Jonathan Pollak (born c. 1982) is an Israeli activist and graphic designer who works for Haaretz. [1] [2] He co-founded the direct action group Anarchists Against the Wall.
Jonathan Pollak (born c. 1982) is an Israeli activist and graphic designer who works for Haaretz. [1] [2] He co-founded the direct action group Anarchists Against the Wall.
Jonathan Pollak was born around 1982 in Tel Aviv, Israel to actor Yossi Pollak and a psychologist named Tami. [3] [4] He is an Ashkenazi Jew. [5] His father is an artist who refuses to perform in the West Bank, and his maternal grandfather, Nimrod Eshel, was imprisoned for leading a strike by seamen during the 1950s. [6] As a teenager, Pollak was involved in the Israeli hardcore punk scene, which in the 1990s was strongly tied to anarchism, and became a straight edge. [7] At the same time, Pollak became a vegan and an animal rights activist; years later he would state that "racism, chauvinism, sexism, speciesism all come from the same place of belittling the other". [6]
Jonathan Pollak is the brother of actor Avshalom Pollak and film director Shai Pollak. [1]
In 2003, Pollak co-founded the organization Anarchists Against the Wall, which protests the Israeli West Bank barrier. [7] He participated in protests in Budrus in 2003 and 2004. [8] In the mid-2000s, he joined protests against the barrier wall in Bil'in. [9]
Pollak was struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired by an Israeli soldier in April 2005; he briefly lost consciousness and required stitches. He later accused Israeli forces of violating their regulations by deliberately firing the canister at him. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson stated that the canister had first struck a rock and then hit Pollak on a ricochet. [10]
In October 2010, Pollak was fined $1,250 for participating in an illegal demonstration against the barrier; Palestinian activist Abdullah Abu Rahma was sentenced to a year in prison at the same hearing. [11] On 27 December 2010, he was sentenced to three months in prison for illegal assembly for having participated in a January 2008 bicycle ride protest. A prison term for illegal assembly was an unusually severe sentence, attributed by one official to Pollak's three previous convictions on protest-related charges. [12] He declined an offer by the court to have his sentence commuted to a community service requirement. Pollak was released from prison in February 2011 after having his sentence reduced for good behavior, and returned to demonstrating at the Palestinian village of Nabi Salih within the week. [13]
After the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah in January 2011, from tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers, Pollak criticized Israel's use of the gas against Palestinians, stating: "This death was caused by the fact that they are using tear gas that was banned in Europe in the 60s and 70s, because it is lethal. But here, on Palestinians, they continue using it". [14] In May 2012, Pollak protested at the trial of Bassem al-Tamimi, a Nabi Saleh protest leader accused of organizing stone throwers and holding illegal demonstrations. [15] In December, Pollak criticized the Israel Defense Forces for shooting in the face Mustafa Tamimi, a Nabi Saleh resident throwing stones at a military vehicle, who was struck with a tear gas canister; Tamimi later died from his injuries. [16]
Pollak supports the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in protest at the occupation of the Palestinian territories. [5] He has stated: "'Ni'lin, just like Soweto, needs the world to stand behind it and generate significant pressure. ... In Palestine, just as in South Africa, a strong BDS movement can make that change." [17] He has defended Palestinian stone throwing against Israeli soldiers as a moral act of self-empowerment. [4]
On 27 February 2018, a criminal complaint was filed against three activists in the organization Anarchists Against the Fence; Jonathan Pollak, Kobi Snitz, and Ilan Schleif. [18] The complaint was filed by the organization Ad Kan in association with soldiers affected by demonstrations the three used to organize. Pollak, Snitz, and Shliff are charged with assaulting soldiers and police and organizing events in which security forces were wounded. [19] On 6 January 2020, Pollak was arrested and imprisoned for not attending court hearings related to the case. Pollak said he does not accept the authority of Israeli courts to hear matters relating to “resisting israeli colonial rule”. [20]
In early July 2019, Pollak was physically assaulted by two men who waited outside of his workplace and slashed him across the face with a knife. Pollak would not report the attack to the police. "My experience of the police is that they inflict more harm on us then what I just went through," he said. "The police is the last place in the world I'd go to for protection." [21]
On 6 September 2024, Pollak attended the weekly demonstration in Beita. He was at the protest when Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot and killed. The same day, he provided an account of the events leading to her death to Associated Press. [22]
The International Solidarity Movement is a Palestinian-led movement focused on assisting the Palestinian cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. ISM is dedicated to the use of nonviolent protests and methods only. The organization calls on civilians from around the world to participate in acts of nonviolent protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The ISM participates in the Free Gaza Movement.
Anarchists Against the Wall sometimes called "Anarchists Against Fences" or "Jews Against Ghettos", was a direct action group composed of Israeli anarchists and anti-authoritarians who opposed the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier.
Bil'in is a Palestinian village located in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) west of the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Bil'in had a population of 2,137 in 2017. In the 2000s, it was known for its regular protests against Israeli occupation.
Anarchism in Israel has been observed in the early Kibbutz movement, among early Labor Zionists as well as an organised movement in Israel following the 1948 Palestine war. Anarchism has also had a mixed relationship with Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with +972 Magazine publishing an article claiming anarchists were "the only group in Israel engaged in serious anti-occupation activism." Animal rights are notably popular among Israeli anarchists, even when compared to anarchist movements in other countries.
