The Electronic Intifada Podcast 1 February 2021
On Episode 29 of The Electronic Intifada Podcast, we speak with Issa Amro, co-founder of the activist group Youth Against Settlements in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
Amro has faced indictments for years over his campaigns of nonviolent civil disobedience against encroaching Israeli settlements inside the city and the apartheid system maintained and protected by Israeli soldiers.
On 6 January, Amro was convicted in an Israeli military court on six charges, including three counts of protesting without a permit, two counts of disrupting the activities of Israeli soldiers and one count of assault on a soldier.
“My ask is not to stop going after me,” Amro tells us. “My ask is to close the Israeli military courts. My ask is to end the Israeli military system … if they don’t put me in jail this time, they will put me in jail the next time I protest.”
He faces a sentencing hearing on 8 February.
United Nations experts stated on 26 January that Amro’s conviction “is part of a clear and systematic pattern of detention, judicial harassment and intimidation by Israel of human rights defenders, a pattern that has increased in intensity recently.”A petition calling on the UN to protect Amro is gathering signatures.
Articles we discussed
- “Foot soldiers of the colonizer state,” Maureen Clare Murphy
- “Issa Amro: They are trying to put me in jail,” Nora Barrows-Friedman
- “Israel to expand colonization of Hebron,” Miriam Deprez
Theme music by Sharif Zakout
Photo of Issa Amro by Claire Thomas
Music: “Enough” by Maysa Daw
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