add more sources + dateScrapedDate

README.md

@@ -23,9 +23,11 @@ A curated dataset focused on authentic Palestinian narratives and reporting.
 Current sources:
 
 * decolonizepalestine.com - Educational content and historical documentation
-* electronicintifada.net - 2500 articles
-* palianswers - A crowdsourced database of short responses to Zionist lies
+* electronicintifada.net - 2000 articles
+* palianswers.com - A crowdsourced database of short responses to Zionist lies
 * english.khamenei.ir/news - Articles tagged with FreePalestine
+* mondoweiss.net - 2500 article of news and analysis
+* stand-with-palestine.org - interviews and articles
 
 ## Purpose
 
@@ -50,28 +52,6 @@ The repository is organized as follows:
   * `combined_with_metadata.csv` and `combined_with_metadata.jsonl` - Combined data with additional metadata
 * `texts` directory - Individual numbered text files
 * `texts_with_metadata` directory - Text files with metadata information
-
-`decolonizepalestine`
-
-* Data scraped from decolonizepalestine.com
-* Includes raw `texts`, `CSV`, and `JSONL` formats
-* Original `website content` preserved
-
-`khamenei-ir-free-palestine-tag`
-
-* Content from english.khamenei.ir tagged with FreePalestine
-* Includes raw `texts`, `CSV`, and `JSONL` formats
-* Original `website content` preserved
-
-`electronicintifada`
-
-* 2500 articles scraped from electronicintifada.net
-* Includes raw `texts`, `CSV`, and `JSONL` formats
-* Original `website content` preserved
-
-`palianswers`
-
-* A crowdsourced database of short responses to Zionist lies
 * Includes raw `texts`, `CSV`, and `JSONL` formats
 * Original `website content` preserved
 

combined/combined.csv

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combined/texts/1.txt

@@ -1 +1 @@
-Answer 1The issue is that we need to establish that there was a dispute for the case to be heard at the ICJ under the Genocide Convention. South Africa both in its written opinion (Paragraph 15 and 16) explains that there is clearly a dispute. Moreover jurist John Dugard explained in great detail during the oral hearing that there is a dispute, and therefore that the court has jurisdiction.Answer 2The Genocide Convention allows allows any states party to the ICJ to bring a case against each other to the ICJ on issues including responsibility for genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, or attempt to commit genocide. The ICJ recently confirmed this in a case brought by The Gambia, which accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya population.
+Answer 1Article 16 of Hamas’ 2017 charter states that “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.” Answer 2The Hamas charter of 2017 emphasizes that Islam “provides an umbrella for the followers of other creeds and religions who can practice their beliefs in security and safety. Hamas also believes that Palestine has always been and will always be a model of coexistence, tolerance and civilizational innovation.” Hamas calls for the resistance of military occupation, a right sanctioned under UN General Assembly resolution 37/43 of 1982.

combined/texts/10.txt

@@ -1 +1 @@
-Answer 1First, Allah is the Arabic word for ‘God’. He is the same God revered by three Abrahamic religions and followers alike. Second, ‘Palestinian’ is not a religion. Palestinians are a people of shared ethnic and national background that includes people of all faiths, including Jews. Third, it is against the Muslim religion to harm ‘People of the Book’, which includes all Muslims, Christians and Jews. Answer 2This is Islamophobia at its finest. Nothing about Islam, or Palestinian resistance, calls for “murdering” Jews. Even the Hamas charter explicitly differentiates between Zionism and Judaism, where Zionism is considered a racist, ethno-supremacist, settler-colonial ideology that has hijacked Judaism for its nefarious purposes. The Hamas charter is clear in its call for resistance against Zionist, not Jewish, colonization of Palestine. Answer 3Every Zionist accusation is merely a confession. It was Netanyahu and his government in November 2023 that invoked religious scripture to justify the genocide of Palestinians. Answer 4Islamophobes propagate the falsehood that Islam fosters anti-Semitism. In Islam, Jews are recognized as “People of the Book,” and Moses is revered as a prophet. Palestinian resistance targets not the Jewish people, but rather the Zionists who exploit Judaism to establish and maintain a racist settler colony.
+Answer 1There have always been Jews in Palestine, and historically they spoke Arabic and were part of the tapestry of the Levant. The explicitly European colonial nature of political Zionism, however, is antithetical to any notions of Jewish indigeneity. This is because Zionism has from the outset sought to implant European Jews as settlers at the expense of the indigenous multi-faith inhabitants and stewards of the land.Answer 2Zionism was and is – in the words of its own founders – a colonial movement. It has been implemented with the methodologies and ideologies of European colonialism. The fact that Jews have spiritual ties to the land does not make them indigenous per se, nor does it erase the colonial nature of Zionism, which in any case, is not synonymous with Judaism.Answer 3Judaism is not Zionism. Judaism is a religion with legitimate spiritual ties to the ancient land of Israel/historic Palestine. Some Jews have indeed lived uninterrupted in Palestine for centuries and could therefore be considered indigenous. Indigeneity, however, cannot be manufactured through a process of colonization, as was/is the case with Zionism.Answer 4Indigeneity is based on a connection to the land. Palestinians without a doubt have that connection.This includes Palestinian Jews, Muslims and Christians. Jews of European descent are not indigenous to Palestine. They have a religious connection and emigrated as settlers, mostly within the past 100 years or less.

combined/texts/100.txt

@@ -1,39 +1,45 @@
-It was a war of “no choice”.
-It was a war which would fatefully decide whether Israel would “live or perish”.
-It was a war for survival, where an Israeli David defended itself from the Arab Goliath hell-bent on its elimination.
-This is how the 1967 war is often described by Israelis. Unfortunately, this view is often uncritically regurgitated in the mainstream narrative of the war. Needless to say, this is pure revisionism with no basis in reality. Israel has managed to score a major propaganda victory when it convinced many that its wars are all defensive, even the one which it initiated through a sneak attack. It is a testament to the triumph of sophistry and confirmation bias over facts in the context of the Palestinian question.
-Let us look at the historical record and dismantle this myth piece by piece.
-Although it has become part of the conventional “wisdom” for many, the idea that Israel was pushed into a war it wanted nothing to do with collapses upon itself when the historical record of events is examined.
-The 1967 war did not materialize out of a vacuum, nor should it be understood as such. The 1967 war was merely a continuation of Israel’s wars against the region to achieve maximum territorial expansion. Particularly, this war would finish what was begun in 1956, when Israel invaded Egypt with the help of Britain and France.
-The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was created in the aftermath of the 1956 war on Egypt to secure peace, and patrol both sides of the border between Egypt and Israel. Despite being the aggressor, Israel refused to cooperate with the UN force, and rejected the idea of any peace-keeping force on their side of the border, meanwhile Egypt accepted the UN force and cooperated with them. Not only did Israel refuse to cooperate, but over its decade-long existence, Israeli troops “regularly patrolled alongside the line and now and again created provocations by violating it“.
-This, however, was only the tip of the iceberg of Israeli provocations towards its neighbors. Much of Israel’s military actions were designed to goad Nasser into war, an example of this can be seen in the disproportionate Israeli assault on Gaza in 1955, or the assault on Samu in 1966, or the frequent unprovoked bombings of Syrian border positions. This is hardly our unique interpretation of events; at the time this was widely understood. For example the British ambassador in Israel explained that this tactic aimed to spawn a “deliberately contrived preventive war“.
-But even if this is unconvincing to you, and you remain adamant that Israel was acting purely in self-defense, there is ample evidence to show that Israel was not intent on avoiding war. As mentioned, war was an opportunity to achieve many of its objectives, one of which is the expansion into territories not conquered in 1948, as Ben Gurion lamented. This becomes exceedingly clear once we examine the diplomatic record, and the numerous times Israel sabotaged any attempt at mediation or diplomacy to avert the outbreak of war.
-For example, throughout much of the crisis of 1967 Egypt expressed its willingness to resurrect and expand the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission (EIMAC), which was officially rejected by Israel in May. In the same month, the UN secretary-General personally attempted to avert an escalation by travelling to Cairo to mediate between the Egyptians and Israelis. He came with a proposal which called for a two-week moratorium in the straits of Tiran (Which we will be discussing shortly). Once again, Egypt agreed to the proposal in an attempt to lower tensions. Israel rejected the proposal. Brian Urquhart, who was a senior UN official at the time, wrote in his memoir that “Israel, no doubt having decided on military action, turned down U Thant’s ideas“.
-This is hardly the only attempt at averting an escalation, the United States also tried its hand at mediation. High ranking American diplomats and politicians met with Nasser in late May in a meeting that was deemed a “breakthrough in the crisis”. In this meeting Nasser showed flexibility and a willingness to include the World Court to arbitrate in some of the issues. However, what was most promising was that Nasser agreed to send his vice-president to Washington within a week in an attempt to reach a diplomatic settlement for the crisis.
-You may be wondering why you’ve never heard of such a meeting, or what its results were. That is because two days before the meeting, Israel decided to launch its surprise attack, torpedoing all efforts to reach a non-violent diplomatic solution to the crisis.
-This shocked even the Americans, Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State wrote that:
-
-“They attacked on a Monday, knowing that on Wednesday the Egyptian vice-president would arrive in Washington to talk about re-opening the Strait of Tiran. We might not have succeeded in getting Egypt to reopen the strait, but it was a real possibility.”
-
-Following the diplomatic developments of the time leaves no shadow of a doubt that Israel was purposely seeking war. It rebuffed all attempts at mediation and even deceived and humiliated its ally, the United States, by allowing it to continue with the charade of diplomacy which Israel knew it was going to attack anyway. On the other hand, this shows Nasser to have been far more flexible, and amenable to diplomatic solutions than many suggest. Yet until this day, Israel is portrayed as being forced into a defensive war, while Nasser is portrayed as a warmonger.
-In his memoir, U Thant, the UN Secretary General at the time, wrote that “if only Israel had agreed to permit UNEF to be stationed on its side of the border, even for a short duration, the course of history could have been different. Diplomatic efforts to avert the pending catastrophe might have prevailed; war might have been averted.” This was further confirmed by Odd Bull, chief of staff of  the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) at the time, who stated that “it is quite possible that the 1967 war could have been avoided’ had Israel acceded to the Secretary-General’s request.“
-Israel had no interest in avoiding war, this much is clear. But let us delve a little bit deeper and inspect the pretexts it used for the justification of its sneak attack on Egypt, which it labeled as a “preemptive strike”.
-
-The culmination of all the pretexts mentioned previously constituted -according to the Israeli narrative- a clear and present danger to the very existence of the Israeli state. This is why they had to attack Egypt, otherwise Israel would have been utterly destroyed. However, after reviewing these pretexts, the following becomes clear:
-Israel was under no military threat from the Egyptian or Syrian militaries.
-An ineffective, partial blockade on a minor port did not actually threaten it with strangulation.
-Israel constantly and aggressively provoked its neighbors with raids, bombings and violations of UN resolutions.
-Israel avoided every attempt at mediation or de-escalation, and chose to attack right before a meeting that could have eased tensions.
-Virtually every talking point Israel uses to justify this war is based on strategic omission and the manipulation of history.
-Under no circumstance was Israel under an imminent threat of destruction, not even the Israelis believed that at the time. Israeli Minister Mordecai Bentov frankly admitted a few years later that:
-
-“This entire story about the danger of extermination was invented and exaggerated after the fact to justify the annexation of new Arab territories“.
-
-For Israel, the 1967 war had nothing to do with “self-defense” and everything to do with finishing what it started in 1948 and 1956. It had to do with acquiring new territories and expanding, and it had to do with striking Nasser’s project before it could become too big of a threat.
-Ben Gurion’s apprehension regarding Nasser was never a secret, he admitted that he:
-
-“..always feared that a personality might arise such as arose among the Arab rulers in the seventh century or like [Kemal Ataturk] who arose in Turkey after its defeat in the First World War. He raised their spirits, changed their character, and turned them into a fighting nation. There was and still is a danger that Nasser is this man.”
-
-We should keep these lessons in mind whenever tackling any Israeli claim. We must never take these arguments at face value. We should always question and investigate. Truth is the best disinfectant, and Israel would not need to lie so brazenly if it truly believed its position to be a just or moral one. All will be revealed in time, and as we say “You can’t cover the sun with a sieve“.
+For instance, Deir Yassin was a small, pastoral village west of Jerusalem. The village was determined to remain neutral, and as such refused to have Arab soldiers stationed there. Not only were they neutral, they also had a non-aggression pact signed with the Haganah. This, however, did not save it from its fate, as it was in the territory of the Jewish state lined out in Plan D.
+This meant that not only was it to be destroyed and have its population ethnically cleansed, an example needed to be made of it as to inspire terror in the surrounding villages. As a result, this massacre was particularly monstrous.
+On April 9th 1948, Zionist forces attacked the village of Deir Yassin under the cover of darkness. The Zionist forces shot indiscriminately and killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in their own homes. The number of those murdered ranges from roughly 100 to over 150, depending on estimation.
+Perhaps one of the most graphic witness testimonials comes from Othman Akel:
+[Warning:  Explicit descriptions of torture and violence. Click to skip]
+
+“I saw the Zionist terrorist soldiers ordering the bakery man of the village to throw his son in the oven and burn him alive. The son is holding the clothes of his father tightly and crying from fear and pleading to his father not to do it. the father refuses and then the soldiers hit him in his gut so hard it caused him to fall on the floor. Other soldiers held his son, Abdel Rauf, and threw him in the oven and told his father to toast him well-done meat. Other soldiers took the baker himself , Hussain al-Shareef, and threw him, too, in the oven, telling him, “follow your son, he needs you there”.
+
+Other stories include tying a villager to a tree before burning him, rape and disembowelment. Dead villagers were thrown into pits by the dozen. Many were decapitated or mutilated. Houses were looted and destroyed. A number of prisoners were taken, put in cuffs, and paraded around West Jerusalem as war trophies, before being executed and dumped in the village quarry.
+
+[End of explicit descriptions of torture and violence]
+The village posed no threat and was not part of any military action. It is also noteworthy that because the village had a non-aggression pact with the Haganah, it was the Stern and Lehi that carried out this massacre. The Yishuv offered a few words of condemnation, but later the name of Deir Yassin would be seen listed next to successful operations. In the future, there would not even be the charade of caring about non-aggression pacts or the neutrality of villages that were designated for ethnic cleansing.
+There was absolutely nothing defensive about these actions. They were designed to change demographic realities that the Zionists found inconvenient, as even the proposed Jewish state would not have had a Jewish majority without additional settlers.
+Even internally, the Yishuv acknowledged that it had the power to impose a new status quo regardless of what the Palestinians thought, Cabinet Minister Ezra Danin believed that:
+
+“..the majority of the Palestinian masses accept the partition as a fait accompli and do not believe it possible to overcome or reject it.”
+This talking point also neglects to mention the enormous efforts behind the scenes aimed at avoiding war, not to mention ending it early when it did eventually break out. These efforts were heavily sponsored by the United States, who asked in March 1948 that all military activities be ceased, and asked the Yishuv to postpone any declaration of statehood and to give time for negotiations. Outside of Abdallah, the Arabs accepted this initiative by the United States. However, it was rejected by Ben Gurion, who knew that any peaceful implementation of the partition plan meant that the refugees he had expelled earlier would have a chance to return, not to mention that war would offer him a chance to conquer the lands outside the partition plan that he coveted.
+This was the Zionist aim from the outset, as even in the earliest discussions of partition, Zionists emphasized that any acceptance of partition was merely tactical and temporary. Ben Gurion argued that:
+
+“[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state–we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel.”
+
+This was not a one-time occurrence, and neither was it only espoused by Ben Gurion. Internal debates and letters illustrate this time and time again. Even in letters to his family, Ben Gurion wrote that “A Jewish state is not the end but the beginning” detailing that settling the rest of Palestine depended on creating an “elite army”. As a matter of fact, he was quite explicit:
+
+“I don’t regard a state in part of Palestine as the final aim of Zionism, but as a mean toward that aim.”
+
+Chaim Weizmann expected that:
+
+“partition might be only a temporary arrangement for the next twenty to twenty-five years”.
+
+When the Arab states finally reluctantly intervened, they arrived for the most part in the areas designated for the Arab Palestinian state per the 1947 partition plan. They were not interested in war and despite their propaganda and rhetoric, sought different secret opportunities to end the war with Israel, which were rejected by the latter with the goal of maximizing its land-grabs. .
+For example, there were negotiations between Israel and Egypt in October 1948, where based on previous correspondences, Egypt was prepared to offer many concessions in exchange for peace, even offering to resettle the Palestinian refugees in the UN decreed “Arab” areas of Palestine. Four days after Israeli politician Eliyahu Sasson went to meet with Heikal, chairman of the Egyptian senate, Ben Gurion launched a new military operation. Naturally, this put an end to any negotiation and with it, any attempt at avoiding bloodshed.
+From their side, the Syrians also attempted to end the war at the beginning of 1949, where prime minister al-Azm informed the US ambassador of their desire to stop the fighting. The only conditions they put forward was that Palestinians be afforded the right to self-determination, and the recognition of traditional and historic Syrian fishing rights in certain areas of lake Tiberius. In the same month, a Syrian mediator attempted to meet with Eliyahu Sasson’s assistant in Paris to directly discuss a peace treaty. He was instantly turned down because the Israelis believed that any negotiation with Syria meant discussing the division of water sources, which Israel wanted to control in their entirety.
+Following a coup in Damascus, Husni al-Zaim seized power and offered Israel even more concessions. As a matter of fact, he suggested meeting Ben Gurion face to face to negotiate a full-fledged peace. Not only that, he offered absorbing and resettling 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria. The US was enthusiastic about this development, the Israelis however, were indifferent and refused the offer. Ben Gurion wanted to force an agreement through military might only. Israeli historian Avi Shlaim wrote that:
+
+“During his brief tenure of power [Zaim] gave Israel every opportunity to bury the hatchet and lay the foundations for peaceful coexistence in the long term. If his overtures were spurned, if his constructive proposals were not put to the test, and if a historic opportunity was frittered away . . . the fault must be sought not with Zaim but on the Israeli side.”
+
+This followed a long series of Zionist rejections to overtures by the native Palestinians. In 1928, for example, the Palestinian leadership voted to allow Zionist settlers equal representation in the future bodies of the state, despite them being a minority who had barely just arrived. The Zionist leadership rejected this, of course. Even after this, in 1947 the Palestinians suggested the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea to replace the mandate to no avail. There were many attempts at co-existence, but this simply would not have benefited the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
+
+So, in a sense, the 1948 war was only inevitable because Zionist expansionism and aims made it such. From their first arrival in Palestine, the settlers were intent on conquering the entirety of Palestine and erecting an exclusivist ethnocratic regime, and never had the intention of living peacefully with anyone else. As Chairman of the Jewish National Fund, Menachem Usishkin, so bluntly put it:
+
+“..the Arabs do not want us because we want to be the rulers. I will fight for this. I will make sure that we will be the landlords of this land . . . . because this country belongs to us not to them..”
+
+The narrative of Israel emerging from an inevitable war of self-defense has little basis in reality, and is rather a reflection of ideological bias. It serves to justify what was done to the Palestinians and disguise the victimizers as the victims. It is therefore unsurprising that many other myths revolve around this talking point, such as the myth of Israel being a small and outnumbered David facing a mighty Arab Goliath . As with most Israeli talking points, when properly inspected and situated in their historical context, a different image emerges. It falls on us to make this sure that this image is accurately conveyed.
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combined/texts/1000.txt

@@ -1,92 +1,231 @@
-A doctor examines a boy with a skin condition at an encampment for displaced people in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in July 2024.
+Owen Jones at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstration in 2019. The Guardian columnist has played a double game.
+Guardian columnist and YouTuber Owen Jones has apologized for a tweet supporting “Britain’s greatest living filmmaker” Ken Loach, who was expelled from the Labour Party last month.
 
-APA imagesToward the end of September, I had a severe toothache.
+Backtracking from his support, Jones tweeted last week that he wanted to “reflect” on “the justifiable distress” caused “to Jewish people” by a play Loach directed three decades ago.
 
-I tried to ignore it at first, but the pain became unbearable. Desperate for relief, I went to a nearby pharmacy.
+I “therefore apologize for the tone of my tweet,” Jones wrote.
 
-I was met with an apologetic smile from the pharmacist.
+The 1987 production, called Perdition, was critical of the role the Zionist movement played during the Holocaust.
 
-“Sorry, we don’t have any antibiotics,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.
+Zionism is Israel’s official racist and colonial ideology that is used to justify the expulsion of indigenous Palestinians and the seizure of their land.
 
-I asked for a painkiller instead. His response was just as disheartening.
+As usual, Jones wants to have his cake and eat it.
 
-“We’re out of those too. You might find some paracetamol at one of the street stalls,” he added, still smiling as if trying to mask the grim reality of our situation.
+He prefaced his condemnation of Loach with the claim that he did not support the Labour Party’s “action” against the director.
 
-This is the new normal in Gaza.
+Loach’s television and cinema work, over more than six decades, has focused particularly on the lives of working-class people and has also included anti-war and anti-colonial themes.
 
-Shelves that once carried basic medications now stand empty, and even simple painkillers are a luxury.
+The Palme d’Or winner is popular among the same left-wing audience that Jones relies on to buy his books and watch his videos.
 
-I went to a government clinic, hoping for some relief.
+A veteran British socialist, Loach has long been an advocate of Palestinian liberation.
 
-The doctor, clearly worn down by a continuous stream of patients, asked me what was wrong. I described my symptoms, and without much examination, he prescribed paracetamol and Flagyl, an antibiotic.
+Loach revealed his ejection from Labour on 14 August.
 
-These two medicines, it seems, are the catch-all prescriptions here. Whether you have an infection, bone pain, the flu or a toothache, you are given the same treatment.
+While I don't support the action against Ken Loach, Jewish friends and comrades were rightly upset by my tweet, and the tone it took, so it's important I say this. https://t.co/gaqLtNHuu0— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) August 23, 2021
 
-It’s the only option available.
+Loach’s expulsion is part of the McCarthyite purge of socialists and Palestine solidarity activists by right-wing party leader Keir Starmer and his acolytes.
 
-Frustrated but still in pain, I eventually followed the pharmacist’s suggestion and ventured to one of the many makeshift stalls on the street. These stalls, once unthinkable as places to purchase medicine, have become the last resort for those of us needing pain relief.
+According to right-wing party news website LabourList, Loach was expelled due to his support for Labour Against the Witchhunt, one of several left-wing groups recently banned by the party.
 
-Buying medication streetside
+This is all a continuation of the right-wing campaign that single-mindedly aimed to oust Jeremy Corbyn after the veteran left-wing lawmaker was elected party leader in 2015.
 
-As I approached a young man selling medicine, I watched in disbelief as he confidently handed out pills to a crowd.
+The witch hunt has targeted Corbyn supporters with disciplinary measures including suspensions and expulsions. They have often been wrongly accused of “anti-Semitism” – almost always a code word for supporting Palestinian rights.
 
-“Here’s an antibiotic for a urinary tract infection,” he said to one person.
+Corbyn, who resigned as leader in 2019, was himself purged the following year.
 
-To another: “This is a great cough medicine.”
+Jones’ claim that he did not support the expulsion of Loach is belied by one of his tweets from July.
 
-There was no regard for diagnosis, no expertise. People were buying medicine from someone who might have been as ignorant as they were desperate, trusting a pharmacist-by-chance created by war.
+Jones tweeted that he agreed with a supposedly left-wing member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, who had just voted for the “auto-expulsion” of party members associated with banned left-wing groups, including Labour Against the Witchhunt.
 
-The value of a human life here has been reduced to almost nothing.
+agreed— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) July 21, 2021
 
-Falling sick is terrifying because illness in Gaza now means possibly facing death, not from the disease itself but from the complete lack of medical care.
+You do realize you just agreed to the expulsion of Ken Loach?— A Joker (not in the literal or figurative sense) (@socialist_101) July 21, 2021
 
-A woman passing by shared her story with me. Her daughter had broken her leg, but when she took her to a hospital in Deir al-Balah, the doctors apologized for not having plaster to create a cast. Instead, they used wooden splints.
+Pro-Israel lobby group the Jewish Labour Movement told LabourList that it supported Loach’s expulsion.
 
-A week later, the girl’s condition worsened. She is now facing a likely permanent disability.
+Chair Mike Katz responded that Starmer had “shown strong leadership in tackling anti-Semitism.”
 
-Another young man, injured in an airstrike, had his leg amputated because there had been no proper treatment available for his wound. But without proper hygiene products, the wound left still became infected.
+Jones happily promoted Israel lobby talking points at a Jewish Labour Movement event in 2017.
 
-These are just two among thousands of similarly tragic stories in Gaza.
+Ahead of the national executive’s July vote banning the left-wing groups, LabourList reported that getting rid of Loach was one of the main motivations for including Labour Against the Witchhunt in the ban.
 
-The blockade and the war haven’t not only restricted the ability to get nourishing food and clean water but also the entry of life-saving medical supplies. What little medicine is allowed in is never enough to meet the needs of the injured and ill, let alone all those displaced and living in overcrowded shelters.
+Loach is arguably the most high-profile supporter of the group.
 
-The UN and international health medical groups like Doctors Without Borders have reported a critical lack of medical supplies and medicines in Gaza as a result of Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid supplies.
+So Jones’ claim not to support Loach’s expulsion when that was the inevitable and predictable result of the ban on Labour Against the Witchhunt – which Jones supported – is disingenuous or downright dishonest.
 
-Outbreaks of infectious disease are soaring, with 40,000 confirmed cases of Hepatitis A just the tip of the iceberg.
+“Distressing to Jewish people”
 
-In August, the World Health Organization confirmed the return of polio. Two infants have already been diagnosed.
+Jones also implies that Loach is not a real socialist, tweeting: “Why would someone on the left want to make this play?”
 
-Hygiene horror movie
+Here is how Jim Allen, the author of Perdition, described the play:"the most lethal attack on Zionism ever written because it touches at the heart of the most abiding myth of modern history, the Holocaust. Because it says quite plainly that privileged Jewish leaders— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) August 23, 2021
 
-The situation goes beyond just medicine. Soap, disinfectants, toothpaste and razors are also in short supply.
+But the play, Perdition, by late socialist scriptwriter Jim Allen, was loosely based on a real event – a fact Jones ignores.
 
-People have resorted to making their own soap, but the long-term effects of the absence of basic hygiene products on our health are starting to show. My children have developed rashes, and I can’t do anything about them. Seeing them suffer makes me feel helpless, as if our lives don’t matter anymore.
+Jones claimed the play was “incredibly distressing to Jewish people.”
 
-It feels like something out of a horror movie, yet this is our reality.
+But what he really meant was that the play caused distress to supporters of Israel.
 
-More than two million people are trapped in Gaza, subjected to a comprehensive siege, continuous bombings and now epidemics. Those who manage to find medicine often do so at great risk, buying from unqualified vendors selling stolen or counterfeit drugs.
+Ahead of its 1987 debut at the Royal Court Theatre in London, Perdition was attacked by the Israel lobby.
 
-Our chances of survival feel slimmer each day.
+Later that year protests against a reading of the play were called by the Union of Jewish Students – a pro-Israel group which at least in recent years has been funded by the Israeli government.
 
-This is happening in the twenty-first century, under the watch of a world that claims to value human rights and dignity.
+A day before its opening, the play was canceled. Loach and Allen correctly blamed the Israel lobby and said they were being censored.
 
-How can an entire people be left to suffer like this — deprived of food, water, fuel and medicine — while the world stands by and watches?
+The play was eventually staged in 1999. Once more, the Union of Jewish Students protested.
 
-As winter approaches, the fear only grows. Our tents will flood, and we won’t have the medicine to treat the inevitable wave of winter illnesses.
+“The charge of anti-Semitism is the time-honored way to deflect anti-Zionist arguments,” Loach said in a 2004 letter to The Guardian.
 
-How can we survive this?
+“Collaboration with the Nazis”
 
-Shojaa al-Safadi is a Palestinian writer and poet, a member of the Palestinian Writers Union, and a founder and director of the Friendship Cultural Forum from 2004 to 2014.
+What was all the fuss about? In order to answer that, it is necessary to relate a well-documented, but little-known episode.
+
+Perdition was based on the 1954 Gruenwald-Kasztner trial in Israel.
+
+Malchiel Gruenwald – a refugee from Hungary who lost 50 relatives to the Nazi Holocaust – was sued for writing a pamphlet accusing Labor Zionist functionary Rezső Kasztner of “collaboration with the Nazis” back in their native country.
+
+A press spokesperson for an Israeli ministry, Kasztner was a member of the ruling Mapai party, the forerunner of Israel’s present-day Labor Party.
+
+Mapai leaders were hoping to get Kasztner into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. He was a Mapai candidate for the first two Knesset elections, and initially for the third, before he was removed as an embarrassment.
+
+Rezső Kasztner speaking on Israeli state radio. Kasztner’s cooperation with Nazi war criminals in his native Hungary caused a national scandal after his actions came under the microscope during a 1954 libel trial in Israel. (Wikimedia Commons)Party leaders had a degree of loyalty to Kasztner, as he had been their man in Hungary during the war. If Kasztner was a collaborator, so were they, they reasoned. Gruenwald’s accusations could not be allowed to stand.
+
+According to a 1950 Israeli law, if Kasztner was a Nazi collaborator, he could even have faced the death penalty. The government resolved to sue Gruenwald for libel. They would come to regret it.
+
+After months of hearings, the court found Gruenwald had not defamed Kasztner and decided that the Mapai man had indeed collaborated. Kasztner had “sold his soul to the devil,” the judge famously ruled.
+
+Worse still for the Labor Zionists, the hearings became a trial of Kasztner in the court of public opinion – and by extension a trial of them. The affair still resonates in Israel decades later.
+
+The trial exposed a gruesome history of Nazi-Zionist cooperation which Israeli leaders would have preferred remain buried.
+
+Deadly lies
+
+After the March 1944 German invasion of Hungary, Kasztner, a local member of the Zionist leadership, worked directly with the Nazis.
+
+He agreed to help maintain calm in the Hungarian Jewish community, particularly the 20,000 Jews of Kasztner’s native town of Kluj. The Nazis wanted to ensure there was no repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in Poland the year prior.
+
+The Jews of Kluj were concentrated in a ghetto prior to deportation, and were told a tale about “Kenyermeze,” a work camp in a German-occupied area where they would supposedly be sent and kept alive.
+
+But this was a deadly lie: The trains were actually taking people to Auschwitz, the death camp in occupied Poland, where the Nazis murdered 12,000 Hungarian Jews per day.
+
+Almost half a million Hungarian Jews were ultimately exterminated.
+
+To ensure there was no rebellion, Kasztner’s men told the Jewish community that they would be safe. Fake postcards and letters from “Kenyermeze” were distributed or read by his group assuring the Jews in Kluj that all was well. Thinking they were being deported to labor camps, Jews in Hungary mostly did not resist.
+
+As Ben Hecht writes in Perfidy, his 1961 book on the affair, the Jews of Kluj were guarded in their ghetto by fewer than two dozen Nazi and Hungarian guards. They could have easily overcome them and escaped to safety across the Romanian border, just three miles away, had Kasztner told them what fate he knew really awaited them.
+
+But Kasztner had personally negotiated a deal with senior Hitler aide and Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. Kasztner knew where the “resettlement” trains were actually headed, but remained silent.
+
+“A success for Zionism”
+
+In exchange for deceiving his community, the Nazis agreed to let Kasztner select a group – mostly fellow Zionists, friends and family – who would be permitted to escape Hungary on a train to Switzerland. The idea was that the elite group would join the Zionist settler-colony in Palestine.
+
+Zionists and Nazis both agreed on the goal of removing European Jews from Europe.
+
+Eichmann was captured in Argentina in 1960 by Mossad agents and brought back to Israel, where he would be tried and executed in 1962.
+
+Speaking to a pro-Nazi Dutch journalist, while still at large in 1955, Eichmann himself fondly recalled working with Kasztner. He described the Nazi-Zionist meeting of minds in chillingly frank terms.
+
+According to Eichmann, Kasztner’s main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to go to Palestine.
+
+“You can have the others,” Eichmann recalled Kasztner saying, “but let me have this group here.”
+
+The Nazi also asserted that “there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders.”
+
+“I believe that Kasztner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal,” Eichmann said. “He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood – that is, human material that was capable of reproduction and hard work.”
+
+“Because Kasztner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his group escape,” Eichmann explained.
+
+Judge Benjamin Halevy took nine months to write his ruling, concluding on 21 June 1955 that “the Nazis’ patronage of Kasztner, and their agreement to let him save six hundred prominent Jews, were part of the plan to exterminate the Jews.”
+
+He said that Kasztner “considered the rescue of the most important Jews as a great personal success and a success for Zionism.”
+
+“How could the judge dare!”
+
+The Israeli press extensively covered the story and the affair dominated the 1955 Knesset elections. The government immediately appealed to the high court. There were calls in the Knesset and press to have Kasztner tried under the Nazi collaborators law.
+
+“A nightmare, a horror,” Prime Minister Moshe Sharett wrote in his diary. “How could the judge dare!”
+
+Kasztner had become a liability. He was leaking inconvenient facts like a damaged bucket.
+
+Israel’s second prime minister Moshe Sharett, who called the verdict “a nightmare.” (Wikimedia Commons)If the appeal had not gone the government’s way, calls to try Kasztner as a Nazi collaborator would have been much harder to resist.
+
+But before he could take the stand again, Kasztner was silenced forever.
+
+In March 1957, he was assassinated outside his home. The three killers were already known to the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, and immediately arrested. One of them, Zeev Eckstein, confessed to having been a Shin Bet agent prior to the killing.
+
+During and after the Gruenwald trial, Kasztner was given police protection. Shortly before his assassination, this was lifted. There were allegations that the Israeli security establishment had made a decision to murder Kasztner to shut him up.
+
+The killers were sentenced to life in prison – yet only five years later they were released. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, had personally intervened to help secure their freedom.
+
+The high court overturned most of the libel trial verdict. The judges did not dispute the facts that emerged in the trial about what Kasztner had done, but only Judge Halevy’s legal interpretation of what they amounted to. In some instances the judges even justified his actions.
+
+What did Kasztner have left to tell? It’s likely that some secrets died with him.
+
+Notably, his collaboration with Nazi war criminals did not end with the war.
+
+After the Holocaust he traveled to Germany and testified at Nuremberg in defense of several Nazis involved in the extermination of Jews, such as SS officer Kurt Becher. As a result, Becher escaped the noose and eventually became one of West Germany’s richest industrialists.
+
+Kasztner had originally been brought to Nuremberg to testify against Nazi war criminals, as detailed in Akiva Orr’s 1994 book Israel: Politics, Myths and Identity Crises.
+
+But according to one American prosecutor, “Kasztner roamed the Nazi prison camp for Nazi officers searching for those he could help by testimony or intervention on their behalf. In the end we were very glad when he left.”
+
+Jones’ double game
+
+While Kasztner’s behavior may have been particularly egregious, it came within the context of broader Zionist-Nazi cooperation, as both movements shared the goal of removing Jews from Europe.
+
+Kasztner’s affidavit to the Nuremberg tribunal on behalf of the Nazi Kurt Becher stated that it was given “not only in my name, but also on behalf of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress” – two of the leading bodies of the Zionist movement at the time.
+
+In the appeal of the Gruenwald verdict, Israel’s attorney general admitted as much.
+
+“Kasztner did nothing more and nothing less than was done by us,” he stated. “It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of the many in arranging the immigration to Palestine.”
+
+What do we learn from all this?
+
+Owen Jones is often referred to on the British left as a weather vane because he changes his positions so often.
+
+In 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn was popular, Jones supported his leadership.
+
+But at the first test in 2016, when there was an attempted coup by Labour MPs and the Israel lobby, Jones turned against him, writing that he was in “despair” about Labour under Corbyn.
+
+Soon before the June 2017 election, Jones went further and explicitly called for Corbyn to quit.
+
+After Corbyn’s Labour came within a few thousand votes of winning that election, depriving the ruling Conservative Party of its majority and ultimately forcing Prime Minister Theresa May to step down, Jones flip-flopped once again, writing that he had made a mistake.
+
+Unchastened, Jones has played a similar double game ever since. He has long fueled the Labour witch hunt over “anti-Semitism,” endorsing calls for socialists like Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and this author to be suspended or expelled.
+
+Now, with Loach expelled, Jones again wants it both ways. He wants to claim he doesn’t support expulsion, but at the same time he unjustly condemns Loach’s work as “incredibly distressing to Jewish people” – and thus implies there’s merit to the expulsion.
+
+Owen Jones is no true friend to socialists or Palestinians.
+
+Sources
+
+Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Atlanta: On Our Own Authority, 2014), pages 284-291
+Ben Hecht, Perfidy (New York: Julian Messner, Inc., 1961)
+Akiva Orr, Israel: Politics, Myths and Identity Crises (London: Pluto Press, 1994), pages 81-116
+Tom Segev, The Seventh Million (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), pages 255-296, 305-310
+Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.
 Tags
 
-eiGazaDispatches
+Owen Jones
+
+Rezso Kasztner
+
+Ken Loach
+
+zionism
+
+Labour Against the Witch-hunt
+
+Lara McNeill
+
+Jewish Labour Movement
 
-Gaza genocide
+Holocaust
 
-Gaza war crimes
+Moshe Sharett
 
-Gaza health care system
+David Ben Gurion
 
-Health care
+Jim Allen
 
-medicine
+Hungary

combined/texts/1001.txt

@@ -1,114 +1,15 @@
-Abu Nader with a photograph of his family’s ice cream shop in Akka.“The taste reminds them of Palestine. That’s why people love our ice cream,” said Khamis Ghafour, better known as Abu Nader.
-
-Abu Nader, 73, owns an ice cream shop in Baddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli in northern Lebanon. His is a family trade going back nearly a century.
-
-“I make it the same way my father used to back in Akka, Palestine,” he said with pride.
-
-Abu Nader’s grandfather opened the family’s first ice cream shop in the coastal Palestinian city in 1929.
-
-“Back then they sold only two flavors: lemon and vanilla,” Wael Ghafour, Abu Nader’s nephew, said. He gestured toward a cooler packed with tubs of colorful ice cream to show the plethora of flavors the family makes today.
-
-Abu Nader, then a baby, was among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forced from their homeland during the Nakba, the Zionist conquest of Palestine in 1948. A recent census found that there are some 175,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendents currently living in Lebanon.
-
-“We lost everything. We fled to Lebanon after the Zionist paramilitary groups attacked us. We had no other choice but to live in Baddawi refugee camp,” he said.
-
-“We opened our first family shop in downtown Tripoli,” Wael said as he put on blue gloves and opened the cooler to scoop up a serving of strawberry ice cream.
-
-Wael’s grandfather – Abu Nader’s father – labored for two years to save money to open the first Ghafour ice cream shop in Lebanon in 1950.
-
-“It was not in the camp. At that time, we were still living in tents,” Wael explained. “There was no place for ice cream shops there. No place for joy or happiness.”
-
-The family didn’t open a shop in Baddawi until 1974, when electricity became available throughout the camp.
-
-Going out for ice cream is a happy activity anywhere, but for some refugee visitors to the Ghafour shop in Baddawi, it means something much more, as it allows them to enjoy a taste of the home to which they are forbidden from returning.
-
-The Ghafours note that their former neighbors in Akka, who are also now living in Baddawi, prefer the original lemon and vanilla flavors of their childhood in Palestine.
-
-The ice cream also connects the generation of refugees born in Lebanon to their homeland in Palestine.
-
-“My next door neighbor, Abu Ahmad, was 10 when we were exiled,” Abu Nader recalled. “In the summer he gathers all of his 10 grandchildren and buys them ice cream. The kids sit around the old man, eating their ice cream and listening to his memories of Palestine.”
-
-“I used to not like winter to come, because that meant no more ice cream,” said Fouad, a young Palestinian living in Baddawi camp, while glancing at the cooler to choose an ice cream flavor.
-
-“It is the best ice cream in the North,” added Fouad, whose family come from Akka. “It is hard to explain, but to us, keeping this ice cream alive is a national duty. It has to stay until we return.”
-
-A dying craft
-
-Dib Atallah’s family owned a pottery workshop in Akka before the Nakba. Originally from Gaza, his cousin operates a pottery workshop there. Tucked away behind a building off a highway in the town of Ghaziyeh, near Sidon in southern Lebanon, is a pottery workshop operated by cousins Muhammad and Dib Atallah, Palestinian refugees originally hailing from Gaza.
-
-The place is easy to miss; it is in the midst of broken concrete and stone.
-
-The cousins don’t have a license to operate; Palestinian refugees have long been shut out from working in dozens of trades in Lebanon.
-
-As noted by the United Nations relief agency UNRWA, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon “face legal and institutional discrimination; they are denied the right to own property and face restrictive employment measures.”
-
-“My mother was Lebanese,” Dib, 45, said. “When she was still alive, back in 1950, we were able to get a license. When she passed away, we lost the license.”
-
-Lebanese women are barred by law from passing on their nationality to their spouses and children.
-
-The municipality wants the cousins to clear their workshop from the area. Their livelihood is in peril.
-
-Dib shaped clay with his hands while spinning a wheel with his foot. “I fear we will be forced to leave this craft. I did not want this to happen in my lifetime.”
-
-Muhammad, who was repairing some jugs, said, “The plan was to keep this craft alive until we return to Palestine. I have two daughters, I am teaching them pottery. It is not common for girls here to work in such a craft, but it has to stay alive until we return to Palestine.”
-
-Muhammad and Dib’s fathers learned the trade in Gaza City before they moved to Akka.The brothers opened their clay factory there in the 1920s and after the Nakba they became refugees in Sidon and opened a new business in exile.
-
-Dib loaded a video on his mobile phone showing his relatives in Gaza working at their pottery factory. That shop is owned by another cousin, Sabri Atallah, in Gaza City.
-
-“They do a nice job. They send us videos of what they do. Pottery keeps us connected with home. We even asked someone to look for our old factory [in Akka]. It turned out the [Israeli] occupation removed it. Now there is a public garden in its place. But we will return, and we will rebuild it too.”
-
-Modern preferences, however, have put the cousins’ trade out of favor.
-
-“Long ago, people relied heavily on pottery. Now it is not that popular anymore,” Dib explained.
-
-“Plastic is the only thing people are using. This is putting our craft in more danger.”
-
-Disappearing youth
-
-Deep inside the Beqaa valley in Lebanon’s east sits al-Jalil refugee camp – formally called Wavel camp by UNRWA – where Muhammad Khalil, known as Abu Rabih, has lived all his 58 years. A carpenter, Abu Rabih’s livelihood was passed down from his father and grandfather.
-
-Sitting on an old plastic chair in his small workshop, Abu Rabih said, “We opened our first shop around 1935 in Haifa,” a coastal city in northern Palestine. His family came to Haifa from the Galilee town of Lubya.
-
-“After the Zionist militias forced us out of Haifa in 1948, my grandfather and my father worked for UNRWA, building its facilities inside refugee camps,” Abu Rabih said. “When that was over, they started working for Lebanese carpenters.”
-
-The family was eventually able to open its own shop in al-Jalil camp. But life was never easy.
-
-Abu Rabih dropped out of school at the age of 14 after his father got sick and his oldest brother was killed by the Israeli military during its 1982 invasion of Beirut.
-
-“I loved school,” Abu Rabih said as a throng of students exited the school next to his shop. “I was a good student. The choice was never mine. It’s either I work, or the family begs for money.”
-
-Abu Rabih’s family owned a carpentry shop in Haifa before the Nakba.Abu Rabih brightened when asked about his family’s workshop in Haifa.
-
-“I know all about the shop. My father talked about it all the time. I even still have the tools he used here with me,” he said.
-
-“I have never seen Haifa or that shop, but I know every single detail about it. I always feel I belong to that place and not the camp. I will pass [my tools] along to my son who also now works with me.”
-
-Unemployment remains the biggest problem in al-Jalil camp. Nearly 25 percent of all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are unemployed; that figure doubles for the more than 40,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria who have fled the country. Sixty-five percent of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty; that number skyrockets to 90 percent for Palestinian refugees from Syria now in the country.
-
-“You have taken a walk around the camp, you can easily see not many young men remain here. They all left to Scandinavian countries,” Abu Rabih said.
-
-Many Palestinians in Lebanon leave the camps and make dangerous journeys by smuggling boats from Tripoli to Turkey, and from there cross by land or sea into Europe, to try and secure a better life.
-
-Abu Rabih is trying to convince his 18-year-old son to stay with him at the workshop. But he recognizes that his is a trade that no longer guarantees security.
-
-“I know our craft does not make much money like it used to. People used to rely on us for building their houses, furniture, wooden antiques. But not anymore.”
-
-All photos by Amena ElAshkar
-
-Amena ElAshkar is a journalist based in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut.
-Tags
-
-Baddawi refugee camp
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-Akka
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-Nakba
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-Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
-
-Lebanon
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-Wavel refugee camp
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-UNRWA
+(Anna Lekas Miller)
+
+You wouldn’t expect a gay porn director to be the one that calls off the party.
+Nevertheless, Michael Lucas (you may remember him as the budding genius behind Shameless Hole or Piss Gods) decided to flex his political muscle for a change of pace. After hearing that the New York City LGBT Center was planning to host Israeli Apartheid Week’s final celebratory fundraiser, “Party to End Apartheid,” he made some phone calls, sent some emails and spent upwards of $1,000 to pressure the center to close their “open doors policy” and cancel the event.
+Israeli Apartheid Week is a program hosted independently by dozens of cities around the world through the month of March to create awareness around the Palestinian struggle. It has emerged as a focal point for activism and education as part of the larger boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
+However, when Lucas put his fist down, the NYC LGBT Center immediately complied. Along with canceling the Party to End Apartheid a week before it was supposed to take place, executive director Glennda Testone decided to prohibit the Palestinian peace activist group SiegeBusters from using the center to hold their meetings and any group from showing queer-related Israeli-Palestinian films because they “violate the safe haven of the center.”
+Located in Greenwich Village, in the brownstone-lined gay haven of 7th Avenue and West 13th Street, the NYC LGBT Center has a long history of an open-doors policy as a meeting place for many different groups and events. They recently hosted an eyewitness testimony from an activist in Egypt. Three years ago, they hosted an Israeli Apartheid Week event without complaint. However, by bowing to Lucas’ pressure and shutting down the event and closing its doors to SiegeBusters in less than eight hours, the center demonstrated that its principles are not based on solidarity, but on checkbook activism.
+Sherri Wolf, president of SiegeBusters and a long-time Palestinian rights activist and socialist organizer who identifies as a lesbian and a Jewish anti-Zionist, told The Village Voice that the center closed their doors to her group without so much as a phone call. Michael Lucas, an Israeli national, shrugged, commenting that as a lesbian, Wolf should focus on how Israel is a democratic haven for all queers in a sea of Islamic homophobia (Michael Lucas: The Zionist Porn Impresario Waves His Political Muscle in the Left’s Face,” 25 February 2011).
+Lucas presents an interesting tension between conflicting interests and forming solidarity. Many queer activists hesitate to criticize Israel because it is promoted as a gay-friendly democracy, while pro-Israeli and Islamophobic propaganda portrays Arab and Muslim countries as being unusually hostile to those who engage in same-sex relations or choose to identify as “gay.”
+Though like in most other countries in the world there is an undeniable presence of cultural, and sometimes political hostility towards those who identify as gay, the critiques of Arab countries usually exaggerate the extent of such hostility, demonizing Arabs and minimizing manifestations of anti-gay and anti-homosexual violence or political and religious sentiment in Israel and elsewhere.
+Though Israel promotes itself as democratic and gay-friendly, and actively attempts to maintain a politically progressive image, it is also infamous for legislating and legitimizing a Jim Crow-like segregation between Israelis and Palestinians. While Palestinians are forced to wait for hours to pass through checkpoints during trips that should take 15 minutes, Israelis travel freely on Jewish-only roads. Palestinians frequently face curfews and other forms of movement restrictions as a part of daily life under occupation, while Israelis enjoy all of the benefits of a modernized country at Palestinians’ expense.
+While Israel is presented as progressive in many ways, it engages in undeniable, heart-wrenching racism that alienates and demonizes Arabs and Palestinians.
+A surprising number of individuals base their opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict according to stereotypical perceptions of LGBT rights in the Middle East. Though some people who identify as gay or queer feel a need to ally with “gay-friendly” Israel, others see parallels between forms of oppression they have experienced and those experienced by Palestinians. Ultimately it is a personal choice as to whether one is exclusively centered in their queer identity, or the much more complex and overwhelming fight against all oppression.
+The night that New York City’s Israeli Apartheid Week organizers were supposed to hold their final party, it seemed fairly evident where many New York City queers (and of course, Palestine solidarity activists) stood. Though we were still not allowed to party, more than 130 queer, allied and Palestine activists brought music, friends, energy and solidarity with signs reading that “All Oppression Issues are Queer Issues” and “Peace and Justice for Everyone is Just Fabulous,” loudly reminding Michael Lucas, Glennda Testone and anyone else who threatens the sanctity of the center that it is not for sale.
+Anna Lekas Miller is a student, freelance writer, blogger and activist living in New York City. Her writing on Palestine, politics, technology and feminism can be tracked either through twitter @agoodcuppa or her blog vocaleyes.wordpress.com.

combined/texts/1002.txt

@@ -1,23 +1,9 @@
-In Selma Dabbagh’s debut novel Out of It, 27-year-old twin misfits Iman and Rashid Mujahed try to find belonging in a contemporary Gaza groaning under Israeli siege and air strikes, and street battles between competing political factions.
-The Mujahed family’s trials in Dabbagh’s fast-paced narrative encapsulate that of the Palestinian family at large — split by political division, secrecy and amputated (literally, in the case of Iman and Rashid’s heroic older brother, Sabri) by betrayal. The children of a high-ranking figure with the “outside” Palestinian leadership who has fallen from grace, the Mujahed twins were raised in scattered countries before peace agreements brought their family to Gaza.
-Out of It is strikingly different from the story which one would expect to be told about Palestine, focusing on a family which has spent most of its time in exile. The Israeli occupation is felt by a menacing helicopter overhead and air strikes executed by anonymous pilots rather than dramatic scenes of incursion or checkpoints (though Iman has a humiliating experience at one when leaving Gaza). There are lots of characters with guns here, but they are Palestinians, and those guns are pointed at other Palestinians.
-Contradictions within Palestinian society are shown through the characters’ struggles. Iman diligently tries to prove herself in tedious leftist Women’s Committee meetings, where competition rather than camaraderie is the prevailing dynamic. Iman is marginalized because she has only just “returned” to Gaza, and finds that the only thing she can contribute are servings of tea. Her desire to take more effective action sets her life in an unanticipated trajectory, taking her to the Gulf and later London.
-Shadowed by family’s past
-Meanwhile, Rashid, despite working at a human rights center, becomes increasingly apathetic politically and long-held grudges further alienate him from his brother and mother. He escapes from his non-future in Gaza by smoking marijuana until a scholarship brings him to London, where he is still shadowed by his family’s past.
-The twins’ time in the Gulf and London makes for the richest narration, thanks to Dabbagh’s evocative description of Rashid and Iman’s new surroundings. In London, Rashid is brought to his English girlfriend Lisa’s family home, “as though she had brought home a particular piece of jewelry from a junk shop and could now, against a plain background, appreciate its particular panache” (113).
-Meanwhile in the Gulf, Iman is stuck in a traffic jam with her father, “where middle-aged Western men stared hard at the stationary traffic, gripping their steering wheels as though they were about to be pulled away from them, women in black headscarves chewed gum with open mouths, East Asian women in the safari uniforms of the Chinese proletariat held toddlers in backseats, their foreheads slumped against the windows” (166).
-Iman and Rashid’s characters are complicated and believable, and this reader wishes that more narrative care was spent on other characters — particularly that of their mother, who is portrayed bickering with a next door neighbor and obsessively pickling vegetables. One of the plot’s turning points is a revelation about the mother’s past that explains why the father abandoned the family. But because those two characters are not particularly developed, the plot twist falls a bit flat.
-Power dynamic
-Dabbagh also uses some of the characters to make points that come off as forced. Rashid’s girlfriend Lisa is at first presented as a well-meaning human rights activist who had volunteered in Gaza. But when Rashid joins her in London, a patronizing power dynamic develops between them.
-This is compellingly shown in a tension-filled dinner gathering in which Rashid is expected by Lisa to perform on command by describing the despair in Gaza to impress the crowd, which includes a British government official. “Anger had built up in Rashid, talking about the situation, trying to give these people Gaza like it was chili on a saucer,” Dabbagh narrates (141).
-This would be enough to show the dynamic between Lisa and Rashid — Rashid wanting a fulfilling relationship with Lisa, Lisa wanting him to serve a particular end. This is needlessly hammered home when Lisa responds to Rashid’s suggestion that a small grant from the British official be given to his friend Khalil, who is devoted to the human rights center in Gaza. Lisa says: “ ‘That’s just typical, isn’t it? So tribal, you stick up for your own little group. You just don’t get it, do you?” (143).
-The patronization Western activists show toward the Palestinians with whom they purport to be in solidarity is demonstrated with more restraint through the character of Rashid’s fellow stoner roommate, Ian, who does his best to one-up Rashid’s knowledge of Palestinian history. “When faced with political questions of the type Ian particularly liked to concoct, Rashid never knew where to start. … Victim or propagandist, take your pick; Ian always forced him into one role or the other” (119).
-While the character development in Out of It may be uneven, the plot moves quickly and Dabbagh’s unique sense of observation brings her story’s settings and characters to life. Iman and Rashid do eventually find their own sense of belonging, but not without their own complex personal struggles and not without understanding the truth of their family’s — and people’s — history.
-Maureen Clare Murphy is managing editor of The Electronic Intifada.
-Tags
-
-Selma Dabbagh
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-Gaza
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-fratricide
+The title of Alastair Crooke’s book Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution may easily invoke the late Palestinian thinker Edward Said’s critiques of trying to essentialize Islam. The reader may become more concerned when she realizes that Crooke is not merely referring to the Iranian Revolution (the book’s cover depicts a Muslim cleric in a Tehran street) but to the totality of Islamist movements and ideological trends that emerged in modern times across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
+Crooke, a former advisor to European Union High Representative Javier Solana in the Middle East, admits in the introduction that he is keenly aware of Said’s warnings against speaking of such categories as “Islamism” or the “West” when speaking about a vast array of social, political and ideological phenomena. Crooke agrees with Said that such generalizations are problematic. But then immediately afterwards — in what reads like a sigh of despair — declares that one has little alternative but to go down that road if one is to keep the message simple and focus on defining such an “essence!” The reader might forgive Crooke if this were a brief newspaper article or TV appearance where time constraints and public engagement don’t allow for a nuanced exposition of these ideas. However, this is a nearly 300-page book that itself engages in a multi-layered discussion about ideological trends and philosophies in Islamic and Western thought.
+To be fair to Crooke, he does not paint all Islamist movements with the same ideological brush. But he does seem to suggest that they all have one common essence, that of resistance. A more appropriate common thread would have been that of politicization. Political Islam is the sine qua non of this religious revival, with a clear invitation to place Islamic values — both conservative and subversive — at the center of public life. Resistance, on the other hand, is a different matter. It is a feature of certain movements and certain times but not others. It is directed against certain forces, such as imperialism, but not necessarily others, like patriarchy.
+The search for an essence undermines what otherwise might have been a worthwhile study of philosophy of resistance among Islamic movements as articulated by influential Islamist thinkers and revolutionaries of the last century. This is a much welcome discussion especially in a European and North American context in which political Islam continues to be highly associated with terrorism and the pre-modern and — as Crooke points out — denied rational agency. Crooke offers numerous engaging discussions about this ideological trend. He explores the common motivating questions that occupied Islamic revivalists like Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual icon of the Iranian Revolution Ali Shariati, and the figurehead of Islamic thought in Iraq Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. He also tackles the ideas and beliefs animating political movements like Hizballah and Hamas in their struggle against occupation.
+Crooke argues that all of these Islamist ideologies are — in some way or another — a reaction to the Western-inspired and often imposed projects of nation-building, such as Kemal Ataturk’s founding of Turkey along anti-Islamist, secular lines. These nation-building projects, he maintains, tried to uproot local traditions of knowledge and import European understandings of rationality, individualism and morality. Islamist currents critiqued these projects, not because they shunned modernity or rationality, but because they shunned a particular understanding of modernity that suffered from moral decadence, an instrumental use of rationality in the service of power and dominance, and an individualistic depiction of community and social action. In short, Islamists were disillusioned with the perceived spiritual bankruptcy of European 20th century modernity, the latter largely blamed — by Crooke — on its earlier progenitor, the protestant reformation.
+It is in the context of this disillusionment that Crooke presents what he terms the “Islamist Revolution,” an attempt to create a “dynamic and forward-looking religion that is in the process of evolving distinct ideas about the individual, about relationship within a society, about relationships between the community and its government.” The conflict then between Islam and the West as envisioned by Crooke is a religious one at its core. It is a clash of two value systems, of two ideological world-views. Sounds familiar? This is Samuel Huntington’s theory of “Clash of Civilizations,” only with inverted conclusions. Huntington clearly ranked the two value systems. He privileged the West as the cradle of modernity, democracy and rationality battling the primitive forces of fundamentalism summarized by Islamist ideology. For Crooke, it is almost the opposite, with Islamism offering a new vision of the essence of man that is more humble, more spiritual and more communal than that of the West.
+There may be some — or a lot — of truth to Crooke’s depiction of the value system that many of these Islamist ideologies espouse. Moreover, ideology clearly plays a role in shaping conflicts. But putting too much emphasis on ideology as a source of conflict without linking it to political and economic factors is misleading. Such an emphasis ignores the enduring alliance between secular regimes in the West and the most fundamentalist Islamist ones like Saudi Arabia — a relationship that is based almost entirely on material interests not ideology. Moreover, it underplays the role of the Saudi regime in supporting Islamists across the Arab world and central Asia since the 1970s as a counterweight to secular nationalist and communist movements. This was not a benign interference. It led to significant trends of conservatism and anti-resistance or anti-revolutionary currents in some of these Islamic ideologies that the author does not address. The role of Saudi Arabia aside, the question of the dynamism and transformations of these ideologies over time is not addressed either. For example, Crooke does not explain how this “essential” notion of resistance can be squared with the transition of Islamist forces in Iran from opposition during the Shah’s time to government and at times oppressors of their own people later.
+The idealistic and at time lopsided depiction of Islamism and its ethics of resistance, reinforces — ironically in this case perhaps — many of the assumptions that Crooke is trying to dispel. It deprives readers misinformed about political Islam the opportunity to replace their prejudiced and skewed understanding of it with a more nuanced and realistic one. At worst, it belongs to a well-entrenched discourse on both sides of the divide that wants to will away the material realities animating much of these conflicts. At best, it serves as a reminder to us, and hopefully to Crooke, that the road to intellectual misrepresentation can be paved with good intentions.
+Hicham Safieddine is a Lebanese Canadian journalist.

