update

combined/combined.csv

@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1
-oid sha256:4059afad3b8b2ab038b7cc821aef5587e40c277db6cb8265d01184c35e07b97f
-size 38805171
+oid sha256:55b2d8bbd3d4412dfdbc6a4fe9a7d7d66d07f897a476cf7a3d331aac7ee29814
+size 38023646

combined/combined.jsonl

@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1
-oid sha256:35bafdcb75cf60ab4331226eac6d6dbfbdbf3a9045d12602496e3594519bad74
-size 39241763
+oid sha256:8e682865e07bd0ec177463d62126e80f3d5e0ddb4ba699823d9481ed4e7227e7
+size 38508788

combined/combined_with_metadata.csv

@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1
-oid sha256:3bce4c61eeebb24a9a00d74a49f2a50c7ee74c34c5a39073ef70eadd3c538fea
-size 40212067
+oid sha256:a87d02bb4730a3d0433c444e20bd23db296a5bedb5571c3713d08b262159a7e9
+size 39585278

combined/combined_with_metadata.jsonl

@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1
-oid sha256:a75fa4a167d07c6a32067f6d52bea2f84cb4933d00c73d53b442dd2a2e803629
-size 40881757
+oid sha256:c3bb91b57590d2b06d06b0273cf2755e5f70e3ad4949fbc66ced6e779e5405b7
+size 40388809

combined/texts/1.txt

@@ -1 +1 @@
-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.
+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.

combined/texts/100.txt

@@ -1,45 +1,8 @@
-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.
-Learn something new?
-Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!
+“Do you affirm Israel’s right to exist?”
+We would be surprised if you were at all involved in Palestinian activism and had not come across this question in one form or the other. This question often comes out of the blue and is unrelated to the discussion at hand. This is because it is not asked in good faith or to further any kind of dialogue, but rather to create a “gotcha” moment and derail the conversation.
+To begin with, you will notice that you never ever hear of a state’s right to exist outside of the context of Israel. This is because this right does not exist. People have a right to self-determination, but this does not mean that a state -any state- has an inherent right to exist. After all, there are thousands of ethnic groups in the world and not even 200 countries. States either exist or they don’t, and as we’ve discussed [before], states and nations are not static entities, as they often change in form, parameters and even names over their history. Could you imagine the argument that former Yugoslavia had a right to exist? Who would have bestowed this right? Who would have upheld it, and how?
+From the get-go, this is a ridiculous question that has absolutely no legal backing in international law or international relations. You’ve never heard, for example, of Belgium affirming the right of Canada to exist as a state.
+To reiterate, the goal of this question is not to contribute to dialogue, but rather to shut it down. This is because there has been a concentrated effort on part of Israel and its advocates to conflate Israel with the Jewish people as a whole. When you combine this with long history of persecution of the Jewish people, any hesitation in answering this question in the affirmative is enough to paint you as a bloodthirsty antisemite. This is further aided by the typical settler anxiety shared by beneficiaries of settler colonialism everywhere, where any alternative to the current oppressive matrix of control is framed as genocidal in intent . We saw this particularly in South Africa, where it was argued that full equality would mean the complete destruction of not only South Africa as a state, but the annihilation of the white minority entirely.
+But let us try and imagine this question in any other settler colonial context: Could you imagine asking any indigenous nation on Turtle Island whether the United States or Canada have a right to exist? Keep in mind that these states could only exist through the destruction of indigenous life, language and culture.
+It doesn’t feel right, does it? How could anyone demand that these nations rubber-stamp their own dispossession with approval, and lend it legitimacy?
+If we naturalize the idea that nation states are inherently legitimate, and champion the false notion that they have a right to exist anchored in international law, then this restricts our ability to critique any country’s foundations. Suddenly, acknowledging the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the attempted ethnocide of the Palestinian people in any meaningful way becomes an infringement upon Israel’s fabled right to exist. By “meaningful” we are not speaking of mere empty acknowledgment that functions to signal a superficial settler regret while continuing to profit off the dispossession of the natives, but a material acknowledgment that aims to be the first step in righting historical wrongs.

combined/texts/1000.txt

@@ -1,231 +1,62 @@
-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.
+Workers carry an unidentified body found at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on 23 April. Thousands are missing in Gaza, with families desparate for news.
 
-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.
+XinhuaThe harrowing anxiety over their missing loved ones that has surrounded many Palestinian families for months broke to the surface on 25 September, when 88 unidentified bodies were found in a container on a truck that reportedly came from an Israeli-controlled crossing into Gaza.
 
-I “therefore apologize for the tone of my tweet,” Jones wrote.
+The bodies arrived at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis with no accompanying data. There were no names, no ages, and no locations of recovery noted, according to the Ministry of Health, which refused to receive them and sent the truck back to the crossing from where it had come.
 
-The 1987 production, called Perdition, was critical of the role the Zionist movement played during the Holocaust.
+“We cannot allow them to disappear into an anonymous grave,” said the ministry in a statement, which confirmed the number of bodies. “Each of these individuals has a family, a history, a life that deserves recognition. We are demanding that their humanity be honored.”
 
-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.
+More than 10,000 people in Gaza have been reported missing. Many are believed buried under rubble, but authorities in Gaza have also accused Israel of systematically disappearing significant numbers of people.
 
-As usual, Jones wants to have his cake and eat it.
+For the families, the lack of information is agonizing.
 
-He prefaced his condemnation of Loach with the claim that he did not support the Labour Party’s “action” against the director.
+Ahmed Kafarna, whose son Salah disappeared nearly a year ago, described the torment.
 
-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.
+“For months, we have lived in uncertainty. Is my son alive? Is he dead? Now, we hear about these bodies, but how can we know if one of them is our beloved?”
 
-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.
+“No parent should have to bury their child without knowing. Not like this.”
 
-A veteran British socialist, Loach has long been an advocate of Palestinian liberation.
+His voice faltered, as raw emotion seemed about to overwhelm him, but he kept talking: “We just need answers. We need to know.”
 
-Loach revealed his ejection from Labour on 14 August.
+Without a body to mourn, many families find it difficult to process their grief. They cannot hold funerals or create a space to commemorate their loved ones, denying them closure.
 
-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
+Khaled, whose 28-year-old friend Mahdi Abu Seedo has vanished, echoed Kafarna’s anguish.
 
-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.
+“Every day feels like a cruel game. You cling to hope, and then you lose it again. And there’s no end, no peace,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-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.
+Dignity
 
-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.
+Hisham Mehanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said international law mandates that those who have died during armed conflict be handled with dignity.
 
-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.
+“It requires that the deceased be searched for, collected and evacuated, and that all available information must be recorded before disposing of the dead. This ensures that people do not go missing,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-Corbyn, who resigned as leader in 2019, was himself purged the following year.
+Rights organizations have also weighed in. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor strongly condemned the manner in which the bodies were delivered to Gaza, emphasizing that Israel is obligated under international law and human rights standards not to mistreat the dead or their remains.
 
-Jones’ claim that he did not support the expulsion of Loach is belied by one of his tweets from July.
+“Israel must take all necessary steps to identify the deceased, which includes recording as much information as possible and ensuring the dignified handling and transfer of the bodies, without interference with their graves,” the organization said in a press release.
 
-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.
+For the families, every day without answers is another day of suffering.
 
-agreed— Owen Jones (@owenjonesjourno) July 21, 2021
+Amina Nasir, 52, who has lost both her son, Nasir, and her brother Muhammad in the past months, said simply: “I have nothing left. No news, no body, no grave. Just memories and questions. It’s a torture I can’t describe.”
 
-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
+There are broader implications, too. Beyond the immediate suffering, this issue highlights a critical gap in how the international community addresses the rights of the dead in conflict zones. The Geneva Convention explicitly states that warring parties must keep records of the dead and facilitate the identification of bodies. But without enforcement, these legal obligations are too easily ignored.
 
-Pro-Israel lobby group the Jewish Labour Movement told LabourList that it supported Loach’s expulsion.
+The lack of clear information from Israel about the 88 bodies has fueled growing frustration. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has made it clear it will not back down from its demand for proper identification.
 
-Chair Mike Katz responded that Starmer had “shown strong leadership in tackling anti-Semitism.”
+“We owe it to the families and we owe it to the dead,” a ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qedra, told The Electronic Intifada. “They are not just numbers or statistics. They are human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity, even in death.”
 
-Jones happily promoted Israel lobby talking points at a Jewish Labour Movement event in 2017.
+The international community’s silence on the matter is deafening, and families such as Salah Kafarna’s are left grappling with uncertainty.
 
-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.
+“My son was a kind boy,” his father said softly, holding up a worn photograph. “He deserves to come home, even if it’s just to be laid to rest.”
 
-Loach is arguably the most high-profile supporter of the group.
-
-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.
-
-“Distressing to Jewish people”
-
-Jones also implies that Loach is not a real socialist, tweeting: “Why would someone on the left want to make this play?”
-
-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
-
-But the play, Perdition, by late socialist scriptwriter Jim Allen, was loosely based on a real event – a fact Jones ignores.
-
-Jones claimed the play was “incredibly distressing to Jewish people.”
-
-But what he really meant was that the play caused distress to supporters of Israel.
-
-Ahead of its 1987 debut at the Royal Court Theatre in London, Perdition was attacked by the Israel lobby.
-
-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.
-
-A day before its opening, the play was canceled. Loach and Allen correctly blamed the Israel lobby and said they were being censored.
-
-The play was eventually staged in 1999. Once more, the Union of Jewish Students protested.
-
-“The charge of anti-Semitism is the time-honored way to deflect anti-Zionist arguments,” Loach said in a 2004 letter to The Guardian.
-
-“Collaboration with the Nazis”
-
-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.
+Fedaa al-Qedra is a journalist in Gaza.
 Tags
 
-Owen Jones
-
-Rezso Kasztner
-
-Ken Loach
-
-zionism
-
-Labour Against the Witch-hunt
-
-Lara McNeill
-
-Jewish Labour Movement
-
-Holocaust
+Gaza genocide
 
-Moshe Sharett
+Gaza war crimes
 
-David Ben Gurion
+Geneva Convention
 
-Jim Allen
+Gaza missing
 
-Hungary
+laws of war

combined/texts/1001.txt

@@ -1,15 +1,27 @@
-(Anna Lekas Miller)
+Children participate in Christmas services at the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City.
 
-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.
+The Electronic Intifada“If you have no relatives in the West Bank, you can’t afford to visit the Church of the Nativity [in Bethlehem] with your family members. This is because of the economic hardships here in Gaza,” said William al-Turk, as he, his wife Nancy and their four daughters attended Christmas services this week at Saint Porphyrius, the only Orthodox church in Gaza City.
+According to the Eastern Christian calendar, the church marks Christmas on 7 January.
+Israel granted several hundred Christian Palestinians aged under 16 or over 35 short-term permits to travel to the occupied West Bank to participate in Christmas celebrations in recent weeks.
+Since 2007, Israel has imposed a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip, home to 1.7 million Palestinians.
+“Different from the past”
+Still, even though they stayed at home, the al-Turk family were dressed in new clothes and surrounded by other worshippers in the ancient church, whose first stones were laid in the fifth century of the common era.
+As churchgoers greeted each other, a young man offered them cups of Turkish coffee, honoring the Arab tradition of hospitality on major occasions.
+“I don’t think I’m going to celebrate outdoors, only here at the church. I might go with my friends to a nearby restaurant,” said Rosa, one of the al-Turks’ daughters.
+“We celebrate here for about three days,” she said.
+Nancy, looking hesitant, spoke up when pressed about the less than celebratory mood: “Christmas in recent years has looked different from the past. In the past, we faced no economic hardships and used to enjoy Christmas to the fullest.”
+“During Christmas, we make special foods, including a roast turkey dinner, cakes and sweets stuffed with dates. In previous years we would have a little wine, but for the time being we can hardly find any.”
+William added that marking the Christmas celebration has in recent years been limited to little more than calling on family members, though he pointed to decorations and to a Santa giving small gifts to the children.
+He noted that in keeping with common tradition, he, his brothers and their families would gather at his parents’ house for a celebration.
+Christmas wish
+Hani Tarazi, a local trader, attending the services with his family, told The Electronic Intifada his Christmas wish: “What I really hope for this year is that Palestinians achieve national unity on the basis of Palestinian national interests, away from any partisan interests or religious affiliations.
+“Palestinians should start honoring Palestine, first and foremost. We are all Palestinians, irrespective of our various backgrounds.
+“We hope that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is lifted completely and that people will have freedom of movement.”
+Outside, Khader Saba, a teenager, stood with his friends near the church’s cemetery. They all wore new clothes and chatted merrily.
+“Me and my friends take some of the gift money we got from our fathers or brothers and head either for the Christian Youth Association or Unknown Soldier Square in Gaza City to enjoy some time out,” Saba told The Electronic Intifada.
+In the cemetery, families visited the graves of loved ones whose absence was particularly felt at holiday time.
+Jawdat Michael, a university student and a Christian youth leader, hoped that the coming year would bring better things for all youth in Gaza, including the territory’s Christian community.
+In the Gaza Strip, the Christian community constitutes a very small minority, comprised of a few hundred families. Most of them belong to the Orthodox church, but there are also Catholic and Protestant congregations.
+“When I was a child, I remember that I took part in scout parades right in the heart of Gaza City, not only in the church. I also remember that the Christmas tree used to be lit at the public garden at Unknown Soldier Square, where all segments of society used to enjoy Christmas Eve,” Michael said.
+“But now, nothing like this is happening, unfortunately.”
+Rami Almeghari is a journalist and university lecturer based in the Gaza Strip.

combined/texts/1002.txt

@@ -1,9 +1,112 @@
-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.
+The Biden administration was complicit with Israel’s genocide in Gaza for 14 months. Few in Gaza believe Trump will be an improvement.
+
+SOPA Images/SIPA USAAs the world prepares for the second coming of Donald Trump, Palestinians in Gaza are clutching at straws to find any positive perspective on the new/old next US president whose inauguration is on 20 January.
+
+With Israel continuing to refuse a ceasefire in Gaza, though entering a separate, if deeply fragile one with Hizballah and Lebanon, the hope that a comprehensive truce could be agreed has fallen by the wayside.
+
+With Israel also unrestrained and acting with complete impunity, the hope from the beginning in Gaza was that the US would eventually rein in its genocidal ally.
+
+But more than a year of US complicity under outgoing President Joe Biden and nothing other than the usual Trump incomprehensibility to go on suggest little will be different from January.
+
+Certainly, that’s how most people in Gaza see it.
+
+Omar al-Khudary is a nurse from northern Gaza.
+
+In January, Israeli soldiers abducted Omar and put him in the infamous Sde Teiman detention center for 40 days.
+
+“I was dying a hundred times a day inside the prison. I forgot that I was a human because the Israelis dealt with us as animals,” Omar recalled. “I spent the time blindfolded. Seeing the sun once I was freed was like a rebirth.”
+
+Even when he was finally freed, he was released in the south, where he remains, separated from his wife and two children, still in the north.
+
+Omar was happy to see Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats lose the election.
+
+“Harris and her party offered nothing. They were a vacuum that gave Israel more than 400 days to create chaos.”
+
+He held US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in special contempt for continuing to provide Israel with weapons throughout the past 14 months.
+
+One coin, two faces
+
+Omar did not, however, think Trump Republicans would be any different. Both Republicans and Democrats, he said, “are committed to what they see as Israel’s security.”
+
+He did agree with more conservative Republican positions on sexuality and gender issues and also thought Trump’s party would be less likely to “push the world towards a third world war.”
+
+Tameem, 25, is a doctor who confesses to never caring for politics even though she understands that for Palestinians, “there is no escape: Politics is our life and our lives are all about politics.”
+
+She did not want to give her full name for this report.
+
+Tameem agreed with Omar that there is little difference between the two US parties on Palestine.
+
+“Let’s admit that America is the spiritual father of Israel and will never be with our side.”
+
+She said suggestions that Trump is keen to end Israel’s war on Gaza give  little sense as to how he will want it to end.
+
+She suspected, she told The Electronic Intifada, that “Trump is basically a businessman and wants to make deals. But they won’t be for our benefit.”
+
+She said she was not opposed to international forces taking control of Gaza’s borders, and she said she would not be opposed to taking Israeli citizenship if it meant she could stay in Gaza.
+
+“It’s better than being thrown into the Sinai desert,” said the young doctor – who once wanted to complete her studies abroad but now dreams, she says, only of bread and water.
+
+“All I want is an end to this war as soon as possible –  to save what souls are left.”
+
+Manufactured hero
+
+Ahmad Majdalawi, 36, is a teacher from the north of Gaza.
+
+Early in Israel’s assault, he was forced to leave his home and sought shelter in Gaza City, where he still resides.
+
+He has been puzzled by the attempt to paint Trump as an anti-war president.
+
+“Everyone knows that Trump is racist, unstable, reckless, chaotic and pro-Israeli,” he said. “The image of the ‘alternative hero’ who will stop wars has been gradually produced.”
+
+People seem to have forgotten, he pointed out, that it was Trump who decided to “recognise” Jerusalem as Israel’s “indivisible” capital and further “recognize” Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And that Trump also canceled the Iranian nuclear agreement, and ordered the assassination of senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
+
+Trump’s anti-war image is entirely manufactured, Ahmad said, and goes to show that elections today only “trade in people’s fears,” leaving them to vote for a mirage – even though everyone knows they are voting for a mirage.
+
+Similarly, Hana, 30, a homemaker and mother of three, said she had no respect for Trump or anyone else in American politics.
+
+Hana too did not want to give her full name for this article.
+
+She said that the only positive thing about Trump was that he was not Biden.
+
+“I thought that Trump was the worst American president ever, until we tried Biden.”
+
+Hear my voice
+
+Hana has been caring for her children alone since November 2023 because her husband is trapped in northern Gaza looking after his injured brother.
+
+She said the US has an outsized influence on world events and so US elections are important to everyone, including the Palestinian people.
+
+But with US politicians forever trying to appease a powerful pro-Israel lobby, no president has ever done much for the Palestinians.
+
+“Biden was always saying positive things; but he implemented nothing positive.”
+
+“Trump won’t be better,” she said, “but at least he might be honest about his pro-Israel positions.”
+
+Sameh Barbakh, 15, would love to have a chance to speak with the incoming US president.
+
+The boy was displaced along with his family when their home in Khan Younis was destroyed in an Israeli air strike last December.
+
+He hasn’t seen his father – whom Israeli troops detained in February from Nasser Medical Complex, where he had sought shelter – for ten months.
+
+“Biden is supporting the occupier over the occupied. And he keeps funding Israel with weapons that kill us,” Sameh said.
+
+He wondered aloud why the world cannot distinguish between the victim and the victimizer and said he wished for a “just” US president to take power and to acknowledge Palestinian rights and ownership of their land.
+
+Those around him say they are not happy about Trump’s victory, Sameh said, but he had decided to defer his own judgement.
+
+“I wish Trump could hear me. I want him to know that all I want is my father back. I want him to know that I miss eating chocolate and meat. I want him to know that it’s cold at night and our clothes are few and very expensive to buy.”
+
+Hanin A. Elholy is a researcher, writer and translator based in Gaza.
+Tags
+
+Joe Biden
+
+Kamala Harris
+
+Donald Trump
+
+Gaza genocide
+
+Gaza war crimes
+
+eiGazaDispatches

combined/texts/1003.txt

@@ -1,66 +1,54 @@
-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
+Gaza’s churches and the areas surrounding them have been under attack since the early stages of Israel’s latest war on Gaza.
+
+DPA via ZUMA PressThe 1,000 Christians living in Gaza have dreams. They want a better future.
+
+The war came suddenly, forcing people to leave their homes. Many went to churches, hoping they would provide safety.
+
+The fear of Christians has been heightened as Israeli tanks have been surrounding them. An elderly woman and her daughter taking shelter at the Holy Family church in Gaza City were killed earlier this month by an Israeli sniper.
+
+Suhail Saba is among those who have taken shelter in the Holy Family church.
+
+She is a survivor of the massacre Israel carried out at the nearby Church of Saint Porphyrius during October. Eighteen people were killed in that massacre.
+
+“The bombing was violent, like an earthquake,” she recalled. “The walls were broken and I was thrown from one place to another. People were tripping over me and I could hear the screams of children and women.”
+
+Multiple members of one family were “instantly killed” when one missile fell on the church, she said.
+
+Saba herself was wounded in the head, back and legs.
 
-political prisoners
+“No joy”
 
-hunger strike
+Ramez al-Souri lost three children during the attack on the Church of Saint Porphyrius. Israel’s attacks are carried out with weapons supplied by the US.
 
-Stop the Wall
+“I left my home and came to the church because it was supposed to be a safe place,” al-Souri said. “My children were sleeping in the building. Suddenly the place was bombed with a missile from a warplane.”
 
-Mourad Jadallah
+He added, “I cannot believe that I lost my children. I feel like I am in a nightmare. America and Israel killed my children while they were sleeping in a place of worship.”
 
-Ayman Nasser
+Kamel Ayyad notes that conditions in churches have been harsh since the beginning of the war. He had taken shelter in the Church of Saint Porphyrius before the October attack on that building.
 
-Hassan Karajah
+“It is painful that the church was targeted while they [the Israelis] knew that the displaced people inside it were civilians,” he said. “We had gone to the church in search of safety.”
+
+Christmas will be very different for his family than it was in 2022.
+
+“Last year we celebrated the holidays with the family,” he said. “We decorated the house and had lights on the Christmas tree. We went to Bethlehem and visited the Church of the Nativity. This year we are suffering from loss and destruction.”
+
+“There is no joy in anyone’s heart these days,” he added. “Everyone is crying for those they have lost.”
+
+In previous years, Christians in Gaza applied for permits from the Israeli occupation so that they could visit Bethlehem in the West Bank during the festive season.
+
+Nobody is waiting for permits this year. Like their Muslim friends and neighbors, Christians in Gaza are under siege.
+
+They have very little to eat and drink. And they fear being killed by snipers or by other forms of Israeli violence.
+
+Ruwaida Amer is a journalist based in Gaza.
+Tags
 
-Jamal Juma'
+Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church
 
-Arafat Jaradat
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
 
-Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
+Suhail Saba
 
-Israeli Prison Service
+Ramez al-Souri
 
-B'Tselem
+Kamel Ayyad

combined/texts/1004.txt

@@ -1,13 +1,84 @@
-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.
+Bethlehem is under military occupation by Israel, with cooperation from the Palestinian Authority.
+
+APA imagesIsrael’s military frequently poses as a humanitarian organization.
+
+So it came as little surprise that it recently sought to turn an announcement about Christmas celebrations into a goodwill gesture.
+
+In reality, the announcement reinforced what every Palestinian knows: Israel dictates what they can and cannot do. For Christians, that includes deciding where they spend Christmas.
+
+If Israel keeps its word, up to 500 Christians living in Gaza may visit the West Bank, which is also under Israeli military occupation. They can then spend part of the festive season in Bethlehem, where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born.
+
+The Israeli announcement – similar to ones made in previous years – is far from altruistic.
+
+Because a limit is placed on the number of people who may travel to Bethlehem, such announcements have the effect that family members either spend Christmas apart from each other or that trips to Bethlehem do not go ahead.
+
+“It is unusual for a whole family to get approval [for traveling to Bethlehem],” said Kamel Ayyad, a spokesperson for the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza. “Sometimes, the Israeli authorities will only grant approval to one or two members of a family. That means the family is forced to cancel their travel plans.”
+
+At more than 700, the number of applications for travel permits quickly exceeded the quota set by Israel.
+
+“Everyone should be granted the permit,” said Ayyad. “We all have the right to freedom of movement. And freedom of worship.”
+
+Christmas in Gaza tends to be subdued. Last year, it was effectively canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
+
+“Special feeling”
+
+Palestinian Christians have been long placed under considerable strain by the occupation. Many have grown so frustrated with Israel’s relentless brutality that they have emigrated.
+
+In Gaza, the number of Christians has fallen from approximately 3,000 in 2010 to only around 1,000 now.
+
+Hani Farah, a prominent figure in the YMCA’s Gaza branch, is among those who have applied for a permit to visit Bethlehem. He is still waiting to hear whether or not his application is successful.
+
+“I love to pray at the Church of the Nativity [in Bethlehem],” he said. “It has a special feeling.”
+
+Farah pointed out that the last two years have been extremely stressful due to both the pandemic and a major Israeli attack. He is hoping that all of his family will be permitted to visit Bethlehem this Christmas.
+
+“We need this holiday,” he said.
+
+Bethlehem is just 75 kilometers from Gaza. Accessing the city should be relatively easy with the benefit of modern transportation.
+
+Yet to have any chance of reaching Bethlehem, it is first necessary to exit Erez, a checkpoint separating Gaza and Israel.
+
+“We love life”
+
+The task of deciding who may leave Erez has been assigned to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). That body is now headed by a general named Ghasan Alyan.
+
+He used to be a commander of the Golani Brigade, an elite unit within Israel’s military.
+
+Led by Alyan, the Golani Brigade committed a massacre in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City during July 2014. Some 55 Palestinian civilians – 19 of them children – were killed in that massacre.
+
+This means that decisions about how Gaza’s people may live their lives are rubber stamped by a man who has committed war crimes in Gaza. Far from being punished, Alyan has been promoted.
+
+Khader Tarazi, 23, has visited Bethlehem just once – when he was a small child. His memories of the trip are patchy, though joyful.
+
+“Every year I submit an application for a permit,” he said. “But it is rejected for reasons that are not known to me.”
+
+Israel typically rejects most requests for permits to visit Bethlehem at Christmas. In 2019, around 800 requests were made from Christians in Gaza; Israel granted slightly more than 300 permits.
+
+While Gaza may not be synonymous with Christmas cheer, those spending the festive season here try their best to have a good time.
+
+Florence Khouri was one of the guests at a party earlier this month, organized by the YMCA in Gaza City.
+
+“Turning on the Christmas tree lights has a special meaning in Gaza,” she said. “We love life despite all the darkness.”
+
+Fedaa al-Qedra is a journalist in Gaza.
+Tags
+
+May 2021 attack on Gaza
+
+COVID-19
+
+Kamel Ayyad
+
+Hani Farah
+
+YMCA
+
+COGAT
+
+Golani brigade
+
+Ghasan Alyan
+
+Khader Tarazi
+
+Florence Khouri

combined/texts/1005.txt

@@ -1,52 +1,47 @@
-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
+Israel’s orders and attacks caused chaos and panic in Khan Younis on Monday.
+Israel committed a massacre in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, on Monday.
+
+At least 70 Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded.
+
+The Israelis opened fire on people who were evacuating areas in eastern Khan Younis as they had been ordered to do by the occupying forces. The evacuees were attacked from the air and by ground troops using shells and bullets, resulting in a general state of panic.
+
+Zainab Abu Taha received a phone call at 9 am. The caller ordered her to evacuate swiftly.
+
+“I got my children, some clothes and a few essentials ready,” she said.
+
+When Zainab and other members of her family were about to leave their area in a car “shells were fired directly at us,” she added.
+
+Her husband and son were killed, along with many other members of her extended family.
+
+“I saw bodies lying on the ground,” Zainab said. “I feel shocked and very afraid.”
 
-Yarmouk
+After being displaced during a previous stage of the current genocidal war, Iman al-Qanou had returned to live in her Khan Younis home. She went back to her house, even though the Israelis had attacked it, causing severe damage.
 
-Palestinian refugees in Syria
+She spoke of everything suddenly becoming chaotic on Monday.
 
-Palestinian Refugees
+“People said we have to leave,” she said.
 
-Damascus
+As she evacuated, “the quadcopter fired on us,” she added.
 
-ethnic cleansing
+Iman’s sister was killed.
 
-Nakba
+“My 5-year-old niece came looking for me in the middle of the chaos,” Iman added. “She said to me, ‘Auntie, I saw my mother dead.’”
 
-right of return
+Abdullah Abu Omar said that no warning was given before Israel began firing shells at people.
+
+“My son is 8 and has lived his whole life in wars,” Abdullah said. “Today he saw bodies lying in the streets and was screaming in fear.”
+
+“We are now on the streets because there is nowhere to go,” he added.
+
+“We have no food, money or anything. The war has exhausted us.”
+
+A little girl named Rama became separated from her family during the chaos.
+
+With no way of contacting them, she became extremely distressed.
+
+Fedaa al-Qedra is a journalist in Gaza.
+Tags
 
-Hassan Hassan
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
 
-Syria
+Khan Younis

combined/texts/1006.txt

@@ -1,92 +1,35 @@
-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
+Israeli forces fire tear gas at an International Women’s Day rally at Qalandiya checkpoint near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, 8 March 2012.
+
+APA imagesDespite the establishment of stale Orientalist campaigns created in the name of women’s liberation in the Middle East and North Africa, the existence of enduring, self-sufficient women in the region has far-reaching historical context.
+The search for female Middle East voices among pundits in the mainstream media echoes the same tired “Palestinian Gandhi” cliche; analysts have long used Lawrence of Arabia-esque exoticism as a means to portray the women of the Arab world, in that if they are not subservient housewives they are coy and reserved daughters, sheltered and locked away by the domineering male figures in the household. These conjectures are not false in their entirety, but they are also not unique to one specific region, culture, religion or people.
+The pervasive Western tradition of characterizing an entire community by certain traits, which their Western audiences can ooh and ahh at, has helped manufacture a plethora of distortions.
+History confirms that Arab women have long played an active political role in their societies, from Egyptian women who demonstrated alongside men during the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, against British occupation of Egypt and Sudan, to resistance fighter Jamila Bu Hreid of Algeria. Bu Hreid was nearly tortured to death by French occupation forces during the Algerian revolution and independence movement which lasted from 1954 to 1962 and resulted in Algeria gaining its independence from France.
+South Lebanon, liberated in 2000 after nearly 22 years of Israeli occupation, was also home to female political action. Lebanese women would quietly supply resistance fighters with ammunition, often wrapping them across their stomachs before passing through Israeli checkpoints unnoticed.
+An alluring token
+As of late, the women of the Arab world are being actively pursued by journalists, media figures and political commentators as sort of stock characters to be featured in their next editorial or television broadcast. Those usually courted by the media are there to reassert Orientalist theories, for a Western audience to relish in sheer amusement, because for many an outspoken and visible Arab woman is an alluring token.
+This has much to do with the current state of the Middle East and North Africa, specifically the uprisings that have captured the hearts and minds of many across world. Prior to the deposing of Tunisia’s Zine el Abidine Ben Ali there was little or no media attention given to Arab women in respect to what role they played in the region, besides being propagandized as second-class to their more aggressive male counterparts.
+Although the media claims to be on a scavenger-hunt of sorts, in search of the dauntless women of the Middle East, there has always been little talk of female Palestinian heroines and their struggle against Israel’s brutal system of apartheid and occupation of their native land.
+The Palestinian village of Bilin has hosted weekly unarmed demonstrations against the occupation of its land since 2005. For nearly seven years, numerous men and women courageously have faced Israeli forces in order to prevent further colonization of their villages, the destruction of their resources and the subjugation of their people.
+Jawaher Abu Rahmah, one of many women Palestinian protesters, was killed by Israeli forces after inhaling extensive amounts of tear gas during a demonstration in Bilin in 2011; she suffered from severe asphyxiation and poisoning caused by chemicals in the tear gas.
+Abu Rahmah’s brother Bassem was killed in 2009 after a tear-gas canister was fired at his chest by an Israeli soldier during a similar village demonstration.
+And today, Hana al-Shalabi, a 30-year-old Palestinian woman from Jenin, is on hunger strike to protest her administrative detention without charge by Israel.
+Al-Shalabi has been subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment by Israeli forces and, despite having had her detention recently reduced from six months to four months since her hunger strike began three weeks ago, she has declared that her hunger strike will continue until her demand for freedom is met.
+Womens’ compelling strength
+The archetypal Arab women most often approved of, for the viewing pleasure of television audiences, is one which is confined to a subservient role: a coy, bashful creature whose raison d’etre is based on approval from a domineering male society. This decayed misconception branding every aspect of Middle Eastern and North African society a homogeneous stereotype has long been refuted by women like Hana al-Shalabi and Jawaher Abu Rahmah, and a great number of others who are deliberately ignored by the mainstream media.
+Women of the Middle East and North Africa are of compelling strength, doubtless courage and incorruptible dignity. History is laden with prominent female activists, poets, authors and political figures from this region who have have long existed, despite the deliberate evasion of their stories and in the printing their names, and they will continue to exist.
+Roqayah Chamseddine is a US-based Lebanese-American journalist, commentator and activist.
 Tags
 