Ni'lin is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of the State of Palestine, in the central West Bank, located 17 kilometers (11 mi) west of Ramallah. Ni'lin is about 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) east of the 1949 Armistice Line bordered by Deir Qaddis, the Israeli settlements of Nili and Na'ale to the northeast, the village of al-Midya and Modi'in Illit settlement bloc are to the south, Budrus (4 km) and Qibya (5 km) villages are located to the northwest. The town's total land area consists of approximately 15,000 dunams of which 660 is urban. Under the Oslo II agreement, 93% of town lands has been classed as 'Area C'.
Halamish, also known as Neveh Tzuf, is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, located in the southwestern Samarian hills to the north of Ramallah, 10.7 kilometers east of the Green line. The Orthodox Jewish community was established in 1977. It is organised as a community settlement and falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Binyamin Regional Council. In 2022 it had a population of 1,590. On a hill within the settlement is Hovlata, an archeological site dating to the Hasmonean period.
Skunk is a malodorant, non-lethal weapon used for crowd control by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and marketed to militaries and law enforcement around the world. It was developed and is manufactured by Odortec, with two supporting companies, Man and Beit-Alfa Technologies. The liquid's strong odor is marketed as an improvement over other crowd control weapons (CCWs) such as rubber bullets and tear gas used by the IDF against Palestinian protestors. The IDF has been criticized for its tactics during deployment, including common use against people, businesses, and neighborhoods not involved in protests as a form of collective punishment.
Nabi Salih is a small Palestinian village in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate in the central West Bank, located 20 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. It had a population of 522 in 2017. It is noted for the weekly marches to protest the occupation undertaken since 2010, a practice suspended in 2016, after 350 villagers were estimated to have suffered injuries in clashes with Israeli troops over that period.
Nakba Day in 2011 was the annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people marking the Nakba—the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. Generally held on May 15, commemorative events in 2011 began on May 10, in the form of march by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel on Israel's Independence Day. On May 13, clashes between stone-throwing youths and Israeli security forces in East Jerusalem resulted in one Palestinian fatality, and clashes continued there and in parts of the West Bank in the days following.
Bassem Tamimi is a Palestinian grassroots activist and an organizer of protests against Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank. He was convicted by an Israeli military court in 2012 for "sending people to throw stones, and holding a march without a permit".
Iyad Burnat is a Palestinian activist who leads Bil'in's non-violent struggle in the West Bank. He is the head of the Bil'in Popular Committee against the Wall, which has led weekly demonstrations since 2005 against the Israeli West Bank barrier. He is also head of Friends of Freedom and Justice in Bil’in, a pro-Palestinian organization with the stated aims of building a "wide network of people from all over the globe who support Freedom and Justice for all"
The Beitunia killings refers to the consecutive killings of two Palestinian teenagers which took place on the occasion of the annual Nakba Day protests on May 15, 2014, near the Israeli Ofer Prison outside Beitunia in the occupied West Bank. Israel described the protest as a riot in which a crowd refused to disperse, and initially denied responsibility, saying the cause of the deaths was unknown, the deaths were faked, that video clips of the killings either failed to capture the violence of the scene shortly before or might have been manipulated, that soldiers had been provoked, and that only rubber bullets had been fired.
Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi is a Jordanian national known for assisting in carrying out the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem, in 2001. She was convicted by an Israeli military tribunal and received multiple life sentences, but was released in 2011 as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange and exiled to Jordan. She hosts a television show about Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel is a New York-based organization that campaigns for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. “Adalah” is the Arabic word for “justice.”
Al-Shuhada Street, nicknamed Apartheid Street by Palestinians and King David Street by Israeli settlers, is a street in the Old City of Hebron.
BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within, commonly known as Boycott from Within, is an association of Jewish and Arab Israelis who support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Founded in 2008, it describes itself as following the guiding principles and sharing the goals of the Palestinian BDS movement, as delineated by Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
The American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 2006.
Ahed Tamimi is a Palestinian activist from the village of Nabi Salih in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Best known for appearances in photos and videos in which she confronts Israeli soldiers, she has been hailed by pro-Palestinian activists as a symbol of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation. Her memoir They Called Me a Lioness was published in 2022.
Mustafa Tamimi, a 28-year-old Palestinian taxi driver, was killed when he was hit by a tear gas canister by Israeli forces fired from close range and striking him directly in the face on 9 December 2011 during a weekly protest in Nabi Salih, West Bank. The tear gas canister that struck him was fired from the rear door of a military vehicle at which he was throwing stones while running after it. The incident raised questions about Israeli military behavior when engaging with the demonstrators.
Gabriela "Gaby" Lasky Schutz is an Israeli politician, attorney, feminist, human rights activist, and social activist. From 2021 until 2022 she served as a member of the Knesset representing Meretz. She was a member of the Tel Aviv city council between 2013 and 2018, representing Meretz, and was the secretary general of the Israeli peace organization Peace Now. As a human rights attorney, Lasky documents and responds to cases of torture, false imprisonment, and police brutality within Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.