combined/texts/1003.txt

@@ -1,76 +1,66 @@
-People hold imitation children’s coffins in protest at US policy on Gaza outside the White House in February.
-
-NurPhoto via ZUMA PressAs Israel’s invasion of Gaza enters its sixth month, the impact on children has been devastating. It will only get worse in the coming months.
-
-UN agencies report that an estimated 17,000 children have been orphaned or separated from relatives, and 1 in 6 children under the age of 2 are acutely malnourished.
-
-The health ministry in Gaza reported that 23 children died from malnutrition and dehydration in recent weeks.
-
-Out of more than 31,000 killed in Gaza, over 13,000 are children.
-
-President Joe Biden’s proposed temporary port and the ongoing air drops are insufficient in the face of this unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.
-
-The UN has warned that nearly 580,000 Palestinians – a quarter of Gaza’s population – are “one step away from famine.”
-
-These statistics and scenes are all too familiar to me. As a Palestinian refugee, I lived with my family for a large part of my life in Lebanon. I experienced civil war and the Israeli invasion in 1982, the siege of Beirut, the subsequent occupation of Lebanon, as well as the 2006 invasion.
-
-The experience of displacement and facing death daily is still stuck in my mind today. I have memories of jumping over scattered body parts after an Israeli air strike hit a building next to the house where we took refuge.
-
-There are many such horrible recollections. The psychological trauma rooted in the ravages of war are scars that last a lifetime.
-
-American aid, American weapons
-
-Israel continues to block humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza and has attacked Palestinians attempting to receive aid. The last day of February witnessed Israeli forces massacring over 100 unarmed Palestinians queuing for flour and humanitarian assistance. Three days later, Israel killed nine Palestinian civilians in line for flour in two separate attacks.
-
-Having already vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire, the Biden administration also blocked a statement that condemned the “Flour Bag Massacre” as it did not “have all the facts yet on the ground.”
-
-Even though Washington has supplied the Israeli military with massive quantities of munitions and political cover, it has consistently claimed that it is unable to influence Israeli policy.
-
-Instead, the Biden administration initiated air drops of “ready meals” into Rafah. The air drops are not even close to sufficient considering the dire needs of the population. And on 8 March the falling crates killed five people, including two children, when a parachute or parachutes failed to open. Biden’s proposed temporary port will take weeks to complete as disease and malnourishment grow.
-
-Meanwhile, Israel has continued its campaign and is employing American weapons. As the first aid drops were delivered, an Israeli drone strike targeted Palestinians huddling in tents outside Rafah’s Emirati hospital. At least 11 civilians, including children and two health workers, were killed and at least 50 people were injured.
-
-For five months, the Biden administration has defended Israel’s actions and offered only muted criticism. Washington has remained steadfast in its support despite the overwhelming evidence of war crimes, including the determination by the International Court of Justice of a plausible genocide.
-
-Spokespersons for the White House, State Department, and National Security Council as well as President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly dismissed or diminished reports by the United Nations, journalists, and humanitarian organizations of the humanitarian catastrophe that has been live streamed to a horrified global audience.
-
-Even after the “Flour Bag Massacre,” NSC spokesman John Kirby insisted that Israel “has tried to help with the delivery of humanitarian assistance.” Yet a handful of Israeli protesters have been successful in blocking aid trucks from entering Gaza. The carnival-like atmosphere of these Israeli protesters at the border crossing has occurred in full view of international media as well as the Israeli military.
-
-Israel has also prevented basic necessities from entering Gaza and contributed to the pain and suffering of Palestinian children. CNN has reported that maternity kits, sleeping bags and sanitary pads have been barred from entering Gaza. Anesthetics, oxygen cylinders and crutches are also on the list of rejected items.
-
-Never forgive
-
-The shocking scenes of children undergoing surgical procedures and amputations without anesthesia have now become routine as has the acronym WCNSF, for wounded child with no surviving family.
-
-UN Secretary General António Guterres’ 6 November warning that Gaza was becoming “a graveyard for children” has been realized.
-
-Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl who called begging for help after Israeli soldiers targeted the car in which she and her family were traveling, was killed after a long wait, along with the paramedics who went to save her.
-
-Infants like 45-day-old Mahmoud Fattouh, who died due to severe dehydration and malnutrition, or Ahmad, a child who was rescued after nine days under the rubble, a skeleton, or Taleen, 10, who recognized her mother’s body by the hair.
-
-There are countless stories of mothers who held their children in their arms when they took their last breath. And this is only a partial telling. There are thousands of others whose stories we don’t know. With thousands still buried under the rubble, the stories of many of the dead children may never be told.
-
-Yet the Biden administration repeatedly insists it needs more evidence before it can condemn or criticize Israel’s actions, standards it has not applied to the Palestinians, or UN agencies or the ICJ.
+Staff from Addameer inspect their Ramallah offices after a raid by the Israeli army, 11 December 2012.
+
+APA imagesAs protests continue across Palestine in support of thousands of prisoners languishing in Israeli jails, local organizations say that the Israeli authorities have increased their pressure on Palestinian human rights defenders.
+“This is a way to [break] the principle of solidarity between the Palestinian people and the Palestinian prisoners, and the case of the Palestinian prisoners in the conscience of the Palestinian people,” said Mourad Jadallah, a legal researcher with Addameer, a Ramallah-based prisoners support group.
+In October 2012, Israeli soldiers arrested Jadallah’s colleague, Ayman Nasser, from his home in the West Bank village of Saffa, near Ramallah, in the middle of the night. He was taken to Jerusalem’s infamous Russian Compound prison — Moskobiyyeh in Arabic — and kept in isolation for weeks of interrogation.
+Addameer reported that he was held in painful, stress-inducing positions during interrogation sessions that sometimes lasted for more than 20 hours, was barred from sleeping, psychologically intimidated and frequently denied access to a lawyer and to proper medical care.
+The Israeli authorities eventually accused Nasser of organizing and participating in demonstrations as a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and recruiting others to join the group.
+Through the use of torture, the Israelis also coerced witnesses — other Palestinian prisoners held in Israel — to incriminate Nasser. These witnesses later testified in front of an Israeli military court that they gave false statements (“The Shin Bet’s dream investigation,” Haaretz, 10 February).
+Nasser is currently being held in Israel’s Megiddo prison; his next hearing will take place on 4 March at Ofer military court.
+“This kind of arrest and attacks is a collective punishment for the Palestinian people for supporting the prisoners. They want to say [to] the Palestinian society that the Israeli forces are able to arrest Palestinians and to punish those that will support them,” Jadallah told The Electronic Intifada.
+“It’s a message for the prisoners that even these kinds of organizations, such as Addameer, are not protected, so don’t hope to get [help from] these organizations.”
+Arrested in front of 8-year-old
+Israeli pressure on Palestinian human rights defenders and organizations continued unabated into 2013. Another case that has drawn widespread criticism was the arrest and continued detention of 28-year-old Palestinian activist Hassan Karajah, also from Saffa.
+The youth coordinator at Stop the Wall, a Palestinian grassroots movement against Israel’s wall in the West Bank, Karajah was arrested from his home in the middle of the night on 23 January.
+More than 20 Israeli soldiers stormed the Karajah family home, waking up all the family members, including Hassan’s 8-year-old sister, and held everyone in two rooms as they conducted a three-hour search.
+Before arresting Hassan and taking him away, blindfolded and shackled, in an Israeli army jeep, the soldiers confiscated computers, cell phones, paperwork and family photos from the home, and threatened and interrogated other family members.
+“Hassan is one of the youth activists well-known within the youth circles in Palestine. He is one of the recognized, youth leaders who can organize [people],” said Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign.
+“They are trying to be aggressive and to finish their colonial project in the West Bank. They don’t want any Palestinian, organized reaction. Anybody that they think that he can be influential on the street, [with] the people, of course he will be targeted because they want to continue their project quietly,” Juma’ told The Electronic Intifada.
+After his arrest, Karajah was taken to the al-Jalame interrogation center near Jenin. He has had his interrogation period regularly extended since January. In a hearing at Ofer military court on 28 February, the court decided that Karajah would spend at least seven days in prison before the state presents its evidence, and charges, against him.
+According to Addameer, Karajah has lost 16 kilos (35 pounds) since his time in prison began, and was not given the correct dosage of medication for nerve damage in his leg.
+“I think Hassan as well as all the other Palestinian prisoners should be [released]. There is no crime that has been committed, other than being committed to their cause and their people and trying to defend the rights of their people and the rights of humanity. [They] are in [prison] for values that [they] believe in that don’t belong just to Palestinians, but to the whole world,” Juma’ added.
+Killed in custody
+Tens of thousands took to the streets across Palestine earlier this week to show their anger at a Palestinian prisoner’s death in Israeli prison. Thirty-year-old Arafat Jaradat — a father of two from the West Bank village of Sair — was killed in Megiddo prison on 23 February. An autopsy revealed signs of torture on Jaradat’s body, including laceration marks, broken bones, bruises and cuts.
+Jaradat’s death has drawn attention to what many say is the widespread use of torture in Israeli interrogation centers and prisons, medical neglect of prisoners, and the lack of accountability with which Israeli interrogators operate.
+According to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, between 2001 and 2011, 700 complaints were filed to the Israeli attorney general on behalf of detainees alleging torture was used against them. To date, not a single criminal investigation was launched into these complaints (“Failure to investigate alleged cases of ill-treatment and torture,” 1 January 2011).
+“This mechanism transmits a message to interrogees, [and] the potential complainants, that the chance of measures being taken against the persons responsible is zero,” B’Tselem found.
+“Hostile” doctors
+According to Anat Litvin, director of the prisoners and detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the level of medical care provided to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is lower than that given to Israeli civilians held in the same facilities.
+Israeli prison doctors are not under the authority of the Israeli health ministry, but the Israeli Prison Service and ministry of public security. These doctors are often not specialists and receive little, if any, additional training annually, and are often hesitant to transfer prisoners to Israeli civilian hospitals, due to the high financial costs and resources required, Litvin said.
+“These [doctors] are employed by the security authority, by the security system and they see themselves as part of this system and they fear that they are going to be fired. There is loyalty and also some basic hostility towards Palestinians, and some basic hostility towards people in prison, in general,” she said.
+“It’s basically a security system that has within it a medical system and the security prevails.”
+Loopholes for torture
+In 1987, the Israeli government appointed a judicial committee — known as the Landau Commission — to investigate the practices of the Israeli General Security Services (also known as the Shin Bet or Shabak). The commission stated that if interrogators employ a “necessity” defense — arguing that their actions helped prevent pressing and unavoidable harm — to justify their use of physical force against detainees, they wouldn’t be held criminally liable.
+The Israeli high court finally prohibited torture more than a decade later, in 1999, and outlawed certain interrogation techniques. The court left a loophole open, however, for Israeli interrogators: the use of physical force remained permitted in “ticking time bomb” situations.
+In February, the Turkel Commission — a government-appointed committee charged with investigating the Israeli navy’s killing of nine activists on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2010 — recommended that the Shin Bet videotape and record all interrogations of individuals suspected of security offenses.
+Despite this recommendation, the Israeli high court recently rejected a petition filed by local human rights groups challenging a long-standing exemption shielding the Israeli authorities from recording interrogations of “security” detainees. The court argued that the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, must be the one to amend the law, and completely ignored the Turkel recommendations.
+“Real leaders”
+According to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, the Knesset has regularly extended the exemption since 2002. As it stands, the Israeli security services will not be forced to record their interrogations before 2015, at the earliest.
+Addameer’s Mourad Jadallah argued that Palestinians need a long-term strategy based on forcing Israel to apply international law and international humanitarian law standards to its treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
+He explained that implementing the Third Geneva Convention, related to prisoners of war, and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which sets out protections for individuals in a time of war, is crucial. “If they do so, most of the Palestinian prisoners’ problems will be solved,” Jadallah said. “We know that Israel is refusing, but this is our demand. This is the demand of the prisoners.”
+While this strategy begins to take shape among Palestinian organizations and activists, Jadallah said the struggle to support Palestinian prisoners — and to free his colleague, Ayman Nasser — will continue, despite Israeli pressure and intimidation.
+“It’s very emotional and sensitive for Palestinians all over the world. They look to the prisoners as the real leaders. The prisoners issue means that we are still in occupation and we still have to resist,” Jadallah said. “We are ready to pay the price. Just like Ayman said, I am supporting the Palestinian prisoners and I am ready to pay my freedom as a price for my support.”
+Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at jkdamours.com.
+Tags
 
-Children in Gaza have suffered the loss of their closest family members, in many cases their parents, siblings, grandparents and other relatives. Their homes and schools have been destroyed, their neighbors killed or displaced, their books and toys have been lost, their pets have been killed, their favorite park has been razed.
+political prisoners
 
-Under constant bombardment, the children are still grappling with the greatest challenges of siege, destruction, displacement and starvation. These challenges will only increase in the weeks and months after the fighting ends.
+hunger strike
 
-And the children will never forgive the silence and complicity of those who supported this horror.
+Stop the Wall
 
-I know, I was once them.
+Mourad Jadallah
 
-Dalal Yassine is a non-resident fellow with the Jerusalem Fund/Palestine Center in Washington, DC. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center.
-Tags
+Ayman Nasser
 
-Gaza genocide
+Hassan Karajah
 
-Gaza war crimes
+Jamal Juma'
 
-Joe Biden
+Arafat Jaradat
 
-The White House
+Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
 
-crimes against humanity
+Israeli Prison Service
 
-children
+B'Tselem

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@@ -1,66 +1,13 @@
-New restrictions on the right to boycott Israel are being rolled out globally. Since 2019, 34 US states have passed laws penalizing companies that use boycotts and other nonviolent methods to pressure Israel on its human rights record and apartheid governance.
-
-Julia Bacha’s 2022 documentary Boycott tells the story of just how these efforts to stifle dissent work.
-
-She follows three American citizens who chose not to sign the standard clauses, or “certifications,” that they do not support BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), as required by their employers (or, in one case, an advertiser).
-
-What results is a compelling, uplifting and powerful documentary and an excellent example of activist filmmaking.
-
-Refusing to sign
-
-There are three heroes in Boycott: one in Texas, another in Arkansas and a third in Arizona.
-
-The certification they are asked to sign does not draw much attention to itself. A contractor (teacher, editor of a local newspaper or an attorney) may never read it before signing, while others may read it and consider it irrelevant to their lives.
-
-The certification requires that one does not engage in the boycott, divestment or sanctioning of Israel. Those who refuse to sign are in the minority. The risks they take in doing so are significant; they could lose their jobs and their livelihoods and put others’ livelihoods at risk too.
-
-Director Bacha and producers Suhad Babaa and Daniel J. Chalfen identify three eloquent, grounded and modest heroes of 21st-century American democracy. They may not agree with BDS, but they consider the right to boycott to be an essential part of American democracy.
-
-Alan Leveritt, publisher of The Arkansas Times, has no connection to Palestine or Israel. Yet, when one of the paper’s advertisers asked the paper to sign a certification that it would not support BDS, he refused.
-
-By refusing to sign, the paper lost advertising revenue essential for the newspaper’s survival.
-
-The certification in this case stems from anti-BDS legislation passed by the Arkansas state legislature in 2017. (Though an appeals court initially ruled that the legislation was unconstitutional, the law is still in effect because the court later reversed itself. The case may well go to the Supreme Court.)
-
-Leveritt’s refusal was based on principle: “Any country that bases its founding mythology on the Boston Tea Party,” he says, should still, several hundred years later, “see boycotts as a form of political speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment.”
-
-Leveritt, with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas to have the “law overturned on free speech grounds.”
-
-The question, then, is what motivated US lawmakers to push through legislation that tampers with the very core of American democratic organizing.
-
-“The Bible is very clear”
-
-Bacha allows the state legislators who introduced the bills in their respective states to speak for themselves.
-
-“The Bible is very clear,” says Bart Hester, an Arkansas state senator, who is also a supporter of anti-BDS legislation in the US Congress.
-
-“There’s going to be certain things that happen in Israel before Christ returns. Listen to this very closely,” he tells the invisible, attentive Bacha. “There will be famines and disease and a war and the Jewish people going to go back to their homeland. At that point, Jesus Christ will come back to the earth. When the king comes, we will all go to heaven while the earth is burned with fire.”
-
-Those who do not see Jesus at this time of Armageddon “will burn,” while the others, he indicates, “including the Jews,” will see Jesus and, as we are made to understand, be saved.
-
-Spread of boycott bans
-
-In addition to interviewing Bahia Amawi and Mikkel Jordahl, who also refused to sign certifications in the states where they live and went to court to challenge the anti-boycott legislation, Bacha also interviews opponents of the BDS movement, who are just as opposed to the various US laws that restrict the right to boycott in the United States.
-
-Rabbi Barry Block, head of one of Arkansas’ largest Jewish congregations, articulates this position most cogently: “American freedoms are terribly important to American Jews,” he says. “We wouldn’t be in the magnificently enviable position in which we find ourselves were we not blessed with freedom of religion and the rights to express ourselves as we see fit.”
-
-Boycott tells the story of resistance through the courts, traces the background of legislation and calls for action to be taken to oppose it. It provides sensitive portraits of individuals with moral courage of diverse backgrounds and motivations. It makes for essential viewing.
-
-The film excels on many levels: research, narrative, sense of character and as persuasive political filmmaking. The cinematography and soundtrack add to the quality of this outstanding documentary.
-
-The fight to protect the right to boycott in Western democracies is far from over, as boycott bans are being threatened in other countries, with similar provisions being introduced in the UK in recent years and further legislation being proposed elsewhere.
-
-Boycott is an essential weapon in the armory of those who wish to protect the rights to express themselves, to resist, to oppose, to dissent, to question; rights that far too many of us take for granted.
-
-Selma Dabbagh is a writer of fiction and a lawyer.
-
-Boycott will be available for streaming online 1 March 2023, on Google Play, Amazon, Apple TV and Vimeo on Demand.
-Tags
-
-BDS
-
-boycott, divestment, sanctions
-
-anti-boycott law
-
-Documentary
+The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has called upon their colleagues in the international community to “comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions” as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott. The call was made at an international conference on “Resisting Israeli Apartheid Strategies and Principles” at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on Sunday 5 December.
+The campaign urges the international community to refrain from participating in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions; to suspend all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions; to promote divestment from Israel by academic institutions; and to condemn Israeli policies by pressing for resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural associations and organizations - as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.
+Giving the welcoming remarks at the conference, the author, journalist and playwright Victoria Brittain said “many of you may not know how very, very sharp was the struggle for South Africa’s freedom. Ten years after majority rule it is easy to forget that just a very few years before that we in the anti-apartheid movement were deeply absorbed in battles over perception, over media bias, over western government indifference and downright lying, which mirror exactly what the solidarity movement is doing for Palestine today.”
+Tom Paulin, Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford University, said in the keynote address that “a struggle against embedded prejudices and  institutions which aim to equate people into tribes and enforce apartheid is an imaginative struggle, a struggle which does not demand that a work of art should be constrained to, and interpreted by, a single ideological struggle.” He mentioned the work of the late Edward Said who in his book “The End of the Peace Process” wrote that only the force of unyielding principle, held on to from a position of moral strength, was capable of delegitimising apartheid all over the world.
+Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Israel’s Haifa University, told the conference that the boycott should be comprehensive for it to work, even though he would be adversely affected. “The academics in Israel are closely and almost integrally associated with the army, the political system and the industry. Rather than being a critical agency vis-a-vis these pillars of the society it has become one of them - culpable as they are in sustaining the occupation mainly by providing moral and ‘scientific’ explanations for the oppression in the occupied territories.”
+Lawrence Davidson, Professor of Middle East History at West Chester University, described himself as “a nice Jewish boy fallen from the faith.” He told the conference about a number of divestment initiatives in the US, including a scheme by the Presbyterian Church to selectively divest stocks from its $8  billion investment portfolio in corporations who profit from supporting Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory. “Charges of anti-Semitism come fast and furious, but there is an important difference between being anti-Semitic and being anti-Zionist,” Davidson added.
+Ur Shlonsky, adjoint Professor of Linguistics at Geneva University said in recent years “the construction of anti-Semitism has been extended to cover criticism of the policies of the State of Israel towards the Palestinians and over hostility towards Zionism.” He said “the self-proclaimed leadership of the Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere has made it its task to convey and to sustain a Jewish identity which is centred on solidarity with Israel and to simultaneously denigrate and marginalise all  other forms of Jewish identity.”
+There was a strong presence of British Jews at the conference, as well as Jewish academics from universities in Australia, Israel, and Switzerland. Few Arabs were present, but two Palestinians, Lisa Taraki and Omar Barghouti, travelled from  Israel and the West Bank to support their call for an academic boycott of Israel and to draw attention to the British Committee for Universities for Palestine (BRICUP). They called on the academic community to support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts.
+The British media picked up on accusations by “Jewish” groups that the SOAS Palestine Society was inciting hatred because it called the conference “Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles.” In the Guardian, Polly Curtis reported that Danny Stone, of the Union of Jewish Students organised a counter-meeting at SOAS. One of the aims of the World Union of Jewish Students, of which the UJS is a constituent member, is to “promote Zionism, strengthen the ties of Jewish students worldwide with the State of Israel as the central creative factor in Jewish life, and to pursue this through the encouragement of Aliya, strengthening the State of Israel and increasing the ties between the Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora.”
+The Jewish students picketing the conference were very amicable however. Despite all the fuss, some of them even attended the conference - though they may have disagreed with the politics. Interestingly, the mainstream British media failed to point out that there was a talk by Moty Cristal and David Cesarani on the Geneva Accords also at SOAS University on the same day as the conference. Under these circumstances the accusation that SOAS  is “institutionally biased” seems plainly false. As Colin Bundy the Director of SOAS pointed out: “We probably do more on the Middle East than any other university.”
+Related Links
+BY TOPIC: Divestment and Boycott
+Victor Kattan is a Director of Arab Media Watch. You can reach him at victor@arabmediawatch.com. BRICUP’s website is found at at www.bricup.org.uk. The web site for the International Campaign to Defend Palestinians’ Right to Education at Birzeit University is right2edu.birzeit.edu.

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@@ -1,52 +1,52 @@
-Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies by Heba Hayek, Hajar Press (2021).
-
-“I’m constantly longing for old places while finding new ones,” writes the London-based Palestinian writer Heba Hayek in her debut book, Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies.
-
-The book, not quite a memoir and not quite a novel, is a series of vignettes describing the daily life, memories and upbringing of an unnamed narrator whose background bears a distinct resemblance to Hayek’s own.
-
-When the narrator misses Ohio, where Hayek herself attended graduate school, she goes to Tesco Extra, “the British version of America’s Target,” to walk “aimlessly down the aisles reading all the ingredients of new vegan products.” The narrator is not, she assures the reader, a vegan, but she finds “plant-based turkey amusing and it’s important to remain informed.”
-
-On some days there are more police cars outside the narrator’s Southeast London flat than she can imagine, a place where the trees are sticks in the winter, refusing to stay green all year round like they seemed to do in the more affluent northwest area of the city, where she lived previously. When she misses Gaza, she sends everyone away, pretending that she has a meeting, and summons her homeland, calling on its spirit as though through a séance.
-
-Heba Hayek is a Palestinian writer born in Gaza, now in her twenties. Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies won her the Creative Award for the 2022 Palestine Book Awards. She is one of the most talented Palestinian writers writing in English today.
-
-In Sambac, her narrator comes across as unassuming, surprising and lovable. From discussing shopping in Lidl for a cheap but delicious croissant, to describing the hair-waxing parties organized by her grandmother in Gaza, complete with bizarre aphorisms from her grandmother, such as, “If you want a happy vagina, you don’t get to say ouch,” there is a frankness that is rare and exhilarating in her writing.
-
-Hayek has an ability to combine, to juxtapose, to list, to joke and to move the reader, creating a new form of bildungsroman that captures the destructive, fragmented and mentally torturous existence of many Palestinians living under occupation or in the diaspora. Her writing combines the horrors and killings with the hopes, warmth, food and humor. This is a contemporary requiem to an assaulted, beleaguered homeland, sorely missed.
-
-Hayek writes in her introduction that, growing up in Gaza, she was able to “search for the world in books and movies. On Google Maps, I walked down beautiful streets and cities whose names I couldn’t yet pronounce. But there was no shortcut for the reverse; for finding home in exile.”
-
-The book stems in part, she writes, from seeking to “discover myself in books or movies,” and through doing so she writes the story of how Gaza feels, not as a commentary on the military assaults and bloodshed seen in the news, but how it feels to grow up there – coping, marginalizing and essentially trying to deal with the unnatural circumstances present in Gaza – the daily violence inflicted on this young population.
-
-Point 15 of Chronology of a Girlhood in Gaza:
-
-On your first attempt to leave Gaza, you will stand in a cold dark room to be strip searched. The soldier will ask you to squat.
-“I don’t want to squat.”
-
-She will push you to the floor and stick her finger up your ass. Your eyes will feel like someone has stuck lit candles in them, but you will try to stop yourself from crying.
-
-“Clear,” she will say to the other soldiers in the room.
-
-You will dress yourself and get sent back for no reason.
-
-The cruelty of the siege is always there, but Hayek refuses to let it define her narrator, to limit her, for the ritual humiliations to reduce her to the place where they are clearly designed to relegate her.
-
-The book is named after the Sambac, or Arabian jasmine, tree that symbolizes her “narrator’s attempts to create life where this shrub doesn’t naturally thrive,” embodying resilience – “a word that has been overused but nonetheless is full of meaning and truth.”
+Ala’a is one of five youth featured in a moving film about life in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria.
+“Why do I want to leave? In Damascus, a soul is born serene and dies used up.” Ala’a, a young aspiring filmmaker, decries the lack of freedoms in Yarmouk camp, a neighborhood of Damascus, as he sits in contemplation in a sunlit room.
+Ala’a is one of the five shebab (youth) that make up the The Shebabs of Yarmouk, a poignant new documentary by French director Axel Salvatori-Sinz.
+Elegantly alternating between moments of intense conversation, poetic monologue, and subtle, symbolic observation and exploration, the film paints a beautiful portrait of a tight-knit group of third-generation Palestinian refugees inside Yarmouk camp. It delves deep into their identities, precariously situated between Palestine and Syria, in a place where citizenship is hard to find or define.
+Prominent young theater actor Hassan Hassan, his fiancée Waed, and their friends Ala’a, Samer and Tasneem are the protagonists of the film. Shot over the course of three years, the film brings you affectingly close to the group as it approaches adulthood and negotiates difficult choices with grace and acuity.
+Melancholic aura
+Shebabs of Yarmouk takes on a melancholic aura when considering the current situation in Yarmouk. Finished in 2011, the film’s context is situated directly before conditions in the camp began to corrode drastically as conflicts between rebel and regime forces increased.
+Today, the Syrian army controls the perimeter of the camp, allowing in only minute amounts of aid, a siege that has caused widespread hunger and dozens of deaths from starvation among the 18,000 or so residents remaining. Most of the 160,000 persons who lived in Yarmouk before the war have fled. The situation has gotten progressively worse since armed opposition groups entered the camp in December 2012 and the Syrian army began the siege. Fighting has left much of the camp in ruins.
+In the midst of this, the young actor Hassan Hassan was recently reported killed, the victim of torture inside a Syrian regime prison.
+Committed
+Hassan Hassan stands out in the film, not only for his charisma and energy, but for his humbling commitment to Yarmouk camp itself, where he saw opportunity for growth and creativity. Early in the film, he admits, “I love the camp. I love its details … If I could put up but one theater play a year, and it is staged only in the camp, I’ll be satisfied and happy.”
+Still a Palestinian, Hassan does not forget his right of return and compensation for all that his grandparents lost in the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing undertaken by Zionist forces shortly after the couple’s marriage in 1948.
+We witness Hassan’s charming humor as he states, “They had a new house, brand new pots and pans. Everything was new, even the frying pan for eggs. They even had four pounds of laban (yogurt) in the fridge … Motherfuckers, I need this laban back.”
+To live, work or marry in Yarmouk, young men are required to serve in the military, a commitment that Hassan concedes to so he can make a life there. Over the span of the film, we see his hair shaved off for draft, grow out and be cut again multiple times.
+Hassan’s peers relate to his connection to the camp, but are less willing to accept a life in it. “Up to now, I still haven’t got a passport but I am expected to do military service,” Ala’a explains. “It is called the Palestinian Liberation Army, though it doesn’t liberate anything. It’s directly accountable to the Syrian government. Humanness is desperately missing in this army.”
+Beyond these political expositions, much of the film’s beauty lies in its encapsulation of the shebab’s more personal and intimate narratives.
+Hassan and Waed lovingly argue over their future and finances. Waed and Tasneem discuss their hesitancy to raise families in their current environment, asking, “Will we forever have to be the camp’s children? Won’t we ever become a country’s children?”
+Breathtaking
+In a breathtaking five-minute candid single take, Ala’a describes his relationship with a woman he dated who received an abortion. He laughs and cries as classical music playing in the background swells around him. Noticing the camera, he asks “It’s recording?” before quietly telling the viewers in English, “When you lose the meaning, you lose everything.”
+Interspersed in the film are striking shots that reveal the details of the camp itself. Views of the clustered, layered buildings and narrow streets reveal its natural flow.
+The youth cough and laugh while they beat dust out of a rug or sit and converse on rooftops covered in broken appliances, satellite dishes, tangled wires and poles.
+Images of escape and return, entrapment and wonder recur. A train departing, birds circling the stacked rooftops, and open windows revealing the camp behind them appear as motifs throughout the film.
+Coupled with Palestinian singer Reem Kelani’s beautifully composed score, or often accompanied by the camp’s adhan (call to prayer), these interludes make a strong impact. They illustrate the subtle and precarious contradictions of the shebab and the camp itself, described by Samer as the “non-place settled inside [them].”
+Unbearable
+At the end of the film, the shebab allude to repercussions felt in the camp as the popular uprisings began. Since that time, it has become a site of intense conflict, destruction and siege.
+In a statement to The Electronic Intifada, director Axel Salvatori-Sinz explained that after the culmination of the film, all of the shebab fled Yarmouk except Hassan and Waed.
+“It was an act of resistance,” the director said. “The camp was [Hassan’s] place and it was not possible for him to leave the camp behind him.”
+Eventually, conditions became unbearable. “The Syrian regime decided to eradicate Yarmouk camp, stopping the provision of food … Hassan and Waed decided to try to escape.”
+With exits of the camp blocked by Syrian forces, Hassan attempted a bribe but was arrested. Late last year, Hassan’s family was notified of his death inside prison, which many have alleged was a result of torture.
+As much as a portrait of a place and a generation, Shebabs of Yarmouk now acts as a solemn celebration of Hassan Hassan, who never wavered in his commitment to Yarmouk as a place of livelihood, creative opportunity and beauty. He longed for a homeland, but resolved that, “Palestine is the camp, and the camp is a piece of Palestine,” and so he strove to create an ideal within it.
+The spirit and beauty that he found is realized in The Shebabs of Yarmouk. As thousands still languish in the camp, we cannot — for Hassan’s sake — let Yarmouk be forgotten.
+Watch the trailer of The Shebabs of Yarmouk, via IMDB.
+Daryl Meador is a graduate student studying media at The New School, who recently lived and volunteered in Nablus. Follow her on Twitter @yalladaryl.
+Tags
 
-The warmth, love and resolve of the narrator’s family radiates throughout this short book; their wisdom, resolve, patience and kindness. Far from the al-Tuffah area of Gaza City, where they lived for decades, some family members are squeezed into tiny spaces in tiny cities across Europe. Hayek attempts to reconnect with them, with other Palestinians from Gaza and with home. The dispersal of the narrator’s family is yet another example as to how the Nakba continues daily.
+Yarmouk
 
-The absurdity of the narrator’s life does not escape her – nor do the extreme contradictions or demands placed on her.
+Palestinian refugees in Syria
 
-“Late capitalism is the bane of my life,” she writes, describing buying the furry slippers that have been repeatedly popping up on social media advertisements. “Sometimes it feels as though my very brain chemistry has been encrypted within these algorithms, yet somehow, they never quite grasp what I actually need. At least not in the long term.”
+Palestinian Refugees
 
-Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies comes with a playlist that ranges from Mashrou’ Leila to Nina Simone. Food, music and humor can console and help, can speak to you when the yearning and isolation hurt, but essentially, at the end of the day, Hayek’s short book upholds that nothing really uproots the yearning for home.
+Damascus
 
-Selma Dabbagh is a writer of fiction and a lawyer.
+ethnic cleansing
 
-Tags
+Nakba
 
-Gaza
+right of return
 
-literature
+Hassan Hassan
 
-diaspora
+Syria

combined/texts/1006.txt

@@ -1,14 +1,92 @@
-A graduation ceremony at Birzeit University, West Bank, June 2006. (Mushir Abdelrahman/MaanImages)
-
-In one of those reports commissioned and written in Palestine and then promptly forgotten, the challenges facing higher education and the consequences of not heeding these challenges are painstakingly detailed.
-The Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research produced the document in August 2002 with financial and technical assistance provided by the World Bank. It is titled “Palestinian Higher Education Financing Strategy.”  The paper has two objectives. The first is to provide an analytic rationale for donors wishing to finance higher education in Palestine, and the other, thornier one, is to “build stakeholders consensus on the rationale and mechanism for financing reform.”
-Given the nature of the document, it is taken for granted that the answer to the challenges higher education faces in Palestine is “a compelling financial strategy” and that’s what the document provides.
-But at a panel discussion conducted on 4 December at Birzeit University by the newly established teaching resources unit Iben Rushd, three veteran Palestinian educators (Ramzi Rihan, George Giacaman and Maher Hashweh) took another hard look at these challenges and placed a “compelling financial strategy” at the bottom of their list of possible solutions.  After all, a few Arab countries with tight budgets (Jordan being among them) have produced higher quality universities than countries able and willing to spend much more money on higher education.
-As someone who has been involved in teaching at a private institution of higher learning in Palestine for almost a year now, my gut feeling is the same. The fundamental problem is not lack of funds. Once a Palestinian budget materializes to keep pace with infrastructures, decent salaries for educators and reasonable funds for research, the troubling question that Maher Hashweh raised at the panel discussion will remain:  Are Palestinian universities in the business of producing cultured, educated and ethical citizens who can think on their own and who have genuine expertise in their fields of study, or are we simply teaching students the various rote-learning tricks needed to pass exams — that is to say, we are not teaching the professional/technical expertise students need or the higher aesthetic and social values and critical thinking skills contained in a liberal arts education.
-George Giacaman located the major challenge facing Palestinian universities in the political and cultural sphere. He observed that Palestinian universities, long viewed by the PA as the locales for political resistance, are constantly at war with Palestinian society in their effort to impose their educational mission on students; universities get little effective support from the PA in enforcing standards, regulations and laws.
-This is true in my experience so far. Student councils at Palestinian universities are a precise reflection of the political factions on the outside and take instructions from political leaders in the community rather than from educators at the university.  Currently, Fatah and Hamas are feuding on campuses just in the same way as their counterparts are feuding in society at large, and universities have to expend a lot of energy containing them. On many academic as well as political issues, student leaders set the agenda on campus and exert power in the time-honored manner of tribal chiefs through a mixture of charm, pressure, coercion and an exchange of favors.
-However, the fundamental problem universities face is not located simply in the social and political world outside the university to which Giacaman referred. There is a lot that our universities can and ought to control internally at the level of management. Dubai, the big economic success in the Middle East, is a shining example of what could be done once the will to manage effectively is unleashed. We should stop pretending to be research institutions and focus the energies of our overworked and alienated faculty on providing first-rate instruction.
-Good instruction cannot possibly take place without an understanding of our educational mission. Our faculties of arts and sciences, especially, have a hard time articulating this mission. They ought to be forcefully pointing the way in connection with the rhetorical question Hashweh raised. Indeed, they ought to be imposing that mission on both society and government.
-The agenda, at least in our arts and sciences faculties (if not in the professional schools), is to provide a liberal arts education.  We need to embrace this concept of the liberal arts in spite of the low value placed on it by government and society (witness, for example, in which fields of study low Tawjihi matriculation exam scorers are placed).  Our degrees should be much more flexible and allow students to double major or have majors and minors.  We need to liberalize our degrees and our teaching in the faculties of arts and sciences in the true sense of the word.
-A liberal arts education teaches our students how to think, how to learn and how to see things holistically. It will make them better citizens, better employees, better parents and better future teachers. Indeed, it will make the universities themselves richer intellectual places in which to be. Only when we understand and embrace our mission can we hope for our instruction inside the classroom to change for the better.
-Rima Merriman is assistant professor and chair of the Modern Languages Department at the Arab American University - Jenin.
+Hebron activist Issa Amro
+
+ActiveStillsOnce a thriving marketplace, Hebron’s Shuhada street has been closed to Palestinians for the past twenty-one years.
+
+Israel used the 1994 massacre at the nearby Ibrahimi Mosque — during which the extremist American settler Baruch Goldstein killed 29 worshippers — as a pretext to tighten its control over the occupied West Bank city.
+
+Today, Jewish-only settlements have surrounded Hebron and taken over parts of the city. These settlements are illegal under international law.
+
+The closure of Shuhada Street is vigorously opposed by Palestinians. The organization Youth Against Settlements (YAS) both documents human rights abuses carried out by the Israeli military and takes direct action against Hebron’s suffocation.
+
+In a symbolically important move, the group has succeeded in setting up a kindergarten on Shuhada Street.
+
+Doing such work is highly risky. Youth Against Settlements has repeatedly found itself attacked by Israeli settlers and the military. Last month, for example, some of its activists were fired upon by residents of the Jewish-only settlement Karmei Tzur.
+
+Issa Amro is a founder of Youth Against Settlements. He spoke to Narjas Zatat.
+
+Narjas Zatat: What are the main aims of Youth Against Settlements?
+
+Issa Amro: The main aim is to oppose the Israeli policies that displace the Palestinians from their homes in Hebron and to strengthen the morale of the Palestinian people in Hebron. We also want to empower Palestinian youths with the skills and support [needed] to resist the Israeli occupation, principally by advocating nonviolent resistance.
+
+NZ: One of your projects is the Open Shuhada Street campaign. Could you tell me a little bit about the campaign and how it was conceived?
+
+IA: Since 25 February 1994 — the date of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre — Shuhada street has been closed to Palestinians.
+
+In 2009, Youth Against Settlements led a delegation from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa through Shuhada Street. The Israeli army and the settlers attacked us.
+
+After this ordeal, we agreed to coordinate a global day of action to call for the reopening of Shuhada Street for Palestinians. In 2010, we had our first global day [of action]. We asked all of our friends from all over the world to organize nonviolent activities — in their cities, organizations and universities — in solidarity with Hebron. Over time, it came to be known as the international day of solidarity with Hebron.
+
+We held many activities for Palestinian youths. One of the things we did was to train young people to use video cameras so that they can document human rights violations and we succeeded in increasing awareness of the situation in Hebron through the use of these cameras.
+
+We use social media as a tool to reach a wider audience. We organize tours and home stays for international visitors who are visiting Hebron in order to learn more about Palestinian life in the city.
+
+We have volunteering days where we organize trips in order to help Palestinian families to remain in their homes. We deliberately choose houses in a “hotspot” — houses that are near settlements or military bases or areas that are somehow closed off from the rest of the Palestinian [community]. We clean each house, we clean the yard, we dig the land, paint, put up fences and tidy up the mess left by soldiers who often enter these houses as part of their intimidation tactics.
+
+We have managed to create a kindergarten on Shuhada Street. It is the only public space created in the restricted part of Hebron in the last twenty years.
+
+NZ: Why is the Open Shuhada Street campaign so important?
+
+IA: Because the main goal of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre was to kill the Palestinian identity in Hebron. The main aim of the settlers in Hebron is to confiscate Shuhada Street and the area surrounding it. They want to connect the settlements inside the city with Kiryat Arba, which is a settlement [on the outskirts of] Hebron.
+
+They [the Israeli military] have closed Shuhada Street and confiscated over 520 Palestinian-owned shops. It is the main street in Hebron which connects all of the parts of Hebron together — north, south, east and west. It is the city center.
+
+All the main markets are either on Shuhada Street or around it, and the same goes for holy sites. Small Palestinian businesses that specialize in handmade products are also based around Shuhada Street.
+
+NZ: Youth Against Settlements has enjoyed a number of small victories. Can you summarize those victories and explain their impact?
+
+IA: We have stopped the expansion of the Tel Rumeida settlement to the east. Settlers were [according to Israeli law] illegally occupying one of the houses. In one of the rare occasions where the law worked in our favor, we managed to take it back.
+
+We are now using the house as the center for Youth Against Settlement activities. Our presence there has halted the further expansion of the settlement, although the settlers continue to try and take it.
+
+Another victory is that we have defended Palestinian land between Kiryat Arba and the neighboring settlement Givat Haavot. The Israeli settlers thought they had acquired the land, but we managed to get it back and allow the original Palestinian owner of the land to once more farm on it.
+
+The kindergarten we created had been an empty house that settlers had tried to move into illegally. However, we have consistently protected that building despite the fact that Israeli soldiers have forcibly removed us from the premises sixteen times.
+
+Israeli settlers attacked us more than 35 times. We had to smuggle in the construction materials during the night in order to refurbish the house. We would walk one kilometer, sometimes more, to buy the construction materials and carry them on our shoulders to the home.
+
+NZ: I understand that your office was raided on 26 February. What happened?
+
+IA: The Israeli soldiers surrounded the house, and they came in to search for the materials we use for protests. It was a preemptive move to stop the protest that was scheduled for the following day. They wanted to confiscate the speakers, the banners, the flags that were made. Luckily, they found nothing.
+
+We have had previous experience with these types of raids and we took all the materials to another house the night before they came. Luckily, nobody was hurt. They were looking for specific people who were leaders in the protest and in the community in order to arrest them. However, we were prepared for this as well, and told the relevant people to stay away from the office until the day of the protest.
+
+NZ: Do these kind of arbitrary raids happen often?
+
+IA: These raids happens usually before a big event. For example, there were problems when Youth Against Settlements filmed the incident with David Nahlawi [an Israeli soldier, whose real name is David Adamov, aiming his rifle at young Palestinians]. The footage was on every social media outlet all over the world.
+
+As a result, soldiers came to the house and threatened us with arrests in order to warn us from filming them in the future. From time to time, Israeli soldiers come to warn activists from filming, protesting peacefully or talking to internationals about the situation in Hebron.
+
+NZ: On 6 February, Israeli settlers living in the Hebron area opened fire on a group of Palestinian activists. Is this kind of violence commonplace?
+
+IA: Yes, yes it is. We have been attacked many times by settlers. They usually threaten us with guns.
+
+They do not want any kind of popular resistance or peaceful protests against the illegal settlements — particularly in Hebron.
+
+Narjas Zartat has completed a masters’ degree in Japanese studies and international relations. She is currently undertaking an internship in Palestine. Twitter: @NtheodoraK
+Tags
+
+Hebron
+
+Hebron massacre
+
+Shuhada street
+
+Youth Against Settlements
+
+Issa Amro
+
+Israeli settlements
+
+settlements
+
+settler violence

combined/texts/1007.txt

@@ -1,44 +1,128 @@
-Campus in Camps participants meet nearly every day to discuss their initiatives. (Image courtesy of Campus in Camps)“When we speak about homeland, we always speak about the past. I think this is wrong, because our homeland is the future,” said Aysar al-Saife, a 24-year-old resident of Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem. Al-Saife is one of 12 active participants in Campus in Camps, a new two-year program for young residents of the refugee camps in the southern West Bank who are eager to rethink their representation and identity as Palestinian refugees.
-Campus in Camps was officially born in January 2012. The initiative was developed by architect and urban design specialists Allessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, both of whom were also founders of the Decolonizing Architecture Artist Residency. The initiative was developed from an interest in exceptional nature of the camps; despite harsh conditions, they have developed into relatively autonomous social and political spaces. Based on this, they began to ask, how can the camps be re-represented, divorced from past conceptions, without normalizing the status of the refugees as being in exile?
-“[In the past,] refugee camps have been spaces for humanitarian intervention. But now if you look at the refugee camp, they are very independent spaces. What we seek is to find how to represent these, because the very static and traditional way of representation for refugees is of victimization, poverty and passivity,” explained a participant, Isshaq Albarbary. “And we think we are in a new phase of representation. That’s very much what we work on.”
-Housed in Dheisheh’s al-Feniq Center, Campus in Camps was created as a space where young people could attempt to answer these questions themselves, and develop their answers into initiatives for their own communities.
-“Occupation of knowledge”
-While the project, known as “Campus” for short, takes its basic idea from the concept of a university and is part of the Al-Quds University/Bard College partnership, it functions through methods very different than a traditional university. Participants take part in a process they have called “unlearning” — choosing key subjects of their lives as refugees, analyzing and redefining them through their own interpretations.
-“As Palestinians we have been subjected to different kinds of occupation — the physical, it exists and you can see it. But you have occupation of knowledge,” Albarbary remarked. “I am 24 years old, and my knowledge has been occupied. What we do here is to re-look at things, in terms of knowledge and producing knowledge. If we have knowledge imposed on us from external sources that doesn’t fit with my everyday life in the refugee camp, that doesn’t mean that it’s knowledge for me.”
-Participants attend the project for two years, meeting nearly every day to develop and discuss their work. The first year bases itself in education, involving guest lecturers and public forums and many conversations on the nature of the Palestinian refugee camp.
-The second year of the program is largely based on implementation of the ideas developed by the participants. “We always link our work with the community. Discussion is the base for everything. Every Saturday is a public lecture where the community comes to discuss, and sometimes we travel around and have workshops with the community,” explained Albarbary.
-Most of the initiatives are connected to Dheisheh or one of the nearby camps. Ahmed Allahham described his investigation into a suburb of Dheisheh, al-Shahoda, populated mostly by refugees but known for its villas and spacious streets. The suburb recently petitioned to become part of Dheisheh camp. Allahham asked, “What does it mean when a refugee living in a villa wants to be part of the refugee camp?”
-Focus on “reusing”
-Naba Alassi is analyzing the relationship between Dheisheh and the adjacent town of Doha, established as a kind of extension to Dheisheh and also populated by refugees. Albarbary is exploring use of the bridge that connects the two complexes, which was built and financed by residents of Dheisheh but has been closed for three years due to misuse. “What I would like to do is first of all to reactivate use of the bridge, but differently. Both in functionality and intellectually,” he said.
-Other participants are creating media projects based on strengthening the social fabric of the camps. Some are investigating and writing about the political representation of the refugees in Palestine and abroad.
-“My initiative is about reusing,” explained 23-year-old Bisan Jaffari. “Not just to reuse everything that you can touch, but some things that are cultural. Cooperation and participation, these are very strong powers in the camp. Maybe we are going to concentrate on enhancing and reusing these good things.”
-Using dialogue as their basis for learning — or unlearning — certain terms came up in conversation again and again. One participant, Murad Owdeh, said, “If something provokes us inside campus and camps, and we will put it on the table, discuss it and redefine it.”
-“That’s how we came up with the Collective Dictionary, a series of publications containing definitions. Participants pick a word, or a word emerges from active conversations or work with the community, and then redefine the word based on personal experience,” said Albarbary.
-Pride
-The dictionary was developed into several small books published in English and Arabic. Each book considers a term that the group has decided is fundamental to the understanding of Palestinian refugee camps, such as “common,” “well-being,” “participation,” “responsibility” and “ownership.” The books feature personal interpretations, interviews with the community, and photographic and written explorations of spaces within the camps.
-The Collective Dictionary offers a rare glimpse into the minds of young Palestinian refugees, and offers readers a new lens of viewing them. Through observations, memories and analysis, the publications deconstruct what it means to be a Palestinian refugee today.
-The publications describe a certain pride and affinity to the space of the camp and the ownership the participants feel there. In the essay “Who owns the Camp?” Alaa al-Hamouz writes: “Nowhere else do I have the authority that I do inside the camp. This is because I am a part of it. When I walk between the houses in the alleys, I feel that we all share the camp, all of the people who live inside.”
-But while the publications celebrate the strength of the camps, they also seek to reconcile this with the ever-present state of exile in which the refugees live. Writing on the idea of “common” within the camps, al-Saifi and Albarbary explain, “The camps at the moment live in a state of loss between idea and reality. The idea is that when we look to refugeehood and the right of return as common to every refugee … In reality, camps became homelands to refugees.”
-This does not imply giving up the right of return, but redefining it for the new generations of refugees. Writing on the right of return, Albarbary argues, “we have this right, and should start designing and forming our return based on our values, principles, culture and social fabric.”
-“Everything has changed”
-Campus in Camps is asking difficult and important questions, but without seeking concrete answers. Instead, it is trying to instill more widespread engagement with ideas fundamental to the existence of Palestinian refugees. By creating a space for analysis, it hopes to begin redefining refugees through their own definitions.
-The first group of participants will end their cycle this year, and Campus in Camps will begin a new one in January. In the next year, the project hopes to include more camps, including Aida, Beit Jibrin and Shufat. Youth continue to come to the center eager to get involved. The strength of the project is demonstrated by the passion and excitement its participants demonstrate.
-“I joined Campus in Camps because I see that it is the small window that is looking into the refugee’s world. With our hands we can open and expand this window and know what the meaning of real refugees is,” explained participant Bissan Jaffari. “Everything has changed. We are still refugees, but we are something different.”
-Daryl Meador is a recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who is currently living and volunteering in Nablus.
+Palestinians climb a ladder to get over the Israeli-built wall separating the occupied West Bank village of Abu Dis from Jerusalem, 17 November 2014.
+
+APA imagesUS President Barack Obama, in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, reaffirmed his support and love for Israel because, as he claims, “it is a genuine democracy and you can express your opinions.”
+
+He further expressed his commitment to protecting Israel as a “Jewish state” by ensuring a “Jewish majority.”
+
+The US government’s support for the “Jewish state” has always been far more than rhetorical, backed by billions of dollars of military funding and consistent pro-Israel vetoes at the UN Security Council.
+
+We are a group of US-based academics, representing diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, as well as a range of national origins, who recently visited Palestine. We were able to gain firsthand exposure to what Obama described in the interview as Israel’s “Jewish democracy” and to what kinds of infrastructure our tax dollars help to support — walls, checkpoints and modern weaponry.
+
+We had the privilege of traveling through part of the occupied Palestinian territories — the West Bank, including East Jerusalem — where we met with Palestinians.
+
+Double standards
+
+We feel compelled to share a few examples of what we witnessed during our visit with Palestinian scholars, policy makers, activists, artists and others working in the West Bank. We observed numerous double standards with regard to Palestinians’ rights that prompt us to question the claim that Israel is a genuine democracy.
+
+We believe that our government’s assertions that Israel is a democracy obscures the conditions it imposes on the Palestinian people through the occupation and beyond with conditions that amount to apartheid under settler colonialism.
+
+Our concerns began even before we arrived, as a search of the US State Department website for information about travel to Israel returned sobering results.
+
+The US government warns travelers to back up their computers because Israeli border control officials can erase anything at will. This indeed happened to one of us upon leaving Tel Aviv to return to the US.
+
+The site also warns travelers that their personal email or social media accounts may be searched, and so travelers “should have no expectation of privacy for any data stored on such devices or in their accounts.” Equipment may also be confiscated.
+
+The State Department further acknowledges that US citizens who are Muslim and/or of Palestinian or other Arab descent may have considerable trouble entering or exiting through Israeli-controlled frontiers. And this too happened to one of us who had mobile phone contacts searched immediately on entering Tel Aviv.
+
+Profiling
+
+Concerns in entering and exiting pale in comparison to the restrictions placed on US citizens of Palestinian origin, along with all other Palestinians who hold identification documents from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
+
+Before traveling, most of us did not understand that for Palestinians under occupation, there are several types of identification and profiling and each comes with its own restrictions on mobility.
+
+Palestinians from Jerusalem have identification cards they must carry in a blue booklet while those living in the rest of the occupied West Bank hold an ID card in a green booklet, issued to them from the Palestinian Authority with the permission of the Israeli government.
+
+People possessing that identification generally cannot enter Jerusalem or present-day Israel without prior permission, even for a visa interview to attend an academic meeting in the US. Many people we met had only visited Jerusalem, home to many holy sites, once in their lives despite being mere minutes away by car.
+
+In the rest of the West Bank, a US citizen of Palestinian origin who wants to live there long term has to obtain a visa that says West Bank only. They are not allowed to travel in and out of the West Bank and are subject to the same checkpoints as other Palestinians. They cannot leave the occupied territories as a US citizen, as the State Department warns on its website.
+
+A Palestinian in the West Bank who holds US citizenship cannot simply catch a plane from Tel Aviv like any other US citizen simply because he or she is Palestinian and holds a Palestinian ID card. This fact is stamped into the US passport.
+
+They are not allowed to enter the checkpoints into Jerusalem or any other checkpoints as other people with a US passport can. This restriction is not at all applied to the Jewish settlers who are growing in number — thousands of them US citizens who are choosing to live in the occupied West Bank inside illegal settlements financed in part by US tax-exempt organizations.
+
+Academic freedom
+
+As scholars, among the many disturbing things we witnessed was the limited academic freedom and freedom of speech imposed on Palestinians (and many Israelis, whose travel in the West Bank is restricted) by the Israeli government.
+
+We learned that there is a prohibition on most books published in Syria, Iran and Lebanon even though Beirut is a central publishing hub of Arabic literary materials in the region. Regardless, banning books is, in our view, a profoundly anti-democratic act.
+
+Israel’s wall that surrounds the West Bank including Jerusalem — and which snakes deep inside the West Bank in many locations — also functions to limit academic freedom.
+
+One of the starkest examples is in Bethlehem, where the wall cuts through the city, making access to education at Bethlehem University very difficult for those who happen to be on the wrong side of the wall’s many twists and turns.
+
+Additionally, the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University is completely surrounded by the wall, making travel to and from the campus incredibly arduous despite it being in Jerusalem.
+
+An academic colleague described to us the difficulties she experiences getting to campus on a typical day. She must pass through roadblocks and endure searches and myriad forms of harassment by Israeli soldiers. In the West Bank, we were shocked to witness separate roads for Palestinians and Israelis based on the color of one’s license plate and identity card.
+
+In theory, these roads exist for the protection of Israeli settlers living on settlements built in the West Bank illegally according to international law. In practice, these roads create an apartheid travel system where Palestinians encounter several checkpoints on a given day, some of which may be mobile, unpredictably placed “flying checkpoints.”
+
+As our colleague explained to us, what used to be a very short trip between her village and the university now often takes more than an hour and a half and she is expected to cross through at least three checkpoints. She is often late to teach her classes and some days she is unable to make it to work or back home at all.
+
+Her students are often arrested and jailed using the legal cover of administrative detention — detention without charge or trial for an indefinite amount of time — for their participation in any political activities, or simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We heard that this process is intensified at exam periods.
+
+This creates an extraordinarily stressful academic environment when on any given day Israeli soldiers might detain students and faculty who are simply traveling to class.
+
+Impunity
+
+We recognize every people’s desire to be secure — and Israel’s supporters will defend its policies and actions in the name of its national security. What we witnessed during our visit is that “security” was offered as a rationale for almost any troubling behavior or policy.
+
+What we witnessed was a slow but deliberate expansion of Israel’s occupation, increased settlements, the taking over of agricultural land and the spread of industrial parks in the West Bank including substantial parts of East Jerusalem — all in the name of “security.”
+
+The United States, as a settler colonial state with its own occupations, police violence, carceral injustice, de facto apartheid and its own brand of border brutality — certainly has its own failings as a democracy, failings we continue to address in our intellectual and political work.
+
+We thus claim no moral high ground. But an ethnocracy is not a democracy; the State of Israel imposes violent domination of the Palestinian people through colonialism, occupation and apartheid — three prongs of brutal oppression that are the very antithesis of democracy.
+
+As academics, watching attempts to stifle criticism of Israel — as in the case of our colleague, Professor Steven Salaita — and visiting the West Bank has prompted us to speak out publicly about Israel’s injustices. Doing so is imperative.
+
+We implore President Obama to reconsider his rhetoric and policies — and budget appropriations — that support Israel with impunity.
+
+Radhika Balakrishnan is professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.
+
+Karma R. Chávez is associate professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
+
+Ira Dworkin is assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University.
+
+Erica Caple James is associate professor of Anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
+
+J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is associate professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University.
+
+Doug Kiel is assistant professor of American Studies at Williams College.
+
+Barbara Lewis is associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
+
+Soraya Mekerta is director of the African Diaspora and the World Program, and associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Spelman College.
 Tags
 
-Palestinian Refugees
+Barack Obama
+
+Jeffrey Goldberg
+
+US aid to Israel
+
+East Jerusalem
+
+Jewish state
 
-Dheisheh refugee camp
+US State Department
+
+racial profiling
+
+denial of entry
+
+Palestinian Americans
+
+Israeli settlements
 
 Bethlehem
 
-Campus in Camps
+Bethlehem University
 
-Al-Quds University
+Israel's wall in the West Bank
+
+Abu Dis
 
-Bard College
+Al-Quds University
 
-architecture
+mass incarceration
 
-right of return
+US border

combined/texts/1008.txt

@@ -1,42 +1,60 @@
-Ahmad al-Haj was 15 when he was expelled from his village in 1948.
-
-Ain MediaEarlier this month The New York Times referred to the “destruction of Arab villages in battles that led to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”
-The testimony of Ahmad al-Haj, however, exposes that paper’s version of events as dishonest.
-Rather than being the victim of “battles” — a term that implies fighting between two armies of similar strength — this octogenarian was forced from his home in a carefully planned campaign of ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias. The ethnic cleansing is known to Palestinians as the Nakba — Arabic for catastrophe.
-Al-Haj was just 15 in 1948. Like many other young Palestinians, he was already working in agriculture.
-One day in April that year, he was returning to his village, al-Swafer al-Sharqia, after going to an area market. To get home, he and his mule had to pass through nearby Julis, which, he was told by a passerby, had been taken over by Zionist forces.
-“I thought nothing would incite those people to try to kill an unarmed, small boy passing peacefully on his way,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
-He was mistaken. The only way he could survive was to throw himself off his mule and sprint.
-“The mule ran faster than me,” he said. “The machine gunners stopped shooting when their bullets could no longer reach me.”
-When he arrived back home, his parents were standing in the yard they used to thrash wheat. “My father and mother took me into their arms and kissed me and thanked God for my safety,” he said.
-Attacked
-The following month, Zionist forces attacked a village next to al-Swafer. His family had moved to that village to tend to their crops.
-During the attack, al-Haj’s father went missing. At first, the family thought he had been killed. Four months later, they learned from the Red Cross that he was in prison.
-Contrary to what The New York Times implied, Palestinians did not have the means to defend themselves against their Zionist assailants. “My father owned a gun, but he had only twenty bullets to fight with,” al-Haj said.
-He added that whereas Zionist militias were well-armed, the British Mandate forces — then in charge of Palestine’s security — used to search Palestinian houses and farms, confiscating any weapons they found.
-The disappearance meant that al-Haj assumed many of his father’s responsibilities. He told his sisters to stop crying as his father may have been captured, rather than killed. “Weeping and wailing will not bring him back,” he recalled commanding. “We have many things that we should do in the absence of our father. Let us have something to eat then get up to work.”
-Thirty Palestinian villages in the Gaza district were forcibly evacuated between 15 May and 11 June 1948. They included al-Swafer.
-Brutal
-“My village was brutally attacked and burned down by the Zionist army and we were forced to flee the burning village to the adjacent village of Hatta,” al-Haj said.
-His family then sought refuge in nearby Falluja, where the Egyptian army was based. Within a few days, they had to flee again.
-“Zionist warplanes attacked the village. It was a Friday. We had lunch at the house of one of our relatives. A man pushed me out and took my position when the warplanes attacked again. In a split second, he died in front of my eyes. I survived,” al-Haj said.
-“The Egyptian army could not help us or did not want to help us because they were in a truce” with Britain, which then ruled Palestine, he added.
-Al-Haj ended up in Gaza. Although the Strip is only 35 kilometers from al-Swafer, he is unable to return to his native village.
-Initially, al-Haj lived in a camp set up by American Quakers. In 1950, the UN formed its own agency, UNRWA, to administer camps for Palestine refugees.
-Let down
-Initially, the camps consisted of tents. These were replaced by cement and brick shelters after refugees froze to death in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp during the winter of 1951, al-Haj said.
-“Life in a camp was not humane at all,” he added. “I knew these tents very well.”
-Entire families lived in one tent. Numerous families had to share the same dirty toilets, with no running water.
-Al-Haj feels that Palestinians have been let down by international bodies: “The UNRWA officials said, ‘We cannot do everything to good standards because we receive scarce donations.’ They built schools. These schools were not intended to educate the people more than they were intended to prepare the new generation of the Palestinians to work and serve other people.”
-Al-Haj still lives in a rented house in Gaza. He has refused to buy a lot of land to build a new house because he never thought that being a refugee in Gaza would be his final destiny.
-Sixty-six years after the Nakba, he still dreams of returning to his village.
-Wafaa H. Aburahma is a Gaza-based translator. A refugee from the village of Aqer in historic Palestine, she lives in Nuseirat camp in Gaza. She has an English literature degree from the Islamic University of Gaza.
+Maisa Abd Elhadi in 3000 Nights3000 Nights written and directed by Mai Masri
+
+Mai Masri’s remarkable first feature film, 3000 Nights, is set in an Israeli women’s prison. Layal (Maisa Abd Elhadi), a newly married schoolteacher, has been sentenced to eight years by a military court for giving a ride to a young man.
+
+No details as to the man’s actions or affiliations are given; they are not important to the story. None are given to Layal’s background either, although it is understood that she, unlike the man she gave a lift to, was not a member of the Palestinian resistance.
+
+The opening scene of this film is as startling as it is disturbing. Layal is dragged out of bed and into the street in heavy rain, stuffed into the back of a van, then blindfolded and taken away by heavily armed soldiers to an unknown destination.
+
+Unless the characters are plotting an escape, as for example in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) or Escape from Alcatraz (1979), it is a challenge to create drama in a prison movie. Incarceration normally mitigates against romance. There are no fortunes to be lost or gained, careers to be developed, journeys to be taken, or accolades to be won. The tragedy — that the characters are incarcerated — has occurred before the film has even started.
+
+How, then, does one bring life into a place designed to be lifeless? In Masri’s film, she does this literally. Layal is unaware that she is pregnant at the time of her arrest. She is forced to give birth shackled to a bed as her husband plans to leave to Canada, doubting the paternity of his child and encouraging her to abort.
+
+The birth is about as harsh and loveless as a birth could be, but the baby that emerges evokes a sense of harmony and beauty to which few in the prison remain unaffected.
+
+Resisting containment
+
+In many ways, 3000 Nights is a coming-of-age film. Layal enters the prison with integrity yet she remains naïve. She is condemned to serve a longer term because she refuses, against the advice of those around her, to testify that the man she gave a lift to threatened her.
+
+Her sense of national loyalty is not fixed from the start, however. Those who represent the resistance are also branded, not without reason, as “trouble-makers” by others bent on survival and Layal needs to decide who she trusts. It is hard for her not just to determine whose side she is on, but for her to prove to others that she has made that decision.
+
+In this way, the captive setting enables drama to develop where it really matters, with characters’ internal developments and struggles. Class, age and religion are less important here than proving one’s worth when having one’s resolve tested.
+
+The prison’s confinement and brutality serve as an analogy for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, what it can make of people (including the prison officers), what they are forced to become and how they are forced to treat each other.
+
+The beauty and strength of characters here are found in the ability to resist that which is forced on them by the structure in which they find themselves contained.
+
+Masri is also adept at avoiding a monolithic demonization when it comes to depicting Israelis in the film. These range from politically sympathetic lawyers to fairly brutish prison officers to irredeemably racist drug addict inmates.
+
+Masri’s background as a documentary filmmaker — previous works include Children of Shatila (1998) and Children of Fire (1991) — is evident in the research that went into the making of this movie.
+
+She undertook a number of interviews with former Palestinian women prisoners and the setting, a disused prison in Jordan, lends realism. The youth and freshness of some of the actors contrast powerfully with the oppressive setting of most of the scenes.
+
+Reclaiming history
+
+Part of the role of artists who focus on Palestinian stories is to bear witness and reclaim history. In this context, 3000 Nights is extremely powerful. It focuses on those frequently ignored segments of society: women and children, statistically impacted most severely by war, poverty, dispossession and occupation.
+
+It also emphasizes a critical juncture in Palestinian history: the 1980s, when resistance to occupation was fought on an inclusive, non-sectarian platform and religion was a private affair that did not dominate public discourse.
+
+The enterprise shown by the women in prison, through education programs and political instruction, evince an inclusion and belief in the role of all elements of society, regardless of sex, religion or age, that it is critical to be reminded of today.
+
+Masri’s film has won two prizes since its October premiere: the Audience Award at Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain and the Jury Award from The Women’s International Film and Television Showcase (TheWIFTS) in the US.
+
+It richly deserves those awards and many more.
+
+Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer. Her debut novel, Out of It, is published by Bloomsbury (2012).
 Tags
 
-refugees
+film
+
+cinema
+
+Mai Masri
+
+Maisa Abd Elhadi
 
-Palestinian Refugees
+3000 Nights
 
-Nakba
+Palestinian prisoners
 
-al-Swafer al-Sharqia
+women

combined/texts/1009.txt

@@ -1,33 +1,92 @@
-Approximately 30 activists – mainly students from area universities – disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert’s speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain.
+Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat, Stanford University Press (2019)
 
-Protesters inside the hall read off the names of Palestinian children killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza last winter. They shouted that it was unacceptable that the war crimes suspect be invited to speak at a Chicago university when his army destroyed a university in Gaza in January. They reminded the audience of the more than 1,400 Palestinians killed during the Gaza attacks and the more than 1,200 killed during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Both invasions happened during Olmert’s premiership.
+Noura Erakat explores the role of international law in the struggle for Palestinian national liberation in her latest book Justice for Some.
 