-Hebron
-
-Hebron massacre
+women
 
-Shuhada street
+International Women's Day
 
-Youth Against Settlements
+Arab uprisings
 
-Issa Amro
+Jawaher Abu Rahmah
 
-Israeli settlements
+popular resistance
 
-settlements
+tear gas
 
-settler violence
+Hana al-Shalabi

combined/texts/1007.txt

@@ -1,128 +1,66 @@
-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.
+Palestine’s own Liberation Day is coming.
+
+APA imagesThere is a fire burning beneath the ashes of occupation in Palestine; these are the flickering embers of resilience which have long advanced the people’s struggle for national liberation, and in Palestine they continue to rage.
+The historical narrative of Palestinian resistance is one shared by all subjugated and indigenous peoples — it is a chronicle of an indomitable human will to endure, to break the fetters of both mental and physical bondage. In Palestine, the occupation and its consequences are tangible, harrowing and intentionally humiliating: collective transfers, exploitation of natural resources, checkpoints, acts of random settler violence, home demolitions, the intentional burning of crops and a policy of colonization which has caused the Palestinians to become the oldest and largest refugee population in the world.
+The ever-expanding colonization of Palestine has produced a farcical peace process that is clinically dead — stillborn from inception — as there can be no “peace” on Israel’s terms, or the terms of any other such settler-colonial entity. The immense failure of the “peace process” (and other such lifeless diplomatic negotiations ironically brokered by the United States) to bring an end to the occupation was predicted, as this was not the intention of such negotiations.
+The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, is widely considered corrupt by Palestinians, as its main focus is on marginalizing mainstream Palestinian voices in order to line the organization’s pockets — a premise corroborated by the PA’s often distracted collusion with Israel and the US. The only sufficient response to Israel’s occupation is popular resistance.
+In Palestine, the people’s response to colonial and foreign hegemony is composed of armed resistance and unarmed resistance, and historically the people of Palestine have engaged in both — even prior to the creation of Israel.
+Tax revolts, mass demonstrations and general strikes involving women’s unions, youth movements and political organizations made up the “Great Palestinian Revolt” against British occupation in Palestine from 1936 to 1939, as did organized armed resistance. The historical confirmation of popular resistance movements in Palestine, though often ignored, remains a testament to the determination of the Palestinian people, who have long expressed clear opposition to the occupation of their land. The dauntless people of Palestine continue down the path of resistance and over the years their countless methods have become more diverse and creative.
+Hunger strike for basic rights
+In December 2011, administrative detainee Khader Adnan, a baker from the village of Arraba in the occupied West Bank, began an open-ended hunger strike. His action would lead to a historic mass hunger strike, continuing until demands pertaining to the conditions of Palestinian prisoners were met — the most pressing stipulation was to bring an end to administrative detention.
+Earlier, in September 2011, hunger strikes and civil disobedience swept across the Israeli prison system in protest of Israel’s use of solitary confinement, denial of family visits and other punitive measures.
+Administrative detention, a practice criticized by a number of human rights organizations as being a violation of civil and political rights, is the arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. In the case of Israel, Palestinian prisoners are held in administrative detention without being charged or allowed to stand trial. According to prisoner support and human rights association Addameer, “administrative detainees in Israel must endure severe restrictions on their right to education, rights to communicate with families and receive visits, and right to adequate medical treatment.”
+In a letter given to his lawyers, Khader Adnan declared his intentions as to why he was on hunger strike: “The Israeli occupation has gone to extremes against our people, especially prisoners. I have been humiliated, beaten, and harassed by interrogators for no reason, and thus I swore to God I would fight the policy of administrative detention to which I and hundreds of my fellow prisoners fell prey. … I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on” (“Hunger-striking prisoner not backing down,” Maan News Agency, 11 February 2012).
+Thousands of Palestinian prisoners joined the mass hunger strike with an international community of ordinary people — not governments — standing firmly behind them; campaigns were launched around the world in support of the prisoners; and the pressure against Israel was building without the voices of Palestinians being co-opted and therein marginalized.
+Khader Adnan was released on 17 April this year, known to Palestinians as Prisoners’ Day, after being on hunger strike for 66 days. According to Addameer, as of 1 June, there were at least 303 administrative detainees in Israeli prisons, and so the struggle against Israel’s arbitrary use of administrative detention and prisoner abuse continues.
+Youth lead by example
+Palestinian youth, within Palestine and in exile, have taken an active and effective role in resisting the occupation of their ancestral land; from organizing and movement building to empowering young Palestinians to take a more direct role in the liberation struggle.
+Stop The Wall is one such organization which cultivates the role of Palestinian youth, from organizing protests at a national level to spreading information so that Palestinians globally are able to take a vigilant role. As of late, youth activists have held demonstrations lasting for many hours in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in front of Ofer prison, according to Hassan Kharajeh, a youth coordinator with Stop the Wall. The Palestinian Youth Movement, a grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and those in exile around the world, have led calls for international mobilization and have worked closely with popular committees throughout Palestine.
+In an interview, Maath Musleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian activist and resident of Jerusalem, emphasized to me that “as in any place in the world throughout history,” the youth are leading movements for change in the region, but not exclusively.
+Palestinians from all age groups and varied backgrounds are taking part in resisting Israel’s occupation and are leading on different levels. The younger Palestinian generation is directing, mobilizing and taking part in the stirring responses to the subjugation of their people and the Zionist colonial-settler project that is Israel; and, as Musleh and other Palestinians contend, they are doing so alongside the older generation as well.
+Palestinian youth, who are now arguably even more invigorated by recent upheavals in the region, have taken even more coordinated action in order to smash the settler state; they realize that they shall inherit the earth which their ancestors have long watered with blood, sweat and tears and they will be the first to resist the occupation on the front lines.
+Duty to resist
+The choice of what methods of resistance are used, be it armed or unarmed, are to be left entirely up to those occupied; what is imperative is that there must be an unwavering response and that the struggle must continue until the achievement of both physical and mental liberation. The colonized mind must be emancipated just like the colonized land.
+Israel’s occupation is intentionally humiliating and crippling so as to hasten the process of ethnic cleansing, so as to make it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to go about their day-to-day lives, and to pressure them into leaving their homeland — thereby joining the distressing number of other Palestinian exiles around the world. The United Nations has also recognized the significance of the right of peoples to self-determination, as noted in UN General Assembly resolution 3070, which “reaffirms the legitimacy of the people’s struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and alien subjugation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
+The people of Palestine have chosen to combat the further usurpation of their native land through strategic resistance, by any means they deem necessary; and, despite the ruthlessness of Israel’s violations of their basic human rights and the theft of their land, they continue to remain steadfast in their uncompromising struggle against occupation.
+The liberation of Palestine from the grips of brutal Israeli occupation will look like that of my native south Lebanon — patient struggle, sacrifice and long-awaited victory. From the horrors of airstrikes which stretched across our southern Lebanese villages, claiming thousands of lives, including that of my aunt Hoda Chamseddine, to the countless homes destroyed atop the heads of their inhabitants to the checkpoints erected on our soil, it was all intended to provoke feelings of shame and helplessness.
+Yet despite the brutality of Israel’s conquest of southern Lebanon, a brutality which is an equal opportunity destroyer, the organized and unwavering response which followed the occupation of our land is a tangible and historic reminder that we are the sole protectors of our people, of our land and of our dignity.
+After witnessing the misery and suffering of our people, the national liberation struggle against the occupiers of our land grew and engulfed south Lebanon. The young and old stood united as one fist raised in the face of Israel’s insatiable militancy and cruelty — and in 2000, after nearly 22 years, the struggle against the foreign occupier produced our “Liberation Day,” commemorated every year across Lebanon.
+Palestine’s own “Liberation Day” is coming — and the vast Zionist settler-colonial project, i.e. Israel, knows it. It is an overlooked and steadfast truth that these powerful ripples of hope, as seen in south Lebanon and beyond, will only encourage resistance to oppression. And in Palestine, this will result in an uprising that shall shake the very earth and warm the subjugated masses with cloaks of freedom.
+The obligation of an oppressed and an indigenous people to resist occupation is universal; not only is resistance a right but it shall remain a legitimate duty. In the end, all that an oppressed people have to lose in the battle for national liberation are their chains.
+Roqayah Chamseddine is a US-based Lebanese-American journalist, commentator and activist.
 Tags
 
-Barack Obama
+checkpoints
 
-Jeffrey Goldberg
+Mahmoud Abbas
 
-US aid to Israel
+settlements
 
-East Jerusalem
+Palestinian Authority
 
-Jewish state
+popular resistance
 
-US State Department
+hunger strike
 
-racial profiling
+Palestinian prisoners
 
-denial of entry
+Khader Adnan
 
-Palestinian Americans
+Ameer Makhoul
 
-Israeli settlements
+Addameer
 
-Bethlehem
+administrative detention
 
-Bethlehem University
+Prisoners Day
 
-Israel's wall in the West Bank
+Stop the Wall
 
-Abu Dis
+Maath Musleh
 
-Al-Quds University
+Jerusalem
 
-mass incarceration
+Ofer prison
 
-US border
+Lebanon

combined/texts/1008.txt

@@ -1,60 +1,204 @@
-Maisa Abd Elhadi in 3000 Nights3000 Nights written and directed by Mai Masri
+A boy holds a mock rocket during a demonstration against a US-led operation to safeguard Red Sea shipping, Sana’a, Yemen, 12 January.
 
-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.
+ZUMA Press WireMore than 100 days in, President Joe Biden’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s genocide in Gaza has so far cost the lives of an estimated 32,200 Palestinians, put the integrity of international law to the test, and is now seemingly threatening the United States’ own interests, as Washington escalates a regional war that it claims it doesn’t want.
 
-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.
+Biden has firmly positioned himself as a full partner to Israel’s military campaign despite acknowledging – more than once – the indiscriminate nature of its bombing in Gaza, essentially admitting to aiding and abetting war crimes.
 
-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.
+Accordingly, Biden and his secretaries of state and defense are being sued for their failure to prevent a genocide and their complicity in the genocide unfolding in Gaza.
 
-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.
+The Biden administration’s “no daylight,” unconditional support for Israel has provided so much leeway that Tel Aviv has no way of climbing down from its stated war objectives, despite having achieved none (dozens of captives remain in Gaza and Hamas’ command and control appears to be in tact, to say nothing of the resistance being waged by multiple factions against Israeli ground forces).
 
-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.
+No victory is on the horizon for Israel, to say the least.
 
-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.
+What's unsettling isn't just the US' indifference to genocide, but its disregard for reason: having experienced invasion, occupation and siege, Hamas, Hizbullah and Ansarullah will keep fighting because they don't have much to lose. Israel has much more to lose in relative terms— Amal Saad (@amalsaad_lb) January 14, 2024
 
-Resisting containment
+The US is putting itself in a similarly intractable position as it lobs bombs in a regional tinderbox, setting off a series of consequences that it will find increasingly difficult to control.
 
-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.
+Washington is now bombing Yemen, despite acknowledging doing so has little deterrent effect, after the US and UK launched air strikes across the country last week following an alleged missile and drone attack in the direction of an American cargo ship and Navy vessels surrounding it days earlier.
 
-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.
+That about sums up the administration's Mideast policy https://t.co/KqmgywJhMK— Alex Kane (@alexbkane) January 18, 2024
 
-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 Biden administration claims that the US is “not interested in … a war with Yemen,” as White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said last Friday. The New York Times asked that same day: “The regional war no one wanted is here. How wide will it get?”
 
-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 answer depends on how long the US prolongs the genocide in Gaza, as the regional escalations are a direct result of Washington’s morally and strategically disastrous policy.
 
-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.
+The US-UK airstrikes in Yemen were launched on the first day of the genocide hearings at the International Court of Justice at The Hague last week.
 
-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.
+The US opposes those proceedings (Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrogantly dismissed South Africa’s genocide complaint against Israel as a “meritless” distraction, while White House spokesperson John Kirby said it was “completely without any basis in fact whatsoever”). Washington opposes any effective measure to hold Israel accountable, just as it opposes even efforts towards securing a ceasefire, repeatedly preventing the UN Security Council from issuing a legally binding call for one.
 
-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.
+Biden’s regional predicament is one of his own making as he has inserted himself as a full partner to Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
 
-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.
+His administration’s support for Israel’s military campaign, now surpassing 100 days, has resulted in hostilities between Israel and Lebanon that are on the brink of a full-scale war.
 
-Reclaiming history
+Washington’s material and diplomatic support for the genocidal campaign in Gaza has invited attacks on American targets in Syria and Iraq, where US strikes on 4 January –  killing a militia leader in Baghdad – raised the ire of that country’s government.
 
-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.
+And now the US is engaged in direct military confrontation with Ansarullah, the de facto government of Yemen, which has for weeks maintained a naval blockade to prevent commercial ships from reaching Israeli ports.
 
-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.
+Ansarullah’s aims
 
-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.
+Ansarullah has made clear that its intervention in the Red Sea is aimed at exacting an economic cost on Israel for the genocide in Gaza, a form of pressure to bring the bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe to an end.
 
-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.
+Yemen’s solidarity with Gaza is compelled by its own experience of foreign military occupation and starvation born of blockade and being subjected to a years-long Saudi air campaign backed by Washington and London. Surely Ansarullah and its supporters see the fates of Palestinians in Gaza and people in Yemen as intertwined, and that taking action to curtail the genocide in Gaza also serves to protect Yemen’s own long-term security.
 
-It richly deserves those awards and many more.
+Any reporter who takes Biden at his word when he says the US is committed to protecting free flow of goods is -- at best -- being foolish, and -- at worst -- deeply complicit. The US-backed blockade on Yemen has been a nightmare beyond words, almost entirely ignored in US press. https://t.co/nC9tW5zIWp— Sarah Lazare (@sarahlazare) January 14, 2024
 
-Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer. Her debut novel, Out of It, is published by Bloomsbury (2012).
+The US-backed blockade on Yemen isn't ancient history. The restrictions are still ongoing, with dire consequences for those who face severe illness. https://t.co/MqcBVeWAcg pic.twitter.com/geeMU2uaD8— Sarah Lazare (@sarahlazare) January 14, 2024
+
+Ansarullah’s objective is in direct contradiction to the US policy of prolonging the war and shielding Israel from any meaningful pressure to end it.
+
+Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, said this week that the US-UK bombing of Yemen in response to Ansarullah’s intervention was a “defensive action.” He claimed that his administration was creating “the conditions for de-escalation” through “a combination of steady deterrence and steadfast diplomacy.”
+
+Sullivan’s assertions are of course the opposite of reality – it’s pretty difficult for Washington to claim self-defense in the Red Sea – and the strikes violate both the UN Charter and US Constitution. Far from a diplomatic gesture, the State Department designated Ansarullah as a terrorist group on Wednesday, paving the way for sanctions that will “primarily harm civilians,” as the human rights watchdog DAWN said the following day.
+
+Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a member of the political wing of Ansarullah, said that before the US-UK airstrikes on Yemen, his group had targeted only ships heading towards Israeli ports or owned by Israeli entities (however, DAWN says that “at least some of the ships it has attacked appear to have no connection to Israel”). Al-Bukhaiti added that the goal wasn’t to sink or seize the vessels but to cause them to reroute and thus provide a means of applying economic pressure on Israel.
+
+The Yemeni attacks on shipping have resulted in no reports of injuries or fatalities, unlike the deadly US-UK airstrikes.
+
+[Thread] Al-Mayadeen interview with Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti (AnsarAllah political bureau)“We will take revenge on what the US-UK committed…now British & American ships won’t dare to use what? The Red Sea. Praise be to god that our enemies are idiots.” pic.twitter.com/d9LgImu3Fu— deeeeeee (@revolutionaryem) January 13, 2024
+
+Al-Bukhaiti said that the US-British strikes have set new and permanent rules of engagement in the Red Sea.
+
+“This is the moment we have been waiting for, that the battle is directly between us and America and Britain,” Al-Bukhaiti said. He added that the world now sees clearly the two sides: “Yemen, which is bravely trying to stop this genocide [in Gaza] and America-Britain, who are protecting the perpetrators.”
+
+On Monday, Yahya Sare’e, the spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, said that “all American and British ships and warships involved in the aggression against our country are considered hostile targets by the Yemeni Armed Forces.”
+
+He reiterated that the blockade on Israeli navigation would continue “until the aggression stops and the siege on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted.”
+
+Later that day, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards attacked what they said were espionage centers in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq, “in an area near the US consulate,” according to Reuters.
+
+This was just minutes ago near the US consulate in Erbil, Iraq. Possibly by the Iranian IRGC. Six explosions via missiles & drones, per media reports. Unclear if there are any casualties. This follows a Houthi attack on a US ship earlier today. Biden's unwise escalation in the… pic.twitter.com/i9iDHvSrdo— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) January 15, 2024
+
+Middle East is imploding, in one day - Attack on US ship by Yemen Houthis- US intercepting 2nd attack in Red Sea- Israel strikes in Gaza- Stabbing & car ramming near Tel Aviv- IRGC attack in Iraq- IRGC attack in SyriaEven for Middle East, this is beyond usual instability— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 15, 2024
+
+The consequences of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza have rippled out even further geographically as Iran and Pakistan carried out airstrikes on each other’s territory along their shared border this week.
+
+The longer the war drags on in Gaza, the greater the risk of an even more consequential regional escalation, as the UN secretary-general and others have made clear.
+
+A lengthy and messy conflagration is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be after, to save his own skin and to force the US to intervene in a potential military confrontation with Iran.
+
+In his speech marking 100 days of war, Netanyahu said that in addition to its campaign in Gaza, Israel has “another, constant, existential mission – to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.”
+
+“This is my mission. This is our mission,” Netanyahu added. “I told Secretary of State Blinken: This needs to be your highest mission too.”
+
+No good options?
+
+Last week, a headline in Foreign Policy stated that “Biden has no good options in Yemen.”
+
+That appears to presuppose that a ceasefire in Gaza is not an option, or if it is an option, that it isn’t a good one, and that the use of force is the only course of action available to Biden (albeit an apparently ineffective one, as the US now acknowledges that its airstrikes barely made a dent in Ansarullah’s military capacity).
+
+But because engaging in diplomacy to end the genocide in Gaza isn’t viewed as a reasonable option by Biden (and apparently the mouthpieces of empire), the US is willing to risk the lives of people in the region as well as its armed forces – all for a most reprehensible aim.
+
+I have what some may consider a dumb idea, but here it is:  stop the bombing of Gaza, then the attacks on commercial shipping will end. Why not try that approach?— Rep. Hank Johnson (@RepHankJohnson) January 13, 2024
+
+As morally repugnant as Biden’s current policy may be, it is a continuation of his disastrous Middle East policy as a whole, which until 7 October sought to bypass Palestinians, including those under siege in Gaza, and their aspirations and inalienable rights entirely.
+
+The US support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is an extension of longstanding efforts to impose regime change in the territory after Hamas assumed control over its internal affairs in 2007 and Israel imposed a severe blockade of collective punishment enforced by Egypt and its allies.
+
+The siege on Gaza was and is a form of collective punishment aimed at, applying severe economic pressure on Palesinians in a bid to get them to turn against Hamas, which refuses to give up armed struggle against Israeli occupation and colonization.
+
+Meanwhile, Washington props up the Palestinian Authority, which is deeply unpopular among Palestinians as it does little more than serve as an authoritarian policing arm of the Israeli occupation.
+
+Bilateral negotiations are stalled as Israeli leaders in multiple governments have been firm in their opposition to a Palestinian state.
+
+Correctly identifying an impasse, but not addressing the key role played by the US in materially supporting Israel’s forever occupation, the last two administrations in Washington have sought to marginalize the rights-based demands of the Palestinian people entirely. They both pursued normalization deals between Israel and neighboring despotic states while treating the Palestinian situation as something that could be ignored or “conflict-managed” indefinitely.
+
+The Biden administration’s oft-repeated variations of the mantra that “Israelis and Palestinians deserve equal measures of freedom, dignity, security and prosperity” are not far off from the “Peace to Prosperity” language used by the Trump administration to describe its framework vis-a-vis Palestinians and Israelis.
+
+The Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” scheme attempted to substitute the Palestinian goal of national liberation with economic inducements, while maintaining a permanent state of military occupation and apartheid.
+
+That itself was a rehash of the Obama administration’s approach of supporting “economic peace” in the occupied West Bank under the banner of Palestinian “state-building.”
+
+Adalah, a group that advocates for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, said that the Trump proposal was “no more than an attempt to bypass international legal barriers and to ignore Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”
+
+Israelis and Palestinians deserve equal measures of freedom, dignity, security, and prosperity.— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 13, 2021
+
+Biden’s legacy
+
+Little fundamentally changed when Biden took office as his administration continued to push Trump’s keystone normalization policy while sidelining the Palestinians.
+
+Prior to 7 October, the Biden administration had obscured the rights-based demands of a colonized people with the language of “tensions between Israelis and Palestinians,” as typified in an optimistic speech that national security advisor Jake Sullivan gave at The Atlantic Festival in late September.
+
+“The amount of time that I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East today compared to any of my predecessors going back to 9/11 is significantly reduced,” Sullivan said at the time.
+
+Middle East crisis will now be Biden’s foreign policy legacy, the horrors of the genocide in Gaza potentially eclipsing even the disastrous proxy war pushed by Washington that has resulted in a bloody impasse in Ukraine.
+
+Hamas’ military operation on 7 October sought to disrupt efforts to liquidate the Palestinian cause after a quarter-century of a US-led sham “peace process” that only bought Israel time to seize and build on more Palestinian land.
+
+Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’ politburo, told the Turkish outlet TRT that its military operation was a response to the accelerated colonization of Palestinian land by the Netanyahu government. He also said that the operation succeeded in its aim of putting the Palestinian liberation cause back on the international agenda.
+
+“If that was indeed Hamas’ aim to bring the Palestinian cause right to the forefront of international dialogue, you’re correct, it succeeded,” the TRT interviewer replied.
+
+“There are countries that had maybe parked the two-state solution and the future of the Palestinians somewhere in the background of their activities, but now the whole world is talking about it,” the TRT anchor added.
+
+Similarly, Hizballah’s opening of the front along Lebanon’s border with Israel on 8 October in solidarity with Gaza, and military intervention by resistance organizations in Yemen and Iraq, are reshaping the power dynamics in the region.
+
+During a recent speech, Hizballah leader Hasan Nasrallah insisted that only a ceasefire in Gaza would allow for talks to end hostilities across the Lebanon-Israel boundary.
+
+Likewise, Nasrallah said that security in the Red Sea is entirely dependent on ending Israel’s aggression on Gaza.
+
+He also rejected attempts by the US to cast resistance groups as proxies of Tehran, saying that Yemen acts independently and that “the Yemeni response is decided by the Yemenis.”
+
+Biden doubles down
+
+Biden is doubling down on the policies that created the conditions for the catastrophic crisis in Palestine and the escalating regional war.
+
+Axios reports that the US is frustrated with Israel, because, among other reasons, Netanyahu’s government refuses to “seriously discuss plans for the day after the war and his rejection of the US plan for a reformed Palestinian Authority to have a role in post-Hamas Gaza.”
+
+Blinken reportedly told Netanyahu and his war cabinet that their post-war plans for Gaza – which envisions “a multinational task force to rebuild the enclave” without the presence of the Palestinian Authority, as Reuters reports – was “pie in the sky,” a US official said to Axios.
+
+But the Biden administration suffers from its own delusions – first, the assumption that there will be a “post-Hamas Gaza” (as Hizballah’s Nasrallah noted, Israel’s military has accomplished nothing but killing and destruction for the last 100 days) and second, that they could reimpose the Palestinian Authority on a population which holds it in great contempt.
+
+Inconceivable to them is the notion that Palestinians and Palestinians alone should determine how they should be governed. Indeed, this adamant rejection of Palestinian self-determination is at the heart of the conflict, and to continue to deny it guarantees more suffering and bloodshed.
+
+And yet the Biden administration is staying the course.
+
+According to HuffPost, White House official Brett McGurk, who has played a key role in shaping Middle East policy under both Trump and Biden, “is leading post-war Gaza planning in Washington.” McGurk envisions the rebuilding of Gaza with the normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia as its cornerstone.
+
+“McGurk’s plan would use the incentive of aid for reconstruction from Saudi Arabia and possibly other wealthy Gulf countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to pressure both the Palestinians and the Israelis,” HuffPost reported, citing three unnamed US officials.
+
+“In this vision, Palestinian leaders would agree to a new government for both Gaza and the occupied West Bank and to ratchet down their criticisms of Israel, while Israel would accept limited influence in Gaza.”
+
+According to HuffPost, critics in the US government say that McGurk’s scheme reflects “the Biden administration’s pre-Oct. 7 approach of treating the Palestinians as an afterthought,” and could doom the region to “cycles of unprecedented violence.”
+
+Treating the Palestinians as an afterthought might be too generous a description of the Biden administration’s calculations. In his statement “marking 100 days of captivity for hostages in Gaza,” Biden made no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed during that time, or the hundreds of Palestinians rounded up by Israeli troops in both Gaza and the West Bank.
+
+It would seem that neither Palestinian suffering or political aspirations receive much if any consideration or sympathy from Biden’s White House.
+
+This is sick, but it’s not surprising. Why would the White House care about the horrific consequences of the Israeli genocide they have enthusiastically armed and endorsed?Arabs are not human to them. Palestinians especially are not worthy of life to Joe Biden and his… https://t.co/fu3QXNrQis— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) January 15, 2024
+
+McGurk’s “day after” scheme indicates not only Washington’s indifference to the rights and wishes of Palestinians, but also its refusal to acknowledge the new reality shaped by resistance forces of various nationalities since 7 October.
+
+Those resistance forces are an indigenous response to foreign occupation and war either imposed or backed by the US.
+
+With those resistance groups at a stage of maturation, no longer can Israel, armed and shielded by Washington, do whatever it wants to the Palestinians without incurring a cost to both itself and its chief benefactor.
+
+The genocide in Gaza is strengthening the belief in the region that resistance is imperative – not just as a deterrent to the existential threat posed by Israel, but as the only realistic path to liberation, sovereignty and self-determination.
+
+Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.
 Tags
 
-film
+Joe Biden
+
+Hamas
+
+Yemen
+
+Ansarullah
+
+Jake Sullivan
+
+Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti
+
+Yahya Sare'e
 
-cinema
+Palestinian Authority
 
-Mai Masri
+Donald Trump
 
-Maisa Abd Elhadi
+Osama Hamdan
 
-3000 Nights
+Hizballah
 
-Palestinian prisoners
+Hasan Nasrallah
 
-women
+Brett McGurk

combined/texts/1009.txt

@@ -1,92 +1,202 @@
-Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat, Stanford University Press (2019)
+How many times will Israel be allowed to wreak widespread destruction in Gaza?
 
-Noura Erakat explores the role of international law in the struggle for Palestinian national liberation in her latest book Justice for Some.
+APA imagesIsrael’s most powerful allies will never succeed in their aim of Palestinian surrender.
 
-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.
+Yet they continue to empower Israel and prolong Palestinian pain in their grotesque treatment of an anti-colonial struggle for liberation as a conflict between two equal parties to be managed seemingly in perpetuity.
 
-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.”
+One of the cruelest aspects of this approach is the maintenance of the air, land and sea blockade on Gaza that has been imposed by Israel with the help of Egypt since 2007.
 
-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.
+The siege has kept Gaza teetering on the brink of collapse and made life miserable and precarious for its population of more than two million Palestinians.
 
-Legal work
+The International Committee of the Red Cross affirmed more than a decade ago that the siege on Gaza constitutes a war crime of collective punishment.
 
-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.
+Yet there is no serious international effort to bring it to an end. World powers appear content for the siege to become as permanent as Israel’s military occupation as a whole.
 
-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.
+The so-called Quartet and the states and bodies it represents – the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia – made no demand on Israel to lift the siege after an unconditional ceasefire ended 11 days of bombing and terrorization of the coastal enclave last month.
 
-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.
+Neither did the UN Security Council.
 
-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.
+Instead, these powers fell back on well-worn calls for a bilateral two-state solution, calls that they have been repeating ad nauseum since the mid-1990s following the signing of the Oslo accords by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
 
-Israel’s efforts to change the law
+In something of a novel twist, Russia welcomed with the ceasefire Washington’s renewed commitment to a two-state solution following the Trump administration’s ridiculed “Prosperity for Peace” plan.
 
-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.
+That plan – informally known as the Deal of the Century – did not feign acknowledgment of Palestinian rights and national aspirations.
 
-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.
+Critics said it envisioned a permanent state of military occupation, apartheid and Palestinian suffering.
 
-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.
+Which is exactly the de facto situation today, made possible by the peace process charade managed by the Quartet.
 
-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.
+Those most committed to this pretense stick close to the script: “both sides” bear equal responsibility for maintaining a ceasefire and relative calm, ignoring the essential relationship of colonization between Israel and the Palestinian people whose land it covets.
 
-The problem of sovereign exception
+The situation is delicate and the ceasefire remains fragile. All actors should refrain from unilateral steps and provocations, exercise restraint and facilitate efforts to bring sustainable calm. We all need to work hard for a lasting peace for everyone.— Sven Koopmans (@EUSR_Koopmans) June 8, 2021
 
-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.
+The cessation of hostilities is fragile. I urge both sides to refrain from unilateral steps and provocations, exercise restraint and allow for the necessary work to solidify the ceasefire.— Tor Wennesland (@TWennesland) June 7, 2021
 
-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.
+Sidelining Hamas
 
-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.
+Though Israel has a new government, there is absolutely no reason to expect its longstanding policies towards Palestinians, and Gaza in particular, to change.
 
-Subsequently, Israel has used the same justification to pass laws expelling and dispossessing Palestinians, and placing them under martial law.
+The managers of the peace process charade defaulted to envisioning a return to the pre-escalation status quo in Gaza before and after the ceasefire.
 
-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.
+Tor Wennesland, the UN secretary-general’s Middle East envoy, omitted any mention of the siege during his briefing to the Security Council in late May.
 
-Palestinians’ use of the law
+He did say that “Palestinian national unity and the return of a legitimate Palestinian Government to Gaza is [sic] needed to move forward sustainably.”
 
-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.”
+This means the continued sidelining of Hamas, which governs Gaza’s internal affairs and leads the armed resistance there, in favor of the Palestinian Authority, which serves as an enforcement arm of the Israeli occupation by stamping out Palestinian resistance against it.
 
-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.
+Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said that “if we do this right, reconstruction and then relief for the people of Gaza — far from empowering Hamas — has the potential to undermine it.”
 
-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.
+Israel also sees opportunities to advance its interests by imposing political conditions on humanitarian aid.
 
-Is law really politics by other means?
+Its foreign ministry has suggested that it would use access to aid as leverage against the International Criminal Court’s investigation of war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.
 
-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?
+The ministry said working groups would be established to implement “civilian projects in Judea and Samaria” – the term Israel uses for the West Bank – “while simultaneously setting out demands [on] the Palestinians, including ceasing petitions to international institutions and stopping incitement.”
 
-In other words, why in spite of Israel’s power is the law mostly on the side of the weaker party – the Palestinians?
+Israel’s targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure during its rampage in Gaza in 2014 is a primary focus of the ICC probe. Successive international commissions of inquiry have recommended targeted sanctions and other forms of pressure to avoid another episode of Israeli violence in the territory.
 
-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.
+But those calls have gone unheeded and the prevailing situation of impunity has allowed Israel to attack Gaza yet again.
 
-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.
+Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, greets supporters during a rally in Gaza City on 24 May.
+Ashraf Amra
+APA imagesIsrael is obliged by international law to provide for the humanitarian needs of the civilians living under its military occupation, including in Gaza.
 
-An alternative explanation involves distinguishing between two different bodies of international law and their relationship to politics.
+But instead of seeking the respect and enforcement of those obligations, third states foot the bill for the reconstruction after each destructive confrontation in the territory.
 
-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.
+Not only has Israel been exempted from providing reparations to Gaza, it controls what can be brought into the territory and when.
 
-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.
+It limits or bans so-called dual-use items that might be used for military purposes and delays security clearance approvals on materials, taking years for projects to be completed.
 
-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.”
+Projects begun after the last war were not yet completed before Israel wrought a fresh round of destruction last month, as The Christian Science Monitor reports.
 
-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.
+And where Israel does allow essential supplies into Gaza, its own companies reap profits by selling construction materials and others goods and services to international agencies.
 
-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.
+Rebuilding will be painfully protracted and mired in restrictions. By contrast, Washington is rushing to replace the missiles that Israel used to destroy Palestinian lives and homes in Gaza.
 
-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.
+The US State Department approved a $735 million sale of precision-guided munitions despite congressional opposition and calls for an arms embargo by human rights groups including Amnesty International.
 
-Law cannot replace politics
+Meanwhile, the UN is expected to continue to enforce the siege via the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism.
 
-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.
+Under that mechanism, the UN gathers private information about Palestinian households to be passed onto Israel, which has a veto over which families get aid to rebuild their homes. This makes the UN an active participant in Israel’s crimes.
 
-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.
+Conditioning rights on surrender
 
-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.
+The aim of Israel’s siege on Gaza is the surrender of armed resistance to occupation and colonization – a right enshrined in international law.
 
-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.
+By prioritizing the return of a “legitimate Palestinian government” to Gaza, the UN is conditioning the basic right to a dignified life on capitulation to colonial rule in Palestine.
 
-She proposes that Palestinians must, therefore, formulate a new emancipatory political program that looks beyond statehood, at other possibilities for decolonization and freedom.
+Upholding the siege on Gaza is part of a broader strategy to punish civilian populations when their leaders don’t bend to imperial will.
 
-Perhaps the real question is: will Palestinians rise to the challenge?
+Sweeping sanctions have been imposed on Iran and Syria, impeding post-war rebuilding and the provision of humanitarian relief in the latter.
 
