citizens. We call on the State of Israel to facilitate fair application of the law, implement necessary regulation reforms, or where this is not possible, to have the courage to transform the fundamental structures which impede equitable and healthy relations between Arabs and Jews."

This phase of the project rides on previous successes. Two years ago, BUSTAN worked with Dr. Yusef el Atrash to build a solar powered refrigerator to chill cancer medications for his 3 year-old daughter, Enas el Atrash (see The Guardian, 2005). Today, Enas, now 4 years old, is in remission from her cancer , and her family is no longer in need of the photovoltaic system and refrigerator built with the help of the funder, Ameinu, in 2005.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, Devorah Brous : mailto:devorah@bustan.org, (972) 0523 711 800 BUSTAN: P.O. Box 6955, Jerusalem, Israel 91060http://www.bustan.org/


United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination Signed by Israel 7 March 1966: Ratified by Israel: 3 January 1979In compliance with the fundamental obligations laid down in article 2 of this Convention, (Israel) undertakes to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights:The right to equal treatment before the tribunals and all other organs administering justice;The right to own property alone as well as in association with others;The right to housing;The right to public health, medical care, social security and social services;The right to education and training;The right to equal participation in cultural activities.

Deutoronomy 16:20 – “Justice, justice shall you pursue that you may live and inherit the land which God gave you” and the footnote in the 1980 Hertz Edition “(T)here is international justice, which demands respect for the personality of every national group, and proclaims that no people can of right be robbed of its national life or territory, its language or spiritual heritage.”