-With interventions coming every few minutes throughout his appearance, Olmert had difficulty giving his speech and often appeared frustrated. At one point he appealed for “just five minutes” to speak without being interrupted.
+It is unlike other books on the question of law and Palestine – such as Victor Kattan’s The Palestine Question in International Law and John Quigley’s The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective – that presuppose it is possible to arrive at definitive conclusions about the rights and obligations imposed by the law.
 
-The demonstration was mobilized last week after organizers learned of the lecture, paid for by a grant provided by Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Within hours an appeal was issued, urging those concerned with Palestinian rights to call the university and demand that the lecture be canceled. The call was put out by major community organizations such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)-Chicago, American Muslims for Palestine and the United States Palestine Community Network, as well as solidarity organizations al-Awda, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the International Solidarity Movement, the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago and area campus groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at DePaul University and the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as the Arab Student Union at Moraine Valley.
+By contrast, Erakat’s starting point is that “law is politics: its meaning and application are contingent on the strategy that legal actors deploy as well as on the historical context in which that strategy is deployed.”
 
-The security presence at the lecture was severe with university police, the US Secret Service and Israeli security present – many of them visibly armed – with Israeli security checking in those who had registered in advance to attend the lecture. Video and photography was banned inside the hall and media were not allowed to cover the lecture. Despite these restrictions, activists managed to take video inside the hall and drop an eight-foot-long banner from the mezzanine that read “Goldstone” in both English and Hebrew, referring to the recently published UN report investigating violations of international law during the Gaza invasion. One activist was arrested and put in a headlock by a police officer, witnesses said, and released around midnight. Approximately 30 supporters waited for him at the police station while he was detained.
+As a result, the book does not draw conclusions about who is violating the law but explores the relationship of law to politics, examining how Israel and the Palestinians have used the law in different ways to further their political objectives.
 
-Towards the end of the lecture, Olmert put his hand over his brow and squinted to search out the source of the shout, “There’s no discussion with a war criminal – the only discussion you should be having is in court!” That call was made by Ream Qato, who graduated from the university in 2007, and added, “You belong in the Hague!” Qato told The Electronic Intifada that yesterday’s protest “Set the stage for University of Chicago students and students in the Chicago area … no one should be afraid of speaking out against someone.” She added that the demonstration was significant because “The Palestinian community [in Chicago] for the first time went to a university campus to protest.”
+Legal work
 
-Approximately 150 protesters demonstrated outside the University of Chicago hall where former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was speaking. (Maureen Clare Murphy)
-Second-year medical student Afshan Mohiuddin was removed from the hall after she voiced her disapproval at the Harris School dean’s on-stage assertion that Olmert was invited to express his views. “He can do that at the International Court of Justice, not at this university,��� Mohiuddin shouted, adding, “[Olmert] belongs in a cage, not on a stage!”
+A major theme of the book is the “legal work” that Israel has carried out over the decades –  meaning the efforts Israel has made to ensure legal norms are interpreted in a manner supportive of its political project – and how this has suppressed Palestinian rights.
 
-Mohiuddin told The Electronic Intifada that “it was ironic that they searched us [instead of him],” considering that Olmert is suspected of war crimes. She added, “As a University of Chicago student I was upset with the lack of commotion on behalf of the student body before the event … No one has protested the event.”
+For example, Erakat writes, when resolution 242 was passed by the UN Security Council in 1967, calling on Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured, Israel exploited an ambiguity in the English text of the resolution (the absence of the word “the” before “territories”) to argue that the resolution did not mandate a withdrawal of all territories captured in 1967 – a position Israel maintains today in order to legitimize its colonization of the West Bank.
 
-Mohiuddin’s frustration was echoed in a commentary published by the University of Chicago’s student publication The Chicago Maroon earlier this week, in which third-year student Nadia Marie Ismail decried the lack of protest by the university community towards the Olmert speech. She contrasted this silence with the pressure the Center for Middle Eastern Studies faced after a lecture earlier this year by The Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah (who was the first to disrupt Olmert’s speech yesterday), University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein, whose lost bid for tenure at DePaul University is attributed to outside pressure by Israel government apologists. “[T]hat University center was put under unprecedented pressure for weeks before and months after the event, with claims that University centers and schools should not host ‘one-sided’ speakers,” Ismail wrote.
+Similarly, after the onset of the second intifada in 2000, Israel sought to justify its policy of assassinating Palestinians – a practice considered illegal under international law – by promoting new interpretations of the law. In particular, Israel cited the weaponized nature of the second intifada to argue that the conflict with the Palestinians was one of “armed conflict short of war” – a concept unknown in international law.
 
-Olmert’s lecture in Chicago was one of several scheduled throughout the United States. His speech at the University of Kentucky the previous day was disrupted by activists and met with a protest outside. These demonstrations are part of a wave of notched-up dissent towards Israeli officials implicated in war crimes and racist policy. In 2003, former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky was greeted with a pie in the face by an activist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Last year at the UK’s Oxford University, a speech by Israeli President Shimon Peres was drowned out by protesters outside while students inside the hall disrupted his talk.
+By invoking this category, Israel sought to avail itself of the right of states to use extrajudicial lethal force against hostile combatants in war. At the same time, by claiming the conflict was one “short of war” Israel hoped to deny Palestinian fighters the same right to use lethal force against Israeli soldiers.
 
-One of the organizers of the protest, Hatem Abudayyeh, National Coordinating Committee member of the United States Palestine Community Network, hoped for a larger count of protesters despite the adverse weather. However, he said, “The fact that there’s people around the world who know about it, the fact that PACBI [the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel] sent us a letter of support and endorsement of our action, the fact that there was coordination with the outside protest and the inside disruption – all of these components and aspects of the action made it one of the more successful ones that we’ve done.”
+Israel’s efforts to change the law
 
-He added, “There is real change happening, whether it’s the international response to the Lebanon war or the international response to the Gaza war. The US is the most powerful country in the world, Israel is a powerful military as well, but the Palestinians have the world on their side.”
+Israel’s attempts to reinterpret the law in order to suit its objectives have not only added legitimizing force to its actions, but have also contributed to creating changes in the law itself.
 
-Video shot and produced by The Electronic Intifada.
+As Erakat explains, this is possible because customary law – one source of international law – is comprised of what states do (state practice) and what states believe is legal (opinio juris). Therefore, if enough states violate the law for long enough, and represent their actions to be lawful, a new rule of customary law may crystallize to reflect this fact.
 
-Maureen Clare Murphy is Managing Editor of The Electronic Intifada and an activist with the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago, which co-sponsored the demonstration.
-Tags
+Indeed the book describes how Israel, aware of this feature of customary law, has aggressively promoted new interpretations of the law in order to create a shift in the understanding of certain norms to its advantage.
+
+As an example, Erakat writes, when Israel first initiated its policy of targeted assassinations in 2000, other countries robustly condemned the policy as unlawful. However, after several years of Israel promoting legal interpretations justifying the practice, as well as the initiation of the US “war on terror” following the 11 September 2001 attacks – in which assassinations of suspected “terrorists” featured heavily – states’ attitudes towards assassinations softened, and the policy moved from the zone of definitely illegal to the realm of potentially legitimate.
+
+The problem of sovereign exception
+
+International law’s susceptibility to be changed by the legal work of states is a facet of the state-centric nature of international law, which Erakat argues, places non-state actors such as the Palestinians at an automatic disadvantage.
+
+A related feature of the law that has caused problems for Palestinians is the concept of “sovereign exception.” This is a mechanism by which states may suspend the law’s application, claiming the state is facing an exceptional situation where normal rules do not apply.
+
+Erakat writes that this mechanism has been used repeatedly, first by Britain, and then by Israel, in order to deny Palestinian nationalism and promote Israel’s settler-colonialism. For instance, Britain declared a sovereign exception in order to insert the Balfour Declaration, establishing the right to a “Jewish national home” in Palestine, into the British Mandate for Palestine.
+
+Subsequently, Israel has used the same justification to pass laws expelling and dispossessing Palestinians, and placing them under martial law.
+
+Israel’s denial of the de jure application of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and its claim that unique challenges posed by the second intifada justify an expanded right to use force against Palestinians, are also examples of the application of the sovereign exception.
+
+Palestinians’ use of the law
+
+While highly critical of the role of international law in suppressing Palestinian rights, Erakat is not, however, pessimistic about the law’s “emancipatory potential,” which she claims Palestinians can leverage if they “wield [the law] in the sophisticated service of a political movement that targets the geopolitical structure that has rendered their claims exceptional and therefore, non-justiciable.”
+
+An example of the Palestinian use of law in this manner is the impressive work carried out by the Palestine Liberation Organization during the 1970s, which won international recognition for the Palestinian cause. Although the PLO never resolved a tension that existed between its revolutionary policy of liberating all of Palestine through armed struggle, and its pragmatist tendency of aiming for statehood in some part of the territory, the PLO was successful, nonetheless, in capitalizing on political support within the UN to secure groundbreaking UN resolutions.
+
+These recognized the legal status of the Palestinians as a people entitled to self-determination, and granted the PLO observer status in the UN, allowing it admission to many international bodies. Moreover, the PLO contributed to the creation of new law where none had previously existed (Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions) which legitimized the use of force by national liberation movements such as its own.
+
+Is law really politics by other means?
+
+A central question regarding the role of law in the Palestinian struggle, however, that the book does not address is: why, if “law is politics,” as Erakat asserts, has Israel’s considerable political power, which it has wielded to promote interpretations of the law favorable to its objectives, not affected the weight of international judgments, UN resolutions, and the legal positions of states, which are overwhelmingly condemnatory of Israeli policy?
+
+In other words, why in spite of Israel’s power is the law mostly on the side of the weaker party – the Palestinians?
+
+One explanation is that it is not, in fact, true that law is politics. Rather, it is the case that international law, although susceptible to the political agendas of states that make the law and may therefore mould and interpret it to serve their own interests, nonetheless places limits on the extent to which the meaning of the law may be stretched in any given situation.
 
-Ehud Olmert
+This acts as protection to weaker parties from violations of law perpetuated by powerful actors who attempt to legitimize their actions by promoting self-serving interpretations of the law.
+
+An alternative explanation involves distinguishing between two different bodies of international law and their relationship to politics.
+
+The first is the body of law dealing with the emergence, rights and obligations of states and national liberation movements. This law is intimately connected with politics due to the fact that the determination of what law applies in a given situation depends on realities on the ground.
+
+For example, the law will only deem a political movement to be a national liberation struggle representing a people with a right to self-determination, once that movement has managed to win recognition from the international community for its cause.
+
+Similarly a political entity will, generally, only be deemed to be a state with all the advantages statehood entails in the international system, once it has actually acquired effective control over a territory and population. Thus, the law will only work in favor of political movements that have secured, by other means, certain “facts on the ground.”
+
+It explains why, for example, recent Palestinian legal initiatives aimed at seeking diplomatic recognition for statehood have been ineffective at creating an independent state in practice: the law follows the facts, and not the other way around.
+
+By contrast, the body of human rights treaties drafted in the 20th century reflecting a postwar consensus aimed at preventing the perpetration of atrocities, and, subsequently, the values of newly emerging post-colonial states, are less vulnerable to forces of realpolitik.
+
+These treaties enshrine rights that apply in the face of brute state power, and the meaning of the treaties is relatively tightly circumscribed. It is this second body of law that is, arguably, most supportive of the Palestinians, and that Israel, in spite of all of its attempts to promote manipulative interpretations of the law, has not managed to usurp.
+
+Law cannot replace politics
+
+No matter how the relationship of law and politics is judged, however, it is clear that no number of court decisions or UN resolutions supportive of Palestinians are of any use if they remain unimplemented.
+
+As Erakat highlights, international law has no hierarchical enforcement mechanism and its implementation is therefore wholly reliant on the political will of states and other bodies.
+
+The central message of Erakat’s book, therefore, that no use of the law will be successful unless it is wielded in support of a political program that seeks the implementation of rights contained within the law, stands true, even if the book’s main thesis, that “law is politics,” does not.
+
+Indeed, the concluding chapter of Erakat’s books is more a critique of politics than law. Erekat suggests that the current lack of clear Palestinian political vision has rendered all recent Palestinian legal initiatives, such as securing an International Court of Justice opinion on Israel’s apartheid wall in 2004, and achieving UN recognition of Palestinian statehood in 2012, insufficient for affecting change.
+
+She proposes that Palestinians must, therefore, formulate a new emancipatory political program that looks beyond statehood, at other possibilities for decolonization and freedom.
+
+Perhaps the real question is: will Palestinians rise to the challenge?
+
+Salma Karmi-Ayyoub is an attorney specializing in criminal law and a legal consultant on Palestinian human rights issues.
+Tags
 
-olmerting
+international law, Israeli Occupation, war crimes

combined/texts/101.txt

@@ -1,126 +1,18 @@
-Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
-The miraculous genesis of Israel was achieved through a heroic and desperate battle for survival. Outnumbered and outgunned, the fledgling Jewish state held its own against overwhelming military odds and persevered.
-I’m certain that such a narrative makes for some great story-telling, not to mention indoctrination; tales of plucky underdogs overcoming their powerful bullies have always resonated with people and elicited their sympathies. However, as far as foundational tales in the context of nation building tend to be, they are more mythology than reality. Such tall stories cannot withstand even elementary research or scrutiny.
-It is not difficult to understand the allure of such a narrative for Israelis and their supporters, as it functions on multiple levels. It evokes a modern-day David and Goliath, which bestows moral superiority to the Zionist colonists, further reinforcing notions that they were favored by God, karma, justice, the universe or whatever metaphysical force you believe in (or don’t). This interplays wonderfully with the claimed Israeli purity of arms (Tohar HaNeshek) where Israeli weapons are framed as “pure” because they are used only in self-defence and never against innocents . It also serves to augment Zionist claims of technical superiority over the natives, as a small number of the enlightened and civilized colonists managed to hold out against seven whole nations! If this isn’t further proof that they are more deserving of the land by virtue of their ingenuity and strength then nothing is.
-Unfortunately, as many myths regarding Israel tend to be, this is an enduring one that is still widespread today, especially within Israel itself. Up until relatively recently it was virtually unchallenged in the world outside the Arab states and those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It began to be challenged seriously with the advent of the so-called Israeli New Historians, who with access to declassified Israeli war archives offered a “new”, more critical look at Israel’s foundational myths. As far as Orientalism goes, this is nothing new, Palestinian and Arab claims are often dismissed as biased and unscientific, while Israeli claims are accepted with hardly any scrutiny at all. For example, the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba, including acknowledging the ethnic cleansing and war crimes committed by Zionist militias did not even earn a glance from Western audiences until it was confirmed by Israeli scholars, but this is a different topic for a different article.
-Avi Shlaim argues that the disconnect between the Israeli narrative and reality is further aided by the fact that:
+But this claim that Gaza is unoccupied has been very useful for Israel, as it plays into the propaganda that Israel has sacrificed immensely for peace, a talking point unsubstantiated by actual history, and also erases the valiant efforts of Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip who played a critical role in making the maintenance of a physical military presence inside the strip very costly to Israel to the point it had to retreat.
+As noble as Israelis make it sound, there were other less altruistic intentions regarding the retreat from Gaza, articulated by Dov Weisglas, top aide to Ariel Sharon who was Prime Minister at the time:
 
-“Most of the voluminous literature on the war was written not by professional historians but by participants, by politicians, soldiers, official historians and by a large host of sympathetic chroniclers, journalists, biographers and hagiographers.”
+“The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process, and when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress.”
 
-Therefore, most “historical” writings on the war are relegated to the realm of political claim-making rather than honestly reflecting the history and events of the war.
-With this in mind, what does the historical data say on the question of Israelis being outnumbered in the 1948 war?
+He continued:
 
-Unsurprisingly, the data says that it was in fact the Arab armies which were outnumbered. The actual debate here is about the degree to which the Arab armies were outnumbered. Let us look at a few sources:
-Let us begin with the numbers of John Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion during the war, who estimated that on May 15th -the outbreak of the war- the numbers of troops were roughly as follows:
+“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde, it supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”
 
-Country
-Number of soldiers
+And he was right. For example, whenever the Palestinian Authority criticized Israel for its intransigence or its new settlement and colonization projects in the West bank, Israel would retort that they gave up Gaza and sacrificed immensely for peace. This was an effective way for Israel to circumvent criticism of its violations of international law and shift the onus of compromise onto Palestinians. In this context, “compromise” came to mean acquiescence to the brazen colonization of the vast majority of the West Bank. Weisglas bragged that:
 
-Egypt
-10000
+“That is exactly what happened, you know, the term `peace process’ is a bundle of concepts and commitments. The peace process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The peace process is the evacuation of settlements, it’s the return of refugees, it’s the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen…. what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did.”
 
-Transjordan
-4500
-
-Iraq
-3000
-
-Syria
-3000
-
-Lebanon
-1000
-
-Arab total
-21500
-
-Israel total
-65000
-
-How could this be? How could such a numerical advantage be swept under the rug and be so grossly misrepresented? Perhaps as commander of the Arab Legion, he purposefully exaggerated the number of Israeli troops, and downplayed the number of Arab troops.
-Let us look at another source, this time the estimates of the brothers Kimche, who have been very vocal about their Zionism. They estimated the balance of power on May the 15th as such:
-
-Country
-Number of soldiers
-
-ALA
-2000
-
-Egypt
-10000
-
-Transjordan
-4500
-
-Iraq
-3000
-
-Syria
-3000
-
-Lebanon
-1000
-
-Arab total
-23500
-
-Israel total
-25000
-
-The main differences in these estimates, is that Kimche added the Arab Liberation Army to their estimates for the Arab side, and trimmed the Israeli total down to 25000. Even in this very conservative estimate, the Israeli army outnumbered every single Arab army combined. But what is the reason for such a large discrepancy? How did 65000 become 25000?
-Walid Khalidi sheds some light on this, as he differentiates between first-line mobilized Zionist soldiers and second-line troops in the settlements. Glubb partially accounted for these in his numbers, Kimche elected to omit them completely. Here are Khalidi’s numbers:
-
-Country
-Number of soldiers
-
-ALA
-3830
-
-Palestinian Arabs
-2563
-
-Egypt
-2800
-
-Transjordan
-4500
-
-Iraq
-4000
-
-Syria
-1876
-
-Lebanon
-700
-
-Arab total
-20269
-
-Israel first-line
-27000
-
-Israel second-line
-90000+
-
-Israel total
-117000+
-
-Shlaim goes even further and estimates that the number of first-line Israeli troops was at 35000 on May 15th. So even if we were to omit these second-line forces -for some reason- there is a solid scholarly consensus that it was actually the Arab armies that were outnumbered. Remember that these numbers are for May 15th, the first day of the war. The numbers did not remain static. As a matter of fact, the longer the war went on for, the more the numerical gap between the sides widened in Israel’s favor. Between March and July, almost 13,000 trained men arrived from abroad to join the war on the Israeli side, by mid-June Ben Gurion noted that the IDF stood at 41,000, in addition to the 90,000 second line units as a complement to the IDF. There were efforts to increase these 90000 to 112000. The Arab states also reinforced their armies, but they were never able to keep up with the numbers of the Israeli side. At the end stages of the war, the Israeli army actually outnumbered the Arab armies by 2 to 1. This is not even delving into the qualitative difference in troops, as many troops on the Israeli side had combat experience from the world wars as well as superior equipment and tools after the first truce.
-
-However, another aspect that is often ignored in this narrative is the inter-Arab rivalries and disunity that were the main cause for the intervention in 1948. Contrary to popular framings of the 1948 war, and despite their fiery rhetoric, the Arab countries and leaders were not interested in a war with Israel. Barely coming out from under colonialism, their actions during the war showed that they never really joined the war with eliminationist intent, as the popular narrative goes. The Jordanians were more interested in acquiring the West Bank as a stepping stone to their real ambition, which was Greater Syria. As a matter of fact, there is ample evidence of collusion between the Israelis and Jordanians during the 1948 war, with deals under the table pretty much gifting parts of the West Bank to Jordan in return for not interfering in other areas. This is why Glubb Pasha, commander of the Arab Legion, described the 1948 war as a “phoney war“.
-The Egyptians intervened in an attempt to counter the Hashemite power-play that could change the balance of power in the region. This is why the Arab armies generally intervened in the territories of the mandate destined to be part of the Palestinian Arab state according to the 1947 partition plan, and with very few exceptions, stayed away from the area destined to be part of the Jewish state. Yes, support for Palestine and Palestinians played a large role in the legitimization of such interventions, but they were never the real reason behind them. As per usual when it comes to international relations, interests are always at the center of any maneuver despite the espoused noble and altruistic motivations.
-Ultimately, Israel enjoyed a number of advantages which are often downplayed if not completely omitted from this “underdog” mythical version of history:
-Significant superiority in numbers, technical and military training courtesy of veterans of the world wars, sympathetic allies in Europe who smuggled advanced weaponry and equipment and troops into the country, as well as a centralized command which ensured unity in goals, organization and tactics.
-In short, there was nothing “miraculous” about the Israeli victory in 1948. The better organized, better armed and most numerous side won. This is why when spreading this narrative the only numbers mentioned are the number of Arab states that wanted to team up on Israel but still couldn’t win. This is an attempt to imply numerical superiority on the side of the Arab states without explicitly claiming it, as it is complete nonsense when even briefly researched.
-The endurance of this myth stems from the desperate need of the Zionist settlers for the illusion of moral superiority in the foundation of their colony. After all, it is hard to sell the scrappy, righteous underdog survivor story if the numbers show you to be the top dog in this situation. This is not a uniquely Israeli quality, however, as in most foundational narratives, it is mostly myth legitimizing horrible acts of cruelty. One need look no further than foundational myths in other settler colonies like the United States or Canada to see how twisting and omitting history is used to legitimize the powers that be.
+Furthermore, Israel knew it was not really relinquishing control of the Gaza strip, but rather reconfiguring how the occupation looked and functioned. They knew that the occupation, despite being in a new form, would still illicit resistance from those inside the strip. Israel could then use this resistance as proof that “relinquishing” land in return for peace with the Palestinians was an impossible task, because Palestinians would continue to attack it no matter what. This has served as a major argument for why Israel should not withdraw from any inch of the West Bank to this very day.
+So, as you can see, the withdrawal from Gaza did not really end the occupation, and it certainly was not a compromise out of a desire for peace with the Palestinians. This is not speculation, this is not a conspiratorial reading or analysis of the policy; we have a complete candid confession from the architect of this plan, it is all documented and easily accessible and we encourage you to read the full interview for context.
+Gaza today remains as a staunch reminder of Israel’s birth: A small strip of land filled to the brim with refugees whose houses have been seized by foreign colonists. Israel can occupy, besiege and bomb the strip, but it will never beak the spirit of those yearning for freedom and a return to their stolen homes. It is our duty to help them in any way we can, even if by simply not allowing Israel to create its own false narrative and pass it off as the indisputable truth.
 Learn something new?
-Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!
-
-Said, Edward W. The war for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948. Vol. 15. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
-Institut des études palestiniennes (Beyrouth). From haven to conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine problem until 1948. Ed. Walid Khalidi. No. 2. Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971.
-Shlaim, Avi. Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist movement, and the partition of Palestine. Clarendon Press, 1988.
-Shlaim, Avi. “The debate about 1948.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27.3, 1995: 287-304.
-Pappe, Ilan. Britain and the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1948-51. Springer, 1988.
-Flapan, Simha. The birth of Israel: Myths and realities. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
-Hughes, Matthew. “The Conduct of Operations: Glubb Pasha, the Arab Legion, and the First Arab–Israeli War, 1948–49.” War in History 26.4, 2019: 539-562.
+Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!

combined/texts/1010.txt

@@ -1,100 +1,12 @@
-Israeli violations of international law, such as its West Bank settlements, have prevented Palestinians from exercising their right to self-determination.
-
-ActiveStillsPalestine just passed another signpost on the long road to justice.
-
-Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, declared last week that Palestine is a state for the purposes of the Rome Statute on which the tribunal was founded.
-
-The court has jurisdiction to investigate war crimes perpetrated in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, she added.
-
-Bensouda recognized that “a finding that the court lacks jurisdiction would most likely foreclose any access to justice for victims” of crimes she identified during her preliminary examination of the situation in Palestine.
-
-That years-long probe concluded in December when Bensouda recommended the court open a formal investigation. But she requested that a pre-trial panel of judges make a ruling on jurisdiction as a precondition to an investigation.
-
-That decision is expected in the next few months.
-
-Palestinian human rights groups that have pursued war crimes investigations at the ICC welcomed the prosecutor’s response last week to more than 50 submissions made to the court arguing for and against jurisdiction in the occupied territories.
-
-Shawan Jabarin, the director of Al-Haq, one such human rights group, applauded Bensouda’s “extensive reliance on submissions made on behalf of Palestinian victims.”
-
-The Palestinian people, whose right to self-determination has long been recognized while its exercise has been denied, are the rightful sovereigns of the West Bank and Gaza, Bensouda argued.
-
-The last recognized sovereign of those territories was the Ottoman Empire, which renounced its rights and title in 1923.
-
-Palestine was treated as an independent nation at the adoption of the Versailles Treaty in 1919 following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. But in 1947 the United Nations recommended partitioning Palestine into two “independent Arab and Jewish states.”
-
-British rule over Palestine in the interim had already paved the way for the Zionist colonization that culminated in the declaration of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948.
-
-Then came the Israeli seizure of the West Bank and Gaza, administered by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, by force in 1967. It was followed by a belligerent military occupation of those territories – including the construction of Israeli colonies in them.
-
-“Palestine’s viability as a state – and the exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination – has been obstructed by the expansion of settlements and the construction of the barrier and its associated regime in the West Bank,” Bensouda stated.
-
-She has noted that contemporary international law recognizes the right to self-determination as both fundamental and universal, “giving rise to an obligation to the international community as a whole to permit and respect its exercise.”
-
-Right to self-determination
-
-This position was applauded by Palestinian rights groups.
-
-“The prosecutor’s endorsement of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and permanent sovereignty is very welcome,” Al-Haq’s Jabarin said.
-
-But Bensouda defended her request for a ruling on court jurisdiction before any actual criminal case, a move that was criticized by some Palestinian victims and their representatives.
-
-She also rejected the argument advanced by Israel’s surrogates that recognizing court jurisdiction would improperly confer statehood onto Palestine, a status that she agrees does not result from accession to treaties like the Rome Statute.
-
-She observed that no state party employed the mechanisms of that statute to challenge Palestine’s accession in 2015.
-
-An inequitable “two-tiered” accession to the court would undermine “the protection and deterrence that accession” to the Rome Statute provides, she said.
-
-“Simply put, any person who commits an international crime on the territory of a state party is liable to investigation and prosecution either by a state or at the court, irrespective of their citizenship,” Bensouda stated.
-
-International crimes include genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
-
-In disagreement with some of the Israel-aligned observations submitted to the court, Bensouda said the Oslo accords signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s do not bar the court from exercising jurisdiction in the West Bank and Gaza.
-
-Nor would a determination of court jurisdiction “entail resolution of territorial ‘disputes’ between Israel and Palestine, which is clearly not the court’s mandate,” she added.
-
-“Undisputed territorial borders are not required for the court to exercise its jurisdiction, nor are they a prerequisite for statehood; indeed a state may exist despite conflicting claims over its territory,” Bensouda said.
-
-Imminent annexation
-
-Many of the crimes that Bensouda found in her preliminary examination are ongoing.
-
-“As annexation of parts of the West Bank by the State of Israel appears imminent, with American support, it is more important now than ever that an investigation be conducted into Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Al-Haq stated.
-
-The rights group expressed its disappointment over the prosecutor excluding waters off Gaza’s coast from her understanding of the court’s jurisdiction.
-
-Palestinian groups “remain concerned about the ongoing commission of the crime of pillage at sea, the unlawful appropriation of Palestinian offshore natural resources, and the systematic attacking of Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza shore,” Al-Haq added.
-
-That group said it “remains concerned that the prosecutor continues to resist taking action in the Mavi Marmara case.”
-
-In 2015, the prosecutor decided to not open an investigation into the fatal wounding of 10 people when Israeli commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in a humanitarian flotilla headed to Gaza.
-
-ICC appeals judges have twice told Bensouda to reconsider, and the case is still being appealed by the victims’ lawyers.
-
-When the panel of judges issues its decision on court jurisdiction per Bensouda’s request, that too will likely be appealed. Indictments of high-ranking Israeli officials, let alone war crimes trials, remain a long way off.
-
-The court faces the wrath of the US and Israel, and will come under increasing pressure as it moves towards opening investigations that would make officials of both countries liable to prosecution.
-
-Submissions made by signatories to the Rome Statute such as Germany arguing against court jurisdiction in Palestine, as well as a thinly veiled threat of defunding from Canada, undermine the court’s ability to exercise its independent mandate in the face of US-Israeli belligerence.
-
-Meanwhile, the newly formed Israeli government plans to proceed with the annexation of large swathes of West Bank land in July.
-
-“As the ICC constitutes the last hope for accountability for Palestinian victims, it is crucial that it takes steps to put an end to Israel’s impunity,” the Palestinian Center for Human  Rights stated.
+A year of imprisonment has passed. To spend one year in prison is a high price to pay for Israel’s unjust rule. My share has been more modest compared to other prisoners who are about to enter their fourth decade in Israeli prisons.It’s true, one should not differentiate between the sentences the same way we should not differentiate between the fighters for freedom — the sentence of the judges of oppression is always one of cruelty, terror and abuse. What is most important, however, is that it is always temporary.Things in Palestine occur according to the following rule: the harsher the escalation of state-sponsored terrorism, oppression, political persecution and deportation policies, the stronger is our steadfastness, challenge, will to remain, preservation of our identity and commitment to our cause and dispossessed rights.They wish to fragment our cause according to geography and the color of identity cards, but our senses are never suppressed and our struggle for liberation is one in all of its components. While they continue to reproduce oppression, we reproduce freedom and break out of their vicious circle, transforming their actions into reactions to ours.Our rights in Palestine, whether we are in our homeland or in exile, are one: return; self-determination; ending the occupation; prisoners’ release; recovery of confiscated land; dismantling settlements and the apartheid wall; protection of Jerusalem, the Naqab, the Galilee and the coast from Judaization and eviction projects; and breaking the Israeli blockade on Gaza — all these causes form part of our single cause.But the struggle for our cause is not waged only by us Palestinians. It is complemented by the rebellions in the Arab world and the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, isolating Israel on both the Arab and international levels. These actions are nothing but an extension of the Palestinian anti-normalization movement inside Israel and of our struggle to strip the racist colonizing regime of its legitimacy.Speaking on behalf of the prisoners’ movement, I wish to allude to the dangers of the so-called security coordination between Israel and any Palestinian or Arab party. The victims of such coordination are, first and foremost, the fighters and prisoners for the freedom of Palestine and the Arab peoples. We call on the Arab peoples to stop the complicity of some Arab regimes with Israel on the so-called security coordination level by launching an Arab and Palestinian campaign for this cause.To spend one year in prison is a high price to pay for Israel’s unjust rule. However, a free will has made this year an act of steadfastness, challenge and struggle for our people.I hereby send a message of appreciation and love to all the people who call for my release, as well as to the popular committee for my defense and the Popular Committee for the Defense of Political Freedoms, which launched a campaign for my release from the very moment I was arrested.From inside the prison cells I also wish to greet my loving and supportive family, and to all those who are in solidarity with our cause, here and abroad, as individuals, and the organizations they represent. They are in constant contact with me, and are partners in our struggle for liberation and freedom. What we seek, we the political prisoners, is freedom and not to accumulate more years of imprisonment. We were born free, and protecting our freedom is our responsibility.On 15 May we commemorated the 63rd anniversary of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba. Our strength continues to stem from the justice of our cause and rights, which can be fulfilled only through struggle. To struggle for liberation, as well as to rebuild ourselves as people and institutions, is our right and obligation. As for the price that is paid. it will always be painful, whether it is individual or collective. Regardless of how painful it is, we will never deviate from the road to liberation and freedom of our people and land.Their rule, not matter how long, is temporary, but freedom is our destiny.Ameer Makhoul is a civil society leader and political prisoner at Gilboa prison
 Tags
 
-International Criminal Court
-
-Fatou Bensouda
-
-Shawan Jabarin
-
-Al-Haq
-
-self-determination
+solidarity
 
-Rome Statute
+boycott
 
-accountability
+political prisoners
 
-Impunity
+Arab uprisings
 
-war crimes
+Nakba day

combined/texts/1011.txt

@@ -1,18 +1,86 @@
-Some of the agents suspected of involvement in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. (Dubai Police)
-
-The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas official in Dubai, almost certainly by a death squad dispatched by Israel’s Mossad, is by no means the first such aggression against the sovereignty of another state. While Israel has literally gotten away with murder thousands of times, was this one killing too far?
-Israel has a long, bloody history of murder, sabotage and outright terrorism all over Europe, in Beirut, Tunis, Amman, Damascus and now Dubai. And that is just what we know about. All of this is allegedly in “self-defense” against “terrorism” even though the Zionist movement in Palestine invented the sort of modern terrorism for which the Middle East became known. It started with countless Zionist bomb attacks on Palestinian civilians from the 1930s, often in markets and cafes, the bombing of the King David and Semiramis hotels in Jerusalem in the 1940s claiming dozens of innocent lives, and the murder of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. These crimes, on top of the long history of massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs over the past six decades, were all worn as badges of honor by Zionist leaders including Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who later became prime ministers.
-Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who according to reports personally approved the killing of al-Mabhouh, must have thought it would be a great achievement celebrated by the “civilized” world that is engaged still in a “war on terror.” The so-called “international community,” after all, has helped Israel isolate Hamas and labels it a “terrorist” organization despite Hamas’ diplomatic overtures, repeated offers of truces and ceasefires, and the mandate it won at the ballot box.
-Unfortunately it is not working out that way this time. Counting on the usual international complicity was not that unrealistic on Israel’s part. Indeed there has been no clear condemnation of the act of extrajudicial execution of al-Mabhouh, in a hotel room, apparently by electrocution and smothering with a pillow according to The Daily Mail (UK). What has been greeted with indignation is the forging of passports and identity theft.
-Meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers strongly condemned the abuse of passports, but did not have the courage to publicly name Israel even though several governments including the UK and Ireland had already summoned their Israeli ambassadors. The British and Irish foreign ministers even directly confronted their Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, who was also in Brussels.
-Mossad, the Israeli intelligence and international murder agency, has a long history of using fake and stolen passports of countries including Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany. It notoriously used fake Canadian passports during the attempted murder of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Amman in 1997. Countries view their passports much like their currencies — their credibility and value must be defended. The lives of their citizens may well depend on it; an Irish, British or German citizen has to be able to travel all over the world without fear that he or she will be suspected of being a Mossad assassin.
-Several years ago, New Zealand, a country of three million people, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel over the use of its passports by Mossad. But apart from that example, most countries have been too timid to confront Israel. That Lieberman refused to provide any additional information or even acknowledge an Israeli role in the Dubai attack when he met with the European foreign ministers is a sign that Israel still feels safe displaying arrogance and lawlessness, because it knows the “international community” has never dared to hold it accountable.
-This time, however, Israeli arrogance may have exceeded the limits of what has been tolerated so far, and turned what was supposed to be an “heroic” act into a scandal with far-reaching consequences. There are some specific and general factors that contribute to that. First, the crime was committed on the territory of a moderate Arab country whose support for peace with Israel has been practically translated into unofficial bilateral relations. A high-level Israeli delegation had been in the country only days before the Mossad hit squad arrived. Showing so much contempt for a leading moderate Arab state gives a very bad example for any other state that might consider softening its position toward Israel (as the United States had been demanding as “confidence-building measures” for the “peace process”).
-A second factor is that Israel mostly used stolen identities of living people, whose very public shock and fear at waking up to find their names splashed over the newspapers and linked to a murder, could not easily be hidden.
-A third factor is that the Israeli adventure in Dubai carries the traits of just the kind of terrorist act the world has been mobilizing to fight. Improvements in passport security were introduced in recent years to stop terrorism, but here is a country violating and sabotaging these security measures in order to commit murder.
-We cannot assume that the assassination in Dubai will be the straw that breaks the back of Israeli immunity and impunity, but we can be sure that the general erosion of Israel’s standing as a result, particularly of its aggressive recent wars on Lebanon and Gaza, means that what was tolerated by the world more easily five or ten years ago, is less tolerated now. Global public disgust at Israeli actions has reached levels that may require governments who normally prefer complicity and silence to act.
-And when there was a “peace process,” Israel’s crimes particularly against Palestinians were ignored in the interests of not damaging relations or slowing momentum toward the hoped-for successful conclusion. But no one today — except the most naive or delusional — believes that there is any peace process. Despite Israel’s efforts to blame the Palestinians, only the most pro-Israel extremists deny that Israel’s aggressive colonization in Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the siege on Gaza, is what killed any prospect of a negotiated solution for the foreseeable future.
-Consider that just days before the passport affair broke out, Israel was once again pressuring the UK to change its laws to protect Israeli officials from arrest for war crimes should they visit London. Although British officials had publicly expressed shameful enthusiasm to tailor UK law to meet Israeli needs, they may now face real public opposition if they attempt to change it. What interest does the UK have to protect the likes of Tzipi Livni from arrest if the facts and evidence make it necessary?
-The truth is that as it becomes desperate, Israel is turning ever more wild and dangerous, not only for its neighbors but for world peace, security and prosperity. Without constant pressure from the Israel lobby, there may have been no invasion of Iraq. Today, it is Israel and its apologists who are constantly inciting confrontation and war against Iran when most of this region wants peace and good relations.
-Even if the countries harmed by Israel’s latest brazen act do not hold it properly and adequately accountable — as they must and should — it appears that it is on a path of self-destruction. The great fear is how much more harm it will do to others on the way.
-Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan Times and is republished with the author’s permission.
+Although he has stopped playing professional football, Khalid Khalaila (front) still receives racist messages on his mobile phone.
+
+ReutersBnei Sakhnin is by far the most successful football club mainly comprised of Palestinians living inside Israel.
+
+It has won Israel’s State Cup and competed in the UEFA Europa League. The team’s tenacity has earned it many admirers and even inspired a movie.
+
+The occasional triumphs it has enjoyed do not, however, erase a grim reality for the team: Its players and supporters are regularly subjected to racist abuse.
+
+Khalid Khalaila spent about 20 years as a midfielder with Bnei Sakhnin and was the team’s captain for a decade. He was also part of the side which won the State Cup in 2004.
+
+Despite having stopped playing professional football, he still receives hostile messages on his mobile phone.
+
+Almost certainly, the messages come from fans of Beitar Jerusalem. Typically, they call Khalid a “dirty Arab” and curse his family.
+
+Skeptical
+
+Beitar’s supporters have hurled insults at Bnei Sakhnin whenever the two sides have played against each other.
+
+The insults have effectively been endorsed by top-level Israeli politicians.
+
+Miri Regev, then Israel’s minister for sports and culture, posted a video on Facebook in 2018 of her attending a match between Beitar and Bnei Sakhnin. In the video, Regev could be seen smiling broadly as Beitar’s supporters chanted “may your village be burned.”
+
+Beitar has been reprimanded and penalized by Israel’s football authorities over the conduct of its fans. Yet Khalid is skeptical about whether the authorities really want to kick racism out of football.
+
+“We keep on hearing ‘death to the Arabs’ and other slogans being chanted,” he said. “The Israel Football Association imposes sanctions but unfortunately the sanctions don’t prevent the abuse. They are just formalities.”
+
+Khalid remains among the best known players in the history of Bnei Sakhnin, which is based in the Galilee region.
+
+“I played quite a strong, physical game,” he said. “Some people called me a rough player. I drew a lot of attention and that may explain why I got a lot of racist abuse.”
+
+While Bnei Sakhnin mostly features Palestinian citizens of Israel, it also has a few Jewish Israelis and players from Colombia, Nigeria and Brazil.
+
+“Determined”
+
+Ali Othman, 33, is the team’s current captain.
+
+The racist abuse he encounters can be so severe that he has taken steps to protect his safety. When the team is playing Beitar, he travels in a car separately from the rest of the squad, in an attempt to go unnoticed.
+
+In his experience, players with Bnei Sakhnin are more exposed to racism than Palestinians selected by other teams in Israel.
+
+Othman joined Bnei Sakhnin in 2006.
+
+Three years later, he was transferred to Maccabi Haifa. The transfer enabled him to play against some of Europe’s best teams.
+
+Othman stated that he was never subjected to racist abuse during his time with Maccabi Haifa. Yet when he returned to Bnei Sakhnin in 2012, Othman got another taste of how much the team is hated by some Israelis.
+
+He is nonetheless doing what he can to rise above the racism targeting him.
+
+“I do my best to stay positive when we hear racist slogans being chanted,” he said. “They chant nasty things about Arabs and the Prophet Muhammad. But the nastiness encourages me to try harder. It makes me more determined to win.”
+
+Saeed Hasanein, a sports writer with the newspaper Kul al-Arab, said that “every Palestinian inside Israel is proud of Bnei Saknin, despite all the racism it is exposed to.”
+
+“I have witnessed many incidents of racism against Arab players from the 1980s until now,” he added. “The Israel Football Association has never taken real action against this racism. We, Arabs, are a lower people as far as they are concerned. So they just turn a blind eye.”
+
+Munther Khalaila, a spokesperson for Bnei Sakhnin, noted that when its fans hear “death to the Arabs” being shouted at games against Beitar, they respond by chanting “Allahu akbar.” Though that expression is widely misunderstood in the West, it simply means “God is the greatest” and is often used by Palestinians at times of celebration.
+
+Bnei Sakhnin has kept going despite having financial difficulties recently. The support and sponsorship it has received from businesses has been inadequate.
+
+Players have accepted a salary cut and some of its management work on a voluntary basis. Relegated last year, the club is now back in Israel’s premier league, although it has not had a good season so far.
+
+Many Palestinian citizens of Israel identity with Bnei Sakhnin because they respect its spirit of defiance.
+
+The town of Sakhnin witnessed battles between Zionist and Arab forces in 1948, the year of Israel’s foundation. While many of its residents fled during the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine – a considerable number stayed put.
+
+“Younger generations were born as citizens of Israel,” said Munther Khalaila. “We have lived with racism since our childhood. A lot of Israel’s football supporters don’t want us here.”
+
+Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.
+Tags
+
+Bnei Sakhnin
+
+Khalid Khalaila
+
+Beitar Jerusalem
+
+Miri Regev
+
+Ali Othman
+
+Maccabi Haifa
+
+Saeed Hasanein
+
+Kul al-Arab
+
+Munther Khalaila

combined/texts/1012.txt

@@ -1,85 +1,12 @@
-A Palestinian youth is arrested by Israeli police in occupied East Jerusalem in May 2013.
-
-APA imagesPalestinians in an occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood are demanding that Israeli police cease harassing schoolchildren.
-
-The Parents Council of al-Tur organized a protest against the harrassment at the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem Municipality on Sunday.
-
-“Our message to the government is that it is very dangerous to leave the police here [in al-Tur outside of schools],” said Mufid Abu Ghannam, a father of two children, ages eight and nine.
-
-“The border police don’t bring security to al-Tur; they bring terrorism against small children,” he added.
-
-Abu Ghannam told The Electronic Intifada that the presence of so many Israeli police, “hundreds, stationed near the schools from morning until night,” provokes confrontations with youth. The police often use the confrontations as a pretext to fire tear gas and stun grenades.
-
-On 21 January, police had fired a stun grenade into a crowd of students outside an elementary school on the main street in al-Tur. When he asked the police why they had thrown the grenade, Abu Ghannam was given a typical answer: the children were throwing stones.
-
-“But I had been standing there and I saw with my own eyes that these eight-year-old students had done nothing,” he said. “Afterwards the boys were just standing there crying.”
-
-The policy of arresting and harassing youth is not unique to al-Tur. Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine) reported that in last October 2014, 163 Palestinian children were imprisoned and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. DCI-Palestine says that the majority of Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces “are held on charges of throwing stones.”
-
-On 24 January, Israeli police shot a young man in the face with a rubber bullet while he was outside his home in al-Tur. No clashes were reported at the time, and a relative of the young man said that Israeli forces were firing “randomly.”
-
-The next day Ma’an News Agency reported that Israeli forces assaulted and detained Muhammad Afeef Khweis, a ten-year-old boy, in al-Tur. Muhammad’s uncle tried to protect him and “was pepper-sprayed and arrested, despite suffering from shortness of breath,” Ma’an added.
-
-Some locals suspect that the crackdown on al-Tur may be related to Israel’s planned construction of the so-called Eastern Slopes National Park on Palestinian land in the surrounding area.
-
-The Alternative Information Center, a watchdog on Israeli human rights abuses, has reported that the park is designed to achieve “territorial continuity” between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, a major Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.
-
-Skunk water attack
-
-In addition to firing tear gas and grenades, on multiple occasions police have blasted the neighborhood and schools in particular with “skunk water” — a liquid that smells like a mix of dead animal carcasses and feces and leaves an odor that is extremely difficult to eliminate. In November, a police “skunk truck” was filmed rolling through two East Jerusalem neighborhoods and spraying its foul liquid on schools and homes.
-
-At a 23 January protest in al-Tur, a boy holds a sign that reads: “Children have a right to study with peace and safety, right?!”
-Sarah LevyNo clashes had occurred prior to the truck’s arrival.
-
-In al-Tur, four of the neighborhood’s five schools — all located on the same street — were sprayed in one incident, forcing 4,500 students to stay home for several days due to the intolerable smell.
-
-Since the beginning of the current school year, border police have been stationed outside many schools in East Jerusalem without explanation. The school year began shortly after Israel’s summertime attack on Gaza.
-
-Since then, two children each lost an eye in separate instances of police firing sponge bullets in the East Jerusalem neighborhoods of Issawiyeh and Shuafat.
-
-State violence overlooked
-
-The Israeli government has recently approved a plan to bring one thousand additional police officers into East Jerusalem. It was approved following some isolated incidents of violence by Palestinians against Israelis in the last few months of 2014.
-
-Although those incidents received considerable attention, attacks against Palestinians have largely been ignored by the Western media.
-
-Since the brutal July 2014 murder of Muhammad Abu Khudair, a Palestinian boy from Shuafat, attacks by Jewish extremists against Palestinians have become a common occurrence across Jerusalem.
-
-The attacks have continued into this year. On 28 January, a Palestinian teenager from the al-Thuri neighborhood near Silwan in East Jerusalem was assaulted by an Israeli settler while the boy was walking to school.
-
-Underfunding of schools
-
-Besides the physical threats from both police and Jewish extremists, students in East Jerusalem also suffer from the underfunding of schools, especially compared to the education system to which their Jewish counterparts have access just a few kilometers away in West Jerusalem.
-
-Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem have 3,000 classrooms less than they need and at least 8,000 children cannot be accounted for, meaning it is uncertain whether they are in school at all. Some teachers have complained of serious overcrowding in classrooms.
-
-Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 in a move that remains unrecognized by governments around the world.
-
-East Jerusalem is nominally protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention. The convention requires Israel, the occupying power, to “facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.”
-
-Israel’s refusal to honor that obligation amounts to a war crime.
-
-Sarah Levy is an independent journalist living in the West Bank. Follow her on Twitter: @levysarahm.
-
-Shai Barash and Mohamed Kabha helped with translation for this article.
-Tags
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-al-tur
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-East Jerusalem
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-West Bank
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-skunk water
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-education
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-tear gas
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-land confiscation
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-child detainees
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-DCI-Palestine Section
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-Muhammad Abu Khudair
+The hills of north Palestine as seen from south Lebanon. (Stefan Christoff)
+
+Under an open morning sky, Palestine’s golden hills lit up the horizon. Fast approaching via taxi from Amman, Jordan, strikingly beautiful landscapes rushed by until Israeli military installations multiplied at the edges of the border line to the occupied West Bank.
+The World Education Forum had just begun in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, where thousands of students, teachers and activists from around the world had gathered to express support for Palestinians’ right to education. More than fifty individuals traveled from Quebec, Canada to join the conference, including more than twenty members of Fédération nationale des enseignantes et enseignants du Québec (FNEEQ), a Quebec-wide teachers syndicate, and one of the first major unions in both Québec and more widely, Canada to back the growing global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
+I was previously refused entry into Palestine in 2003 when planning to join the International Solidarity Movement. My second attempt to enter Palestine via land borders controlled illegally by Israeli occupation forces was rooted in both my involvement in the World Education Forum but also to once again attempt to join in person Palestinian grassroots activists engaged in popular resistance to Israeli apartheid.
+This time at the land border crossing, immediately after entering my name into the computer, Israeli officers told me the wait. After a while, I was taken to an interrogation room and questioned about my involvement in Palestine solidarity work, specifically the growing BDS movement. They asked me for the names and phone numbers of comrades in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and elsewhere. After six hours shifting between waiting rooms, holding areas and interrogation stalls, I was told: “You will not be admitted entry into Israel.” With multiple bright red Israeli stamps reading “entry denied” littering my passport, I was put on a bus back toward Amman.
+I was deported by the Israeli government for publicly expressing support for and participating in the growing global movement for Palestinian human rights and freedom. Israel’s increased deportation of witnesses and activists such as myself comes as the solidarity movement including the call for BDS gains momentum around the world.
+Despite growing collusion with Israel by the minority Conservative government in Ottawa, a grassroots movement across Canada in support of Palestinian freedom is growing. In Montreal five hundred artists signed an open letter backing the cultural boycott against the Israeli government and a wave of major unions have endorsed the BDS campaign. In October, hundreds gathered for the first Quebec/Canada-wide BDS conference, pointing to the emergence of a vibrant social movement for justice in Palestine.
+In the past decade waves of international solidarity activists have traveled to Palestine to witness apartheid first-hand. Solidarity visits and delegations have played a key role in shaping international solidarity with Palestine.
+In response, Israeli occupation forces have blocked the borderlines and the state has deported hundreds of social justice activists to prevent them from witnessing the reality on the ground and building solidarity with Palestinians resisting the occupation in the West Bank. Israeli occupation forces have also systematically prevented leaders of the Palestinian grassroots movement from traveling abroad and telling their stories. Meanwhile, Israel has imposed severe travel restrictions on anyone attempting to travel in or out of the occupied Gaza Strip — Palestinians and international observers alike.
+It is certain that Israel’s policies to limit access to international eyes and ears will crumble in the face of the ongoing steadfastness and daily resistance of the Palestinian people, supported by the global BDS movement. It is with hope and inspiration that we will continue to walk forward toward a free Palestine.
+Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based musician, journalist and social justice activist with Tadamon! (http://www.tadamon.ca/). His Twitter feed is http://www.twitter.com/spirodon.

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@@ -1,26 +1,27 @@
-Palestinians attend Friday prayers on the remains of an old mosque in the village of Lifta.
-
-APA imagesEarlier this year, the group 1948 Lest We Forget filed an application to the World Monuments Fund (WMF) to include the Palestinian village of Lifta in its 2012 World Monuments Watch List.The WMF was chosen because it accepts nominations from individuals, institutions and organizations without the need for national or state endorsement. The fund is an independent organization registered as a charity and based in New York City. It is concerned with saving some of the world’s most treasured places, whether great buildings, sites or singular monuments.In preparing the application, we carried out extensive research on Lifta — its rich history, its unique architectural, cultural and social character — and found it to be an embodiment of everything Palestinian.The tragic history of Lifta is no less important an element in its nomination than its special architectural character. This is because Lifta, unlike most other urban environments, was built by its own inhabitants who also owned the houses and the nearly 1,200 hectares (approximately 3,000 acres) which belonged to it.The construction of Lifta’s cube-like buildings topped by their domed roofs was only possible because of the use of the single natural material the inhabitants employed: the special Jerusalem stone. The unique cluster of buildings seem to be embedded into the gentle slopes of the hills around them, and not one house vies for recognition over its neighbor. These houses are a perfect example of how to build a community in total harmony with the physical environment without pretense or architectural pastiche.Since its depopulation in 1948-49, Lifta has been kept deserted by the Israeli authorities and it currently faces demolition by speculative developers. As a last act of architectural violation, gangs of drug addicts and squatters have been roaming the village and destroying the elegant domed roofs in an attempt to prevent a return by Lifta’s legitimate owners.Alas, Lifta will see darker days ahead, should genuine efforts to save it from demolition fail.Making the case for LiftaOur application to the WMF included many illustrations, historical documents, indicative plans and some superb photographs taken at various periods of Lifta’s recent history. An important document included with the application was our “Save Lifta” petition which attracted 2,958 signatures from around the world. This number, at which point the petition was closed in time to file the application, symbolically represented the number of Lifta inhabitants in 1948 before it was ethnically cleansed. Had we kept the petition open, we were certain it would have attracted thousands of other signatures.The 2012 WMF Watch List criteria for assessment and eventual selection of entries to its prestigious list include the significance of the site, the urgency of the conditions and the viability of feasible action (“World Monuments Fund, Nomination Guidelines”).In our application, we carefully addressed them one by one with supporting material to show that Lifta deserved recognition and protection.Of the above criteria, urgency was the most relevant in Lifta’s case because, as is now well-documented in reports published by The Electronic Intifada, The Guardian and elsewhere, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), which claims to own Lifta and its surrounding terrain, has parcelled the village land for sale by tender to private developers to build more than 210 luxury housing units with shops, hotels and a museum for wealthy Jewish expatriates.Nearby and slightly below the village, it has been reported that a secure tunnel is being planned and built to connect this site to the nearby Knesset (Israeli parliament) building for use by VIPs and state officials when the future development is completed.All of this has been planned to be carried out under the noses of the few surviving original Lifta owners and their many descendants who have not been allowed to return to the village — although a good number of them have taken refuge only a few kilometers away.Deceased family members cannot even be graced with a burial plot in Lifta. Even a return through death has been prevented. Living in proximity to Lifta, and being buried in it, we thought, would certainly meet the WMF 2012 Watch List’s two other criteria: relevance and significance. In our submission, we had included many more compelling reasons to meet these criteria.On 11 February, the application was successfully filed and later confirmed by the WMF to be valid and in order. A decision date, we were told, was to be expected towards the end of September 2011. Due diligence required us to contact the WMF to ensure that all was on track. This was again confirmed.During the last week of September, the WMF website announced that the jury had made their selection and the results would be announced on 28 September. On 1 October, we received by email a letter dated 29 September signed by Erica Avrami, Director of Research and Education at WMF. It included this statement: “We regret that the Lifta Village was not selected for inclusion in the 2012 Watch.”Significance of Lifta as a heritage siteLifta, for us, symbolizes not only the cultural, architectural and contextual importance of a heritage site, but also its political significance. Architectural history is full of such examples, whether single buildings, or a cluster of them, where the political element in fact played an important part in their formation and evolution.Lifta, without doubt, is considered a “hot potato” because it is as much a symbol of the Palestinian tragedy as it is a physical manifestation of it. Could it have been, we tried to guess, Lifta’s “political” dimension which de-classified it from the Watch List?In order that a future re-nomination of Lifta may be attempted, it was important for us to get an absolute understanding of the reasons why Lifta was de-selected in order that we may avoid derailment in the future. We spoke to Avrami at the WMF and, after a brief discussion, we asked her, “was the decision to exclude Lifta a political one?” The answer came in an email about two weeks later and it confirmed our worst fears:“The Watch nomination for Lifta village incorrectly located the site in the Palestinian Territory, when it is in fact within the current borders of Israel [our emphasis]. Factual inaccuracies are something taken into consideration in the review and selection process.”It is worth repeating here that our application was accepted and validated back in February and there were no questions raised at the time, or since, about Lifta’s geographical location. Our application had clearly showed Lifta’s coordinates on the map which accompanied the application and positively placed it inside the Corpus Separatum zone designated by the 1947 Partition Plan under UN Resolution 181.As the reason for disqualifying Lifta is seen now to be its geographical location and not necessarily the other criteria, we felt that we were about to be embroiled in a debate on an issue which sits at the core of the Israel-Palestine question.For the sake of historical correctness, we had no choice but to rely on international conventions to safeguard Lifta from physical oblivion. An extract of the UN Resolution 181 Partition map was sent to the WMF with another map showing the UN designated are of Jerusalem and its environs within the Corpus Separatum international zone. Lifta sat comfortably inside that zone, and as the WMF response emphasized “the current borders of Israel,” we also sent the WMF another extract of the UN map showing the 1949 Armistice Lines which wrapped around West Jerusalem and the village of Lifta at the cessation of hostilities.We explained that these lines are exactly what they were meant to be according to international legal definitions: “Armistice Lines represent where the hostilities between the parties ceased until the warring parties reach final agreement.” This is in accordance with international law and the Geneva Convention.In its response dated 1 November, the WMF wrote:“World Monuments Fund is a private, not-for-profit organization that undertakes the World Monuments Watch as part of advocacy work on behalf of heritage around the world. We are not an intergovernmental organization that must abide by international conventions …” (my emphasis).However, the WMF is part of the United Nations, listed under the “Official Relations” section of UNESCO. By definition, therefore, it is required to respect international law (“UNESCO - World Monuments Fund).But as is usually the case at the UN, rights take a back seat to politics. The US State Department’s “Diplomacy In Action” section created the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, which has donated over $2 million to the WMF. In view of the fact that the US has punished UNESCO for admitting Palestine as a member on 31 October 2011, the political link between the State Department funding and the WMF cannot be underestimated.Despite the WMF’s refusal to include Lifta on its watch list, the village’s fate appears directly relevant to the organization’s work. This can be seen from a comment made by Bonnie Burnham, the WMF’s president, in a 2006 interview with the National Trust for Historic Preservation:“Time, war, and politics are destroyers of monuments. Which is the biggest threat? In a global context, unquestionably, the biggest is war. In addition to destroying buildings, armed conflict destroys the entire national capacity to deal with heritage” (“The Short Answer: Bonnie Burnham”).If the WMF was prepared to address that threat, surely it would be acting to save Lifta.Antoine Raffoul is a chartered Palestinian architect living and practicing in London. He is also a coordinator of 1948 Lest We Forget and can be reached at info AT 1948 DOT org DOT uk.
-Tags
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-Lifta
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-World Monuments Fund
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-Jerusalem
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-UNESCO
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-refugees
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-1948 Lest We Forget
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-Israel Lands Administration
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-Israeli Knesset
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-Erica Avrami
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-US State Department
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-Bonnie Burnham
+Ahmad Jaradat in Dakar (Stefan Christoff)
+
+Tens of thousands of activists gathered in Dakar, Senegal for the 2011 World Social Forum (WSF) in February. Hundreds of workshops and assemblies on social justice struggles around the world were held at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, including a series of presentations on the Palestinian struggle for liberation and the growing global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid.
+Activists from around the world held meetings, workshops and strategy sessions on the global BDS movement, working toward a global day of action on Palestinian Land Day, 30 March, and a global forum on Palestine to take place in the upcoming years within the WSF process.
+Palestinian activist Ahmad Jaradat of the Alternative Information Center (www.alternativenews.org) has been involved in the WSF process over the past decade and sits on the international coordination committee of the global forum. The Electronic Intifada contributor Stefan Christoff spoke with Jaradat outside the Palestine people’s assembly tent in Dakar on the 10th anniversary of the global anti-capitalist gathering.
+Stefan Christoff: Can you talk about the importance of the World Social Forum for the global Palestinian solidarity movement?
+Ahmad Jaradat: The Palestinian struggle has been a key point for the WSF over the past decade since the first global forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. As many, many social movements are represented here at the WSF, movements struggling against capitalist globalization, for environmental justice and for human rights, it makes sense that Palestine has been a key point in the forum process.
+Only in 2009 at the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, after the Israeli military attack on Gaza, did the discussions on Palestine at the WSF move into real action. The international coordination committee of the WSF took a decision to officially support an international day of action in solidarity with Palestine on 30 March — Palestinian Land Day. The first global day of action for the BDS movement, protests took place in many cities all around the world.
+In Dakar this year people at the WSF continued to discuss seriously the BDS movement, trying to work out ways to move the BDS campaign forward in the Middle East, in Europe, in North America and also in Africa, even here in Dakar. So now the WSF has become a important space for the global Palestine movement to work on real actions and campaigns in solidarity with Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and military siege which violates our basic rights every day.
+SC: Can you describe the sessions on BDS that took place during the forum?
+AJ: More than two hundred people attended the BDS session on the opening day of the Palestine people’s assembly at the WSF, with many activists from Palestine, from Europe and from Canada, those leading the BDS campaign in different countries. Reports were presented about different BDS efforts globally, the campaign against Agrexco in France, a presentation by union activists in Morocco struggling against normalization with Israel, to the cultural boycott work in Canada.
+Also at this session many Senegalese students attended who were really, really interested in learning about what is happening in Palestine. Hundreds of students from the university stayed for more than two hours listening, learning about BDS and the situation on the ground in Palestine. Now there is a committee established at the Cheikh Anta Diop University to work on BDS and Israeli Apartheid Week. It is so important that the BDS movement develops in Senegal and across Africa.
+SC: Can you reflect on your feelings being here at the WSF and organizing for the global Palestine solidarity movement?
+AJ: As a Palestinian the global participation at the people’s assembly on Palestine at the WSF makes me proud; the Palestinian issue is now an international issue and is central to this international forum that is working to counter capitalist globalization.
+On one side the forces of oppression and corporate power are global but we are responding at a grassroots level globally, on Palestine but also on environmental issues and for human rights all around the world. Protests in Egypt and Tunisia are on everyone’s minds at the WSF and many activists from Tunisia travelled to the forum in Dakar to speak about the situation in their country directly.
+Today, Palestinians are in the fire, we are living under occupation, “peace process” negotiations are not achieving anything, the Israeli colonies are expanding, the apartheid wall is being built, East Jerusalem is being colonized, the rights and freedoms of Palestinians living in ‘48 areas [inside Israel] are being attacked, so as civil society globally we have to respond.
+Governments are silent toward Israeli human rights abuses but people are responding at a grassroots level all around the world and are having an impact. Today, the BDS campaign is making the Israeli government scared. Similar to decades ago for the South African freedom struggle against apartheid, the BDS campaign has the possibility to become extremely destabilizing for the Israeli apartheid regime and today it is the most important tool for social movements to act in solidarity with Palestine.
+BDS is not just about words, it is about action; the campaign is really starting to have an impact and the WSF process is strengthening the BDS movement.
+SC: A proposal emerged from the World Education Forum in Palestine in October 2010 for a thematic World Social Forum on Palestine to take place in the coming years. Can you comment on the proposal, which is being discussed and debated here in Dakar?
+AJ: Yes, this proposal for a World Social Forum on Palestine is important and I hope that this global forum will play a role is pushing the situation facing the Palestinian people to the international level and lead people to take action globally.
+All over the world people today are more and more aware about the situation in Palestine, especially those in social movements, so a global forum will be a way for progressive movements globally to take action, work together and to support and build the BDS campaign.
+A global forum on Palestine will be a big achievement and is a statement on the growing number of friends that Palestine has around the world. After the WSF in Dakar, all the groups attending from Palestine will being holding consultations in occupied Palestine toward this global forum and in the next months we can start working on this global event for Palestine.
+SC: The Palestinian Authority is facing a great deal of pressure because it has negotiated away fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, like the right of return. However, you represent another major element of the Palestinian political landscape: the grassroots element. Can you speak about this growing split between the Palestinian political class and the grassroots in Palestine?
+AJ: From the beginning, [the Oslo accords] worked to divide the Palestinian people; real justice for Palestine is very far from the Oslo agreement. Now the PA is in crisis because the negotiations have failed and the Palestine Papers [diplomatic documents leaked by Al Jazeera] show this clearly. Israeli settlements are expanding, Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights are becoming worse, Gaza is under siege, while the PA is negotiating away our rights. This “peace process” is achieving nothing.
+As activists from Palestine we engage with the WSF because we know that this is a long term struggle and grassroots campaigns like BDS can apply real pressure on Israel. Oslo only creates divisions and leads to no concrete changes for the Palestinian people, while the BDS [movement] is creating a real problem for the Israeli government.
+Over the past decade through the WSF we have connected with grassroots activists, human rights workers and trade unions globally who are willing to stand with Palestine, so the WSF is important for the global movement for justice and specifically for Palestine. In the past couple WSF forums the words in solidarity with Palestine have moved into action through the BDS campaign and this year we are starting seriously to plan a global forum for Palestine, a major step forward.
+Stefan Christoff is a Montreal-based community organizer, journalist and musician who contributes to the Electronic Intifada and works with Tadamon! Follow him on twitter at: www.twitter.com/spirodon.

