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Issue No. 14, September 2008 | Donate  | Subscribe 
In Brief

Transportation for Schoolchildren

As a result of a petition submitted by ACRI and our partners, hundreds of schoolchildren from the Dahmesh neighborhood of Ramle will realize their right to free transportation to schools starting this month. The Ramle Municipality had provided transportation for schoolchildren in the neighborhood until 2005, when it decided to cancel the service, claiming that the entire neighborhood, which has existed for decades, was built illegally and was thus "unrecognized." In the ruling, the Court stated that it was not appropriate to charge parents for school transportation services, and that the Municipality's refusal to provide this service violated the neighborhood children's right to education.
 
Providing Rightful Refuge

Following an urgent petition ACRI submitted on August 3 to the Supreme Court, Israel reneged on its decision to send 188 Fatah supporters back to the conflict-ridden Gaza Strip after they sought refuge in Israel. In its petition, ACRI claimed that returning the individuals would directly violate the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees to which Israel is a signatory – most specifically the notion of "non-refoulement," which prevents states from sending asylum-seekers into life-endangering situations. For additional details, click here.
 
Protecting Privacy

In response to the Cabinet's authorization of a biometric database that would contain the fingerprints and facial features of all residents and citizens of Israel, ACRI issued a public statement against the initiative stating that it would constitute a dangerous precedent and a massive breach of privacy. In a wide-reaching public campaign, ACRI called on Knesset members to vote against the establishment of the biometric database to preserve the right to privacy for all. For additional details, click here.
 
Expanding the Health Basket – For All

ACRI, as part of a coalition of 14 civil-society organizations, in collaboration with Knesset Member Haim Oron scored an important victory on June 30 when a draft bill to increase the universal basket of services automatically by 2% each year was passed in its first reading in the Knesset. The bill, if legislated, will save the lives of thousands of Israelis, for whom life-saving services and medications have become unreachable with the proliferation of supplementary health insurance.
 
Public Hotline Success Story

In June, ACRI's public hotline won a hard-fought battle, following more than two years of intensive advocacy before the Interior Ministry, when the daughter of an Israeli Arab citizen now residing in the U.S. finally received her Israeli citizenship. The young woman should have received citizenship automatically because her mother, a citizen, was born in Palestine in 1945, but Interior Ministry officials repeatedly erected obstacles before her and had even detained her during one of her attempts to enter the country.
 
Demanding Justice in Ni'lin

On August 19, ACRI and three partner NGOs submitted an urgent petition against the Judge Advocate General’s decision to prosecute a battalion commander and soldier, who shot a Palestinian with a rubber bullet at close range while the latter was handcuffed and blindfolded, for “unbecoming conduct,” a light offense that does not result in a criminal record. Consequently, the Court ordered the State to respond to the petition within 21 days and issued an interim order, suspending military court proceedings until further notice. ACRI submitted the petition in cooperation with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and Yesh Din, as well as B'Tselem, the organization responsible for documenting the shooting. Photo: Courtesy of B'Tselem. For details, click here.
 
ACRI's Public Hotline

ACRI operates a “Public Hotline” for consultation and information on rights entitlement: 02-6521218 (Jerusalem and the south), 03-5608185 (Tel Aviv, the Sharon area and the center of the country), and 04-8526333/4/5 (Haifa and the north of the country).
 
 

© ACRI 2008
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
PO Box 34510
Jerusalem 91000
Israel

Tel: +972-2-652-1218
Fax: +972-2-652-1219
E-mail: mail@acri.org.il
www.acri.org.il

Click here to make a secure online donation through PayPal to ACRI.

 
A Letter from Hagai El-Ad, ACRI's Executive Director


Dear Friends, 

I am happy to present you with ACRI's latest newsletter and also to introduce myself as ACRI's new executive director. I am very excited and humbled to have assumed this important position, and I would like to thank my predecessor, Rachel Benziman, for her tremendous dedication and for leaving such an incredible legacy. Over the past two months, I have been busy getting to know the outstanding team of professionals and activists who make up ACRI's Board and staff, learning about the details of ACRI's vast, important, and effective body of work, and embarking on a broad organizational process aimed at defining and renewing our strategy for 2009. Needless to say, it's been a stimulating and eventful summer.  For more details on a few of the directions ACRI is looking toward, click here.

