The Russell Tribunal on Palestine - The Movie

I am from a small village in the West Bank called Nabi Saleh which began to demonstrate once a week, four years ago, against the stealing of our land by the settlers more than 35 years ago.

Bilal Tamimi

"May this tribunal prevent the crime of silence"

Bertrand Russel

I now officially declare open the final session of the tribunal

Today our task here as members of the Russel Tribunal on Palestine is very simple, very clear, very uncontroversial.

We are here to say what violations of international law

is being committed of which the Palestinian people has been suffering from for the last sixty years.

We are here to say that any country member of the United Nations

and that is the case of France, South Africa and of Israel, has a committment to the charter,

which is to implement the texts

that have been submitted and adopted by the international organisation.

The Russell Tribunal has no legal status but acts as a court of the people

a Tribunal of conscience, faced with injustices and violations of international law

that are not dealt with by existing international jurisdictions

or that are recognised but continue with complete impunity due to the lack of

political will of the international community.

More than 80 experts and witnesses worked together during these four sessions

in Barcelona, London, Cape Town and New York

They were accompanied by an extraordinary team of legal experts

in international law.

The forces at work in Palestine, much the same as the forces at work elsewhere,

are recognising that the chips are down,

and that there is action being taken. And there is an interesting correlation and connection -

Tony mentioned it - the connection between these various movements and the Palestinians.

Because they all recognise that what the Palestinians have had to put up with

for 60 years, sometimes much longer, than they have

is their struggle.

You know that from my roof, in [town] which is 15km from the Mediterranean Sea

I can see the sea, I can see it.

Totally clear to see it, but I haven't been there and I am not managing to be there and to be in this sea.

Today as we speak, there's Palestinian workers stopped at checkpoints

that can't get through being held up by 18 year old soldiers.

There are farmers watching their lands but unable to get to them.

There are Palestinians tour drivers showing tourists parts of Palestine

that they cannot get to, and having to smile while doing it to make a living.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947 and 48 that led to the flight of over three quarters

of the Palestinian population, is the starting point of any explanation of the evolution of Palestinian labour conditions.

Palestinian workers today are spread across many geographical regions. Refugees like myself denied

our right to return to our homes, those living in the West Bank and Gaza strip, in scattered population centres

divided from one another by Israeli settlements, military checkpoints and Israeli-only highways.

And finally there are Palestinian workers who are citizens of the state of Israel.

Each of these groups of Palestinian workers face harsh conditions to various degrees

but their conditions stem from the multi-tiered system of colonialism, occupation and apartheid

imposed on them by the Israeli state.

This is a story of a grandfather talking with his grandson.

The grandson says, "But I can't dig up this stake."

And the grandfather answers, "You know, if you want to, and pull only once,

you'll never manage this. On the contrary, if you move it in every direction

back and forth, from left to right,

one day you'll dig up that stake."

The third international session of the RToP took place in Cape Town, on 5, 6 and 7 November 2011.

It asked the question: "Are Israel's practices against the Palestinian People in breach of the prohibition

on apartheid under International Law?"

We use the word apartheid in Israel, officially!

In other words, the word we use, the name of our policy towards the Palestinians is called "fhafrada" in Hebrew - FHAFRADA.

Fhafrada in Hebrew means apartheid.

A separateness - to separate.

We simply say it in Hebrew rather than Afrikaans, but it's the same concept.

And in fact, the official name of the wall is not the security barrier, because that really wasn't built for security,

but the official name of the wall is the Separation Barrier

And Israel calls the line of the wall, I was going to show it on a slide but we don't have it, but Israel calls

the torturous line of the wall that intrudes deeply into Palestinian territory its demographic border.

Its security border is the Jordan river, but the demographic border

is, is, and this is all in documents and government statements, this isn't something secret that I'm revealing today,

it's up front and it's explicit and I think it conforms to what Leya was saying.

Desmond Tutu: Archbishop of Cape Town - Nobel Peace Prize.

When you go to the Holy Land, for us, not having been drilled by anybody,

for us, for me, it has been such an uncanny

such an agonising thing,

to see a replay of what used to happen here.

John Dugard: In many respects the apartheid regime was much more honest.

Because the laws of apartheid were openly

legislated in Parliament and they were clear for all to see.

Whereas the laws governing Palestinians in the Palestinian territory are largely contained in obscure military decrees

or inherited emergency regulations which are virtually inaccessible.

Diane Buttu - I recognise that law is derived from power, I recognise that the way that laws are made is not some organic

force, but that there is the push of power that creates laws.

But that said, I think that we generally know what is just and what is injust.

And what the United States has attempted to do in Palestine is to make what is unjust seem just.

What is illegal, seem legal.

Susan Akram: The Palestinian people constitute one of the largest and longest standing unresolved situations of displacement in the world.

About half the refugees in the world are Palestinian.

Approximately 66%, or 7.4 million of the entire population of 11.2 million Palestinians, is forcibly displaced.

Among those displaced are at least 6.8 million Palestinian refugees and another 519 thousand internally displaced persons.

The New York session of the Tribunal focused on the complicity of the United States of America

and the failings of the United Nations regarding

the Israeli breaches of international law towards Palestine and Palestinians.

Ilan Pappe: Before the Arab world decided to use force in order to reject the Partition planned by the United Nations, namely before

the 15th May 1948, and before it was clear what the positions of the sides were because of the United Nations deliberations on

Palestine continued. Before these deliberations ended, already half of the Palestinians became refugees.

Johan Galtung: I know perfectly well that sociocide is not an object of positive international law.

I can sense one reason why - this is what Western colonialism is about.

It was also about killing, it was also about destroying nature,

but it was above all tearing apart, fragmenting, marginalising local indigenous societies.

Haneen Zoabi: In an official discourse, in the Israeli official discourse starting from 2007,

the head of the Israeli intelligence Yuval Diskin has described the Palestinians, of course those who don't accept the rules of the game as a threat.

Phyllis Bennis: Our job, as civil society, is to pick up the slack when the United Nations fails to do the job it is mandated to do

because the United States government refuses to allow it to do what it is mandated to do.

That's our job. That's the job of civil society. That was the reason that the largest of the United States mobilisations

on February 15th 2003, and there were 250 some demonstrations across this country, but by far the largest

was at the foot of the United Nations. Because we were saying to the United Nations the same thing that people around the world

were saying. The world says no to war. Well now, the world is saying no to Israeli occupation and apartheid.

Roger Walters: Your resolutions trace the history of Israeli violations. You regret, you deplore, you even condemn the violations

but when have your resolutions been implemented?

It is not enough to deplore, condemn. What we need is for the United Nations, for you Exellencies, your governments and the General Assembly

in which you serve, to take seriously your responsibility to protect Palestinians

living under occupation and facing the daily violation of their inalienable rights of self-determination and equality.

The will of we, the people of these United Nations, is that all our brothers and sisters

should be free to live in self-determination.

That the oppressed should be released from their burden by being given recourse to the law.

Angela Davies: And I want to begin by emphatically asserting that the important work of the Russell Tribunal

on Palestine is not over.

And so now is the time to issue the strongest possible condemnation of Israel.

We demand that the state of Israel immediately dismantle its system of apartheid,

not only in the Occupied Territories but also in relation to Palestinian refugees

and inside Israel itself

We demand in the strongest possible terms that Israel rescind all discriminatory laws and practices

and that it immediately halt its persecution of Palestinians wherever they may reside.

the legitimacy of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine does not come from a government or any political party,

but from the prestige, professional interests and commitment to fundamental right

of the Members that constitute this Tribunal.