combined/texts/1014.txt

@@ -1,22 +1,24 @@
-Photojournalist Nayef Hashlamoun’s documentation of life under occupation in Hebron has received awards and accolades.
+Palestinians inspect a car belonging to Mona Ghalayni after unknown Palestinians planted a bomb in it in Gaza, 18 April 2007. The car of Ghalayni, who is the owner of a famous chain of restaurants in the Gaza Strip, exploded shortly after her arrival at one of her restaurants in the south of Gaza City. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)
 
-In October 2009 Palestinian photojournalist Nayef Hashlamoun traveled to Jordan to collect a lifetime achievement award from the Arab Youth Media Forum, a Dubai-based press project. The award recognized Hashlamoun for his “professionalism and skill and for his service in the media, and courage to work despite being wounded several times by Israeli soldiers and settlers,” according to Forum president Haitham Yousif.
-Hashlamoun, who until December worked for Reuters in Hebron, had also been feted during the 2006 China International Press Photo Contest in Shenzhen. His work documenting the incessant persecution of Hebron’s Palestinian residents by Israeli soldiers and settlers has appeared in newspapers around the world.
-“But I am especially happy about this latest award,” says Hashlamoun, “because this is not just about one photograph. It’s about the whole package — my body of work, my professionalism, my ethics. Because of that it’s something special.”
-Nayef Hashlamoun
-Nayef Hashlamoun’s father, a sculptor, taught him different ways to see the world, and he learned to draw and paint as a schoolboy. At the age of 16 he borrowed a camera from a studio in Hebron. “After that I went to study journalism and took special courses in photography,” he says. “The camera became my shadow. People know now that I always have my camera; they joke that I take pictures of my dreams while I sleep.”
-But just two months after receiving his Arab Youth Media Forum prize, Hashlamoun ended almost two decades of work with news agency Reuters. Instead, he has taken up a role with the al-Watan center, a nongovernmental organization based in his hometown of Hebron which intends to operate as a small, freelance news agency.
-“I feel more independent and free doing this,” he says. “I can give training for people in journalism and photography, and at al-Watan we will start a media program, to train young people and professionals. Journalism is always connected to new technologies and new skills and information, so professionals have to be able to update their skills and experience. Photojournalism under conditions of war and violence is dangerous, but we have to do our job under the umbrella of ethics and credibility, always.”
-Despite having run a series of successful training courses, both in Palestine and in Turkey, Hashlamoun must now start over professionally; his international supporters have run a fundraising campaign via Facebook to buy him his own camera.
-“But al-Watan has been well known as a conflict resolution center for many years,” he says, “and for that I’m happy to be working with them. They say a picture tells a thousand words, and I like pictures because they are the best international language, everybody can read them. A camera can be a peacemaker; many times I’ve seen soldiers stop shooting or the police or settlers stop beating people because the cameras are there. I’ve been a victim of that violence, and I want my camera to be a peacemaker as well.”
-But as Hashlamoun’s citation at the award ceremony highlighted, a Palestinian photojournalist is rarely safe at work, and international prizes are no guarantee that journalists will be respected by the Israeli security forces. In November 2009, for example, writer Mohammed Omer was stripped, humiliated and severely beaten on his way home from collecting Norwegian PEN’s Ossietzky prize for “outstanding achievements within the field of free expression.” And in 2008, Martha Gellhorn Prize recipient Omer al-Mughaier was beaten unconscious by Shin Bet agents at the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank.
-Hashlamoun has also been attacked on at least seven occasions. Last year, Israeli workers from the civil administration attempted to attack him as he tried to photograph their destruction of water pipes belonging to Palestinian farmers; the farmers successfully protected him. In May 2008, he wasn’t so lucky. Hashlamoun’s family home was raided at 3am by Israeli soldiers, just days after he and his son had been denied Israeli security clearance to travel to the US to participate in a media production course. Two months later, Hashlamoun and colleagues from Agence France Presse and the Associated Press were attacked by Palestinian Preventive Security officers in Beit Jala, while trying to cover an al-Tahrir party meeting. In October 2008, Nayef, his brother Abdel Hafiz Hashlamoun and a British human rights observer were beaten by Israeli settlers in Hebron, while covering the olive harvest in Tel Rumeida.
-“Being a journalist is the most dangerous work in the world,” says Hashlamoun, “especially being a photojournalist or a photographer. We work under risk every day, especially in conflict areas like Palestine or Iraq, especially if you have soldiers who feel that you are from the other side, not from their side. We are professionals, we are doing our job, we are not part of any story, we are working as journalists, but because you are Palestinian and the soldiers are Israeli or settlers they come, they try to stop us, they try to attack us, to beat us, to shoot us.”
-According to Riham Abu Aita of the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA), based in Ramallah, Palestinian journalists currently encounter harassment and interference in their work from both the Israeli and Palestinian security forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. A March 2009 MADA report identified a whole range of problems, from the overt violence of the Israeli military to more subtle forms of distortion, such as self-censorship, implemented by journalists themselves.
-The report identified 257 separate violations of media freedoms during 2008, 147 of them committed by Israeli occupation forces and settlers and 110 by Palestinian security services and armed groups in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. “The kinds of violations we see from the Israeli occupation forces are more serious than those from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas,” says Riham Abu Aita, “because they not only attack or arrest journalists, they shoot and kill them.”
-MADA says that in 2009 four journalists were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, and many had their homes demolished. “We noticed that in 2009 there were fewer violations of press freedom in absolute number, but the kinds of violations were more serious, especially the killing of four journalists in the aggression against Gaza,” continues Abu Aita.
-In January 2009, Aidan White, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, led a delegation to Gaza just days after the end of Israel’s invasion. White called Israel’s targeting of the media “premeditated and precise … reckless intimidation of media on a shocking scale.”
-The subtitle of the Israel section of Reporters’ Without Borders worldwide roundup of infringements of press freedoms in 2009 was “Operation Media Crackdown.” The Paris-based organization noted that the killing of several journalists and the injuring of 20 more during Israel’s invasion of Gaza last winter, as well as several “completely illegal” arrests of dissenting journalists within Israel itself. Reporters Without Borders’ index of press freedoms placed Israel itself at 93, below other countries in the region stereotyped as repressive of the media, including the United Arab Emirates (86), Kuwait (60) and Lebanon (61). Moreover, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories were ranked at 150, below the authoritarian regimes of Egypt (143) and Jordan (112).
-“Palestinian journalists can’t work freely or safely,” says Riham Abu Aita.
-“Some of my colleagues have been killed or injured, and a lot of them are now in jail,” adds Nayef Hashlamoun. “But this is the work of photojournalism in a situation of war and violence. We have to continue to do our job with ethics and credibility.
-Sarah Irving is a freelance writer from Manchester, UK. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She now writes full-time on a range of issues, including Palestine and the wider Middle East.
+The Palestinian Authority has been starved of funds since Hamas was elected in January 2006. Israel has also been withholding the millions of US dollars it owes the Palestinian Authority in tax revenues. This has led to a breakdown of public services and law and order in the occupied Palestinian territories. Government ministries, hospitals, schools and the courts have all faced closure over the last year and are functioning at minimum capacity, with staff salaries withheld.
+Poverty is rising in the West Bank and Gaza because of international sanctions, compounded by Israeli restrictions on the movement of Palestinian goods and labour related to security concerns. The Palestinian Authority (PA) cannot pay its civil servants because the international community has refused to fund the PA unless the Palestinian government, which includes Hamas, recognises Israel.
+Poverty in ‘the biggest jail on earth’
+According to the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 84 percent of Gazans and 60 percent of West Bankers have reduced their spending; some households have already sold their assets such as land, jewelry, electrical devices and furniture.
+Thousands of laborers have not been able to find reliable long-term work inside Gaza to replace the construction or agricultural jobs they had in Israel. A small number earn food from the WFP by working on community projects in Gaza, such as road cleaning. According to the UN, one-third of Palestinians are ‘food insecure’
+More than 80 percent of Palestinians live under the poverty line; most of those Palestinians who have been affected due to the siege imposed up on the government and the ordinary Palestinian people as a form of collective punishment live in the Gaza Strip. While the disengagement of Israel from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005 was thought to represent new hope for the Gazan civilians, it has practically turned Gaza into the biggest jail on earth; the Strip has become isolated from the rest of the world because Israel still controls Gaza’s airspace, territorial water and the borders, including cargo and commercial crossings, in addition to the Rafah pedestrian terminal in the southern Gaza Strip which is the only gate for Gazans to the outside world.
+The Gaza ‘pressure cooker’
+Since Gaza is a prison for 1.4 million people and they are locked inside, it has become a pressure cooker.
+As result of these circumstances, falatan, the Arabic word which means security chaos, anarchy and lawlessness, has spread, especially in light of the security forces’ inability to enforce the law despite the fact that there are more than 85,000 Palestinian security men.
+The Palestinian society, torn apart by internal feuding and infighting between the two major factions as they struggle for power, in addition to clan disputes and thugs running around with AK-47s, have became ordinary occurrences in our everyday life. On the other hand, the continued Israeli military practices in all its forms contribute to the suffering of the people.
+The emigration dream
+Life is unbearable in Gaza; people are hopeless and frustrated, especially for the thousands of university graduates who cannot find jobs due to the increasing unemployment rate. It is a serious crisis when one sees educated people and intellectuals packing their stuff and leaving without even saying goodbye to their close friends. A survey published by An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus says nearly one third of Palestinians would emigrate outside the Palestinian Authority territories if they could.
+It is worth mentioning that Rafah crossing, between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt, is sometimes partially open for a few days a week but this is not guaranteed. Therefore, leaving Gaza and traveling abroad is a nightmare. Travelers do not know when the crossing will be open and whether they will have to queue for a long time. Sometimes, travelers even have to pay bribes in order to be one of the first to cross the border due to the crowds.
+I asked some Palestinian youths about how life feels in Gaza, how they spend their spare time and if they have ever considered leaving Gaza.
+Nidal Mater, 26, a governmental employee: “Life has no taste in Gaza, where the law of the jungle rules. We are suffering because of the siege imposed on us by the Quartet [comprising the UN, EU, USA and Russia]: no salaries; no security as we are suffering from internal security chaos as a result of an absence of law; we are frustrated and feel hopeless. Thank God that we have the Mediterranean Sea along Gaza’s shores so that we can breathe; it’s the only place where Gazans usually go to enjoy themselves and have fun. Also, we, as youths, are lucky that we have Internet access to communicate with the outside world as we are locked in this cursed prison which is called Gaza. I also go to the gym to release life’s stress. We, the youth, have the potential and energy but we are neglected by the local authorities. I thought many times to leave Gaza and go to Europe but I don’t have relatives or friends over there. In addition to that, it’s very difficult to obtain visas and will cost me a lot of money, and even if I go there, one day I will come back to my homeland, as they say home is home.”
+Azzam Al-Saqqa, 22, a new graduate: “Whoever wants to commit suicide, he should come to Gaza. We need responsible leaders who care for the people, not for the sake of their factions. Gaza has become a danger zone; thugs and gangs are ruining our lives. Those irresponsible thugs who have committed crimes including the abduction of our guest Alan Johnston are known by the Palestinian security forces and they don’t take harsh action against them. We as youths are fed up and need the attention and concern from our leadership in order to improve life’s conditions and demand the international community intervenes to end the brutal siege. I usually use the Internet to read more news about the miserable situation in the Palestinian territories, which increases the psychological pressure, while youths use it in the West for entertainment. If I was offered the chance to emigrate, then I would do that in order to build my future.”
+Hatem Shurrab, 23, an NGO worker: “Life is very difficult in Gaza. We don’t feel safe in our streets; the number of robbers and criminals is increasing due to the poverty which is caused by the siege, and also the stress and psychological pressures contribute to this crisis. Unfortunately, the security forces are paralyzed because they have not received their wages for many months although they should fulfill their duty to restore order and enforce the law. Many people here are leaving and others have already left. I personally thought of leaving Gaza but I said to myself, ‘If we, the educated people, leave Gaza, then we give the abusers a chance to worsen the situation and damage our reputations and future.’ I urge our leaders to be really united and face the internal and external threats and work for the interest of the people.”
+Ibrahim Al-Ejlah, 23, a project coordinator: “Gaza is hell and it feels like living in a jungle - survival of the fittest. I blame Israel in the first place for its occupation of our land and I also blame the factions who only care for their interests. I am personally willing to leave Gaza if there was a chance although I’m earning a good salary. It’s just that I’m not enjoying myself here; people are depressed around me and the ghost of security chaos persecutes us. There are mysterious elements who want to destroy our lives. The phenomenon of chaos is pushing people to migrate from Gaza, but leaving Gaza is difficult as the Palestinian authorities don’t control the crossing. I assure you that if people, especially youths, could travel freely without restrictions for vacation, then they would never think of emigrating.”
+Sameh Habib, 22: “Here in Gaza the strongman kills the weakling. The social structure has become disjointed; people are suffering deeply and have been sharply affected by the siege and by the Israeli occupation force’s practices. My message to those who imposed the sanctions upon us: ‘You can destroy us but you will never defeat us!’ I never thought of leaving my Gaza and emigrating. If the border was open and running smoothly without closures, then I might go for a vacation to replace the stress of work with ease and comfort. My message to the president and the government is that you should focus on the youth, because we have potential and can make a change.”
+Yousef Alhelou is a freelance Palestinian journalist based in Gaza, and a contributor to several media outlets. He also presents Gaza’s only live English program across radio stations in the Gaza Strip. He can be contacted at ydamadan at hotmail.com
+Related Links
+BY TOPIC: Cutting Aid to Palestine (30 March 2006)

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-Nobody was prepared for the scale of destruction in Gaza.
-
-APA imagesWe have experienced many wars against Gaza. But I never expected to see the current scale of killing, destruction, displacement and hunger.
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-After Israel declared war on 7 October, all the horrors and nightmares seemed to converge on me.
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-I was nine months pregnant at the time. And I was already the mother of two girls.
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-Who would take care of me and my two little daughters?
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-How would I get to the hospital so that I could give birth?
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-Who would accompany me?
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-I felt weak and helpless as my daughters ran into my arms seeking protection from Israel’s bombardment.
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-The violence was extreme.
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-We could not sleep due to the severity of the explosions.
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-Then our house was struck by shrapnel. All the windows were broken.
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-Stressful
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-We decided to sleep in a dark and musty basement. It was a very stressful situation.
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-The most stressful thing was when I went into labor at a time when the Israeli military had surrounded us with a belt of fire.
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-We were only about 500 meters away from the hospital.
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-But we were unable to reach it. Finding a car to bring me there was like an impossible mission.
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-There was huge confusion about what I should do and with whom I should leave my daughters, who were crying in fear. Amid that confusion, I decided that I would take them with me to the hospital.
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-At the hospital – as my husband was busy looking after my daughters – I felt like I was drowning in pain.
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-I wished that instead of taking my new baby from my womb, the doctor would put all my children inside me so that I could protect them from the horrors surrounding us.
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-It was a difficult birth. I needed many stitches.
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-If the circumstances were different, I would have stayed at the hospital under medical care. But because of the security situation, we had to leave immediately.
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-The danger to the hospital was very real: It was subsequently bombed.
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-Instead of being able to go home, I went to stay with relatives in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp.
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-We were about 20 people in the house and gathered in a room that we thought would be the safest.
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-It felt chaotic. There was no comfort or privacy.
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-I slept on a sofa. My newborn daughter was next to me – on a table.
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-Like everywhere else in Gaza, we heard the sounds of explosions in Beach camp.
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-Witnessing a massacre
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-We had not been there long when the Israeli military ordered us to leave for the south. So we set off for the city of Khan Younis.
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-On the way, Israel bombed a truck full of displaced people in front of us.
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-A massacre.
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-We saw death with our own eyes.
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-I could not believe what was happening.
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-We were trying to survive amid mass destruction. And we were hearing stories of atrocities against children and women, against people’s homes and everything they owned.
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-It dawned on me that we were facing a genocidal war.
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-We stayed with family in Khan Younis. In the middle of the night, we received a call from the Israeli military, telling us to evacuate.
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-We fled from the house barefoot. My heart was full of terror as I tried to look after my children.
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-I spent an entire night on the sidewalk with my baby and my two other children. It was cold.
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-I used to tell my daughters stories at bedtime, sing to them, hug and kiss them. They slept in a warm and clean bed and we lived in safety and love.
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-Now we are living in a tent.
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-We have no electricity or clean water. We are often in the dark.
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-We use unclean public bathrooms. They put our children at risk of contracting disease.
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-We queue for water, bread and other food and struggle to provide the necessities of life.
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-I cannot buy new clothes for my baby.
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-I am struggling to find diapers and infant formula.
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-I have changed the type of formula and diapers more than once. My baby has allergies and abdominal bloating.
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-Empty markets
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-My older daughters long for chocolate, chips, candy, fruit and meat. We cannot provide them as we wander through the empty markets.
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-All we can buy are some canned goods and biscuits.
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-We have been uprooted a number of times. This has meant that we have had to leave many of our belongings behind, including clothes and bedding.
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-We have always struggled to buy what we need again.
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-The war has humiliated us, stripped us of our dignity and humanity, made us sleep barefoot on the streets and in tents, made us yearn for our previous life.
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-Before the current war, Gaza had been already under a complete blockade for more than 16 years.
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-Compared to the current situation, we now see the previous state of siege as bliss. Something that we long for.
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-I miss my old life, my home, my room, my bed, my memories, my children’s room, their toys, their clothes. I wait for the day that we will return to the north.
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-I know that I am like vast numbers of other Gazans.
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-If I return, I will return homeless.
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-I always held out hope that I would return to our house, even if it was damaged, that I would repair it and live in it again. That was before I saw the pictures and had to accept that my house had been turned into rubble.
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-When entire families have been annihilated, when the bodies of so many children are still buried under the rubble, we cannot mourn for mere stones.
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-But we can mourn for the years of effort that have now been destroyed.
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-We can mourn for our shattered memories.
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-And we can wonder.
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-We can wonder how many times we Gazans must start our lives all over again.
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-Fedaa al-Qedra is a journalist in Gaza.
-Tags
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-Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
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-eiGazaDispatches
+UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - The 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) approved a resolution Friday endorsing war crimes charges against Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as spelled out in a report by a four-member international fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.
+As expected, the United States threw a protective arm around Israel and voted against the resolution, along with some members of the European Union (EU): Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia, as well as Ukraine.
+“The voting was predictable,” an Asian diplomat told IPS, pointing out that while Western nations voted against the resolution or abstained, most of the developing countries voted in favor.
+The vote was 25 in favor, six against, 11 abstentions and five no-shows.
+The Geneva-based Council not only endorsed the recommendations of the Goldstone report but also strongly condemned Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), including those limiting Palestinian access to their properties and holy sites, particularly in occupied Jerusalem.
+Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies told IPS the US vote — and its obvious pressure on governments dependent on US political, financial or military support — “indicates just how out of step the administration of President Barack Obama is on this issue.”
+“There is a clear double-standard, once again, in the US position between Ambassador Susan Rice’s recognition of the primacy of accountability for war crimes in the case of Darfur and Sudan, regardless of any potential impact on future peace talks, while rejecting accountability in the case of Israeli actions in Gaza,” she said.
+She said the US administration claims to base its foreign policy on a commitment to international cooperation and the rule of law.
+It is unfortunate that on the question of war crimes against innocent civilians in Gaza, the United States is continuing its longstanding pattern of Israeli exceptionalism, said Bennis, author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.
+“If Washington remains unwilling to hold Israel accountable for its violations, the potential for a new US position in the world — one in which the United States is respected instead of resented, welcomed as a partner instead of feared — will be impossible,” she added.
+Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, strongly supportive of Israel, said his organization was “outraged, but far from surprised” by the Council’s endorsement of the Goldstone report.
+Describing the resolution as one-sided, Foxman said the vote only proves the Council’s “unwavering and biased focus on all things related to Israel.”
+“We express profound appreciation to the United States and the five other nations which showed their commitment to principles of fairness and moral responsibility by voting against this resolution,” he added.
+An overwhelming majority of developing countries in the Council, along with Russia, supported the resolution: Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia.
+The abstentions came from Belgium, Bosnia Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Uruguay.
+The five countries that skipped the voting were Angola, France, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar and Britain.
+Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor (emeritus), University of Massachusetts, told IPS it remains to be seen how Israel and the Obama administration will react to the adoption of the Goldstone report.
+“The latter action will expose Israelis to possible arrests and criminal prosecution under the principle of universal jurisdiction, when traveling abroad,” he noted.
+He said the Goldstone report recommends that both Israel and Hamas bring their accused to justice.
+“If they don’t, they could be facing prosecution in the International Criminal Court and it could signal a major diplomatic defeat for the Obama administration,” Aruri said.
+“If Obama uses more vetoes in the Security Council to protect Israel from the international scrutiny, he would be placing his country in moral jeopardy,” he declared.
+Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies said Washington also must take into account its own complicity and potential liability in war crimes during “Operation Cast Lead,” the code name for the 22-day Israeli military attacks on Gaza last December.
+Violations of the US Arms Export Control Act, which narrowly constrains Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons and military equipment, must be investigated thoroughly and violators held accountable, she added.
+“The significance of the Goldstone report overall is not because it exposed war crimes that had not been known before; the significance lies in the comprehensiveness of the assessment, certainly, but most of all in the breadth of the recommendations,” Bennis said.
+She said it is almost unprecedented for a UN human rights report to move so broadly to identify obligations and responsibilities under international law — not only for the alleged perpetrators, but as well for virtually all relevant United Nations agencies, as well as for individual governments.
+It was particularly so in invoking universal jurisdiction, and most especially in defining obligations and recommendations for global civil society.
+She said the reversal of the earlier withdrawal of the report from consideration at the Human Rights Council reflects the significance of the issue not only among Palestinians inside the OPT, inside Israel and among the diaspora, but as well in international civil society.
+“It was that pressure that forced the Palestinian Authority to reverse its wrong-headed rejection of the report,” Bennis added.
+Aruri said the government of Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, whose term of office expired 9 January, had succumbed to pressure being exerted by Israel and the United States to defer all discussion of the Goldstone report until next March.
+Nearly two weeks later, however, Abbas succumbed to a different kind of pressure, this time exerted by Palestinians, Arabs and various members of the UN Human Rights Council.
+A broad coalition succeeded in getting Abbas to rescind his earlier position.
+Undoubtedly, Abbas — who was widely condemned in Palestinian circles, including being accused of treason — could not withstand the pressure, especially that which included credible calls on him to resign, Aruri added.
+In a statement issued Friday, Amnesty International said the resolution recommends that the UN General Assembly, the next body which is able to consider the Goldstone report, do so during its current session.
+“Amnesty International urges the Assembly to demand that both Israel and the Hamas de facto administration in Gaza immediately start independent investigations that meet international standards into alleged war crimes, possible crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international law reported during the conflict,” the statement added.
+All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2009). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

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-Relatives of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons hold a sit-in at the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the West Bank city of Ramallah, March 2015.
-
-APA imagesNaimeh Shamlawi missed her youngest son more than ever during Ramadan, which concluded earlier this month.
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-Ali, 19, has spent the last three years in Israeli military detention on attempted murder charges. Israeli prosecutors claim that he and four friends threw rocks at an Israeli settler’s car, causing a crash that resulted in the death of a young Israeli girl.
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-Though they took a plea deal, Ali and his friends, known as the Hares Boys, have maintained their innocence throughout their trial and incarceration.
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-The evidence against them, they say, was based on “confessions” extracted under torture. But that’s small comfort to their mothers who say they felt the loss acutely every time the rest of the family gathered to break the Ramadan fast.
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-Naimeh, who has been permitted see her son only twice a month, is determined to spend every moment she can with him even though it means a six- or seven-hour journey for a 45-minute visit.
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-“The last time I saw my son, he told me not to come during Ramadan, because the journey would be too difficult while I am fasting,” Naimeh recalled. “But how can I leave him, especially now?”
-
-Unfortunately for the Shamlawis, as well as thousands of other Palestinian families who have loved ones in Israeli military prisons — according to Addameer, a prisoner advocacy group, as of May 2016 there were a total of 7,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli detention — the opportunities to visit are about to be drastically reduced.
-
-Halving visiting time
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-In late May, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that it was reducing coordinated visits between adult male Palestinian prisoners and their families from the West Bank by 50 percent, starting in July.
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-Families of prisoners from Gaza are exempted.
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-The announcement has worsened already fraught relations between Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups and the ICRC, but the latter shows no sign of relenting.
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-The rationale, according to Nadia Dibsy, a public relations officer with the ICRC in Jerusalem, is due to a decrease in the number of families showing up for scheduled visits. Based on the number of those participating in the program, the ICRC does not have the budget or personnel necessary to support twice-monthly visits, she said.
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-“Following an in-depth assessment, the ICRC decided independently that the second visit per month that it is currently facilitating will continue to be provided only for minors and female detainees.
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-“This decision is based on the fact that in the last few years, we have noted a clear decrease in the number of people showing up for these visits. This concern was communicated repeatedly in the last years to the families, the detainees and the authorities.”
-
-Naimeh Shamlawi relies on coordination with the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit her son Ali in Israeli prison.
-Clare MaxwellNaimeh and her family, however, rely on the ICRC to help with travel permit applications, coordination with the Israel Prison Service, and buses to take families from the West Bank into Israel, which they are restricted from entering without a permit, and on to faraway prisons such as the Ramon prison in the Naqab desert where Ali is currently being held.
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-Without the buses, the cost of traveling to Ramon could cost approximately $250 per visit, according to the family. Obtaining the necessary permit to cross into Israel in the first place becomes much more difficult without ICRC support.
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-The ICRC has worked with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention — most of whom are convicted for political reasons — since 1948. The prison visit program started in 1968 and has remained one of its most important human rights programs in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
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-The organization’s role there is governed by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that it is illegal for an occupying power like Israel to transport prisoners out of occupied territory such as the West Bank.
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-Yet out of 19 Israeli detention centers that hold Palestinian prisoners, just one is located within the West Bank. Ensuring prisoners incarcerated in Israel have the same visitation rights they would enjoy if they were held in facilities in the West Bank becomes a matter of upholding their rights under international law.
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-Fraught relations
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-Already on every Tuesday, a coalition of prisoner support groups holds a sit-in outside the ICRC offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah to push for action on a number of issues. And since the decision to reduce the number of visits was announced, the coalition has included a demand for twice-monthly visits on their agenda.
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-Samidoun activists in New York City have also staged a protest outside the ICRC offices there, demanding that the program of visits continue as is.
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-For its part, the ICRC is adamant that it has been communicating with families, detainees and advocacy groups over the possibility of reducing visits.
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-Yet representatives from prisoner rights groups insist that the announcement came as a surprise to them. Communications with the ICRC have fallen to the point, they say, that they depend on weekly protests to relay their demands. And disappointment with the decision among the protesters during one recent visit was palpable.
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-“Our work is the same as the Red Cross,” said Khitaan Saafin, who works with the Union of Palestinian Women and is a regular protester outside the ICRC offices in Ramallah. “But they do not respond to us.”
-
-Ali Shamlawi is due to spend another 12 years in prison. His mother will be 69 by the time he is released. Naimeh is afraid she won’t be alive then. For her, every moment they can spend together is precious, even if it is in an Israeli prison, surrounded by guards and with a plate glass window between them.
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-She’s already lost a lot of time with her son; now she is losing even more to bureaucracy.
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-Still, she will take what she can get. Even if they can only spend a total of nine hours a year together, they’ll make the most of it.
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-“I will spend every minute with him,” Naimeh said.
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-Clare Maxwell is a journalist and human rights activist working in the Salfit region of the West Bank.
-Tags
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-Naimeh Shamlawi
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-prisoners
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-ICRC
-
-Ali Shamalawi
-
-arrest and detention
+From the window of his mother’s house in Nazareth, director Elia Suleiman can look out on a breathtaking view. A stark contrast to the threatening chaos of the city’s main street, choked with cars and vendors, the tranquillity of the Suleiman family’s courtyard is almost surprising. Beneath the veranda, where the foreign maid is serving tea, the vista includes most of the landscape from the filming of “Divine Intervention,” Suleiman’s newest film, which opened in Israel this past weekend.
+The reaction of Israeli viewers is hard to predict: Will they embrace the film, or feel threatened by its critical message?
+Viewers in Europe and the U.S., where it was screened in cinemas catering to foreign and art films, have given “Divine Intervention” an enthusiastic reception. Entitled “The Hand of God” in Arabic, the film premiered at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival and captured the prestigious Grand Jury Prize. Last October it won a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival and, to general astonishment, even took Best Foreign Film at the European Film Academy, over competition that included Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” Joel Zwick’s “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and Curtis Hanson’s “8 Mile.”
+“I work like a painter, putting down one layer after another,” says Suleiman. “I carry a notebook everywhere and write down my ideas - another image, another picture, a little more color. Each time, I take an overall look and then change things: take something away here, add something there. In the end, I have a scene and then another, until all together they create something called a film, but I prefer to call it an atmosphere.”
+Life as protest
+“Divine Intervention” has no coherent plot with a beginning, middle and end. The film supposedly relates a love story between E.S. (Elia Suleiman), played by Suleiman, and an unnamed woman, played by Palestinian journalist Manal Khader. He lives in Jerusalem and she lives in Ramallah - they’re separated by a military checkpoint.
+In the film’s opening scene, a man dressed as Santa Claus (whose voice is that of French actor Michel Piccoli) flees a group of youths and is finally found dead with a big knife in his heart. After that, in long scenes that sometimes appear to have no relation to one another, the director portrays the Sisyphean lives of the residents of Nazareth: One arranges bottles on the roof of his house, another throws garbage into his neighbor’s yard, yet another weeds her garden, and some bored children are trying to play ball.
+Throughout the film, Suleiman’s character remains at a distance, observing. The film deals with what is going on in Israel, but Suleiman left Israel many years ago. He lived for 12 years in New York and now lives in Paris.
+It’s interesting to watch the critical portrayal of Nazareth’s residents who are presented as threatening and full of frustration, in contrast to their portrayal in Suleiman’s action film, “Chronicle of a Disappearance.” This earlier film, made in 1996 with the assistance of Israel’s Fund for Cinema and Television, drew an optimistic picture of the euphoric days of the Oslo Accords, and the city’s residents full of hope. That work won the Venice Film Festival prize for a first film and was screened for about a year in France.
+The governing impression in “Divine Intervention” is that all is lost. Suleiman emphasizes the fractured reality by giving us almost no dialogue at all, as if even language itself - the ability to communicate - has been lost.
+Was it hard for you to portray residents of your city in such an unflattering way?
+Suleiman: “Some people find it pleasant to see me as the good Palestinian, because I present not only Israel in a critical way, but also my own people. Still, it’s clear where the frustration of the residents comes from and why they behave this way: the occupation. When there is no love, when people live in a ghetto, they start to fight each other. In every ghetto in the world, you can find people behaving maliciously to one another. When I was in New York, I would tell my friends: `Your Harlem is my Nazareth.’
+“But when people ask me if the film is about the occupation of the Palestinian people, I say right away that this isn’t a film about anything. If it has to be reduced to one subject, I say it’s a film about occupation in the world as a whole - it focuses on Israel only because Israel serves as a kind of microcosm.”
+Even for non-Israeli ears, Suleiman is in no hurry to make political statements. “I leave the talking to the politicians,” he says. “My work is in film. To me, to be pro-Palestinian means to become a better person. Only when you can appreciate your own life, and live a longer and fuller life, are you able to even begin to express an opinion.”
+Role of the victim
+Among the only scenes in which the protagonist E.S. shakes off the role of observer and exacts some small revenge is one that has him sitting in his car in a traffic jam alongside a car with a yarmulke-wearing observant Jew. E.S. opens the window and turns up the volume on his radio, which is playing Natasha Atlas, a leading figure in world music, singing “I Put a Spell on You.”
+The real protest actually comes from a strong, fictional female figure. Her first appearance is in a scene in which Israeli soldiers are brandishing their rifles at Palestinians in their cars in a crowded queue at a checkpoint, telling them to back up. In contrast to the frightened drivers, who make haste to comply, suddenly a beautiful woman in a pink dress and sunglasses steps out of one of the cars. As if moving down a fashion runway, she walks right past the soldiers, standing there transfixed, and crosses the checkpoint.
+Some people saw that powerful figure of a woman as the Palestinian people.
+“I don’t agree with that conception. To me, the woman represents my other, feminine, self. E.S. imagines himself as a woman, as this sensual figure, because he isn’t able to get past all the obstacles. For me, a demonstration of feminine power and violence is aesthetic, while masculine violence is vulgar and pornographic.”
+This same feminine figure appears in another impressive scene, six minutes long, which cost about half million dollars to shoot. Unlike the rest of the film, which is very understated, this scene has the impact of a punch in the face. At first we see soldiers practicing at a firing range, and suddenly this woman appears out of nowhere, wrapped in a keffiyeh. The soldiers begin shooting at her but she, like a character out of “Matrix,” flies through the air and the bullets become a kind of halo around her head. She throws stones at the soldiers, shoots them with arrows shaped like an Islamic crescent, and defends herself with an iron shield shaped like the State of Israel. Finally she kills a soldier whose Peace Now T-shirt may be glimpsed peeking out from under his uniform.
+“The killing of the soldier was an in-joke for Israeli viewers,” explains Suleiman, “so I didn’t translate what is written on the shirt into foreign languages. For me, it’s the Peace Now people who are the real bad guys. They’re the ones who plan the airplanes that kill us, and afterward, they win Nobel Peace Prizes. One has to know the whole history and see that not only Likud governments have occupied us - Peace Now people are the best pilots, they plan the most successful wars and then try to expiate that with demonstrations in favor of peace and by wearing T-shirts with empty slogans.”
+That scene could give people pause in terms of the message you are trying to convey.
+“So long as I am describing the Israeli occupation, that’s okay for everyone, and I’m accepted as long as I remain the victim. But the moment I start to take action and kill Israelis, that’s over the line. People all over the world were put off by this part of the film. When a cowboy murders thousands of Indians, that’s okay, but as soon as one Indian does something, the audience automatically begins to criticize him. In my opinion, this is the first time in the history of cinema that the audience doesn’t automatically identify with a woman who is being shot at by six men. It’s because the audience isn’t ready to see us outside the role of victim.”
+Another scene that Suleiman says evoked harsh reactions takes place when E.S., driving in his car and eating a peach, finishes the fruit and throws the pit out the window. The peach pit hits an Israeli tank and blows it up. “People everywhere asked me if I want to blow up Israeli tanks, and the answer is no,” says Suleiman. “I want to blow up all the tanks in the world. All human beings should hate these instruments of war. Beyond that, I am not willing to put up with being cast as the cause of Israeli paranoia about terror attacks. I’m not willing to have it said of me that I encourage hatred and suicide bombers. Neither I nor my films cause suicide attacks; that’s done by your government and its actions.
+“Instead of criticizing these isolated scenes, maybe it would be worthwhile to take me as a case study. The film should raise questions - how is it that a filmmaker like me, who doesn’t even live here, and who was never hurt by Israeli forces, nor were any of his family - how come he creates such violent scenes? When people in the audience leave the movie theater and ask themselves these questions and begin to give themselves real answers, the dialogue I am looking for will have begun.”
+Long live Israel
+One of the few actors in “Divine Intervention” is Menashe Noi, who plays a drunken soldier at a checkpoint. The soldier forces the Palestinians to get out of their cars and then makes them dance, while shouting through his megaphone, “Oy, oy, oy, Am Yisrael chai” (“the People of Israel live”).
+“That’s the most violent and threatening scene in the film,” says Suleiman. “The other scenes are fantasies - it’s clear that a peach pit can’t blow up a tank and that there are no ninjas in the real world - but in this scene, something very close to reality is depicted.”
+Noi, in an interview with Yigal Ravid on Channel Two News, dissociated himself from the film. He says he didn’t read the entire script and would not have taken part had he known that the film supports the Palestinian Authority. Suleiman, meanwhile, is full of compliments for Noi’s acting. “I could not have found a better actor,” says the director.
+About two months ago, after the film had won all those important international prizes, the people in charge of America’s Academy Awards were trying to decide if the film could represent the Palestinian Authority and compete in the category of best foreign-language film. They finally decided to go by the book and said no, because the Palestinian Authority isn’t a country.
+If the budget for “Divine Intervention” had come from Israeli sources, like that for “Chronicle of a Disappearance,” perhaps the film could have represented Israel at the Oscars, but Suleiman says he wouldn’t have agreed to that.
+“I carry an Israeli passport,” he says, “and I won’t give it up because then I couldn’t come to visit my family and my mother, but I don’t want any connection with Israel. For me, Israel is a fascist state. In `Chronicle of a Disappearance,’ I took funding from the cinema fund because it was a question of civil rights. I pay taxes and therefore I deserve the same treatment as any other local artist. But I no longer want to have any connection with the Israeli establishment.”

combined/texts/1017.txt

@@ -1,47 +1,16 @@
-An Israeli tank in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, 26 November 2023.
-
-APA imagesMy cousin Nayaf Ali is 20 years old. He lives in the al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, and he told my brother and me this story over the phone.
-
-It was 12 December and the Israeli occupation forces had invaded his neighborhood. Around 30 family members were trapped in their home during this time, as the Israelis had besieged the neighborhood.
-
-The family remained quiet in the house to try to avoid detection by the Israeli forces. They remained in this silent state of terror for three days.
-
-On the fourth day, Israeli bulldozers surrounded the house, and the ground began to shake. Israeli soldiers fired bullets at and around the house, and they hit Nayaf in the foot.
-
-He said he bit down on his lip and swallowed the pain, to keep from shouting. He used a scarf to stop the bleeding. He was more afraid of being discovered by the Israeli forces than from the severity of the wound.
-
-Yet, soon after, the bulldozer struck a wall in their home, and everyone began to scream and panic, especially the children.
-
-It was clear, then, that the family had been discovered, as Israeli forces forcibly entered their home.
-
-They took Nayaf along with the other men into another room. They demanded that they strip down, and some of the men were beaten by the soldiers.
-
-The soldiers were speaking Arabic and English, and they commanded the women and children to leave the home, without any belongings. Some of them were barefoot.
-
-The men were blindfolded and forced into a truck. Nayaf said the cuffs were so tight that they cut into his wrists. He said this was the first time in his life he had ever felt such humiliation.
-
-They were taken to a prison, yet he does not know where it was located exactly.
-
-When he arrived, he asked to see a doctor due to his foot injury, but they refused him.
-
-He was beaten repeatedly, and he saw many other people being beaten.
-
-The food they provided was meager: bread, a slice of cucumber, a slice of tomato. Even water was not freely given.
-
-He said that when he asked one of the guards for water, they told him to open his mouth. He did so, thinking that the guard would pour water into his mouth, but instead the guard spat into his mouth and forced him to swallow it.
-
-The last three days in the prison were the worst, he said. The mental and physical torture reached unbearable levels.
-
-His whole body ached and for the first time, he wished he were dead. Every inch of his body was covered with cuts and bruises.
-
-Finally, after 18 days, he was released. He received treatment for his foot, and luckily the doctors did not have to amputate it.
-
-“The memory of my imprisonment will stay with me forever,” he said.
-
-Shahad Ali is a writer in Gaza.
-
-Tags
-
-prisoners
-
-Gaza genocide
+Smoke rises from the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun in the northen Gaza Strip, 1 November 2006. (MaanImages/Moti Milrod)
+
+The Israeli army declared on Wednesday morning Beit Hanoun a closed military zone, demanding the residents to stay indoors.  The Israeli army issued a warning thorough two local radio stations, Freedom Radio and Youth Radio, after they managed to occupy the signal for few minutes in the town of Beit Hanoun.  The town is home to 28.000, only few miles a way from the Israeli city Sderot.
+It’s reported that the Israeli army conducted a large-scale offensive in Beit Hanoun at dawn, with combined air and ground forces including infantry, armored corps and engineer corps.
+According to Palestinian sources, this incursion is the tenth that Beit Hanoun has been subjected to after the Israeli army left the Gaza Strip in August 2005. As of this writing, the death toll resulting from this last offensive stands at eight and more than 100 people have been wounded.
+Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the operation “a massacre” and an “abominable crime,” while Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh declared, “This is the fruit of [Yisrael Beitenu Chairman] Avigdor Lieberman’s addition to the government.”
+Beit Hanoun resident Nedal Wahdan, 47, explains, ” The Israeli army say that this operation will be rapid without the re-occupation of the Strip. Are they trying to fool us? They still occupy us even after they left the Gaza Strip by turning it into a big prison. I can not go to my farms, fearing that a shell might him me or at least its shrapnel.” He added, “Beit Hanoun used to be a paradise full of trees and planted fields; we used to barbecue between the trees, enjoying the singing of birds. But now it has become a desert because the Israeli bulldozers destroyed everything.”
+Basmah Al-Kafarnah, a 36-year-old mother of six children, says, “My children get scared and terrified whenever they hear tanks shelling. I don’t have an alternative house to move to; it’s very dangerous when shrapnel falls on the roof and hits the windows. The shells don’t differentiate between militants and civilians. They are conducting random killings; they even killed animals in our field.
+“God knows how many people they are going to kill this time,” worries 31-year-old farmer Naem Al-Masri.  “On the day of Eid El-Fitr they killed seven people. We have lost many loved ones; I wonder why the Israelis have the desire to commit ethnic cleansing. We demand that the international community intervene and stop this genocide. Do we Palestinians not have the right to live like the Israelis? The only solution to this crisis is to end the Israeli occupation to our lands. We need to breathe freedom.”
+Pointing to the dire nature of the situation, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Palestinians are leaving the territories due to the harsh security and economic situation there.
+Ahmed Suboh, a Palestinian Foreign Ministry official, said at a Ramallah press conference that over the last four months, foreign and Arab diplomats in the territories have authorized 10,000 Palestinians to enter their countries.
+Student Ahmed Abu Harabid, 15, said, “I was wounded last week by shrapnel to my leg and abdomen. It hurts so much. I want to tell the Israeli children to feel how we feel; we don’t enjoy our lives like they do. I want to be a doctor one day to help treat people, especially innocent babies and children. My uncle is imprisoned in an Israeli prison and my cousins lost their father two years ago.”
+While I was listening to the boy, group of young children came and invited him to play soccer in the street but his father shouted, “Son go inside the house. I don’t want to lose you.” The father said in a sad tone, “When he was wounded the last time, we thought he was going to die. Thank God he is still alive. We always worry. The drones are hovering in the skies so it’s dangerous, I should go to my house.”
+Related Links
+
+Yousef Alhelou is a producer, translator, and fixer based in the Gaza Strip.

combined/texts/1018.txt

@@ -1,7 +1,33 @@
-At the height of the Israeli war against Hezbollah last summer, in which hundreds of civilians living in southern Lebanon were killed, the U.S. rushed a request from Israel for more than 1,300 American-made M26 cluster bombs. The request prompted an outcry in Congress and elsewhere that the artillery rockets, which disperse 644 submunitions each, might be used in civilian areas, contrary to the terms of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act. Last week, the Department of State delivered a preliminary report to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and to Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that is said by the news media to accuse Israel of exactly these charges.
-A petition banning the use of cluster bombs and demanding an urgent clean-up of the more than 1 million cluster-bomblets sprayed over southern Lebanon has been launched by the American Task Force for Lebanon, a non-profit non-sectarian group based in Washington, DC. We urge our members to join the campaign that has been endorsed by Ralph Nader by signing their petition: “Stop the Carnage, Ban the Cluster Bomb.”
-In the closing days of the war, after a deadline had been set by the U.N. and accepted by both the Israelis and Hezbollah and 72 hours before the ceasefire was to go into effect, the Israeli military fired thousands of cluster munitions into southern Lebanon, leaving behind a deadly legacy. As of January 25, 2007, the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon confirms that 30 people have been killed and 184 injured from unexploded ordnance since August 14, when hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel ended. Many of the casualties have been children.
-Cluster bombs have been controversial for many years. They were used by the U.S. army in both Iraq wars, inflicting damage on civilians especially, and by the Israeli army in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, prompting the Reagan administration to suspend shipment of the bombs to Israel for six years. The UK NGO Landmine Action has published evidence that Israel used American cluster munitions with expiration dates as early as 1974, which were made available to Israel from classified U.S. weapons depots in Israel. Thus the American taxpayer is once again supporting the slaughter of civilians through the misuse of its arms exports.
-The findings of the State Department report on Israel’s misuse of cluster bombs has not yet been made public. A resolution curbing the sale of cluster bombs last September that was introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) failed in the Senate by a vote of 70 to 30. A new resolution is said to be prepared by the senators for introduction in the Senate this year once the furor about the State Department findings has died down.
-Related Links
-Council for the National Interest
+Food prices have risen by at least 40 percent in Lebanon over the past year. (Lucy Fielder/IRIN)
+BEIRUT, 8 May (IRIN) - Ramzi Ali was nearly 13 when his parents took him out of school to work as a motorbike mechanic.
+“Conditions are hard, and political tensions are destroying the country,” said Ali, now 14, as he manned a barricade of burning tires in central Beirut on 7 May. “My parents just couldn’t afford to keep me at school any more.”
+Anti-government protesters blocked roads with burning tires across the Lebanese capital on 7 May after Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizballah, and an allied Christian party, threw their weight behind a general strike called by the country’s union federation to demand higher wages and decry high prices.
+A pall of smoke hovered above a city of shuttered shops and empty roads, as workers either obeyed the strike call or stayed at home for fear of the sectarian violence that flares up periodically in Beirut and stokes fears of civil war.
+Gunmen exchanged fire in central areas of Beirut that are mixed Sunni and Shia Muslim, and therefore divided between supporters of the Sunni Future Movement, part of the pro-Western governing coalition, and the Shia opposition Hizballah and Amal parties.
+The strike was called by labor unions after rejecting a last-minute government increase in the monthly minimum wage from US$200 to $330. Recent research by Lebanese economic consultancy InfoPro found that wages averaged $500 while the actual minimum wage was around $320, making the increase irrelevant to most workers.
+Prices up
+Prices of basic commodities have spiked over the past month.
+A grocer in Ras al-Nabeh neighborhood of Beirut said a bottle of cooking oil had risen from $4 to $6.50, while the price of sugar had doubled. Where one dollar used to buy 1.5 kilogram of bread, it now buys 1.1 kilogram. Chickpeas and grains that are a staple of Lebanese diets, meat and vegetables have also risen.
+According to the consumer association, prices have risen by 43 percent over the past 21 months, while the official unemployment rate stands at 10 percent. Independent estimates put it at 20 percent.
+Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh also said last week that the inflation rate had risen by 10 percent, due to a rise in oil prices on international markets, food prices and the weakening of the dollar against other currencies.
+Personal testimonies
+Mahmoud, an unemployed 20-year-old at the barricade who preferred not to give his full name, said rising prices and low wages made it harder for young men to get ahead.
+“At this rate, I’ll never get married,” he said. “You have to work several jobs at once just to make ends meet, and it’s hard even to find one … Women don’t want to marry a man who can’t afford even to rent his own home,” he said.
+Both young men, who said they were Hizballah supporters from the mainly Shia Muslim southern suburbs of Beirut, blamed the government for Lebanon’s worsening living conditions.
+“Every time we protest about price rises and low wages, or the policies of this government that’s on Western life-support, we’re told we’re stirring Sunni-Shia strife,” said Mahmoud.
+Because the strike was associated with the opposition, some government supporters were showing their defiance.
+In a pro-government part of the eastern area of Achrafieh, Raymond Charbel, a 68-year-old father of three, defied the strike to keep his run-down dry-cleaning shop open despite the dearth of customers.
+Food to feed his family had become harder to afford, he said, saying lemons — much used in Lebanese cooking — had more than doubled from about $0.75 a kilogram to $1.75. “Inflation and economic ruin is affecting everybody, so what good is closing down the roads so no one can work?” he asked.
+Causes of the crisis
+Rami Zurayk, professor of land and water resources at the American University of Beirut, said the crisis resulted from a combination of global commodity and oil price rises and economic mismanagement by successive governments since Lebanon’s 15-year civil war ended in 1990.
+Those policies had focused on sectors of the economy that directly contributed to national growth, rather than on job-creation, development and investment in such sectors as farming, he said.
+“So inequality between the people of Lebanon has continued to increase over time,” Zurayk said.
+Gradual economic disintegration was a catalyst for the political problems and the sectarianism that plague Lebanon, he argued.
+“Bad economics produces a situation in which politicians become powerful, because you have to hide behind a sect, a leader, and become a client in order to survive. In turn, the bad economic situation is hijacked by political parties in order to apply pressure.”
+Tensions
+A stand-off on the flashpoint Corniche al-Mazraa road between government and opposition supporters, with the army separating the two, illustrated how far Lebanon’s polarized politicians are from reaching a deal to end the 18-month political crisis.
+Tensions between Hizballah and the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora escalated this week after the latter banned the guerrilla and political group’s private telephone system, calling it a threat to the state.
+Hizballah said the network was part of its military defense against Israel, which it fought in a July 2006 war, and that tampering with it was collaboration and tantamount to disarming the group. Hizballah’s weapons lie at the heart of the political standoff.
+The government also this week vowed to sack the security chief at Beirut international airport over allegations of aiding Hizballah to place cameras there to monitor private jets. Airport employees stopped working for six hours while opposition protesters blocked roads to the airport, leading to the cancellation or delay of 19 incoming and 13 outgoing flights.
+This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
+Related Links

combined/texts/1019.txt

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-Israel’s repeated attacks on Jabaliya refugee camp have been deadly and have led to hasty flight to other dangerous locations.
-
-Xinhua News AgencyOn 6 October 2024, 15-year-old Zamzam al-Ajrami was having lunch in northern Gaza with her mother and sisters, Saja, 21, and Lamis, 23. They were taking shelter at the UNRWA center in Jabaliya refugee camp following the Israeli invasion of northern Gaza that had started the previous day.
-
-Zamzam told The Electronic Intifada that it was the first time they had eaten meat in 10 months, made possible through aid from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
-
-Suddenly, Israeli airstrikes began, launching shells and bombs, while Jabaliya was besieged by drones. This prompted Zamzam’s mother to suggest relocating to the nearby UNRWA Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled.
-
-She said it would be safer, as it was located among narrow streets and densely packed houses, unlike the main road where they were sheltering at the time. Zamzam recalled her mother saying, “From the rehabilitation center, we can escape if we get surrounded.”
-
-They reached the center at 4 pm. It was overcrowded with displaced people.
-
-The family went to the third floor for shelter. The bombing continued relentlessly, terrifying their mother.
-
-She decided to ask nearby families if they planned to stay or leave, intending to follow their decision.
-
-Just five meters from the door of their room, a shell smashed into Zamzam’s mother.
-
-Zamzam and her sisters rushed to see what had happened, only to find their mother gravely injured. Israel – using a quadcopter drone – targeted anyone who moved and the bombardment continued.
-
-Rescue teams present in the center were busy evacuating casualties from the lower floors.
-
-Saja, according to Zamzam, pleaded with them: “My mother is still alive. Please save her!”
-
-A rescuer tried to reach them, but it was too dangerous because of the drone firing at any movement.
-
-Saja returned to her mother. She was barely breathing.
-
-The young woman tried to dress her mother’s wounds using her hijab. Later, she performed chest compressions in a desperate attempt to keep her mother alive.
-
-Zamzam hopelessly tried to call an ambulance, but the signal was weak. She then tried to call her married sister, Dina, who had evacuated to southern Gaza.
-
-After several attempts, the call succeeded. Dina then called an ambulance in northern Gaza, but the ambulance crew said it was too dangerous to reach Zamzam and her family.
-
-A short time later, her mother died from her wounds. Due to the tight siege and extreme danger, they were unable to even bury her in a cemetery.
-
-Zamzam kept crying and refused to leave her mother. “I slept beside my mother’s corpse, hugging it the whole night,” Zamzam said.
-
-Flight
-
-The three daughters wrapped their mother in her bloodstained clothes and buried her in the room they were sheltering in, covering their mother with debris from the shell that had killed her.
-
-By 9 am the next morning, Zamzam and her sisters managed to flee the center, leaving behind all their belongings and their mother’s interred body.
-
-The road was full of corpses and injured people. Blood was everywhere.
-
-They encountered paramedics about 500 meters away from Kamal Adwan Hospital, where their minor injuries from the shell that killed their mother were treated, and they were given water.
-
-Zamzam explained that escaping the Israeli shells and accompanying dust had left them desperately thirsty.
-
-Two hours later, they went to their aunt’s house in Beit Lahiya. But the bombing continued incessantly, and drones kept them trapped indoors.
-
-No safe place
-
-On 3 November, at 1:30 am, their aunt’s house was bombed. Saja and Lamis were killed.
-
-Zamzam said of the attack: “The house was full of displaced people. My uncle, my aunt and their families were there, about 30 people.”
-
-She added that she and her sisters were in a room that Israel targeted with a tank shell. Her aunt started screaming and calling for help from the neighbors.
-
-Zamzam could not even immediately mourn her two sisters. Due to injuries incurred in the attack, she lost consciousness and woke up in the middle of the road.
-
-One of her aunt’s neighbors managed to get her to the hospital.
-
-Zamzam survived by fluke the strike that killed her sisters, sustaining apparently moderate injuries, including fractures, bruises, burns on her face and back, and a head wound. She was taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital, where her wounds were disinfected, hours after her arrival.
-
-According to the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the facility was being subjected to regular bombardments at that time. Medical staff and patients alike were targeted.
-
-Abu Safiya was later seized by the Israeli military in late December and is thought to be at Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp. Gaza-based human rights organization Al Mezan noted on Thursday that Israeli authorities have “extended the ban on his access to legal counsel until 22 January” and an Israeli court extended his detention until 13 February.
-
-Zamzam’s aunt, who had been left at the hospital with her, was still alive. Kamal Adwan Hospital told them that Zamzam’s injuries were serious and needed an X-ray, but there was no functional X-ray imaging facility at the hospital.
-
-The hospital told them that there was an X-ray facility at Al-Awda Hospital in Jabaliya, a dangerous distance from Kamal Adwan Hospital with Israeli forces attacking in the area.
-
-Despite the danger, they managed to arrive at the hospital, where they took an X-ray and put a cast on Zamzam’s foot. Staff at the hospital told Zamzam she could not remain in the hospital due to the lack of adequate services and the overwhelming number of injured people requiring ongoing care.
-
-Unable to stay, her aunt decided they should leave and take refuge at a relative’s home in Beit Lahiya. On 5 December, the area where they were sheltering was warned of an impending attack, forcing Zamzam to leave on foot despite her injuries, as Israeli forces prohibited the use of ambulances.
-
-On the morning of that December day, while Zamzam, her aunt and her aunt’s family were considering what they should do, their course of thought was interrupted by the sound of a quadcopter ordering Abu Tamam School in Beit Lahiya to evacuate. Those departing were told the school would be stormed and to head to western Gaza.
-
-The whole family immediately evacuated the house.
+Palestinian and UK students at a school assembly event. (Photo courtesy of CADFA)It was a warm summer evening in an East London public library. Local people, including two councilors from the suburb of Hackney, have packed a room to meet visiting Palestinian school children. Organized by a local twinning group with the help of the Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association (CADFA), the event was an example of the type of modest activism that can be easy to miss.
+The organizers behind such efforts often have to overcome serious obstacles for their Palestinian visitors to reach their destination. These obstacles come from the Israelis and sometimes the UK Border Agency.
+At Dalston’s CLR James Library on 12 July, two Palestinian schoolchildren came with their English teacher from Beit Surik, a village near Jerusalem. To a packed room, Asma Badwan, aged 21 and a mother of two, gave a short presentation about life behind Israel’s wall in the West Bank. She talked about how half the village’s land has been annexed behind the wall and about the Israeli permits system that governs their lives.
+Badwan is from Biddu, another nearby village, but teaches at a Beit Surik school. To travel from Beit Surik to the nearby town of al-Ram used to take only a five-minute drive, she said, but since Israel built the wall, the same journey takes about two hours. Al-Ram is now on the “Israeli side” of the wall.
+Wisdom beyond her years
+As part of CADFA’s school exchange program, Badwan’s pupils Yara and Marram had been paired up with “buddies” from local schools, who showed them around London. They also took part in presentations at local schools.
+At the library, their buddies gave a historical presentation on the origins of the Zionist colonization of Palestine, and the current Israeli system of apartheid.
+Badwan and her two pupils then had a chance to answer questions from the audience. The questions were many, and the discussion was lively. One person asked: what can be done, apart from boycotting Israeli goods? Badwan emphasized that there needed to be more education in the UK about Palestine. When the Palestinian guests had visited local schools, some of the British children asked where Palestine was, or confused it with Pakistan.
+With a wisdom beyond her years, Yara emphasized Britain’s historical responsibility for the Israeli takeover of Palestine. Speaking through a translator, she said that more should be done to educate and to raise the issue with British politicians.
+Obstacles
+Such Palestinian visitors to the UK, of course, face many obstacles from Israel. The racist permits and checkpoints regime makes flying from the main Israeli airport, Ben Gurion International, out of the question for most Palestinians. Most must take the arduous journey through Israeli checkpoints into Jordan, flying to their ultimate destination from Amman.
+And then there is the UK Border Agency. The Conservative-led coalition government is known for cracking down on the number of “foreigners” visiting the UK, often accusing them of wanting to overstay their visas and claim asylum. In this climate, even visitors’ visas can be hard to obtain.
+At the end of July, a group of Palestinian children from Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon had their British visas denied, despite how their visit to the North-East had already been paid for, local papers reported. The trip had been organized by the Shatila Theatre Trust.
+After the intervention of local Member of Parliament Alan Campbell (a former government minister), the British embassy in Beirut relented. But this reversal came too late for the group to catch their original flights. Organizers are hoping the visit will still go ahead, with rebooked flights (“Green light for refugee kids to visit the North East,” ChronicleLive, 27 July 2012).
+Seven summers
+But CADFA director Nandita Dowson told The Electronic Intifada that the charity had only suffered from one such incident since its inception in 2006. In that instance, about ten schools then rallied round and wrote letters to the UK Border Agency in support of the visit, and it was allowed to proceed.
+Registering as a charity has likely helped boost CADFA’s reputation, building it up within local communities. “We’ve now got the respect of the schools here,” Dowson said, pointing out that local authorities even allow pupils six days off from regular classes to participate in CADFA activities.
+Palestinian schoolchildren come here, and British schoolchildren and teachers go to Palestine. For seven consecutive summers, children have been brought over from Palestine. The focus is educational, with the English kids learning first-hand. The children go to events together and have “amazing conversations.” At one Wiltshire camping trip during this soggy-wet English summer, the kids came back as “ambassadors for the Palestinians,” she said.
+Perhaps the main strength of such low-key, unglamorous projects is that they involve people beyond the usual activist suspects. By “always reaching new people,” as Dowson puts it, they help raise awareness about Palestine at a local level.
+Asa Winstanley is a journalist from London who has lived and worked in occupied Palestine. His website is: www.winstanleys.org.
+Tags
 
-Zamzam recounted to The Electronic Intifada that while they were walking she “saw many bodies lying on the ground.” She added, “I could smell the corpses filling the streets. A quadcopter was watching us and shooting at anyone who tried to go back.”
+Palestinian youth
 
-The teenager was forced to walk on her injured foot. “My broken foot and my wounds were the biggest obstacle I faced during my displacement journey,” she said.
+Beit Surik
 
-Zamzam managed to reach the Shujaiya neighborhood. From there, she went west into Gaza City and is now receiving treatment at al-Shifa Hospital.
+london
 
-But the hospital’s resources are insufficient. The medical equipment she needs for foot surgery is lacking.
+UK Border Agency
 
-It’s been a painful and deadly journey for Zamzam since her 6 October 2024 meal with her mother and sisters at the Jabaliya UNRWA center.
+Jerusalem
 
-Khaled El-Hissy is a journalist from Jabaliya in the Gaza Strip. He is currently in Jordan for medical treatment. Twitter: @khpalestined
+Israel's wall in the West Bank
 
-A second author is based in Gaza but has chosen to remain anonymous.
-Tags
+Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association (CADFA)
 
-Gaza genocide
+apartheid
 
-Hussam Abu Safiya
+BDS
 
-Al Mezan Center for Human Rights
+Ben Gurion airport
 
-Jabaliya
+Shatila refugee camp
 
-Beit Lahiya
+Beirut
 
-UNRWA
+Nandita Dowson
 
-Kamal Adwan hospital
+al-Ram
 
-Gaza war crimes
+children

combined/texts/102.txt

@@ -1,40 +1,14 @@
-Associating Israel with the label of Apartheid has become ubiquitous as of late; annual events all over the globe such as Israeli Apartheid Week have done much to normalize this coupling. Naturally, advocates for Israel insist that it is all nonsense, indeed how could Israel practice Apartheid when there are “Arab” judges, or members of Knesset? How could anyone accuse Israel of such practices when every citizen is allowed to vote?
-Let us delve a little bit deeper into this question and try to come up with an answer.
-Firstly, it is important to establish what we mean with Apartheid. There is a widespread misconception that Apartheid refers solely to the case of South Africa. While it’s understandable that people think of South Africa when Apartheid is mentioned, it is critical to recognize that it was merely one manifestation of it, and that there were different regimes with different configurations which upheld the same system.
-According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the crime of Apartheid is defined as follows:
+In the grand scheme of Israeli colonialism, this might seem like a relatively small issue. What is stealing a dish when there are millions of Palestinians in refugee camps?
+But this theft of culture is typical for settler movements, which seek to coopt and commodify the culture of the natives in an attempt to self-indigenize. Although they would never admit this, it stems from an unconscious nagging that they do not belong and that aspects of the native culture are seen as more legitimate than their imported ones.
+Settlers do not only lay claim to these indigenous practices, but they also attempt to ban the natives from practicing them altogether. Examples of such cases are abundant, such as Canadian attempts to ban or restrict indigenous peoples from their millennia-old sustainable fishing practices. Similar efforts were pursued by the Israeli authorities regarding Za’tar, Akub and many other traditional Palestinian wild herbs and plants. Palestinians had been harvesting these plants for centuries, however,  Israel quickly moved in to ban picking these herbs, conveniently and selectively citing environmental concerns, while it continued to dump sewage and toxic waste on Palestinian villages in the West Bank .
+Meanwhile, Israeli businessmen started cultivating Za’tar. The Ben Herut family was the dominant force in this market, where for the first time they sought to create an Israeli Za’tar mix. Their first attempt resulted in a product that is, according to Ben Herut the son: “Totally disgusting, it came out all black.”
+It was only after his father consulted some Palestinians that they learnt how to make the mix that in any way resembles the traditional Za’tar we all know and love. When asked what drove their business, the son responded with: “National pride … I want people to say za’atar is Israel.”
+Settler societies have a penchant for selective history, Israel is no different. Consequently, this new cooptation stuck and Israelis started claiming Za’tar as their own. Additionally, it was retroactively legitimized and incorporated into the national mythology, Israelis declared that Za’tar is actually “traditionally Israeli” because the plant is mentioned in the Bible as Ezov. It is quite ‘convenient’ how this supposedly ancient traditional food was only discovered in the 1970s, and only after copying the Palestinian recipe. It is also quite a ridiculous argument, as the Bible does not describe the plant being eaten in the same way as Za’tar, which is a specific blend of spices, herbs and sesame, eaten with olive oil and bread.
+If we were to follow this same line of biblical logic consistently, can it also not be argued that any food item mentioned in the Bible is traditionally Israeli? After all, milk was mentioned in the bible, so following this same reasoning can’t we argue that ice cream is also “traditionally” Israeli?
+When confronted with these issues, Israelis often claim that since many Israelis are Mizrahim (Jewish people of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry) then these foods are part of their culture and history as well. However, this argument buckles under its own contradictions when examined in a wider context.
+It seems that even while attempting to self-indigenize, Zionists can’t help but have an essentialist view of the region. This essentialism treats all Arab or Muslim majority countries across the Middle East and North Africa as one monolithic entity. For example, a large portion of Mizrahi Israelis originated in Iraq and Morocco where dishes such as Hummus, Falafel and herbs such as Za’tar are not part of the local cuisine, and if they are, they are vastly different to the Levantine style that the Palestinians prepare. It is not a coincidence that this exact same Levantine Palestinian style is the one that the Israelis sought to coopt and claim as their own.
+Furthermore, as Ali Abunimah observed, this argument is rather selective and only seems to apply in the case of Middle Eastern cuisines. For instance, over a million Israelis today have Polish ancestry, yet we never hear the claim that Pierogi is a traditional Israeli dish. This selective application reinforces the argument put forward by many Palestinians that this claim is not made in good faith, and aims to justify the cooptation of these cultural markers. Indeed, if we were to apply this argument consistently based on the geographic origin of Israeli dishes, it would produce the opposite effect to the intended one, which is to better claim indigeneity.
+The increasingly common identification of Zionism with settler colonialism and reactionary far-right movements all over the world has left Israel in a crisis of image. It is more desperate than ever to project an organic, indigenous depiction of itself, but all these efforts are destined to fail as long as Israel remains steadfast in its Zionism. As many propagandists have found out over the years, marketing can only help you so much when you have a rotten product.
 