In this issue, we have highlighted the recent achievements of our Education Department, including the very exciting news that Sharaf Hassan, a veteran educator and ACRI's Coordinator for Human Rights Education in the Arab School System for the past nine years, has recently taken the helm as department director. This newsletter also reaches you at the start of the new academic year. As in the past, ACRI is at the forefront of efforts to promote the right to education for all children in Israel and the OPT. As you will read here, ACRI and our partners were responsible for forcing the Ramle Municipality to provide free transportation for the hundreds of schoolchildren living in the unrecognized neighborhood of Dahmesh. Also, ACRI is working intensively in East Jerusalem to ensure that children there can study in the Municipality's public classrooms. We will update you on our progress in East Jerusalem in ACRI's next newsletter.

As you will learn by reading the rest of this newsletter, ACRI's education department is headed toward new horizons. There is no better time than the beginning of a new school year to take part in the innovative educational initiatives underway at ACRI. Your gift in support of ACRI's efforts to foster a culture of human rights in Israel is an investment not only in ACRI's future, but also in the future of Israeli society. You can make an online donation through PayPal by clicking here; to make a tax-deductible donation or to find out more about giving options, contact Gila Orkin at gila@acri.org.il and she will be happy to provide further details.

With Best Wishes,

Hagai El-Ad
Executive Director
 
Sharaf Hassan: ACRI's New Education Director


In July, ACRI welcomed Sharaf Hassan as the new director of its Education Department. Sharaf replaces Dubit Ater, who managed the department for some 10 years.

Sharaf is an experienced educator and group facilitator. Before becoming Education Department director, he coordinated ACRI's human rights education programs in the Arab school system for nine years. Since 1995, he has taught civics, sociology, and political science at the high school level. In addition, Sharaf has long been actively involved in a range of local and national civil society initiatives, including the Student Movement and Amnesty International - Israel Branch. Sharaf holds a master's degree in sociology as well as a teacher's diploma from Haifa University. He is currently completing a doctorate in sociology at Tel Aviv University. Contact him at sharef@acri.org.il.
 
ACRI Launches Groundbreaking Program for Prison Staff


ACRI's Education Department recently completed the pilot stage of a groundbreaking project to acquaint the staff of security prisons, in which Palestinian security prisoners and detainees are held, with human rights values in the context of their work. Through the workshops, we aim to provide participants with tools to implement human rights values and ethical and humanitarian considerations to best fulfill their professional duties. With the completion of the program's pilot stage at two security prisons this summer, ACRI plans to work with the staff of seven more prisons throughout Israel in the coming months, reaching close to 200 security staff.
 
Promoting Access to Health 
in the South
As part of our Right to Health Project, ACRI launched an innovative new program, matching social and community workers from communities in the South with local activists in order to facilitate initiatives to improve access to health-care in their specific communities. The program's inauguration took place on June 17 at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, where 25 community activists and three social workers from the towns of Rahat, Netivot, and Arad met to set goals and expectations for the coming period.
 
Reclaiming the Right to Housing


On July 13, ACRI released a groundbreaking report entitled "Real Estate or Rights: Housing Rights and Government Policy in Israel," urging the government to take responsibility for safeguarding the right to housing of all Israelis. The report, written by ACRI Attorney Gil Gan-Mor, found that although the government neglects its obligation to ensure the right to adequate housing for all Israelis, it is the poor and Israel's minority populations who suffer the most. To read the English summary of the report, click here. To view our photo gallery of Israel's housing crisis, click here and for an accompanying video (in Hebrew), click here. The report received widespread attention in the Israeli media, and among key decision-makers. 

Since the report's publication, we are happy to report that as a result of a petition submitted by ACRI to the Jerusalem Administrative Court, the Housing and Construction Ministry published all of its criteria and procedures relating to housing assistance on its Web site, a step which eases the procedures for applying for assistance for hundreds of thousands of Israelis. In addition, on August 24, ACRI submitted a petition to the Tel Aviv Administrative Court against a tender for a housing project in the city's center that would limit buyers to hi-tech and other high-income professionals. Photo credit: Activestills.org.