-Salma Karmi-Ayyoub is an attorney specializing in criminal law and a legal consultant on Palestinian human rights issues.
+Parallel to the impact of Israel’s siege on Gaza, the Congressional Research Service acknowledges that economic sanctions have not “altered Iran’s pursuit of core strategic objectives including its support for regional armed factions and its development of missiles.”
+
+But they have made it difficult for families to make ends meet while undermining Iran’s ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
+
+Venezuela has been targeted as well, with a UN human rights expert determining that the US, UK and EU-backed sanctions “constitute violations of international law.”
+
+The Palestinian experience has demonstrated that surrender will not result in any gain. The Oslo accords only brought about more land theft and tightened Israeli control.
+
+And this is why Palestinian groups in Gaza resist, with broad public support, despite the asymmetry of power between them and Israel.
+
+Israeli military doctrine makes no distinction between combatants and civilians and its forces deliberately target civilian infrastructure in a cruel and fruitless attempt to generate public opposition to the resistance.
+
+High cost
+
+The cost of maintaining a Jewish settler-colonial state in Palestine has always been high, paid for with countless Palestinian and Lebanese lives.
+
+Gaza has shouldered the burden of this unbearable cost in recent years. But the equation of power has shifted.
+
+The resistance in Gaza, with the support of Iran and Hizballah in Lebanon, has increased its capacity with each confrontation with Israel.
+
+The latest episode resulted in an effective defeat for the latter.
+
+After the ceasefire was declared, Hamas’ armed wing said it “humiliated the enemy.”
+
+A commentator in the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz called it “Israel’s most failed and pointless Gaza operation ever.”
+
+The chief of the Israeli military acknowledged that little if any deterrence against the resistance was achieved.
+
+After launching thousands of rockets, Hamas said that it still had enough in its stockpiles to keep firing towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for several more months.
+
+Rocket fire from Gaza shut down traffic at Israel’s main international airport near Tel Aviv, and then its backup airport near Eilat after projectiles reached that area.
+
+Though still vast, the gap of power between Israel and the armed resistance is narrowing.
+
+Israel’s military avoided the boundary with Gaza this May after it proved deadly for its forces in 2014.
+
+Israel claims that Hamas is “developing an electronic jamming system to be used against the Iron Dome defense system,” as Gilad Erdan, the Israeli ambassador to the US, told media.
+
+Erdan attempted to justify Israel’s targeting of the tower housing the agency by asserting that it was being used to develop this technology. AP said it has seen no evidence proving this claim.
+
+Cryptocurrency transactions beyond the reach of the US Treasury department allow Hamas to fundraise while circumventing international sanctions.
+
+Perhaps even more worrying for Israel than the increased strength of the armed resistance in Gaza is Palestinian unity throughout their occupied homeland.
+
+Israel was quickly overwhelmed last month by various forms of resistance throughout historic Palestine: rocket and anti-tank fire from Gaza, confrontational protests and firefights in the West Bank, rebellions in Palestinian communities inside the Green Line where police-backed settler mobs chanted “Death to the Arabs.”
+
+Israel may well find itself even more quickly overwhelmed in any future military confrontation.
+
+Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizballah, which forced Israel to withdraw its occupation from Lebanon in 2000 and defeated it militarily in 2006, warned in late May that the next Israeli attack on holy sites in Jerusalem could mean a regional war.
+
+Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, said earlier this month that resistance factions only used “half of their force” in the May confrontation and the next one would “change the face of the Middle East.”
+
+The Israeli military knows this isn’t mere bluster.
+
+An Israeli military ombudsman said this month that “hundreds of sorties and hundreds of planes dropped thousands of precision munitions costing billions of shekels” but were unable to halt the firing of rockets and mortars from Gaza.
+
+“Hamas and Islamic Jihad continued launching … as if nothing happened, and they apparently could have continued to do so for a long time,” he added.
+
+The ombudsman projected that in a future multi-front war, “thousands of missiles and rockets will be fired at Israel … relentlessly in all directions. … Every day, thousands of missiles and rockets will be fired at the population centers … missiles whose destructive power is 10 times that of Hamas’ rockets.”
+
+A protester repudiates the Oslo accords during a demonstration in front of the Norwegian parliament on 19 May.
+Ryan Rodrick Beiler
+ActiveStillsA regional war will bring untold bloodshed, destruction and suffering. Those who have fostered a culture of impunity and armed Israel unconditionally will shoulder much of the blame for it.
+
+All forms of resistance against colonization in Palestine have been branded illegitimate by Israel’s powerful friends, whether it be seeking remedy at the International Criminal Court; through the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement; or armed struggle.
+
+The UN secretary-general has not publicly supported the ICC investigation.
+
+Instead, he has welcomed normalization agreements between Israel and nearby authoritarian states, which former US President Donald Trump’s secretary of state has confirmed were glorified arms deals.
+
+Israel has been lavished with weapons and funding while international expressions of solidarity with Palestinians are repressed and criminalized.
+
+Sinwar recently pointed out that when Palestinians held massive unarmed protests and were gunned down by Israeli military snipers, the world looked on and did nothing.
+
+Armed struggle is necessary when the behavior of an oppressor – and its international allies – makes it so, to paraphrase the South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela.
+
+Fourteen years of Quartet-backed siege and multiple military offensives have not and will not force Palestinians to capitulate and surrender the cause of national liberation.
+
+Yet Israel’s powerful allies seem willing to risk a regional war to maintain the peace process charade in service of a Jewish settler-colonial state in Palestine.
+
+And for everyone else outside of Palestine who wants to help defray the cost of liberation: Boycott, divestment and targeted sanctions are the floor, not the ceiling, of solidarity.
+
+Maureen Clare Murphy is senior editor of The Electronic Intifada.
 Tags
 
-international law, Israeli Occupation, war crimes
+Impunity
+
+Gaza siege
+
+Antony Blinken
+
+Hamas
+
+Oslo accords
+
+Joe Biden
+
+Gabi Ashkenazi
+
+International Criminal Court
+
+Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism
+
+US aid to Israel
+
+Hasan Nasrallah
+
+Quartet
+
+May 2021 attack on Gaza
+
+peace process

combined/texts/101.txt

@@ -1,18 +1,14 @@
-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:
-
-“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.”
-
-He continued:
-
-“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.”
-
-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:
-
-“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.”
-
-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.
+But this kind of discrimination is only the tip of the iceberg, as it only covers some aspects of de jure inequality among Israelis. Inspecting the de facto discrimination against non-Jewish Israelis shines an even brighter light on Israel’s ethnocratic hierarchy.
+Almost half of all Palestinian citizens of Israel live under the poverty line, with a considerable percentage close to the poverty line. They also have a considerably lower life expectancy, a higher infant mortality rate, less access to education and resources as well as less municipality and government funding. Should you be interested in delving into some of the more detailed aspects of this discrimination, you can read Adalah’s The Inequality Report. It is an excellent overview of many issues facing Palestinians within the green line. Another report shining the light on Israel’s discrimination is “Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens in the Budget of Jerusalem Municipality and Government Planning: Objectives, Forms, Consequences” by the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute.
+Additionally, you could read this report from the Adva center which illustrates quite clearly how this discrimination touches almost every aspect of life.
+Furthermore, most land inside the green line is off limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel. A large percentage of land in Israel is under the control of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), which has a:
+
+“specific mandate to develop land for and lease land only to Jews. Thus the 13 percent of land in Israel owned by the JNF is by definition off-limits to Palestinian Arab citizens, and when the ILA tenders leases for land owned by the JNF, it does so only to Jews—either Israeli citizens or Jews from the Diaspora. This arrangement makes the state directly complicit in overt discrimination against Arab citizens in land allocation and use…”.
+
+The JNF is not the only entity blocking Palestinian citizens of Israel from purchasing, leasing or renting land and property, but also the so-called regional and local councils, which account for the vast majority of land. These councils have the authority to block anyone from settling in these areas that do not seem like a “good fit” for the community there. For example, a religious community would not want to allow secular residents from moving in on the grounds that it would be against the spirit of their communities. In practice, this has translated into a virtual ban on non-Jewish Israelis moving into Jewish areas. In a Statement submitted by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah to the United Nations, it was estimated that almost 80% of the entire country is off limits to lease for Palestinian citizens of Israel. You can click here to read their full statement.
+No matter how you look at it, Israeli society is a heavily segregated and hierarchical one. Whether through the legal system or just the attitudes of average Jewish Israelis, the ethnocratic nature of Israel and its obsession with ethnic gerrymandering always rises to the surface. Some would deny it, citing standards of living or some random “Arab” judge as a refutation of this point, but as discussed in [this article], none of these claims dispute the extreme inequality -by design- of Israeli society. This denial is not unique to Israelis, we saw similar sentiments among white Americans who denied the existence of white supremacy, even though they reaped its benefits either directly or indirectly.
+Ultimately, the goal of this article is not to advocate for a “more just” or equal settler-colonial state. As Audre Lorde observed, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. A just society is the complete antithesis to an ethnocracy, which elevates one group of people over the rest by virtue of their blood. It falls on us, however, to advocate for decolonization, where justice is its cornerstone rather than ethnic supremacy.
+Sound utopian?
+Perhaps, but to quote Pliny the elder, how many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible, until they have been actually effected?
 Learn something new?
 Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!

combined/texts/1010.txt

@@ -1,12 +1,67 @@
-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
+Jumana.
+It took me 42 days to regain the ability to write. Writing about her is as difficult as accepting her loss.
+
+Jumana, my university friend, is gone. A martyr.
+
+Jumana, or Jeeji, as I used to call her, was her mother’s best friend, her father’s only daughter, and my heart’s delight.
+
+She knew all the details and secrets of my days. She was the only one who knew my unrealistic dreams and encouraged me to pursue them. She answered all my silly questions with illogical answers. She was the best at understanding my glances.
+
+She was everything. Now I have nothing.
+
+I lost Jeeji on April 11. After the first cry, I became silent and remained so for many days, unable to comprehend my great loss.
+
+Jeeji and her parents were killed when an Israeli missile hit a crowded market. There was no body left to bury.
+
+Jeeji will have no grave. In Gaza, finding a grave for your loved one is a luxury. You are lucky if you find their whole bodies.
+
+I don’t want to remember how Jeeji died. My memories of our conversations and time together and our photos are making me die slowly. I have aged quickly since her death.
+
+Jeeji was the best face to see every day at university, though she often missed classes, which made me angry. She didn’t like waking up early, but our time together made up for what we didn’t like.
+
+We would sit in our favorite place, first talking about lectures, then everything else. I loved bringing her a falafel sandwich, her favorite. We would eat, laugh, and take a lot of photographs.
+
+Surviving
+
+Jeeji was always perfectly dressed and often shared dress designs and photos with me and discussed the happy occasions on which she would wear these outfits.
+
+She promised I would be with her on her wedding day, as she had no sister, and I eagerly awaited the occasion.
+
+How lucky I was.
 
-solidarity
+Jeeji always told me that I was like a mother to her and our friends. She said I was a healing power for them all because I checked on them every day.
+
+What should I tell them now?
+
+Shall I tell them I am not able to live up to the title Jeeji gave me?
+
+That I am unable to wipe away their tears?
+
+That I won’t be able to gather them all at once?
+
+I write this to accept Jeeji’s absence from my life. Losing her has drained what little hope remained. The hope I stored in my chest to protect it from the many arrows of despair.
+
+Jeeji, like this hope, clings to what remains of my heart, which sought to preserve something called love amid all this hatred.
+
+Every fear that haunted me would have left if she had stayed. Every sorrow that devoured me would have vanished if she had been by my side. Every wound that pained me would have healed if her eyes could still see me.
+
+But Jeeji is not here, and the fear will not go away, the sorrow will not fade, and the wound will not heal.
+
+The world no longer means anything to me, and I no longer care about the end.
+
+I am not the only one to lose a dear friend. I had often wondered how those who lose their best friends find the strength to continue. Now, I understand.
+
+Jeeji will forever remain in my heart, my writings, my speeches, and my prayers. She didn’t die; she will live on through me. I will speak of her until my last breath, ensuring the world knows that our martyrs are not just numbers.
+
+They were human, with dreams and lives.
+
+Ghayda’a Hasan Owaidah is a writer, translator and voice-over specialist from Gaza.
+Tags
 
-boycott
+eiGazaDispatches
 
-political prisoners
+Gaza genocide
 
-Arab uprisings
+Gaza war crimes
 
-Nakba day
+trauma

combined/texts/1011.txt

@@ -1,86 +1,82 @@
-Although he has stopped playing professional football, Khalid Khalaila (front) still receives racist messages on his mobile phone.
+Israel killed at least seven children in its attacks on the Gaza Strip beginning 9 May 2023.
 
-ReutersBnei Sakhnin is by far the most successful football club mainly comprised of Palestinians living inside Israel.
+APA imagesAt my family’s home in Gaza City, amid the incessant buzzing of drones and the shockwaves of explosions, a small child sings and dances in front of the television.
 
-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.
+Hamoud, my nephew, barely two years old, sings along with YouTube songs about love, justice and humanity.
 
-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.
+The irony is as stark as it is heartbreaking: just a few blocks away, children his age have been orphaned or killed by Israeli attacks.
 
-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.
+The reality outside Hamoud’s sheltered world is dire.
 
-Despite having stopped playing professional football, he still receives hostile messages on his mobile phone.
+As of 13 May, Israel has killed 34 Palestinians, including seven children. At least 147 people, including 48 children, have been injured.
 
-Almost certainly, the messages come from fans of Beitar Jerusalem. Typically, they call Khalid a “dirty Arab” and curse his family.
+A few blocks from Hamoud’s TV, Mayar and Ali Izzedine, aged 12 and 8, had been excited about a school trip planned for the next week.
 
-Skeptical
+Yet their eagerly anticipated trip never materialized for them. Instead, an Israeli airstrike targeted their family home in Gaza City on 9 May, killing the two children and their father, Islamic Jihad leader Tariq Izzedine.
 
-Beitar’s supporters have hurled insults at Bnei Sakhnin whenever the two sides have played against each other.
+The coming days, which should have been filled with joy and discovery, were instead marked by devastating loss – a loss their classmates felt deeply.
 
-The insults have effectively been endorsed by top-level Israeli politicians.
+Such instances of trauma aren’t isolated events in Gaza.
 
-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.”
+“Nine out of ten children in the Gaza Strip suffer[ed] some form of conflict-related trauma” following the Israeli military attack in May 2021, according to a report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
 
-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.
+The situation is further exacerbated, the report concluded, because Gaza’s population is so young: around half of its population of more than two million is under the age of 15.
 
-“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.”
+Explaining the unthinkable
 
-Khalid remains among the best known players in the history of Bnei Sakhnin, which is based in the Galilee region.
+Parents, including Yusra al-Aklouk, the mother of Ali Izzedine’s best friend and classmate, Jamal al-Zebda, grappled with how to explain to their children why the school trip had been canceled.
 
-“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.”
+How does one explain the senseless loss of young lives to a child?
 
-While Bnei Sakhnin mostly features Palestinian citizens of Israel, it also has a few Jewish Israelis and players from Colombia, Nigeria and Brazil.
+Jamal has already endured inexplicable losses at such a young age. In a May 2021 attack, Israel killed his father Osama and his grandfather Jamal.
 
-“Determined”
+Ali and his father, Tariq, had been a source of comfort and support, and now Jamal faces another devastating loss.
 
-Ali Othman, 33, is the team’s current captain.
+The unbearable news was delivered over a few hours, a desperate attempt to cushion the blow. Jamal’s reaction was heartbreaking; he mourned his friend but found solace in the belief of meeting him in heaven later. He felt a strange relief that at least Ali wouldn’t have to endure the fate of growing up without a father, as he has.
 
-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.
+Another child, Miral Khaswan, faces that fate now.
 
-In his experience, players with Bnei Sakhnin are more exposed to racism than Palestinians selected by other teams in Israel.
+A video circulated online of her at al-Shifa Hospital crying and asking for her father, Dr. Jamal Khaswan, a dentist, who was rushed to the hospital following the Israeli airstrike. The Khaswan family lived in the apartment above the Izzedine family, and their ceiling collapsed as a result of the Israeli missile strike.
 
-Othman joined Bnei Sakhnin in 2006.
+Unbeknownst to Miral, her mother, father and older brother had died.
 
-Three years later, he was transferred to Maccabi Haifa. The transfer enabled him to play against some of Europe’s best teams.
+Fragile normalcy
 
-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.
+In our struggle to shield my nephew Hamoud from the destruction outside, we maintain an illusion of normalcy. With every explosion, we exchange glances, our faces betraying no fear but our eyes seeking reassurance in one another.
 
-He is nonetheless doing what he can to rise above the racism targeting him.
+Hamoud hears the sounds, looks at us, and, finding us undisturbed, he returns to the TV, perhaps believing that nothing important is happening.
 
-“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.”
+As we navigate this bleak and uncertain reality, the drones, or, as we call them in Gaza, al-Zanana – meaning “to buzz” – are a haunting constant.
 
-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.”
+Amid the never-ending buzzing, Hamoud’s out-of-place singing, and the vibrations of our phones bearing grim news, we find solace in each other’s company, striving to uphold a semblance of normalcy for Hamoud.
 
-“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.”
+But deep down, we know we could be the next target. An unseen fanatic in a warplane, circling above us, may choose to either snuff out our existence or grant us the chance to live a little while longer.
 
-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.
+Our fate could be the same as those who went to bed, only to have their lives cut short because a soldier decided so.
 
-Bnei Sakhnin has kept going despite having financial difficulties recently. The support and sponsorship it has received from businesses has been inadequate.
+Generations of trauma
 
-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.
+Hamoud hasn’t yet celebrated his third birthday, or his third Ramadan, hasn’t been to three different cities, hasn’t experienced many things thrice in his short life. Yet he has already endured three major escalations, three rounds of destruction and bloodshed.
 
-Many Palestinian citizens of Israel identity with Bnei Sakhnin because they respect its spirit of defiance.
+Hamoud’s world is a symphony punctuated more by the echoes of war than the echoes of play, a reality shared by over a million children in Gaza, a cycle of trauma through generations, each bearing the scars of different wars and conflicts.
 
-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.
+Isn’t this the lived experience of everyone in Gaza? It is a cycle of trauma that stretches back generations. From the British colonization of Palestine, the Nakba, and the Gaza siege, our lives are punctuated by nonstop gruesome episodes.
 
-“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.”
+Words of war
 
-Amjad Ayman Yaghi is a journalist based in Gaza.
-Tags
-
-Bnei Sakhnin
+Hamoud has made me reflect on my own childhood. I don’t recall the moment I learned the words war, bombing or death. These terms, it seems, were always a part of my vocabulary.
 
-Khalid Khalaila
+However, I vividly remember when I learned the word mountain in a geography lesson in the fifth grade. I hadn’t seen a mountain in my life, but I learned the word then.
 
-Beitar Jerusalem
+Living in Gaza, I’ve seen the sea many times, as well as war, rockets and bombing. So these words have been seemingly ingrained in my consciousness since early childhood. By the time I reached a conscious age, I already knew what they meant.
 
-Miri Regev
+Hamoud will learn the word mountain, perhaps in a few years. But he will not learn the words war or bombing in school; he already knows them, just as I did.
 
-Ali Othman
-
-Maccabi Haifa
+Ahmed Nehad is a freelance writer and translator from Gaza. Twitter: @AhmedNehadKh
+Tags
 
-Saeed Hasanein
+May 2023 attack on Gaza
 
-Kul al-Arab
+trauma
 
-Munther Khalaila
+children

combined/texts/1012.txt

@@ -1,12 +1,31 @@
-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.
+Palestinians gather with pots to receive food at a donation point in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, 19 December 2023.
+
+APA imagesEvery child in Gaza knows the “whistle.” It is the sound of a rocket dropping on a house.
+
+Every child knows that when you hear the whistle, it means that it is not your house being bombed.
+
+Because you will not hear anything when you are bombed.
+
+Children in Gaza can tell an F-16 from an F-35 from a drone. They know a whole litany of things that are beyond their years. Things that they shouldn’t have to know.
+
+Over 10,000 children have been killed in Gaza.
+
+The children who have survived have seen their families, friends and neighbors killed by the Israeli army. They have seen near-death by starvation and death by suffocation, under the rubble and by explosion.
+
+Children in Gaza do not have the luxury of death being a mystery. It is a daily presence.
+
+If a child in Gaza is hungry, they know not to throw a tantrum. They have become used to feeling hunger. The same is true of the cold. Every child in Gaza now knows what it is to be unhoused, to sleep in a tent or on the streets in winter.
+
+They feel the immense fear and daily trauma of nonstop Israeli attacks over their heads. Sometimes the shock overtakes them during the airstrikes, and they cannot even cry in these moments. They either tremble in fear or are paralyzed by it.
+
+This world is not what the children of Gaza deserve. They deserve to feel safe, warm and healthy. To have full stomachs. In their dreams, the children can retreat to worlds where all they have to do is play and eat candy. The morning is a different story.
+
+There is no chance of a normal childhood in Gaza. Israel has stolen their chance at that. I’m not sure that there is any child left in Gaza in any true sense of the word. Gaza is now “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child,” according to UNICEF.
+
+Sahar Qeshta is a writer in Gaza.
+
+Tags
+
+children
+
+trauma

combined/texts/1013.txt

@@ -1,27 +1,96 @@
-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.
+The sound of explosions is constant in Rafah, southern Gaza.
+
+ZUMA PressI woke up at 3AM with a really bad pain in my right eye.
+
+It was a sign that I was about to get a migraine, so I searched for a painkiller. Fortunately, I found one among the few belongings I had packed before leaving my home and moving southwards.
+
+If I didn’t have that pill, it is likely that my migraine would have lasted for at least eight hours. I’ve been getting migraines for at least three years.
+
+Later that day, I went looking for pharmacies in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. My parents have rented a flat for our family in the city.
+
+The first pharmacy I went to did not have the painkiller I needed. The second one had almost no medicines of any kind.
+
+I went to five more pharmacies. None of them had the right medication for me or any substitute.
+
+So I went to another neighborhood in Rafah that was about 15 minutes’ drive away. No luck there either.
+
+My doctor gave me a prescription a couple of years ago for a preventive medicine that I am supposed to take once a day, as well as for painkillers that I take whenever a headache begins.
+
+Before leaving the northern part of Gaza for the south, I went to a pharmacy to buy the medicines I needed. But I couldn’t find the preventive drug.
+
+I was told that it had run out since the first week of Israel’s latest war on Gaza. All I could find were a few painkillers.
+
+Ominous
+
+The lack of medicines was ominous.
+
+Before the war, I had been getting migraines about three times a month. I was following a particular diet, as well as taking the prescribed medicine.
+
+Since the war began my migraines have become a lot more frequent.
+
+My doctor had advised me to stay away from cheese and salty food.
+
+With food scarce over the past two months, all I have to eat are canned goods containing such food as meat, peas and cheese distributed by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).
+
+Sometimes, I have just one meal a day. At other times, I go without food, even bread.
+
+As each migraine lasts at least eight hours, I have no choice but to get used to them.
+
+In our one-bedroom flat in Rafah, I sleep beside three children, including a 2-month-old baby. The sound of explosions is constant.
+
+We have no curtains in the flat. So I often lie down and put a blanket and a pillow over my eyes to block out the light.
+
+And I wait for the migraine to go away.
+
+I have lost everything
+
+The war is having a huge impact on both my physical and mental health.
+
+When the recent – and all-too-brief truce – began, a fellow journalist emailed me some photographs of our old home.
+
+Israel had already attacked our street from the air in October. The photographs confirmed that the walls of our home had also been struck by shells fired from an Israeli tank during the subsequent ground invasion.
+
+The pictures made me cry a lot. They brought back memories of my parents taking all of their savings from the bank and buying an apartment in March last year.
+
+We renovated the flat and added new furniture before moving in.
+
+Now my parents’ investment has been obliterated.
+
+About a week after the airstrike on our street, I awoke to the news that my uncle and his extended family – a total of 12 people – had been massacred in Jabaliya refugee camp.
+
+I was unable to break this devastating news to my parents. I simply ran to the bathroom and couldn’t stop weeping.
+
+I let my brother call my dad to tell him about the massacre.
+
+Before the war, I had opened a clothing store in Gaza City’s al-Watan Tower. It, too, has been destroyed by Israel.
+
+I had been striving for some kind of financial stability. With the latest war, I have lost everything.
+
+I nonetheless keep battling.
+
+We have very little electricity or internet access.
+
+My laptop was left behind in our home, when we had to flee. So I write articles on my phone.
+
+I always get up at 8AM and try to find a way of charging my phone.
+
+When it’s sunny, some phones can be charged using solar energy. I charge mine with the help of a neighbor.
+
+When it’s cloudy or rainy, I head to the hospital. Workers at the reception charge the phone for me because they know I am a journalist.
+
+I often work in the hospital’s yard until sunset. The internet connection is relatively fast there.
+
+At other times, I charge the phone at a store. That costs me about 50 cents.
+
+My doctor has told me that a cup of coffee can help reduce the pain from headaches for some people, not all. So when a migraine begins, I fetch a cup of coffee.
+
+My doctor’s advice has proven helpful. But coffee isn’t always effective.
+
+When the pain doesn’t diminish, I try my best to endure it and keep working.
+
+Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman is a journalist living in Gaza.
+Tags
+
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
+
+UNRWA

combined/texts/1014.txt

@@ -1,24 +1,110 @@
-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)
-
-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)
+Resources for Palestinian children with autism in Gaza are scarce, but institutions like the Shams school and Nabeel Childcare Center offer classes and support.
+
+APA imagesWhen Awni Abu Hatab was a toddler, he preferred to play alone.
+
+His mother Nujoud, 28, noticed that his movements were jittery and excessive and that he was unable to make eye contact.
+
+She grew concerned and took him to several doctors and hospitals in Gaza.
+
+“At first, I thought that he could not hear,” Nujoud said. “I went to doctors and they confirmed that there was no problem with hearing. Others said that … the problem was psychological.”
+
+Awni, now 8, has since been diagnosed with autism.
+
+“We discovered this after years of effort,” Nujoud said.
+
+The National Institute of Mental Health defines autism spectrum disorder as “a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn and behave.”
+
+Marwa Atallah, a special education specialist at the Society for the Care of the Handicapped in Gaza, which was founded in 1975 and offers services to children with autism, said that children with autism often face misdiagnosis.
+
+Many doctors, she said, “interpret cases of shock and delay in the use of personal skills in children as disability.”
+
+Furthermore, children in Gaza already suffer from high instances of trauma as a result of Israeli violence. And children with autism, who are often highly sensitive to external stimuli, are particularly susceptible to the enduring impacts of war and conflict, which could potentially make diagnosis difficult.
+
+Before Awni’s diagnosis, Nujoud left doctors’ offices feeling confused and frustrated, and while it was a relief for Nujoud to understand more about her son’s condition, life is not necessarily easier for their family post diagnosis.
+
+At the family’s home in Gaza’s Beach refugee camp, Awni prefers to be near his mother. He likes to draw, but he doesn’t like loud noises and the dark.
+
+“His brothers are young,” Nujoud said, “and they cannot bear his constant screaming and his nervousness. He hits everything on the ground, his movement is very fast, and we cannot control him.”
+
+Nujoud has discovered that the resources for parents of autistic children in Gaza are extremely limited.
+
+“There are no institutions to take care of him, no hospitals, not even specialists who provide sessions for free,” she said.
+
+The Abu Hatab family struggles financially, as many do in Gaza due to Israel’s 15-year blockade. Awni’s father works as a laborer, and they share their home with three of his sisters.
+
+Recently, though, Nujoud heard about Gaza’s Society for the Care of the Handicapped and let them know Awni was in need of services.
+
+He was then enrolled in the society’s Shams school, where he attends classes headed by specialists who understand developmental differences in individuals with autism.
+
+Nujoud is hopeful that the school will be a good place for him but, like other parents in Gaza, she understands that until the family’s financial circumstances improve, providing resources to their autistic child will be a struggle.
+
+“I lose control over her”
+
+Wafa Atallah, 26, first understood that her daughter Rawan was different when she turned 2 years old.
+
+“We started to notice that she was not responding to her name and that she avoided eye contact,” she said. “At first, I thought that she only needed time.”
+
+Just like Awni’s mother Nujoud, Wafa took Rawan to many doctors, all of whom did not offer a hopeful prognosis.
+
+Rawan, now 6, was eventually diagnosed with autism.
+
+“I wish we knew earlier that she was autistic,” Wafa said. “Maybe her condition would have been better.”
+
+The family lives in al-Zaytoun neighborhood south of Gaza City and lives off of Rawan’s father’s income as a baker.
+
+They pay $117 a month for Rawan to attend classes at Basmet Amal in Gaza, though they are unsure if they can continue to pay that long-term.
+
+Basmet Amal, like Shams school, provides classes and developmental support tailored to individuals with autism.
+
+Wafa is grateful to be able to afford the classes, but she acknowledges that the consequences of not having professional support to help with Rawan’s development is a daunting prospect.
+
+Rawan’s behavior can be trying for Wafa, as Rawan often screams loudly and finds it difficult to be still for long.
+
+“Sometimes I lose control over her and I end up crying,” she said. “I always say that if there were no blockade and if our financial situation were good, I would travel with her to receive better treatment and deal with experts who could provide me with the best techniques to deal with her.”
+
+Wartime trauma
+
+Ahmad al-Nawati, 22, also attends the Shams school.
+
+“I enjoy being a student at Shams school,” he said. “My teacher is lovely and caring. I got to know new friends there.”
+
+Ahmad’s developmental age is 8 years old, and he is progressing along a third-grade curriculum, learning mathematics and strengthening his reading skills.
+
+His diagnosis of autism came later in life, said his mother Naima, 55.
+
+“When he was born, there were no services offered to children with autism,” she said. “How would I know! In that time, there was not enough knowledge about it.”
+
+Naima said Ahmad’s speech was delayed and that he found it hard to socialize with others.
+
+“I was totally unaware of what was happening to him,” she said. “I clung to the hope that he would get better with time.”
+
+Dr. Hamouda al-Dohdar, the head of the Nabeel Childcare Center in Gaza, which provides services for children with autism, said, “I believe that we are in dire need of conducting awareness sessions for all community members – parents, youths and mothers. We need to involve everyone, especially parents, in treatment plans.”
+
+He believes that greater awareness of autism in Gaza would also help reduce the stigma that some parents say is a problem.
+
+Yet certainly one of the biggest stressors on autistic individuals is Israel’s repeated wars on the Gaza Strip.
+
+Naima said that during Israel’s wars on Gaza, Ahmad has found it hard to cope.
+
+“I hate the loud sounds,” he said, “and I can’t stand the dark at all.”
+
+The wars have worsened his condition, according to Naima. “He gets panic attacks, trembles and screams nonstop when he hears explosions nearby,” she said. “He experienced depression for a long time. Now, when he hears loud music from wedding parties or any loud sound, even the sound of a car door opening, he gets close to me and holds my hand tightly. I hug him to reassure him that we are fine.”
+
+Dr. Al-Dohdar advocates for more behavioral therapy for children and adults with autism.
+
+He called on Gaza’s health and social development ministries to provide more resources for individuals with autism and parents of autistic children, including the establishment of a government department that “includes a group of highly skilled specialists” who could provide accurate medical diagnoses.
+
+Ahmad, meanwhile, is thriving at Shams school, though Naima said he longs to work at a shop because he enjoys calculations.
+
+“He promises me that he won’t be easily deceived and would do the work perfectly,” she said. “I do hope this wish can be fulfilled.”
+
+Yasmin Abusayma is a freelance writer and translator from Gaza, Palestine.
+Tags
+
+Autism
+
+children
+
+trauma
+
+Health care

combined/texts/1015.txt

@@ -1,35 +1,52 @@
-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.
+People pick their way through sewage water flowing through the streets of Khan Younis. A lack of clean water, and the near total destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, including sewage treatment plants, has led to a surge in infectious and gastrointestinal diseases.
+
+APA imagesI yearn for the life I used to lead before this genocide. War transcends mere bombings, missiles and destruction; it encompasses economic, social, environmental and psychological devastation.
+
+I’ve lost touch with my sense of womanhood, feeling much older than my years. Even my appearance reflects this.
+
+My daily routine, previously centered around caring for my children, making breakfast, ensuring they got to school before starting my work, has been completely shattered.
+
+I’ve forgotten the simplicity of life before the war, including my food preferences and principles for raising my children. Every day, I eagerly await the moment I can return home and reclaim my former lifestyle.
+
+I long for the simple pleasure of sitting on my bed with my kids after a shower. Now, even having a shower is hard work. Securing warm water requires gathering wood from specific locations after fetching water from distant sources.
+
+Eight months have elapsed without electricity. Before the genocide, we were accustomed to eight hours of power daily. However, since then, Israeli forces have targeted Gaza’s only power plant as well as solar panels across the Gaza Strip. I’ve regressed to washing clothes by hand, cooking and baking over firewood. There are shortages of gas, fuel and flour.
+
+The washing machines and refrigerators in those houses that have not been reduced to rubble serve as mere decorations or, in some cases, a sanctuary for children during their games of hide-and-seek.
+
+Even basic activities such as charging our phones or connecting to the internet have turned into monumental challenges. We traverse long distances to find working solar panels.
+
+Life in makeshift tents and crowded schools lacks even the most basic necessities. Days can pass without access to clean drinking water. We try to avoid unhygienic public bathrooms where queues are interminable.
+
+An ordinary day
+
+My children have suffered immensely during the war. They’ve had gastrointestinal issues and diarrhea due to displacement and unsanitary conditions. We’ve all lost weight since nutritious food is scarce.
+
+My children used to enjoy eggs every morning. However, for prolonged periods, eggs were simply unavailable in the markets. When they finally became available again, they were very expensive and often spoiled.
+
+The lack of meat and chicken has led us to depend on canned food, marking a significant change from our diet before the war.
+
+Both my husband, a software engineer, and I, a writer and translator, have lost our jobs and livelihoods due to the internet blackout. We used to work from home with high-speed internet, which allowed me to work from my bed and quickly perform my tasks.
+
+The war has deprived my children of their playtime and weekly visits to their grandfather’s house. Every Friday, they used to go to his house, where there was a garden, a swing and lemon, olive, orange and guava trees.
+
+They used to gather with their cousins, play in the sand, have fun, water the trees and eat their fruit.
+
+Israeli warplanes targeted their grandfather’s house in Beit Hanoun, leaving nothing for the children to do there now, except gather firewood. Just like that, their childhood disappeared and their games vanished. All they care about is for this genocide to end.
+
+Playgrounds and family gatherings are replaced by the harsh realities of displacement and scarcity.
+
+I pray for an ordinary day spent with my children at home. Yet, in Gaza City, a city plagued by perpetual conflict, the pursuit of normalcy remains an elusive dream.
+
+Iman Abo Qamar is a content writer and translator in the Gaza Strip.
+Tags
+
+eiGazaDispatches
+
+Gaza genocide
+
+Gaza war crimes
+
+forcible displacement
+
+sewage

combined/texts/1016.txt

@@ -1,32 +1,74 @@
-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.”
+Massive destruction in Rafah.
+
+Xinhua News AgencyIt was after midnight when Samir Abu Shamala heard a knock on the door.
+
+Some neighbors delivered news of an imminent attack. Israel had ordered everyone in Burj al-Masri tower to evacuate.
+
+Samir and his family hastily left the apartment they were renting in the tower.
+
+As they went down the stairs of the building, they saw many parents carrying their children. Other residents only had bags containing essential documents.
+
+Many of the children were weeping. They had been woken up from their sleep.
+
+Soon after the evacuation occurred, the Israelis fired a number of missiles toward Burj al-Masri tower.
+
+And so one of the largest residential buildings in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was destroyed.
+
+“I put my hands on my children’s eyes and ears after the first missile,” Samir said. “But all around me, the screams of women and children grew louder. I was about to start crying but I stopped myself.”
+
+Darkness had enveloped the surrounding area when the evacuation took place. But Israel’s attack on the 12-story building lit up the sky in frightening shades of red.
+
+“It was an awful sight that I will never forget,” said Samir.
+
+Homeless once again
+
+The attack has left Samir and his family homeless once again.
+
+They had previously lived in Gaza City’s al-Rimal neighborhood. Yet they had to flee it during the earlier stages of Israel’s genocidal war.
+
+Al-Rimal has been subjected to incessant bombardment by Israel. Homes, stores and other businesses have been reduced to rubble as a result.
+
+After moving to Rafah, Samir and his family took an apartment in Burj al-Masri tower. Renting it cost them $700 per month.
+
+With their apartment destroyed, the family sought shelter in a hospital. The hospital was so packed with displaced people that there was no room for the family.
+
+Many other public buildings – including mosques – in the area were similarly full.
+
+As the family have been unable to find any other shelter, they are now living in their car.
+
+“Miracle”
+
+Wasim Afana and his family were among the last people to evacuate Burj al-Masri tower. They heard the news of the imminent attack later than other residents.
+
+“The moment we stepped outside the tower, a missile was fired towards the building,” Wasim said. “It’s a miracle we made it out alive.”
+
+Wasim’s children could not stop crying as they watched the tower’s destruction. He tried to calm them down by reciting verses from the Quran.
+
+The family had moved to Rafah after leaving their home in Sheikh Radwan, another neighborhood of Gaza City where Israel has caused devastation.
+
+Initially, they stayed with relatives in Rafah before managing to find an apartment in the tower.
+
+It was a considerable relief for the family to have their own apartment as the relatives’ home was crowded. About 50 people were taking shelter there.
+
+The tower’s destruction means that the family has now gone back to their relatives’ home. “We have no choice,” said Wasim.
+
+Ahmad Abu Hassanien and his family have returned to Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza after Burj al-Masri tower was destroyed.
+
+They had left Nuseirat a few months ago because Israel ordered its evacuation.
+
+Heading to Rafah, they moved into a relatives’ apartment in al-Masri tower.
+
+About 60 displaced people were crammed into two rooms in the apartment.
+
+Although they had no space to themselves, the family took solace in how children could play with each other. It was less stressful than Nuseirat, where the children heard explosions constantly.
+
+Following the attack on Burj al-Masri tower, the family stayed in their car until dawn. They then decided on going back to Nuseirat.
+
+“It would be better to die in my own neighborhood than in a strange place,” Ahmad said. “It would be better to die with my friends and family than with people who don’t know me.”
+
+Salma Yaseen is a student of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.
+Tags
+
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
+
+eiGazaDispatches

combined/texts/1017.txt

@@ -1,16 +1,22 @@
-Smoke rises from the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun in the northen Gaza Strip, 1 November 2006. (MaanImages/Moti Milrod)
+Palestinians in Gaza don’t want handouts and uncertainty and despair; they want their dignity and their freedom. (Ahmed Ghabayen/MaanImages)
 