-“The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime;”
-
-There are many inhumane acts listed under paragraph 1, but the most relevant to our case are:
-
-Deportation or forcible transfer of population.
-Imprisonment and severe deprivation of liberty.
-Persecution based on ethnic, religious or national origins.
-Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
-
-It is indisputable that Israel practices these acts against Palestinians, inside and outside of the green line. It is also indisputable that as a state built on a colonial ideology that privileges one ethnic group over the rest, its actions are ultimately committed to maintain this system of supremacy.
-You will notice that nowhere in this description does it say that if you have a judge from the oppressed minority then it ceases being an Apartheid system. As a matter of fact, Nelson Mandela was a successful lawyer. The counter-argument that there are “Arab” judges or policemen ceases to be convincing when you realize that the system doesn’t need to be a complete carbon copy of South Africa to be counted as Apartheid.
-Mentioning that there are “Arab” members of Knesset is also not as powerful a gotcha moment as Israeli advocates believe it to be, simply because there is a precedent of an Apartheid state having parliament members of the oppressed indigenous group. That precedent is Southern Rhodesia. Despite allowing a certain number of black parliamentarians, it was still a racist entity ruled by a white minority, with the very honest declared goal of maintaining itself as a white state.
-As you have surely noticed I have been referring to “Arabs” in parenthesis, this is because most Palestinians living within the green line prefer to call themselves Palestinians, not merely Arab. Naturally, this is a threat to the Israeli narrative of the non-existence of Palestinians as a people , so even as they tokenize them in an attempt to prove their egalitarianism, they seek to simultaneously erase their actual identity.
-So now that we have established the meaning of Apartheid, and that having a few members of the oppressed group in high profile positions is irrelevant to the definition, we can move onto the next part of our answer.The argument that Israel does not practice apartheid hinges on one very crucial caveat: that we are distinguishing between Israel and the areas Israel rules. In practice, however, this distinction is functionally meaningless. (Even following this caveat, Israel itself is definitely not a democracy, at best it could be described as an ethnocracy ).
-In practice, Israel rules everything from the river to the sea, it is the only sovereign power that runs the lives of all who inhabit this area. I know some of you will point to the Palestinian Authority, but in reality, the Palestinian Authority is relegated to the realm of administering occupied territories, without any real power, sovereignty or influence.
-For example, the Palestinian Authority can’t even determine who a Palestinian citizen is. The citizen registry for Palestinians is under de facto Israeli control. Meaning that if a Palestinian marries a non-Palestinian, their spouse will never be able to gain Palestinian citizenship as Israel’s demographic obsessions would not allow for any preventable increase in the Palestinian population. Even Abbas needs to coordinate with the Israeli military to be able to visit other Palestinian cities, cities of a “country” he is supposedly president of.
-In a watershed moment, B’Tselem, Israel’s largest human rights group recently released a report officially calling Israeli practices Apartheid, it argues that:
-
-“Although there is demographic parity between the two peoples living here, life is managed so that only one half enjoy the vast majority of political power, land resources, rights, freedoms and protections. It is quite a feat to maintain such disfranchisement. Even more so, to successfully market it as a democracy (inside the “green line” – the 1949 armistice line), one to which a temporary occupation is attached. In fact, one government rules everyone and everything between the river and the sea, following the same organising principle everywhere under its control, working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group of people – Jews – over another – Palestinians. This is apartheid.”
-
-They continued:
-
-“There is not a single square inch in the territory Israel controls where a Palestinian and a Jew are equal. The only first-class people here are Jewish citizens such as myself, and we enjoy this status both inside the 1967 lines and beyond them, in the West Bank. Separated by the different personal statuses allotted to them, and by the many variations of inferiority Israel subjects them to, Palestinians living under Israel’s rule are united by all being unequal.”
-
-Indeed, the green line has long been invisible to Israelis, and Israel treats the settlements as parts of its own state. Why should we pretend otherwise? Why pretend that we’re talking about two governing bodies when the Palestinian Authority is a glorified bantustan administrator with no say about anything?
-This is by design, not by chance. Israel has been very conscious with how it approached its colonization project in the West Bank, in 1972 Ariel Sharon proclaimed that:
-
-“We’ll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty five years’ time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
-
-Even more recently, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also officially designated Israeli behavior as constituting Apartheid. We promise they won’t be the last human rights organization to do so.
-It is about time we stopped pretending that there ever was a hope for two states, or that we aren’t already living under a de facto one state from the river to the sea, with varying tiers of rights and privileges bestowed upon you based on where you come from and your ethnicity.
-When a Jewish settler attacks a Palestinian and is tried in a civil court, while those protesting the attack are tried in a military court, that practice is Apartheid, and no appeals to the contrary can change that. Pretending that this occupation is temporary has long been delusional, but has now crossed the line into intellectual dishonesty. If we are to have any hope for a way forward then we must call things as they are. We do not have the privilege of wasting another 25 years pretending to live in an alternate reality.
-Finally, it should be stressed that calling Israeli policy Apartheid does not mean that the Palestinian question is not a settler-colonial context, nor does it imply that the solution lies in a civil rights movement for equality or the mere incorporation of the West Bank or Gaza Strip into the Israeli state. The Palestinian cause is a cause for decolonization and freedom, not for acquiring privileges in a colonial state. Consequently, we argue that the term Apartheid is not a sufficient descriptor for the status quo, but merely one of the many crimes committed by Israel. After all, even if Israel stopped practicing Apartheid, without true decolonization and the right of return, the Palestinian struggle for liberation would be incomplete.
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combined/texts/1020.txt

@@ -1,122 +1,86 @@
-Hundreds of people were killed in an Israeli attack on Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza, earlier this week.
+The diplomas of some 20,000 recent graduates from universities in Gaza are being withheld over tuition debt.
 
-DPA via ZUMA PressI was raised in Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza.
+APA imagesKhaled Musallam, 24, studied media at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University and graduated two years ago. But he never received his diploma.
 
-The first intifada erupted right in the heart of our camp during 1987. I was born three years earlier.
+“After graduating I went to the students affairs office to get my diploma,” Musallam said. “But they said that I couldn’t, that I owed $810.”
 
-My father gave my brother the name Hatem as a tribute to Hatem al-Sisi, the first Palestinian killed in the intifada.
+Musallam’s student debt – and the diploma withheld as a result – has also prevented him from finding work or pursuing a higher degree. And it is a predicament that increasing numbers of young people in the impoverished coastal enclave find themselves in.
 
-All the joy and success in my life has been overshadowed by sorrow.
+Malak Abu Dan, 25, studied business administration at the University of Palestine and graduated the same year as Musallam. With an $680 bill for outstanding fees, she too is in limbo with no diploma.
 
-As a child, I heard the stories told by the elders of my family about the first intifada. Stories about the activities of Israeli soldiers: arrest campaigns, house raids, curfews and camp closures.
+“I do not have the money to pay; you know the situation is generally bad in Gaza. I tried to get it, but all my attempts went in vain,” she added.
 
-All of these had a major effect on my family and our neighbors. I witnessed many tragic events in the camp.
+“I don’t know what to do”
 
-Over time, a love for learning grew inside me. I decided to travel for educational reasons.
+Abu Dan is in a double bind. She wants to find work to pay off her debt, but needs a diploma to do so.
 
-I studied in several countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, the US and Iceland. Today, I am in Belgium.
+“You rarely find jobs in Gaza. In the last two years, there were opportunities, but they require a diploma. I don’t know what to do.”
 
-But I often returned to the camp. Wandering the streets brought back memories of my childhood.
+Unlike in many other countries, academic diplomas can be withheld as a result of outstanding student debt, said Ayman al-Yazuri, assistant deputy of higher education at Gaza’s education ministry.
 
-I would inhale the scent of the land I grew up on.
+Debt is also hard to avoid for those pursuing an education. Business administration graduate Muhib al-Haddad, 25, applied for a grant to cover some of his outstanding fees at Al-Aqsa University.
 
-Massacre at a market
+But the university has set strict criteria for grant eligibility, requiring that graduates demonstrate both need and a high cumulative grade point average. Al-Haddad didn’t qualify, something he conceded he had expected.
 
-Among my childhood memories are the times I spent in my grandfather’s home in Block 5 of the camp.
+“When you look at the thousands of graduates in those years, who are waiting for such a grant to help them get their certificates, your chance will be negligible.”
 
-As a young boy, my mother relied on me to help provide for the household.
+Rami Khatib heads the board of directors of the Palestinian Zakat Institution, a charity which partners with five universities to provide grants to recent graduates like Haddad.
 
-My father worked in Israel’s clothing industry throughout the week. He would only be in Gaza on Fridays and Saturdays.
+The Zakat institution has contributed $100,000 to the project, which has a budget of $250,000, according to Khatib. The rest is shouldered by the partner universities.
 
-Like other children in the camp, I went to buy groceries for my family.
+“This project was necessary in light of the increasing numbers of students in need of their diplomas, unable to join the labor market,” he said.
 
-The Jabaliya market was in the adjacent Block 4. It wasn’t just any market but the market for all the towns and villages in the governorate of North Gaza.
+“Real crisis”
 
-The market started at the intersection of al-Ajarma Street with Turk Street, leading north to Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya. It began with the al-Ajarma bookshop, followed by al-Kholafa Pharmacy, next to which was a shawarma restaurant.
+Riad Abu Zanad, the dean of student affairs at Al-Aqsa University, said that 17,000 graduates haven’t received their degrees because they still owe money to the school, despite various forms of financial assistance offered to students.
 
-Nearby was the al-Talouli Electric Store, which sold hardware. It was a place where my father and his friends from the al-Talouli and al-Madhoun families gathered from the 1980s onwards.
+Full tuition is awarded to the children of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and those imprisoned by Israel, according to Abu Zanad, and the school also offers assistance to students who demonstrate financial need.
 
-As children, we would pass these places on our way to school, the health clinic run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) or other shops in the market.
+He added that 140 recent graduates from Al-Aqsa will benefit from the Zakat institution grant, receiving around $280 each. Responsibility for the remaining tuition balance – total annual tuition, according to the ministry of education, averages at $700 per student at state universities – is split between the university and the student, Abu Zanad said.
 
-The al-Talouli Electric store is located at the center of the market. Earlier this week, Israel subjected that area to heavy bombardment.
+Given the high levels of unemployment and sharply increased poverty in Gaza, however, need is greater than the resources available to students and recent graduates.
 
-Hundreds of people were killed in the massacre. Many of the dead were my relatives, neighbors and friends.
+“We call on all business leaders, government bodies and entrepreneurs to work on solving the problem of graduates’ certificates and provide them with financial support so they can get their diplomas,” Abu Zanad said.
 
-I don’t understand why this market was subjected to so much violence.
+The education ministry’s al-Yazuri acknowledged the “real crisis” that universities are withholding the diplomas of more than 20,000 recent graduates.
 
-Less than 24 hours later, Israel carried out another massacre on the other side of the camp.
+Al-Yazuri said the situation is borne of the dire economic situation in Gaza, which has made it harder for families to pay for tuition, despite education being highly valued in Palestinian society.
 
-The Six Martyrs neighborhood in al-Faluja – an area within the camp –  was bombed. Perhaps we should rename it the Hundred Martyrs or even the Thousand Martyrs neighborhood.
+Self-perpetuating problem
 
-Nobody will know for sure how many people have been killed until all the rubble is cleared and all the martyrs are counted.
+More than half of Gaza’s public universities’ budgets are covered by tuition fees, according to al-Yazuri.
 
-Is there any guarantee that there won’t be a new massacre in the coming hours?
+“Students cannot pay university fees in full, so they are forced to pay by installments,” creating a deficit in school budgets, al-Yazuri said. “Universities are in financial crisis.”
 
-Nothing can stop my tears from falling at this moment.
+Al-Yazuri also pointed to budget cuts by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
 
-Death is everywhere in Gaza. The situation is far worse than all the previous massacres and tragedies we have gone through.
+“Nine public universities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip need about 70 million Jordanian dinars [approximately $98 million] annually to improve their work,” al-Yazuri told The Electronic Intifada. But the Palestinian Authority paid only approximately $8.5 million to public universities in 2016, he said.
 
-Nothing is left
+Universities in Gaza have also seen a decline in enrollment, and thus tuition revenue.
 
-Jabaliya is a camp with small alleys that is still being targeted in Israel’s air strikes.
+“In 2015, 95,000 students were registered at the universities, while in 2016 only 90,000 students were registered. The number declined in 2017 to 86,000 students,” al-Yazuri said.
 
-Buildings with concrete walls that were three or four floors high have disappeared. A huge number of smaller homes made from asbestos and tin sheets have been destroyed, too.
+The withholding of diplomas is just another way that ambitious young people in Gaza find their futures being hemmed in.
 
-Nothing is left in the Jabaliya market except large craters.
+Ahmad al-Haw, who graduated from Al-Aqsa University in 2015, still hopes to get his certificate so he can pursue scholarships for postgraduate study outside Gaza.
 
-I saw images of houses in which my friends and neighbors lived being destroyed.
-They include the home of my childhood friend Yunis al-Assi.
+“I graduated from university, and I was looking forward to traveling and getting a scholarship abroad, because job opportunities in the Gaza Strip are virtually nonexistent,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-Getting information about who was killed in massacres is very difficult.
+He said he has found scholarships for study in a wide range of countries, “but I could not apply to them, because I do not have a university certificate.”
 
-I cannot contact friends and family in northern Gaza because they have no internet connection. So I don’t know if my friend Fayez lost his family or not.
-
-Fayez himself was probably not at home as he works as an ambulance driver with the Palestinian Red Crescent. But I don’t know that for certain.
-
-But I did see my friend Ahmad Abu Nasser appearing in a video saying, “Three of
-my children were killed. I’m looking, oh God, for one who might still be alive.”
-
-Khalid, another friend of mine, remarked with astonishment about how one small alley has been transformed into a wide square. All the surrounding buildings have been flattened.
-
-I haven’t been able to reach Khalid directly. But I heard him make that comment in a Telegram video.
-
-Followers of fashion
-
-My friend Tareq Hajjaj was killed during October. Tareq and I went to school and remained friends afterwards.
-
-We were friends despite being rivals. We were among the top-performing students at school, especially in English and math, although we engaged in some reckless behavior as teenagers in high school.
-
-We were followers of fashion and used to mingle with and tease girls from the neighboring girls school in the al-Faluja area of Jabaliya refugee camp.
-
-We even established what we called a political party and distributed flyers to school students about it.
-
-This week’s massacres caused people to scream. Others tried to lift the rubble and dig with their hands, searching for their relatives and neighbors.
-
-But the most painful thing was the muffled cries of people trapped under the rubble. Children, women, elderly people who have not been heard or recorded with cameras.
-
-Today, I  can only visit the camp virtually – by looking at the screen on my phone. I fear greatly for my family, neighbors and friends.
-
-Everywhere in Gaza has been under a merciless attack since 7 October. But what pains me most is knowing that so many bombs have been dropped on civilians in Jabaliya refugee camp.
-
-The pain and sorrow I felt seeing how places I got to know so well during my childhood were wiped away is indescribable.
-
-I am unable to help people in Jabaliya camp practically at the moment. But my determination to raise awareness about Palestine has only increased.
-
-I am determined to share the stories of Palestinians with the world.
-
-Despite being far from my homeland, my heart still beats with love for Jabaliya refugee camp and its people. I will work with all my strength to make a difference and to alleviate their suffering.
-
-Tamer Ajrami is a student of political science living in Belgium.
+Jehad Ewais is a freelance journalist based in Gaza.
 Tags
 
-Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
+education
+
+higher education
 
-First intifada
+Ayman al-Yazuri
 
-Jabaliya refugee camp
+Al-Aqsa University
 
-Hatem al-Sisi
+Palestinian Zakat Institution
 
-UNRWA
+Riad Abu Zanad
 
-Tareq Hajjaj
+Palestinian universities

combined/texts/1021.txt

@@ -1,34 +1,35 @@
-Thousands of Palestinian children in East Jerusalem face crowded, sub-standard classrooms while Israel attempts to censor Palestinian identity in school.
-
-The Electronic IntifadaPalestinian activists, parents and students are fighting against the Israeli authorities’ recent push to impose an Israeli curriculum on East Jerusalem schools, which they say threatens the city’s Palestinian culture and identity.“Through the move of distortion in the Palestinian curriculum, the Israeli occupation authorities are willing to complete the project of achieving total domination over both the Palestinian land and the Palestinian human while depriving him from his culture and his history, thus tampering with the collective identity of Palestinians,” said Abdel Karim Lafi, the head of the Parents’ Committee Union, during a press conference in East Jerusalem in September.“Our Palestinian curriculum expresses our past, present, and future. It fulfills what we need as an occupied Arab Palestinian community, and any [meddling] with that curriculum by the occupation influences it negatively,” he added.In March of this year, the Jerusalem municipality sent a letter to private schools in East Jerusalem that receive allocations from the Israeli authorities. The letter stated that at the start of the 2011-2012 academic year, the schools would be obliged to purchase and only use textbooks prepared by the Jerusalem Education Administration (JEA), a joint body of the municipality and the Israeli ministry of education.The move to introduce the Israeli curriculum came after Israeli parliament (Knesset) member Alex Miller from the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, who heads the Knesset’s education committee, stated that in East Jerusalem, “the whole curriculum should and must be Israeli.”In addition to using Israeli textbooks, the Israeli ministry of education requested that the Israeli Declaration of Independence be on display in both public and private schools in East Jerusalem.“That means that they are trying to promote the Israeli story at the expense of the Palestinian story. If we talk about Jerusalem, Jerusalem is occupied like any other part of the West Bank so what’s going on is illegal and Israel is trying to promote the annexation of Jerusalem,” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civil Coalition to Defend Palestinians’ Rights in East Jerusalem.“The Jerusalem municipality and Israeli ministry of education are trying to promote Israeli politics and culture and identity. That’s what the Declaration of Independence is talking about. They are trying to spread these ideas among the Palestinian students at school. This is at the expense of the people [who] don’t have the right to express their identity, their culture,” Odeh told The Electronic Intifada.Lack of resources crippling educationAfter Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinians in the city followed the Jordanian educational system. Then, shortly after the signing of the Oslo II agreement, schools in East Jerusalem began using the curriculum of the Palestinian Authority (PA).Today, four different authorities govern the education system in East Jerusalem: the JEA, the Islamic Waqf, the private sector, and UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees.According to 2010-2011 statistics provided by the East Jerusalem Education Directorate, the JEA runs 50 schools in East Jerusalem, which are attended by 38,785 students, or 48 percent of the total number of Palestinian students in the city. An additional 22,500 Palestinian students attend 68 different private schools in East Jerusalem.The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Jerusalem-based organization Ir Amim released a report on the education system in East Jerusalem last year (“Failed Grade: Palestinian Education System in East Jerusalem 2010,” August 2010).The report found that more than 4,000 Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem were not enrolled in school, and that over 1,000 classrooms were missing. Additionally, East Jerusalem schools suffered from a systematic lack of resources and facilities, which negatively influenced the desire and motivation of Palestinian students to complete their studies, the report found.“Thousands of children do not attend school, and even those who attend school, do so in crowded and substandard classrooms, where the academic level is poor. The school dropout rate is 50 percent and only a few graduates go on to attain higher education. Only a true policy change accompanied by appropriate budgeting can bring about the necessary change and offer the children of Jerusalem a better future,” the report stated.Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are entitled to receive access to public education since they live under Israeli control in what is considered under international law to be occupied territory.“The compulsory education law requires Israel to provide education services to all Palestinian children in East Jerusalem from kindergarten to 12th grade. The ministry of education and the municipality of Jerusalem recognize this duty and have even clearly stated it themselves during various legal proceedings over the past decade,” the ��Failed Grade” report found.“However, an overview of the policy of the ministry of education and the municipality of Jerusalem on this issue shows that their recognition of this commitment is not translated into actual policy.”Protected under international lawPalestinians in East Jerusalem are protected by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states that, “the Occupying Power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.”Article 13 of the International Convention on Economic and Social Rights also specifies that states must “undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents … to choose for their children schools … [and] ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.”In February of this year, the Israeli high court gave the education ministry and Jerusalem municipality five years to improve the level of state education in East Jerusalem. The court also ordered the Israeli authorities to bear the cost of tuition for students attending “recognized but unofficial” schools due to the shortage of classrooms.“It appears that the right of many children in East Jerusalem to receive an official education for free is not being fulfilled and at this point the authorities are not fully meeting their legal obligation to give every child in Israel a free official education,” wrote Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch in the ruling, as quoted in a report by Ir Amim and ACRI (“The East Jerusalem School System — Annual Status Report,” September 2011).“The violation of the right to equality in education in East Jerusalem is not the plight of a few. It is the plight of a significant portion of an entire sector of the population, which is not able to exercise a basic right it is afforded by law and the constitutional values of Israeli law,” Beinisch continued.According to Zakaria Odeh, the Israeli authorities have done little so far to improve the system, and devastating restrictions remain in place.“The municipality doesn’t allow Palestinians to build new schools, so there has been no increase in the [number of] Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem. There has been a restriction on building, so the schools are using buildings, which were meant to be for housing, for residential [purposes]. Especially in the Old City, most of these buildings are more than 100, 200 years old. They need renovations. They are not appropriate for education,” Odeh said.Odeh explained that the Jerusalem municipality and Israeli ministry of education are using the fact that they provide funding to private schools in East Jerusalem to impose the Israeli curriculum on those schools. To prevent this from happening, he said that the PA should step in and support the Palestinian education system in East Jerusalem.“We talked to the [PA’s] education minister and the PA prime minister’s office in order to try to ask them to provide some support because the Israelis are targeting the private schools because these schools get financial support from the municipality,” he said.“The PA has a responsibility to provide financial support for the education system, for the schools in East Jerusalem.”Israeli curriculum threatens Palestinian identityIn June, Ir Amim sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denouncing the government’s plan to force an Israeli curriculum on Palestinian private schools.“The right of the children of East Jerusalem to an education by their culture and national identity is also consistent with the basic right to education recognized in Israeli law and their right to equality in education, freedom and defense of their identity. Israel is obligated not only to avoid violating those rights but also has the positive obligation to support their realization,” the letter stated.According to Abdel Karim Lafi, Israel’s attempt to introduce its own curriculum against the will of Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem reflects the larger goal of using education to harm Palestinian culture and identity.“We call upon all the student frameworks and parents’ committees in all neighborhoods to unite, organize and take a fast action to stop this threatening plan, which forms the most dangerous battle against our Jerusalemite culture,” Lafi said.He urged the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligations of providing education and resources to Palestinian Jerusalemites. He also called on Arab states, the US and Europe to protect Palestinians from attempts to alter the curriculum in East Jerusalem.“This protection must include preserving Palestinians’ rights, culture, and civilization, consequently their right to confront the attempts to ‘Israelize’ the Palestinian curriculum in the schools of the city, as these attempts violate the most basic human rights of this nation, particularly their right in education which comes along with their needs and aspirations,” he said.“This is [also] a message to the Israeli society and the Israeli leaders that we the people know how to maintain our curriculum and save the Palestinian face of Jerusalem.”Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jkdamours.com.
+One year after his murder, the Palestinian Authority police have not yet found who shot and killed Juliano Mer-Khamis.
+
+ActiveStillsJERUSALEM (IPS) - Actors, musicians, activists and friends gathered in various locations throughout Palestine over the past week to commemorate the life of actor and theater director Juliano Mer-Khamis.
+Mer-Khamis was shot and killed on 4 April 2011, while he sat in his car in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank.
+“It is a sad reminder of the reality of the present situation here, of the fear in our part of society here. It is a reminder of how thin the border is between life and death here, and how little is in our control,” Jonatan Stanczak said. Stanczak, a Swede, co-founded the Freedom Theatre along with Mer-Khamis and Zakaria Zubeidi, the former West Bank commander of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
+An Israeli citizen born to a Palestinian father and a Jewish Israeli mother, Mer-Khamis opened the Freedom Theatre in Jenin in 2006 as a way to encourage Palestinian youth in the refugee camp to express themselves, and to use creative expression as a method of resistance.
+“I think that when artists are attacked, then it is a symbol that free cultural expression is under grave threat and every artist is then also a potential target. It also recognises the important role, I think, of artists in this struggle for freedom and equal rights,” said Stanczak.
+The Palestinian Authority has jurisdiction over the Jenin refugee camp, a 0.42 square-kilometer area with more than 16,000 registered Palestinian refugees, almost half of them under the age of 18. The PA began a criminal investigation immediately after Mer-Khamis was killed.
+A separate Israeli investigation is also ongoing and is being conducted jointly by the Israeli army, police and the Shabak security agency, which is also known as the Shin Bet.
+Israeli authorities have arrested various members of the theater — including a twenty-year-old lead actor — and have broken theater windows and equipment, conducted night raids involving the shooting of live ammunition, and intimidated and ransacked the homes of individuals affiliated with the theater.
+According to the Freedom Theatre, more than thirty arrests were made in the Jenin refugee camp in December 2011 alone, all supposedly related to the investigation into Mer-Khamis’s killing.
+Unsolved
+Despite the case remaining unsolved, Stanczak said that the theater has continued to follow Mer-Khamis’s vision of using cultural expression to promote change and fight injustice.
+“We are here to join a movement struggling against oppression and inequality, struggling for a society built on democratic values. We believe that culture is a key component in that struggle because culture has the built-in capacity of questioning the present systems, of questioning authority, of questioning and challenging the present reality and also, showing the possible alternative reality,” Stanczak said.
+Today, the Freedom Theatre continues to organize various cultural activities in Jenin and throughout the West Bank, including running Palestine’s first professional acting school, and hosting filmmaking workshops and playback theater events, where members of a community share personal experiences, which actors and musicians then act them out in an improvised piece.
+Freedom Bus
+In September-October this year, the theater plans to organize a “Freedom Bus” tour through the West Bank, where Palestinians’ personal stories and experiences under occupation will again be acted out in street theater events.
+“We are continuing to educate professional actors, future leaders, in a cultural revolution. The Freedom Theatre is continuing the work of Juliano in the spirit of Juliano,” Stanczak said.
+“We are inviting people all around the world to join this struggle. The reality [in Palestine] is only getting worse by the day. We see ourselves as part of a rising popular struggle and we will only succeed if the international community will join this popular, nonviolent struggle asking for democracy and justice.”
+All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2012). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.
 Tags
 
-education
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-Israeli Ministry of Education
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-East Jerusalem
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-Parent's Committee Union
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-Jerusalem Education Administration
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-Alex Miller
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-Yisrael Beiteinu
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-Zakaria Odeh
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-Association for Civil Rights in Israel
+Juliano Mer-Khamis
 
-Civil Coalition to Defend Palestinians' Rights in East Jerusalem
+Jenin freedom theater
 
-UNRWA
+Jenin refugee camp
 
-Dorit Beinisch
+Palestinian Authority
 
-Ir Amim
+Shin Bet
 
-Benjamin Netanyahu
+Jonatan Stanczak
 
-Abdel Karim Lafi
+Freedom Bus

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@@ -1,34 +1,32 @@
-Rawda Odeh embroidering in her home. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-When Loai’s and Ubai’s mother Rawda was born in 1948, her father, Saleem Abu Khaled al Tamimi of Hebron, was in prison for his part in resisting the British plan to partition Palestine.  The boys never got to know their grandfather, because he died of a stroke in Ramallah during an altercation with Israeli guards when their mother, a student at Birzeit University then (1969), was being tried because of her activities in the Palestine Liberation Front.  She was sentenced to four years in prison and spent a good part of her sentence in Ramleh prison, where her son, Loai (26), is currently being held.  Ubai (19) is in Jalboun prison in the north, one of the harshest in the Israeli system.
-After her release in 1973, Rawda met her future husband, Mohammad Ahmed Odeh, who was among the many well wishers converging on her home in Jerusalem after her release.  The two got engaged but had to put off their wedding, because they were both jailed shortly thereafter, Rawda for six months and Mohammad for two and a half years.  Mohammad is currently employed at the Ramallah water works corporation and Rawda is a pharmacist assistant at the Makased Hospital in East Jerusalem.  They have two more sons, Qusai (24) and Udai (16).  Until recently, Qusai was in Iceland studying mechanical engineering.  Now he is back in East Jerusalem and about to enroll at the Hebrew University in order to study speech and hearing science. But first, he must learn Hebrew.  As a backup, he is trying to get citizenship in Iceland.  Udai is still in high school.
-Qusay and Uday in their bedroom, checking out EI’s homepage on their computer. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-Mohammad with family books, which have shaped a lot of his and his sons’ thinking.  One big influence is Ghassan Kanafani (1936 –‘72), a Palestinian novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist, whose major themes are exile, national struggle and dispossession.  (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-Ubai was arrested at 17 when he was on his way to school.  He was held (questioned and tortured) for 38 days, but had nothing to confess.  The accusations against him are based solely on what others have reported under questioning.  He was sentenced to 2 years and 2 months, but the military prosecutor, who believed that Ubai had the makings of a leader in spite of his youth, appealed the sentence, which was then upped to 4 years.
-For four years before his arrest in 2002, Loai was being chased by the Israeli authorities and stayed in hiding in Ramallah moving from place to place.  He had completed a certificate in insurance studies from Najah University and had found a job.   Many times his mother would cook his meals and take them to Ramallah in search of him only to bring them back with her, because she would be unable to locate him.
-When he was finally cornered, his mother was with him at his aunt’s vacant house in a suburb of Jerusalem, Dahiat al Barid.  The soldiers, along with a bulldozer, two tanks plus a helicopter on top, came at 2:30 a.m. and surrounded the house.  Knowing that they had targeted her son for killing, Rawda refused to let him surrender except to an officer.  She stood in front of him until an officer came to take him.  She continued to call out encouraging words to him, as they blindfolded and tied his legs.  Loai was sentenced to 28 years in prison.  He was accused, among other things, of helping to arrange passage for a suicide bomber in Jerusalem.
-Loai (with the beard) and Uday’s photos in the Odeh home. The embroidery is done by Rawda and says: “My son/He gave his life to his country/Traitor is he who forgets him with the march of time.” (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-Loai, now 26, knew what the Ramleh prison looked like from the inside, long before he himself came to be thrown in it.  As a very young child, he was a regular visitor to this prison , along with his grandmother and other relatives, in order to see one of his uncles, Yacoub Odeh, who endured severe torture (still visible on him physically) and seventeen years of imprisonment until his release in the Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange of 1985, when 1,150 Palestinian prisoners were freed. He had been sentenced to three life terms.  Now, he is active in human rights with a special interest in demolished Palestinian houses in Jerusalem.  This year alone, 83 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem were demolished by Israel and 470 people made homeless as a result.
-Uday Odeh with his uncle Yacoub. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-After Yacoub’s arrest in 1969, the humble Odeh home in Jerusalem, barely two rooms sheltering Yacoub’s mother, her seven children and four relatives, was demolished (his father had died in 1952 and the oldest brother, Daoud, was taken out of school to support the family).  It was the third house to be demolished by military order after the occupation.  The house had been built with great hardship after the Odeh family lost their home in 1948 in Lifta, a village near Jerusalem.  A three-storey house next door to them was demolished and fell on top of their home.  They moved to al Bireh and then to East Jerusalem and could not return to Lifta.
-This time around, the family was greatly heartened when the grapevine that had been in the yard sprouted through from underneath the rubble of their demolished home.  The first fruit it bore was promptly taken to Yacoub by his mother.  Continuing this sad tradition, Rawda and Mohammad now carry grapes from this same vine to their imprisoned sons.  The family calls it “the Resistance Vine.”
-Loai and Ubay’s aunt and uncle Sarah and Yacoub Odeh under the Resistance Vine. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-The Israeli prison system is such that Palestinian prisoners are largely dependent on food from their families, either through food packages or through money spent at prison “canteens.”  Israelis also regularly fine these prisoners by way of punishment for prison infractions.  If the person fined has no money, prison officials extort the money from other prisoners who have it.  During the recent hunger strike that Palestinian prisoners conducted in order to effect prison reforms for the thousands of political prisoners in Israeli jails, Loai lost 11 kg.
-Loai’s photo in the Odeh’s living room. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-The Odeh rebuilt family home in East Jerusalem after it was demolished in 1969, the third house to be demolished in Jerusalem after the Israeli occupation. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-The Odeh family home was rebuilt with help from family and friends less than two years after it was bulldozed.  The grapevine is still in the yard.  Shortly after Loai’s arrest in 2002, the house was burgled by Israeli troops.  Rawda had called her sister-in-law, Sarah, asking if she could keep her valuables at the family home (investments in gold coins that she had gradually accumulated for her sons’ education from what she earned through her embroidery) as well as her jewelry (marriage dowry).
-She knew that her house would be ransacked by Israeli soldiers following her son’s arrest.  Shortly after this phone conversation, which the family believes was tapped, the iron grid on the back window of the house was cut and bent to allow entrance to the house. Both Sarah’s and Rawda’s valuables were taken.  The commemoration plaques the family kept of the various imprisonments of its members were carefully placed on top of the piles scattered through the two rooms that were searched.  When the Israeli police were called, they showed little interest in investigating.
-The family dog “Rumsfeld”. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-The family dog “Powell”. (Photo: Rima Merriman)
-
-Mohammad Odeh, who has been in and out of Israeli prisons several times himself and knows first hand what his sons have to go through, was just eighteen when he saw Lifta for the first time.  He and a group of people from Lifta took the first opportunity after 1967 to visit their hometown with the older ones telling the younger ones what they remembered of the village mosque, the village school, the village water spring, the village farm lands.  Some of them had family homes still standing with Jewish families now living in them.
-The Odeh family has appealed to Israeli authorities to allow Loai and Ubai to be held in the same prison to make family visitation easier, especially for Rawda, who is suffering from cancer.  So far, nothing has come of the appeal.  One brother remains in the far north of the country and the other in the far south.
+An Israeli military jeep patrolling near the Israeli-Lebanese border, near the village of Shtula July 12, 2006. (MaanImages/Inbal Rose)
+If you are not rain, my love
+Be tree
+Sated with fertility, be tree
+If you are not tree, my love
+Be stone
+Saturated with humidity, be stone
+If you are not stone, my love
+Be moon
+In the dream of the beloved woman, be moon
+(So spoke a woman to her son at his funeral)
+From the poem, “Under Siege,” by Mahmoud Darwish
+The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have named their relentless military operation in Gaza “Summer Rain” (gishmei ha-qeitz in Hebrew), which is cruel and sarcastic given the political, historical, and environmental context of the Eastern Mediterranean. It does not rain in the summer in this region. From early May to mid-September, one can expect clear skies and no precipitation. What is raining, though, is fire and metal, along with leaflets bearing chillingly familiar threats.
+Any Palestinian in Gaza, or indeed anyone who knows what happened in Lebanon one scorching summer 24 years ago, will be appropriately terrified by those leaflets warning people of the firestorms to come. The metal rains of the summer of 1982 in Beirut were heavy and deadly. No one stopped the IDF then from committing massive crimes, directed against an Arab capital crowded with civilians.  And sadly, no one will stop them now. Thursday morning, President G.W. Bush and the newly elected German leader Angela Merkel reiterated that Israel has the “right to defend herself.”
+Institutionalized Israeli impunity is an amazing sociopolitical phenomenon: The capture of one Israeli soldier, taken as a bargaining chip to ransom hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children held in administrative detention in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, now provides the unquestioned and self-righteous pretext for massive violations of international humanitarian law. Given the mainstream media’s depiction of Palestinians as cruel, heartless terrorists, and Hamas as the most evil organization ever to exist, the IDF can safely assume they’ll get away with crimes this summer that will rival those committed in 1982, when 17,000 civilians lost their lives in Lebanon and Beirut was put to a brutal siege during the hottest months of the year.
+Institutionalized Israeli impunity is an amazing sociopolitical phenomenon: The capture of one Israeli soldier, taken as a bargaining chip to ransom hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children held in administrative detention in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, now provides the unquestioned and self-righteous pretext for massive violations of international humanitarian law.
+Israeli Prime Minister Olmert declared last week that he wanted no one in Gaza to sleep. With the dramatic bombings of buildings and accumulating corpses in Gaza the last two nights (among them seven children in the last 24 hours), he need not worry that anyone is dozing, oblivious of the might of the IDF. As for losing sleep at night, you don’t have to be in Gaza to be tossing and turning. The dynamic interaction of recent events in the region, and beyond, augur for one of the hottest summers on record.
+For the last three years, I have wondered if the Middle East is at a turning point or a breaking point. The former would entail a denouement, a last-minute deliverance from horror. It would require, more than anything else, wise leadership on all sides, strong moral vision, courage, and compassion. The indices of a turning point, sadly, are not in evidence. The failure of leadership in Israel, the US, the Arab world, the UN and the EU is obscene.
+A breaking point would entail a cataclysmic but contained explosion or implosion, bringing a long and bloody chapter of modern history to a violent but decisive end. This, too, seems unlikely, because the region has reached another, far more dangerous stage: a tipping point that poses lethal threats and dramatic changes to communities far from the alleys of Gaza and the marble halls of the Knesset.
+A tipping point constitutes the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development. Small changes which, seen in isolation, may appear insignificant, build up to a critical mass, such that the next small change may suddenly change everything in unpredictable and dramatic ways.
+For those attentive to small changes and their interrelationships, indices of a tipping point in the Middle East are now coming into terrifying focus: Escalating intercommunal violence and outright ethnic cleansing in Iraq and the revelation that US troops have committed murder and rape in cold blood, not to mention a chilling report in the New York Times on July 7th that “a decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists to infiltrate the military.”
+The report, by John Kifner, cited accounts by neo-Nazis of their infiltration of the military, including a discussion on the white supremacist Web site Stormfront: “There are others among you in the forces,” one participant wrote. “You are never alone.” These guys will come home one day – well organized, trained, and very knowledgeable about weapons and urban warfare tactics. They view their army training as preparation for a coming race war in American cities. Such soldiers pose a more lethal threat to American society, and indeed the US government, than does Al-Qaida.
+Meanwhile, the “War on Terror” is looking bleak further east, with this week’s announcement that the UK is sending reinforcements to Afghanistan, where the Taliban are clearly, and predictably, pursuing a strategy to take back the cities. Pakistan, a member of the nuclear club, is also home to Taliban and Al-Qaida forces, who might one day be able to control the levers of the state and military. But this week came news that US intelligence services are no longer concerned with Al-Qaida in the Middle East, but rather, are redirecting their attention to Al-Qaida v.2 in Europe, London, and in the US.
+If Israel carries through with its threats to “turn back the clock 30 years in Lebanon,” it should surprise no one if this exacerbates growing Sunni-Shi’a tensions in the region, particularly in Iraq, and also leads to violence and chaos in countries throughout the region, all with unpredictable effects.
+And yesterday, the fires of the hot summer of 2006 spread to Lebanon. The Israeli Government just declared that entire country a legitimate target for massive air strikes following the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah members who crossed the border into Israel in a daring raid, an illegal and unwise action that may well not have happened had the IDF’s punishment of the Gaza Strip not been so cruel and the world’s silence in the face of Israel’s war crimes so deafening.
+Hizbullah, like Palestinians, wants illegally imprisoned friends and relatives to be freed and returned. Diplomatic and multilateral mechanisms for attaining this end have halted, so perhaps this is the last resort: taking Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips.
+If Israel carries through with its threats to “turn back the clock 30 years in Lebanon,” it should surprise no one if this exacerbates growing anti-Western sentiments as well as Sunni-Shi’a tensions in the region, particularly in Iraq, and results in a conflagration of violence and chaos in countries throughout the region, all with unpredictable effects. If this scenario plays out, expect to see attempts to destabilize Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.
+The Middle East is in dire need of the refreshing rains of law, justice, sanity, and wisdom. The clouds on the horizon, though, are full of fire and death, not life-giving water.
+A hard rain’s gonna fall, clanging like metal on concrete and bone. It did not have to come to this, but the tipping point is here, and few will be able to sleep peacefully through the coming storms.
 Related Links
-Other recent stories by Rima Merriman
-BY TOPIC: Palestinian Prisoners’ Hunger Strike (15 August 2004-)
-Rima Merriman is a freelance writer and a communications specialist. She has been working in the West Bank for the past five months.
+BY TOPIC: Israel attacks Gaza (27 June 2006)
+Laurie King is a co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. She has lived and worked in Israel, Palestine and Lebanon and is currently living in Washington, DC.

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@@ -1,19 +1,31 @@
-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speaks at a conference in Tel Aviv, 28 December 2006. (Moti Milrod/MaanImages)
-
-The second Lebanon War of summer 2006 threw a dark shadow over the government of Ehud Olmert and his party, Kadima. For the first time, Israel got to know what it’s like to cower helplessly under barrages of rocket fire. The 4,000 Katyushas that rained on Galilee for 33 days rubbed in the feeling of failure. The air force could not stop them. The government could not protect or supply its citizens. It left them to fend as best they could, ruled by the wails of sirens.
-After the cease fire, Israelis demanded an investigation, as they had following the lapse of October 1973. In an attempt to calm the welling rage, Olmert established an investigative committee under retired judge Eliahu Winograd. Many at the time disputed the PM’s right to appoint the body whose function it was to investigate him. Winograd, however, did not disappoint the head hunters. On April 30, 2007, the Committee published its Interim Report, which gave failing marks to the three main figures behind the war: Olmert, Defense Secretary Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (who had already resigned). The decision to launch the war, it wrote, was taken in haste, without sufficient regard for the danger of the rockets or the lack of civil defense, without consideration of alternatives, without achievable goals and without an exit strategy. The Committee refrained from demanding the resignations of Olmert and Peretz, leaving this — it said — “to the public.” It did reserve the option of making that demand in its Final Report, which is scheduled for August.
-The public duly appeared. On Thursday, May 3, three nights after the Report’s publication, about 150,000 assembled in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. Right and Left stood shoulder to shoulder, demanding the heads of Olmert and Peretz. The banner on the stage read, “Failures, go home!”
-The public blissfully forgot to count itself among the “failures.” Those standing shoulder to shoulder in Rabin Square had also stood thus, figuratively speaking, on July 12, 2006 when they backed the decision to pound Lebanon. The Israeli consensus was seamless then too, only in the opposite direction. Warrior Olmert enjoyed celestial popularity. Even Meretz leader Yossi Beilin claimed, as late as August, that “the military response [to rocket fire — Ed.] in the Gaza Strip is justified in our eyes, and the response in Lebanon no less” (Meretz website: “The Test of the Zionist Left”).
-But so are things in war. Patriotic feeling swells the breast. Ideological differences melt. In this case, the wrath of Israel was spent upon the destitute of Lebanon.
-Things also have their characteristic pattern in the aftermath of failure. The right-wingers in the Square blamed Olmert not for entering the war, but for failing to prosecute it ruthlessly. He didn’t commit the ground troops soon enough. He didn’t go all the way. The Right overlooks the fact that he had no mandate for a massive ground operation. It would have meant many casualties. Israel today is unwilling to take casualties. Knowing this, Olmert hoped to do the job from the air. It didn’t work, so he gets the blame for the unwillingness to take casualties.
-The right-wingers took their stand in the Square for other reasons too. They hate Olmert for backing disengagement from Gaza and for contemplating “convergence” in the West Bank. But above all, his ouster would likely result in new elections, and these, if held today, would bring Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu again to power. This is the same Bibi who led the Likud to only 15 seats in the elections of 2006. Because of his neoliberal cuts in welfare as Sharon’s Finance Minister, he had by then become the most hated politician in the country. It is a measure of the turnabout occasioned by the war that today he beats all contenders! According to a Haaretz poll, his Likud today would get 30 seats, Labor 21 and Kadima 14 (Ha’aretz, “Haaretz poll: 40% want elections, 68% say Olmert should resign,” 2 May 2007).
-But if the ousting of Olmert would open the door to Netanyahu, why did the Left go to Rabin Square on that Thursday night after Winograd? Quite simply, it went in haste, without sufficient regard for the danger, without consideration of alternatives, without achievable goals and without an exit strategy. The Left is “naive,” wrote Yediot Aharonot pundit Nahum Barnea on May 4. The alliance of Right and Left in the Square, wrote Nehemia Shtrasler in Ha’aretz on May 6, is one of horse and rider — the Left is the horse and the Right is the rider.
-Netanyahu stands between the PM and the abyss. Olmert is almost universally viewed as a shady opportunist, lacking in conviction, principle, conscience, vision or integrity. Over his head hang four potential indictments for corruption. In the Knesset, however, the fear of Bibi is greater than the revulsion at Olmert. Even the Arab parties, who don’t stop voicing their disgust, swallow it back because of that fear. In the current situation, whoever seeks Olmert’s resignation is, in effect, a Bibi-ite.
-To behead leaders is easy enough, especially in a society that raises and deposes them rapidly. Yet Olmert is no strange bird on Israel’s political scene. He is its authentic product. He is both Right and Left. He represents the political and ideological fuzziness — or want of spine—that has characterized Israeli society for the last two decades. Israel wants peace, yes — but is unwilling to pay the price. Sometimes, therefore, it also wants war—but is unwilling to sacrifice troops. In short, it wants painless war or painless peace. This is politics, however, not dentistry.
-Israel devours its leaders because it is not prepared to accept the simple truths with which these leaders, in order to lead, must cope. The first such truth is this: as long as it remains intent on dominating the Middle East, there can be no such thing as a winnable war. One day’s apparent victory engenders the morrow’s defeat. And suppose a leader should attempt the impossible, making concessions for peace? He has Rabin’s fate to consider. Ehud Barak, we concede, did try — but only as a drowning man grasping at a straw. By the time he reached Camp David, his coalition had dissolved beneath his feet.
-Under these conditions, Israelis prefer the following solution: Since war cannot be won, avoid it as much as possible, and since there is no majority for peace, avoid it too. Live sans peace, sans war. And how does one manage that? Simple. Make only the concessions that are comfortable. So Barak behaved when he pulled out of Lebanon in May 2000, and so Sharon behaved when he pulled out of Gaza in 2006. Unilateralism was the trick.
-The results speak for themselves. Rockets from Gaza land on Sderot, and rockets from Lebanon fell, last summer, on the cities of the north. The Palestinian and Syrian issues, which lead ever again to war, have not been addressed. Both would require dismantling settlements — a feat beyond the power and will of any Israeli government.
-Post-Zionist Israel, then — where the stock exchange achieves record highs, whose moguls buy historic buildings in Manhattan — cannot produce a leader to conduct its affairs. The good life must go on. For this post-Zionist Israel disengaged from Gaza. For this it erects a wall between itself and Palestine, leaving deep-ditch poverty out of sight. But the good life will have its limit. Reality encroaches on every side. Twenty minutes separate Tel Aviv from the cordoned-off, implacable West Bank town of Qalqilya. Those are the minutes parting hell from heaven, war from peace. The minutes grow ever shorter.
-CHALLENGE is a bi-monthly leftist magazine focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a global context. Published in Jaffa by Arabs and Jews, it features political analysis, investigative reporting, interviews, eye-witness reports, gender studies, arts, and more. This article first appeared in Challenge #100 and is reprinted with permission.
-Related Links
-CHALLENGE Magazine
+Leaders of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel warned this week that they were facing an unprecedented campaign of persecution, backed by the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to stop their political activities.
+The warning came after Said Nafaa, a Druze member of the Israeli parliament was stripped of his immunity last week, clearing the way for him to be tried for a visit to Syria three years ago.
+In recent weeks legal sanctions have been invoked against two other Arab political leaders, following clashes with the Israeli security forces at demonstrations against the occupation, and pressure is growing for two more MPs to be investigated.
+Arab politicians are particularly concerned about a bill introduced last month requiring all parliamentary candidates to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. If passed, the seats of the 10 Arab MPs belonging to non-Zionist parties in the 120-member parliament, or Knesset, would be under threat.
+Jamal Zahalka, one of those MPs, said: “Every week either the Knesset or the government try to impose new restrictions on our activities and freedom of speech. There is a growing trend towards anti-democratic legislation.”
+Nafaa, the latest target for legal action, was stripped of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution last week by a Knesset committee dominated by the right wing.
+Keeping his immunity was his only hope of avoiding a trial after he was indicted by the attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, in December over a visit he organized in 2007 to Syria, considered an enemy country.
+The MP had arranged for a group of 280 Druze clerics to make pilgrimage to Syria’s holy sites via Jordan after they had been repeatedly refused a permit by the interior ministry. Nafaa has argued that the clerics were being denied their religious freedom.
+Afu Aghbaria, an Arab MP, called the case political persecution and asked the committee: “Do you think he organized an espionage trip with 280 people?”
+Nafaa is also charged with contact with a foreign agent. According to the testimony of one of his assistants, who was interrogated by the Israeli secret police, the MP discussed the feud between Fatah and Hamas with Talal Naji, a Syrian leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and tried to meet Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas in Damascus.
+Nafaa, who denies meeting Naji, maintains that his visit was entirely political in nature and that the Knesset’s actions are designed to prevent him from fulfilling the role he was elected for by the Arab minority, one in five of Israel’s population.
+Ahmed Tibi, the only Arab MP on the panel hearing the immunity case, said Arabs politicians, instead of being prosecuted, should be encouraged to build bridges to the Arab world on behalf of Israel.
+Orna Kohn, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre representing Nafaa, said that, whereas the immunity of Jewish legislators was removed in cases of corruption and serious criminal offenses, the revocation of immunity for political activities was “very rare” and appeared to apply only to Arab MPs.
+The last case was against Azmi Bishara, who was tried in 2001 on two counts — for a visit to Syria and for alleged incitement during a speech — both of which were rejected by the courts.
+Arab MPs have avoided trips to much of the Arab world since the so-called Bishara Law of 2008 granted the government powers to bar anyone who makes an unauthorized visit to an enemy state from standing as a candidate.
+In recent weeks other Arab politicians have found themselves in trouble.
+Last month Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement, was sentenced to nine months in jail after being found guilty of spitting at a policeman during clashes close to the al Aqsa mosque compound in 2007. Salah, who denied the charge, said he was the victim of concerted efforts to prevent Muslims from protecting the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City.
+Another Arab leader, Mohammed Barakeh, head of the Communist party in the Knesset, is due to stand trial on four counts of assault against security officials during demonstrations over a four-year period.
+Kohn, who also represents Barakeh, said the MP had attended hundreds of demonstrations at which he mediated between protesters and security forces.
+“Often soldiers turn violent against the demonstrators and in some cases Barakeh was assaulted. In such circumstances it is easier for soldiers to accuse Mr Barakeh of being violent than risk being accused themselves.”
+She said the decision to indict Barakeh was an attempt to “criminalize” his political role and reflected an “escalation” in using the law against Arab politicians.
+The spate of indictments prompted Mohammed Zeidan, head of the Higher Follow-Up Committee, the main political body for the Arab minority, to complain last month of “ongoing attacks” on the Arab leadership.
+At Nafaa’s immunity hearing, Anastasia Michaeli, a committee member and member of the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, said she would introduce a bill to revoke the citizenship of anyone visiting an enemy state and deport them to that country.
+Colleagues in her party have already initiated legislation that would require MPs to swear allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish, Zionist and democratic state.” Currently the pledge refers only to loyalty to “the state of Israel.”
+Zahalka, leader of the National Democratic Assembly party, said: “Imagine the outcry if a Jewish representative in the US or Britain was expected to swear loyalty to his country as a Christian state.”
+Zahalka was himself accused of incitement after commenting on Israeli TV in December that Ehud Barak, the defense minister, listened to classical music while children were killed in Gaza. On air, Dan Margalit, the host, called Zahalka “impertinent” and ordered him to leave the studio.
+Danny Danon, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, subsequently initiated a bill to bar from the Knesset any MP found to have incited against the state.
+There have also been demands for another MP, Taleb al-Sanaa, of the United Arab List party, to be investigated after he used his cellphone to allow Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader in Gaza, to address a group of demonstrators on the first anniversary of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
+Yitzhak Aharonivitch, the public security minister, was among those calling for al-Sanaa’s indictment.
+Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
+A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

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-Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality by Ian S. Lustick, University of Pennsylvania Press (2019)
-
-Any American who has asked their representative or senator a question related to Palestinian rights knows that it only seems to auto-generate the following response: “I support the two-state solution.”
-
-The words spill right out of the box like a mantra, or a Pavlovian reaction, or perhaps, even like a Manchurian Candidate triggered by a post-hypnotic suggestion. The response invariably is also evasive of the actual question asked.
-
-Like any paradigm, Ian S. Lustick observes in Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality, the two-state solution has become so ingrained and enshrined that it represents a barrier to critical thinking.
-
-Lustick, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist on Israeli politics, abandoned the two-state solution in the early 2010s after nearly 50 years of advocacy. He achieved public attention with a 2013 opinion column in The New York Times titled “Two-State Illusion.”
-
-Three obstacles
-
-In this slim new book, Lustick cites three obstacles that inadvertently helped guarantee the demise of the two-state solution, devoting a chapter to each. His concluding chapter, titled “One-State Reality and Its Future,” outlines strategies for a rights-based approach to secure equality and freedom for all – Israeli Jews, non-Jewish immigrants and Palestinians.
-
-The author identifies the first obstacle as a “flaw” in the notorious Iron Wall strategy outlined by the revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky in 1923 and later adopted by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister.
-
-The strategy advocated for the complete military defeat of the Palestinians and their Arab allies until Zionist settlement in the “Land of Israel” emerged triumphant and unassailable. Then, and only then, Jabotinsky envisioned, could Israel proceed to a peace arrangement with “moderate” Arabs willing to “compromise.”
-
-The “flaw” in this strategy, Lustick maintains, is that the resulting military strength only encouraged Israel to remain implacable. Lustick blames the demise of the two-state solution entirely on Israeli leaders who, he argues, failed to recognize the willingness of the Palestine Liberation Organization to compromise when it officially accepted a two-state solution in 1988.
-
-Lustick identifies the second obstacle as a distortion of the collective memory of the Holocaust. Zionist leaders categorized Palestinians as “Nazis” as part of a crude propaganda campaign to unite Ashkenazi and Arab Jews and to reinforce the Zionist idea of “an unbridgeable abyss that separates Jews and gentiles.”
-
-That device has been used to rally Israelis around military adventures, such as when prime minister Menachem Begin invoked the World War II extermination camp at Treblinka to win public approval for the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Or more recently, when Israel’s current head of state, Benjamin Netanyahu, proclaimed that “It’s 1938” and “Iran is Germany.”
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-For Lustick, this distortion of Holocaust memory fails to account for Nazi “crimes against humanity,” which included extermination not just of Jews but also of Roma, Slavs, homosexuals and disabled people.
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-The constant invocations of the Holocaust also worked against the Zionist leadership and its separatist goal of an exclusively Jewish state, the author observes.
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-Many Israelis began to understand “the universalism” of the Holocaust, Lustick contends, especially following the publication of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963 and the 2008 release of the animated film Waltz with Bashir that invokes the massacres of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982.
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-Universalism enabled Israelis to appreciate “the common humanity of Jews and Palestinian Arabs.” In doing so, it helped undermine the effort to cast Palestinians as Nazis, although the propaganda nevertheless remained a strong enough factor to prevent a two-state solution.
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-Finally, Lustick indicts the Israel lobby and its “disproportionate influence” in US Congress as the third obstacle and final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. By successfully pushing year after year for military aid to Israel, the lobby created a “cocoon of unconditional American support” that undermined Israeli moderates and made Israeli hawks more hawkish.
-
-As the Israeli electorate shifted increasingly to the right, Israeli leaders saw no need to negotiate for a two-state solution. An attitude of “intransigent maximalism” emerged in the Israeli polity, Lustick writes, and this triumphalist version of Zionism “destroyed possibilities” for a historical compromise.
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-Winning rights for all
-
-The result is a one-state reality without democracy. Lustick embraces the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement as the way forward.
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-He argues that the two-state paradigm is “solution based” whereas BDS relates to a “process.”
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-The former focuses on the result – two independent states – whereas BDS deals with the process of winning rights for all, regardless of whether there are two states or one.
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-Under the two-state solution, Israel could continue to discriminate against its Palestinian citizens and Palestinian refugees. BDS, however, asserts the rights of all.
-
-Proposals for a two-state solution, Lustick argues, had always put their “emphasis on the sovereign independence of those states, with almost no consideration of the rights and statuses of the populations they will govern.”
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-Moreover, proponents of the two-state solution had often resorted to chauvinistic arguments heralding separation and instilling fear of an Arab demographic problem, in effect “exploiting and even fanning Jewish hatred and fear of Arabs.”
-
-The BDS movement, by contrast, focuses on “realizing Palestinian rights to equality and nondiscrimination under international law and the laws of the state that governs them,” Lustick writes.
-
-As he probes what the BDS “process” might look like, however, he raises sensitive questions regarding Palestinian national rights. These include whether Palestinians should boycott municipal elections in Israeli-controlled Jerusalem instead of using them to improve conditions there.
-
-Similarly, he suggests “not opposing annexation per se but rather shaping it.” Lustick seems to imply that since BDS is a process and since the two-state solution is dead, it may not make sense to oppose all annexation plans.
-
-He also seems to reduce Palestinian civil society demands to one: equal rights. In doing so, Lustick neglects that Palestinian civil society’s call for BDS also demands ending the occupation and allowing Palestinian refugees to exercise their right to return.
-
-Perhaps because the author is a specialist in Israeli politics, he focuses unduly on what the Israeli left can accomplish within the country and neglects the role of the global BDS movement, particularly in the US and Europe.
-
-That movement can influence directly the governments or blocs that play crucial roles in upholding Israeli apartheid, especially the US, UK and the EU. The challenge then is to pressure legislators to recognize that espousing support for a two-state solution is not an answer to the question of Palestinian rights, it’s an obfuscation.
-
-Rod Such is a former editor for World Book and Encarta encyclopedias. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and is active with the Occupation-Free Portland campaign.
+Mourners pray during the funeral of Muhammad Ashour, 21 November 2012.
+
+APA imagesUnder a mulberry tree on a sunny day, Muhammad Ibrahim Ashour and five of his cousins were playing near their homes on Siyam street in the Zaytoun neighborhood of southern Gaza City.
+It was Tuesday, 20 November and Israeli warplanes were carrying out intensive air strikes on the area, and many other parts of the coastal occupied territory. All of a sudden, an Israeli drone-fired missile hit the mulberry tree, killing eight-year-old Muhammad and wounding the five cousins and Muhammad’s eighty-year-old grandfather.
+Muhammad was one of nearly three dozen children killed during Israel’s eight consecutive days of intense bombing and shelling across Gaza last month.
+According to the Gaza health ministry, 183 persons were killed during Israel’s offensive. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that 103 Palestinian civilians were killed. Almost 1,400 Palestinians were injured, including 155 elderly persons and 220 women, the health ministry says.
+Loud explosion
+“It was almost 4pm Tuesday, and I was coming back from afternoon prayer in a nearby mosque,” recalled Muhammad’s uncle, also named Muhammad Ashour, but goes by Abu Rizeq.
+Abu Rizeq was returning from giving his condolences to his neighbors, the Abu Zour family. Some of their children had been killed by an Israeli warplane.
+“All a sudden, I heard a loud explosion just west of me but I didn’t imagine it was in the vicinity of my family,” he said.
+“I rushed to find Muhammad laying on the ground with his leg amputated and abdomen torn apart, while the other children, who are also my nephews, were wounded as well,” Abu Rizeq recalled, pointing at an almost half-meter crater just beneath a mulberry tree near the Ashour family’s home.
+Children targeted
+Abu Rizeq added: “I couldn’t imagine my nephew would be a target for their warplanes. Our home is almost three kilometers away from the borderline and as you see, all four homes belong to me and my other brothers and no stranger can approach this area.”
+“Our women, ourselves and our children are the only ones here,” he explained. “The moment the explosion hit just a few meters away from the family house, I was in shock while an ambulance came over to rescue the wounded children and my dead nephew Muhammad.”
+Abu Rizeq and his son searched for Muhammad’s leg, which had been blown off.
+“My son wrapped it up and sent it to the hospital, where Muhammad and the other wounded were evacuated,” he said.
+Since August, Abu Rizeq had been taking care of his nephew. Muhammad’s father, Ibrahim, his mother and their four daughters had returned from the United Arab Emirates, but Ibrahim soon went back to prepare for a permanent move.
+“Just one day before that Tuesday, I spoke to Muhammad and asked him to take care. But he replied, laughing: ‘Uncle, don’t worry about me, I will be a martyr, I will be a martyr,’” Abu Rizeq said.
+Life-shattering phone call
+Ibrahim Ashour is an electronics engineer and was in the UAE when his son was killed. The 49-year-old father spoke to The Electronic Intifada nearby a new house being constructed where Ibrahim and his now five-member family plan to live permanently, canceling plans to relocate to the Gulf.
+“I was informed by phone that Muhammad was killed and by then, I kept restrained and only said alhamdullilah [praise be to God] and whispered some prayers and prepared myself to return back to Gaza to be with my wife and daughters during such a hard time,” he said.
+“The moment Muhammad was born we were extremely happy as he came after we had three daughters, the eldest of whom is 16. I told myself and my wife that we need no more children after God had given us Muhammad.”
+“Once I asked Muhammad, ‘Where is your brother?’ He answered me with anger, ‘My mother should bring one more brother for me,’” Ibrahim recalled with a sad smile on his face.
+A leader
+In the UAE, Muhammad was an intelligent schoolboy who used to excel at most subjects and showed leadership skills.
+“All his teachers used to love Muhammad very much and during phone calls with me, all of them expressed great sorrow for his death at the hands of Israel,” said Ibrahim. “My son used to have a group of friends at school and his friends relied on him to lead them.”
+According to the grieving father, Muhammad used to be fond of football on TV, especially Spanish football star Ronaldo from Real Madrid, and computer games.
+“Once, he was playing football in the yard of our Emirates home and his mother asked him to come back before 6pm,” Ibrahim said. “Yet he came back almost two hours later and said, ‘I forgot — I was enjoying playing, forgive me mom, forgive me.’”
+Muhammad’s eleven-year-old cousin, Qasem Ashour, was a close friend. Qasem sat idle under the mulberry tree where his cousin was slain, now adorned with a poster of Muhammad. Qasem was in no mood to play where Muhammad was killed and his relatives were wounded.
+“Every night I dream of Muhammad. He says: ‘Qasem, let’s play around, let’s ride the bike,’” Qasem said.
+“I miss Muhammad and don’t play with kids as usual. I loved Muhammad so much. He was polite, quite different from other children around,” he added.
+A bird in heaven
+“Muhammad is now a bird in heaven,” said Muhammad’s sister, five-year-old Huda. “Muhammad used to play with me and let me play on the iPhone,” the little girl went on. She suddenly stopped talking and smiling.
+The other three sisters and Muhammad’s mother were still too grieved to speak about their lost brother and son.
+Ibrahim is now set to go back to the UAE to finish his work as an electronic engineer, then return once and for all to his Gaza neighborhood. Just near the mulberry tree, some construction workers are endeavoring to finish building the family’s new Gaza home.
+“I have not regretted returning to Gaza even though my only son has been killed,” Ibrahim said, holding Huda’s hand near the hole in the earth left by the missile strike. “On the contrary — I want to say it outright — we will remain here, as rooted as this mulberry tree. I pray to God that I will have one, two or three sons to fill in the gap that Muhammad has left.”
+Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.
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-Connecting issues and joint struggle will build a better future.
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-ActiveStillsToday, in the Western world, as Arizona and the United States await the fateful decision by Arizona Schools Chief John Huppenthal on whether Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) is non-compliant with the Ethnic Studies ban, 10,000 miles away fellow youth leaders carry the Arab Spring into summer.As youth activists organizing to defend and preserve Ethnic Studies in Arizona, we’d like to highlight some related, global issues in our struggle. Arizona residents alert to the history of these lands know very well the issues of human displacement, expulsion, transfer, ethnic cleansing and extermination. More importantly, they know of the historical consequences of equality denied and justice delayed.Speaking as Arizona youth intermingled with indigenous, white, Arab, Jewish and Chicana/Mexicana roots, Arizona’s history relates to us as descendants of both settler and indigenous peoples. This history can provide insight into the Israel-Palestine conflict and prospects for peace in those torn borderlands of 1948, 1967, and today.A review of the history of modern Palestine reflects a startling image of the conquest and colonization of traditional indigenous lands settled by the US.In his essay “The Iron Wall,” one of the “founding fathers” of Israel, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, outlines a basic observation of human history that “there has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country.” An honest cynic, Jabotinsky recognized that the Palestinian indigenous population “look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism [a form of Jewish nationalism aiming to create a Jewish state] in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile.”Jabotinsky knew, as Israeli leaders know today, that the indigenous peoples must be driven out by force if policies of foreign settlement are to be maintained: “Zionist colonization must .. proceed regardless of the native population and it should continue “behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach,” he wrote.After all, “there are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing,” remarked leading Israeli historian, Benny Morris to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2004. “Even the great American democracy,” Morris says, “could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians.”Indeed, settler movements act alike to justify the indefensible. But the dispossessed tell a different story of lost family and land connections, impaired way of life and damaged cultural ties from generation to generation.Another crucial aspect of settler-colonialism is to deny native peoples access to their cultural institutions which preserve and enrich their heritage, memory and future generations.This is where the struggles of Chicana/Mexican-American, Palestinian and Native indigenous peoples intertwine. In Ethnic Studies, we retain the power in our social-based education to keep our culture from being erased. Indeed, the retention of culture and educational integrity are the most threatening obstacles to dominant groups attempting to overpower minority ethnic groups as in Arizona and Palestine.This is not only true in a state such as Arizona where HB2281, signed into law in May 2010, outlawed Ethnic Studies programs on false grounds of promoting racism and the “overthrow of the US government” — enabling economic sanctions on any school district rendered non-compliant with the ban (“Arizona bill targeting ethnic studies signed into law,” Los Angeles Times, 12 May 2010). One of Israel’s most prominent military and political leaders, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was quoted by Haaretz in 2004 admonishing that “Palestinian education and propaganda are more dangerous to Israel than Palestinian weapons.”Current Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne (previously AZ Schools Chief) and Gov. Jan Brewer couldn’t have been more eloquent in their own recognition that Ethnic Studies is “dangerous” because it enables our people to retain our education on our terms rather than simply accept imposed history.Israel’s own Ethnic Studies ban might make them blush with pride. On 22 March, the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) passed the “Nakba Law,” which banned schools from teaching the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that coincided with the creation of Israel. Also like HB2281, the “Nakba Law” enables the state to withhold public funding to institutions which fail to comply with the law.In a letter sent to Israeli legislators prior to the vote, Adalah, the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel, warned that “the law stood to cause major harm to the principle of equality and to the rights of Arab citizens to preserve their history and culture” and urged the bill to be rejected, according to the organization’s 27 March press release (“Adalah: Law violates rights of Arab minority to preserve its history and culture”).A less discussed aspect of HB2281 bans Arizona Ethnic Studies programs from “advocating ethnic solidarity.” We proudly violate this aspect of the law in our solidarity with Palestinians and Native indigenous peoples.When dominant powers realize that ethnic minority groups merely want equal rights within a society, we can all live among each other in respect and mutual dignity.It is through seeing these connections, and joining in each other’s struggles, that we can come one step closer to building a better world for ourselves and future generations.Yusi El Boujami is an Arab-Jewish American sophomore at City High School. Gabriel Schivone is a Chicano-Jewish American and a student at the University of Arizona and a coordinator of AZ Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine and passenger on Gaza Freedom Flotilla 2 sailing in late June 2011. Ryan Velasquez is a Chicano American and a City High School 2011 graduate who gained national attention in late April 2011 when he and eight other Tucson high school youth chained themselves to the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) School Board’s chairs and dais in order to prevent a resolution vote that would comply with HB2281’s ban on Ethnic Studies.
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+‘When we started shooting, so did they’
+It was never going to be easy for a Palestinian to film in the West Bank. Elia Suleiman tells Xan Brooks how he became a hit-and-run director
+Monday January 13, 2003
+The Guardian
+When Elia Suleiman brought his film Divine Intervention to Ramallah he found the Israeli soldiers had got there first. The entrance to the cinema had been bombed, the cash till rifled, the Dolby stereo stolen. Storming the adjacent “house of culture”, the soldiers proceeded to gun down a row of costumed mannequins and shoot holes in a canvas that hung on the wall. “They executed a painting,” Suleiman says, before dissolving into giggles. “I thought that was so funny. I mean, it’s depressing when you’re there. I was in Ramallah only yesterday and I was completely devastated. But we all have our own mechanism to lift us up again. Yesterday was a nightmare. Today I’m laughing.”
+Divine Inspiration is the Suleiman mechanism writ large. The Jury prize-winner at last year’s Cannes film festival, it is a 90-minute procession of comic vignettes that spotlight the absurdities of Palestinian life under Israeli rule. As you would expect of a film that opens with a panting Santa Claus being hounded through Nazareth and closes with a pressure cooker seething on a stove, Suleiman’s film goes heavy on the allegories. And yet Divine Intervention is finally too bemused to stand as a traditional satire, and too oddball to quite qualify as propaganda.
+In terms of style and content, it swings in out of left field. Stumped by the film’s lugubrious line in comedy, and by the way its director doubles as its stone-faced, tragedian hero, critics have suggested Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati as possible inspirations. “Which is funny, because I’ve never seen any of their films,” says Suleiman. “My films have a silent movie aspect only because I don’t know much about making films, so there is a naivete and a literalness that’s similar to the comedies of the silent era. But because of all my cultural baggage, I suppose that I make films that are complicatedly simple, as opposed to simply complicated.”
+Now 42, Suleiman has been making these films for six years. Before that he was working, as an illegal immigrant, initially in a London wine bar, later in a clippings library in New York (“Minimum wage,” he says. “And I was very lonely”). It was in New York that he began schooling himself in cinema: reading about Godard before actually seeing his films and cannibalising the back catalogues of Bresson, Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. “City of Sadness was a key film for me,” he says. “All these Taiwanese are so Palestinian it’s unbelievable. There’s something in their mannerisms, in the way that they sit on their balconies that seemed eerily close to home.” Returning to his native Nazareth, he took his experience of returning to a homeland that was only halfway home and farmed it into a semi-autobiographical feature, Chronicle of a Disappearance. Divine Intervention, he says, is just an extension of that inquiry. Sometimes wry, sometimes gloomy, its observations all have a basis in real events, from the Israeli soldiers who periodically release a prisoner to direct tourists to the Holy City, to the massed patients who chainsmoke in the hospital corridor, dragging their IV drips behind them.
+The way the director tells it, the making of Divine Intervention was a weird mix of guerrilla opportunism and harmonious collaboration. Many of the cast and crew were Israeli, including Suleiman’s line producer (and close friend) Avi Kleinberger. This helped smooth things over with the authorities. But on other occasions, Suleiman was forced to resort to hit-and-run tactics, showing up, filming a scene and then piling back into the van. “It was very difficult. Once the authorities know that you’re a Palestinian and that the M16s the actors are carrying are real, then forget it. East Jerusalem was terrible to film in and Nazareth even worse, with all the trouble there. Whenever we started shooting, they started shooting.” One key shot of an exploding tank had to be staged on a back road in France.
+Off-screen there were explosions, too. At Cannes the director was quoted as saying that he rejected the ideal of an independent Palestinian state. This enraged both the Israelis - who filed the words as a call for an end to Israel - and the Arabic press, which saw the director as tacitly condoning an ongoing ghettoised community. Neither, says Suleiman, is exactly what he meant. “What I said was that I want an end of occupation. That is what a Palestinian state should mean. I oppose the notion of statehood as it stands at the moment. And yes, I do think that Israel should cease to exist as a state for the Jewish people and commence to be a democratic, secular state for all its citizens, and that includes the one million or so Palestinians living there who are marginalised, with racist practices against them. What I want to see is this: no religion, multi-national, open borders.” He shrugs. “But I can see that this probably cannot happen for generations. When all the wounds have healed.”
+The problem, Suleiman realises, is that the current climate makes it impossible to separate his film from its cultural baggage; to view it clear of the swarming suspicion and hatred surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian stand-off. In the eyes of the world, Suleiman can never simply be a humble film-maker with a semi-autobiographical tale to tell. He’s a spokesman for a culture denied a voice, and a crusader for a national cinema for a people without a nation. Inevitably, his film is read first and foremost as an impassioned broadside against Ariel Sharon’s policies.
+Such a position clearly has him exasperated. When I ask how Divine Intervention has been received in Israel, he tells me that it has yet to go on general release. “But there are Israelis who love cinema, so people will go to see it when it does.” He shrugs. “And maybe they will love it, and maybe they will hate it. And who is ‘they’ anyway? These are individuals, with their own tastes and desires. The foreign press with their patronising, colonial discourse are always asking me: ‘What do you think the Palestinians will make of this film?’ What Palestinians? Which ones? It’s like saying: ‘What will the Jews feel about this or that?’ ” In his agitation, Suleiman fishes a cigarette from the pack before realising that he already has one burning in the ashtray. “It’s so patronising to assume that all Palestinians are the same. I had a screening of the film recently and one guy came up afterwards and told me that he didn’t like the film because of the cursing. He was an older man and he simply didn’t care to hear so many curses.”
+That said, there is one common currency that Suleiman will acknowledge. “Answer me this,” he says. “How is it that, even with all the different cultural codes in the world, people will always laugh at exactly the same time in a film?” Do they, though? “Oh, they do. I know they do, because I’ve stood at the back of the cinema during every screening and I’ve heard them. And remember that every spectator is different from the one sitting next to him. But there must be some communal ritual at work. I’m not sure what it is, but if it gives everyone a sense of togetherness, if only for a moment, then it must have a good consequence.” He pauses to light the other cigarette. “That’s what makes me happy. It’s not about getting people to learn about Palestine, because I think that they learn about Palestine when they laugh. They become a little bit Palestinian, just by that.”

combined/texts/1026.txt

@@ -1,90 +1,36 @@
-Lowkey has long been regarded as an enemy by Israel’s supporters.
+In this video, the Gaza Strip can be seen from above: not from an Israeli military aircraft, but through the drone camera of Soliman Hijjy, a 31-year-old aerial photographer in the territory.
 
-ZUMA PressThe rapper and campaigner Lowkey was smeared by a pro-Israel group before a planned visit to one of Britain’s best-known colleges.
+“I started aerial photography during Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. We recorded the extent of the destruction that Israel caused in its last assault on Gaza,” Hijjy told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-On 15 March, Lowkey gave a talk via Zoom arranged by the Palestine Solidarity Society at Cambridge University.
+Over the course of a 51-day assault on Gaza that summer, Israel killed an average of 11 children per day.
 
-The talk – titled  “The Israel Lobby’s War Against You” – was supposed to take place on campus a week earlier. The night before it was scheduled, however, Lowkey was contacted by the organizers, who informed him the event had been postponed.
+When the Great March of Return started in March 2018, Hijjy took to documenting Israel’s crimes at the Israel-Gaza boundary then too.
 
-The postponement followed pressure exerted by the Cambridge University Jewish Society.
+He says that aerial photography “played a big role in recording the events” and “drew attention to the marches and the Palestinian issue.”
 
-In an email message to the organizers of the talk featuring Lowkey, the group alleged he “has repeatedly used unfounded conspiracy theories and harmful arguments about ‘the Israel lobby’ to attack the British Jewish community, often in a way that undermines the lived experiences and realities of Jewish students.”
+Just as Israel targets reporters on the ground, aerial photographers too face significant obstacles.
 
-The message, seen by The Electronic Intifada, claimed that Lowkey had dismissed “genuine complaints of anti-Semitism from British Jews” and depicted those complaints as “a sinister ploy designed to promote a certain agenda on Israel-Palestine.” The group also accused Lowkey of arguing that the Israel lobby was “behind criticisms of anti-Semitism” in the UK Labour Party, when Jeremy Corbyn was its leader.
+Israel bans so-called “dual-use” items from Gaza on the pretext that they may have military purposes.
 
-Funded by Israel
+The list has included medical supplies, binoculars, several kinds of cameras, GPS equipment and many other basic commodities.
 
-The Cambridge University Jewish Society is among around 70 groups that comprise the Union of Jewish Students (UJS). Jack Lubner, a Cambridge student who signed the email message smearing Lowkey, is also active in the UJS at national level.
+“Everywhere else in the world, people are permitted to take out their camera and take pictures, except for us,” Hijjy told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-The UJS makes plain its commitment to Israel in its official constitution. One objective of the group is “inspiring Jewish students to making an enduring commitment” to Israel, that document states.
+He says that Israel’s occupation is the biggest obstacle to journalistic freedom.
 
-In 2017, an investigation by Al Jazeera revealed that the UJS is financed by the Israeli embassy in London.
+Through his photography, Hijjy also wants to convey Gaza City’s natural beauty, “to showcase normal life, even as we show the political circumstances, the destruction and the blockade,” he says.
 
-Asked for a comment, Lowkey said “I’m not surprised” a group with strong connections to the Israeli embassy “came after me in this way.”
+“People want to see the beautiful aspects of Gaza, to show that Gaza is full of life and it is beautiful, but its political reality and Israel’s blockade and occupation are what tarnish its beauty.”
 
-“But it’s certainly disturbing that yet again the Israel lobby is attempting to prevent pro-Palestinian, anti-apartheid perspectives from reaching uni campuses in the UK,” he added.
+Hijjy hopes to one day take pictures in other Palestinian cities, including Jerusalem, Jaffa and Acre.
 
-“UJS, through the Masa Israel Journey program can serve as a gateway to the Israeli occupation forces. The two programs it can connect members to are Marva and Tzofim Garin Tzabar which directly enlist teenagers into the Israeli army.”
-
-The email message from the Cambridge University Jewish Society argued that the title of the rapper’s talk “plays into a trope that Lowkey has employed against Jewish students.” Yet it failed to back up the insinuation that Lowkey is hostile toward Jews in any way.
-
-That is not surprising. While Lowkey is a trenchant critic of Israel and its state ideology Zionism, there is no evidence that he is bigoted against Jews based on their ethnicity or religion.
-
-“Potential nightmare”
-
-On the contrary, he has a solid track record of opposing racism generally.
-
-Because he has mastered an artform – hip-hop – popular among young audiences and sought to educate his fans about Palestine, Lowkey has long been regarded as an enemy by pro-Israel lobbyists. Back in 2011, the right-wing Jewish Chronicle quoted an unnamed “expert studying anti-Israel activity” describing the influence of Lowkey and similar performers as a “potential nightmare.”
-
-Far from dismissing genuine complaints of anti-Semitism, Lowkey has condemned how such bigotry is cynically weaponized by the Israel lobby.
-
-So, the Board of Deputies, an org that worked tirelessly to remove Corbyn, has said for the first time in it's 2020 Trustees' Report, that it has a "close working relationship with the Embassy of Israel in the UK" and "links to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs & IDF." pic.twitter.com/aJ2PUoshjX— Lowkey (@Lowkey0nline) July 28, 2021
-
-During Jeremy Corbyn’s time as leader of Britain’s Labour Party, pro-Israel groups manufactured an “anti-Semitism crisis.”
-
-Numerous allegations of anti-Semitism were made against Labour Party activists.
-
-The allegations were usually based on comments criticizing Israel’s policies and activities. Many of the allegations targeted Jewish political activists who have rejected the ideology of Zionism.
-
-Lowkey was correct in speaking out against a lobby which has conflated opposition to Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry.
-
-Jack Lubner, who signed the email message protesting against Lowkey’s planned visit to Cambridge, was among those who took part in the witch hunt against Israel’s critics.
-
-Lubner campaigned for Labour to punish Chris Williamson, then one of its lawmakers, a few years ago.
-
-Williamson was suspended from Labour in 2019 after he denounced the witch hunt against Labour members who supported Palestinian rights.
-
-Double standards
-
-The Union of Jewish Students, which Lubner represents, is seeking to muzzle Israel’s opponents in British universities.
-
-It played a prominent role in efforts to have David Miller fired from his post as a sociology professor with Bristol University. Miller, who has researched the pro-Israel lobby meticulously, was dismissed even though he was cleared of anti-Semitism in investigations launched by the university.
-
-The treatment of Lowkey can be contrasted with how Cambridge University hosted Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, last month.
-
-Hotovely’s visit went ahead as planned despite how it attracted a protest from Palestine solidarity activists.
-
-There are clear double standards involved here.
-
-An elite British college is willing to welcome a representative of Israel’s apartheid state. Yet when a critic of that same state is invited, some unfounded smears are sufficient to have the event postponed.
-
-Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Twitter: @KitKlarenberg.
+Video produced by Amjad Ayman Yaghi, camera work by Jaber Badwan, footage provided by Soleiman Hijjy and editing done by HQ Company, which Hijjy heads.
 Tags
 
-Lowkey
-
-Jack Lubner
-
-Union of Jewish Students
-
-Jeremy Corbyn
-
-Chris Williamson
-
-David Miller
+Soliman Hijjy
 
-The Jewish Chronicle
+Great March of Return
 
-Al Jazeera
+photography
 
-Tzipi Hotovely
+video

combined/texts/1027.txt

@@ -1,27 +1,52 @@
-Like hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, Lifta was forcibly depopulated and ethnically cleansed in 1948.
-
-In Israel, renovation projects are frequently used in order to build a national narrative, ignoring the deep contradictions between planning and human rights that inevitable become apparent in such initiatives. Lifta, like the ‘unrecognised village’ of Ein Hud, is a potent symbol of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and its tragic human consequences. The ‘unofficial’ Palestinian village of Ein Hud was built by refugees fleeing the original Ein Hud nearby; Israeli artists later colonized the old village, renaming it Ein Hod. The new Ein Hud’s struggle for legitimacy (and the planning system’s refusal to grant this) was the subject of FAST’s recent architecture competition.
-The village of Lifta, which lies just outside Jerusalem, has been abandoned since the Israeli army drove out the last of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948. Today Lifta is more or less a ghost town while the former villagers live mainly in East Jerusalem and Ramallah. Now, however, a renovation project aims to turn Lifta into an expensive and exclusive Jewish residential area - reinventing its history in the process. While Ein Hud and Lifta are historically and spatially unique, they are both symbols of the deep complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began not with the occupation of 1967, but with the creation of Israel in 1948. Viewing the history and transformation of each, from Palestinian village to the realization of a utopian ideology of a modern society and nation, reveals much about the conflict, and how planning tools are fundamental in making the transition.
-One nation - Israel - is being invented through national narratives and ethos, through culture, language, image, history and space, another nation - Palestine - is being brutally negated. It is essential to study this transformation process, from land confiscation to the displacement of one group and accommodation of another, the role of master planning, zoning, programming, planting, demolishing, fencing, and so on. Only in becoming fully aware of this process can we actively realign our profession to create viable alternatives. As with Ein Hud, we aim to explore the possibilities for an alternative planning solution, for Lifta.
-The renovation of Lifta should take into consideration not just the esthetic history of the village but also its human component. In contrast with Ein Hud, in Lifta we have the opportunity to offer an alternative before a new order has been imposed, making it subsequently harder to achieve an equal solution. The alternative to Lifta’s official renovation plans will therefore be the result of activism and planning.“Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations. Our cultural and natural heritage are both irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration.” - UNESCO
-The masterplan: The Lifta legacy
-In its present derelict, largely abandoned state, Lifta captures the moment of destruction of Palestinian life in 1948, when Israeli forces conquered it. Lifta’s 2,000 villagers fled - mostly to East Jerusalem and the Ramallah area. However, unlike many of the 530 Palestinian villages and towns also conquered and usually bulldozed during the war, many of Lifta’s 450 houses remained untouched; yet the village was never ‘officially’ resettled. Unlike Ein Hud (which later became Ein Hod), Jewish settlers did not inhabit Lifta. This does not mean that all the original houses remained vacant. Several Jewish families did move (illegally) into former Palestinian homes. Some of these families have been living there for a number of decades, and seem to have become permanent residents.
-In another part of the village, people from the fringes of society have settled: drug addicts and dealers, run-away teenagers, as well as nature freaks. Even so, several dozen houses, some now falling apart, have remained empty. They stand as monuments marking the events that took place here during the 1948 War. Over the years, Lifta has remained a different and unique place, for several reasons. Geographically, it is part of the ‘new’ West Jerusalem; however, it represents and symbolizes the architecture and the topography of Palestinian towns. Lifta remained in its place, as if frozen in time.
-Topographically, it is located lower than its surroundings; this gives the feeling that Lifta somehow exists beneath the surface of the city. It seems to occupy a different level of history, geography and society. Those who have inhabited Lifta since 1948 are the ‘other,’ in the context of the larger Israeli public. They live outside the borders of law and order, and even outside our vision, since they usually go about their shady business down below, near the village’s fountain. As mentioned already, Lifta is unique in that, unlike many other villages, its houses remained almost intact, yet without being inhabited by Jews as part of the Zionist enterprise.
-Many of Lifta’s refugees live today in East Jerusalem, not far from their village. This is not unique to Lifta, as refugees often live in close proximity to their pre-1948 towns and villages.2 However, Lifta is distinctive in that many of its original inhabitants are not citizens of Israel, but rather East Jerusalem residents, who have limited civil status. ow, a new development plan intends to turn Lifta into exclusive real estate. The plan would transform the village into an expensive living area, with some shops, a hotel and open green areas, while at the same time maintaining its villagey atmosphere and keeping some of its original buildings and structures. The plan was submitted to the Jerusalem Municipality Planning Committee in 2004 and was approved by a regional committee. Reading this plan, together with an earlier development plan from the 1980s, consistent attitudes are revealed in plans for reshaping abandoned Palestinian villages.
-It is of great significance that the plan does not ignore the many remains of the Palestinian village; on the contrary, these are deconstructed and become a central element of the new design, with dozens of them earmarked for preservation.
-The official Israeli masterplan of Lifta.
-
-In addition, the natural scenery of the place - the spring, trees, and terraces - are a major component of the plan, which strives to preserve the authentic surroundings of Lifta. Israeli authorities took part in creating the plan, and also gave it an official approval, and for this reason it is informative to observe the connection between state ideology and planning. Lifta has been partially in ruins since it was conquered in 1948. The lands belonging to it were confiscated by the state. However, the centre of the village was never rebuilt.
-Today, there are some 55 Palestinian houses remaining from the original 450, some standing intact while others are almost entirely derelict. Several houses - those closest to the road leading to Jerusalem - were occupied decades ago, by Jewish families who still live there. These families apparently will not be evacuated when the new construction plan is implemented. The plan essentially focuses on reshaping the space of Lifta’s village centre, the surroundings of the famous spring, and the bottom part of the wadi, the ravine on whose slopes Lifta is situated.
-The plan, numbered 6036, was designed by two architect offices: G. Kartas - S. Grueg and S. Ahronson, and is part of the “local space planning of Jerusalem.” The plan was submitted on June 28, 2004, and according to its title refers to “The Spring of Naftoach (Lifta).” The plan includes a change to the previous construction plans for the area.
-Desirable relicts
-The plan’s goal, as stated in the document, is to build residential areas, some of them preserving the original houses that still exist in the village centre. It includes plans to build areas for commerce, shops, public buildings, a hotel, and passages. In addition, some part of the scenery will remain untouched for the public to enjoy. The total area to be included in the plan is 455 dunams (45,000 square metres). Some 50 houses located before 1948 in the centre of the Palestinian village will be preserved. A total of 243 housing units will be built, as well as a 120-room hotel.3
-The relations between the masterplan and the Palestinian village of Lifta are various; in the plan’s goals it specifies: “instructions on how to preserve, restore and reconstruct the existing structures and the terraces inside the village of Lifta, and their integration with the new developments in the area.” In the chapter about “A particular residential area to be preserved,” these references can be found: “any additional building or reconstruction or renovation of houses in these areas will be conducted by maintaining the architectural nature of the existing structures that are destined to be preserved, including their building scale and architectural details, and by keeping and completing the distinctive fabric of that area.”; and “there will be no changes in the level of the lands and the terraces; no damage will be caused to trees, apart from when paving access routes and shops; while “the construction work of preserving, restoring and expanding will only be done reusing old stones”.
-On “areas for institutions,” the plan states that “construction will be carried out using natural square stones chiselled manually. Building with stone that has not been chiselled is forbidden. On the terraces, it says: “All the existing terraces … are to be preserved and restored … Terraces that are to be restored will be created using stones similar to the existing ones” On detailing “conditions for building permits”, the plan says that it will be required to hand in “a document that includes detailed instructions … for preventing destruction of structures for preservation, careful detailing of the greenery in the area, and explaining the methods of construction to be used so that the existing vulnerable fabric is not harmed”.
-On the trees in the area, it says: “Those trees that are located in the areas of buildings, roads and infrastructures are meant to be preserved and uprooting them is forbidden”. On the “particular residential area for preservation,” a previous construction programme for Lifta is mentioned. Dating back to April 11, 1984, plan number 2351 is still to be implemented as part of the new plan, excluding specific articles that contradict the newer plan. Plan 2351 was never realized, but looking at its instructions regarding the preservation of Lifta’s remains is important for our topic.
-The goals of the previous plan were that inside the village area there would be “museums, shows, offices, and institutions that care for nature, landscape and that place.” It included “instructions for preserving the village, the orchard and the spring”; It insisted that, “the area designated to be preserved and renovated shall remain open to the public. Usages in that area that would involve closing it off to the general public will not be approved. Fencing the area selected to be restored is also forbidden.”
-In addition, “in the area of the nature reserve, it will be allowed to conduct actions needed for preserving the nature and landscape of the spring and its immediate surroundings, the agricultural steps and the orchard; it will also be permissible to renovate the existing structures in the area of the nature reserve - these building can be used only as museums and study rooms”. On “buildings to be preserved,” the plan mentions three olive oil process structures and two halls dating back to the time of the Crusades. This are to be renovated, and “any archaeological findings there are not be harmed”.
-Places without people A ccording to this view, the remains of Lifta exist in the landscape and should be preserved. The trees, spring, terraces, natural stone, remaining houses (complete and incomplete), and the olive oil process structures are all originally from Lifta. They even have character, like “distinctive texture” and a unique “architectural nature.” The plans are thus not in denial concerning the Palestinian space of the village. On the contrary, they are aware of its advantages and use them, through the practices of preservation, to elevate the touristic and commercial real-estate value of the project. This comes across clearly in the earlier master plan (plan 2351), which stresses that “the area which is subject to directives of preservation and renovation is to remain open to the public.”
-Those who will visit the place, and not Lifta’s residents alone, will be able to enjoy the remains of the renovated village, and access to it will not be denied in any way. The aesthetics and the architecture of the Palestinian ruins raise the value of this space, and therefore will be professionally safeguarded.
-[NEXT]
+COVID-19 cases in Gaza have skyrocketed in recent weeks.
+
+In March, active coronavirus cases in the Gaza Strip more than tripled.
+
+During that month, Gaza’s health authorities confirmed the first cases of the more transmissible B117 variant first discovered in the UK, which has caused major surges in many countries.
+
+UN monitoring group OCHA has noted a significant increase in patients being admitted to intensive care units and requiring ventilation in the occupied West Bank and Gaza in recent weeks.
+
+Gaza’s health sector has been devastated over the course of the Israeli blockade, assisted by Egypt, that is now entering its 14th year, and successive Israeli military assaults.
+
+Human rights groups have warned that the pandemic would stretch Gaza’s medical system beyond capacity.
+
+There is no doubt that it took a further hit with the coronavirus over the last year.
+
+Health authorities in the Gaza Strip have reported a shortage in oxygen supplies for COVID-19 patients, especially during surges of cases.
+
+“The most important therapy for COVID-19 patients, in addition to medicines, is oxygen,” the head of the Palestine-Turkey Friendship Hospital in Gaza City, Marwan al-Hams, told The Electronic Intifada.
+
+While certain hospitals have small oxygen production plants, they do not have the capacity to produce the oxygen supplies that coronavirus patients need when cases are high.
+
+“There’s a deficit of about 50 to 60 percent for oxygen-generating plants,” Khalid Abu Jayyab, head of maintenance at the same hospital, told The Electronic Intifada during a coronavirus surge earlier this year.
+
+“We are suffering a severe shortage during the pandemic,” he added. “The Israeli occupation and siege bears full responsibility.”
+
+The European Hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza is the main facility where coronavirus patients are being treated.
+
+It is also facing shortages of medical oxygen.
+
+“We need new sources of oxygen, whether it’s liquid oxygen or new oxygen generators,” Abu Jayyab added.
+
+Mahmoud Shalabi of the health charity Medical Aid for Palestinians said in November that Gaza’s health ministry “currently only has a capacity of 1,300 liters of oxygen per minute while they are in need of 3,000.”
+
+Of the nearly 95,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Gaza Strip since March 2020, almost 19,000 are currently active.
+
+Of more than 2,500 Palestinians who have died from the disease, more than 800 have been in Gaza.
+
+Video by Mohammed Asad.
+Tags
+
+COVID-19
+
+coronavirus
+
+Khalid Abu Jayyab
+
+Marwan al-Hams
+
+Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital
+
+Medical oxygen
+
+video

combined/texts/1028.txt

@@ -1,54 +1,19 @@
-The anniversary of the killing of 13 unarmed Palestinian protesters inside the green line in October 2000 passed by this year without note.
+Conference hall at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Washington D.C. (Nigel Parry)
 
-APA imagesThe Palestinian calendar is permeated with anniversaries of uprisings, battles, massacres, fateful declarations and meaningless “independence” days. Despite our continuous pledge to never forget and never forgive, most of these once-paramount occasions have been transformed into fleeting memories — oscillating between irrelevance, fetishism and attempts by factions to exploit them for political gains.
-For instance, the thirteenth anniversary of the start of the second Palestinian intifada passed a few days ago, but it breezed by with remarkably little public or media attention. While this is neither surprising nor unprecedented, it is exceedingly disheartening.
-Although there are several negative aspects of the second intifada, it remains — for good or bad — a momentous, life-changing event for many Palestinians, particularly those of us born in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There are so many lessons we can draw from it, fatal mistakes to rue, and many disappointments and personal traumas to nurse.
-One thing is certain, however. The second intifada started out as a mass popular uprising in September 2000, in which unarmed Palestinians from Nazareth to Gaza took to the streets en masse. They faced more than a million bullets, fired by the Israeli army and police in the first three weeks of the intifada alone, and they shattered the pretense of stability that the Oslo accords endeavored to maintain.
-I write from a personal perspective, knowing that the process I underwent with the eruption of the second intifada was one experienced by many Palestinians — specifically Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship and live within the green line, Israel’s internationally-recognized armistice boundaries.
-Apolitical
-Growing up in an apolitical, conservative family, I paid relatively little heed to politics and to the Palestinian cause. Occupation slowly strangles all Palestinians, but the extent of its effect and visibility varies from one area to another.
-The few occasions I dared express my abhorrence of the Israeli occupation publicly — without understanding at the time the big words I was using — I would be reproached by my teacher or parents. Even when I summoned up the courage to call a radio show to speak about the anniversary of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, two weeks before the outbreak of the second intifada, I had to hide it from my parents for fear of retribution.
-“They will kick you out of school and put us in jail if you criticize this state,” my over-protective father would warn. He had spent his childhood under the Israeli military rule that governed Palestinians inside the green line between 1948 and 1966.
-And even though some of my parents’ fears stemmed from excessive paternalism and may have been blown out of proportion, it is not difficult to understand where they were coming from.
-After all, Palestinians inside the green line are not gullible enough to buy into the myth of Israeli democracy. They are fully aware of the repercussions that political activism entails. They have witnessed innumerable examples of Israel arresting and persecuting Palestinians simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
-The wall of fear erected by Israel since 1948 through a long process of dominance, isolation, soft power and naked violence appeared too solid for Palestinians to dismantle. The second Palestinian intifada, though, caused major holes in this wall, if only momentarily.
-No wishful thinking
-Remembering the massive demonstrations that took place inside the green line in the fall of 2000 brings shivers down my spine. For once, the talk of national unity was not just wishful thinking or a pointless cliché.
-The demonstrations truly brought Palestinians together. Probably for the first time, we as 1948 Palestinians (Palestinians with Israeli citizenship) felt relevant and part of the conversation. We did not just watch the news and comment about a Palestine so close, yet so far away from us. We actually made the news.
-For many, it was their first encounter with live ammunition and snipers. “For the first time, Nazareth appears on TV for something other than the Christmas mass,” joked a friend at the time.
-It was no longer possible for school administrators to silence students. We talked about the events of the second intifada during the first week of October 2000 in class and during breaks. We argued with our teachers, some of whom insisted on lecturing us about the importance of demonstrating in a “civilized” manner.
-The funeral processions for martyrs Iyad Loubani, Omar Akkawi and Wissam Yazbak, the three Palestinian protesters murdered by Israeli police in Nazareth, turned into mass protests. Some of my relatives who never cared about politics attended them.
-“The killing of these men by the Israeli occupation transcended politics;” “it’s a national cause, they are our sons”: these phrases were often repeated by people from neighboring villages.
-Israeli police would kill a total of 13 unarmed Palestinian demonstrators inside the green line over the course of eight days that month, most of them shot in the upper body at close range. There was no criminal investigation launched into the killings, nor were any of the police held to account.
-Fallacy of a free press
-The strike and protests in October 2000 endowed us with an invigorated sense of national belonging. The coverage of the protests by Israeli media which described protesters as rioters and extremists spreading bedlam dispelled the fallacy that Israel has a free press.
-The strong Israeli consensus on the “need” to meet protests with lethal power also proved, yet again, that Israel’s “left” is not essentially different from the right. We understood that Zionism has unleashed a tyrannical, racist regime against Palestinians everywhere, whether they live in Gaza, Jenin or Nazareth.
-Unfortunately, the 1 October 2000 anniversary commemorations have become a folklore event, filled with dull speeches by political leaders. The demonstration that marked the thirteenth anniversary in Kafr Manda in the Lower Galilee was almost a copy of most previous anniversary protests in different towns. And the number of demonstrators had decreased.
-Any attempt to break from this annual routine is hindered by the internal bureaucracy of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, to the dismay of Palestinian youth activists.
-Inseparable
-The problem does not just lie in the way we mark the second intifada inside the green line, however. Local political leaders and the media tend to refer to the mass protests inside the green line during October 2000 as the “October outburst,” treating them as if they were somehow separate events from the second intifada and as if they were only relevant to Palestinians with Israeli citizenship.
-The October 2000 protests inside the green line were an inseparable part of the second Palestinian intifada. Though short-lived, those protests smashed the barriers which divide Palestinians and isolate 1948 Palestinians from Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.
-And the October protests, like the second intifada in general, did not happen solely because of Ariel Sharon’s invasion of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The act of the former defense minister, who would be elected prime minister the following month, was a provocation. But there were long-festering social and political catalysts.
-While it is true that the second intifada can in no way be compared to the first intifada — which was built on grassroots mobilization, self-organization and sustained civil disobedience — it is important to remember that the second intifada was born out of the post-Oslo reality and a radically different Palestinian society.
-Opium
-Oslo has turned the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination into a bid for quasi-statehood and created a situation where Palestinians were forced to rely heavily on foreign aid and the opium of “civil society.”
-Israel’s control of Palestinian water and other natural resources effectively minimized Palestinians’ ability to be self-sufficient. So they left their work in their farms and took jobs with the Palestinian Authority.
-Twenty years later, Palestinians continue to pay the heavy costs of the Oslo accords that were forced on them. Israel’s theft of our natural resources has only hastened along with the settlements and the reliance on foreign aid.
-Palestinian Authority leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad have overseen a “state-building” project. It has included a rapacious neoliberal onslaught on the economy, the disarming of Fatah’s armed wing, the persecution of other armed resistance factions in the West Bank and the targeting of nonviolent dissidents.
-All of this, as well as the geographical separation between Gaza and the West Bank, has meant that any possibility of a sustainable, inclusive grassroots rebellion has become a far-fetched dream.
-For Abbas’ Palestinian Authority and its backers, such a rebellion is a nightmare they will do anything to prevent.
-If the second intifada has taught us one thing, however, it is that uprisings could happen at the most unpredictable of times and that we should never be deceived by the supposed stability.
-Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian anarchist and law graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. She can be followed on Twitter: @Budour48.
-Tags
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-second intifada
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-October 2000 killings
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-Oslo accords
+Members of the Arab American community and its supporters gathered at the 20th Annual Convention of the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), the nation’s largest Arab-American membership organization, held in Arlington, VA from the 12th to the 15th of June, 2003. At the Convention, the ADC Board of Directors adopted and committed the organization to the following resolutions:
+1) Whereas ADC is a grassroots American civil rights organization, dedicated to protecting the civil rights and liberties of people of Arab descent, and promoting their interests and concerns; and whereas the ADC membership strongly believes that the erosion of civil rights and liberties drastically undermines the foundations of American democracy; be it resolved that ADC will intensify its struggle to defend civil rights and liberties and seek every opportunity to strengthen existing alliances and forge new ones with all others who share ADC’s commitment to the promotion and protection of civil rights.
+2) Whereas ADC believes that in a democracy citizens should take an active part in the political life of their nation; and whereas ADC aims at the empowerment and mobilization of the Arab-American community which it believes has a great potential that has not been fully mobilized; and whereas it believes in working at both local and national levels to secure such empowerment; be it resolved that ADC will do its utmost to organize and mobilize the Arab-American community, its friends and supporters, and will strongly encourage Arab-Americans to run for office, engage in voter registration drives, and contribute to and volunteer for political campaigns at local, state and federal levels.
+3) Whereas widening the membership base of ADC, further mobilizing its membership and improving the effectiveness of ADC are central to meeting the challenge facing the Arab-American community; and whereas ADC is committed to democratic principles, the ideals of inclusion and the benefits of diversity of views; be it resolved that the ADC will continue to pursue ambitious plans of growth by developing new chapters and offices, improving fund raising and holding membership drives; be it further resolved that ADC will seek to establish innovations to improve transparency, communication and participation in ADC’S decision making process and all aspects of organizational efforts.
+4) Whereas ADC is committed to a just and lasting peace between Arabs and Israelis; and whereas any peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict should include ending the occupation of all occupied Arab lands, the creation of a fully independent sovereign Palestinian state and upholding the principle of the right of return based on international law and all relevant United Nations Resolutions; be it resolved that ADC will continue to advocate the right of the Palestinian people to freedom and self-determination in a fully independent state, living alongside Israel in peace and security.
+5) Whereas ADC is committed to the independence and territorial integrity of Iraq; and whereas ADC believes that it is vital that the Iraqi people are allowed to reclaim control of their own destiny; be it resolved that ADC will advocate an end to the occupation of Iraq, the complete restoration of Iraqi independence and the free election of a democratic government for the Iraqi people.
+6) Whereas ADC condemns terrorism and all forms of violence against innocent civilians regardless of the source and who the victims or perpetrators may be; and whereas it strongly believes that injustice breeds insecurity and that effective fighting of terrorism requires dealing with the underlying causes of injustice; be it resolved that ADC will urge the our government to take a more comprehensive approach to fighting terrorism, which would include eliminating the causes of injustice which might create sympathy for reprehensible acts.
+7) Whereas ADC believes that our country should assume its leadership role in the world through the promotion of the values that are reflected in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights; and whereas ADC would like our great nation to be perceived in the world as the carrier of the torch of freedom, equality and justice for all people; be it resolved that ADC calls on our government to adhere to the international rule of law within the framework of the United Nations in its relations with other states and seek objectivity and even handedness as a general principle, especially in regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
+8) Whereas ADC is strongly committed to democratic rule and its underlying values for all people; whereas all individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation and gender, should enjoy fundamental rights with equal protection of the law; whereas ADC strongly supports the establishment of adequate safeguards for the protection of civil and human rights and democratic forms of government in all Arab countries; and whereas ADC would like to see governments prevailing in the Arab world which are accountable to, and which reflect the interests and aspirations of, their people; be it resolved that ADC urges Arab governments and organizations of civil society to spare no efforts in establishing laws and institutions that would lead to the full exercise of participatory democracy in all Arab states.
+9) Whereas the October 11, 1985, terrorist attack on the ADC West Coast Office and assassination of its Regional Director Alex Odeh has yet to see any of the perpetrators arrested; be it resolved that ADC will continue to press this case until the guilty parties are arrested and brought to trial.
+Attendees watch a cultural performance at one of the varied events found at the ADC conference. (Nigel Parry)
+ADC
+4201 Connecticut Ave, Suite 300
+Washington, D.C. 20008, U.S.A.
+Tel: (202) 244-2990
+Fax: (202) 244-3196
+Web: http://www.adc.org

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-Workers sew medical masks for export to Israel in a workshop in Gaza City on 12 April 2020.
-
-ActiveStillsAs the Gaza Strip records more cases of the coronavirus in its quarantine centers, its textile industry’s long-dormant response to need is in full gear.
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-This includes Israel’s needs.
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-The Noor al-Bahaa factory in Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip switched operations in March from producing clothes for the domestic market to manufacturing thousands of medical masks and exporting almost all to Israel.
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-Ironically, some of the factory’s workers were themselves injured by Israeli snipers during Gaza’s Great March of Return protests.
-
-Muhammad Anbar and Ezz Abu Dlakh, who work at the factory, were both injured while taking part in the demonstrations on 14 May 2018, which came to be known as Gaza’s bloody Monday after Israeli snipers killed more than 60 demonstrators that day and injured thousands more.
-
-The stories of Anbar and Abu Dlakh echo each other.
-
-Both were shot in the leg during the protests and both struggled to find work after.
-
-Anbar, 29, lost his job as a clothes salesman in Jabaliya’s central market. After a six month recovery period, he regained his ability to walk albeit with difficulty. He found himself unable to find a job to support his parents and siblings, 11 in total.
-
-It took almost two years before Anbar was offered a job at Noor al-Bahaa factory by its owner, Rezq al-Madhoun, 50.
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-Anbar and Abu Dlakh now sit behind a desk for almost 13 hours every day. Such work means their injuries are less of a burden.
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-They pleat medical masks by hand and place them inside sterilized bags. The masks are then transferred to warehouses and then to the Kerem Shalom checkpoint, the only place Israel allows goods in and out of Gaza.
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-“It never occurred to me that I’ll be working at a place that exports to Israel, which destroyed my leg,” Anbar told The Electronic Intifada.
-
-“But ultimately I’m happy that I found a job to make a living and support my family.”
-
-Dlakh also sees the irony in their labor but considers it a service to a greater good.
-
-“Two years ago, Israel was killing us. Today, we’re producing masks to protect them from the coronavirus. We’re more human than they are.”
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-Israeli investors look to Gaza
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-There have been 72 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in the Gaza Strip, and one death.
-
-So far, all confirmed cases in Gaza have been discovered among individuals already in quarantine after returning from abroad, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
-
-For that reason, Gaza did not go into full lockdown. Businesses like sewing factories did not stop working, as opposed to in Israel, which announced a state of emergency and suffered thousands of cases.
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-Hence, Israeli investors looked outside to meet the needs of their market.
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-In less than one month, the factory exported some two million medical masks to six Israeli corporations after being licensed for production by the Israeli health ministry, according to Bahaa al-Madhoun, Noor al-Bahaa’s executive director.
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-Now, the factory produces around 85,000 masks every day, al-Madhoun told The Electronic Intifada.
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-He claimed in order to ensure the production of the masks reached international standards, Israel allowed the transfer of 30 tons of raw materials – specifically three types of cloth – into Gaza in early March.
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-In turn, the factory now employs some 500 workers.
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-“It’s not only Israel requesting medical masks. We have also received an order from a delegation working with Doctors without Borders to produce masks for Belgium,” al-Madhoun said.
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-Work on that contract is due to begin soon.
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-Temporary boom
-
-Al-Madhoun, who is personally known to this writer, said he thought the human benefits and considerations were more important than any political issues in this case.
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-“There’s mutual benefit. Israel wants medical masks, we need to employ as many people as possible,” he said.
-
-The factory is currently working with a double-than-normal production capacity which has helped it recoup some losses over the past many years of Israel’s blockade, which was imposed in 2007 after Hamas won parliamentary elections.
-
-Until 2014, trade between Gaza and Israel halted completely. Since then, Israel has allowed a tiny amount of goods produced in Gaza to be sold in Israel and the West Bank.
-
-Al-Madhoun’s factory is not the only factory that exports medical masks to Israel.
-
-The textile sector was traditionally among the best performing in Gaza, with some 900 factories employing more than 35,000 workers before Israel imposed its blockade on the Strip.
-
-Today, after more than a decade of Israeli blockade, only about 140 factories still operate employing some 1,500 workers.
-
-And despite the recent uptick, Maher al-Tabaa, head of Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce, Trade, Industry and Agriculture, said he did not expect improved trade relations with Israel after the pandemic is over.
-
-A real flourish
-
-One of the major obstacles al-Madhoun factory faced was the lack of sewing machines and spare parts after Israel banned their entry since 2006. But the factory managed to get hold of enough working machines to ensure a steady line of production.
-
-“The demand is big. We work with 30 small workshops that had closed or were working with low capacity,” al-Madhoun added.
-
-Adel Shaqoura, 48, turned a room of his house into a workshop after he fixed four sewing machines that had not been in use for 12 years.
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-“This is the first time in a long time I work on these machines. I thought they would never work again,” Shaqoura told The Electronic Intifada.
-
-Shaqoura works with another three tailors for 18 hours a day. They produce 13,000 medical masks every month.
-
-“I hope our work continues after the coronavirus. I don’t want to return to poverty again,” Shaqoura, who supports a family of seven, added.
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-Hundreds of families have benefitted in the Jabaliya camp.
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-To deal with the workload, al-Madhoun decided to distribute masks to families in the camp to make final and minor finishes, like cutting excess threads.
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-Among those who benefitted is Wafaa al-Najjar, 43, who desperately needed to support her family after her husband Diab, 48, became unemployed due to chronic illness.
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-The couple has nine children.
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-Al-Najjar adds finishing touches to masks. It provides her with a way to work from home. She earns around $90 a week.
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-“I used to clean houses upon request. It wasn’t permanent and it barely provided us with food,” al-Najjar told The Electronic Intifada.
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-Al-Najjar’s eight daughters help her every day.
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-Together, they clean around 2,000 masks per day.
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-“These are our best days since my husband stopped working as a taxi driver,” she said, hoping to continue the work after the pandemic.
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-Some scars, however, don’t heal with work. Abu Dlakh took time off on 15 May. On the day that marked his injury, he said, he did not want to work to “benefit those who destroyed my life.”
-
-Hamza Abu Eltarabesh is a journalist based in Gaza.
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-Muhammad Anbar
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-Ezz Abu Dlakh
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-Rezq al-Madhoun
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-Bahaa al-Madhoun
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-Maher al-Tabaa
+“End the oppression, end the occupation” was the rallying cry at the European Social Forum in London last weekend, where thousands of delegates from all walks of life descended on Alexandra Palace united in the belief that “another world is possible.” Delegates spent three days discussing issues ranging from Palestine, Iraq and the Basque country to privatisation, animal rights and globalization.
+An elaborate network of translators, volunteers from all over Europe, sat in little boxes translating the cries against imperialism, capitalism, colonialism and occupation into English, French, Spanish and German. Headphones were free of charge and a travel card was included with the price of the ticket. Food and beverages were provided at extra cost. There was a heavy demand for Arabic language speakers.
+In the Great Hall, Cubans sold Che Guevara books, badges and mugs. Communists distributed Marxist literature. Palestinians sold olive oil. Persians protested the Ayatollahs. Feminists campaigned for women’s rights, greens for the environment and Iraqis for Iraq. Activists drew attention to the plight of political prisoners throughout the world, and artists protested against the war.  “It’s not who you are against but what you’re for” declared one banner.
+On the first day of the forum, in a show of solidarity and cooperation, Palestinians and Israelis universally condemned the government of Ariel Sharon. “I am calling for international sanctions on the Israeli regime” shouted Jonathan Shapira, a former helicopter pilot turned refusenik to rapturous applause. “Sharon must be put in Jail” thundered Mustafa Barghouti of Medical Relief for Palestine.
+Towards the end of the talk, a young woman approached the microphone. “I am a Palestinian refugee from Chatila” she said. “When I was a child I had to walk over the bodies of my dead brothers and sisters. I have never seen Palestine” she lamented as the audience tried to hold back their tears. It was an emotional experience.
+A young man then approached the stage from Jabaliya refugee camp where over a hundred Palestinians, including many civilians, were killed by the Israeli army in Gaza last week. “Jonathan is my hero” he said as he shook the hand of the former Israeli pilot who had admitted that “lately, I learnt how to say no.” Shapira was the first of twenty-six pilots in the Israeli air force to refuse “illegal and immoral orders.”
+Palestine was so popular at the forum that people had to sit on the floor, or stand at the back during the plenary. Dennis Brutus, a poet, professor and former political prisoner who spent time on Robin Island with Nelson Mandela “breaking stones”, said it was “encouraging to see the crowds that have attended on each occasion to discuss the issue of the Palestinian people and their struggle for social justice.” He urged the audience to build a “global movement in support of the Palestinian people” just like was done in South Africa. “We can do this by boycotts, divestments, embargoes and sanctions” he said.
+Ben Soffa, co-convener of “Jewish Students for Justice for Palestinians” was handing out leaflets at a seminar on Palestine. He told me there are “an awful lot of people” who sympathize with his organization even though they don’t always stand up and say so. In a recent poll, Soffa told me that “more British Jews say they are frequently critical of Israel than say that they are frequently supportive of the Israeli government.”
+Primal Scream, a major British rock band, performed in Brixton Academy on Saturday evening in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The lead vocalist, Bobby Gillespie, wrote in the Guardian that “most people can see what is taking place on the ground in the Middle East. And they can see who needs our support. Everyone knows who is under the boot and who’s got the mouthful of broken glass. The Palestinians are a prisoner nation, refugees and exiles treated like ghosts. Now we want them to feel our solidarity.”
+Jeremy Corbyn M.P. noted that Palestine is an icon across the whole continent, across the whole of the Middle East. “The injustice to the Palestinian people is seen as an injustice to the poor, to the downtrodden, to the oppressed and the marginalized throughout the world” he said. The rain over the weekend did not dampen expectations. Outside in the Marquee there was salsa music and a Palestinian rap group called DAM. “The Palestinians rappers were really good” a student informed me as we huddled together for shelter in the train station on our way home.
+Related Links
+European Social Forum
+Arab Media Watch Correspondent and committee member Victor Kattan is an ocassional contributor to the Electronic Intifada. Victor was a U.N. Development Program TOKTEN Consultant to the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights from May-August 2003 and from November-February 2004. In July his article “The Right of Return Revisited” was published in a special edition of the Mediterannean Journal of Human Rights.

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-Despite how ubiquitous this accusation is, there is actually scant evidence to corroborate it.
-If the use of human shields was so wide as to cause hundreds upon hundreds of dead Palestinian civilians, then surely there would be a reporter or an observer on the ground that could have caught a whiff of it. But reporters on the ground could find no trace of such a supposedly widespread action, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC wrote that he found no evidence of the use of human shields while he was covering the assault on Gaza. Similarly, Kim Sengupta writing for the Belfast Telegraph interviewed Palestinians in Gaza and unsurprisingly came to a similar conclusion: Hamas was not forcing anybody to be a human shield, counter to Netanyahu’s claims.
-But perhaps these reporters were missing something, let us consult an organization which specializes in these matters. Fortunately for us, Amnesty international released a detailed report of its investigation into the matter. In their report they indicate that:
+A cursory glance at Palestine’s geography would reveal that most of it is part of what is known as the Fertile Crescent (you have three guesses as to why). The region has historically been known for its crops and agriculture.  As a matter of fact, if we are to look at the average annual rainfall in the area over the last 100 years, then Ramallah has a higher average annual rainfall than Paris, and Jerusalem has a higher average annual rainfall than Berlin. Now unless you’re going to refer to north-east Germany as an uncultivated desert, then you might want to reevaluate why Jerusalem was framed as such with comparable levels of rainfall. Although Palestine does not have many sources of surface water -relatively speaking- it has an abundance of ground and mineral water stored in its aquifers.
+Truth be told, over its history Palestine has had ample problems with an overabundance of water, leading to the creation of swamplands in the north. Naturally, the drying of these swamplands is also used by Zionists as an example of their ingenuity bringing prosperity to the land, while also claiming that Palestine was a dry desert. National foundation mythologies are seldom consistent, and the Zionist one is no exception.
+Historically speaking, there is strong evidence that the fertile crescent is where agriculture was first invented and practiced; for example the Natufians who lived in the area are often credited with being the pioneers of agriculture. This, of course, would not be possible if the land lacked the necessary prerequisites, such as abundant water and fertile soil.
+This is not to say that Palestine is entirely free of deserts, as the Naqab desert actually extends over vast territories in the south. But under no stretch of the imagination did this mean that Palestine as a whole is or was a desert. For example, vast swathes of land in California are also considered desert, yet it also contains fertile and cultivated lands that make it a major bread basket in the world.
+Another aspect we should be wary of is reading desert as to mean uncultivated. Palestinian Bedouins have long cultivated lands in the Naqab desert using traditional farming and water preserving techniques. Records show that despite the loud proclamations of Zionists making the desert bloom, in 1944 land cultivated by Palestinians in the Naqab desert alone was three times of that cultivated by the entire Zionist settler presence in Palestine. As a matter of fact, the amount of cultivated land in the Naqab desert has dropped significantly since the Nakba in 1947-48. This is yet another case of a popular Zionist slogan being the complete opposite of reality.If we look at the data even more closely, it paints an even clearer picture: The vast majority of cultivated agricultural land in Israel today was already being cultivated by Palestinians before their ethnic cleansing. Schechtman estimates that on the eve of the 1948 war, around 2,990,000 dunams of land (or 739,750 acres) were being cultivated by Palestinians. These cultivated lands were so vast, that they were “greater than the physical area which was under cultivation in Israel almost thirty years later.” It took Israel 30 years to even equal the amount of land being cultivated before its establishment. Alan George continues:
 
-“The Israeli authorities have claimed that in a few incidents, the Hamas authorities or Palestinian fighters directed or physically coerced individual civilians in specific locations to shield combatants or military objectives. Amnesty International has not been able to corroborate the facts in any of these cases.”
+“The impressive expansion of Israel’s cultivated area since 1948 has been more apparent than real since it involved mainly the ‘reclamation’ of farmland belonging to the refugees.”
 