-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.
+It’s three years since I’ve been back to Gaza. Much has happened since my last visit. Fatah waged a failed coup and now rules only the West Bank, while Hamas is in charge of Gaza. Israel launched its deadly Cast Lead assault. Fuel shortages. Electricity crises. And so on.
+I needed to regain perspective. So I walked and I talked and I listened. I went to the beach where women — skinny jeans and all — were smoking water pipes, swimming and generally having a good time, irrespective of the purported Hamas ban on women smoking sheesha.
+During the eight hours of electricity we get each day, I logged on to the Internet and browsed the English-language papers. It seemed like suddenly everyone was an expert on Gaza, claiming they knew what it’s really like. Zionist sympathizers and their ilk have been providing us with the same “evidence” that Gaza is burgeoning: the markets are full of produce, fancy restaurants abound, there are pools and parks and malls … all is well in the most isolated place on earth — Gaza, the “prison camp” that is not.
+If you take things at face value, and set aside for a moment the bizarre idea that the availability of such amenities precludes the existence of hardship, you’ll be inclined to believe what you read.
+So, is there a humanitarian crisis or not? That seems to be the question of the hour. But it is the wrong one to be asking.
+The message I’ve been hearing over and over again since I returned to Gaza is this: the siege is not a siege on foods; it is a siege on freedoms — freedom to move in and out of Gaza, freedom to fish more than three miles out at sea, freedom to learn, to work, to farm, to build, to live, to prosper.
+Gaza was never a place with a quantitative food shortage; it is a place where many people lack the means to buy food and other goods because of a closure policy whose tenets are “no development, no prosperity, and no humanitarian crisis,” Gisha, the Legal Centre for the Freedom of Movement, explained in a press release.
+The move from a “white list” of allowable imports to a “black list” might sound in good in theory (ie everything is banned except xyz, to only the following things are banned) but in practice only 40 percent of Gaza’s supply needs are being met, according to Gisha. The Palestinian Federation of Industries estimates that only a few hundred of Gaza’s 3,900 factories and workshops will be able to start up again under present conditions.
+Sure, there are a handful of fancy restaurants in Gaza. And yes, there is a new mall (infinitely smaller and less glamorous than it has been portrayed).
+As for food, it is in good supply, having found its way here either through Israeli crossings or the vast network of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Of course, this leaves aside the question of who in Gaza’s largely impoverished population (the overwhelming majority of whose income is less than $2 a day, 61 percent of whom are food insecure) can really afford mangoes at $4 a kilo or grapes at $8 a kilo. A recent trip to the grocery store revealed that meat has risen to $13 a kilo. Fish, once a cheap source of protein, goes for $15 to $35 a kilo. And so on.
+Prices are on par with those of a developed country, except we are not in a developed country. We are a de-developed occupied territory.
+All of the above adds up to the erasure of the market economy and its replacement with a system where everyone is turned into some kind of welfare recipient. But people don’t want handouts and uncertainty and despair; they want their dignity and their freedom, employment and prosperity and possibility.
+Perhaps most significantly, they want to be able to move freely — something they still cannot do.
+Let’s take the case of Fadi. His father recently had heart surgery. He wanted to seek followup care abroad, at his own expense, but he doesn’t fall into the specified categories allowed out of Gaza for travel, whether through Egypt or Israel. “He’s not considered a level-one priority,” Fadi explained. “Can you please tell me why I can’t decide when I want to travel and what hospital I can take him to?”
+Even the cream of Gaza high-school students must lobby the Israeli authorities long and hard to be allowed out to complete their studies. They literally have to start a campaign in conjunction with human rights groups to raise enough awareness about their plight, and then look for local individuals to blog about their progress, explained Ibrahim, who was approached by one organization to “sponsor a student.”
+I have no doubt that if journalists Stephanie Gutmann and Melanie Phillips — who devoted recent columns to disputing British Prime Minister David Cameron’s description of Gaza as a “prison camp” — lived in Gaza their principle worry would not be about “what parts of their bodies they can display,” it would be the fact that they would not be allowed out again. It would be because everything from the kind of food they would have on their plate to when they can turn on the lights to what they can clothe those bodies with and whether or not they can obtain a degree is determined by an occupying power.
+Using the phrase “prison camp” to describe Gaza is not vile rhetoric. It is an understatement and even a misnomer. Prisoners are guilty of a crime, yet they are guaranteed access to certain things — electricity and water, even education — where Gazans are not. What crime did Gazans commit, except, to quote my late grandmother, “being born Palestinian?”
+Ketchup and cookies may be flowing to Gaza in slightly greater quantities than before. But so bloody what? Goods for export are not flowing out. Nor, for that matter, are people. So while there may be some semblance of civil life and stability in Gaza, there is absolutely no political horizon or true markers of freedom to speak of.
+And as long as freedom of movement is stifled, whether by Israel or Egypt, and export-quality goods, which account for a large portion of Gaza’s manufacturing output, are forbidden from leaving Gaza, all the malls and mangoes in the world won’t make a bit of difference.
+Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian freelance journalist, photographer and blogger (www.gazamom.com) who divides her time between Gaza and the United States. A version of this essay was originally published by the Guardian’s Comment is Free and is republished with permission.

combined/texts/1018.txt

@@ -1,33 +1,21 @@
-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
+At the edge of the Khan Yunus refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, crumbling refugee homes face off with the red-roofed seafront villas of the Neve Dekalim settlement. (Arjan El Fassed)
+
+Location: Southern Gaza Strip: al-Mawasi sealed enclave in Khan Yunis and Kissufim settler road near al Qarara. Central Gaza Strip: houses near the evacuated settlement of Kfar Darom. Northern Gaza Strip: al-Sayafa sealed enclave between the evacuated settlements of Dogit and Elli Sinai.
+Chronology of Events
+IOF have continued to demolish structures in the evacuated settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. The demolition process is taking place while a suffocating closure is being imposed on Palestinian communities in the areas close to the evacuated settlements. In addition, IOF have started to dismantle some military facilities in the Gaza Strip and replace them with tanks.
+Closures and Curfews
+Kissufim Road near al-Qarara
+At approximately 12:00 on Saturday, 27 August 2005, an infantry unit of IOF moved nearly 200 meters to the south of “Kissufim” settler road.  They raided and searched a house belonging to Mansour Jomai’an al-Sumairi.  They held the three residents in one roof and transformed the roof of the house into a military site.  IOF left the house in the evening after detonating a sound bomb inside.  Residents of the house were extremely terrified.
+Al-Mawasi
+At approximately 19:00 on Friday, 26 August 2005, IOF positioned in al-Mawasi area in Khan Yunis arrested Haidar ‘Abdullah al-Majadia, 45, when he was in an area at the beach, where Palestinians are permitted to be present.  In the meantime, IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on al-Mawasi area since the beginning of the implementation of the “Disengagement Plan.”  However, on Friday, 26 August 2005, they reopened al-Tuffah checkpoint at the entrance of the area for a few hours, allowing entering some food stuffs into the area, but they did not allow Palestinian civilians to cross the checkpoint.
+Houses near the Evacuated Settlement of Kfar Darom
+At approximately 16:15 on Saturday, 27 August 2005, an infantry unit of IOF moved into al-Ma’ni sealed enclave.  They forced the 36 residents (5 families) of a house belonging to Ahmed Suleiman al-Ma’ni out and held them in front of it.  Then, they raided and searched the house using one of the residents as a human shield.
+Al-Sayafa
+IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on al-Sayafa area.  On Thursday evening, 25 August 2005, IOF allowed 4 Palestinian civilians to exit the area to bring some foodstuffs.  In the past three days, IOF raided and searched Palestinian houses in the area.
+For the second consecutive week, IOF have continued to close Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip and Abu Houli and al-Matahen checkpoints on Salah al-Din Street (the main road between the south and north of the Gaza Strip).  The two checkpoints are opened for a few hours at night.  IOF have also continued to close a number of the main and branch roads in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the current Intifada.
+International Law
+Settlements and settlers are illegal under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention, the primary document governing the OPT, stipulates in Article 49 that the transfer of the population of the occupying power into the occupied territory is in breach of international law.   The International Court of Justice confirmed in its 2004 judgment that settlements and settlement activity is illegal.
+Freedom of movement is a right afforded to Palestinian civilians under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as under established international treaties on human rights.  Preventing free movement of people and goods interferes with the right to work, the right to health, the right to education, the right not to be held as a prisoner without a free and fair trial.
+Related Links
+BY TOPIC: Gaza Disengagement
+Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

combined/texts/1019.txt

@@ -1,51 +1,96 @@
-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
+Laila El-Haddad and her daughter, Noor, in the US in 2008.
 
-Palestinian youth
-
-Beit Surik
-
-london
-
-UK Border Agency
-
-Jerusalem
-
-Israel's wall in the West Bank
-
-Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association (CADFA)
-
-apartheid
-
-BDS
-
-Ben Gurion airport
-
-Shatila refugee camp
-
-Beirut
-
-Nandita Dowson
-
-al-Ram
-
-children
+“Its not very comfortable in there is it?” said the stony faced official, cigarette smoke forming a haze around his gleaming oval head.
+“Its OK. We’re fine,” I replied wearily, delirious after being awake for 30 hours straight.
+“You could be in there for days you know. For weeks. Indefinitely. So, tell me, you are taking a plane tomorrow morning to the US?”
+It was our journey home that began with the standard packing frenzy: squeezing everything precious and dear and useful into two suitcases that would be our sustenance for three months.
+The trips to the outdoor recreation store in preparation for what I anticipated to be a long and tortuous journey across Rafah Crossing to Gaza. The insect repellent, the mosquito netting, the water purifier, the potty toppers for my kids and the granola bars and portion-sized peanut butter cups. This time, I wanted to be ready, I thought to myself, just in case I got stuck at the crossing. The crossing. My presumptuousness is like a dull hit to the back of my head now.
+In addition packing the suitcases, we were also packing up our house — my husband Yassine was finishing up his residency at Duke University and set to start a medical fellowship at Johns Hopkins in July. In the meantime, we were “closing shop,” putting our things in storage, selling the rest, and heading overseas: me to Gaza, my husband to Lebanon to visit his family; and eventually I was to meet him there (assuming I could get into Gaza, and then assuming I could get out). Yassine is a third-generation Palestinian refugee from the village of Waarit al-Siris in northern historic Palestine; he was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and holds a laissez passer for Palestinian refugees. Israel denies him return to his own home — or even to the home of his spouse in Gaza. So when we go overseas, we often go our separate ways; we cannot live legally, as a unit, as a family, in our own homes.
+I hold a Palestinian Authority passport. It replaced the “temporary two-year Jordanian passport for Gaza residents” that we held until the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid 1990s, which itself replaced the Egyptian travel documents we held before that. A progression in a long line of stateless documentation.
+It is a passport that allows no passage. A passport that denied me entry to my own home. This is its purpose: to mark me, brand me, so that I am easily identified and cast aside without questions; it is convenient for those giving the orders. It is a system for the collective identification of those with no identity.
+We finished packing as much as we could of the house, leaving the rest to Yassine who was to leave a week after us, and drove four hours to Washington, DC, to spend a few day at my brother’s house before we took off.
+First, we headed to the the Egyptian embassy.
+Last year, my parents were visiting us from Gaza City when Rafah was sealed hermetically. They attempted to fly back to Egypt to wait for the border to open — but were not allowed to board the plane in Washington. “Palestinians cannot fly to Egypt now without a visa, new rules,” the airline personnel explained, “and no visas can be issued until Rafah is open,” added the Egyptian embassy official. They were in a conundrum, aggravated by the fact that their US entry stamp had reached its six-month limit. Eventually, they got around the issue by obtaining an Egyptian tourist visa, made easier by their old age, which they used to wait in Egypt for one month until Rafah Crossing opened again.
+I did not want to repeat their ordeal, so I called the embassy this time, which assured me the protocol had changed. Now it was only Palestinian men who were not allowed to fly to or enter Egypt; women were allowed and could get their visa at the Egyptian port of entry. I was given a signed and dated letter (6 April 2009) by the consul to take with me in case I encountered any problems. It read:
+“The Consular Section of the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt hereby confirms that women, who are residents of the Gaza Strip, and who hold passports issued by the Palestinian Authority are required to get their visa to enter Egypt at Egyptian ports and NOT at the various Egyptian consulates in the United States on their way to the Gaza Strip for the purpose of reaching their destination (i.e. Gaza Strip).”
+With letter and bags in hand, we took off, worried only about the possibility of entering Gaza; the thought of not being able to enter Egypt never crossing my mind.
+Two long-haul flights and one seven-hour transit later, we made it. I knew the routine by heart. Upon our arrival, I was quick to hit the bank to buy the $15 visa stamps for my children Yousuf and Noor’s American passports and exchange some dollars into Egyptian pounds. I figured it would help pass the time while the lines got shorter.
+I then went and filled out my entry cards. An officer came and filled them out with me seeing my hands were full, a daypack on my back, Noor strapped to my chest in a carrier, Yousuf in my hand.
+We submitted our passports and things seemed to be going smoothly. Just then the officer explained he needed to run something by his superior. “You have a Palestinian passport. Rafah crossing is closed …”
+“I promise it will just be five minutes,” he assured me. But that’s all I needed to hear. I knew I was in for a long wait. It was at this point I yanked out my laptop and began to Tweet and blog about my experience. At first I thought it would simply help pass the time; it developed into a way to pool resources together that could help me, and ended as a public awareness campaign.
+The faces were different each time. Three or four different rooms and hallways to navigate down. They refused to give names and the answers they gave were always in the form of cryptic questions.
+The first explained I would not be allowed entry into Egypt because Palestinians without permanent residency abroad are not allowed in; and besides, Rafah Crossing is closed, he said (my response: so open it). I was told I was to be deported to the United Kingdom first. “But I have no British visa,” I explained. I was ordered to agree to get on the next flight. I refused. I didn’t come all this way to turn back.
+I was escorted to the “extended transit terminal.” It was empty at first, save for a South Asian man in tightly buckled jeans and with a small duffel bag, who spent the good part of our time there there in a deep sleep. During the day the hall would fill up with locally deported passengers — from villages and cities across Egypt, and we would move our things to the upper waiting area.
+Most of the time was spent in this waiting area with low-level guards who knew nothing and could do nothing.
+At different intervals, a frustrated Yousuf would approach them angrily about “why they wouldn’t let him go see his seedo and tete [grandpa and grandma]” and why “they put cockroaches on the floor.” When we first arrived, he asked if these were the “Israelis,” his only experiences with extended closure, delay, and denial of entry being at the hands of the Israeli soldiers and government. “No, but why don’t you ask why [Israelis] are allowed through to [Egypt to] sunbathe and we aren’t allowed to our own homes?”
+“Rabina kbeer,” came the response, signifying impotence. God is great.
+There was very little time I was given access to anyone who had any authority. I seemed to be called in whenever the new person on duty arrived, when they were scheduled for their thrice daily interrogation and intimidation, their shooting and crying.
+Officers came and went as shifts began and ended. But our status was always the same. Our “problem,” our case, our issue was always the same. We remained, sitting on our chairs, with our papers and documents in hand, waiting.
+Always waiting. For this is what the Palestinian does: we wait. For an answer to be given, for a question to be asked; for a marriage proposal to be made, for a divorce to be finalized; for a border to open, for a permit to be issued; for a war to end; for a war to begin; for a child to be born; for one to die a martyr; for retirement or a new job; for exile to a better place and for return to the only place that knows us; for our prisoners to come home; for our homes to no longer be prisons; for our children to be free; for freedom from a time when we no longer have to wait.
+We waited for the next shift as we were instructed by those who made their own instructions. Funny how when you need to pass the time, the time does not pass.
+“You need to speak with whose in charge — and their shift starts at 10am.” So we pass the night and wait until the next morning. “Well, by the time they really get started it’s more like noon.” So we wait until till noon. “Well, the real work isn’t until the evening.” And we wait until evening. Then the cycle starts again.
+Every now and then the numberless phone would ring, requesting me, and a somber voice would ask if I changed my mind. I insisted all I wanted to do was go home; that it was not that complicated.
+“But Gaza is a special case, we all know that,” I was told. Special — as in expendable, not human, not entitled to rights, I thought.
+Unfamiliar faces that acted as though though I was a long-lost friend kept popping in and out to see me. As though I were an amnesiac in a penitentiary. They all kept asking the same cryptic question, “So you are getting on a plane soon, right?”
+First, a gentleman from the Palestinian representative’s office that someone else whose name I was meant to recognize sent. “It’ll all be resolved within the hour,” he promised confidently, before going on to tell me about his son who worked with Motorola in Florida.
+“Helping Israeli drones do their job?”
+“That’s right!” he beamed.
+An hour came and went, and suddenly the issue was “unresolvable,” and I was “a journalist up to trouble.”
+Friends and family in Egypt, the US and Gaza worked around the clock with me, calling in any favors they had, anyone they knew, doing anything they could to get some answers and let me through. But the answer was always the same: State Security and Intelligence says no, and they are the ultimate authorities. No one goes past them.
+Later a second Palestinian representative came to see me.
+“So you are not going on that second flight, are you?”
+“What are you talking about? Why does everyone speak to me in question form?”
+“Answer the question.”
+“No, I came here to go to Gaza, not to return to the US.”
+“Ok, that’s all I needed to know; there is a convoy of injured Palestinians with security clearance heading to the border with some space; we are trying to get you on there with them; 15 minutes and it’ll all be resolved, we just need clearance, it’s all over,” he assured me.
+Yousuf smashed another cockroach.
+We were taken down a new hallway. A new room. A new face. The man behind the desk explained how he was losing sleep over my case, how I had the whole airport working on it, how he had a son Yousuf’s age. He then offered me an apple and a bottle of water and told me to rest, a command I would hear again and again over the course of the 36 hours.
+Is this man for real? An apple and a bottle of water? I thought to myself, my eyes nearly popping out of my face.
+“I don’t want your food. I don’t want to rest. I don’t want your sympathy. I just want to go home! To my country. To my parents. Is that too hard to understand!?” I screamed, breaking my level-headed calm of the past 20 hours.
+“Please don’t yell, just calm down, calm down, everyone outside will think I am treating you badly, come on, and besides its ayb [disgraceful] not to accept the apple from me.”
+“Ayb? What’s ayb is you denying my entry to my own home! And why should I be calm? This situation doesn’t call for calm; it makes no sense and neither should I!”
+“C’mon lady don’t have a breakdown in front of your kids, please. You know I have a kid your son’s age and its breaking my heart to do this, to see him in these conditions, to put him in these conditions, so please take the plane.”
+“So don’t see me in these conditions! There’s a simple solution, you know. Let me go home! It’s not asking a lot, is it?”
+“Hey now, look lady,” he said, stiffening suddenly into bad cop mode, his helpless grimace disappeared.
+“Rules are rules, you need a visa to get in here like any other country, can you go to Jordan without a visa?”
+“Don’t play the rules game with me. I had approval from your embassy, from your consul general, to cross into Egypt and go to Gaza; and besides, how else am I supposed to get into Gaza?” I shouted, frantically waving the stamped and signed document in front of him as though it were a magic wand.
+“So sue him. State Security supersedes the foreign ministry’s orders, he must have outdated protocol.”
+“The letter was dated 6 April, two days ago, how outdated could it be? Look, if I could parachute into Gaza I would, trust me. With all due respect to your country, I’m not here to sight-see. Do you have a parachute for me? If I could sail there I would do that too, but last I checked Israel was ramming and turning those boats back. Do you have another suggestion?”
+“What is it you want, lady? Do you want to just live in the airport? Is that it? Because we have no problem letting you live here, really. We can set up a shelter for you. And no one will ever ask about you or know you exist. In any case you don’t have permanent residency abroad so our government policies say we can’t let in a Palestinian who does not have permanent residency abroad.”
+“I have a US visa — the stamp in my passport is expired but my extension of status document is valid until the end of June. And besides — what kind of illogical law is that? You aren’t allowing me back home unless I have permanent residency abroad?”
+“I don’t read English please translate.”
+“You see it says here that my status is valid until 30 June 2009.”
+“Good, so then we can deport you back to the US,” he said, picking up the phone and giving a quick order for the Palestinian convoy of injured Palestinians heading to Rafah Crossing to go on without me, my only hope of returning home dissipating before my eyes at the hands of a barely literate, manipulative enforcer.
+“You just said if I have permanent residency abroad I can go home, now you say I can’t, which is it?”
+“I’m sorry you are refusing to go on the plane. Take her away, please.”
+We were ushered back to the extended waiting area, back to the roach-ridden premises that had become our home, along with a newly arrived Luxemburger and French couple and their two children who had failed to produce their passports and were being sent back home. Here I was, about to be deported away from home, over-prepared, with my documents and signed papers, from consulates and universities and governments — and they, used to traveling passport-free within the EU, being sent back home because they had only their ID cards.
+It wasn’t long before a new guard came to us, and requested we follow him “to a more isolated room.” “It will be better for you, more private. All the African flights are arriving now with all their diseases, you don’t want to be here for that! It’ll get overcrowded and awful in here.”
+Given the the well-wishes that preceded my last interrogation about the “discomfort” I might endure, I somehow had a feeling where we were headed.
+Before we were asked to bring all our luggage and escorted down a different hallway. This time we were asked to leave everything behind, and to give up our cameras, laptops, and mobile phones. We took our seats in the front of a tiny filthy room, where 17 other men (and one Indonesian woman who was sleeping on the floor, occasionally shouting out in the middle of her interrupted sleep) of varying nationalities were already waiting.
+A brute man — illiterate by his own admission — took charge of each of the files, spontaneously blurting out vulgarities and ordering anyone who so much as whispered, to shut the hell up or get sent to real prison. The room was referred to as “habs,” or a cell; I can probably best describe it as a detention or holding room. A man with a protruding belly that seemed at odds with his otherwise lanky body was the door guard.
+Officer number one divided up the room into regions: the five or so South Asians who were there for whatever reason — expired paperwork, illegal documentation — were referred to as “Pakistan” when their attention was needed. The snoozing, sleep-talking woman in the back was “Indonesia,” and the impeccably dressed Guinean businessman, fully decked in a sharp black suit and blue-lined tie, was “Kenya” (despite his persistence to the contrary). There was a group of Egyptian peasants with forged, fake, or wrongly filed ID cards and passports: a 54-year-old man whose ID said he was born in 1990, another who left his ID in his village five hours away, and so on.
+By this point, I had not slept in 27 hours, 40 if one were to count the plane ride. My patience and my energy were wearing thin. My children were filthy and tired and confused; Noor was crying. I tried to set her cot up, but a cell within a cell did not seem to her liking and she resisted, much as I did.
+We took the opportunity to chat when officer number one was away. “So what did you do?” asked “Kenya,” the Guinean businessman.
+“I was born Palestinian,” I replied. “Everyone in here is being deported back home for one reason or another right? I bet I am the only one being deported away from home; the only one denied entry to my home.”
+Officer number one returned, this time he asked me to come with him “with or without your kids.” I brought them along, not knowing what was next.
+There were two steely-eyed men on either end of a relatively well-furnished room, once again inquiring about my “comfort” and ordering — always in the form of a question — whether I was taking a flight that morning to the US.
+Noor began making a fuss, bellowing at the top of her lungs and swatting anyone that approached her.
+“She is stubborn. She takes after her mother, I see,” said the man.
+Soon we were escorted back to the waiting area. I knew there was nothing more I could do. We waited for several more hours until my children exhausted themselves and fell asleep. I bathed them in the filthy bathroom sinks with freezing tap water and hand soap and arranged their quarters on the steel chairs of the waiting room, buzzing with what seemed like a thousand gnats. Thank God for the mosquito netting.
+Eventually, dawn broke, and we were escorted by two guards to the ticket counter, our $2,500 flights rerouted, and put on a plane back to Washington.
+I noted on one of my tweets that I would be shocked if my children’s immune system survived this jolt. It didn’t.
+My daughter vomited for the whole flight to London as I slipped in and out of delirium, mumbling half-Arabic, half-English phrases to the flustered but helpful Englishman sitting next to us. I thank him wherever he is for looking after us.
+Whatever Noor had, Yousuf and I caught along with an ear and throat infection in the next days.
+Eventually, we reached Dulles Airport. I walked confidently to the booth when it was my turn.
+What was I going to say? How do I explain this? The man took one look at my expired visa, and my departure stamps.
+“How long have you been gone?”
+“Thirty-six hours,” I replied bluntly.
+“Yes, I see that. Do you want to explain?”
+“Sure. Egypt forbade me from returning to Gaza.”
+“I don’t understand — they denied you entry to your own home?”
+“I don’t either, and if I did, I wouldn’t be here.”
+With that, I was given a a stamp and allowed back to the US.
+Now that we are warm, clothed, showered, rested and recovered from whatever awful virus we picked up in the bowels of Cairo airport, I keep thinking to myself: what more could I have done?
+“The quintessential Palestinian experience,” historian Rashid Khalidi has written, “takes place at a border, an airport, a checkpoint: in short, at any one of those many modern barriers where identities are checked and verified.”
+In this place, adds Robyn Creswell, “connection” turns out to be only another word for separation or quarantine: the loop of airports never ends, like Borges’s famous library. The cruelty of the Palestinian situation is that these purgatories are in no way extraordinary but rather the backdrop of daily existence.”
+Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian freelance journalist, photographer and blogger (http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/) who divides her time between Gaza and the United States.

combined/texts/102.txt

@@ -1,14 +1,32 @@
-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.
+Sustaining this argument requires some glaring lies of omission and manipulation of facts. I believe it is important to scrutinize this claim, and this can only be done by conveying a historically accurate depiction of the debates and context surrounding partition.
+Before we can talk about partition, however, we need to talk about those demanding partition. Based on the Israeli narrative, this would be “the Jewish people”. This is a dishonest assertion and is often uncritically accepted by many.
+This line of thought conflates the Jewish people with Zionism, an ideology finding its origins in Europe in the late 1800s. At the time, the Jewish people were largely uninterested in Zionism. As a matter of fact many groups were fiercely anti-Zionist. The attempt to conflate the two is an attempt to give legitimacy to self-professed settlers from Europe, and portray any criticism of the Zionist project as inherently antisemitic.
+Yet in the early days, the Zionist movement was astonishingly honest about its existence as a form of colonialism. The founding fathers of Zionism, such as Herzl, Nordau, Ussishkin and Jabotinsky –among others- employed the same colonial tropes and tactics used by Europeans to legitimize their imperialism. Not only was Zionism colonialism in practice, but Zionists openly referred to it as such; for example, Herzl sought counsel from Cecil Rhodes on how best to proceed with the process of colonization, describing Zionism as ‘something colonial’. To drive this point even further, the first Zionist bank established was named the ‘Jewish Colonial Trust’ and the whole endeavor was supported by the ‘Palestine Jewish Colonization Association’ and the ‘Jewish Agency Colonization Department’.
+At the end of the day it was a group of European settlers claiming an already inhabited land for an exclusivist ethnic state, while planning to ‘spirit the penniless population across the border’ through various means. Modern attempts to retroactively whitewash Zionism, and portray it merely as a movement for self-determination, cannot escape these facts .When partition is brought up in the historical sense, it is not surprising that most tend to think of the 1947 UNGA resolution. However, this was not the first partition scheme to be presented. In 1919, for example, the World Zionist Organization put forward a ‘partition’ plan, which included all of historical Palestine, parts of Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. At the time, the Jewish population of this proposed state would not have even reached 2-3% of the total population.
+Naturally, such a proposal did not see the light of day, but it is an indication of the entitlement of the Zionist movement in wanting to establish an ethnic state in an area where they were so utterly outnumbered. To put this into context, even after waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, and a much smaller area allocated to the Jewish state in the 1947 partition plan, the proposed Jewish state would not have had a Jewish majority without additional immigration and settlement. As even on the eve of the Nakba, the Jewish population in mandatory Palestine was less than a third.
+If we consider that most of this population arrived during the 4th and 5th Aliyot (Between 1924-1939), then the majority of those demanding partition of the land had barely been living there for 20 years at the most. To make matters worse, the UN partition plan allotted approximately 56% of the land of mandatory Palestine to the Jewish state.
+Why, then, were Palestinians expected to agree to give away most of their land to a minority of recently arrived settlers? Why is the rejection of such a ridiculously unjust proposal framed as irrational or hateful?
+Jabotinsky understood clearly what establishing Israel meant for the natives; he did not mince words, in his 1923 essay The Iron Wall he wrote that:
 
+‘Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised’.
+
+What was being asked of Palestinians was nothing short of rubber-stamping their own colonization with approval. Nobody should be expected to agree to that.Yet for some, this is not seen as convincing reasoning for the rejection of partition. They acknowledge the obscene injustice of what was being asked of Palestinians, yet they argue that due to the historical persecution of the Jewish people, and fresh off the heels of the Holocaust, creating a Jewish state at the expense of Palestinians was a historic necessity.
+While such justifications serve mainly to assuage guilt, I argue that there is also a practical reason for why accepting or rejecting partition was irrelevant to the grand scheme of Zionist colonization of Palestine.
+It is often brought up how the Yishuv agreed to the 1947 partition plan, showing good will and a readiness to coexist and live with their Palestinian neighbors. While this may seem true on the surface, a cursory glance at internal Yishuv meetings paints an entirely different picture. Partition as a concept was entirely rejected, and any acceptance in public was tactical in order for the newly created Jewish state to gather its strength before expanding .
+While addressing the Zionist Executive, Ben Gurion reemphasized that any acceptance of partition would be tactical and temporary:
+
+“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”
+
+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”.
+
+So even ignoring the moral question of requiring the natives to formally green-light their own colonization, had the Palestinians agreed to partition they most likely still would not have had an independent state today. Despite what was announced in public, internal Zionist discussions make it abundantly clear that this would have never been allowed.
+Partition today remains as immoral as it was when first presented, a band-aid solution and a cure for a symptom which overlooks the root cause. Any settlement that is achieved without justice or accountability merely buries the issues in exchange for short-lived quiet; but no matter how long it takes, silenced and ignored grievances will resurface. This becomes exceedingly clear when observing the situation of our comrades in South Africa today.
+The demise of the Oslo accords can serve as a catalyst to challenge the fixation on the pre-1967 war borders. Reducing the question of Palestine to partition and occupation overlooks crucial components of the struggle. Many may prefer to ignore said components; however, if true justice is our goal, then they must be discussed and confronted. We must start from the beginning and reject any urges to whitewash history.
 Learn something new?
 Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!

combined/texts/1020.txt

@@ -1,86 +1,14 @@
-The diplomas of some 20,000 recent graduates from universities in Gaza are being withheld over tuition debt.
-
-APA imagesKhaled Musallam, 24, studied media at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University and graduated two years ago. But he never received his diploma.
-
-“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.”
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-“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.
-
-“I don’t know what to do”
-
-Abu Dan is in a double bind. She wants to find work to pay off her debt, but needs a diploma to do so.
-
-“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.”
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-“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.”
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-“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.
-
-“Real crisis”
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-“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.
-
-The education ministry’s al-Yazuri acknowledged the “real crisis” that universities are withholding the diplomas of more than 20,000 recent graduates.
-
-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.
-
-Self-perpetuating problem
-
-More than half of Gaza’s public universities’ budgets are covered by tuition fees, according to al-Yazuri.
-
-“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.”
-
-Al-Yazuri also pointed to budget cuts by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
-
-“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.
-
-Universities in Gaza have also seen a decline in enrollment, and thus tuition revenue.
-
-“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.
-
-The withholding of diplomas is just another way that ambitious young people in Gaza find their futures being hemmed in.
-
-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 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.
-
-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.”
-
-Jehad Ewais is a freelance journalist based in Gaza.
-Tags
-
-education
-
-higher education
-
-Ayman al-Yazuri
-
-Al-Aqsa University
-
-Palestinian Zakat Institution
-
-Riad Abu Zanad
-
-Palestinian universities
+Laundry in Khan Yunis refugee camp. (Arjan El Fassed)
+
+It’s interesting to read the news from this perspective. I mean, when you are the news, or when you are living the news that is being reported, and while all the while you write the news.
+On Monday I visited the Khan Yunis refugee camp, the target of many an attack by Israeli forces, to talk to Palestinian refugees there, to hear their thoughts on Israeli disengagement (the subject of a forthcoming article).
+It was quite an incongruous-and bleak-scene, as is often the case in Gaza. Crumbling refugee homes with pockmarks the size of apples stand like carcasses in front of the Neve Dekalim settlement, part of the Gush settlement bloc. It is shaded with palm trees, red-roofed Mediterranean style villas, and the unspoilt pristine sands of the Khan Yunis beach, accessible to all but the Palestinians now.
+Abo Ahmed is one of the refugees I met. The view from the second floor of his home on the edge of the camp overlooking Neve Dekalim, and an Israeli sniper tower, is breathtaking. The military base aside, there is nothing but the clear blue of the lonely Khan Yunis Mediterranean. “Nice view, right?” he told me jokingly, the wall behind him pockmarked like a piece of Swiss cheese from the hundreds of Israeli shells and bullets that have hit it. “One of those holes could have been in me”. It’s was the first time Abo Ahmed had ventured up to this empty living room since he built it a few years ago.
+His neighbours children, living under a zinc-sheet covered with torn blankets, giggled when they saw me. “Please take our picture” asked a little girl, Siham.
+Overhead, a drone whirred menacingly, and a helicopter gunship cruised the coast. “See those planes, they come and shoot missiles at us,” they explained expertly. Planes they have seen too many times before. War has been their teacher.
+Nearby, a group of Palestinians who live in the Mawasi enclave-completed sealed off from the rest of Gaza by Israeli forces for several years now- sat under a the shade of a handmade palm-leaf canopy waiting for the Tufah checkpoint to open, so they could return home. A day before, 4 of Mawasi’s residents were brutally beaten by Jewish settlers form the Gush bloc.   The perpetrators have yet to be brought to justice.
+Meanwhile, the children trotted off into the horizon, dangerously close to the Israeli sniper tower, trying to fly a rustic paper kite one of the older boys folded together.
+Next to them, a group of boys cooled off in a pool of salty wastewater that pours into a sand pit here from the settlements, the byproduct of an Israeli desalination plant. This is their playground. Soon, the Israelis call the Palestinian DCO to ward them off.
+On my way back to Gaza city, I learn that 17-year-old Iyad al-Nabaheen was shot dead by Israeli snipers as he was catching birds with his friend north of the Breij refugee camp, just as I pass by it.  I couldn’t help but think that could have been little Siham. Or one of the other children wading in the water. Or my own son, Yousuf.
+But Iyad’s death didn’t make it anywhere. His obituary could be found in the 7th or 8th paragraph of an article talking about an attempted-even fabricated some say- female suicide bombing at Erez, and the killing of an Israeli settler in the West Bank. Rest in peace, Iyad. May your soul fly higher than little Siham’s kite.
+Leila M. El-Haddad is a journalist based in the Gaza Strip.

combined/texts/1021.txt

@@ -1,35 +1,33 @@
-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
-
-Juliano Mer-Khamis
-
-Jenin freedom theater
-
-Jenin refugee camp
-
-Palestinian Authority
-
-Shin Bet
-
-Jonatan Stanczak
-
-Freedom Bus
+At the edge of the Khan Yunus refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, crumbling refugee homes face off with the red-roofed seafront villas of the Neve Dekalim settlement. (Arjan El Fassed)
+
+The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) completed their withdrawal from Gaza at 7 am this morning. Operation Last Watch ended with a brief ceremony at Qissufim road crossing when the national flag was re-raised by Gaza Division troops on the Israeli side of the crossing.
+Palestinian National Security Forces progressively moved into the former settlements throughout Sunday night and into the early hours of this morning. In spite of their presence, synagogues were set ablaze in Netzarim, Kfar Darom and Morag by groups of Palestinians who followed behind the security forces.
+Status of former settlements
+All former settler homes were dismantled by the IDF prior to their departure. Only a small number of municipal and commercial buildings now remain and the PA will decide their future.
+The settlements are now under the control of Palestinian security forces, although tens of thousands of Palestinians have subsequently entered including armed militants in Kfar Darom.
+Official celebrations organised by the PA are expected to take place in Al Mawasi and Neve Dekalim later this week.
+Following a cabinet meeting on Sunday, the Israeli government decided that it could not demolish 27 synagogues and has left the responsibility to the PA, in spite of its reluctance to take such on such action.
+The rubble from the former settler homes will be transferred to the Sinai under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
+The PA will conduct evaluations of the former settlements in order to check for unexploded ordanance and hazardous materials while also assessing the remaining infrastructure.
+External movements
+Erez crossing has remained open throughout the disengagement with limited numbers of merchants and workers crossing on a daily basis to Israel. Today 174 workers and 159 merchants were able to leave Gaza.
+Rafah terminal closed on 7 September for movement in both directions and is unlikely to re-open for up to six months. The terminal remains intact but the Joint Verification Team (JVT) building was demolished at the weekend by the IDF.
+Karni terminal and Nahal Oz crossing have remained open throughout the disengagement except for 22 August when Netzarim was evacuated.
+Internal movements and closure
+Abu Houli junction now has free movement of traffic in both directions following the dismantling of the IDF observation posts to the north and south of the junction and the withdrawal of Israeli forces. Abu Houli junction bridge that linked Gush Katif with the Qissufim road was demolished towards the end of last week.
+Salah ed Din street – Netzarim junction will reopen once engineers have been able to conduct repairs. The junction to the east of Netzarim settlement opened following the July 2003 hudna but closed again shortly afterwards.
+Rafah-west Khan Younis road will similarly reopen following repairs by Municipal engineers. This road has been closed since October 2000.
+The former enclaves of Al Mawasi, Al Maáni and As Siafa are now accessible following the dismantlement of checkpoints at Tuffah and Tel es Sultan (Al Mawasi) and the fences that had previously surrounded the populations.
+Humanitarian issues
+There is a need for the Palestinian security forces to take control of the former settlement areas to ensure people’s safety. Already three people have drowned today in the seas off Al Mawasi and seven people have been injured when falling from buildings in the former Gush Katif block.
+Hazardous waste and unexploded ordanance. Under the terms of the withdrawal the Israeli government had an obligation to ensure that all hazardous materials were removed from the homes of settlers before being demolished. There is a need for technical experts to verify the situation in relation to hazardous and unexploded materials at the earliest opportunity.
+The continuing closure of Rafah passenger terminal and the inability of the Israelis and PA to agree over movement through Kerem Shalom will directly impact on the 600 to 700 Palestinians who leave Gaza each month to receive secondary health treatment. Many of these patients receive treatment for cancer conditions and are not able to wait for medical provision on a long term basis when alternative treatment is not available locally.
+Enclaves. Residents living in Al Mawasi and As Siafa have effectively been cut off from Gaza for the last five years. There is a need for these residents to be reintegrated back into their host communities at the earliest opportunity. The Ministry of Planning’s Gaza Regional Plan may serve as a useful means for achieving this aim.
+Coordination
+The Gaza Security/Operations room centred in the UNRWA radio room has been operational since Monday, 15 August and provides an information hotline – 08 284 7719, SMS service and blog facility.
+Coordination meetings continue in Gaza city in the health, water/sanitation, education and psychosocial/child protection sectors.
+OCHA is acting as a focal point with the (acting) Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) Facilitator to enable coordination and information exchange with the NGOs.
+There is regular contact between the Operations room and the Israeli DCL to discuss issues of common concern.
+Related Links
+Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
+BY TOPIC: Gaza Disengagement

combined/texts/1022.txt

@@ -1,32 +1,10 @@
-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
-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.
+Najwa cleans the houses of the rich in Beirut. She lives with her son in the limbo spreading between the Stadium (Cite Sportive) and the Sabra Palestinian camp. Sociologists often refer to the Palestinian camps in Lebanon as a “space of exclusion”: the laws governing life in the camps are different from those governing life in the rest of Lebanon. Najwa’s neighborhood is an exclusion from the exclusion: no laws apply there.
+Najwa’s one-room house has been put together from various materials: a bit of cement, some wood, and a couple of glass windows. Electricity and running water are occasional guests. There is a small platform in front of the house where she keeps plants in old powdered milk containers. She sits there sometimes in the evenings after a day’s work and talks to her neighbors.
+They have drifted in from all over the place. Some are Shia from the Bekaa, some from the south, some are Sunni from ‘Aarsal, in the Bekaa, and others are settled nomads. There are also a few houses built from wood, plastic and corrugated iron, where Nawar (Roma or Dom) people live. They were all brought here by poverty and the need for shelter.
+The area is known as “Behind the Sport City.” For the past three years, its inhabitants have been living in tremendous tension. The sectarian parties of Lebanon have found fertile ground among the poor. There are many reasons for that: occasional payments and aid, the need for protection when the bulldozers will come to clear the illegal settlement, but also fear. An irrational perhaps, but very powerful fear from “the other,” a state that was cultivated by the various sectarian media in the past three years.
+“Behind the Sport City” sits in the middle of an explosive cauldron: The Future Movement’s Tariq al-Jadida stronghold to the north, Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party-controlled Wata Mussaytbah to the west, the Palestinian camp to the east and the Rihab neighborhood dominated by Amal to the south. Around Najwa’s house, everybody was armed, but the government coalition Future Movement’s militias were the most powerful. They became bolder after the events of the Beirut Arab University last year, when organized shooting took place between Amal and Future Movement supporters and resulted in several dead and wounded.
+Last Wednesday, Najwa told me, the Future Movement militia established armed presence around her and shot at the houses of opposition supporters. Many left. When the skirmishes started on Thursday afternoon, the neighborhood filled up with armed men. She looked out of her door and saw her neighbors sitting outside the house. Their 17-year-old son stood up and walked towards the street. He was shot and died there.
+Najwa and her son left the house in a hurry and ran down the hill to seek shelter in Sabra. The Palestinian camp was boiling, filled with armed men. Hamas and Fatah supporters were eying each other menacingly. Hamas’ people support Hizballah, and Fatah are sympathetic to Hariri and the Future Movement. But when the night fell, they all joined rank as the camp began to tremble. As the sound of explosion and gunfire increased, a rumor had spread through the camp: Samir Geagea men, the Lebanese Forces, were coming back to massacre everyone, as in September 1982. Najwa tells me that as of this moment, the camp established serious guard rounds till the morning, and only relaxed when the news came that the opposition had taken over the city.
+When she went back to her house, Najwa found the neighbors in mourning. Being Shia, their grief and anger had been adopted by the Amal militiamen. They had gone around shooting and terrorizing some of the known Future Movement supporters. The Nawar people, she told me, paid the price. But her neighbor’s son was dead.
+The poor, regardless of color, race or creed, always pay the price.
+Rami Zurayk is a researcher and a writer on food, environment and development issues. He lives in Beirut. His blog is at: http://www.landandpeople.blogspot.com/.

combined/texts/1023.txt

@@ -1,31 +1,68 @@
-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.
+Israel has carpet-bombed parts of Gaza City.
+
+APA imagesHala al-Aswad has two daughters with disabilities.
+
+One of her daughters Fedaa was diagnosed with lymphatic filariasis (commonly known as elephantiasis) when she was just 8 months old. Fedaa is now 23.
+
+Another daughter Nedaa was born with cirrhosis. She is now aged 21.
+
+Before the current Israeli war on Gaza, Hala did everything she could so that her daughters could be happy.
+
+Although the family are poor, they managed – with the help of donations – to furnish the sisters’ room so that it would be as comfortable as possible. Hala made sure they got the best treatment she could find and brought them on regular day trips.
+
+Then the genocide began.
+
+On 8 October – one day after Benjamin Netanyahu declared a major war against Gaza – Israel bombarded the area near where the family lived in al-Karama, a Gaza City neighborhood. Hala and her son Asad struggled to find a car so that they could evacuate Fedaa and Nedaa.
+
+“I had to leave everything I had worked hard for behind,” Hala said. That included her daughters’ wheelchairs and their medical reports.
+
+Soon after they left their home, it was subjected to an Israeli airstrike.
+
+Hala and her daughters took shelter at a school in Gaza City’s Beach refugee camp. They stayed there for about three weeks.
+
+When Israel carpet-bombed the area, the family tried to escape. That meant Hala had to carry Nedaa, while Asad carried Fedaa.
+
+In the panic of escaping, the family became separated.
+
+Hala reached al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, with Nedaa in her arms. When she arrived, she could not see Asad or Fedaa anywhere.
+
+Hala feared they had been killed along the way.
+
+It came as a major relief to hear Asad’s voice. He and Fedaa had actually arrived earlier at the hospital.
+
+“I hugged Asad tightly,” Hala said. “And I shed tears of joy.”
+
+Conditions worsen
+
+They spent just one night in the hospital as it was so crowded with people who had been displaced. The next morning, they moved to a school in al-Nasr, another part of Gaza City, where they spent the following two weeks.
+
+During November, the school and other nearby buildings were surrounded by Israeli troops in tanks.
+
+When soldiers invaded, they searched the school for a few hours and interrogated the family before letting them go.
+
+Hala had to walk with her daughters among dead bodies left on the streets. Fedaa screamed repeatedly.
+
+They made it to a warehouse in al-Daraj, a Gaza City neighborhood, where they took shelter.
+
+Around midnight, a building close to the warehouse was struck with a missile. Nedaa was hit in the face with shrapnel and fell to the ground.
+
+As Nedaa was motionless, Hala assumed she had been killed. Yet Nedaa soon began making a painful sound.
+
+She was bleeding profusely.
+
+The family lifted up Nedaa and rushed to al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City for treatment. Staff in that hospital had kept providing services even though it was the location of a huge explosion, which killed hundreds of people, during October.
+
+Now the family are staying in another small warehouse. It is situated in the northern part of Gaza.
+
+Lacking proper food and living in unsanitary conditions, the health of both Nedaa and Fedaa has deteriorated. According to their mother, they both require surgery.
+
+Although they have suffered immensely, their mother is determined to maintain a positive attitude. She is hoping that the two young women will be able to receive the treatment they need outside Gaza as soon as possible.
+
+Dana Besaiso is a writer and translator in Gaza.
+Tags
+
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
+
+eiGazaDispatches
+
+al-Shifa Hospital

combined/texts/1024.txt

@@ -1,44 +1,17 @@
-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.
-Tags
-
-#GazaUnderAttack
-
-Muhammad Ashour
-
-children
+‘Imad Hassan Mustafa Farhat, 30, married with four children, is a traffic policeman and a resident of Rafah. His testimony was given to Zaki Kuhail at the witness’s house in Rafah on 24 January 2007:
+‘Imad Farhat
+I live with my wife and children in the al-Shabura refugee camp in the center of Rafah. I have two sons and two daughters, the eldest child is six and the youngest is one year old.
+I work as a traffic policeman in the Rafah Police Department and make NIS 1,940 a month. In January 2003, when my son ‘Ali was six months old, I noticed that he had problems hearing and that he was slow in his movements. I took him to the clinic of Dr. Nabil al-Barqoni, a private pediatrician. He conducted some tests and found that ‘Ali had an enlarged spleen and liver and a hearing deficiency. The doctor told me that I had to take him abroad for a precise diagnosis because it couldn’t be done in the Gaza Strip. I didn’t have the money to pay for the trip and requested a grant from the Palestinian Ministry of Health to cover the cost of the tests.
+In February 2005, I received the grant and ‘Ali and I went to ‘Abd al-Nasser Hospital, in Subra, Egypt. We remained there one month, the time it took for the doctors to complete the tests. They found that his spleen and liver were enlarged, that he had a high enzyme level in his liver, and that he was anemic and had a high bilirubin count. The doctors did not treat him. They said the pediatrician in the Gaza Strip could do that.
+When we returned to Rafah, Dr. al-Barqoni prescribed medicines and treatment based on the diagnosis made by the Egyptian physicians. In May 2005, I took ‘Ali back to Egypt for more tests and monitoring. This time, the physicians found that he had a birth defect (atrophy) in the cerebellum and that his physical development and motor skills were slow for his age. They also found that the nerve in his ear was damaged.
+We returned to the Gaza Strip and I showed the new laboratory test results to Dr. al-Barqoni. He treated ‘Ali accordingly. ‘Ali’s hearing and speech improved, but the other problems remained as they were, or even got worse. He lost control of his sphincter muscle and began to have spasms.
+We had to take ‘Ali to hospital in Egypt. It was urgent. Again, I asked for a grant from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, but because of the financial crisis in the Palestinian Authority, they couldn’t help me. I raised $700 from friends and made plans to go to Egypt on 25 December 2006, but Rafah Crossing was closed that day.
+Every day, I listened to the news to learn when the Israelis would open the crossing. On 31 December, it was announced that the crossing would be open the next day. So the next morning, at 7:00, ‘Ali and I went to the crossing. There were about 2,000 people there. I took him in my arms and pushed my way among the people to get to passport control. At 1:00 in the afternoon, we crossed into Egypt.
+In Egypt, I rented a room for four nights in a modest hotel in Cairo. I paid 60 Egyptian pounds (about NIS 45) a night. The four nights passed and ‘Ali still had to undergo more tests, so I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough money to both pay for more nights in the hotel and for the trip home. I called Majdi Farhat, a relative of mine who was studying and living in Cairo, and asked him if we could stay at his place for a few days. He agreed and we stayed with him from the fifth to the twenty-first of January.
+In Cairo, I took ‘Ali to six specialists. Each one cost 100 Egyptian pounds. I had all the diagnostic reports in my hand and we were ready to return to Rafah on the fifteenth of January, but Rafah Crossing was closed (it had been closed since the sixth of the month). I had only 300 shekels in my pocket. I waited a few more days, during which I began to worry that I would run out of money and have no way to get home. Majdi was my only relative in Egypt, and he was a student living in a rented apartment could barely cover his own costs.
+I kept listening to the news, hoping the crossing would be opened. Finally, I heard that it would be open on the twenty-first and the twenty-second. We traveled to a friend in al-Arish to sleep at his house and then go to the crossing in the morning. But the crossing did not open on the twenty-first, as promised. It opened the next day, and we arrived there at 7:00 in the morning. Thousands were waiting to enter the Gaza Strip. We waited for ten hours, but the line hardly moved at all. We waited until 5:00 P.M., when the Egyptians said that the crossing had closed and would be opened the next day. We returned to my friend’s house in al-Arish.
+The trip from al-‘Arish to the crossing cost 70 Egyptian pounds, which had gone to waste. Also, it was very hard waiting at the crossing. ‘Ali was hungry and thirsty, and I had to buy him a bottle of water, which cost two pounds, and later, when he was hungry, I bought food that cost five pounds. He wanted to sleep, so I sat down on the road and he slept on my leg for an hour and a half, out there under the sun. I didn’t move because I was afraid if I did, he would wake up. The area we were in was filthy and smelly. There was no place to sit, or any covering to block the sun. In the afternoon, ‘Ali was hungry and thirsty again. I went to a cafeteria outside the area of the crossing, but no food was left for me to buy. By the end of the day, I had only NIS 200 shekels left.
+To make things worse, ‘Ali had relieved himself, and I had to clean him before changing his diaper. I couldn’t get any water. ‘Ali cried all day long, and I felt humiliated by everything we went through.
+At the end of the day we went back to al-‘Arish, where we slept at my friend’s house. The next morning, we got to the crossing at six o’clock. There were fewer people this time, but we still had to push to get to passport control, which we reached at ten in the morning. A few hours later, we were in Rafah. I didn’t have enough money left to pay the taxi driver who drove us home from the crossing. I had only ten shekels, and the trip cost fifteen. At home, my wife gave me five shekels so I could pay the fare.
+Related Links
+B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

combined/texts/1025.txt

@@ -1,13 +1,96 @@
-‘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.”
+Israel’s attack on Nuseirat has been compared to “the gates of hell [being] opened” by one witness.
+
+APA imagesSamer Walid was eating a meal given to his family in food aid when the sounds of gunfire started coming from all directions.
+
+A moment later, he heard shelling and a series of missiles being dropped on particular locations. Fire belts – as they are known in Gaza.
+
+As he tried to calm down his children, Samer asked Rehab, his wife, to grab some essentials so that they could flee their home in Nuseirat refugee camp.
+
+They did not have time to do so. Suddenly, Israeli soldiers attacked his house.
+
+“They were heavily armed, with their faces covered,” Samer said.
+
+“And they were screaming in Hebrew, which I couldn’t understand,” he added. “They shot me and I collapsed to the floor.”
+
+The forces then killed Samer’s twin sons Yazan and Omar, 12.
+
+“They were shot dead in front of me,” he said. “In cold blood.”
+
+“I was unable to help them,” he added. “I was bleeding.”
+
+“The ambulance crews were unable to reach us because the bombing was continuing. We were trapped in the house for two hours, soaked in our blood.”
+
+The soldiers locked his wife Rehab and two of their other children in a room. The soldiers then made a hole in the wall of the house and went through it into an adjacent building.
+
+Rehab recalled how she was locked in the room throughout the massacre. After everything had gone silent, she forced her way out of the room by breaking the door.
+
+When she found Samer and the bodies of the twins on the floor, “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” she said.
+
+In a state of shock, Rehab went onto the street barefoot.
+
+“All the neighbors’ houses were destroyed,” she said. “Everyone was running away and screaming.”
+
+A large number of corpses could be seen on the ground.
+
+“I saw burnt bodies and I saw bodies sliced to bits,” she said. “And I saw my neighbor carrying her son in her arms, without his head.”
+
+A man on the street agreed to bring Samer and the twins to hospital on an animal-drawn cart.
+
+When they arrived at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, it was confirmed that the twins were dead.
+
+More than 270 Palestinians were killed by Israel in its 8 June attack on Nuseirat refugee camp. Yazan and Omar were among them.
+
+“They were not guilty of anything,” Rehab said. “They loved life and wanted to be engineers when they grew up.”
+
+“Gates of hell”
+
+Maryam Salah had gone to the market in Nuseirat camp with her 10-year-old son Ahmad as he wanted candy.
+
+“While we were shopping, the world turned upside down,” Maryam said.
+
+Israel first used a quadcopter to fire on people in the crowded market, then it began shelling the area.
+
+“I had no idea what was happening,” Maryam said. “I took my son’s hand and began running.”
+
+As they escaped, Ahmad fell to the ground. He had been struck by a missile and lost his right arm.
+
+Maryam picked Ahmad up and began heading to hospital. She was relieved that he was still breathing.
+
+It felt like a miracle that he survived. But Maryam had to perform the horrific task of burying his severed arm when they arrived at the hospital.
+
+Rami Aziz was fetching water near his home late on Saturday morning when the attack occurred.
+
+“It was as if the gates of hell had opened,” he said.
+
+Israel began flying its US-made military helicopters and warplanes over the camp, firing missiles at the residents.
+
+“A fog filled the whole place,” he said. “I couldn’t see anything any more.”
+
+Twenty members of Rami’s extended family – mostly children – gathered in one room.
+
+“In the blink of an eye, my family and I were under the rubble,” he said. “Thankfully, I was still alive.”
+
+“I began shouting for help from under the rubble. But no one heard me.”
+
+Rami remained trapped under the rubble for about two hours and almost lost consciousness.
+
+After the bombardment came to a halt, Rami sensed that the Israeli soldiers had withdrawn from the area.
+
+A passerby heard something from beneath the rubble and called out, “Is there anyone here?”
+
+“Yes,” Rami replied. “I am alive and breathing.”
+
+A group of young men then came and rescued him.
+
+Once he was lifted to safety, Rami went looking for the others who had been in his home.
+
+He was able to save 15 members of his extended family. Five others could not be found.
+
+Doaa Shaheen is a journalist from Gaza.
+Tags
+
+Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
+
+Nuseirat refugee camp
+
+eiGazaDispatches

combined/texts/1026.txt

@@ -1,36 +1,26 @@
-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.
+A shortage of dialysis machines impacts the ability for Palestinians in Gaza to receive proper treatment.
 
-“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.
-
-Over the course of a 51-day assault on Gaza that summer, Israel killed an average of 11 children per day.
-
-When the Great March of Return started in March 2018, Hijjy took to documenting Israel’s crimes at the Israel-Gaza boundary then too.
-
-He says that aerial photography “played a big role in recording the events” and “drew attention to the marches and the Palestinian issue.”
-
-Just as Israel targets reporters on the ground, aerial photographers too face significant obstacles.
-
-Israel bans so-called “dual-use” items from Gaza on the pretext that they may have military purposes.
+Maan ImagesGAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - “During the first years of the siege, we could still manage, but nowadays we have no alternatives,” says Dr. Hassan Khalaf, Deputy Health Minister in Gaza. “It is a major crisis: many health services have stopped, and I’m afraid this will spiral out of control, because Gaza doesn’t have the essential medicines and supplies needed.”Cancer, kidney, heart and organ transplant patients, as well as patients needing routine surgeries, including eye and dental surgery, have been suffering for the last five years under the Israeli-led, internationally-backed siege of the Gaza Strip. Year by year, the warnings of Gaza’s health crisis grow more dire, with the latest warning from Gaza’s Ministry of Health stating the Strip is at emergency levels of medical supplies.Following the democratic elections in 2006 that brought Hamas to power, the population in Gaza has been constrained under a siege which bans food items, construction materials and school supplies among thousands of items. Medical supplies and equipment do not escape the blacklist, which for years now has deprived Palestinians in Gaza of basics like baby formulas, antibiotics and MRI and X-ray machines, which Israel reasons could be used for “terror” purposes.While alarming zero-stock levels of drugs were already being reported in 2007 — when 80-90 of the 480 drugs deemed essential were at zero — Palestinian physicians could still find ways around the shortages.The International Committee of the Red Cross in November 2008 reported that “medical staff try to cope by using the next best solution which is not always a good one — for example, if they need tubes for a medical procedure, they will use a tube size smaller or bigger than the appropriate one.”Medical system under attackWhile the alternatives were not optimal and could result in inadequate and painful treatments, there were at least alternatives. But with each year of the total siege on Gaza, particularly after the 23 days of Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-2009, the already dilapidated medical system in Gaza has been rendered more sickly. During the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli warplanes bombed more than half of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as 44 clinics and the medical storage facility of the Palestine Red Crescent Society.In February 2011, an Israeli bombing destroyed a medical warehouse in Jabaliya. “We lost a large amount of stocks we had finally received from Ramallah just a few days prior to the bombing,” says Dr. Khalaf.In June 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a call for “unimpeded access into the Gaza Strip of life-saving medical supplies, including equipment and medicines, as well as more effective movement of people in and out of the territory for medical training and the repair of devices needed to deliver appropriate health care and respond to the population’s humanitarian health needs.”But prolonged shortages of medical supplies have set-off new alarm bells.“During 2008, Gaza received less than half of the needed medicines and supplies,” says Dr. Khalaf. The WHO reported that in 2010 Gaza received even less, only 40 percent of the Strip’s needs transferred to Gaza. “As of now, in 2011 we’ve received only third of what is needed,” says Khalaf.With years of delays by both the Israeli-led siege and the Ramallah health ministry, Gaza’s zero-stock items list — now at 180 items — has grown as has the number of items temporarily restocked in hospitals and clinics.“We’re missing painkillers and anesthetics, cancer and epilepsy drugs, antibiotics, infant formulas, medicines for dialysis, even rubber gloves,” says Khalaf.The ministry’s warning is echoed by the WHO, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which noted on 13 June that Gaza has not received medical supplies since February 2011. PCHR reports that the medical shortages affect “ICUs, nurseries of premature infants; operation rooms; anesthesia and recovery; emergency; cardiac catheterization; hematology and oncology; nephritic diseases; and pediatrics.”According to Dr. Khalaf, hundreds of patients await “eye surgeries, endoscopic, vascular and pediatric surgeries, and neurosurgery” among others.Ramallah’s “intentional negligence” of Gaza health crisisA group of Norwegian doctors surveyed Gaza’s hospitals and clinics in February this year. Their study, reported in The Lancet medical journal, highlighted the difficulties for cancer patients in Gaza who receive only part of their chemotherapy treatments. Many have died as a result.“Oncologists said 100 of 260 cancer patients at Gaza’s largest hospital were unable to receive effective treatment because the required combination of several drugs was not obtainable,” reported The Lancet.To alleviate the current medical crisis, the ICRC on 14 June gave its stocks of medical supply to hospitals in Gaza. The Ramallah-based Ministry of Health announced it would send medical supplies from its warehouses and that Egypt would soon send essential medicines.Having dealt with the issue of delayed and banned medical supplies for years, the Ministry of Health in Gaza sees this as a temporary and insufficient fix.“Israel and the Ramallah government hold mutual responsibility for Gaza’s medical crisis,” says Dr. Khalaf, citing Israeli obstacles and delays on permissions and shipments via the Israeli-controlled crossings — as well as what he says is the Ramallah ministry’s intentional negligence.“When international donors first cut aid to Gaza, it was resumed via the Ramallah government, with the understanding that Gaza receives 40 percent of the total donations, according to our population needs,” he says.This system worked until the ministry in Ramallah stopped coordinating with the ministry in Gaza, relying instead on its own contacts in Gaza.Dr. Khalaf believes neither the Israeli siege nor the Ramallah government’s reluctance to send medical supplies to Gaza could occur without international compliance. “It is intentional, it’s part of the siege on Gaza’s government,” he says. “The international donor countries and Ramallah health ministry give us temporary, interrupted solutions.”Whether or not it is intentional, the severe lack of medical supplies harms Gaza’s 1.6 million residents, not the Hamas government.All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2011). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.
+Tags
 
-The list has included medical supplies, binoculars, several kinds of cameras, GPS equipment and many other basic commodities.
+Gaza siege
 
-“Everywhere else in the world, people are permitted to take out their camera and take pictures, except for us,” Hijjy told The Electronic Intifada.
+Dr. Hassan Khalaf
 
-He says that Israel’s occupation is the biggest obstacle to journalistic freedom.
+Gaza Ministry of Health
 
-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.
+Hamas
 
-“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.”
+closure
 
-Hijjy hopes to one day take pictures in other Palestinian cities, including Jerusalem, Jaffa and Acre.
+International Committee of the Red Cross
 
-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
+Palestine Red Crescent Society
 
-Soliman Hijjy
+world health organization
 
-Great March of Return
+Ramallah Ministry of Health
 
-photography
+PCHR
 
-video
+The Lancet

combined/texts/1027.txt

@@ -1,52 +1,142 @@
-COVID-19 cases in Gaza have skyrocketed in recent weeks.
+A Palestinian woman walks next to sewage water flowing from Israeli settlements in the West Bank village of Kafr Thulth, near Qalqilya, December 2012.
 
-In March, active coronavirus cases in the Gaza Strip more than tripled.
+ActiveStillsAbu Mazen Square has become a bit of a joke for Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank town of Bruqin.
 
-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.
+To understand why, it is imperative to delve into recent history.
 
-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.
+Two years ago, the site of what is now a public square was an open cesspool. Wastewater pumped out of the nearby Israeli settlement Ariel, one of the largest in the West Bank. This wastewater mingled with overflow from nearby Salfit.
 
-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.
+Salfit, a town of some 9,000 Palestinians, has spent the past 22 years trying to update its sewage management system, according to chief municipal engineer Saleh Afaneh, but has not been able to get the necessary permits from the Israeli military authorities. Consequently, wastewater has been flowing down freely, joining the natural stream that runs through Bruqin village.
 
-Human rights groups have warned that the pandemic would stretch Gaza’s medical system beyond capacity.
+The Salfit government has little power to reduce the amount of sewage entering Bruqin and the neighboring Palestinian village Kufr al-Dik, but it has supplied a few kilometers of pipeline to keep the mess underground in the most densely populated parts of the two towns.
 
-There is no doubt that it took a further hit with the coronavirus over the last year.
+While only four out of 15 planned kilometers of pipeline have been built so far, the Palestinian Authority took the opportunity to build a lavishly decorated new town square, dedicated to Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, directly over the line, giving Bruqin’s local residents Abu Mazen Square. A kilometer away, the sewage continues to flow openly.
 
-Health authorities in the Gaza Strip have reported a shortage in oxygen supplies for COVID-19 patients, especially during surges of cases.
+The story of Abu Mazen Square is an execrable reminder for many in Bruqin that their problems are being glossed over by the Palestinian Authority. While sewage leaks have plagued the village for years, the PA and its Ministry of Health have offered a minimal amount of relief, and have abandoned attempts to advocate for rural communities suffering from wastewater mismanagement.
 
-“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.
+The PA might claim that all is well, but beneath the surface the situation stinks.
 
-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.
+Sewer politics
 
-“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.
+Wastewater management is a problem in the West Bank.
 
-“We are suffering a severe shortage during the pandemic,” he added. “The Israeli occupation and siege bears full responsibility.”
+Approximately half of Israel’s environmental regulations do not apply in the occupied territory. With such lax legislation, companies producing metals, chemicals and plastics flock to settlement industrial zones, such as West Ariel and Barkan. Both Israeli and international companies are drawn to areas where they can pollute more freely, often at the expense of surrounding Palestinian communities.
 
-The European Hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza is the main facility where coronavirus patients are being treated.
+The Oslo accords signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1990s saw the West Bank carved up into areas A, B and C with the Palestinian Authority exercising a diminishing level of control over the internal affairs of Palestinian communities in those areas.
 
-It is also facing shortages of medical oxygen.
+For project approval in Area C — the some 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli civilian and military control — Palestinian towns and villages must apply to the Israeli body which oversees civilian affairs in occupied territory.
 
-“We need new sources of oxygen, whether it’s liquid oxygen or new oxygen generators,” Abu Jayyab added.
+It is the Israeli military that ultimately decides whether Palestinians can build new sewage infrastructure and wastewater treatment plants in places like Salfit where, according to Afaneh, there is no available land in areas A and B, where the Palestinian Authority exercises civilian control, for such projects.
 
-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.”
+For many residents in Bruqin village, Abu Mazen Square represents the Palestinian Authority’s misplaced priorities.
+Clare MaxwellBut the Israeli authorities refuse the vast majority of applications. Making matters worse, since the beginning of 2016, the Israeli military has demolished more than 50 water and sanitation structures in Area C.
 
-Of the nearly 95,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Gaza Strip since March 2020, almost 19,000 are currently active.
+The lack of adequate sewage treatment poses a serious risk to public health. During the winter rains, wastewater overflows its containment pipes, creating a higher risk of contaminating groundwater.
 
-Of more than 2,500 Palestinians who have died from the disease, more than 800 have been in Gaza.
+In the summer, when the West Bank faces massive water cuts imposed by Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, Palestinians are forced to turn to polluted water sources to meet needs.
 