-So, it seems that the Israeli claims have no basis in reality, and are just a way to demonize Palestinians and legitimize their indiscriminate bombardment of civilians. This is hardly the first time Israel has used this accusation to delegitimize their enemies. For example, in the 2006 war against Lebanon Israel accused Hizballah of using human shields. Unsurprisingly, investigations by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch similarly found no evidence.
-The same accusations were also hurled at Palestinians during the great march of return when Israeli snipers killed Palestinian nurse Razan Al-Najjar while she was tending to the injured. Naturally, no evidence was provided other than a clearly doctored video in an attempt to defame her.
-Fortunately, these investigations into the supposed Palestinian use of human shields tend to backfire on Israel, and have historically produced a wealth of literature showing how often Israel targets civilians far removed from any combat context. Amnesty International reported that
+It would be dishonest to claim that there have been no new cultivated lands since, but the fact remains that the agricultural core of the Israeli state consists of cultivated farmland that was stolen from Palestinian refugees after their ethnic cleansing . Zionist settlers did not make the desert bloom, as the land was never as much as a desert as they claimed, and even those areas which were classified as such were still cultivated and tended to by Palestinians. The severe drop in the amount of cultivated land in the Naqab after 1948 attests to this fact.
+But as usual, these talking points are never about the actual history, or the data, or reality. They are usually about a message to be conveyed, or an image to be maintained. This is especially clear when we look at some of the modern Naqab farms that Israel loves to market. Never mind the fact that, as mentioned, the amount of cultivated land in the Naqab actually dropped; the portrayal of these farms as oases in the desert, and as an ode to Israeli and Zionist resilience and ingenuity is rooted in Zionist propaganda. These desert farms do not make sense economically, and they are unsustainable in almost any way you look at it. However, their purpose lies in their discursive value. As Messserschmid argues:
 
-“In the cases of precision missiles or tank shells which killed civilians in their homes, no fighters were present in the houses that were struck and Amnesty International delegates found no indication that there had been any armed confrontations or other military activity in the immediate vicinity at the time of the attack.”
+“Israel allows itself to waste vast amounts of water and water resources, especially for agriculture. Israel, it’s known, uses over 60 percent of its water for agriculture, which amounts to about 2 percent of GDP… Agriculture in Israel is important in terms of preserving the national ethos, and is not calculated in terms of the actual conditions of the water economy.”
 
-This is not in error, and is in fact by design. The destruction of non-military infrastructure and incurring massive losses in civilians is a deliberate policy followed by the IDF. This policy has come to be known as the Dahiya doctrine, where it was first practiced in the Dahiya area of Beirut.
-Gadi Eizenkot was quoted as saying that:
-
-“We will apply disproportionate force on it (village) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.”
-
-This is a direct admission that Israel sees civilian areas as military targets, now the only thing that remained was finding a way to justify it. This is where the human shields accusation comes in. And in the end when the war is over, the fact that no evidence is ever presented, or that various organizations exonerate the accused is forgotten, and the smears remain, and contribute to justify the same inhumane actions in any future conflagration.
-Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of this accusation is that it is a case of pure projection on part of Israel. Israel has been notorious in its use of Palestinians as human shields. As a matter of fact, many of these same reports investigating the Palestinian use of human shields found that it was actually Israel that was using Palestinians as human shields. For example, they would force Palestinian civilians to check houses for traps, or handle suspicious objects, or tie them to military vehicles to discourage stone throwing.
-Even a simple search reveals hundreds of cases of Palestinians being used as human shields. This is not a case of a few bad apples, but of rampant and widespread behavior. In fact, using Palestinians as human shields was so popular that when the Israeli high court attempted to outlaw the practice the IDF actually appealed to have the decision reversed.
-I would further argue that not only does Israel use Palestinians as human shields, but also its own population when it uses them to settle and colonize areas beyond the green line. They are directly put in danger as a sacrifice to Israel’s expansionist colonial designs, which they can then blame on Palestinians to further accelerate this same project.
-So not only is the Palestinian use of human shields a myth lacking any evidence, it is in fact Israel who is infamous for using human shields in its oppression of the Palestinians. Examples of this are incredibly easy to find even with the most rudimentary of research. Like much Israeli propaganda, it seeks to turn reality upside down and accuse the Palestinians of the crimes that Israel so often commits. This is a prime example of baseless dehumanization that many eagerly embrace because they have come to internalize a demonized image of Palestinians based on Israeli propaganda.
-The fact that this slander is so prevalent while not having any basis in reality is a testament to the power of propaganda, and how readily people accept the projections of barbarity onto the peoples of the global south. In the narrative war against Palestine there is hardly a method Israel has not resorted to in order to dehumanize Palestinians. It is on us to resist that, and set the record straight.
+Indeed, making a minor green spot in the desert is no magical feat, as Baskin says “All you need is to waste huge quantities of water“. And despite their “water miracle” propaganda stating the opposite, waste water they do.
+In the end, this whole talking point is beyond the issue, and amounts to nothing more than Greenwashing settler colonialism . It simply exists to try and show why the Zionist settlers are more deserving of the land than Palestinians, who had supposedly neglected it. Despite the data showing that the land was far from an uncultivated desert, and that Israel stole millions of dunams of cultivated land to kick-start its agricultural sector, it’s a moot point to begin with. For argument’s sake, even if this talking point was accurate, and that the land was mostly uncultivated desert, does this provide a moral cover for settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and erecting a reactionary ethnocracy at the expense of the people living there?
+Of course not. Nothing can justify that. But this raises another point: Why the need to resort to such arguments in the first place? Why did these settlers feel the need to legitimize themselves if they didn’t feel like they were doing anything wrong, or if nobody was there in the first place, as they often claimed?
+It’s because they knew they were wronging someone. They knew they were taking over someone’s land, and they knew that they were spouting nonsensical propaganda. This is why these talking points often clash so terribly against each other, because they are not based on fact, but on political utility. It is unfortunate that such baseless claims survive to this day, but as with all propaganda, it loses its effectiveness when you start asking the right questions.
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-Activists in Jerusalem protest in solidarity with Bedouin families whose land was confiscated as a result of the JNF’s discriminatory policies. (Meged Gozani/ActiveStills)
+A Kashmiri protestor raises his fist to Indian forces during a protest in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, 13 August 2010. (Newscom)
 
-For anyone taking a road trip along the highways of the part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948, one is bound to spot a blue and green structure in the shape of a bird marked with the Hebrew letters KKL, which stands for Keren Kayemeth L’Yisrael, the Hebrew name of the Israeli branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). All around the bird one will see expanses of forests planted sometime in the past few decades. A walk through one of these forests will take the visitor past fruit trees, cactus plants, terraced hillsides and the ruins of buildings. In some cases, these ruins are explained in a JNF brochure pointing to their ancient history; in other cases, one is left to the devices of one’s imagination. In all cases, these sites are what remains of some of the more than 500 villages depopulated and destroyed through the course of Israel’s establishment, the homes of millions of Palestinian refugees struggling to return to them for more than 60 years. By walking through a JNF park or forest, one inhales the fresh smell of the greenwashing of Palestine’s Nakba.
-The history of the JNF is well documented, the seminal text still being the late Walter Lehn’s 1988 book The Jewish National Fund written in association with Uri Davis. After heated discussions at the first four Zionist congresses, the JNF was established at the Fifth Zionist Congress held in Basel in 1901, and incorporated in England in 1907. Its Memorandum of Association defines the primary objective of the JNF as “to purchase, take on lease or in exchange or otherwise acquire any lands, forests, rights of possession and other rights in the prescribed region [Palestine and surrounding areas] … for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands” (Lehn). The JNF was expressly prohibited from selling any land to ensure that it would hold on to these lands in the name of the Jewish people in perpetuity (Lehn p. 31-32).
-The organization began its fundraising activities and began to seek out willing sellers, the most significant of whom were absentee landlords living in what would become Lebanon and Syria. The JNF’s “blue box,” a small box for collection of donations, became both a fixture in Jewish communities outside of Palestine, as well as an important tool of mobilizing Jewish community support behind the colonization of the country. By the 1920s, Palestinians were sufficiently knowledgeable of the Zionist project to colonize their country that they refused to sell their land to the Fund. In response, the JNF reverted to more insidious means to acquire land, including proactive recruitment of Palestinians who would acquire land on their behalf. The Diaries of Yosef Nachmani is a film that goes into some of the details of these methods based on the diaries of the JNF’s main agent in the Tiberias region. To serve this process, the JNF systematically kept files on each Palestinian locality that included the names of Palestinians involved in resisting the British and Zionist colonization. These “village files” were later used as a central source of military intelligence for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and many of those activists named in the JNF’s files were executed by Zionist forces (see Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford: One World Press, 2006, pp.17-22).
-After the establishment of the State of Israel, the JNF seemed to have achieved its purpose. The land controlled by the JNF and other Zionist agencies, which amounted to no more than seven percent of the land in British Mandate Palestine, had jumped to almost 90 percent as Palestinian land appropriated by force was transferred to state and JNF ownership under Israeli military orders and laws passed for this purpose. The JNF had to be repackaged and its role reassessed.
-The statement of Israeli author Amos Elon that “[f]ew things are as evocatively symbolic of the Zionist dream and rationale as a Jewish National Fund Forest” encapsulates the most notorious role of the JNF since 1948 (Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995, p.55). For many Jews abroad, the act of donating to plant a tree in Israel, sponsor a park bench, or bankroll a section of forest became an important avenue to support the maintenance and growth of the Zionist movement. The JNF’s charitable status in most countries, usually based on the JNF’s new packaging as an ecological organization that plants trees and develops “green” technology, has facilitated this process by creating a governmental subsidy in each country in the form of tax returns to the donors.
-For the indigenous Palestinians and people concerned about basic human rights, the JNF forest is a concrete manifestation of Zionism’s attempt to erase not only the presence of Palestinians in their homeland, but also any visible sign that they ever existed here. Israeli novelist Abraham Yehoshua’s well-known 1970 short story “Facing the Forest” 1970 attests to Israeli cultural attempts to bring the truths of the Nakba repressed within the Israeli psyche back to the surface. The story is of a Jewish-Israeli student who, together with a Palestinian who has lost his ability to speak, works as watchman at a JNF forest. The story culminates in the Palestinian burning down the forest to reveal the previously obscured remains of a destroyed Palestinian village.
-Eager to maintain a noncontroversial image abroad, the JNF has avoided visible engagement in Israel’s post-1967 colonial enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory. It has rather done so in disguise: through its subsidiary — Himanuta — the JNF works to continue Zionist colonization in the 1967 occupied territory through acquisition of land earmarked for Jewish settlement construction and expansion (see Lehn, p. 67). Furthermore, in the Latrun salient, a pre-1967 demilitarized zone claimed by Israel, the rubble of the villages of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba sits under the trees of the JNF’s Canada Park, awaiting the return of the Palestinian villagers.
-While “greenwashing” is what the JNF is most notorious for, its role as a pillar of Israel’s colonial apartheid regime has been much less understood. As an institution that has incorporated the Zionist concept of an extraterritorial “Jewish race/nationality” in its statutes, the JNF was granted special status in Israel and charged with “the mission of gathering in the exiles and helping build Israel as the state of the “Jewish people” under the Israeli laws of the early 1950s that incorporated the JNF and defined its status.
-At the same time, the JNF registered branches in numerous countries as local charitable organizations. The charitable nongovernmental status of the JNF’s branches abroad has allowed the agency to support Zionism practically and financially, whereas the State of Israel is precluded, as any foreign state, from interfering in the status of citizens in any country outside its sovereign jurisdiction. A look at the honorary members of JNF boards in many countries reveals a roster of political and economic elites, including past, present and future heads of state, who facilitate the work of Israel lobbies as well as JNF fundraising.
-In Israel, the JNF joined the Israel Lands Authority, the arm of the Israeli government responsible for the management of “Israel Lands” based on its legal status as a para-state institution. As owner of 13 percent of land in Israel, and the organization that appoints the largest number of people to the Israel Lands Authority board of directors (6 out of 13), the JNF is the central pillar of Israel’s regime over land. As a Zionist “national” agency unburdened by restrictions on whether or not it treats citizens equally, the state has systematically subcontracted the JNF for the implementation of demographically engineering the land in the country in favor of the Jewish community, or what Israeli officials have called “Judaization.” This process of outsourcing apartheid has been most meticulously described by Uri Davis in Apartheid Israel, a seminal text for those wishing to understand the workings of Israel’s apartheid regime over land within the Green Line boundary.
-The JNF’s role in Israel’s colonial apartheid regime over the Palestinian people has not gone unchallenged, however. Activists in various cities around the world have organized protests to JNF fundraising dinners and other elite functions, while others have called on their government agencies to strip the JNF of its charitable status. In the late 1960s, a successful legal challenge against the JNF’s charitable status in the United States forced Zionist organizations in that country to reshuffle their official names and statuses in order to protect the inflow of donation money. More recently, information gathered and exposed by activists, scholars and lawyers has forced the JNF to weave a tighter corporate veil over the relationship between worldwide JNF branches and its headquarters (JNF-KKL) in Israel, including new logos and websites, in order to avoid “brand risks” and possible liability for violations of international law and human rights abuses. In 2007, the JNF-USA suffered a defeat in the United Nations, when the UN’s Committee on NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) rejected an application of the JNF-USA for consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). While the JNF-USA told the Committee that it was independent and involved in water, environmental and development projects in the Middle East, state representatives stated that they were unable to distinguish between the activities of the JNF-USA and JNF-KKL and argued that the JNF’s work violated the principles of the UN Charter, which emphasizes respect for human rights and equality.
-In November 2008, civil society actors from all around the world gathered in Bilbao to discuss strategies to develop the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law. A concerted campaign to challenge the JNF was one of four main priorities adopted as part of the Bilbao Initiative. As follow-up to this step, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Housing and Land Rights Network and the International Jewish anti-Zionist Network brought legal experts, academics and civil society organizations together in early May 2010. The organizing meeting launched a coordinated campaign under the title “Stop the JNF: Stop Greenwashing Apartheid” (http://stopthejnf.bdsmovement.net/).
-Hazem Jamjoum is the Communications Officer of the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (Bethlehem, Palestine). This essay was originally published as the editorial of al-Majdal, Badil’s English-language quarterly. The winter/spring 2010 issue of al-Majdal looks at the Jewish National Fund from various vantage-points (click here to download the entire publication).
-Related Links
-http://stopthejnf.bdsmovement.net
+The 2010 summer in the disputed area of Jammu and Kashmir, administered by India, has been marked by popular protests by Kashmiris and crackdowns by India’s military. The stream of violence has left more than fifty dead, mostly young protestors. The situation in Kashmir has some parallels with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, even borrowing the term intifada to describe the uprising. But the connection is more than analogy — Israel’s pacification efforts against Palestinians have proven valuable for the Indian police, army and intelligence services in their campaigns to pacify Jammu and Kashmir with numerous Indian military and security imports from Israel leading the way.
+India and Israel had a limited relationship prior to 1992. India, as a prominent member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), had helped to form the NAM political positions on Palestine as part of the “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, racism, including Zionism and all forms of expansionism, foreign occupation and domination and hegemony” (1979, Havana Declaration). Beyond its anti-colonial and Third World solidarity politics, India also had realpolitik reasons for keeping a distance from Israel. The nation had a developing economy with a huge need for petroleum resources, of which it had no domestic source. Good relations with the Arab League and the Soviet Union helped to secure access to resources necessary for India to become the regional and global economic power it aspires to be.
+With the beginning of the Oslo negotiations process between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1990s and the end of the Cold War, India was free to pursue relations with Israel from a NAM standpoint. An end to the Israeli occupation was assumed a formality under Oslo by most international observers, especially early on — and had, by that time, gained the economic strength to pursue a policy taking it, as described in a US Army War College (USAWC) analysis, “from a position of nonalignment and noncommitment to having specific strategic interests taking it on a path of ‘poly-alignment.’” The report states that India has been in a “scramble to establish ‘strategic relationships’ with most of the major powers and many of the middle powers,” including Israel.
+Israel rendered limited military assistance to India in its 1962 war with China and the 1965 and 1971 wars with Pakistan. It was not until after the Oslo process began though, that the limited military contacts developed into a fuller strategic relationship. According to The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in 1994 “India requested equipment to guard the de facto Indo-Pakistan Kashmiri border. New Delhi was interested in Israeli fences, which use electronic sensors to track human movements” (Thomas Withington, “Israel and India partner up,” January/February 2001, pp.18-19). The remaining years of the decade were peppered with arms sales from Jerusalem to New Delhi, most notably unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electronic warfare systems.
+The strategic military relationship picked up even more steam in the new millennium and annual arms sales average in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The shift of Israel being a major defense supplier to a strategic partner was formalized in a September 2003 state visit by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to India where the Hindu nationalist government then in power, the Bharatiya Janata Party led by then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, hosted the Israeli delegation and coauthored the Delhi Statement on Friendship and Cooperation between India and Israel. The statement’s longest segment is on terrorism. It declares that “Israel and India are partners in the battle against this scourge” and that “there cannot be any compromise in the war against terrorism.” The relationship has expanded drastically since 2000 with, in some recent years, Israel even supplanting Russia as India’s largest arms supplier. Surface-to-air missile systems, naval craft, advanced radar systems and other remote sensing technologies, artillery systems and numerous joint production initiatives ranging from munitions to avionics systems have all further boosted the relationship.
+But as the Kashmiri uprising enters its third decade, the most telling part of the relationship is the export of Israeli pacification efforts against Palestinians to India, and their use in Jammu and Kashmir (and elsewhere as India faces multiple popular revolts). Israel has trained thousands of Indian military personnel in counterinsurgency since 2003. According to a 2003 JINSA analysis, “Presumably to equip these soldiers, India recently concluded a $30 million agreement with Israel Military Industries (IMI) for 3,400 Tavor assault rifles, 200 Galil sniper rifles, as well as night vision and laser range finding and targeting equipment.”
+In 2004, the Israeli intelligence agencies Mossad and General Security Services (Shin Bet) arrived in India “to conduct the first field security surveillance course for Indian Army Intelligence Corps sleuths.” The Globes article on the topic cites an Indian source stating “The course has been designed to look at methods of intelligence gathering in insurgency affected areas, in keeping with the challenges that Israel has faced.” The further acquisition of UAVs, their joint production and the acquisition of other surveillance systems, notably 2010 agreements for both spy satellites and satellite communications systems, have all helped to further India’s pacification campaigns in Jammu and Kashmir. A notable example of how deeply embedded in India the Israeli counterinsurgency and homeland security industries are is the May 2010 agreement whereby Ra’anana-based Nice Systems will provide security systems and a command and control center for India’s parliament. Parliament security head Sandeep Salunke noted the context for the $5 million contract being “In light of the recent increase in global terrorism” (Nice Systems press release, 25 May 2010).
+India’s political trend towards poly-alignment whereby it can have both strategic energy agreements with Iran and strategic defense agreements with Israel is part of a broader strategy the USAWC report noted by which “India will fiercely protect its own internal and bilateral issues from becoming part of the international dialog (Kashmir being the most obvious example).” This hostility towards international engagement with its occupation is not the only resemblance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Both were born out the the end of the British colonialism, both are seen as front lines of the “War on Terror,” both the Kashmiri and Palestinian armed groups are erroneously seen as illegitimate in their own right, being mere tools of a foreign aggressor (Pakistan for Kashmir and Iran or Syria for Palestine), both have widespread abuses of human rights, and the Israeli public’s general apathy about or hostility towards Palestinian self-determination is surpassed by the domestic discussion in India, where Kashmiri self-determination isn’t even an issue, though pacifying Kashmir and securing the border with Pakistan is.
+The analogy between the two conflicts can only be taken so far, but the direct connection by which Israel’s pacification industry exports tools of control developed for use against the Palestinians (and Lebanese) to be deployed against Kashmiris (as well as against the Naxalites and others in India) shows a deep linkage between the two conflicts and how one feeds the other. So long as Israel seeks to maintain control over Palestine it will continue to develop pacification tools, and so long as India continues its campaigns in Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmiris can expect to taste the fruits of Palestinian pacification.
+Jimmy Johnson is a Detroit-based mechanic and an organizer with the Palestine Cultural Office in Dearborn. He can be reached at johnson [dot] jimmy [at] gmail [dot] com.
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+NICE Systems

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-So-called safe zones, like al-Mawasi, where the author ended up with her father, are not spared Israeli bombardments. Here people relocate after an Israeli bombing in July.
+A woman mourns as bodies of her relatives are carried for burial from the al-Aqsa hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on 24 October.
 
-APA imagesBack in April, when the spring sun spread its golden rays across Gaza’s war-scarred fields and devastated neighborhoods, my family faced some serious decisions.
+APA imagesAs Israel enters phase two of its attack on Gaza, there is much speculation as to what the Israeli military will face on the ground.
 
-My father was suffering a chronic heart problem and his condition had worsened over the six months of genocide we had survived.
+The answer depends on the extent to which Hamas foresaw what Israel’s response would be to its 7 October Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
 
-Through the ministry of health, and with the help of international organizations, we had secured a permit for him to be transferred to Egypt for treatment.
+That in turn begs the question why Hamas did what it did when it did.
 
-The permit was for 16 May.
+Hamas officials have said they saw little choice but to act. Having seen Palestinian aspirations to end Israel’s occupation regress over the past decades amid international apathy, something had to change.
 
-We had also bought (very expensive) travel permits from an Egyptian broker for my mother and sister to travel ahead in order to find a place for everyone to stay.
+“We knocked on the door of reconciliation and we weren’t allowed in,” senior Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk told The New Yorker earlier this month.
 
-Thus it was that in late April, the day before my mother and sister left, we all sat together in the courtyard of our home in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
+“We knocked on the door of elections and we were deprived of them. We knocked on the door of a political document for the whole world – we said, ‘We want peace, but give us some of our rights’ – but they didn’t let us in. We tried every path. We didn’t find one political path to take us out of this morass and free us from occupation.”
 
-It would be our last time.
+Certainly, the background to the attack bears out Abu Marzouk’s explanation.
 
-We talked about a lot of things that night. We talked about our dreams for the future. We talked about our situation. We wondered if we would survive or if we would starve to death. We wondered if we would ever return to a normal life.
+Seventy-five years after being forcibly displaced from Palestine in 1948, 56 years of living under military occupation, 30 years of a “peace process” that has merely allowed Israel to consolidate its occupation in the West Bank, and 16 years of a Gaza blockade that has rendered normal life and a normal economy impossible there, generations of Palestinians have lived and died without any hope for a better future.
 
-At the end of the evening, my father, who was in great pain, smiled at us before he retired to bed. “Patience,” he said, “is the key to relief.”
+The West’s acquiescence with Israel’s dangerous delusion that it could manage its occupation indefinitely has been equally instrumental in the current situation.
 
-Thwarted plans
+Despite unanimous international consensus behind a two-state outcome since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993 – shared by the US, the UK, the EU, the UN, the Arab League, the African Union, Russia, China – there has never been any serious pressure on Israel to draw down its occupation, roll back its settlement project and end its military rule over Palestinians of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
 
-On 30 April, my mother and sister traveled to Egypt.
+If not now?
 
-On 6 May, the Israeli military began its offensive on Rafah, seizing the Rafah crossing into Egypt on 7 May.
+Quite the contrary. Even as the circumstances on the ground for Palestinians deteriorated dramatically, as Israeli leaders were quite clear that they opposed Palestinian statehood, as settlements expanded and extremist settlers were empowered to go on violent rampages, as human rights organizations all over the world denounced Israel as an apartheid state, as Gaza’s population sunk deeper into the mire of poverty and de-development, as out-and-out racists populated the most senior positions of the Israeli government, the West remained uninterested to the point of complicity.
 
-Our plans had been thwarted by Israel’s genocide. My father and I were stuck, though not at home: due to the intensity of the bombings in our area, three days after my mother and sister left we had been forced to leave the house for a tent in a nearby shelter.
+The so-called Abraham Accords were also pivotal. That Arab countries would seek normalization agreements with Israel when there were no signs of any progress toward ending the occupation or settling the Palestine issue suggested they too were prepared to leave Palestinians isolated.
 
-We eventually ended up in al-Mawasi in the west, where aid workers helped us erect a small tent in the sand. By then, we had lost all comforts. We didn’t even have a change of clothes.
+That prospect was sharpened by reports that a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia was also in the cards.
 
-The bombings, meanwhile, waxed and waned. One night, late May or early June, the bombardment was so close, I felt the earth shake beneath my feet.
+Every indication was that Israel was successfully managing its occupation.
 
-I also realized I had no one to turn to. Over the weeks, I had sought help from relatives and friends for simple things, like helping to carry a mattress, but none was forthcoming.
+It had largely quelled any armed threat from the West Bank, where it is helped in no small measure by the Palestinian Authority. It had confined Hamas to Gaza where it believed it had found a modus operandi whereby cash from Qatar and some extra work permits would keep the area quiet enough to be sustainable.
 
-I concluded that I had no real friendships in times of crisis. And what other friendships are there?
+Meanwhile, the only political plan that seemed to be gaining ground was that of Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who in 2017 penned what he called a “decisive plan.”
 
-I watched my father. He was trying to be strong, but he was in pain. He was afraid, and so was I. How was I to escape the area with him if I needed to?
+That plan would see Israel annex all occupied territory after massive settlement expansion, and leave Palestinians with the choice to either stay as second class citizens or leave. Those “terrorists” who choose to stay but not accept subservience, will “be dealt with” by the Israeli military.
 
-His sleep was disturbed by insects in the sand. He silently endured the discomfort, and he tried to reassure me. But he needed someone to comfort him too.
+In effect, the plan is a formalization of the present reality.
 
-A fire raged in my chest. I felt only anger, helplessness and despair.
+The entry of Smotrich and fellow supremacist Itamar Ben-Gvir into senior government positions in 2022, only signaled public Israeli support for continued occupation – if they thought about it at all. In the five elections Israel has held in the last four years, the issue of occupation barely featured.
 
-Grief
+Something had to change.
 
-We were not alone, though, in our suffering. Seeing how others were dealing with similar conditions, how others had also lost everything and were also fearing starvation and expecting death, I realized that I may have been harsh on my relatives and friends.
+Months in the making
 
-We are all in this together. And we are all overwhelmed just trying to survive.
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood had clearly been months in the planning and was by all accounts conducted in utmost secrecy, with even Hamas’ political leaders unaware of what or when.
 
-We tried to find hope amid the chaos. We would gather around a small fire, my father, myself, and others we’d met. We would tell old stories. We would laugh in the face of the pain.
+Using drones to knock out surveillance cameras and diversionary tactics such as rocket fire and motor cycles fixed on motorized paragliders, on 7 October Hamas succeeded in breaching, in unprecedented numbers, the “smart wall” Israel had finished erecting around Gaza in 2021 in dozens of places at the same time.
 
-Days turned into weeks. Israel’s genocidal violence only intensified. Our determination to survive only grew.
+The first targets seemed clear. Fighters attacked several military bases around Gaza, killing and capturing soldiers with a view to bringing them back to Gaza to exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
 
-I had continued my pharmacy studies at Al-Azhar University. Lessons had been discontinued – in fact the university itself was bombed as far back as 11 October 2023 and several times since – but recorded lectures were available online.
+What the plan was after that is less clear. The Israeli military response was unpredictably slow, and once news spread in Gaza of the wall breaches, others, including other resistance groups, started streaming across the boundary.
 
-This meant that I had to leave al-Mawasi and my father to find areas with internet access in order for me to download lectures and submit assignments.
+Hamas has denied that it targeted civilians. But while some of the more lurid claims of what happened then – the 40 beheaded babies report, for instance – have been quietly dropped, and while the extent to which Israelis were killed in crossfire once the Israeli military did turn up is yet to be determined, it is clear that hundreds of Israeli civilians lost their lives on 7 October.
 
-In August, my father’s condition worsened. He barely ate or drank. I could no longer bear to hear his voice, so weak had it become.
+Certainly, Israel has weaponized claims of atrocities to whip up war fervor in Israel and to shield itself from outside criticism or calls for restraint.
 
-But I also had exams coming, and on 23 August I had left a cousin with my father while I went to study.
+The number of Israeli officials, military or political, former or current who have reached for genocidal language, must have been quite eye-opening for at least some foreign journalists and officials.
 
-He passed away that day. After all we had been through, just he and I, in the months since my mother and sister left, I wasn’t even there in his last moment.
+Equally certain is that Hamas would have expected a massive Israeli response to restore its deterrence after what the group had clearly planned to be an unprecedented dent in Israel’s armor.
 
-That evening I sat alone in a small tent on a sandy bank in the very west of Gaza. My heart was shattered, and my tears fell like rain. How could I live in a world that no longer contained his laughter? How could I go on without his voice, so strong and vibrant, that used to fill our home?
+You don’t have to look back far to see the kind of outsized violence Israel often reaches for.
 
-I didn’t know how to break the news of my father’s death to my mother, but I eventually gathered what little strength I had left to tell her.
+Lessons from 2014
 
-Her grief was beyond my ability to put it into words.
+In 2014 – after three Israeli settlers were captured and killed in the West Bank – Benjamin Netanyahu, then as now, Israel’s prime minister, blamed Hamas; Hamas denied any involvement – Israel unleashed what was at that point its most brutal assault on Gaza, killing 2,251 people of whom, according to the UN, 65 percent, or more than 1,400 people, were civilians.
 
-Hope
+The 2014 war featured a two-week Israeli ground invasion of Gaza, from which Hamas will have learned lessons for this time. Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, has been clear that Hamas is prepared for a long battle.
 
-I passed my exams.
+The capture of more than 200 people, moreover, has provided Hamas a valuable means by which to exercise some control over the Israeli response. The presence of a number of foreign captives has complicated matters for the Israeli government, which has been under both domestic and foreign pressure to secure their release before any major ground invasion.
 
-I remain in al-Mawasi, in a little tent on a sandy embankment.
+The staggered release of some captives has also slowed down the Israeli military and allowed space for slow but growing calls for an immediate ceasefire.
 
-I am still alone.
+Regional tensions were a given once Israel began its attack, and have only grown as Israel’s massive and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza has exacted a grueling cost in lives, over 7,000 at time of writing.
 
-In my solitude, I’ve turned to writing, keeping a journal in which I note down my feelings and thoughts.
+So far, while Arab publics have protested in great numbers in their own countries, they have not yet rebelled to the extent Hamas has called for. On 19 October, for instance, Abu Obeida urged people to “march to the borders of Palestine, unite and (do) everything in their power to overthrow the Zionist project.”
 
-Writing brings me some comfort.
+Nevertheless, Jordan, with its large Palestinian population, sees daily protests. Jordanian riot police had to be deployed to prevent demonstrators from reaching Jordan’s border with the West Bank, while protestors also had to be forcibly removed from outside the Israeli embassy in Amman.
 
-From Egypt, my mother told me that she and my sister had finally found a place to live. This filled me with pride, but also trepidation. If I join them, will I ever return? Can I even leave this place, my homeland, where all my memories of my father reside?
+Saudi-Israeli normalization talks have been shelved indefinitely, though calls on other Arab countries to end their normalization deals with Israel have so far been ignored.
 
-But the Rafah crossing is still closed. This is not a choice I face now.
+In Lebanon, Hizballah has kept up just enough military pressure on Israel to suggest a ground invasion of Gaza would invite a much stronger conflagration there.
 
-My choice is between grief and hope.
+The Lebanese Shiite group will have to factor in the US Navy in its calculations, after Washington sent two aircraft carriers to the area in an explicit attempt to deter any other actors from getting involved.
 
-The thing they never tell you about genocide is that despite the overwhelming loss and devastation; despite the suffocating suffering that is everywhere at all times and in every person’s eyes; despite the hunger and the fear, life also continues.
+Israel’s decision to cut fuel supplies, electricity, food and water to all Gaza’s 2.3 million people, moreover, has left Israel’s supporters in the West struggling to explain how their unqualified support squares with international law, so often invoked over Ukraine.
 
-Life continues, and you have to choose how to live it. And my father always taught us to be strong and not be afraid to confront challenges.
+Observers question the difference in White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby's comments on the civilian death toll in Ukraine vs Gaza pic.twitter.com/X5wWyZglgg— The National (@TheNationalNews) October 27, 2023
 
-So I choose hope. I choose hope to heal myself and I choose hope because it is what my family needs, it is what my people need and it is what my father would have done.
+Game changer
 
-My father was Munther Hamdouna. He was a tailor. I am convinced that he is watching us from afar and will always be a part of my journey.
+Inevitably, diplomacy is beginning to make a comeback. Hamas officials visited Moscow, which has twice seen the UN Security Council vote down its proposals for a full ceasefire, on 26 October.
 
-Lina Hamdona is a writer and pharmacy student from Gaza.
+And Al Jazeera has reported that Qatar-mediated Hamas-Israel ceasefire talks have reached an “advanced” stage.
+
+The central negotiation, according to Al Jazeera, appears to be over a prisoner exchange, one of Hamas’ central aims with the 7 October operation. Israel has engaged in a large arrest campaign in the West Bank since then, netting more than 1,500 Palestinians.
+
+Hamas will also want to see an end to the Gaza blockade, which has blighted the lives of so many for so long.
+
+Any diplomatic breakthrough, however, is contingent on whether Israel feels it can avoid paying any price through military action on the ground.
+
+Israeli troops are massed at the Gaza boundary in unprecedented numbers. Israeli military leaders say they are ready and prepared to do battle.
+
+Much depends on public pressure.
+
+Public support in Israel for an immediate ground invasion is shrinking, and Israeli military planners will be wary that public discourse among Israel’s Western allies has also subtly shifted, likely narrowing the window of opportunity for a large scale invasion.
+
+A full ground invasion will be bloody and lengthy. It will inflict even more pain on Gaza’s population.
+
+What it will not do is end Hamas, as Israel has been insisting is its aim. Hamas is a political movement with a military wing.
+
+It is primarily a national liberation movement, rather than an ideological religious group.
+
+When asked about the sacrifices Palestinians might make as a result of its 7 October operation, Khaled Meshaal, one of Hamas’ senior political leaders, cited Soviet resistance to Nazi German invaders, Vietnam’s war against first France then the US, and Algeria’s struggle for independence from French colonialism as inspirations, placing Hamas firmly in the anti-imperialist camp.
+
+Defeat on the battleground does not equate to political defeat.
+
+And regardless of what happens in any ground invasion, the 7 October operation has irrevocably shifted the situation in Palestine in any day-after scenario.
+
+Hamas has succeeded with a number of aims.
+
+It has damaged Israel’s deterrence image. It has undermined any Israeli-Saudi pact for now.
+
+And it has refocused world attention on the bleeding wound that is Palestine.
+
+That might signal renewed and serious efforts to address Israel’s occupation and end Israel’s military rule over the Palestinian people.
+
+But it also threatens to hit fast forward on Smotrich’s genocide plans.
+
+Omar Karmi is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and a former Jerusalem and Washington, DC, correspondent for The National newspaper.
 Tags
 
-eiGazaDispatches
+Hamas
 
-Gaza genocide
+7 October
 
-Gaza war crimes
+Al Aqsa Storm
 
-Rafah crossing
+Benjamin Netanyahu
 
-al-Mawasi
+Bezalel Smotrich
 
-Gaza health care system
+Mousa Abu Marzook

combined/texts/1032.txt

@@ -1,100 +1,36 @@
-The UK government plans to use legislation to stem the growth of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
+Rashad al-Hissi has been fishing in the Gaza sea for 60 years.
 
-PolarisThe UK government has proposed new legislation to suppress the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the Financial Times reported last week.
+“We have inherited this profession from our fathers and grandfathers,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-The measure aims to restrict the freedom of municipal pension managers to choose how they invest their funds.
+“I have a 12-year-old son, he goes to school. On Thursdays, he comes home early. He joins his siblings in the sea.”
 
-A statement by the ruling Conservative Party released in October announced that it would amend legislation “to stop politically motivated boycott and divestment campaigns by town halls against UK defense companies and against Israel,” which it said would “harm Britain’s economic and international interests.”
+Over the years, al-Hissi has seen fish populations decrease.
 
-The proposals would prevent funds from “pursuing policies which run contrary to UK foreign policy.”
+With waste treatment out of commission in Gaza, raw sewage is being dumped into the Mediterranean.
 
-Ryvka Barnard of the UK-based anti-poverty organization War on Want told The Electronic Intifada that the move comes “at the same time as the increase in the use of lawfare against Palestine activism.”
+That has been catastrophic for Gaza’s fishers, who are restricted by the Israeli military to an area within six nautical miles from the shore.
 
-Earlier this year an anti-BDS law passed by the Illinois state legislature banned the state’s pension funds from investing in companies that boycott Israel — a move to boycott the boycotters.
+In July, Israeli authorities announced a reduction of the fishing zone from six to three nautical miles. That was part of a series of devastating collective punishments that included shutting down Gaza’s only commercial goods crossing and stopping supplies of fuel and cooking gas.
 
-That law was shortly followed by national legislation that inserted anti-BDS guidelines into a trade bill. As The Electronic Intifada reported, the amendment made it a “principal negotiating objective” of the United States “to discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel” in negotiations with the European Union over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
+In January 2017, al-Hissi loaned his boat to his cousin Muhammad to fish in the Gaza sea.
 
-Chilling effect
+An Israeli navy vessel rammed the boat, capsizing it.
 
-Those actions came within months of Israel’s high court affirming its own so-called Boycott Law, which allows Israeli businesses to sue any person or organization that calls for BDS.
+The boat was never found and Muhammad is presumed dead.
 
-More recently, Israeli lawmakers have introduced a new bill that would ban BDS activists from entering any territories Israel controls.
+Israeli forces are currently holding more than 40 boats they have confiscated from their owners, according to the Palestinian fishers union in Gaza.
 
-As for the new UK measure, according to Barnard, “it’s not clear what the actual form is going to take.” The proposal must first wait for a process of public consultation that ends on 19 February. “But the chances of it being changed through the consultation process are very slim,” she said.
-
-“It might not be legally binding,” Barnard explained, “but either way, even if it’s just a ‘guidance’ it will have a real chilling effect.”
-
-Hugh Lanning, chair of the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, blasted the move in a statement saying that the proposals were “an authoritarian response to the amazing growth in the UK of a movement for peace and justice for Palestine” and “a profoundly undemocratic way of undermining UK foreign policy and international law.”
-
-Lanning notes that the action “is at odds with the government’s own longstanding policy,” citing a UK Foreign Office warning that: “Financial transactions, investments, purchases, procurements as well as other economic activities (including in services like tourism) in Israeli settlements or benefiting Israeli settlements, entail legal and economic risks stemming from the fact that the Israeli settlements, according to international law, are built on occupied land and are not recognized as a legitimate part of Israel’s territory.”
-
-The warning adds: “EU citizens and businesses should also be aware of the potential reputational implications of getting involved in economic and financial activities in settlements, as well as possible abuses of the rights of individuals.”
-
-Norway’s state pension fund divested from Israeli companies profiting from the occupation, based in part on evidence published by The Electronic Intifada which proved that the firms were lying about their activities.
-
-Last year, Dutch pension fund PGGM took similar action to divest from Israeli banks due to their role in West Bank settlements.
-
-Anger
-
-In the UK, according to the BBC, Leicester City Council recently voted to boycott goods from Israeli settlements. Four Scottish councils are also boycotting Israeli goods, as are other councils in Wales and Northern Ireland.
-
-Barnard said that while the new measure specifically targets BDS, it’s part of a larger context of government attempts to undermine local authorities.
-
-“It is government using technicalities as a way to prevent BDS activists but also from other people who aren’t activists to be taking action in ethical ways,” said Barnard.
-
-But that extension of power may backfire for the Conservative Party as pension officials reject the new legislation on principle.
-
-The Financial Times reported that the move “angered some of the country’s most senior pension officials.” These include Andrew Clare, chair in asset management at London’s Cass Business School and a pension fund trustee, who said: “Frankly the government should stop sticking its nose in. If a democratically elected council body wishes to pursue an investment strategy with money generated by council taxpayers, they should be able to.”
-
-That report also quotes Kieran Quinn, a Labour Party councillor and chair of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund and the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum.
-
-Quinn addressed accusations that following divestment initiatives could harm pension funds’ returns. “We are legally entitled to look at a whole range of reasons why we should or should not invest in a company. If there were international boycotts [of a company], its financial performance might fall,” he said.
-
-Momentum
-
-For Palestine solidarity activists, the bottom line of BDS is not about numbers but about human rights — and its overall momentum is increasing, say activists.
-
-“Pressure is mounting against arms companies which are profiting from war crimes resulting in the death and destruction of Palestinian men, women and children,” said Lanning. “Rather than attempting to block this surge of support for human rights, governments including our own should act to uphold human rights and international law.”
-
-Barnard stands among those determined to keep the pressure on. “Technically it’s not a done deal,” she said. “It’s not exactly clear how it would work yet. In order for us to be able to mobilize people to fight it they need to understand what it is.”
-
-“It’s using a particular set of scare tactics,” Barnard explained. “So what we’re really wanting to do is have a united front and to figure out how can we frame our fight in such a way that allows the most people to be involved.”
-
-Ryan Rodrick Beiler is a freelance photojournalist and member of the ActiveStills collective who lives in Oslo, Norway.
+Video by Ruwaida Amer and Sanad Ltefa.
 Tags
 
-United Kingdom
-
-Conservative Party
-
-divestment
-
-Ryvka Barnard
-
-War on Want
-
-Illinois
-
-anti-BDS laws
-
-anti-boycott law
-
-Hugh Lanning
-
-Palestine Solidarity Campaign
-
-Israeli settlements
-
-Leicester City Council
-
-Scotland
+Rashad al-Hissi
 
-Wales
+gaza fishermen
 
-Northern Ireland
+Gaza seaport
 
-Labour Party
+Gaza fishing industry
 
-Manchester
+collective punishment
 
-Financial Times
+video

combined/texts/1033.txt

@@ -1,60 +1,68 @@
-The Drone Eats With Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire by Atef Abu Saif (Comma Press)
+Any respite offered by a trip to the beach is extremely short. (Omar Ashtawy / APA Images) July is supposed to be a time for relaxation in Gaza.
 
-The 51-day Israeli war on Gaza may be old news to those who follow the Middle East. What news junkies know are the numbers — at least 2,205 Palestinians killed, including 538 children; 11,000 wounded; up to 500,000 residents displaced; more than 20,000 homes destroyed. What they don’t have are the intimate, granular insights that you get only by living through it — or, reading the diary of someone who has, and is also an eloquent, evocative writer.
+Families should flock to the beach for a well-deserved break.
 
-For instance, do you know how to tell the difference between a missile from a ship, a tank, an F-16 or a drone, by their sound alone? How to prepare your windows when shelling is expected, and where it is safest to sleep? Or what happens to your sense of time in the midst of war?
+Gathering on the seashore with family and friends is a cherished tradition.
 
-The Drone Eats With Me: Diaries from a City Under Fire, by Atef Abu Saif, is just such a book.
+Children should be bursting with excitement the day before a trip to the beach.
 
-(What does a drone sound like? In one passage, Abu Saif describes it, while also giving the book its title: “As the noise of the explosion subsides, it’s replaced by the inevitable whir of a drone, sounding so close it could be right beside us. It’s like it wants to join us for the evening, and has pulled up a chair.”)
+They should pack swimming gear, buckets and spades and speakers on which they can hear their favorite tunes.
 
-“Fragrance” of war
+Parents should stock up on fruit and other snacks.
 
-The diary leads the reader through “Operation Protective Edge” day by day. It’s almost as if you are Abu Saif’s neighbor in the al-Saftawi district of Gaza City or in the Jabaliya refugee camp, where he grew up and to which his family evacuated when his own neighborhood became too unsafe.
+Families should rise early in the morning on the day of a trip – 6 am or even before then so that they can start the day with prayers.
 
-Although already the author of four novels and a political science text, Abu Saif did not write this book with publication in mind. Rather, it began as entries to his diary, printed only after Ra Page, founder of Comma Press, recognized the potential in the passages shared by his friend in Gaza.
+As they approach the shore, families should see fishers unloading nets, each filled with a fresh and colorful catch.
 
-The writing alternates between poignant simplicity and dramatic flourishes and haunting metaphors. Abu Saif often uses a comparison to hunger and eating to describe the rapaciousness of war and those who “feed” off of it. “Destruction is a rich meal for the media,” he writes. “Their camera does not observe the fast of Ramadan, it devours and devours. It is constantly eating new images.”
+The most delightful part of the day should be breakfast on the beach.
 
-The diary begins on 6 July — two days before the officially declared beginning of the war — with this chilling observation: “When it comes, it brings with it a smell, a fragrance even. You learn to recognize it as a kid growing up in these narrow streets. You develop a knack for detecting it, tasting it in the air. You can almost see it. It lurks in the shadows, follows you at a distance wherever you go. If you retain this skill, you can tell that it’s coming — hours, sometimes days, before it actually arrives. You can’t mistake it. War.”
+The breakfast could consist of creamy hummus and crispy falafel, thyme, olive oil, rice, green olives, warm pita bread and steaming hot tea.
 
-Normality and tragedy
+Such food and drink are delicious regardless of where they are consumed. But there is something extra special about chewing or swallowing them, while gazing at the waves, breathing in fresh air and listening to birdsong.
 
-Among the book’s surprising lighter notes is an ongoing thread related to Abu Saif and his beard. Throughout the diary, his wife Hanna and an old friend, the headmaster of the Jabaliya camp high school, nag him to get his beard trimmed — war or no war. Abu Saif stubbornly puts them off, irrationally insisting that he will return to his normal routine only when the fighting ends. Finally, after nearly a month, he gives in.
+Children should spend the morning building castles. They should be allowed to let their imaginations create their own little worlds.
 
-“Sometimes,” he writes, “it’s the smallest things that give the most solace. To have a shave after nearly three weeks of discomfort and itching is a blessed relief. It was a silly idea to mark the days of the war in millimeters of hair.”
+Lunch should be a barbecue.
 
-Likewise, there are scenes to which any family can relate — such as when Abu Saif, his wife and their five small children gather around the television to watch SpongeBob SquarePants.
+Sizzling meat should be served alongside salads, made from tomatoes, onions, green peppers and parsley. That flavorful medley should be enough to satisfy the heartiest of appetites.
 
-And then you turn the page and are hit with a shockingly different reality:
+Vendors should be offering corn on the cob and candy apples.
 
-“Last night was a terrible chapter in the history of Gaza — especially for the eastern part of the city of Beit Hanoun. Tanks moved in from the border toward the residential areas, destroying everything in their way, erasing every building, every school, every orchard. You do not know whether the next shell will fall on your head. When you will be reduced to another number in the news. You think about what it means to disappear from the world, to evaporate like a drop of water, leaving no sign of your existence, and the thought drives you mad.”
+Isolation
 
-False hopes
+The day should continue with animals – particularly camels and horses – visiting the beach.
 
-From SpongeBob to the ever-present risk of obliteration. The contrast couldn’t be more jarring. That is the reality of Gaza. But the most profoundly disturbing chapter of the book is the afterword, written in February 2015:
+Some people should be playing volleyball, others riding the surf.
 
-“It’s been six months since the war ended, and reading over this diary now, my first instinct is to feel a little foolish about the hopes expressed on the last day of the war. For many thousands of Gazans, the suffering continues and the promises [of the ceasefire] seem to have all been broken. The war ended, officially, on 26 August, but for those who were left homeless or bereaved, or with their livelihoods destroyed, the war goes on. The only difference is the world isn’t watching anymore.”
+As night falls, the sound of drums and national songs should fill the air. Adults and children alike should start singing and dancing.
 
-In fact, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned: “Six months after the ceasefire was reached following the recent conflict in Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Strip continue to live under dire conditions, as almost no reconstruction has taken place since the end of the violence.”
+People should be staying on the beach as late as midnight before heading home for a quick shower and a good night’s sleep.
 
-Even the violence hasn’t really ended. Although it’s nowhere in the mass media, Israeli forces fire regularly at fishermen and farmers trying to eke out a living in the boundary zones.
+In July 2024, the joy of summer has been replaced by fear and uncertainty.
 
-Abu Saif’s diary, and the discussion guide that goes along with it (available through an online download), are a reminder to all readers that the suffering and humanity of Gaza may be out of the headlines, but still cry for attention from a fickle world.
+People have lost their enthusiasm for weekend getaways. Instead, the constant threat of violence has caused immense dread.
 
-Pam Bailey is a freelance writer based in Washington, DC. She works as special advisor to the chairman of Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights and founded a project called We Are Not Numbers.
-Tags
+The families who should be unwinding on the beach have been torn apart. Children have been orphaned, parents have lost sons and daughters.
+
+Everybody who is still alive is struggling to make ends meet.
+
+Too many children in Gaza have been displaced time and again. Laughter has been drowned out by the sounds of a genocidal war.
 
-Atef Abu Saif
+The sea can still provide a modicum of solace.
 
-The Drone Eats With Me
+The beach is still a place where people can escape from the confines of their damaged homes or their makeshift tents.
 
-#GazaUnderAttack
+Any respite is extremely short.
 
-Gaza Strip
+The sea does not symbolize freedom in 2024.
 
-literature
+Now it serves as a reminder that Gaza is isolated.
+
+Nobody is able to leave at the moment. We are trapped.
+
+Eman Alhaj Ali is a writer and translator based in Gaza.
+Tags
 
-memoir
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
 
-Gaza ceasefire
+eiGazaDispatches

combined/texts/1034.txt

@@ -1,112 +1,67 @@
-Workers from Gaza going through the Erez checkpoint are often questioned by the Israeli military.
-
-APA imagesMuhammad Abdelwahab had an accident while working on a construction site in Israel.
-
-His injury was severe – hemorrhaging from a wound to the head – and he went to a clinic.
-
-The clinic advised him to go to hospital, but Abdelwahab preferred to wait and return to Gaza for treatment. Since he did not have health insurance, treatment would have been too expensive in Israel.
-
-Despite the severity of Abdelwahab’s injury, his employer did not provide any financial compensation or medical treatment.
-
-Abdelwahab, 39, is a father of four and lives in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
-
-He had been unemployed for three years when he started working construction jobs in Israel in December 2021. His accident occurred in February this year.
-
-Although he is a professional blacksmith, Abdelwahab did not mind working in any field in Israel, not only because those jobs paid relatively well, but because Israel’s blockade on Gaza – imposed in 2007 – has severely diminished job opportunities in the Strip.
-
-Abdelwahab was able to obtain a permit to work in Israel, but he was not officially designated a “worker.”
-
-Instead, he received a “financial needs” permit, which strips the worker of access to benefits like workers’ compensation, health insurance and other labor rights afforded to workers in Israel.
-
-“I am waiting to recover from my injury to return to work,” he said. “The more I stay at home, the more things get worse for me. I have children, three of them are school students, and I have major expenses.”
-
-Though Abdelwahab considers matters like health and life insurance important, he said that conditions in Gaza are so dire that any job, even one without benefits, is “like a dream.”
-
-In this, Abdelwahab is taking into consideration his children’s futures, which seem in peril when he and his coworkers lack job security.
-
-Workers without insurance
-
-Israel recently granted an additional 8,000 permits to Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip to work inside Israel as part of an agreement with Hamas, as mediated by Egypt.
-
-Yet, due to the nature of these permits, these workers lack labor and social benefits and are treated differently and often paid less than Palestinian workers from the occupied West Bank.
-
-Instead of labor permits, the workers from Gaza are granted “financial needs” permits that do not guarantee them labor rights.
-
-Workers from the West Bank, meanwhile, have fixed permits.
-
-Fahmi Amin, 40, who works in an Israeli factory near Gaza, said obtaining such permits can cost a Palestinian in Gaza up to $1,000 in registration fees to Gaza’s finance ministry, a huge amount for the unemployed.
-
-Yet many are held and questioned by Israeli authorities for brief periods at Erez checkpoint, the sole crossing for people between Gaza and Israel.
-
-Amin pointed out that Palestinian workers in Israel, due to their lack of rights, fear that humanitarian aid from the Palestinian Authority could be cut off and that, at any moment, a dispute between Israel and Gaza could arise, leaving them unemployed and with few prospects for further work.
-
-Amin said that working in Israel can pay five times the wages one would receive in Gaza.
-
-“But it will be a disaster if we think about leaving work” in Israel, Amin said.
-
-“We are too afraid that the aid we get from the Palestinian Authority – which has already been suspended for several months – will be cut off,” he said.
-
-The Palestinian Authority – dependent on foreign aid – grants welfare allowances to the poorest families in Gaza.
-
-“Work in Israel isn’t guaranteed,” he added. “We will return to look for a way to convince the official authorities of our need for periodic financial support in case the aid is cut off. We do not want to reach this stage.”
-
-Amin said that he and other workers would work anywhere, so long as they can provide food and clothing for their children.
-
-“We hope our rights are given in the future so that nothing can prevent us from working,” he said.
-
-Denial of basic rights
-
-Following Israel’s May 2021 attack on Gaza, Israel authorized an additional 3,000 merchant permits for Palestinians in Gaza, bringing the total number of permits to 10,000. Yet these merchant and financial needs permits do not entail labor rights.
-
-Up until the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, the total number of workers from Gaza inside Israel stood at nearly 30,000.
-
-Today, this number does not exceed 10,000 Palestinian workers from Gaza, according to Sami al-Amasi, head of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in Gaza.
-
-Al-Amasi pointed out that Israelis, by refusing to label Palestinians from Gaza as “workers,” evade any commitment to providing labor and financial rights.
-
-Many workers who were injured or fired before 2000, al-Amasi said, sought out Palestinian lawyers with Israeli citizenship to obtain their rights.
-
-Some of these cases remained in the courts for years as Israeli employers sought to deny Palestinian workers their rights.
-
-Al-Amasi explained that Israel replaced merchant permits with financial needs permits to avoid providing workers with health insurance, compensation in case of injury and severance pay.
-
-Al-Amasi noted  that before 2000 Gazans employed in Israel were granted the title of “worker.”
+“We grow, they bulldoze, we replant,” says Um Abed, 65, in Zeitoun.
+
+IPSZEITOUN, Gaza (IPS) - Tawfiq Mandil, 45, stood among hundreds of Palestinian farmers, activists and international supporters in the Gaza Strip’s eastern Zeitoun district, about half a kilometer from the boundary with Israel. They were renewing a call for the boycott of Israeli goods.
+“The Israeli army destroyed my house and my five dunums of land [one dunum is equal to 1,000 square meters] on the last day of the attacks in 2009, as well as 20 other homes,” he said.
+With signs reading “Boycott Israeli agricultural products” and “support Palestinian farmers,” Mandil and others protesting Israeli oppression of Palestinian farmers joined together Saturday to plant olive trees on Israeli-razed farmland and to implore international supporters to join the boycott of Israeli agricultural produce.
+Mandil believes that the boycott is his only hope for justice for Palestinian farmers being targeted by the Israeli army and oppressed by Israel. “We hope that it will put pressure on Israel to stop targeting us and allow us to farm our land as we used to.”
+With an Israeli surveillance blimp hovering above and within sight of a remotely-controlled machine gun tower, the significance of the rally’s location near the “buffer zone” was not lost. Israeli authorities prohibit Palestinians from accessing the 300 meters flanking the Gaza-Israel boundary. In reality, the Israeli army regularly attacks Palestinians up to two kilometers from the boundary in some areas, rendering more than 35 percent of Gaza’s farmland off-limits.
+Obligations
+“By engaging in the trade of settlement produce, states are failing to comply with their obligation to actively cooperate in order to bring the Israeli settlement enterprise to an end,” said Mandil. “Therefore, a ban on settlement produce must be considered among those actions that third party states should undertake in order to comply with their international law obligations.”
+The Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq released a position paper last month condemning the Israeli settlement produce trade. The paper highlights the means by which Israeli settlements benefit from the oppression of Palestinian farmers (“Feasting on the occupation: Illegality of settlement produce and the responsibility of EU member states under international law,” January 2013 [PDF]).
+“While the EU has been quite outspoken in condemning settlements and their expansion, they continue to import produce from these same settlements and in doing so, help to sustain their very existence,” Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq’s director general, said.
+“More than 80 Palestinians have been injured and at least four Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks in the border regions since the November 2012 ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian resistance,” said Adie Mormech, 35, a British activist living in Gaza. This is in addition to the many Palestinians killed and hundreds injured in previous years of Israeli army attacks near the boundary.
+“There is simultaneous action happening in the occupied West Bank,” said Mormech. “They’re planting near Yitzhar colony, which is notorious for its violence against Palestinians. Around the world, an estimated 30 countries are holding actions in solidarity with Palestinian farmers and fishers.”
+“They bulldoze, we replant”
+Um Abed, 65, from Zeitoun, is defiant. “Today we’re planting olive trees. God willing next year we’ll plant lemon, date and palm trees. We grow, they bulldoze, we replant.”
+The boycott action follows a growing number of initiatives emerging in recent years from the Gaza Strip.
+Palestinian students in Gaza universities stepped up the “boycott Israel” call in 2012, releasing YouTube videos calling for political action, not aid, from international supporters.
+The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has attracted international support, including in the US and UK.
+Increasing numbers of cultural and religious associations, such as the Quakers’ Friends Fiduciary Corporation, are divesting from corporations that profit from or support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. The United Church of Canada endorsed the boycott of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in August 2012.
+“We want equality”
+Haidar Eid, a professor at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University and a PACBI member, outlined the BDS movement’s objectives.
+“We are calling for implementation of UN Security Council resolution 242, which calls for withdrawal of occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The second demand is the implementation of the United Nations resolution 194, the return of all Palestinian refugees to the towns and villages from which they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. The third demand is the end to Israel’s apartheid policies in Palestine 1948 [present-day Israel]. We want equality.”
+While human rights campaigners and students have been in the forefront of BDS actions in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas government has also taken steps calling for boycott. Joe Catron, an American activist based in the Gaza Strip, explains one recent government-led campaign.
+“The Adidas campaign began in March 2012, when Adidas was sponsoring a marathon through parts of Jerusalem, including parts that are internationally recognized as occupied. The ministry of youth and sports here called upon the Arab League to boycott Adidas in response to this, which a number of countries did.”
+In September 2012, Gaza’s ministry of agriculture decided to ban most Israeli fruits entering Gaza.
+“Palestinian farmers can grow the fruits we consume,” said Tahsen al-Saqa, marketing director in the ministry. “We need to support and protect our own farmers. They’ve been economically devastated by the Israeli ban on exporting since 2006.”
+“Boycott is the key, and it is growing,” said Adie Mormech. “The momentum is so much now that it is not going to stop. It’s going to be like South Africa.”
+All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2013). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.
+Tags
 
-Everyone should be granted the status of worker, he added, “so that everyone gets his due rights.”
+BDS
 
-The union he represents is now pushing for at least 30,000 permits to be issued for people from Gaza to work in Israel. These efforts are being assisted by what al-Amassi called “intermediaries.”
+Gaza
 
-According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, around 230,000 people in Gaza were unemployed during 2021.
+Operation Cast Lead
 
-Among Palestinians with diplomas aged 19 to 29 in the Gaza Strip, 66 percent of females were unemployed, and 39 percent of males.
+farmers
 
-Maher al-Tabaa, the director of Gaza’s Chamber of Commerce, said that the merchant and financial needs permits issued to Palestinians in Gaza do not afford them any rights.
+agriculture
 
-Yet the workers accept these permits, he said, due to high rates of poverty and unemployment.
+Haidar Eid
 
-He added that Israel may later use this as a way to pressure Palestinian factions into accepting a long-term armistice with Israel, which was not taken into account during the earlier negotiations brokered by Egypt.
+PACBI
 
-Currently, the workers who have permits have very limited impact on Gaza’s economy when compared to previous years, al-Tabaa said. The number of people seeking jobs far outweighs the number of permits available.
+settlement products
 
-The minimum wage in Gaza is less than $600 per month, yet the actual average monthly wage is $200.
+settlements
 
-“Low wages are prominent in besieged Gaza,” al-Tabaa said, adding that very few public and private institutions are able to pay the minimum wage.
+Al-Haq
 
-Even then, he noted, “it is limited to major institutions such as banks and main telecom companies, while other workers in Gaza receive half or less than half of the minimum wage.”
+Shawan Jabarin
 
-Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.
-Tags
+Adie Mormech
 
-Muhammad Abdelwahab
+West Bank
 
-Fahmi Amin
+Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation
 
-May 2021 attack on Gaza
+United Church of Canada
 
-Sami al-Amasi
+Hamas
 
-Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
+Joe Catron
 
-Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics
+South Africa
 
-Maher al-Tabaa
+apartheid

combined/texts/1035.txt

@@ -1,26 +1,64 @@
-Marching annually in Sakhnin, families continue to demand accountability for the deaths of 13 Palestinians by Israeli police forces in October 2000.
+Activists say building new structures in the destroyed village of Kufr Birim is their priority.
 