-Video by Mohammed Asad.
+Farmers and herders in the area also report that free-flowing sewage damages crops and can poison animals, undermining livelihoods and negatively affecting the quality of food available in rural communities.
+
+Crisis? What crisis?
+
+One wouldn’t know any of this, however, from talking to Palestinian Authority officials.
+
+Haytham Mansour is director of the Ministry of Health in the Salfit region. Mansour refused to be drawn out on whether there is a water crisis in the area. While he acknowledged both water cuts and sewage leaks, he was adamant that both were under control and did not cause undue suffering in the Salfit region.
+
+He insisted that his department tests local water on a weekly or monthly basis. Yet he would not share the findings of those reports or even confirm that the ministry kept records on water quality.
+
+Mansour did concede that the overflow of sewage, combined with the lack of access to potable water, could hypothetically put communities at risk from anything from scabies to Hepatitis A, but maintained that the Salfit region had not seen any significant increase in those maladies.
+
+But his denials, and those of his deputies, seem to fly in the face of evidence collected independently.
+
+Mohammad Bishr, a doctor with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s Salfit branch, is concerned. As a participant in a mobile clinic program, he regularly visits both Kufr al-Dik and Bruqin to offer free consultation and primary health care services to underserved communities.
+
+In an interview with The Electronic Intifada, Bishr said that since the beginning of June, the nongovernmental organization has noted an increase in the number of patients with scabies, gastroenteritis and gastrointestinal amebiasis, a miniature epidemic that repeats itself every summer. He attributed this pattern to a lack of proper sanitation and the domestic use of polluted drinking water.
+
+Bishr also noted that patients were concerned over the size and frequency of mosquito bites they sustained in recent years. Small pools of sewage provide optimal breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
+
+“We’ve started to see this every time the water goes [out],” noted Bishr. “Every summer, it gets worse.”
+
+Bassam Madi, another doctor with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society mobile clinic program, worries that if the sewage crisis is not adequately addressed, there will be further increases in communicable diseases.
+
+Crucial evidence
+
+But to address a problem, it first needs to be acknowledged.
+
+With no access to water quality reports from the Ministry of Health, local clinicians and public health officials are at a disadvantage. The Palestinian Medical Relief Society and local government officials have access to just a single independent report, obtained after an Israeli activist sent samples of water from polluted streams outside the Ariel settlement and the Barkan Industrial Zone to Aminolab in Israel.
+
+Some samples showed high levels of organic waste, consistent with untreated industrial waste. Others showed waste consistent with unrestricted dumping. Additional samples showed evidence of intermittent filtration.
+
+Aminolab noted in its report, seen by The Electronic Intifada, that this level of contamination in certain areas deviates from the Inbar standards, the Israeli regulations on water quality. While the report is not comprehensive, it includes enough detail to confirm that industrial pollutants from settlements are entering water used for agricultural and household purposes by thousands of Palestinians in the Salfit district.
+
+A polluted stream on the outskirts of Bruqin.
+Clare MaxwellThe mayors of Bruqin and Kufr al-Dik have been equally dependent on the lone water quality report from Aminolab and confirmed to The Electronic Intifada that the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health had taken almost no measures to address the wastewater problem in their towns.
+
+Jamal al-Dik, the mayor of Kufr al-Dik, said that in 30 months of construction, the PA had only completed a little more than a quarter of the planned 15 kilometers of the sewage diversion pipeline that gave rise to Abu Mazen Square. Currently, this pipeline is only keeping sewage at bay in the most heavily populated areas.
+
+The mayor did say that the ministry this year had supplied Kufr al-Dik with a small shipment of mosquito spray, though not enough to supply every household. The health ministry, he said, had been ignoring the escalating public health threat for years.
+
+“This is an old story, but also our future,” the mayor added.
+
+After years of trying to hold a public health crisis at bay with minimal assistance from the ministry, local residents and health workers are losing confidence in finding a solution to the sewage crisis, and losing confidence in their government.
+
+Politics of water
+
+The politicization of water in the West Bank is nothing new.
+
+Under the Oslo accords, a Joint Water Committee, with equal numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, was established to oversee water and sanitation issues in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. While representation within the committee was hypothetically equal, Israel’s military control over Area C gave Israel effective veto power over the committee’s decisions. As a result, almost no Palestinian proposals to the joint committee ever came to fruition.
+
+In 2010, Palestinian Authority representatives stopped giving their approval to Israeli proposals at the joint committee in protest. The Palestinian delegation failed, however, to combine their protest with any strategy to mitigate the effects of stressed water infrastructure for the Palestinian population.
+
+The Israeli military occupation puts a burden on the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry as well. The World Health Organization estimates that in 2015 the ministry was unable to procure an estimated 30 percent of essential medicines, and 25 to 30 percent of medical equipment and laboratory supplies, due to budget shortfalls as well as Israeli restrictions on movement, which limit the flow of medical goods and personnel.
+
+In addition to restricting access to medical supplies, the violence of the military occupation mean hospital beds are filled with those who have been injured by Israeli soldiers and settlers. The restricted access to potable water simply adds more pressure on already overstressed Palestinian public health institutions.
+
+The Ministry of Health could face political consequences for protesting the causes of the sewage crisis. The ministry’s budget for 2015 was some $323 million, according to the World Health Organization. During the same year, the US government agency USAID donated $7.6 million to the Palestinian Authority for basic health projects and $45 million for water and sanitation.
+
+The health ministry remains caught between acknowledging the overtly political causes of a public health crisis, and the political risk of taking concrete action against the occupation.The US government has previously set a precedent in using aid as a bargaining chip against the PA as possible punishment for state-building activities.
+
+The Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s Bassam Madi believes that the problem of a lack of access to potable water will be solved when the PA, and its donors, are ready to address the matter as a public health crisis, not as a political issue.
+
+“Let’s address the human issue, let’s address the environmental issue,” he said during a break from his work with the mobile clinic.
+
+But, if Abu Mazen Square is any indication, the PA seems more interested in keeping up political appearances, whatever the underlying reality. The needs of vulnerable villagers in the Salfit district do not compete with this priority.
+
+At present, the Palestinian Authority is addressing neither the “human issue” described by Madi nor the underlying political reality of Israeli control and abuse of the environment.
+
+Clare Maxwell is a journalist and human rights activist working in the Salfit region of the West Bank.
 Tags
 
-COVID-19
+Bruqin
+
+Salfit
+
+Kufr al-Dik
+
+Israeli settlements
+
+sewage
+
+health
+
+environment
+
+Palestinian Authority
+
+Oslo accords
+
+Haytham Mansour
+
+Mohammad Bishr
 
-coronavirus
+Palestinian Medical Relief Society
 
-Khalid Abu Jayyab
+Bassam Madi
 
-Marwan al-Hams
+Ariel
 
-Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital
+Barkan Industrial Zone
 
-Medical oxygen
+Jamal al-Dik
 
-video
+Joint Water Committee

combined/texts/1028.txt

@@ -1,19 +1,128 @@
-Conference hall at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Washington D.C. (Nigel Parry)
-
-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
+Palestinian students walk past a banner in Gaza City announcing the launch of a campaign calling on informants to Israel to repent, March 2013.
+
+APA imagesIn June 2015, Ibrahim Muhammad, 24, graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in English literature. The eldest son in a family of 11 with a disabled father who had been unemployed since 2003, he needed work, and fast, to support his family.
+
+Like thousands of graduates in Gaza, however, Ibrahim had no luck finding a job. Israel’s siege – which along with three major military assaults has destroyed the Strip’s economy – rendered him unable to leave Gaza to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
+
+Educated and in his 20s, he found himself devoid of work or money and rapidly losing hope. For nearly a year, he was stuck in his room with his cell phone on a 30-year-old bed that had belonged to his dead grandmother.
+
+Days became hazy. He spent the mornings sleeping and nights awake. He started trawling social media and it was during one of those nights that he met a young woman called Suha.
+
+Ibrahim is not this young man’s real name and some elements of this story have been changed to protect his family. The details of his story were related to The Electronic Intifada by two separate security sources as well as members of Ibrahim’s family.
+
+Suha lived in Spain, she wrote him in one of many chats that soon turned into an online relationship, including a virtual sexual one. She began to send him money every month, sometimes as much as $500, as a token of her sympathy and love.
+
+Meanwhile, she learned everything about Ibrahim, as young lovers might. She asked him about his personal life, the people in the neighborhood and other more general details about life in Gaza. She asked him to take photographs of the mosques in the area, in a bid, she said, to strengthen his bond to prayer and his religion.
+
+The trap shuts
+
+After nine months, Suha told Ibrahim that she would introduce him to her brother who would help him leave Gaza. The three – Ibrahim, Suha and her brother, who was introduced as Abu Zeidan – connected on an online group call to discuss this.
+
+It was after that call that Suha vanished. Ibrahim texted and messaged, but to no avail. In desperation, he texted her brother’s number. Within minutes he got a call from someone who said he was an Israeli officer and that he had sexually explicit videos of him taken during video calls with Suha. He threatened to use them if Ibrahim did not comply with instructions.
+
+Shocked and fearful, Ibrahim hung up the phone and turned it off. One sleepless night later, he turned it back on to find a voice message from an unknown number. On it, Suha implored him to follow Abu Zeidan’s instructions, that they would keep his secret safe and that any requests would be simple and would not affect other people.
+
+A mural at the Palestinian side of Erez checkpoint warns against informing to Israel, March 2017.
+Mohammed Asad
+APA imagesFeeling cornered, Ibrahim complied. Soon he was receiving instructions not only from Abu Zeidan, but from other Israeli officers. At the beginning of 2017, however, Ibrahim was apprehended by members of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, who became suspicious when they found him checking out entrances to tunnels used by Gaza’s resistance groups.
+
+After two hours of questioning, Ibrahim confessed, said one of the security officers who spoke to The Electronic Intifada about the case but on condition of anonymity. He was eventually sentenced by a military court to 12 years in prison, avoiding the death penalty only because his information did not lead to the death of anyone in Gaza.
+
+Social media recruitment opportunity
+
+Ibrahim is just one of hundreds of youth recruited by Israeli intelligence via social media, according to Palestinian security officials.
+
+Mahmoud Abu al-Qumsan, a Hamas intelligence officer who works on identifying collaborators, told The Electronic Intifada that Israeli agents target a specific profile, mostly among unemployed youth. All are men between the ages of 22 and 28 and about a fifth of them hold university degrees.
+
+Abu al-Qumsan refused to give any total for the number of collaborators Israel has recruited through social media but said the number began to increase from the first quarter of 2015.
+
+Israel, according to security sources as well as local media reports, has long exploited social media websites, prominent among them Facebook, to recruit spies. In December, Palestinian media carried reports warning against some Arabic-language Facebook groups that give the impression of being sympathetic to resistance groups in Gaza but are likely set up in an attempt to monitor activity and pick out names.
+
+One intelligence source said that by monitoring the comments and behavior of those interacting in such groups, Israeli agents glean information they can use as inducements for potential collaborators, whether that is monetary or help in-kind, like offering permits to travel for medical treatment, education or commerce.
+
+It was through social media that Ashraf Abu Leila, possibly the most notorious of recently convicted collaborators, is said to have first been recruited by Israeli intelligence. Accused with two other men of the assassination of Mazen al-Fuqaha, a senior Qassam Brigades leader who was killed in March last year, Abu Leila was executed on 25 May 2017 after being found guilty by a revolutionary court.
+
+Under questioning, Abu Leila is said to have confessed to being recruited through an online messenger app at the beginning of 2004 by a man who claimed to be a member of al-Qaida. And over time, authorities say, Abu Leila proved a deadly assassin.
+
+A member of Hamas since 2001, Abu Leila reportedly early became close to a Qassam commander, who would unwittingly shield him in the future. During the 2007 fighting in Gaza that led to the ouster of Fatah, Hamas authorities now say he was responsible for the murder of several members of the preventive security forces. He was also accused of another murder, but escaped punishment due to his involvement with Hamas’ military wing.
+
+He subsequently worked in different ministries until 2013, when he became increasingly radicalized and reportedly got close to Gaza’s Doghmush clan and its Salafi Army of Islam group. Indeed, the assassination of al-Fuqaha was initially thought to have been carried out by Salafis, with whom Hamas has been engaged in conflict on and off for more than a decade.
+
+A process without oversight
+
+The lack of transparency around the process that led to Abu Leila’s confession and execution, however, was widely criticized by local and international human rights organizations, the West Bank Palestinian Authority and the United Nations.
+
+A swift investigation led to the arrests, while confessions were extracted after questioning over which there was no oversight. And while Abu Leila reenacted the crime for investigators, according to Nasser Suleiman, the head of the joint Hamas-Qassam military field court who was party to the investigation and sentencing, justice was dispensed with little delay and no recourse to appeal.
+
+Human rights groups said the process is inherently flawed and the speed with which the revolutionary court reached a verdict in Abu Leila’s case was insufficient for a fair trial.
+
+“We can’t rely on revolutionary courts to serve justice for accused criminals,” Mustafa Ibrahim, a human rights researcher with the Independent Commission for Human Rights, told The Electronic Intifada. “Executing criminals this fast … opened the door of doubt in the procedures of the judgment. Revenge is not justice.”
+
+Ibrahim also noted that executions are only legal under Palestinian law if they receive ratification by the Palestinian Authority president. Since Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza in 2007, such ratifications have only been granted by Mahmoud Abbas in periods of détente between the two groups, and no ratification was forthcoming for these latest executions.
+
+All executions carried out by Palestinian governments in recent years have taken place in Gaza.
+
+Yahya Musa, a Hamas member of the Palestinian parliament, defended the death penalties that have been handed out, however, citing vital security interests. “Executions are a national necessity to deter collaborators, maintain the security of the Palestinian people and fortify the internal front.”
+
+He also told The Electronic Intifada that popular anger over collaboration would in any case force the hand of authorities.
+
+Collaborators and reconciliation
+
+Certainly, the issue of collaborators is one of the most sensitive among Palestinians. Few tears are spilled when convicted collaborators are executed for all that human rights organizations argue that due process is not guaranteed under present circumstances and, even when due process can be guaranteed, the death penalty is not a better deterrent than imprisonment.
+
+The issue is also a bone of contention in reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas is unhappy with the way the PA under Abbas’ leadership has failed to implement capital punishment for collaboration, said Muhammad Abu Harbid, a lecturer at Gaza’s Al-Ribat University College.
+
+“The file of collaborators is a sensitive one,” Abu Harbid told The Electronic Intifada. “There will be differences between Hamas and the PA, especially when it comes to who will run the investigative and judiciary processes. Hamas adopts a different methodology. The PA has arrested a number of collaborators but their sentences were not satisfactory to Hamas.”
+
+Moreover, said Hisham Mughari, a retired major in the Palestinian security forces and now the dean of al-Awda college, Hamas is worried that, with the PA taking back control of crossings in and out of Gaza, one of its primary ways to caution people about Israeli methods to recruit collaborators has disappeared.
+
+“Hamas worked with passengers in creating awareness of how to deal with the occupation at the crossing,” Mughari said.
+
+Israel’s permit system, which controls Palestinian movement throughout the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, is easy to exploit for recruitment, often against vulnerable Palestinians seeking medical treatment in Israel. Mughari suggested PA officers would not be as careful as Hamas security in terms of checking for cash and spying equipment destined for collaborators inside Gaza, which, in turn, could lead to an escalation “against the resistance.”
+
+Those left behind
+
+The stigma against collaboration is so strong that it does not simply condemn the collaborator, but shames his or her entire family.
+
+Mariam, 28, is married to a man who was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for collaboration. The mother of three has been disowned by most of her own family and has tried to take her life twice with pills as a result of her and her children’s social isolation.
+
+“We are being punished for a crime we had no hand in,” she told The Electronic Intifada. “I fear for my children’s future. People have already made my life hell.”
+
+Mariam, not her real name, lives with her parents, but even they threaten on occasion to throw her out and her wider family has not escaped the stigma of collaboration.
+
+“One day, my oldest brother was insulted by a colleague at work because his sister is the wife of a collaborator. He came back angry, shouted at us and threw us out. I had to spend two nights at a friend’s house.”
+
+Her husband’s family also refuses to care for the children and Mariam finds herself desperate.
+
+“To whom can I turn?”
+
+She fears, she said, a “tragedy.”
+
+“The community is very unjust to people like us. My daughter is only 9 but she stopped going to school because the other students call her the ‘collaborator’s daughter.’ She couldn’t take it anymore.”
+
+Hamza Abu Eltarabesh is a journalist from Gaza.
+Tags
+
+unemployment
+
+Qassam Brigades
+
+Hamas
+
+collaboration
+
+Mahmoud Abu al-Qumsan
+
+Ashraf Abu Leila
+
+Mazen al-Fuqaha
+
+Mustafa Ibrahim
+
+Fatah
+
+Yahya Musa
+
+Muhammad Abu Harbid
+
+Hisham Mughari

combined/texts/1029.txt

@@ -1,13 +1,128 @@
-“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.
+The spirit of Palestinian resistance is resurgent even as the Israeli military tries to crack down on growing dissent across the occupied West Bank
+
+APA imagesAs Palestinians commemorate the 74th anniversary of their forced displacement, the Nakba of 1947-49, it is clear that a new spirit of resistance is emerging in Palestine after years of stagnation.
+
+In the past two months, politically motivated Palestinian attacks against Israelis have increased, resulting in the killing of 18. That represents an unprecedented number since the second intifada ended in 2005.
+
+On 7 April, the scene on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv was extremely challenging for the security establishment in Israel, to the extent that former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz even commented that Israel had lost the battle for public “awareness.”
+
+On that night, a young man identified as Raad Fathi Hazem from Jenin refugee camp, infiltrated into Tel Aviv and obtained a weapon. He attacked a bar, killing two Israelis. A third died later of wounds sustained.
+
+The operation caused complete chaos in the city. Some 1,000 security personnel were mobilized, including “elite” units, while 100 roadblocks were erected as hundreds of Israelis were sent running into the streets to escape one Palestinian fighter. The pursuit continued for a total of several hours overnight before soldiers killed him.
+
+Then, on 5 May, two youths, Asaad al-Rifai, 19, and Subhi Sbeihat, 20, carried out a new attack in Elad, near Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis. The two youths both lived in Romana village in the Jenin governorate.
+
+A refusal to surrender
+
+As soon as Fathi Hazem heard news of his son’s death, he stood before the crowd of mourners coming to offer their condolences. He spoke in words charged with patience and revolution and said he was proud of his son. And he asked God to make him among the first to pray at al-Aqsa mosque after liberation.
+
+The elder Hazem was a former officer in the Palestinian Authority’s security services. Otherwise trained to coordinate with the Israeli military, his words were a significant indication of how the culture of resistance has spread among Palestinians. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to any specific faction.
+
+The Israeli occupation forces rushed to Jenin camp to arrest him, in line with a long-standing practice of collective punishment targeting the families of perpetrators by either arresting relatives, demolishing their homes or both. Often, this happens without soldiers meeting any resistance.
+
+However, something different happened this time.
+
+Hazem’s father announced he would not surrender. The Israeli military failed to arrest him because of the presence of Palestinian gunmen in the camp.
+
+He remains free to this day, even if another son, Hamem, was arrested on Tuesday.
+
+This is an abnormal situation in the West Bank, where Palestinian Authority security coordination with Israel normally ensures Israeli troops have a clean run at targets.
+
+Over recent weeks, the Israeli military has tried to storm Jenin camp several times. In one of these raids, they killed Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh, sparking global outrage.
+
+On the following Friday, troops tried again, but this time the Palestinian resistance succeeded in killing a veteran Israeli commando.
+
+A changing security situation
+
+Israel’s numerous attempts to storm the Jenin refugee camp are an indication of the extent of its humiliation at the rising defiance from Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as its increasing concern about the changing security situation.
+
+In the last 20 years, Israel has exerted great efforts to dismantle the resistance in the West Bank.
+
+In 2002, Israel carried out “Operation Defensive Shield” to this end.
+
+During the operation, Israel killed hundreds of resistance fighters, arrested thousands, and undermined the military infrastructure of the Palestinian factions in the West Bank, emptying the arena of fighters and weapons.
+
+It even built a separation wall to prevent the resistance from carrying out attacks inside the territories occupied in 1948 – and some settlements constructed after 1967 inside the West Bank. Palestinians recognize that far more than a security measure, the wall advanced an Israeli land grab.
+
+But Israel’s military was not the only actor strongly pushing to eliminate the resistance in the West Bank. In fact, Israel’s attempt came with the full cooperation of the US government and the Palestinian Authority, especially after the death of former President Yasser Arafat and the political ascension of current PA leader Mahmoud Abbas in 2005.
+
+Abbas has repeatedly declared that he rejects the armed struggle against Israel.
+
+In 2005, when Abbas took over the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, the United States formed a security team in Ramallah led by the American general Keith Dayton. The aim was to “reform” the Palestinian security services.
+
+The Dayton plan received generous support from the US administration and Congress. In a speech in 2009 to the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy, Dayton summed up his mission as the creation of an armed force not to confront the occupation but “new men … who will help bring about a new state.”
+
+That, of course, entirely depended on progress toward a state. But no such progress was made. Instead, the security services of the Palestinian Authority, trained by Dayton, were tasked with arresting, sometimes killing, those suspected of carrying out resistance acts.
+
+They were, in other words, merely aiding Israel’s control over the occupied West Bank.
+
+Israel, for its part, only intensified its arrest campaigns against any activist or leader suspected of any ability to inspire Palestinians in the West Bank.
+
+Collaboration
+
+These security policies by Israel, the PA and General Dayton produced a noticeable decline in resistance activities against the Israeli occupation.
+
+What they did not do was produce any similar reduction in Israeli violations of international law in consolidating its occupation or attacking Palestinian dignity.
+
+Settlements continued being built, checkpoints proliferated, Israeli military operations proceeded unhindered and the West Bank became a collection of separated bantustan-like enclaves with little ability to develop and no chance of any kind of statehood.
+
+Many years passed without any sustained resistance from the occupied West Bank.
+
+But after 20 years of intensive systematic targeting, the spirit of resistance of the Palestinian people now appears to be increasing again.
+
+It is notable that most of the perpetrators of the renewed resistance attacks are young Palestinians born after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which Israel signed in order to end the first intifada and, it hoped, with economic incentives to pacify the occupied territories for the future.
+
+Having grown up in the shadow of Oslo and with its main consequence, a PA security force cracking down on its own people, these youths saw no benefits: no freedom, no progress toward statehood, only more settlements and more security for the Israeli military. It is no wonder these youths are turning back to the resistance.
+
+Dizengoff attacker Hazem, for example, came from the Jenin refugee camp. Refugee camps hold a special place in the Palestinian consciousness, a place filled with misery, poverty and a constant reminder of the dispossession and humiliation of the Nakba.
+
+Palestinians from these refugee camps are, of course, well aware that Israelis live in cities that were built on the rubble of Palestinian towns and villages Israel destroyed at its founding. Israeli wealth and comfort is built at their expense. Consequently, Palestinians see resistance as an act of self-defense against those taking their home and land.
+
+Millions of Palestinians have been living for 74 years in dozens of refugee camps spread throughout the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
+
+Jenin camp has another peculiarity.
+
+The camp was almost completely destroyed during Operation Defensive Shield. Hundreds of homes in the camp were demolished and damaged beyond repair, and the Israeli military killed dozens of resistance fighters there.
+
+The challenge to colonialism
+
+This resurgent spirit of resistance was not only expressed in the recent wave of Palestinian attacks and the Israeli failure to storm the Jenin refugee camp. It was also expressed by confrontations and acts of defiance in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem and inside Israel itself.
+
+On 13 May, millions of people across the world watched live as Israeli occupation forces in Jerusalem brutally attacked the funeral of the slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
+
+This assault on peaceful mourners sparked worldwide outrage .
+
+Palestinians understand that the occupation’s aim to obliterate their existence in Jerusalem lay behind the attempt to suppress the funeral.
+
+Israel has been working for decades to Judaize the Palestinian capital, and does not want any expression of Palestinian sovereignty in the city.
+
+But as recent events, including Abu Akleh’s funeral, have shown, this project has failed. Palestinians continue to gather, whether for funerals or weddings, for protests or graduations. And they continue to fly the Palestinian flag and flaunt their Palestinian identity.
+
+The flag-raising battle is a key indicator of the Palestinian people’s new spirit. In one video clip, an Israeli policeman rushes to prevent a settler from waving an Israeli flag at al-Aqsa mosque.
+
+Other footage shows two female settlers in occupied Jerusalem hurriedly removing the Israeli flag from their car in order to avoid aggravating Palestinian demonstrators near them.
+
+A third clip shows an Israeli policewoman stopping a young Palestinian woman only because the colors of her veil matched those of the Palestinian flag.
+
+In still another scene, Palestinian demonstrators raised dozens of Palestine flags inside Tel Aviv University on Nakba Day, provoking the Israeli police to suppress the vigil.
+
+Raising the flag, particularly in places like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is an assertion of Palestinian existence. It also feeds the Palestinian spirit and raises morale.
+
+And this is the key lesson: What the resurgence of the spirit of resistance and defiance shows is that it is the very Palestinian identity that is an existential challenge to Israel’s colonialism.
+
+Decades of oppression, violence and persecution have had no impact on the Palestinian determination to secure their freedom and rights.
+
+Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian writer and activist who is a refugee from Ramle.
+Tags
+
+Jenin
+
+Jenin refugee camp
+
+Jenin refugee camp massacre
+
+Tel Aviv
+
+collaboration
+
+Palestinian Authority security forces

combined/texts/103.txt

@@ -1,19 +1,23 @@
-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:
+In general, the quest for two-states found its genesis in the diplomatic process in the 1970s which called for establishing a sovereign Palestinian state next to Israel. The first bilateral breakthrough in this process materialized in the -at the time- secret Oslo Accords where Palestinians, represented by the PLO, and Israelis agreed upon a declaration of principles that would lead to creating the Palestinian Authority. The Authority would act as an interim Palestinian government that would supposedly pave the way for a final settlement. These accords were mostly a declaration of principles which did not contain any parameters for how such a state would even look. As a matter of fact, the word “state” with regards to Palestinians was never mentioned once. It was two years later, in what is referred to as Oslo II, taking place in the Egyptian city of Taba, that negotiations earnestly began. In these negotiations more concrete parameters were discussed, as well as the logistics and method for instating the Palestinian Authority on the ground.
+The Palestinian Authority was supposed to last no longer than 5 years, after which a sovereign Palestinian state would be established as a culmination of the negotiation process. Clearly, this did not materialize and the negotiation process stalled. In 2000, US. President Bill Clinton called for a summit at Camp David to try and nudge negotiations forward and put an end to the “conflict” once and for all.
+The summit lasted for approximately two weeks, and needless to say, it failed in its objectives. Following this failure, there was a media frenzy blaming Arafat and the Palestinians for the negotiations breaking down.
+The claim was that Barak offered the Palestinians everything they could ever want for peace, and that Arafat simply threw that all away. Articles started emerging saying that this was the perfect test for Arafat’s intentions and that he failed miserably, and asserted that the Palestinians refused to make any concessions or compromise on anything.
+Thus, it became part of the “canon” that the Palestinians had -once again- rejected a peace offer by Israel, proving that Israelis really have no partner for peace, and that nothing could appease Palestinians.Let’s step away from the sensationalism and media spins of Camp David and take a bit of a deeper look into what Barak offered, and why it was rejected.
+To begin with, the often-repeated line that Barak offered the Palestinians the Gaza Strip and 96% of the West Bank for a state is completely untrue. Barak offered the Palestinians 96% of Israel’s definition of the West Bank, meaning they did not include any of the areas already under Israeli control, such as settlements, the Dead Sea, and large parts of the Jordan Valley. This meant that Barak effectively annexed 10% of the West Bank to Israel, with an additional 8-12% remaining under “temporary” Israeli control for a period of time.
+In return for this annexation, Palestinians would be offered 1% of desert land near the Gaza Strip. Thus, Palestinians would need to give up 10% of the most fertile land in the West Bank, in exchange for 1% of desert land. Not to mention that if the past record is any indicator, the additional 8-12% under “temporary” Israeli control would remain so forever.
+In addition to all of this, Israel demanded permanent control of Palestinian airspace, three permanent military installations manned by Israeli troops in the West Bank, Israeli presence at Palestinian border crossings, and special “security arrangements” along the borders with Jordan which effectively annexed additional land.
+The cherry on top of all of these stipulations, is that Israel would be allowed to invade at any point in cases of “emergency”. As you can imagine, what constituted an emergency was left incredibly vague and up to interpretation. The Palestinian state would be demilitarized, and the Palestinian government would not be able to enter into alliances without Israeli permission. None of these are ingredients for the creation of an actual sovereign state.
+But the Israeli conditions did not end here. In the case of East Jerusalem, which was supposed to be the capital of the Palestinian state, Israel refused any form of Palestinian sovereignty over the majority of the city, including many Palestinian neighborhoods. It should be noted that the PA agreed to Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and the Buraq wall, and even proposed Israel annex settlements in East Jerusalem in return for land swaps elsewhere. This was met with Israeli intransigence, and an insistence that the Noble Sanctuary remain under Israeli sovereignty, and that a part of it should be reserved for Jewish worshippers.
+Furthermore, when it came to the right of return, Israel refused to admit any responsibility for the millions of refugees it created . The only thing it offered was a very limited return of a very limited number of refugees over a very long period of time.
+Ultimately, this “generous offer” amounted to turning the West Bank into non-contiguous cantons, crisscrossed by a network of settlements, roads and Israeli areas. Even the supposed “capital” of the Palestinian state would mostly be under Israeli control, with stipulations and conditions that stripped any real sovereignty from any area of the supposed Palestinian “state”. Not even the sky above Palestinian heads would be under their control, nor the water under their feet, as Israel still demanded access to water resources under the West Bank.
+To add insult to injury, Israel was adamant that Arafat declare “the conflict over” with the signing of these accords, meaning that Palestinians could never ask for anything more after this.
+As I’m sure you’ll agree, none of this was conducive for the establishment of a real, sovereign and viable Palestinian state. How could anyone accept a state where they don’t even have control over their own capital?
+Even Shlomo Ben Ami, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, and one of the main negotiators at Camp David, later candidly admitted later that:
 
-“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.”
+“Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.”
 
-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:
-
-“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.”
-
-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.
+As it stands, Palestinian aspirations cannot be allowed to exceed the ceiling of Israeli table scraps. What is acceptable to Palestinians never enters the discussion, which must always be tailored to what Israel is willing to concede. This becomes even more infuriating once you realize that Israel is not really conceding anything; ending its occupation and stopping its settlement activities is merely following international law. It is not a sacrifice -it should be the default position.
+This is how all of the “generous” Israeli peace offers play out. The majority of people who hear about this on the news have no clue what the parameters of the offer are. All they hear is that the Palestinians have rejected yet another “peace” initiative by Israel . This is why Israel focuses on the number of offers, because it distracts from their content, similar to the above example regarding army numbers in 1948.
+All of this feels completely irrelevant today. We’re talking about some failed negotiation summit from a couple of decades ago. Hell, many of its participants have actually passed away since. We bring attention to Camp David not specifically because we believe Camp David needs revisiting, but for it to serve as an archetypal example of how Israel has always approached negotiations with the Palestinians, and how any justified rejection of absurd stipulations leads to decades of accusations and smears.
 Learn something new?
 Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!

combined/texts/1030.txt

@@ -1,22 +1,104 @@
-A Kashmiri protestor raises his fist to Indian forces during a protest in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, 13 August 2010. (Newscom)
-
-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.
+Palestinians in Gaza protest the Manama conference in Bahrain last year to advance the Trump administration’s peace plan as “betrayal and normalization,” two terms that are often synonymous with Palestinians.
 
+UPII have recently been at the center of a controversy after publicly expressing my anger at someone in Gaza who would normalize relations with Israel and Israelis.
+
+It happened quite by accident. I was scrolling through Facebook in early April when I came across a post promoting a meeting on Zoom – a popular communications tool during this coronavirus pandemic that keeps everyone trapped and isolated (in the case of Gaza, even more trapped and isolated).
+
+The post bore Rami Aman’s face, which made me curious since he is quite well-known in Gaza for pursuing normalization activities. In June 2019, Aman – who is regarded in Israeli circles as a peace activist – organized a bicycle race that took place concurrently in Gaza and Israel.
+
+The race saw him briefly arrested by the Hamas authorities in Gaza.
+
+The Zoom meeting brought together Palestinians in Gaza with Israelis. Its stated purpose was to discuss the spread of coronavirus in Gaza.
+
+I listened in; the meeting was open to anyone who saw the Facebook post. I heard Aman say how, “we Palestinians love Israelis,” how, “the majority are like me, they want peace.”
+
+I heard him say how difficult it was in Gaza, but how he hoped to create a “new generation.”
+
+It was clear to me that those listening in thought of Aman as the voice of two million people in Gaza.
+
+Who the hell is Aman to speak for anyone?
+
+Root cause of misery
+
+I grew so angry listening to this meeting, I started to shake.
+
+This was normalization, pure and simple. To me, there is no greater sin.
+
+The root cause of Palestinian misery is the creation of the State of Israel, an original sin that saw most of the land’s native population cast out from their homes to become dispossessed, destitute refugees, if they were not simply murdered. The rest wound up under military law as second-class citizens of the new state.
+
+Israel refused to countenance any recourse to justice for the Palestinians left stateless in 1948. Refugees were expressly denied return, their properties were confiscated by the state and doled out to new arrivals from Europe.
+
+Even those who were internally displaced lost their properties and were categorized – incredibly – as “present absentees.”
+
+It was theft, wholesale and complete. And it was compounded by the occupation in 1967 of the rest of historic Palestine.
+
+Normalization seeks to deepen connections with Israelis without holding them accountable for the crimes – historic and ongoing – committed against the Palestinian people.
+
+How can you so easily talk to the people who stole your land, robbed your people of their possessions and sense of belonging, killed tens of thousands and imposed hundreds of restrictions on your life?
+
+How do you so easily talk to the people who call you a terrorist for wanting to reclaim what is yours? The people who demonize you and shoot you, imprison your relatives, humiliate your parents.
+
+How?
+
+Backlash
+
+I was angry. I expressed my anger, clearly and directly, to Aman, who blocked me.
+
+I tagged three Hamas officials on social media. “Hopefully this nonsense ends as soon as possible,” I wrote them.
+
+This, it would seem, was my biggest mistake – at least for those who read a New York Times article and have since called me everything under the sun.
+
+To give you a taster, these are just a tiny fraction of the angry comments made and messages I received after The New York Times story ran.
+
+“I would wipe that smile on her face after seeing her jobless,” wrote one. “You are an animal, betraying sick, sadistic beast, really you are garbage,” another found the courage to message.
+
+“I hope you lead a lonely miserable life,” said a third, while another simply commented: “Shame on Hind Khoudary.”
+
+To be clear: I did not tag Hamas officials to ensure that they knew the meeting took place, as The New York Times reported.  Aman himself noted during the Zoom meeting that Hamas was aware of his activities.
+
+I tagged them still less for the authorities to arrest Aman.
+
+I am no particular friend of Hamas. I am not Hamas. I was also arrested in March 2019 after covering protests in Gaza against Hamas rule.
+
+I was accused of being a spy and an agent for unknown international parties. I was barred from working for five months after that.
+
+While Aman broke the rules – he was arrested according to Article 153 of the Revolutionary Penal Code of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of 1979 – arresting people like him (or me, for that matter) won’t make a difference.
+
+Banning the kind of activities Aman is engaged in may, however, make a difference. That is why I tagged the officials.
+
+The New York Times article made it appear as if, first, Hamas was not aware of this meeting, which was promoted on Facebook, and second, that I wanted him arrested.
+
+Normalizing the perverse
+
+Many of the people who reacted to the article were angry that I, a journalist, should have stood in the way of what they perceive as Aman’s freedom of expression.
+
+But that is to badly misunderstand both what I believe and what it means to be born and raised in Gaza, where freedom of any kind is a precious commodity, and where it is first and foremost denied us by our occupiers.
+
+I am a  journalist, yes, but I am also a Palestinian who has borne witness to Israeli crimes all my life.
+
+I will never forget – when I was only 5 – watching TV and seeing Muhammad al-Dura dying in his father’s arms after being shot by Israeli soldiers.
+
+I will never forget the sound of airstrikes slamming down around us – so many times – with my parents and brothers trying to act like they were just thunderstorms.
+
+I have lived under endless blockade, survived two wars of aggression (I was outside Gaza during the 2012 attack) and covered the Great March of Return, where people have been used for target practice, their lives and limbs destroyed by snipers on a weekly basis.
+
+I believe that the worst sin any Palestinian can commit is normalization.
+
+I know that what happened may affect my future career, my relationship with international organizations I’ve worked with before, even my online presence. I have already been kicked out of a couple of online journalism groups.
+
+But I’ve also received a lot of support from Palestinians, ordinary folk, journalists and political activists.
+
+And to those who ask how resolution and peace can ever be reached without “dialogue,” the answer is simple: Peace begins when occupation ends.
+
+Hind Khoudary is a freelance journalist.
 Tags
 
-India
+normalization
+
+collaboration
 
-Kashmir
+occupation
 
-Hindutva
+war crimes
 
-NICE Systems
+international law

combined/texts/1031.txt

@@ -1,144 +1,64 @@
-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.
+No leader can surrender Palestinians’ right to return after 68 years of exile. (Tijen Erol)A friend of mine recently shared an image meant to show solidarity with Palestine. At first glance, I thought it was nice: it depicts a heart that is outlined with the word “Palestine,” is filled with the names of many Palestinian cities and is decorated with the colors of the Palestinian flag.
 
-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.
+Naturally, I tried to find the city of Safad, which is near the birthplace of my grandparents. I couldn’t find it, but I also couldn’t find other nearby cities such as Akka, Haifa or even Nazareth. Then it became clear: none of the Palestinian cities seized by Zionist forces during the 1948 Nakba were included in this Palestine heart.
 
-The answer depends on the extent to which Hamas foresaw what Israel’s response would be to its 7 October Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
+As a descendant of Palestinians from a village in what is now known as Israel, the barrage of Israeli propaganda attempting to bury the history of our existence is not surprising. One can expect no less from a state that was created through the expulsion and subjugation of an existing population.
 
-That in turn begs the question why Hamas did what it did when it did.
+Discrimination against Palestinians is not perpetrated solely by the Israeli state; it is endemic to Israeli society itself. A recent Pew survey indicates that almost half of Israeli Jews believe that Palestinian citizens of Israel should be expelled from the country and 79 percent believe that Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel.
 
-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.
+Yet the heart image, which ignores a key injustice perpetrated against Palestinians, presumably originated from a supporter of Palestine. It is just another picture among millions being shared online, but it serves as a reminder of how the plight of Palestinians dispossessed in 1948 has in many ways been forgotten, even by those who are supportive of the Palestinian cause.
 
-“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.
+A non-negotiable right
 
-“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.”
+The right of return, a cornerstone of the Palestinian struggle, is the principle that Palestinian refugees have an inalienable right to return to their homeland. This includes those who fled or were forced to flee in 1948 as well as in 1967, along with their descendants.
 
-Certainly, the background to the attack bears out Abu Marzouk’s explanation.
+The right of return is also enshrined in international law. The UN General Assembly in December 1948 adopted Resolution 194, which called for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. In June 1967, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 237 calling on Israel to facilitate the return of refugees, thereby including those forced out by Israel’s seizure of land days earlier.
 
-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.
+Israel continues to violate its obligations under international law. It has no intention of correcting or addressing the historic injustices that created the Palestinian refugee problem, and the right of return has been one of the main issues preventing a just settlement of the conflict. In the rare instances that Israel even considers Palestinian statehood, it regards the right of return as out of the question.
 
-The West’s acquiescence with Israel’s dangerous delusion that it could manage its occupation indefinitely has been equally instrumental in the current situation.
+Although the original refugees of the 1948 ethnic cleansing are declining in number, their descendants number more than five million. Even if a fraction exercised their right to return, this could potentially upset the balance of power within the Israeli political system in a dramatic way. Considering that Israelis have long been warned of the “demographic threat” to the “Jewish state,” and that the entire Zionist project relies on maintaining Jewish demographic domination, it is no surprise that they are unwilling to accept the right of return.
 
-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.
+As a result of its entrenched political, economic and military power, Israel has no incentive to accept responsibility for its crimes or make any reparations. On the contrary, the Israeli propaganda machine actively tries to normalize the country’s dark history and its ongoing oppression of Palestinians.
 
-If not now?
+In other words, the expectation is that repeated human rights violations, including ethnic cleansing and dispossession, become accepted as normal if given enough time. This normalization influences the perceptions of international audiences, the Israeli public and even Palestine supporters who have become disheartened by the poor prospects for a fair resolution.
 
-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.
+Game of patience
 
-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.
+The first conference of the Zionist movement took place more than 50 years before 1948; the colonization of Palestine has long been a maneuver of patience, backed by overwhelming violence and international complicity.
 
-That prospect was sharpened by reports that a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia was also in the cards.
+This is still the case today, 68 years after the Nakba. Israel is likely betting that after the first-generation refugees die off, the following generations will gradually forget their claims to historic Palestine.
 
-Every indication was that Israel was successfully managing its occupation.
+In the meantime, the trees planted by the Jewish National Fund will continue to grow and conceal the evidence of Palestinian villages destroyed by Zionists.
 
-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.
+It is imperative that supporters of Palestinian rights never forget the refugees of 1948. Palestine solidarity movements continue to call for the right of return, but for strategic reasons much of their activism focuses on issues such as settlement activity in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Israeli aggression against Gaza.
 
-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.”
+The Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement calls for the boycott of “all of the Israeli companies and institutions that are involved in its violations of international law,” but it acknowledges that the most prominent campaigns target companies that operate in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Campaigns against settlement activity in the so-called Occupied Palestinian Territories are simply more likely to gain broad international support than those calling for the right of return.
 
-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.
+This reality of what powerful nations — and even some activists — will support is a testament to the persistence and effectiveness of Israeli propaganda. Despite uprooting hundreds of thousands of people in 1948, occupying their lands and subjugating those who remained, major world powers view Israel as a legitimate state, a “bastion of democracy.”
 
-In effect, the plan is a formalization of the present reality.
+To them, Palestinian lands captured in 1948 are not perceived as occupied in any way. The “Occupied Palestinian Territories” refer to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and Israel’s official position is that they are “disputed,” not occupied. History is written by the victors here.
 
-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.
+Furthermore, supporters of Israel are notorious for answering valid criticism of state policy with accusations of anti-Semitism. They equate the Palestinian right of return with the denial of Jewish self-determination and this discourages others from speaking out.
 
-Something had to change.
+Remaining steadfast
 
-Months in the making
+The core issue here is that the Zionist founders of Israel expelled the native Palestinian population and seized their lands. Israel’s very foundation rests on occupation and oppression.
 
-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.
+In Lebanon, stateless Palestinians continue to live in overcrowded and underserved refugee camps with few rights, while Israelis — effectively squatters — live comfortably on the lands of these Palestinians’ parents and grandparents, only tens of miles away. Their rightful homes and lands are undoubtedly occupied.
 
-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.
+No peace agreement can ever void this right of return because individual rights cannot be abrogated by any peace deal. Israel arrogantly claims sovereignty over the Palestinian lands that it stole in 1948, and it would like nothing more than to receive official sanction of this claim. Any Israeli willingness to recognize Palestinian statehood would be contingent on that.
 
-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.
+In the meantime, Israel will continue to methodically malnourish, stunt and limit the caloric intake of Palestinians in Gaza and suppress Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the hope that protracted suffering and humiliation will lead them into submission.
 
-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.
+The Palestinian people have remained steadfast in the face of such Israeli tyranny. Sixty-eight years of displacement and repression have not broken their will and resilience.
 
-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.
+But as Israel’s propaganda continues to distract from the truth of its foundation, and when even the supposed chief representative of Palestinians indicates his willingness to cede his claims to his hometown, it becomes more important than ever for Palestinians and their supporters to reaffirm the right of return. Otherwise, the true extent of the occupation of all historic Palestine will be forgotten.
 
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-You don’t have to look back far to see the kind of outsized violence Israel often reaches for.
-
-Lessons from 2014
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.”
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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
-
-Game changer
-
-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.
-
-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.
+Mohamed Mohamed is the Finance, Grants and Development Associate at The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center in Washington, DC.
 Tags
 
-Hamas
-
-7 October
-
-Al Aqsa Storm
-
-Benjamin Netanyahu
+right of return
 
-Bezalel Smotrich
+Palestinian Refugees
 
-Mousa Abu Marzook
+Nakba

combined/texts/1032.txt

@@ -1,36 +1,54 @@
-Rashad al-Hissi has been fishing in the Gaza sea for 60 years.
-
-“We have inherited this profession from our fathers and grandfathers,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
-
-“I have a 12-year-old son, he goes to school. On Thursdays, he comes home early. He joins his siblings in the sea.”
-
-Over the years, al-Hissi has seen fish populations decrease.
-
-With waste treatment out of commission in Gaza, raw sewage is being dumped into the Mediterranean.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-In January 2017, al-Hissi loaned his boat to his cousin Muhammad to fish in the Gaza sea.
-
-An Israeli navy vessel rammed the boat, capsizing it.
-
-The boat was never found and Muhammad is presumed dead.
+In Gaza, the implementation of the Zionist vision takes its most inhuman form.
+
+APA imagesIn a September 2006 article for The Electronic Intifada, I defined the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as an incremental genocide.
+Israel’s present assault on Gaza alas indicates that this policy continues unabated. The term is important since it appropriately locates Israel’s barbaric action — then and now — within a wider historical context.
+This context should be insisted upon, since the Israeli propaganda machine attempts again and again to narrate its policies as out of context and turns the pretext it found for every new wave of destruction into the main justification for another spree of indiscriminate slaughter in the killing fields of Palestine.
+The context
+The Zionist strategy of branding its brutal policies as an ad hoc response to this or that Palestinian action is as old as the Zionist presence in Palestine itself. It was used repeatedly as a justification for implementing the Zionist vision of a future Palestine that has in it very few, if any, native Palestinians.
+The means for achieving this goal changed with the years, but the formula has remained the same: whatever the Zionist vision of a Jewish State might be, it can only materialize without any significant number of Palestinians in it. And nowadays the vision is of an Israel stretching over almost the whole of historic Palestine where millions of Palestinians still live.
+The present genocidal wave has, like all the previous ones, also a more immediate background. It has been born out of an attempt to foil the Palestinian decision to form a unity government that even the United States could not object to.
+The collapse of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s desperate “peace” initiative legitimized the Palestinian appeal to international organizations to stop the occupation. At the same time, Palestinians gained wide international blessing for the cautious attempt represented by the unity government to strategize once again a coordinated policy among the various Palestinian groups and agendas.
+Ever since June 1967, Israel searched for a way to keep the territories it occupied that year without incorporating their indigenous Palestinian population into its rights-bearing citizenry. All the while it participated in a “peace process” charade to cover up or buy time for its unilateral colonization policies on the ground.
+With the decades, Israel differentiated between areas it wished to control directly and those it would manage indirectly, with the aim in the long run of downsizing the Palestinian population to a minimum with, among other means, ethnic cleansing and economic and geographic strangulation.
+The geopolitical location of the West Bank creates the impression in Israel, at least, that it is possible to achieve this without anticipating a third uprising or too much international condemnation.
+The Gaza Strip, due to its unique geopolitical location, did not lend itself that easily to such a strategy. Ever since 1994, and even more so when Ariel Sharon came to power as prime minister in the early 2000s, the strategy there was to ghettoize Gaza and somehow hope that the people there — 1.8 million as of today — would be dropped into eternal oblivion.
+But the Ghetto proved to be rebellious and unwilling to live under conditions of strangulation, isolation, starvation and economic collapse. So resending it to oblivion necessitates the continuation of genocidal policies.
+The pretext
+On 15 May, Israeli forces killed two Palestinian youths in the West Bank town of Beitunia, their cold-blooded slayings by a sniper’s bullet captured on video. Their names — Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir — were added to a long list of such killings in recent months and years.
+The killing of three Israeli teenagers, two of them minors, abducted in the occupied West Bank in June, was perhaps in reprisal for killings of Palestinian children. But for all the depredations of the oppressive occupation, it provided the pretext first and foremost for destroying the delicate unity in the West Bank but also for the implementation of the old dream of wiping out Hamas from Gaza so that the Ghetto could be quiet again.
+Since 1994, even before the rise of Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip, the very particular geopolitical location of the Strip made it clear that any collective punitive action, such as the one inflicted now, could only be an operation of massive killings and destruction. In other words, of a continued genocide.
+This recognition never inhibited the generals who give the orders to bomb the people from the air, the sea and the ground. Downsizing the number of Palestinians all over historic Palestine is still the Zionist vision. In Gaza, its implementation takes its most inhuman form.
+The particular timing of this wave is determined, as in the past, by additional considerations. The domestic social unrest of 2011 is still simmering and for a while there was a public demand to cut military expenditures and move money from the inflated “defense” budget to social services. The army branded this possibility as suicidal.
+There is nothing like a military operation to stifle any voices calling on the government to cut its military expenses.
+Typical hallmarks of the previous stages in this incremental genocide reappear in this wave as well. One can witness again consensual Israeli Jewish support for the massacre of civilians in the Gaza Strip, without one significant voice of dissent. In Tel Aviv, the few who dared to demonstrate against it were beaten by Jewish hooligans, while the police stood by and watched.
+Academia, as always, becomes part of the machinery. The prestigious private university, the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya has established “a civilian headquarters” where students volunteer to serve as mouthpieces in the propaganda campaign abroad.
+The media is loyally recruited, showing no pictures of the human catastrophe Israel has wreaked and informing its public that this time, “the world understands us and is behind us.”
+That statement is valid to a point as the political elites in the West continue to provide the old immunity to the “Jewish state.” However, the media have not provided Israel with quite the level of legitimacy it was seeking for its criminal policies.
+Obvious exceptions included French media, especially France 24 and the BBC, that continue to shamefully parrot Israeli propaganda.
+This is not surprising, since pro-Israel lobby groups continue to work tirelessly to press Israel’s case in France and the rest of Europe as they do in the United States.
+The way forward
+Whether it is burning alive a Palestinian youth from Jerusalem, or the fatal shooting of two others, just for the fun of it in Beitunia, or slaying whole families in Gaza, these are all acts that can only be perpetrated if the victim is dehumanized.
+I will concede that all over the Middle East there are now horrific cases where dehumanization has reaped unimaginable horrors as it does in Gaza today. But there is one crucial difference between these cases and the Israeli brutality: the former are condemned as barbarous and inhuman worldwide, while those committed by Israel are still publicly licensed and approved by the president of the United States, the leaders of the EU and Israel’s other friends in the world.
+The only chance for a successful struggle against Zionism in Palestine is the one based on a human and civil rights agenda that does not differentiate between one violation and the other and yet identifies clearly the victim and the victimizers.
+Those who commit atrocities in the Arab world against oppressed minorities and helpless communities, as well as the Israelis who commit these crimes against the Palestinian people, should all be judged by the same moral and ethical standards. They are all war criminals, though in the case of Palestine they have been at work longer than anyone else.
+It does not really matter what the religious identity is of the people who commit the atrocities or in the name of which religion they purport to speak. Whether they call themselves jihadists, Judaists or Zionists, they should be treated in the same way.
+A world that would stop employing double standards in its dealings with Israel is a world that could be far more effective in its response to war crimes elsewhere in the world.
+Cessation of the incremental genocide in Gaza and the restitution of the basic human and civil rights of Palestinians wherever they are, including the right of return, is the only way to open a new vista for a productive international intervention in the Middle East as a whole.
+The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter.
+Tags
 
-Israeli forces are currently holding more than 40 boats they have confiscated from their owners, according to the Palestinian fishers union in Gaza.
+#GazaUnderAttack
 
-Video by Ruwaida Amer and Sanad Ltefa.
-Tags
+zionism
 
-Rashad al-Hissi
+Gaza Strip
 
-gaza fishermen
+genocide
 
-Gaza seaport
+Israeli academia
 
-Gaza fishing industry
+Israeli media
 
-collective punishment
+media
 
-video
+media bias

combined/texts/1033.txt

@@ -1,68 +1,100 @@
-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.
+Israeli violations of international law, such as its West Bank settlements, have prevented Palestinians from exercising their right to self-determination.
 
-Families should flock to the beach for a well-deserved break.
+ActiveStillsPalestine just passed another signpost on the long road to justice.
 
-Gathering on the seashore with family and friends is a cherished tradition.
+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.
 
-Children should be bursting with excitement the day before a trip to the beach.
+The court has jurisdiction to investigate war crimes perpetrated in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, she added.
 
-They should pack swimming gear, buckets and spades and speakers on which they can hear their favorite tunes.
+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.
 
-Parents should stock up on fruit and other snacks.
+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.
 
-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.
+That decision is expected in the next few months.
 
-As they approach the shore, families should see fishers unloading nets, each filled with a fresh and colorful catch.
+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.
 
-The most delightful part of the day should be breakfast on the beach.
+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 breakfast could consist of creamy hummus and crispy falafel, thyme, olive oil, rice, green olives, warm pita bread and steaming hot tea.
+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.
 
-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.
+The last recognized sovereign of those territories was the Ottoman Empire, which renounced its rights and title in 1923.
 
-Children should spend the morning building castles. They should be allowed to let their imaginations create their own little worlds.
+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.”
 
-Lunch should be a barbecue.
+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.
 
-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.
+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.
 
-Vendors should be offering corn on the cob and candy apples.
+“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.
 
-Isolation
+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.”
 
-The day should continue with animals – particularly camels and horses – visiting the beach.
+Right to self-determination
 
-Some people should be playing volleyball, others riding the surf.
+This position was applauded by Palestinian rights groups.
 
-As night falls, the sound of drums and national songs should fill the air. Adults and children alike should start singing and dancing.
+“The prosecutor’s endorsement of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and permanent sovereignty is very welcome,” Al-Haq’s Jabarin said.
 
-People should be staying on the beach as late as midnight before heading home for a quick shower and a good night’s sleep.
+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.
 
-In July 2024, the joy of summer has been replaced by fear and uncertainty.
+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.
 
-People have lost their enthusiasm for weekend getaways. Instead, the constant threat of violence has caused immense dread.
+She observed that no state party employed the mechanisms of that statute to challenge Palestine’s accession in 2015.
 
-The families who should be unwinding on the beach have been torn apart. Children have been orphaned, parents have lost sons and daughters.
+An inequitable “two-tiered” accession to the court would undermine “the protection and deterrence that accession” to the Rome Statute provides, she said.
 
-Everybody who is still alive is struggling to make ends meet.
+“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.
 
-Too many children in Gaza have been displaced time and again. Laughter has been drowned out by the sounds of a genocidal war.
+International crimes include genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
 
-The sea can still provide a modicum of solace.
+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.
 
-The beach is still a place where people can escape from the confines of their damaged homes or their makeshift tents.
+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.
 
-Any respite is extremely short.
+“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.
 
-The sea does not symbolize freedom in 2024.
+Imminent annexation
 
-Now it serves as a reminder that Gaza is isolated.
+Many of the crimes that Bensouda found in her preliminary examination are ongoing.
 
-Nobody is able to leave at the moment. We are trapped.
+“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.
 
-Eman Alhaj Ali is a writer and translator based in Gaza.
+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.
 Tags
 
-Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
+International Criminal Court
+
+Fatou Bensouda
+
+Shawan Jabarin
+
+Al-Haq
+
+self-determination
+
+Rome Statute
+
+accountability
+
+Impunity
 
-eiGazaDispatches
+war crimes

combined/texts/1034.txt

@@ -1,67 +1,222 @@
-“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
+Israeli Jewish extremists wave Israeli flags amid a night-time curfew in the central city of Lydd.
+
+Picture-Alliance/DPAIsraeli Jewish extremists used instant messaging services to organize armed militias to attack Palestinian citizens of Israel.
+
+Voice messages, texts and other communications indicate they coordinated attacks in cities where Palestinians live in close proximity to Jews – including Haifa, Bat Yam and Tiberias in the north, and Ramla and Lydd – Lod in Hebrew – in the center, to Beersheba in southern Israel.
+
+Settlers from Jewish-only colonies in the occupied West Bank also joined the coordinated attacks, with the apparent knowledge and collusion of Israeli officials.
+
+They communicated via WhatsApp and Telegram, as well as Facebook groups.
+
+In many cases, extremist organizers said they relied on either the active or passive support of Israeli authorities.
+
+Israeli research organizations Fake Reporter and HaBloc intercepted messages from some of those groups and reported what they found to Israeli police as a “ticking time-bomb.”
+
+“It’s painful to know that despite our attempts, very little was actually done,” Fake Reporter said.
+
+“No one in the authorities could claim that they did not know,” HaBloc said.
+
+1/ *שרשור חירום מתעדכן*לאור האירועים תחקירנים שלנו יחד עם  @FakeReporter מנטרים קבוצות אחר קריאות לאלימות והתארגנויות של פורעים. בשרשור הזה נעלה תיעוד בשוטף. אף אחד ברשויות לא יוכל לטעון שלא ידע. מתחילים: קריאה להגיע הערב ב19:30 חמושים באלות ואגרופנים למושבה הגרמנית, י"ם pic.twitter.com/0TR8lci2am— HaBloc | הבלוק הדמוקרטי (@HablocOrg) May 13, 2021
+
+“We are Nazis”
+
+In screenshots from the groups posted by Fake Reporter, members talked about types of weapons and made plans for where to meet up in order to attack Palestinians and burn mosques. They engaged in virulent racism and incitement against Palestinians.
+
+The messages were released in the context of recent attacks by extremist Jewish Israelis on Palestinians, their homes and businesses as Israel escalated its attacks on the occupied West Bank and Gaza over the last week.
+
+“We are no longer Jews today,” one user wrote in a Telegram group titled “People from Holon, Bat Yam and Rishon Lezion go out to bring war.”
+
+“Today we are Nazis.”
+
+These towns are suburbs south of Tel Aviv.
+
+In the last few days, our researchers at Fake Reporter alongside @HablocOrg have been monitoring far-right groups on Whatsapp and Telegram.We saw how civilians are organizing and arming themselves, in order to violently attacks Arab businesses and civilians.Thread >>> pic.twitter.com/Wq6LfdAqgB— פייק ריפורטר | FakeReporter (@FakeReporter) May 13, 2021
+
+Videos posted by HaBloc and apparently filmed on 12 and 13 May show people in or heading to Bat Yam, some chanting “Death to the Arabs.”
+
+14/ איפה המשטרה בבת ים?? קריאות מוות לערבים. עשרות צעירים מוסתים חלקם רעולי פנים עכשיו בבת ים. pic.twitter.com/OVoeQhby0e— HaBloc | הבלוק הדמוקרטי (@HablocOrg) May 13, 2021
+
+10/ כמו אתמול גם הערב בת ים על הפרק. פורעים בדרך. ככה נראית ההתכנסות: pic.twitter.com/hTIN1bWvC8— HaBloc | הבלוק הדמוקרטי (@HablocOrg) May 13, 2021
+
+On 12 May, a large mob of Jewish Israelis dragged a Palestinian out of his car and viciously beat him as the attack was broadcast live on television.
+
+בת ים, הערב: זה לא ניסיון דריסה, זה פחד של הנהג מההמון הקיצוני. לינץ' בנהג ממוצא ערבי, למה? כי הוא ערבי. תוהו ובוהו. pic.twitter.com/o5Z0iLCd5n— אור רביד | Or Ravid (@OrRavid) May 12, 2021
+
+Jewish rioters lynching an Arab man in the city of Bat Yam tonight. Crazy photo by Reuven Castro pic.twitter.com/e08HUWrcbt— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) May 12, 2021
+
+A man was taken out of his car and beaten in Bat Yam for being suspected of being an Arab in what Israeli media is calling a lynch. I have no words. pic.twitter.com/lKjMDsOOFR— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) May 12, 2021
+
+The victim, Said Musa, was severely injured before he was evacuated for medical treatment.
+
+“They asked if I was an Arab, I thought they needed help and I said, ‘Yes, how can I help?’” Musa told an Israeli journalist.
+
+In a WhatsApp group titled “Death to the Arabs in Haifa - War Group,” participants were instructed to bring Israeli flags and to meet at the entrance of the Old City of Acre, masked.
+
+In another WhatsApp group titled “Fucking the Arabs, Afula Branch, Death to the Arabs” with 165 members, one posted a picture of a spear gun.
+
+He also wrote, “molotov cocktails, this is the weapon for today.”
+
+In a video posted in the same group, two masked men, one holding two massive knives, says, “Stabbings in the head, terror today.”
+
+כואב לדעת שעל אף הנסיונות שלנו, מעט מאוד נעשה בנידון. חלקים בתקשורת אף ענו שאין טעם לסקר התארגנות לפני שיש פשע. הפשע הוא גם שלהם - חובה היה להתריע, להרתיע ולעצור את זה לפני. pic.twitter.com/I2FFwWdscV— פייק ריפורטר | FakeReporter (@FakeReporter) May 12, 2021
+
+5/ קריאה להגיע רעולי פנים לבית המשפט בלוד הלילה ב21:00. מתעסקים "אך ורק עם ערבים". pic.twitter.com/zEXckcVtTq— HaBloc | הבלוק הדמוקרטי (@HablocOrg) May 13, 2021
+
+In another message in a group for La Familia members, a person calls for burning a mosque in Lydd.
+
+2/ קריאה בקבוצת לה פמיליה - "סיפתח לערב זה שריפת המסגד בלוד" pic.twitter.com/2vmgPMetQa— HaBloc | הבלוק הדמוקרטי (@HablocOrg) May 13, 2021
+
+La Familia is the notorious fan club of Beitar Jerusalem, the football team partially bought last year by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.
+
+The club’s fans are infamous for their anti-Palestinian rampages, habitually accompanied by chants of “Death to the Arabs.”
+
+Police “will back us up”
+
+Adalah, a group that advocates for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, obtained voice messages and internal communications between Jewish extremists coordinating attacks against Palestinians.
+
+All voice notes posted by Adalah date to 13 May, a night many observers called a pogrom.
+
+“The police won’t do anything to us, they will back us up and turn a blind eye,” says one Israeli in a voice message to other far-right Jewish activists.
+
+“The rules are all off. Everything is on fire,” says one person.
+
+“Head out with guns, head out with God knows what,” says another.
+
+Adalah obtains recordings of internal chats between #Israeli Jewish extremists revealing organized, coordinated efforts to bring armed masses to cities with #Palestinian populations to ‘kill Palestinians’ and ‘break all their bones’. CLICK TO LISTEN: https://t.co/pQSud9xItR pic.twitter.com/wYqfph4Llz— Adalah (@AdalahEnglish) May 15, 2021
+
+“Those guys from Yitzhar, they already arrived, six buses arrived,” someone says in another voice note.
+
+Yitzhar is a settlement built on hundreds of acres of land stolen from Urif and other Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank.
+
+It is home to some of the most violent settlers, who frequently attack Palestinians as well as their livestock, orchards and property.
+
+“Six buses is 380 people, 380 people, everyone with weapons, bro. Everyone with masks,” he adds.
 
-BDS
+“Every one of them, bro, dying to kill Arabs, bro. They want to kill Arabs.”
 
-Gaza
+The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, said that “law enforcement authorities are well-aware of these groups” and “appear to be shielding the Israeli Jewish vigilante and settler groups.”
 
-Operation Cast Lead
+The High-Follow Up Committee, made up of elected representatives, party leaders and community leaders, is the de facto representative body of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
 
-farmers
+Approval by authorities
 
-agriculture
+There is additional evidence that Israeli authorities were well aware of and even supported the premeditated mob violence.
 
-Haidar Eid
+A video circulated by Israeli journalists on 12 May shows deputy mayor of Lydd Yossi Harush telling several prominent lawmakers that hundreds of settlers were on their way from the West Bank to “protect” Jewish homes.
+
+“I would recommend to every Arab resident not to leave their home,” Harush says.
+
+He said settlers were “volunteering” to “assist with security.”
+
+Yossi Arush, acting mayor of Lod, reports on hundreds of armed settlers making their way from the WB to the city and warns: "I recommend to every Arab resident not to leave the house." Yesterday in the presence of Ministers Aryeh Deri, Gila Gamliel, and other MKs pic.twitter.com/gftKFeDLJY— Yehuda Shaul (@YehudaShaul) May 13, 2021
+
+A video obtained by Adalah shows a dozen parked cars with people around them while a man speaks in Hebrew.
+
+“These are people from Judea and Samaria,” he says, referring to the name Israel gives to the occupied West Bank.
+
+“Short-barreled M-16 rifles, whoever wants to come protect the state is welcome,” he says.
+
+“Today we’re breaking all their bones.”
+
+Adalah said it was taking legal action in response to the failure of Israeli authorities to stop these ultranationalist mobs from attacking Palestinians.
+
+Israelis and social media users also posted screenshots of Telegram and WhatsApp messages showing similar incitement and tactics.
+
+הסרטון של המשטרה מתחפשת למליציה רץ עכשיו בקבוצות הכהניסטים שמארגנות התקפות על ערבים. זה מה שהם מבינים מהדברים. אחלה משטרה. @JoshBreiner @bar_peleg @saragusti pic.twitter.com/dZ7mA4PRBV— Achiya Schatz (@schatzah) May 14, 2021
+
+Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said settler groups, including far-right organization Regavim and another called My Israel, were forming armed militias to go to mixed cities inside Israel on 13 May.
+
+1/2 Settler organizations are forming armed militias outside of the West Bank. “My Israel” (Yesh Council front) and Regavim an NGO that works to takeover Palestinian land are asking “armed military veterans, owners of armored vehicles and graduates of combat officers courses” https://t.co/3eMvqtzulR— B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) May 13, 2021
+
+My Israel called on “armed military veterans,” “owners of armored vehicles” and “graduates of combat officers courses” to join forces.
+
+Ultranationalist mobs made good on their threats as they raided cities, destroying Palestinian-owned businesses, marking Palestinian homes and attacking Palestinian citizens in the streets over the last week.
+
+An organized pogrom took place tonight against Arabs in Bat Yam despite the fact they they all learned about Kristallnacht. Today, in my Haaretz article I wrote, "We need to see, what a blatantly racist society we have become." I wish I had been wrong. pic.twitter.com/lSeeFSLsQ7— Louis Fishman لوي فيشمان לואי פישמן (@Istanbultelaviv) May 12, 2021
+
+In Haifa, Jewish settler militias broke into the homes of Arabs and then marked the outside of the homes with red paint so others would know Arabs live there. Arabs in Israel are terrified https://t.co/UGZLrQw3yi— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) May 15, 2021
+
+Muslim cemetery in Lyd vandalized overnight and attempts to set it on fire. https://t.co/0I3VL7bvMd— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) May 14, 2021
+
+Zionist extremists with police protection attacking Palestinian citizens in #Lydda: This is the police that is supposed to “protect” all citizens. Instead they protect the attacks & discrimination against us. It’s because of that we are calling for international protection. pic.twitter.com/PvjFimkRqc— Sami Abou Shahadeh (@ShahadehAbou) May 13, 2021
+
+So this is the situation: Palestinian Jaffa in under attack. People are going home to guard their children. The @IL_police  is seen as part of the attack. The arsonists who burned  2 kids last night were clearly seen preparing for the attack on CCTVs in a highly surveilled area>> https://t.co/TgPqkNbH2c pic.twitter.com/JK1FywtJCt— Asaf Ronel (@AsafRonel) May 15, 2021
+
+Deaths and injuries
+
+Palestinian citizens of Israel have been protesting in the streets in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
+
+There have been reports of Palestinians torching a synagogue in Lydd and attacking Israelis, including police and soldiers.
+
+On Monday, 56-year-old Yigal Yehoshua, a Jewish man, died of a head injury he reportedly received when a brick was thrown at his car during unrest by Palestinians in Lydd the previous Tuesday.
+
+The city’s imam, Sheikh Yusef al-Bazz, reportedly said Yehoshua was attacked by Jewish Israelis who mistook him for an Arab.
+
+It remains unclear who caused Yehoshua’s fatal injury.
+
+The night before Yehoshua was injured, Moussa Hassouna, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was shot dead by Jewish residents in Lydd, who claimed “self-defense,” according to The Times of Israel.
+
+The newspaper said an initial investigation indicated “Hassouna was standing dozens of meters away from the Jewish suspects when he was shot.”
+
+Israeli authorities arrested and then released four Jewish suspects.
+
+Footage appears to show an Israeli Jew assaulted by two Palestinians overnight in Jaffa as he went home. https://t.co/wXGyx7rSRH— Mairav Zonszein מרב זונשיין (@MairavZ) May 16, 2021
+
+And in Jaffa, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy suffered serious burns when his family’s home was firebombed. His 10-year old sister also suffered less serious injuries in the attack.
+
+Security cameras reportedly showed two hooded men in a nearby alleyway before the attack.
+
+Police have arrested an Arab suspect. But according to Haaretz, the children’s father has “a hard time believing that the person who attacked his family was Arab, and that he was misidentified by police.”
+
+This is because the family’s home was decorated with crescents for Ramadan – though the lights on the decorations were not working.
+
+In a 15 May speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel to refrain from violence. But his language reflected the systematic racism of the Israeli state.
+
+“We will not allow our Jewish citizens to be lynched or to live in fear of murderous Arab gangs,” Netanyahu declared, while merely admonishing Jewish citizens not to “take the law into their own hands and attack innocent Arabs, or lynch an innocent Arab.”
+
+Minimizing the scale of Israeli Jewish violence, Netanyahu claimed that “there was one such case.”
+
+Adalah said Netanyahu “continues to emphasize that Israeli police, employing brutal violence against Palestinian citizens, will receive full political backing for their actions.”
+
+Palestinian citizens of Israel are the survivors and their descendants of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias before and after Israel was created in 1948.
+
+Unlike millions of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, they have some civic rights, like the right to vote. But they face entrenched discrimination enshrined in dozens of laws.
+
+“The rule of law has no value as far as Palestinians are concerned” throughout historic Palestine, Adalah added.
+
+B’Tselem stated earlier this year that “Jewish supremacy” is Israel’s “single organizing principle.”
+
+Palestinians from Lydd are asking for international protection against Jewish-Zionist gangs and the Israeli police who protect and join them. Please sign and share. https://t.co/bCUnlrESuY #GazaUnderAttack #SaveSheikhJarrah #Haifa #Lydd— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 17, 2021
+
+As violence continues to escalate, ACRI is responding to the events rapidly unfolding across the country to ensure that human rights are protected /1— ACRI (@acri_online) May 18, 2021
+
+“Palestinian citizens, collectively, are afraid for their lives,” the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel stated Sunday in a call for the international community to intervene to help protect them from “both state and private actors.”
+
+Tamara Nassar is associate editor and Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.
+Tags
 
-PACBI
+May 2021 attack on Gaza
 
-settlement products
+Palestinian citizens of Israel
 
-settlements
+Adalah
 
-Al-Haq
+Lod
 
-Shawan Jabarin
+Lydd
 
-Adie Mormech
+Bat Yam
 
-West Bank
+HaBloc
 
-Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation
+Fake Reporter
 
-United Church of Canada
+Moussa Hassouna
 
-Hamas
+Yusef al-Bazz
 
-Joe Catron
+Yigal Yehoshua
 
-South Africa
+High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel
 
-apartheid
+Death to the Arabs

combined/texts/1035.txt

@@ -1,64 +1,87 @@
-Activists say building new structures in the destroyed village of Kufr Birim is their priority.
-
-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
+Ismail was 14 when he was killed in an Israeli airstrike.
+One day in December 2023, Aysha al-Najjar was listening to the news while her daughter Luna, 15, was bathing.
+
+Her husband, Muhammad, an accountant with the ministry of finance before the genocide, had gone to locate some water, and her son, Ismail, 14, was playing football with relatives.
+
+Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, everything around Aysha lit up, then everything rose up and came crashing down.
+
+Aysha, 37, and her family had moved from the Tal al-Hawa area of Gaza City to the al-Qarara area in Khan Younis in October 2023. They left behind a three-storey house with a front yard that used to be abundant in flowers and trees and a backyard for their two children to play in.
+
+Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign was particularly intense in the early weeks and months, and did not spare anyone, people or animals. Aysha and her family felt the horror, especially at night.
+
+They ate canned food and spent large parts of their days finding firewood for cooking and locating water.
+
+And the bombardment followed them south.
+
+Like all children, Ismail was scared by the bombing. But he tried to be brave, said his mother.
+
+When he heard the bombings, he would move close to his mother, saying: “I’m a big man, mama. Their rockets don’t frighten me. I’m coming close to reassure you.”
+
+“We got close to reassure each other,” Aysha said.
+
+But Israel’s war planes did not spare the two-floor apartment building to which Aysha’s family had moved.
+
+Killing the innocence
+
+On that fateful day in December, Aysha remembered coughing under the rubble with dust on her face, sand in her eyes and the smell of gas in her nose. It was difficult to see or breathe.
+
+She realized the house had been struck, and immediately started worrying about her children. But when she tried to get out from underneath the rubble that had collapsed on top of her, she found it impossible to get free.
+
+She couldn’t feel her legs. She tried her best to move her belly and pelvis and push away the stones around her. She felt pain in her shoulder and saw blood on her hands and clothes. Aysha realized that she would likely only make her injuries worse if she kept trying to move.
+
+She shouted for her husband. She called out to her children, as well as her father and other relatives who were in the building.
 