-ActiveStillsOn 1 October, thousands of Palestinians marched in Sakhnin to commemorate the eleventh anniversary of the October 2000 uprising during which Israeli police forces murdered 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel over the course of eight days. None of the slain protesters posed a threat to the life of police forces or others and most of them were shot in the upper-body at close range. The killings took place in Umm al-Fahm, Jatt, Arrabeh, Sakhnin, Nazareth, Kufr Kanna and Kufr Manda between 1-8 October 2000.“Eleven years later, the wound is still bleeding,” Ibrahim Siyam, father of martyr Ahmad Siyam and spokesman for the martyrs’ families, told The Electronic Intifada. “Ahmad was the first martyr of the October 2000 demonstrations. He was just 18 and preparing to attend college in few days,” Siyam added.All 13 martyrs were young men, brimming with hope and life. Amid the attempts of the Israeli propaganda machine to dehumanize Palestinians, the martyrs’ families insist on reminding everyone of the dreams and aspirations of their loved ones.One of the most poignant images of the October 2000 uprising was that of 17-year-old Aseel Assleh from Arrabeh wearing a T-shirt that carried the logo of Seeds of Peace — a Palestinian-Jewish peace group — his head buried in an olive grove after being shot in the back of his neck at extremely close range. Aseel was a remarkably smart student who believed in non-violent resistance and whose political consciousness far exceeded his age.In a phone interview, Aseel’s father, Hassan Assleh, said, “Aseel crackled with energy … even on his way to the demonstration in Arrabeh on 2 October, he was singing. His eyes were glistening with hope and lust for life.”Challenging the “death-loving” mythHassan Assleh is particularly bothered by the stigma often ascribed to Palestinians in the mainstream Israeli and Western media as “death-loving people” who are obsessed with seeking martyrdom. “This is a simplistic and false stereotype,” he said. “Aseel had smoldering passion and he clung to life until his very last heartbeat. All Palestinians are like that. Don’t think that any of the martyrs chooses to die or put martyrdom as their goal. We are aware, however, that freedom requires great sacrifices and it is the insistent drive to freedom and justice that inspires these young women and men to sacrifice. Martyrdom is not our aim, but it’s the cost we are forced to pay to liberate our land and regain dignity.”When I asked him whether he regrets allowing his son to join the demonstration, he heaved a deep sigh that summed up his feelings as expressively as his eloquent words. “No, even if I had known the consequences, I would have never stopped him from joining the protest. I always taught my kids to speak out and stand up to injustice; and preventing Aseel from attending the demonstration would have contravened the values his mother Jamila and I hold,” he replied.“However, there are arduous times when I feel betrayed by our political ‘leadership’ that did very little to demand accountability. In these painfully onerous and lonely moments, I miss Aseel the most. His memory and my wife’s fortitude keep me strong, though.”“Betrayed by the political leadership” is a feeling that is constantly expressed by the martyrs’ families. Even though it was the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel that called for mass demonstrations and public strikes on 1 October 2000 in response to Ariel Sharon’s rabble-rousing visit to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and the killing of 12-year-old Mohammad Al Durra a day later in Gaza, the martyrs’ parents feel that the High Follow-Up Committee and the Palestinian parties in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) have let them down ever since.“I think that since the establishment of the Or Commission [the commission that was set up by the government to investigate into the killings under pressure from the Palestinian minority], the High Follow-Up Committee and all the Palestinian parties did not apply any pressure,” Ibrahim Siyam said. “The Commission desperately tried to absolve the government from any responsibility and in various occasions it denied Palestinians due process and failed to abide by legal norms, but this might not have not happened had a constant pressure been exercised.”Siyam agrees with Assleh: “With every passing year, the October 2000 uprising is pushed further to the margins. In this year, the High Follow-Up Committee did not call for a public strike and was content with staging a central march that has over the years become more of a festival.”The victims’ families are concerned that the October 2000 uprising is turning into a folklore event that is only remembered every subsequent year on 1 October.Protection from amnesia“It’s important to internationalize the October 2000 massacre,” Assleh said, “But what’s more important is to protect it from amnesia inside Palestine. Just like the Kufr Qassem massacre and Land Day, October 2000 is a landmark in the struggle of Palestinian minority in Israel against the Zionist entity and every Palestinian citizen of Israel should be aware of its significance and implications.”Keeping October 2000 a part of the local discourse is an enormous challenge, however. And while the Palestinian political representatives inside Israel bear some of the brunt, the state of Israel also attempts to control the collective memory of Palestinians by banning schools from commemorating the October 2000 killings and persecuting and terrorizing those who do. For instance, the principal of Al Battof high school in Arrabeh was summoned for a hearing at the Israeli ministry of education for holding a panel to discuss the October 2000 killings. Such steps, along with the “Nakba Law” and the censorship imposed on teaching the Palestinian narrative, make a mockery of Israel’s claim to be the “only democracy in the Middle East.”Another damning indictment against Israel is the fact that no criminal investigation was held into the October 2000 killings, and that none of the policemen responsible for the killings was held accountable. In its final report that was published in September 2003, the Or Commission, headed by Justice Theodore Or, found that rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition were used against unarmed protesters and ordered the police investigation department Mahash to restart investigation into the cases. Two years later, Mahash concluded that there was no sufficient evidence to warrant criminal investigation into the cases, in stark contrast to the findings of the Or Commission. In his review of Mahash’s report, the then Attorney General Menachem Mazuz decided to back Mahash and closed all 13 cases in February 2008.“We never trusted the racist state of Israel to bring us justice.” Assleh said. And he is right. In the country that boastfully appoints itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, state-sponsored crimes against Palestinians have always gone unpunished.Ibrahim Siyam wondered: “If one Jewish citizen had been killed by the police, do you think they would have allowed the killer to escape accountability? In Israel, it seems that Palestinian lives are cheap.”Budour Youssef Hassan, originally from Nazareth, is a Palestinian socialist activist and third-year law student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Follow her on Twitter at: twitter.com/Budouroddick.
+ActiveStillsKufr Birim is one of the hundreds of Palestinian villages depopulated by Zionist militas during the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) — the ethnic cleansing which led to Israel’s foundation in 1948.
+Earlier this month, activists held a week-long youth camp in this village. More than seventy young Palestinians living in present-day Israel attended.
+The camp featured lectures and tours that teach the village’s Palestinian history, as well as arts and crafts activities and musical and theater performances.
+“For 66 years we have been trying to return,” George Ghantous, an organizer of the camp, told The Electronic Intifada.
+Harsh winter
+Though this is the 25th annual camp, Ghantous said that this year was special. It is the one-year anniversary of when more than a dozen Palestinian youths — descendants of the village’s refugees — returned to the remains of the village.
+Despite a harsh winter, which included a heavy snowstorm, and harassment by Israeli authorities, they set up camp and stayed on their ancestral lands.
+“Israeli [authorities and companies] come here very often, bringing a lot of different groups, like Birthright groups and tourists, and don’t mention our history here,” Ghantous said.
+“We have summer camps to teach about history and work camps to rebuild the [Palestinian] houses. But [Israeli authorities] come and destroy it. Sometimes we have clashes.”
+Organized by al-Awda, a group advocating for the rights of Palestinian refugees, activists decided to permanently return to the village in August 2013. In Iqrit, another Palestinian village depopulated in 1948, activists had already returned a year earlier in the summer of 2012.
+“Al-Awda is a progressive, leftist group that began back in 1982,” Ghantous said. “For more than thirty years we’ve been working on issues surrounding returning to Kufr Birim.”
+In the cases of both Iqrit and Kufr Birim, the majority of refugees were scattered across parts of present-day Israel and eventually took Israeli citizenship. And in both cases, Israel’s military subsequently demolished the villages despite appeals to state’s high court.
+Bombed
+It wasn’t the first time that the residents of these villages have taken their case to the high court.
+The high court’s July 1951 ruling that Iqrit’s refugees must be allowed to return was ignored. Israeli soldiers forced several of the village’s almost uniformly Christian population to watch as they demolished all of their homes with dynamite and other explosives on Christmas Day that year.
+Only a small church and the local graveyard were left partially intact.
+Kufr Birim’s residents were told by Israel’s high court in 1953 that they would be permitted to return to their homes if the military could not provide a reason to the contrary considered suitable by the court. But Israeli warplanes dropped bombs on the homes and buildings soon afterwards, again leaving only a church and a few small structures standing.
+Much of Kufr Birim’s land was turned into a state park and the rest was divided among surrounding Jewish Israeli communities established after 1948.
+Children play outside the cemetery of the destroyed village of Iqrit in April 2014.
+Ryan Rodrick BeilerStanding in front the ruins of her grandfather’s home, Waad Ghantous, George’s cousin, spoke to The Electronic Intifada. “This is my grandfather’s house,” she said. “His brother was killed here in 1948. Our family lived in the mountains around Birim [during the Nakba] waiting to come back.”
+After Israeli military forces time and again prevented the villagers from returning, her grandparents resettled in al-Jaysh, a nearby Palestinian village. Now a counselor at the camp, Waad Ghantous explained that she was a participant every year while growing up.
+“I used to only visit like three or four times a year,” she said, adding that she lives and works in Haifa, a city in present-day Israel. “Now that we’ve returned, I come back several times every month.”
+George Ghantous recalled that after returning to Kufr Birim during the summer of 1972 to repair the church and homes, villagers refused to leave. “There were clashes with tanks and soldiers came with many [weapons]. After that we stayed for one year, but the 1973 war made things very hard,” he said.
+“The most important thing we do is build [new structures] and maintain ones already here,” he added. “We are trying to make our return and staying here much easier.”
+Harassed
+The Israel Lands Administration and police have consistently harassed the campers over the last year. A week after an Israeli court rejected their appeal, Israeli authorities demolished several structures in June, including a bathroom and tents, and evicted the activists.
+George Ghantous said that they also built a wall on the side of a steep hill “to make it safe for the children,” adding that it was demolished by Israeli bulldozers shortly after its completion.
+“Our [annual summer] camp is the axis that we’ve built our social and political life around,” he said.
+Local activists told The Electronic Intifada that police recently showed up a week after the summer camp and tried to intimidate them by recording their personal information, including names and identification numbers. Though an Israeli court is considering another appeal, campers and residents say they have no hope for justice for Palestinians in an Israeli court.
+“Because [Israeli] authorities have a national park on our land, they are able to monitor us all the time,” George Ghantous said. “They have people working here every day until four or five o’clock, and they have different patrols that come and watch. Some of them try to provoke us.”
+Each year the annual summer camp focuses on a particular theme. This year campers were taught their connections to the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip.
+“This year our activities are much less amusing,” George Ghantous said. “It is more educational this year because we feel sad. We also have mixed feelings about resistance and sadness and feeling like we’re unable to do anything for our people [in Gaza].”
+“At the same time, we continue our work,” he said, vowing that activists will stay on their land regardless of Israel’s oppressive measures and racist policies.
+“We wish to become a front for Palestinian return,” Ghantous added. “We can escalate our struggle at this point … Since we started, we have been wishing that … other refugees will start their own direct actions.”
+Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist and regular contributor to The Electronic Intifada. His website is www.postrickland.com. Follow him on Twitter: @P_Strickland_.
 Tags
 
-Sakhnin
+Kufr Birim
 
-Land Day
+Palestinian citizens of Israel
 
-October 2000 killings
+Nakba
 
-Palestinians in Israel
+right of return
 
-Ibrahim Siyam
+Iqrit
 
-Ahmad Siyam
+israeli high court
 
-Aseel Assleh
+Waad Ghantous
 
-Hassan Assleh
+George Ghantous
 
-High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel
+refugees
 
-Kufr Qassem
+Haifa
 
-Or Commission
+Israel Land Administration
+
+Gaza
+
+#GazaUnderAttack

combined/texts/1036.txt

@@ -1,211 +1,44 @@
-An American F-15 fighter jet deployed as part of President Joe Biden’s regional buildup following the 7 October resistance offensive that routed Israel’s army.
-TwitterThis article has been updated since publication to include reaction from the Jordanian government.
-
-Jordan has strongly condemned Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and its diplomats were instrumental in passing a UN General Assembly resolution on Friday calling for a ceasefire.
-
-The country’s King Abdullah was quick to order humanitarian aid for Gaza even before any such supplies started to trickle in.
-
-The monarch has also been calling for an end to Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza and for a lifting of Israel’s suffocating siege on the territory.
-
-He has also warned that Israeli attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians would be a war crime.
-
-And Jordan’s Queen Rania has garnered warm praise at home and abroad for her forthright condemnation of Israel’s “butchery at a mass scale” of Palestinian civilians, in a recent interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
-
-“Why is it that whenever Israel commits these atrocities it comes under the banner of self-defense, but when there’s violence by Palestinians it is immediately called terrorism?” Queen Rania asked.
-
-“There’s real double standards here that we’re seeing,” she added, undoubtedly channeling the sentiments of millions of Jordanians.
-
-Speaking to CNN anchor Christina Amanpour about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, Queen Rania calls out the “double standard” pic.twitter.com/fMRfh8ixGX— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) October 26, 2023
-
-Jordan must “act in line” with its policy
-
-At the same time, reports that Jordan is permitting the United States to station additional military forces on its soil as Israel exterminates Palestinians in Gaza are generating disquiet.
-
-At a protest near the Israeli embassy in Amman on 24 October, Jordanians expressed opposition to the American military presence in their country. One sign read, for example, “no to US military bases,” and another condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden as “partners in crime.”
-
-The Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK has also criticized Jordan “for allowing the US to use its territory” to transport military equipment into the region as part of an American deployment to defend Israel.
-
-The group urged Amman “to act in line with its policy and the strong statements issued by the Jordanian government confirming that it is against the unjust war launched by Israel with Western support on the Gaza Strip.”
-
-“It is unacceptable for Jordan to call in public to stop the war, while allowing US military support for Israel,” AOHR UK states.
-
-That is a sentiment likely to be widely shared across the region, including by Jordan’s own population.
-
-— Arab Organisation (@AohrUk) October 26, 2023
-
-“The defense of Israel”
-
-But what role is Jordan playing in the US military buildup ordered by President Biden following the 7 October offensive by Gaza-based Palestinian resistance fighters who routed Israel’s vaunted army in a matter of hours?
-
-The regional US deployment is intended to “assist in the defense of Israel,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin explained on 21 October.
-
-It includes positioning two aircraft carrier strike groups in the Eastern Mediterranean, bolstering air defenses across the region as well as placing “an additional number of forces on prepare to deploy orders,” Austin announced.
-
-Meanwhile, by last Sunday, more than 60 American and Israeli cargo aircraft had landed in Israel as part of an airlift ordered by Biden to ensure that Tel Aviv does not run out of bombs to drop on Palestinian families in Gaza.
-
-“Most of them are civilian aircraft leased to carry weapons and spare parts,” according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
-
-This number is certain to have increased significantly in recent days.
-
-Warplanes in Jordan
-
-In the same 24 October article, Haaretz reported that US military transport aircraft have been landing all over the region.
-
-Citing open-source information, the newspaper said eight heavylift planes which took off from supply centers in the US and Europe landed at a Jordanian base.
-
-The Wall Street Journal also reported on 24 October that the US was “scrambling to deploy nearly a dozen air-defense systems to countries across the Middle East ahead of Israel’s expected land invasion of Gaza,” listing Jordan as one of six Arab states where the US would station Patriot surface-to-air missile systems.
-
-And according to a 16 October Haaretz report, “a squadron of US F-15E Strike Eagle bombers based in Britain was deployed … at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base east of the Jordanian capital of Amman,” along with a squadron of A-10 ground attack aircraft and Florida-based American special forces.
-
-Consistent with these reports, the United States Air Force announced on 14 October that a day earlier, “the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron’s F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft arrived in the US Central Command area of responsibility.”
-
-The Air Force Times noted that the F-15s were deployed “as the US looks to bolster its position in the region amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas.”
-
-The US military did not disclose the specific country to which the fighter jets were deployed, but the US Central Command area – also known as CENTCOM – spans a number of countries including Jordan.
-
-CENTCOM published pictures of the aircraft arriving in the region:
-
-RAF Lakenheath’s 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron’s F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, October 13, to bolster the U.S. posture and enhance air operations throughout the Middle East. pic.twitter.com/u8oFMXweYB— US AFCENT (@USAFCENT) October 14, 2023
-
-A-10s from the 354th EFS have arrived to the @CENTCOM AOR.This arrival bolsters the U.S. defense posture, enhances air operations throughout the Middle East, and reassures our allies and regional partners we remain postured to protect and defend their freedom.@usairforce pic.twitter.com/Pe8MVGZBs7— US AFCENT (@USAFCENT) October 15, 2023
-
-An account on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), identifying itself as belonging to a French aviation spotter in Jordan, geolocated the aircraft to the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, east of Amman, using the CENTCOM photos and other publicly available images.
-
-+ Fuel storage facility (31.8335769, 36.7560536) located 3.4km away from the approximate position of the photographer pic.twitter.com/EUAt5u1JMC— Føxïę (@SomeFrench1991) October 14, 2023
-
-The Aviationist website reported that OSINT – open-source intelligence – trackers “were quick to verify the rumor” about the destination of the American warplanes.
-
-“The aircraft, in fact, landed at Muwaffaq Salti/Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan, one of the usual deployment locations for US aircraft in the area,” The Aviationist stated.
-
-Days earlier, Eurofighter warplanes from Germany’s Luftwaffe arrived at the same Jordanian air base as part of previously planned exercises called Desert Air 23.
-
-Gelandet! Unsere Eurofighter sind zur Übung #DesertAir23 auf der Al Azraq Base in Jordanien angekommen. Ab morgen üben wir erstmalig gemeinsam mit der jordanischen Luftwaffe und der @usairforce über 🇯🇴. pic.twitter.com/U1t4rsYZN6— Team Luftwaffe (@Team_Luftwaffe) October 10, 2023
-
-Avi Scharf, the former editor-in-chief of Haaretz and now the newspaper’s national security, cyber and OSINT (open-source intelligence) editor, documented at least 15 American heavylift aircraft, two fighter squadrons and special forces arriving in Jordan since 7 October.
-
-■ OSINT shows U.S. deploying more arms+troops to Israel, Jordan, Cyprus■ Around 80 USAF heavylifters arrived in the region since Hamas attack■ 2nd strike group to enter Med around coming weekend, but may continue south to Arabia Sea/ Persian Gulf areahttps://t.co/womJe3gH9L pic.twitter.com/QOJOprq34x— avi scharf (@avischarf) October 23, 2023
-
-Separately on 24 October, the Pentagon announced it had deployed a squadron of F-16 fighter jets to the CENTCOM area “to help protect US troops.”
-
-It did not name the country where the New Jersey-based warplanes would be stationed.
-
-Jordanian denials and explanations
-
-On Sunday, the Jordanian official news agency Petra, citing a source in the Jordanian armed forces military command, reported that “there is no truth to what has been published on some social media sites about the use of Royal Jordanian Air Force bases by American aircraft that are supplying the Israeli army with supplies and ammunition to be used in bombing operations in Gaza.”
-
-The statement added that such “rumors” were intended to cast doubt on “Jordan’s firm stance towards the Palestinian cause and the reputation of the [Jordanian] armed forces whose field hospital continues to receive the injured and the wounded in Gaza.”
-
-The Jordanian military source added that the intent of those spreading such claims is to “undermine national security and stability” and derail Jordan’s efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire and deliver more aid to Gaza.
-
-While the Jordanian military clearly denied – and plausibly so – any arms transfers through Jordan to Israel, what it pointedly did not deny is the reported arrival of at least two squadrons of US warplanes in Jordan.
-
-Jordan confirms Patriot deployment
-
-Also on Sunday, Jordan confirmed the arrival of the US Patriot missile system in the country.
-
-Military spokesperson Brigadier-General Mustafa al-Hiyari told the country’s national television that Jordan had requested the air defense missiles from Washington.
-
-Al-Hiyari asserted that Jordan wanted the Patriots to counter drones which “have become a threat on all our fronts,” especially because “drones are used for smuggling drugs.”
-
-He added that Jordan had asked the Americans to deploy the Patriots because “this system is an expensive system and there’s no way to provide it with local resources. We need a strategic partner.”
-
-Al-Hiyari also said that there were possible threats to Jordan of ballistic missiles from all directions, without citing any country that has ever threatened Jordan in this manner.
-
-These explanations are likely to be viewed with skepticism.
-
-As the Congressional Research Service –   an official body that provides information to US legislators and the public – acknowledged in a recent publication, the Patriot “system and its interceptors are both expensive and limited in supply.”
-
-That was one of the key factors that led to hesitation over whether to send the system to Ukraine.
-
-Approving Patriots for Ukraine would mean withdrawing them from other regions of the world where the supply was already stretched, the Congressional Research Service observed.
-
-“If they are withdrawn from the US homeland, that could impede training or modernization cycles,” it added.
-
-After an initial refusal and then a lengthy debate, the US in December agreed to send a single Patriot battery to Ukraine.
-
-When the first Patriot battery did arrive in Ukraine in April, it apparently came from the German military’s stock.
-
-In other words, given how difficult it was for the US to spare any Patriots for Ukraine – a war the United States considers its top priority – it is very unlikely that Washington would send any to Jordan merely because Amman asked for them, especially for purposes like drug interdiction or a missile threat that is merely hypothetical.
-
-Al-Hiyari also reiterated the military’s denial that any weapons transfers had taken place.
-
-“Be sure that not a single bullet was transferred towards the Israeli army from Jordanian airports,” he said
-
-Jordan-US defense agreement
-
-Al-Hiyari asserted, “We do not have American bases … on Jordanian soil,” and said that any American military presence in Jordan was solely for training Jordanian forces and providing maintenance and upgrades for equipment.
-
-However in January 2021, Jordan and the United States signed a “Defense Cooperation Agreement.”
-
-That agreement provides the US military with “unimpeded” rent-free use of Jordanian facilities and free movement of US military personnel, vehicles, aircraft and  equipment in and out of Jordan and throughout its territory at Washington’s discretion.
-
-The agreement allows that facilities “may be designated as either for exclusive use by US forces or to be used jointly by US forces and Jordan.”
-
-While the agreement stipulates that any bases used by the Americans remain Jordanian property, it gives the United States near-total control over the facilities and how they are used.
-
-Moreover, the US Department of Defense allocated more than $140 million in 2018, “in Air Force construction funds to expand the ramp space at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base,” according to the Congressional Research Service.
-
-“In summer 2021, the US Department of Defense announced that equipment and materiel previously stored at a now-closed US base in Qatar would be moved to Jordan,” the congressional research report added.
-
-US-Jordan ties
-
-While these latest deployments are part of Biden’s regional military buildup, Jordan has long been a base for US military personnel.
-
-As of June this year, months before the current escalation in Gaza, the White House confirmed in a letter to Congress that nearly 3,000 US military personnel were deployed to Jordan – a fact rarely officially acknowledged in the country itself.
-
-Over the past 15 years, US aid to Jordan has tripled, according to the Congressional Research Service.
-
-“Jordanian air bases have been particularly important for the US conduct of intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISR) missions in Syria and Iraq,” according to the research report.
-
-The United States never officially acknowledged its use of the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base until after the 2021 agreement, but the Congressional Research Service cites reports that “satellite imagery shows it has hosted US Air Force (USAF) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and fast jets since at least 2016.”
-
-Huge protests
-
-Jordan’s close political, economic and military ties with Washington, the main enabler of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, sit uncomfortably with the reality that Jordan’s population staunchly and overwhelmingly supports the Palestinians in their war of liberation from Israeli occupation, colonialism and apartheid.
-
-In 2017, a Pew Research Center survey found that Jordanians held the most negative views of the United States of any country in the region, with 82 percent viewing it unfavorably. There’s little reason to think those numbers would have improved since then.
-
-An opinion survey commissioned by the pro-Israel think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in June, found that 84 percent of Jordanians “stand opposed to having business deals with Israeli companies even if it would help their economy.”
-
-The survey also found that “a majority (60 percent) of Jordanians view Hamas firing missiles at Israel at least somewhat positively.”
-
-Those views too are hardly likely to have shifted in a positive direction for Israel.
-
-Since Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza began earlier this month, there have been large and near-constant protests in Amman
-
-A particular focus of the protests has been the al-Kalouti mosque, less than a mile from the Israeli embassy. The mosque is the closest Jordanian security forces allow protesters to get to the Zionist state’s diplomatic mission.
-
-On the few occasions protesters tried to get closer to the embassy, Jordanian forces fired tear gas and beat them back.
-
-حشود كبيرة أمام المسجد الكالوتي في منطقة #الرابية بالقرب من السفارة الإسرائيلية بالعاصمة #عمان تضامنا مع #غزة.(تصوير: أمير خليفة)#الغد #الأردن pic.twitter.com/i0yyF8K3fK— جريدة الغد (@AlghadNews) October 27, 2023
-
-عاجل: إطلاق قنابل مسيلة للدموع باتجاه شبان اقتربوا من السفارة الإسرائيلية في العاصمة الأردنية عمان. pic.twitter.com/Y5vKJ7AxR9— الجرمق الإخباري (@aljarmaqnet) October 27, 2023
-
-تغطية صحفية: الأمن الأردني يعتدي على متظاهرين احتشدوا قرب سفارة الاحتلال في عمان بعد المجازر في قطاع غزة. pic.twitter.com/4likeixGnu— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) October 28, 2023
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-وسائل إعلام أردنية: قوات الأمن تسيطر على محاولات اقتحام #السفارة_الإسرائيلية في #عمّان pic.twitter.com/lhqNC8ELie— الجزيرة مباشر (@ajmubasher) October 17, 2023
-
-On Friday, Jordanians held a massive protest in downtown Amman demanding cancellation of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty, one day after the 29th anniversary of its signing.
-
-مسيرة شعبية حاشدة في وسط البلد في عمّان، انتصارًا لغزة، وللمطالبة بفك الارتباط بالاحتلال الإسرائيلي في الذكرى التاسعة والعشرين لمعاهدة وادي عربة.#الأردن #طوفان_الأقصى pic.twitter.com/jR5tx4XPt3— 7iber | حبر (@7iber) October 27, 2023
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-تدعوكم الحملة الوطنية الأردنية لإسقاط اتفاقية الغاز مع الكيان الصهيوني (#غاز_العدو_احتلال)، وبالشراكة مع الملتقى الوطني لدعم المقاومة وحماية الوطن، للمشاركة في المسيرة الشعبية الحاشدة التي ستنطلق وسط البلد في عمّان، من ساحة المسجد الحسيني، بعد صلاة ظهر يوم الجمعة 27 / 10 / 2023 pic.twitter.com/oTW9Q5qmrn— Jordan BDS (الأردن تقاطع) (@BDSJordan) October 26, 2023
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-Amid outrage across the region at its barbaric slaughter of civilians in Gaza, Israel evacuated its embassies in several countries last week, including Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt.
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-Yet despite the growing anger at the relentless savagery of the Washington-backed mass murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, not a single Arab country that has formal relations with Israel has officially broken them off.
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-Tamara Nassar is associate editor and Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.
+The assault on Jimmy Carter and his new book which criticizes Israeli policy, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, has been led by many of the usual, uncritical, knee-jerk Israel supporters - Alan Dershowitz, Martin Peretz and Abraham Foxman. However, the campaign to discredit Carter among more thoughtful, less partisan Americans is led by powerful, mainstream institutions like The New York Times, that are respected for their seeming objectivity and balance.
+In the January 7, 2007 Sunday Book Review, after the dust settled from weeks of frenzied coverage by other major media outlets, the Times made its bid to pronounce the “final word” on Carter’s book. In the review “Jews, Arabs and Jimmy Carter,”[1] Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner rejected the more hysterical claims that Carter is anti-Semitic, but simultaneously dismissed Carter’s book as “strange” and “a distortion,” and described Carter, the only US President to have successfully mediated an Arab-Israeli peace agreement, as suffering from “tone deafness about Israel and Jews”.
+If Carter is “tone deaf,” Bronner’s review provides yet more evidence that The New York Times is willfully blind to Palestinians. New research detailed below shows that the Times’ news reports from Israel/Palestine, which Bronner supervises, privilege the Israeli narrative of terrorism, while marginalizing the Palestinian narratives of occupation and denial of rights. Bronner himself has quoted eight times more words from Israelis than from Palestinians in 18 articles he wrote for the Times since mid-2000.
+The Times paved the way for Bronner’s review with two news articles[2] and a blog posting.[3] While allowing Carter space to defend himself, the articles and blog posting focused on attacks on Carter by eight public figures, and included defenses by just two people. As usual, no Palestinians were permitted to comment. The Times’ blog posting noted that the controversy was unfolding during a holocaust denial conference in Iran, hinting at an unspecified link with Carter’s book.
+In his review, Bronner constructs a deceptive sense of balance by rejecting both sides’ more controversial positions. He writes that Carter’s use of “apartheid with its false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa” constitutes “overstatement” that “hardly adds up to anti-Semitism.”
+Bronner derides Carter’s book as characterized by “misrepresentations”, and having “a Rip Van Winkle feel to it”, while simultaneously acknowledging that “Carter rightly accuses Menachem Begin…of deception regarding” settlement expansion, and that “his chapter on the endless humiliation of daily life for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation paints a devastating and largely accurate picture.”
+Yet Bronner still minimizes Palestinians’ “endless humiliations” by devoting just two sentences to them, and he writes, with no sign of irony, “that Carter is right that insufficient attention is being paid, but perhaps that is because his picture feels like yesterday’s story, especially since Israel’s departures from southern Lebanon and Gaza have not stopped anti-Israel violence from those areas.”
+Most of the world recognized that Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza did not end Israel’s occupation or control of Palestinian lives there, nor significantly lessen daily hardships. Bronner avoids addressing Carter’s central argument, that Israel’s refusal to fully withdraw from the Occupied Territories is the main obstacle to a negotiated settlement.
+Palestinians would be justifiably outraged to learn that their continued daily hardships are “yesterday’s story.” Mirroring elements of the arguments of Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League,[4] Bronner seems to see “today’s story” as radical Islam and terrorism, as he laments that Carter’s book on Israel/Palestine fails to also cover the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban’s rise, Al Qaeda and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
+One can only imagine the hysterics that would have arisen at the Times had Carter not ignored the right of return of Palestinian refugees and Israel’s discrimination against its Palestinian citizens.
+Bronner has written 18 articles on Israel and Palestine for the Times since July 30, 2000. In them he quoted 1226 words from Israelis, and just 145 words from Palestinians.[5] For example, in the Week in Review on July 30, 2000, after the failure of Camp David, and two months before the outbreak of the 2nd Palestinian intifada which has continued for the last six and half years, Bronner counseled that “no explosion…occurred, nor is chaos expected any time soon.” The peace process’ “positive direction in the long term is clear.”[6]  Bronner quoted 228 words from Israelis and 67 words from a Palestinian in that less than prescient analysis.
+During the same period, Amira Hass, an Israeli reporter for Ha’aretz Daily living in Ramallah, was comparing the situation to that before the outbreak of the first intifada, warning against the assumption that “confrontation is not feasible”, and arguing that “Rebellion is not planned from above, and the moment could come when the people who were not afraid of IDF rifles will not be put off by those wielded by Palestinian police.”[7]
+In 2003, Bronner wrote a glowing review of The Case for Israel by pro-Israel hatchetman Alan Dershowitz.[8] Assessing Dershowitz’s book, alongside a book by Yaacov Lozowick, Bronner called them “intelligent polemics.” He offered not a single criticism of Dershowitz, saying his book made many “well-argued points,” and Dershowitz “knows how to construct an argument.” He described Dershowitz as a “liberal” “on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” In contrast, Professor Norman Finkelstein devoted an entire book, Beyond Chutzpah, to documenting the errors, fabrications and outright plagiarism in The Case for Israel. “Liberal” Dershowitz defends torture, and suggested Israel destroy entire Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings.
+It’s no surprise then that the news reporting Bronner oversees leans heavily on the Israeli narrative. Searches with Lexis-Nexis Academic identify 935 articles published between December 1, 2004 and November 30, 2006 by the Times correspondents based in Israel/Palestine, Bronner’s area of oversight.[9] Of those, 341 articles (37%) mentioned the word terrorism, 259 (28%) mentioned terrorist, 183 mentioned suicide bombing (20%), and 359 (38%) mentioned Palestinian attack(s).[10] In contrast, only 156 of the 935 articles (17%) included the dominant Palestinian experience of occupation, and 115 articles (12%) mentioned the word occupied.  This overwhelming focus on terrorism, Palestinian attacks and suicide bombings occurred during a two-year period when Israel tightened its siege on Palestinians, sinking Palestinians further into poverty, and Israelis killed 903 Palestinians, approximately half civilians, while Palestinians killed 81 Israelis, 60 of whom were civilians, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.[11] Palestinians committed eight suicide attacks that resulted in 34 of the 81 Israeli fatalities.[12]
+Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights are even harder to find than Israeli occupation in New York Times news reports. Over two years, the Times used the word illegal (as defined by international law or Israeli law) in just 55 articles to describe Israeli offenses against Palestinians[13] (5.9%).  International law relating to Israel/Palestine was mentioned in only 14[14] of 935 articles (1.5%),[15] the Geneva Conventions in one article (0.1%),[16] collective punishment in 12 articles (1.3%), right of return for Palestinian refugees in 14 articles (1.5%), discrimination against Palestinians in four articles[17] (0.4%), and apartheid in three articles (0.4%). Though settlement(s) were mentioned in 318 articles (34%), as noted above, they were infrequently described as “illegal.” Settlement expansion and settlement growth appeared in just six articles each[18] (0.6%). Even Palestinian poverty and unemployment were mentioned in only 13 and 18 articles respectively.[19]
+In short, the entire Palestinian experience is marginalized in New York Times news reports from Israel/Palestine. The words and concepts that Palestinians continually invoke to describe their lives, including apartheid, are almost never found in the Times. Jimmy Carter claims that Americans are poorly informed about Israel/Palestine in part because “the major newspapers and magazines” exercise “self-restraint” in their reporting. Therefore, anything other than denial of Carter’s thesis by the Times would constitute an admission of its own failure.
+Despite a facade of balance and moderate positions, Ethan Bonner’s review of Jimmy Carter’s book represents yet another example of the mainstream US media’s willful blindness on Israel/Palestine. Bronner wields the Times’ power in a bid to restrict acceptable discourse on Israel/Palestine by hiding the Palestinian experience from the American public.
+Fortunately, the US public seems not to be buying it. Instead, they’re buying Carter’s “strange” book, now number five on the Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction.
+Patrick O’Connor is a New York City-based activist with Palestine Media Watch and the International Solidarity Movement.
+Footnotes[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/books/review/Bronner.t.html? em&ex=1168232400&en=f236d4df09fdf9c8&ei=5087%0A
+[2]Carter View Of Israeli’ Apartheid’ Stirs Furor, Julie Bosman, The New York Times, December 14, 2006, and Former Aide Parts With Carter Over Book, Brenda Goodman and Julie Bosman, The New York Times, December 6, 2006.
+[3] Carter’s Rhetoric of Apartheid, Tom Zeller, December 13, 2006
+[4] Judging a Book by Its Cover and Its Content, Abraham Foxman, Anti-Defamation League, November 13, 2006
+[5] It could be asserted that Bronner is unfairly penalized for reviewing four books by Israelis and one book by a Palestinian. However, eliminating those five reviews worsens his ratio, yielding 1045 words quoted from Israelis, and 97 words quoted from Palestinians.
+[6] Camp David Myth-Busting; Nothing Succeeds Like a Failure, Ethan Bronner, Week in Review, The New York Times, July 30, 2000.
+[7] Reporting from Ramallah, Amira Hass, September 20, 2000 dispatch, pgs. 64-65, Semiotext(e)
+[8] The New New Historians, Ethan Bronner, The Book Review,  The New York Times, November 9, 2003
+[9] 380 by Steven Erlanger, 438 by Greg Myre, 51 by Dina Kraft, 29 by Ian Fisher, 26 by Craig Smith, four by John Kifner and four by James Bennet.
+[10] 499 articles mention attack(s). A review of each one revealed that 359 mentioned Palestinian attack(s), 136 mentioned Israeli attack(s), and 73 mentioned Hezbollah attack(s).
+[11] http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp
+[12] January 18, 2005 (1), February 25, 2005 (5), July 12, 2005 (5), October 26, 2005 (5), December 5, 2005 (5), December 29, 2005 (1), March 30, 2006 (4), and April 17, 2006 (7).
+[13] 112 articles mentioned the word illegal, but only 55 were about Israeli actions related to Palestinians.
+[14] International law appeared in a total of 21 articles, 14 of which were related to Israel/Palestine. The rest were related to Israel and Lebanon.
+[15] For more examples of this problem see International Law not Fit to Print, The New York Times and Israel/Palestine, Patrick O’Connor and Ahmed Bouzid, May 1, 2005
+[16] The Geneva Conventions were mentioned in a total of three articles, but one article was about Israel and Lebanon and a second about Sudanese refugees in Israel.
+[17] The word “discrimination” appeared in seven articles, but only four articles related to Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
+[18] These six articles included also the variants, expansion of settlements, and growth of settlements.
+[19] Impoverished was mentioned in 18 articles, and unemployed in 12 articles.
+Related Links
+BY TOPIC: Jimmy Carter
+Palestine Media Watch
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+Ethan Bronner

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-A passionate collector of classic cars, Mahfouz Kabariti dreams of building a museum in the occupied Gaza Strip.
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-Mahfouz has restored vintage vehicles for almost twenty years. There are currently five cars in his garage, with no space for more.
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-A museum, he says, would be the perfect place to collect, preserve and exhibit the history of automobiles in Gaza.
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-However, Gaza has been under a severe blockade imposed by Israel since 2007, making it very difficult if not impossible to find spare parts to maintain vintage cars.
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-But Mahfouz sees job opportunities in restoring old cars — and employment opportunities are needed in Gaza, where general unemployment stands at 40 percent and youth unemployment at 70 percent.
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-A classic car museum would remind Palestinians of happier times, Mahfouz says, when they could travel freely and life was easier than it is today.
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-Linda Paganelli is a visual anthropologist based in Palestine. Her work tackles issues around human rights, minorities and groups existing outside of mainstream society.
-Tags
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-Mahfouz Kabariti
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-freedom of movement
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-Gaza Strip
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-vintage cars
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-video
+Demolished homes in Block O of Rafah refugee camp. An Israeli military post stands alone in a moon landscape left behind by Israeli bulldozers (Photo: Ronald de Hommel)
+
+At least nine Palestinians were killed today in Rafah as the IOF expanded its incursions in the town and stormed new neighborhoods in the southeast of Rafah. IOF’s operation started at 1 am Tuesday 18 May 2004. Today, Israeli military sources announced the expansion of the so-called “Operation Rainbow” to the Al Brazil and As-Salam neighborhoods and said further expansion into the major parts of the refugee camp are expected to occur soon. Meanwhile, the siege of Tel Al Sultan neighborhood has continued and is causing mounting humanitarian repercussions due to the destruction by the IOF of the water network, leaving the besieged population without water supply.
+The total number of Palestinians who killed in the town of Rafah since Tuesday is at least 41, including 14 children (see list of their names In the end of this document). Some 103 people have been injured; more than half of them are children. The movement of ambulance services is still obstructed by the IOF. Al Mezan Center for Human Rights has documented dozens of cases of bulldozing of streets and houses in Tel Al Sultan, As-Salam and Al Brazil neighborhoods. Demolitions were carried out without warning in the majority of the documented cases.
+One day after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution demanding Israel to bring to a halt its demolitions of Palestinian homes, the effects of the international community’s condemnation appears limited. Violations have continued to be perpetrated by the IOF throughout the day and the number of house demolitions has continued to increase.
+A Palestinian mother, Suad Al Bayumi, who was held in detention with her five children inside a flat in her two-story-house for two days told Al Mezan that soldiers left her house. She said that she managed to reach her apartment where soldiers were stationed and found that all of the furniture had been destroyed. Her jewelry or savings had disappeared from the apartment. Her daughters refused to go to the bathroom during the detention period as soldiers insisted that the door remain open and one of the guards accompany them. ‘Although there are two bathrooms in the apartment, soldiers used the mattresses and furniture to pee on’, she said.
+IOF mined and blew up the house of Sheikh Nafith Azzam, a leader of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Rafah. Residents of the same neighborhood reported to Al Mezan that many homes were severely damaged by the explosion.
+IOF has arrested and detained numerous Palestinians from Rafah. Despite Al Mezan’s efforts to find out their location, the place of seven of them remains unknown. The Israeli Army Legal Advisor only announced that a number of Palestinians were being detained in a house in Rafah. He did not give information on the location of the house or the number of the detainees. The Center questions IOF’s motives behind keeping detainees inside an area where a military operation is ongoing, especially under the mounting threats to invade the main refugee camp. The Center fears IOF will use of the detainees as human shields, as they have done at several occasions in Gaza and the West Bank during similar operations.
+Rida Al Afifi, whose home was damaged by Israeli bulldozers in the Al Brazil neighborhood, reported that his house had been bulldozed this afternoon without prior warning. She said that the family could escape thanks to a small connecting door to their neighbor’s house. There are currently 50 people in this house and they are running short of food and water.
+The humanitarian situation in the Tel Al Sultan neighborhood has been rapidly deteriorating due to lack of water, medicine and food supplies. Following the destruction by IOF of water pipes, it is impossible to provide water supply to the area. Humanitarian organizations reported to have sent emergency aid to the neighborhood, but still did not reach it.
+Residents of Al Brazil neighborhood are still suffering wide-scaled home demolitions. Bulldozers and tanks have hit homes without warning of any kind. Al Mezan has several affidavits from people who hardly managed to leave their homes before they collapsed under bulldozers. Contrary to the declared ‘military necessity’ for demolitions, IOF bulldozers severely damaged dozens of homes to make way for tanks into narrow roads. Houses have also been destroyed in the nearby As-Salam neighborhood. One home was burnt due to Israeli firing in this neighborhood.
+A Palestinian family called Al Mezan’s fieldworker and said they had three injured persons in their home. After calling ambulance services which could not reach them, they called the Center’s fieldworker and asked human rights organizations for help. Ambulance services said they were restricted from entering the neighborhood. The wounded are reported to be inside the Al Qutati family house in the middle of Tel Al Sultan neighborhood.
+A woman in the Tel Al Sultan neighborhood in Rafah said she was unable to evacuate her home with her children following IOF shelling of a car parked near her home. The car was in burning and fire was spreading while Israeli tanks guarded the area and fired at anything that moved.
+The IOF’s operation in Rafah generated further international condemnation today. The UNICEF spokesman in Jerusalem said that the organization was highly concerned at the risks for the well-being of Palestinian children in Rafah and that Israel should watch its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which it is a signatory. Both the Chilean and Austrian governments also condemned Israel’s operation and the targeting of civilians.
+Israeli officials at the Karni Crossing told the Palestinian Liaison Office that they would not allow goods of any kind, including medicine, to pass through. They said they lacked the human resources at the crossing. They added that IOF were not likely to allow supplies into Gaza as long as the Palestinian side prohibits what they consider to be  ‘non urgent supplies’, most of which made in Israel.
+Al Mezan knew that international aid agencies managed to enter with food and water supplies into Rafah. The mission, however, was allowed into the town after time of waiting and could not return to  Gaza City after a long wait at the Abu Holly Checkpoint in the middle of the Gaza Strip. aid materials were likely to be stored in the UNRWA warehouse in the town.
+An Israeli helicopter fired two missiles on Tel Al Sultan neighborhood  at around 10am today. No information about casualties were reported until now.
+List of the 41 Palestinians killed in IOF’s first and second days operation in Rafah:
+Muhammad Khalil Al Jindi, 24, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Walid Mousa Abu Jazar, 27, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Muhammad Abdul Rahman An Nawajha, 27, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Hany Muhammad Qufeh, 17, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Tariq Ahmad Sheikh Al Eid, 24, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Ibrahim Ismail Al Bal’awi, 18, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Ismail Al Bal’awi (previous person’s father), 45, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Muhammad Jasir Al Shair, 17, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Ahmad Jasir Al Shair (previous person’s brother), 18, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Zyad Hussain Shanana, 22, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Imad Fadel Al Mghari, 34, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Mahmud Ismail Abu Touq, 34, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Yousif Zahi Qahwash, 25, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Saeed Ibrahim Al Mghaiar, 23, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Muhammad Abdullah Darweesh, 27, Missile shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Ahmad Muhammad Al Mghaiar, 13, A live bullet in the head;
+Asmaa Ahmad Muhammad Al Mghaiar, 16, A live bullet in the head;
+Muhammad mas’ud Zourob, 33, A live bullet in the abdomen;
+Ibrahim Jihad Al Qun, 17, A live bullet in the head;
+Taysir Zaki Kaloub, 31, A live bullet in the abdomen;
+Shadi Fayiz Al Mghari, 24, A live bullet in the abdomen;
+Usama Abdullah Abu Nasser, 24, A live bullet in the head;
+Sabir Ahmad Abu Libdeh, 13, A live bullet in the head;
+Khalil Hasan Abu Saad, 37, A live bullet in the chest;
+Walid Naji Abu Qamar (Rafah march), 10, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Muhammad Talal Abu Shaar (Rafah march), 20, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Alaa Msallam Sheikh Al Eid (Rafah march), 20, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Mahmud Tariq Mansour (Rafah march), 13, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Fuad Khamis Al Saqqa (Rafah march), 31, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Mubarak Saleem Al Hashash (Rafah march), 10, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Rajab Nimir Barhoum (Rafah march), 17, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Ahmad Jamal Abu Al Saeed (Rafah march), 18, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Mahmud Jamal Al Mghari (Thursday), 21, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Hamid Yasin Bahlul (Thursday), 18, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Mahmud Fathi Deib (Thursday), 22, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Mahmud Najeeb Al Akhras (Thursday), 18, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Wail Muhammad Abu Jazar (Thursday), 18, Shrapnel in different parts of the body;
+Jamal Awad Al Assar (Thursday), 39, A live bullet in the head;
+Muhammad Ibrahim Jaber (Thursday), 27, A live bullet in the abdomen;
+Tamer Youniis Al Arja (Thursday), 3, Trauma following missile attack near his home;
+Khalid Abu Anzeh (Thursday), 37, Shrapnel in different parts of the body (found dead after 15 hours).Related Links
+BY TOPIC: Israel’s “Operation Rainbow” in Rafah, Gaza
+MEZAN

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-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to divide Palestinians, who must remain united to secure support before the UN vote on a Palestinian state, and to protect Palestinian refugees’ right of return.
-Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and President of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, affirmed in The New York Times on 17 May 2011 that “this September, at the United Nations General Assembly, we will request international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and that our state be admitted as a full member of the United Nations” (“The Long Overdue Palestinian State,” 16 May 2011).Although this announcement has provoked a storm of indignation amongst certain constituencies in the United States, it will not come as a complete surprise to those who have been following developments closely. In the past six months several Latin American countries have recognized the state of Palestine, bringing the total number of countries to have done so since 1988 to more than 100. In addition, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom have upgraded the Palestine General Delegations in their capitals to diplomatic missions and embassies — a status normally reserved for states.From Abbas’s op-ed it would appear that there are two prongs to this strategy: international recognition of Palestine as a state, and membership of the United Nations.International recognitionAlthough the Palestinian strategy has not been fully articulated, it appears that the PLO hopes to use the opening plenary of the UN General Assembly in September as a forum to call upon other states to recognize it. In other words, it will seek collective recognition.According to Riyad al-Maliki, the PA foreign minister, some 150 countries have said that they will recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in September (“PA: 150 states to recognize Palestine by Sept,” 3 March 2011). If this number is achieved it could be significant, especially if it includes recognition from some of the countries in the European Union. This is because if recognition of a Palestinian state is viewed as constitutive (the argument that statehood is a matter of recognition only) then the number and quality of states that recognize Palestine is important.If, however, recognition of a Palestinian state is viewed as declaratory (the argument that recognition alone cannot confer statehood but must be accompanied by other factors, independence being particularly important) then there is of course a problem if Israel retains control over the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.UN membershipPhase II of the 2003 Roadmap prepared by the Quartet (the US, the EU, Russia and the UN) and endorsed by the UN Security Council calls for “creating an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty, based on the new constitution, as a way station to a permanent status settlement.” As part of Phase II (June-December 2003), Quartet members were supposed to “promote international recognition of a Palestinian state, including possible UN membership” (“The Performance-Based Roadmap Towards a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israel-Palestine Conflict).Thus, the Quartet envisaged that a Palestinian state could be established prior to the conclusion of final status negotiations with Israel. In other words, it was accepted that the PLO need not wait until Israel had agreed to completely withdraw from the territory before asserting its claim to statehood with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty by seeking recognition and UN membership.Abbas also announced in his op-ed that the PLO also intends to seek UN membership in September. According to Article 4 (2) of the UN Charter, admission to membership in the UN is to be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon receiving a recommendation from the Security Council. It is possible that American opposition at the Security Council may not block such a recommendation.In his address at the State Department on 19 May 2011, US President Barack Obama declared, “Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state” (“Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa19 May 2011). It is worth noting that Obama did not flatly oppose such a Palestinian move and his statement is open to different interpretations, although one must assume that the US would veto Palestinian membership given Washington’s appalling track record of vetoing UN resolutions on the Palestine question.Nevertheless, US opposition to Palestine’s membership of the UN would not necessarily affect Palestine’s statehood if 150 states do recognize Palestine at the UN in September and assuming that recognition is constitutive. Statehood and membership in international organizations are entirely separate matters. For instance, Taiwan is not a member of the UN but it is a state. The Vatican is considered a state but it is not a member of the UN. Kosovo is considered a state by major powers, including the US and the EU, but it is not a member of the UN. Switzerland only joined the UN in 2002 but it was a state long before then. During the Cold War, many states had their application for membership at the UN vetoed (such as Ireland, Jordan, and some Soviet republics) but this did not mean that they were not states.Although some scholars have suggested that the PLO and its allies could still turn to the General Assembly and ask it to consider membership under the Uniting for Peace resolution that can be invoked when the Security Council is deadlocked, this is a risky strategy.The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the 1950 Admissions case made it clear that the UN Charter does not place the Security Council in a subordinate position to the General Assembly in matters of UN membership (International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion: Competence of the General Assembly for the Admission of a State to the United Nations, 3 March 1950). In the words of the court, “To hold that the General Assembly has power to admit a State to membership in the absence of recommendation of the Security Council would be to deprive the Security Council of an important power which has been entrusted to it by the UN Charter.”Accordingly, the ICJ was of the opinion that “The admission of a State to membership in the United Nations, pursuant to paragraph 2 of article 4 of the Charter, cannot be effected by a decision of the General Assembly when the Security Council has made no recommendation for admission, by reason of the candidate failing to obtain the requisite majority or of the negative vote of a permanent Member upon a resolution so to recommend.”Consequently, it is likely that should the US veto Palestine’s application for membership, then Palestine will not become a UN member. Instead its position would be similar to that of Kosovo (whose membership is being blocked by Russia) and Taiwan (whose membership is being blocked by China).The potential risks and benefits of statehoodCritics have attacked the Palestinian strategy of seeking membership of the UN as a state in September as being futile and a waste of time that will do nothing to change things on the ground.“The only thing that could be gained from UN recognition,” argues Ali Abunimah, “is for Abbas and his entourage to obtain international recognition for themselves as leaders of an imaginary ‘state’ while nothing changes on the ground for Palestinians.”In 2009, I also argued that a Palestinian state that is recognized “with its territory partitioned, and subdivided into cantons, surrounded by walls, fences, ditches, watchtowers, and barbed wire, would scarcely be a state worthy of the name” (“UDI won’t mean Palestinian statehood,” Guardian, 19 Novermber 2009).However, although there are risks involved, and although the PLO’s current leadership lacks credibility given the grievous mistakes of the past two decades, the advantages of this Palestinian strategy could outweigh the disadvantages. Nor, as will be discussed below, would statehood necessarily bring an end of the dream some hold of a democratic state for all its citizens.Assuming that 150 states, including those from the EU, recognize Palestine as a state, one of the consequences is that this would formally level the playing field between Israel and Palestine on the diplomatic level. In other words, it would become a relationship between states rather than between a state and a non-state actor. Palestine would be able to formally join the international community and to insist upon a relationship based on sovereign equality. Moreover, Palestine’s status will be formally recognized without Palestine having to make any concessions on settlements, the right of return, or Jerusalem, etc. Accordingly, in any future negotiations on these issues Palestine can negotiate with Israel as a state, i.e. as an equal rather than as an occupied people.One of the consequences of this “formal equality” is that new avenues will become available to Palestine to pursue legal remedies against Israel in various international forums. As a state, Palestine will be able to ratify international treaties, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), where an application on the status of Palestine, is currently pending. Even if the US manages to block membership of a Palestinian state, recognition by a large number of states at the UN General Assembly would greatly strengthen Palestine’s claim to statehood and may have a favorable impact on the declaration lodged at the ICC. Should the ICC accept that Palestine is a state for the purposes of its statute, it may commence investigations into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity from any time since July 2002 (the date the ICC Statute entered into force). For the first time in the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Israelis accused of major human rights violations could be held to account for their crimes.The discourse might also change. Palestine could insist that the settlements and the continued occupation are a breach of its sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence and demand that Israel withdraws from the territory. For instance, Palestine could state that Israel is occupying a foreign state as Iraq did in Kuwait in 1990 and as South Africa did in Namibia for more than 40 years, and demand its immediate withdrawal. Should Israel desist and attack Palestinians on the scale say of its 2008-09 winter invasion of Gaza, then Palestine would be able to insist on its right of self-defense under Article 51 UN Charter (“Speech by PM Netanyahu to a Joint Meeting of the US Congress,” 24 May 2011).Should Israel continue to reject dismantling the settlements and withdrawing from the territory of Palestine, then the State of Palestine can as an aspect of its sovereignty demand that those persons either accept to become Palestinian citizens and abide by the rule of law in Palestine or leave. Should Israel still refuse to withdraw from the territory or dismantle the settlements then Palestine would be able to ask the UN Security Council to take measure to force Israel’s departure from the territory.If the Security Council does not do so, then Palestine could seek support elsewhere and ask for a further advisory opinion from the ICJ asking what third states would be obliged to do in the event that Israel fails to bring to an end to the occupation that threatens international peace and security.If Palestine did become a state, and was recognized as such by other states, this would strengthen its argument that it has sovereign immunity, which could protect it from politically inspired lawsuits in the US for “terrorist offenses” under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Antiterrorism Act, which has caused Palestinian officials a headache in recent years. Palestinian officials, in turn, would be accorded diplomatic immunity, and could demand consular protection for their own nationals when they find themselves in trouble in foreign countries. This would include demanding a legal right to offer consular assistance to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails as well as jails in other countries.Palestine would also be in a position to join a plethora of international organizations, in addition to the UN, such as the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which would give it extra rights that can only be granted to states. It would be in a better position to boost trade with other countries by for instance concluding a full Association Agreement with the European Union and similar organizations, which might allow it to improve the economic prosperity of its citizens.If, in addition, Palestine became a member of the UN, it would be able to draft, propose, and table its own resolutions at the UN and vote on them and others. Palestine could also conceivably even be elected as a non-permanent member of the Security Council one day.Moreover, Palestine’s security forces could insist on no longer being described as “terrorists,” but as the forces of a state whose troops are entitled to prisoner of war status. This would mean that if they are captured in an armed conflict with Israeli soldiers they should not be tried for murder in an Israeli court or any other tribunal if they have lawfully killed members of Israel’s armed forces (as opposed to being involved in deliberate armed attacks against civilians.) Regarding the fear that the PLO’s statehood strategy might preclude the wishes of those Palestinians who strive for a bi-national state or a one-state solution to the conflict, it should be remembered that a state can always merge with another state if they are both interested in such a union (e.g., the union of Egypt and Syria when they established the United Arab Republic in 1958).Moreover, in its constitution, Palestine could make it clear that recognition of a Palestinian state would be without prejudice to the right of Palestinian refugees to return and compensation or to any other political solution that might arise in the future. In other words it would not necessarily spell the end of a bi-national or one-state solution if such a solution is desired by a majority of Palestinians and Israelis one day. Such a provision for instance exists in the Good Friday Agreement (1998) in Northern Ireland, allowing for the possibility for reunification if a majority of the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland concurrently vote in favour of reunification. The Constitution of Ireland was amended to reflect this and a similar provision might be considered for a Palestinian constitution.Staying the courseOf course, much could change before September. One cannot predict what Israel might do, although it certainly senses that the winds of change are blowing through the region. It is not entirely inconceivable that it may respond with a “dramatic” gesture such as agreeing to withdraw from most of the West Bank and even dismantling one or two outposts in order to portray Israel as being ��moderate.” This much can be gleaned from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent speech to the US Congress. Alternatively, Israel could provoke a border conflict with Hamas or Hizballah in order to divide the Palestinians. This much too can be gleaned from Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.The PLO has undoubtedly lost legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of many Palestinians in Palestine and in the Diaspora. As “The Palestine Papers” leaked to Al Jazeera and the Guardian clearly showed, the Palestinian leadership has been willing to make far too many concessions on Palestinian rights. This might explain why the PLO is taking a tougher stance on the statehood question. It finally realized that it had exhausted the option of negotiations. Israel’s minimum conditions for accepting a Palestinian state (no right of return, a demilitarized state, annexation of settlement blocs, no sovereignty over Jerusalem, no sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, etc.) are far less that what any Palestinian leader can accept.Netanyahu wants to divide the Palestinians. Before Congress he pointedly called upon Abbas to tear up his unity agreement with Hamas. Netanyahu knows full well that such an action would divide Palestinian society, possibly provoking civil war. Abbas must not fall for any attempts to cajole him away from his current strategy. If he is serious about seeking statehood, then Palestinians must remain steadfast and united and the PLO must secure as much support as it can before the UN vote. Indeed, it should seek support from more than 150 states. For the more states that recognize Palestine as a state, the greater its case for statehood.Victor Kattan is the author of From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949 (London: Pluto Books, 2009) and The Palestine Question in International Law (London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2008). Victor was a Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London from 2008-2011 where he is presently completing his PhD. Previously Victor worked for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (2006-2008), Arab Media Watch (2004-2006), and the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights as a UNDP TOKTEN consultant (2003-2004). A version of this essay was originally published by Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian policy network.
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+2 June 2020
 
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+A Palestinian farmer harvests wheat at a field adjacent to the boundary with Israel, Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 20 May.
 
-United Nations Security Council
+APA imagesFour Palestinians, including a child, were shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces during May.
 
-United Nations charter
+Zaid Fadil Qaisiya, 17, was shot in the head and killed during a raid on al-Fawwar refugee camp near the West Bank city of Hebron on 13 May. When he was injured, the teen was standing on a rooftop watching confrontations that broke out after Israeli forces disguised as Palestinian civilians raided the camp.
 
-US State Department
+Another boy, 16, was shot in the thigh during the raid, breaking his leg.
 
-Barack Obama
+The following day, occupation forces shot and killed Baha Awawda near Hebron during what Israel says was a car-ramming attack in which a soldier was injured.
 
-US president
+Another Palestinian motorist, Fadi Samara Qaad, was killed by soldiers who said that the man accelerated toward them in the central West Bank on 29 May. No Israeli soldiers were injured and Qaad’s family said the 37-year-old was on his way to pick up his wife and was not attempting any attack when he was killed.
 
-UN Security Council veto
+Several Palestinians have been killed in recent years in what Israel claimed were car-ramming attacks, only to be contradicted by human rights groups that investigated the incidents.
 
-Taiwan
+On 30 May, Israeli forces killed Iyad Hallaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian with autism, near a special education institute that he attended in Jerusalem’s Old City.
 
-Vatican
+Israeli forces claimed they suspected Hallaq of carrying a “suspicious object” when they chased him and gunned him down, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
 
-Kosovo
+Palestinian killed outside hospital
 
-Switzerland
+In addition to the four Palestinians killed by Israeli state forces, a Palestinian citizen of Israel was killed by private security guards outside a hospital near Tel Aviv on 13 May.
 
-Cold War
+Video of the incident shows a man lying on the ground who appears to stab another man in plain clothes who has pinned him down. At that point, three additional men open fire several times at close range.
 
-ireland
+The slain man was identified as Mustafa Mahmoud Younis, 26. His father told media that Younis was at the hospital for a psychotherapy session and was undergoing treatment for epilepsy.
 
-Jordan
+The fatal shooting of Younis came a week after police killed Salama Abu Kaf in southern Israel after the man allegedly attempted to steal a car.
 
-International Court of Justice
+The slain man’s family said that Abu Kaf “was killed in cold blood because he’s an Arab.”
 
-China
+An Israeli soldier died after a rock was dropped on his head during a raid on a town in the northern West Bank on 12 May, the sole Israeli fatality so far this year.
 
-Ali Abunimah
+Coronavirus
 
-settlements
+Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip recorded its first – and so far only – death from the coronavirus during May.
 
-right of return
+Fadila Muhammad Abu Raida, 77, died while in isolation at a field hospital on the Rafah crossing at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
 
-Jerusalem
+At the beginning of June, there were more than 600 confirmed cases in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Of those cases, more than 500 patients had recovered.
 
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+Four patients in the West Bank have died from the coronavirus.
 
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+Palestinian farmers examine olive trees cut down by suspected Israeli settlers in al-Sawiya village, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, on 2 May. The farmers were prevented from tending to their land by Israeli soldiers who declared it a closed military zone.
+Ahmad Al-Bazz
+ActiveStillsA Palestinian harvests melons in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on 2 May.
+Ashraf Amra
+APA imagesPalestinian vendors prepare qatayef, a traditional pancake that is popular during Ramadan, Gaza City, 4 May.
+Mahmoud Ajjour
+APA imagesMembers of a traditional Palestinian music ensemble perform via live broadcast amid coronavirus restrictions during Ramadan, Gaza City, 7 May.
+Ashraf Amra
+APA imagesPalestinians wear protective face masks while shopping in the West Bank city of Nablus during Ramadan, 9 May.
+Shadi Jarar’ah
+APA imagesYahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, attends the funeral of Hamas leader Ahmad Al-Kurd in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on 10 May.
+Ashraf Amra
+APA imagesA home belonging to the family of Qassam al-Barghouthi after the top floor was destroyed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank village of Kobar on 11 May. Al-Barghouthi is accused of involvement in an explosion that killed an Israeli teen near the Jewish settlement of Dolev, northwest of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, last August.
+APA imagesPalestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus protest against Israel’s US-backed plan to annex large swathes of the territory, 14 May.
+Ahmad Al-Bazz
+ActiveStillsAnti-Netanyahu protesters, including Druze demonstrating against the Nation-State law, protest outside the Israeli parliament on the day the new government was due to have its first meeting, Jerusalem, 14 May.
+Oren Ziv
+ActiveStillsPalestinians prepare traditional cookies ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, Rafah, southern of Gaza Strip, on 16 May.
+Ashraf Amra
+APA imagesAlaa and Tasneem al-Batat, who recovered from COVID-19, hold their newborn baby Tayem inside their home in al-Dahriya village, south of the West Bank City of Hebron, on 17 May. The parents were being treated for the coronavirus when the mother was rushed to give birth.
+Mosab Shawer
+APA imagesPalestinian citizens of Israel protest the killing of Mustafa Younis, 26, who was shot to death while he lay unarmed on the ground following a confrontation with Israeli security guards, Tel Hashomer hospital, near Tel Aviv, 18 May.
+Oren Ziv
+ActiveStillsHundreds of Israelis take part in the Jerusalem Day march, an annual celebration of Israel’s seizure of the entire city. Due to the pandemic, police prevented the march from passing through Palestinian neighborhoods as usual.
+Oren Ziv
+ActiveStillsDr. Abdul Jalil prays as Samira the cat sits on his lap at one of the gates of the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City on 21 May.
+Oren Ziv
+ActiveStillsPalestinians perform Eid al-Fitr prayers marking the end of Ramadan in the northern Gaza Strip on 23 May.
+Mohammed Zaanoun
+ActiveStillsA Gaza City market ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, 23 May.
+Mahmoud Ajjour
+APA imagesPalestinians perform Eid al-Fitr prayers in the northern Gaza Strip on 24 May.
+Anas al-Sharif
+APA imagesPalestinians visit the graves of their relatives at a cemetery during the first day of Eid al-Fitr, Gaza City, on 24 May.
+Mahmoud Ajjour
+APA imagesOn 31 May, Israeli activists demonstrate in front of the home of Amir Ohana, the Israel minister of public security, to protest against the killing of Iyad Hallaq, a Palestinian man with autism who was shot by Israeli forces in Jerusalem the previous day.
+Keren Manor
+ActiveStillsPalestinians mourn during the Jerusalem funeral of Iyad Hallaq on 31 May. The 32-year-old man with autism was shot dead the previous dead by Israeli forces in Jerusalem’s Old City over suspicion of carrying a gun. At least seven shots were fired but no weapon was found at the scene.
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