-Kufr Birim
+The last thing she remembers, she told The Electronic Intifada, was shouting and the cries of her husband and sister, the sounds of an ambulance and of many men moving stones and looking for her and her family.
 
-Palestinian citizens of Israel
+It was the familiar voice of her husband that was her next memory.
 
-Nakba
+Slowly, Aysha woke to find herself in a hospital bed at Nasser hospital, her legs and shoulders bandaged.
 
-right of return
+In the bed next to her, she saw, with some difficulty, her daughter, Luna, “burns on her beautiful face.”
 
-Iqrit
+The news only got worse. A number of relatives had been killed in the airstrike. Her father and brother included. And Ismail.
 
-israeli high court
+“When I gave birth to my beloved son, doctors told me that he had a weak heart and would not live long. I didn’t know that his end would be a martyrdom as beautiful and harsh as this,” Aysha told The Electronic Intifada.
 
-Waad Ghantous
+Treatment abroad
 
-George Ghantous
+Weeks passed. Aysha underwent a number of operations and was beginning to regain some strength. Physically she was getting stronger. Mentally she was adapting.
 
-refugees
+Then, on 21 January, the hospital was surrounded by the Israeli military. For days, doctors and patients could only eat dates.
 
-Haifa
+Then, after some two weeks, the soldiers entered.
+
+The first thing they did, said Aysha, was arrest the medical staff. Then they collected the patients and moved them all into one room to be interrogated.
+
+Aysha said she was questioned for six hours – which “felt like six years” – about things she knew nothing about: are her neighbors Hamas, do any Hamas people live nearby, where are the tunnels.
+
+They even showed her pictures of detainees in Israeli prisons and asked whether they were members of Hamas.
+
+“Those were very difficult hours,” Aysha said.
+
+The fear and stress, she believes today, made her health worse. Indeed, eventually it was decided that she had to leave Gaza to receive proper medical attention.
+
+She waited two months.
+
+In March, Aysha and a sister finally got permission to leave to Egypt. They later moved to Qatar, where they are today.
+
+“I left, but I could never leave behind the image of my son, my father and my brother all being torn into pieces by an Israeli bomb,” she said.
+
+But, she added, she tries to stay strong.
+
+“I’m the mother, daughter and sister of martyrs. This pride is enough for me,” she said over the phone. “I should be strong. I should be an example.”
+
+Unlike the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, Aysha’s family were not refugees from 1948. But, she said, she now knows how they felt, even though, as she put it, what’s “happening now is worse than 1948 and 1967.”
+
+She said that though safe in Qatar, she could not feel any kind of tranquility because of what is happening back home.
+
+“I should have had more children … Ismail is killed but Palestinian women will give birth to many more like him.”
+
+Hanin A. Elholy is a researcher, writer and translator based in Gaza.
+Tags
 
-Israel Land Administration
+Gaza genocide
 
-Gaza
+Gaza war crimes
 
-#GazaUnderAttack
+indiscriminate bombing

combined/texts/1036.txt

@@ -1,44 +1,57 @@
-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.
+Just a few of the thousands of Palestinians who have been rendered homeless by Israel’s punitive house demolitions.  Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 21 October 2006. (MaanImages/Hatem Omar)
+
+If one thing offers a terrifying glimpse of where the experiment in human despair that is Gaza under Israeli siege is leading, it is the news that a Palestinian woman in her sixties — a grandmother — chose last week to strap on a suicide belt and explode herself next to a group of Israeli soldiers invading her refugee camp.
+Despite the “Man bites dog” news value of the story, most of the Israeli media played down the incident. Not surprisingly — it is difficult to portray Fatma al-Najar as a crazed fanatic bent only on the destruction of Israel.
+It is equally difficult not to pause and wonder at the reasons for her suicide mission; according to her family, one of her grandsons was killed by the Israeli army, another is in a wheelchair after his leg had to be amputated, and her house had been demolished.
+Or not to think of the years of trauma she and her family have suffered living in a open-air prison under brutal occupation, and now, since the “disengagement”, the agonising months of grinding poverty, slow starvation, repeated aerial bombardments, and the loss of essentials like water and electricity.
+Or not to ponder at what it must have been like for her to spend every day under a cloud of fear, to be powerless against a largely unseen and malign force, and to never know when death and mutilation might strike her or her loved ones.
+Or not to imagine that she had been longing for the moment when the soldiers who have been destroying her family’s lives might show themselves briefly, coming close enough that she could see and touch them, and wreak her revenge.
+Yet Western observers, and the organisations that should represent the very best of their Enlightenment values, seem incapable of understanding what might drive a grandmother to become a suicide bomber. Their empathy fails them, and so does their humanity.
+Just at the moment Fatma was choosing death and resistance over powerlessness and victimhood — and at a time when Gaza is struggling through one of the most oppressive and ugly periods of Israeli occupation in nearly four decades — Human Rights Watch published its lastest statement on the conflict. It is document that shames the organisation, complacent Western societies and Fatma’s memory.
+In its press release “Civilians Must Not Be Used to Shield Homes Against Military Attacks”, which was widely reported by the international media, HRW lambasts armed Palestinian groups for calling on civilians to surround homes that have been targeted for air strikes by the Israeli military.
+Noting almost as an afterthought that more than 1,500 Palestinians have been made homeless from house demolitions in the past few months, and that 105 houses have been destroyed from the air, the press release denounces Palestinian attempts at nonviolent and collective action to halt the Israel attacks. HRW refers in particular to three incidents.
+On November 3, Hamas appealed to women to surround a mosque in Beit Hanoun where Palestinian men had sought shelter from the Israeli army. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the women, killing two and injuring at least 10.
+And last week on two separate occasions, crowds of supporters gathered around the houses of men accused of being militants by Israel who had received phone messages from the Israeli security forces warning that their families’ homes were about to be bombed.
+In language that would have made George Orwell shudder, one of the world’s leading organisations for the protection of human rights ignored the continuing violation of the Palestinians’ right to security and a roof over their heads and argued instead: “There is no excuse for calling [Palestinian] civilians to the scene of a planned [Israeli] attack. Whether or not the home is a legitimate military target, knowingly asking civilians to stand in harm’s way is unlawful.”
+On HRW’s interpretation, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would be war criminals.
+There is good reason to believe that this reading of international law is wrong, if not Kafkaesque. Popular and peaceful resistance to the oppressive policies of occupying powers and autocratic rulers, in India and South Africa for example, has always been, by its very nature, a risky venture in which civilians are liable to be killed or injured. Responsibility for those deaths must fall on those doing the oppressing, not those resisting, particularly when they are employing nonviolent means. On HRW’s interpretation, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela would be war criminals.
+HRW also applies a series of terrible double standards in this press release.
+It refuses Palestinians the right to protect homes from attack, labelling these civilians “human shields”, even while admitting that most of the homes are not legitimate military targets, and yet it has not said a word about the common practice in Israel of building weapons factories and army bases inside or next to communities, thereby forcing Israeli civilians to become human shields for the army.
+And HRW prefers to highlight a supposed violation of international law by the Palestinians — their choice to act as “human shields” — and to demand that the practice end immediately, while ignoring the very real and continuing violation of international law committed by Israel in undertaking punitive house demolitions against Palestinian families.
+But let us ignore even these important issues and assume that HRW is technically correct that such Palestinian actions do violate international law. Nonetheless, HRW is still failing us and mocking its mandate, because it has lost sight of the three principles that must guide the vision of a human rights organisation: a sense of priorities, proper context and common sense.
+Priorities: Every day HRW has to choose which of the many abuses of international law taking place around the world it highlights. It manages to record only a tiny fraction of them. The assumption of many outsiders may be that it focuses on only the most egregious examples. That would be wrong.
+The simple truth is that the worse a state’s track record on human rights, the easier ride it gets, relatively speaking, from human rights organisations. That is both because, if abuses are repeated often enough, they become so commonplace as to go unremarked, and because, if the abuses are wide-ranging and systematic, only a small number of the offences will be noted.
+Israel, unlike the Palestinians, benefits in both these respects. After four decades of reporting on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians, HRW has covered all of Israel’s many human rights-abusing practices at least once before. The result is that after a while most violations get ignored. Why issue another report on house demolitions or “targeted assassinations”, even though they are occurring all the time? And, how to record the individual violations of tens of thousands of Palestinians’ rights every day at checkpoints? One report on the checkpoints once every few years has to suffice instead.
+In Israel’s case, there is an added reluctance on the part of organisations like HRW to tackle the extent and nature of Israel’s trampling of Palestinian rights. Constant press releases denouncing Israel would provoke accusations, as they do already, that Israel is being singled out — and with it, the implication that anti-Semitism lies behind the special treatment.
+So HRW chooses instead to equivocate. It ignores most Israeli violations and highlights every Palestinian infraction, however minor. This way it makes a pact with the devil: it achieves the balance that protects it from criticism but only by sacrificing the principles of equity and justice.
+Israeli soldiers use a Palestinian man as a human shield to plant an automatic shooting machine in a besieged house, in contravention to the Fourth Geneva Convention, during a military operation in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, 3 November 2006. (MaanImages/Magnus Johansson)
+
+In its press release, for example, HRW treats the recent appeal to Palestinians to exercise their right to protect their neighbours, and to act in soldarity with nonviolent resistance to occupation, as no different from the dozens of known violations committed by the Israeli army of abducting Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect its troops.
+Women vounteering to surround a mosque become the equivalent of the notorious incident in January 2003 when 21-year-old Samer Sharif was handcuffed to the hood of an army Jeep and driven towards stone-throwing youngsters in Nablus as Israeli soldiers fired their guns from behind his head.
+According to HRW’s approach to international law, the two incidents are comparable.
+Context: The actions of Palestinians occur in a context in which all of their rights are already under the control of their occupier, Israel, and can be violated at its whim. This means that it is problematic, from a human rights perspective, to place the weight of culpability on the Palestinians without laying far greater weight at the same time on the situation to which the Palestinians are reacting.
+Here is an example. HRW and other human rights organisations have taken the Palestinians to task for the extrajudicial killings of those suspected of collaborating with the Israeli security forces.
+Although it is blindingly obvious that the lynching of an alleged collaborator is a violation of that person’s fundamental right to life, HRW’s position of simply blaming the Palestinians for this practice raises two critical problems.
+First, it fudges the issue of accountability.
+In the case of a “targeted assassination”, Israel’s version of extrajudicial killing, we have an address to hold accountable: the apparatus of a state in the forms of the Israeli army which carried out the murder and the Israeli politicians who approved it. (These officials are also responsible for the bystanders who are invariably killed along with the target.)
+Palestinians carrying out a lynching are commiting a crime punishable under ordinary domestic law; while the Israeli army carrying out a “targeted assassination” is commiting state terrorism, which must be tried in the court of world opinion
+But unless it can be shown that the lynchings are planned and coordinated at a high level, a human rights organisation cannot apply the same standards by which it judges a state to a crowd of Palestinians, people gripped by anger and the thirst for revenge. The two are not equivalent and cannot be held to account in the same way. Palestinians carrying out a lynching are commiting a crime punishable under ordinary domestic law; while the Israeli army carrying out a “targeted assassination” is commiting state terrorism, which must be tried in the court of world opinion.
+Second, HRW’s position ignores the context in which the lynching takes place.
+The Palestinian resistance to occupation has failed to realise its goals mainly because of Israel’s extensive network of collaborators, individuals who have usually been terrorised by threats to themselves or their family and/or by torture into “co-operating” with Israel’s occupation forces.
+The great majority of planned attacks are foiled because one member of the team is collaborating with Israel. He or she not only sabotages the attack but often also gives Israel the information it needs to kill the leaders of the resistance (as well as bystanders). Collaborators, though common in the West Bank and Gaza, are much despised — and for good reason. They make the goal of national liberation impossible.
+Palestinians have been struggling to find ways to make collaboration less appealing. When the Israeli army is threatening to jail your son, or refusing a permit for your wife to receive the hospital treatment she needs, you may agree to do terrible things. Armed groups and many ordinary Palestinians countenance the lynchings because they are seen as a counterweight to Israel’s own powerful techniques of intimidation — a deterrence, even if a largely unsuccessful one.
+In issuing a report on the extra-judicial killing of Palestinian collaborators, therefore, groups like HRW have a duty to highlight first and with much greater emphasis the responsibility of Israel and its decades-long occupation for the lynchings, as the context in which Palestinians are forced to mimic the barbarity of those oppressing them to stand any chance of defeating them.
+The press release denouncing the Palestinians for choosing collectively and peacefully to resist house demolitions, while not concentrating on the violations committed by Israel in destroying the houses and using military forms of intimidation and punishment against civilians, is a travesty for this very same reason.
+Common sense: And finally human rights organisations must never abandon common sense, the connecting thread of our humanity, when making judgments about where their priorities lie.
+In the past few months Gaza has sunk into a humanitarian disaster engineered by Israel and the international community. What has been HRW’s response? It is worth examining its most recent reports, those on the front page of the Mideast section of its website last week, when the latest press release was issued. Four stories relate to Israel and Palestine.
+Three criticise Palestinian militants and the wider society in various ways: for encouraging the use of “human shields”, for firing home-made rockets into Israel, and for failing to protect women from domestic violence. One report mildly rebukes Israel, urging the government to ensure that the army properly investigates the reasons for the shelling that killed 19 Palestinian inhabitants of Beit Hanoun.
+This shameful imbalance, both in the number of reports being issued against each party and in terms of the failure to hold accountable the side committing the far greater abuses of human rights, has become the HRW’s standard procedure in Israel-Palestine.
+But in its latest release, on human shields, HRW plumbs new depths, stripping Palestinians of the right to organise nonviolent forms of resistance and seek new ways of showing solidarity in the face of illegal occupation. In short, HRW treats the people of Gaza as mere rats in a laboratory — the Israeli army’s view of them — to be experimented on at will.
+HRW’s priorities in Israel-Palestine prove it has lost its moral bearings.
+Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press.
 Related Links
-BY TOPIC: Jimmy Carter
-Palestine Media Watch
+Human Rights Watch still denying Lebanon the right to defend itself, Jonathan Cook (25 September 2006)
+BY TOPIC: Extrajudicial Killings
 Tags
 
-Ethan Bronner
+Human Rights Watch

combined/texts/1037.txt

@@ -1,61 +1,111 @@
-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
+One of many cars destroyed by Israeli settlers during the Huwwara pogrom.
+
+APA imagesBezalel Smotrich is one of the main pillars in the current Israeli government. Although generally described as the finance minister, his work is not confined to curbing inflation.
+
+His broad portfolio gives him partial responsibility for the defense ministry and a major role in administering Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
+
+A far-right extremist, Smotrich has used his new platform to incite violence. Just days after Israeli settlers carried out a pogrom in Huwwara – killing one Palestinian and inflicting huge destruction on homes, businesses and vehicles – Smotrich called for that West Bank village to be “wiped out” by the Israeli state.
+
+That racist statement was denounced internationally. Ned Price, spokesperson for the US State Department, called it “irresponsible” and “repugnant.”
+
+Smotrich is not the only member of the Israeli government who supported the crimes by settlers in Huwwara.
+
+Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, was initially silent after the pogrom. Yet it did not take long before his admiration for the perpetrators became clear.
+
+Ben-Gvir denounced the detention of two settlers accused of taking part in the pogrom.
+
+Members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, from Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party have openly applauded the pogrom.
+
+One such lawmaker Zvika Fogel said, “A closed, burnt Huwwara – that’s what I want to see.”
+
+Limor Son Har-Melech, another Jewish Power elected representative, called the pogrom “the righteous cry of hundreds of Samaria residents.” Israel refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.
+
+The Huwwara pogrom took place during a time of mass protests by Israelis against Benjamin Netanyahu and the government he leads, which has declared a war of sorts on the state’s high court.
+
+An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets in one day of protest this month, part of an ongoing series of demonstrations.
+
+Among those joining the protests have been Yair Lapid, the former prime minister, and Benny Gantz, the former defense minister. Gantz, then heading Israel’s military, oversaw a 2014 attack on Gaza that – in his own words – caused so much destruction that parts of the territory were “returned to the stone ages.”
+
+Lapid, Gantz and other politicians now in opposition are seeking to isolate Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. The opposition has portrayed the violence in Huwwara as an example of the extreme racism that is supposedly at odds with its liberal values.
+
+Abnormal?
+
+From the Palestinian perspective, the Huwwara pogrom is not something abnormal. Rather, it is the logical result of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.
+
+Israeli settlers – colonizers would arguably be a more accurate word – are not an outlaw group in Israel. They are a strategic tool in the implementation of policies pursued by successive Israeli governments.
+
+The objectives of those policies have been to steal land and to expel Palestinians.
+
+What is new is that the most hardline colonizers now occupy a position of immense power. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are both colonizers themselves, living in settlements that are illegal under international law.
+
+The settlers do not act alone. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has pointed to how settlers benefit from cooperation. “The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”
+
+B’Tselem has rejected the notion that the Israeli state has somehow lost control.
+“This is exactly what Israeli control looks like,” the group stated, adding that “the Huwwara pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a longstanding Israeli policy.”
+
+Violence is necessary to achieve the state’s aim of emptying Palestine of its Indigenous population, so that it may be replaced by foreign settlers.
+
+Founded on massacres
+
+Settlers often do not represent official institutions.
+
+They are, therefore, not confined by rules. They are unrestrained in committing crimes against Palestinians.
+
+The Huwwara pogrom is eerily reminiscent of the violence which occurred in the period leading to Israel’s establishment in 1948.
+
+A whole series of massacres were carried by Zionist forces out around that time. The most infamous was the massacre at Deir Yassin, a village in the Jerusalem area.
+
+The April 1948 bloodbath at Deir Yassin placed terror in the hearts of civilians. It was a significant factor in the Nakba, the huge displacement of Palestinians.
+
+Israel is a state founded on massacres.
+
+The current Israeli political dispute is between two camps.
+
+One camp – the hardline settlers epitomized by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – clearly and explicitly expresses the truth of the Zionist colonial project. The other camp also believes in the same strategy of relentless colonial violence against Palestinians but paints itself with a coating of liberal values.
+
+That coating makes the second camp preferable for  Western governments.
+
+Israel’s most prominent “liberals” of the past few decades – Benny Gantz, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni – were all involved in killing Palestinian civilians, collective punishment, the construction and expansion of settlements and other efforts to deny basic rights to Palestinians when they were in power.
+
+Jonathan Ofir, a trenchant anti-Zionist commentator, has put it well: “Israelis and everyone else are right to be shocked by the explicit genocidal nature of Smotrich’s words. But the righteous, liberal and indignant Israelis should take a good look in the mirror, to see how much of Smotrich’s fascistic vein lives in them.”
+
+For more than a year now, there has been a noticeable uptick in Israeli violence in the West Bank. The formation of a new and overtly racist Israeli government, which clearly supports the settlers and encourages more violence against Palestinians, has helped create a certain atmosphere.
+
+That atmosphere is ripe for more depravity on the part of settlers. Nobody would be surprised if the Huwwara pogrom is followed by similar acts of aggression by settlers, who now have greater access to government and feel stronger politically than before.
+
+But there is another story to be told. It is the story of Palestinians, determined to prevent a new Nakba.
+
+The past seven decades have taught Palestinians that the price of resistance is much lower than the price of fear or the price of fleeing.
+
+There has been a noticeable upsurge in resistance activities by Palestinians in recent times. Palestinians are constantly confronting Israel’s forces of occupation.
+
+The coming months and years will undoubtedly be painful. We are witnessing an increase in the level of terror practiced by the Israeli colonizers.
+
+But this period also carries many opportunities for a new phase in the Palestinian struggle against the colonizers.
+
+Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian writer, activist and refugee from Ramle.
+Tags
+
+Bezalel Smotrich
+
+Jewish Power
+
+Zvika Fogel
+
+Itamar Ben-Gvir
+
+Limor Son Har-Melech
+
+Yair Lapid
+
+Benny Gantz
+
+B'Tselem
+
+Ehud Barak
+
+Ehud Olmert
+
+Tzipi Livni
+
+Jonathan Ofir

combined/texts/1038.txt

@@ -1,93 +1,121 @@
-You are here
+The relatives of slain Palestinians whose bodies are withheld by Israel call for the transfer of their loved ones’ remains at a protest in front of an Israeli checkpoint in Bethlehem on 22 March.
 
-The Electronic Intifada
-2 June 2020
+ActiveStillsMother’s Day has taken on a new dimension for Ibtisam al-Aghwani.
 
-A Palestinian farmer harvests wheat at a field adjacent to the boundary with Israel, Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 20 May.
+On it, she feels a “great sense of responsibility” towards her son Louay. “He always gave me flowers and a big hug on that day,” she said. “Now I want to have the chance to put flowers on his grave.”
 
-APA imagesFour Palestinians, including a child, were shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces during May.
+Ibtisam does not know precisely what happened to her son.
 
-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.
+In February 2008, it was reported that Louay and another Palestinian fighter had carried out a suicide bombing in Dimona, a city in present-day Israel.
 
-Another boy, 16, was shot in the thigh during the raid, breaking his leg.
+Israeli forces shot dead one of the fighters, reportedly after his explosives belt had failed to detonate. One Israeli citizen was killed in the bombing.
 
-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.
+Doubts were quickly cast on whether Louay was involved in that incident. On the following day, Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing.
 
-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.
+The men who carried out the bombing were, according to Hamas, from Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
 
-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.
+Louay, on the other hand, had grown up in Gaza City. He was not affiliated to Hamas but to its rival Fatah and that party’s armed wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
 
-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.
+“I didn’t know whether to believe the news or not,” his mother, Ibtisam, said by telephone. “But I told his father that as long as we don’t see his body or his place of burial, I won’t believe that he has died.”
 
-Israeli forces claimed they suspected Hallaq of carrying a “suspicious object” when they chased him and gunned him down, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
+Some press reports indicated that Louay had crossed from Gaza into Egypt and been arrested there.
 
-Palestinian killed outside hospital
+Ibtisam traveled to Egypt, contacting everyone that might be able to help her. For four years, she searched for any information that could lead to her son’s whereabouts.
 
-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.
+Eventually, an official at the International Committee of the Red Cross told her in 2012 that Louay was buried in one of Israel’s “cemeteries of numbers.”
 
-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.
+These are anonymous graveyards – designated as closed military zones – where Israel buries people it describes as “enemy combatants.” The people are identified only by numbers etched on metal plates.
 
-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.
+It is impossible to know the precise number of bodies buried in these cemeteries. According to the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, there are at least 268 Palestinians in those cemeteries. That figure does not include 19 Palestinians who were killed during the 2014 attack on Gaza and whose bodies have not yet been returned to their families.
 
-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.
+The Israeli military has stated that there are 123 Palestinians buried in those cemeteries. The statement was made at a hearing of the Israeli high court in March this year.
 
-The slain man’s family said that Abu Kaf “was killed in cold blood because he’s an Arab.”
+The hearing followed a lawsuit taken by the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center on behalf of the families of more than 100 Palestinian fighters. The families are demanding that Israel disclose the burial places of the fighters, identify them through DNA testing and return their bodies for proper burial.
 
-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.
+In March, the high court ordered that a process must begin within three months, whereby the Israeli military sets about identifying all the bodies of those buried in these cemeteries.
 
-Coronavirus
+“Died in my arms”
 
-Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip recorded its first – and so far only – death from the coronavirus during May.
+Mufid Naalwa from Tulkarm in the West Bank has been searching for his brother, Kamal, for almost 34 years.
 
-Fadila Muhammad Abu Raida, 77, died while in isolation at a field hospital on the Rafah crossing at Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
+“Thirty-four years is a very long time,” said Mufid. “But we wouldn’t forget him in 100 years. I always tell my children about him, that he was brave and fought for justice and freedom, so that his memory will live on among them when I die.”
 
-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.
+Kamal was in his mid-twenties when he became a fighter with the Palestine Liberation Organization. During the 1980s, he resisted Israel’s invasion of Lebanon.
 
-Four patients in the West Bank have died from the coronavirus.
+In August 1983, Kamal was killed by the Israeli military in the small Lebanese town of al-Mukhtara.
 
-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.
-ActiveStills
+“He died in my arms,” said his friend and comrade Hamid Ali Barho.
+
+Barho had been in jail before his comrade was killed. He was arrested again after the killing and held at Ansar, a detention center in southern Lebanon.
+
+Three months later, he was among 5,000 prisoners released as part of an exchange deal. The prisoners were released in return for the PLO handing over six Israeli soldiers that it had captured.
+
+Barho learned through the Red Cross that Kamal – whom he had known by the nom de guerre Abu Ali – had been buried in a “cemetery of numbers.”
+
+Both men had made a pledge. If one was killed, the other would inform the dead man’s family about what had happened.
+
+Barho now lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
+He was allowed to move back to Palestine following the Oslo accords in the 1990s.
+
+He did not have contact details for Kamal’s family at the time of his return to Palestine. “Finding the family was extremely difficult,” Barho said. “But giving up was not an option.”
+
+Kamal’s parents were already dead by the time Barho had succeeded in making contact with the family. Kamal’s whereabouts remained a mystery to his parents when they died.
+
+Bargaining chip?
+
+As well as burying Palestinians in unnamed graves, Israel has held many bodies in morgues for long periods.
+
+After a Palestinian uprising began in October 2015, Israel delayed handing over the corpses of those killed by its troops. Around 140 corpses were kept in morgues, as a result.
+
+The vast majority were eventually released to their families. Yet Israel still retains the corpses of eight Palestinians, four of whom are from Jerusalem.
+
+The eight bodies are those of Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour, Muhammad al-Faqih, Muhammad Tarayra, Rami Awartani, Misbah Abu Sbeih, Fadi Qunbar, Ibrahim Matar and Siham al-Nimir.
+
+In January this year, the Israeli government decided to transfer the bodies held in morgues to the “cemeteries of numbers.”
+
+It was suggested that the bodies could be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations aimed at securing the return of Israeli soldiers or their corpses supposedly held by Hamas in Gaza.
+
+Israel’s high court issued an injunction against such a move in March, however. The court ordered the Israeli military to provide a justification within 45 days for its decision to retain Palestinian corpses.
+
+“We never count on Israeli courts to give us justice,” said Azhar Abu Srour, who is waiting for Israel to hand over the body of her son Abd al-Hamid. “But I was obviously relieved that they did not transfer my son’s body to the cemeteries of numbers. The fact that Israel is allowed to imprison our sons even after their deaths is a crime in and of itself.”
+
+Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour, a resident of Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, died in April 2016, reportedly from wounds sustained while carrying out an attack on a bus in Jerusalem.
+
+Azhar is campaigning for the release of all Palestinian bodies to their families. She is planning to continue campaigning even after her own son’s body is returned.
+
+“I cannot begin to imagine how the families whose sons’ bodies have been held in the cemeteries of numbers for decades feel,” she said. “But it is our duty – as mothers of martyrs and as Palestinians – to fight for our right to bury our sons in their land and among their loved ones.”
+
+Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. Blog: budourhassan.wordpress.com
 Tags
 
-month in pictures
+Cemetery of Numbers
+
+Ibtisam al-Aghwani
+
+Louay al-Aghwani
+
+Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center
+
+Mufid Naalwa
+
+Kamal Naalwa
+
+Hamid Ali Barho
+
+Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour
+
+Muhammad al-Faqih
+
+Muhammad Nasir Mahmoud Khalil al-Tarayra
+
+Rami Awartani
+
+Misbah Abu Sbeih
+
+Fadi Ahmad Hamdan al-Qunbar
+
+Ibrahim Matar
 
-photojournalism
+Siham al-Nimir
 
-photostory
+Azhar Abu Srour

combined/texts/1039.txt

@@ -1,36 +1,106 @@
-A narrow alley in the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
-
-ReutersJust under half of Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon are aged under 25. One of the most striking features of any visit to the country’s Palestinian refugee camps is the visibly high number of children among the population. Accordingly, one of the greatest medical needs within the camps is for comprehensive and effective obstetrical care.
-Yet this is complicated by Lebanese labor laws, which bar Palestinians from working in professions that require syndicate membership, including both medicine and midwifery. Palestinians in the camps are therefore reliant on receiving these services from Lebanese health professionals, most of whom work in the national health system. That system is in turn unavailable to many Palestinians because as non-citizens, they are not entitled to government assistance with the high costs of medical care.
-In Lebanon last month, I accompanied midwife Mariam and nurse Lamis on an ante-natal home visit within the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein al-Hilweh, near the city of Sidon. Mariam and Lamis’ backgrounds reflect Lebanon’s complex social and political situation; like most midwives in the country, Mariam is Lebanese. Lamis, meanwhile, is a Palestinian, born in Lebanon to parents who had fled their hometown of Acre in 1948.
-Her family have not been able to return and are now dispersed across Lebanon and Jordan. Yet unlike most Palestinians in Lebanon, Lamis does not live in one of the refugee camps and explained to me that she had not spent much time inside them until her job required her to do so. As a Palestinian, she cannot work as a midwife, but she has been able to qualify as a nurse. Indeed, it has conventionally been easier for Palestinians to train as nurses rather than as midwives in Lebanon, partly because of the lower costs; Palestinian nurses have therefore always worked inside the camps.
-Changes to labor law
-Yet it was not until very recently that a change in the policy of the Lebanese order of nurses allowed Palestinians to practice nursing within the national health system. They have now have gained the right — at least in theory — to work in national hospitals under regular contracts.
-Lamis and Mariam drove me to Ein al-Hilweh, telling me the background to their work there. Their words painted a vivid picture of the many challenges that the camps pose to health professionals; poverty and systemic discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon mean that there is a great need for their services. The fact that this particular camp has been frequently blighted by political violence and fighting only exacerbates the problems.
-As we drove through one the main streets, Lamis told me, “This street is called the street of death.” It was nearly destroyed during the civil war, and many families there have lost relatives to the fighting.
-After parking the car in one of Ein al-Hilweh’s makeshift car parks we made the short walk to the home we were visiting. We were going to see Fatima, a 42-year-old Palestinian woman 34 weeks into her first pregnancy. Mariam had been visiting Fatima since the early stages of her pregnancy and had established a strong relationship with her.
-I was looking forward to meeting Fatima, but we had to get there first — and reaching Fatima’s flat was itself indicative of the daily difficulties of life in Ein al-Hilweh. As Lebanese law prohibits Palestinian camps from expanding outwards, residents are often forced to build homes on top of one another in order to accommodate the growing population.
-Housing restrictions
-Fatima’s home had been built on top of a second-story flat, and could only be accessed by climbing up a set of shaky steps — so shaky, in fact, that only one person could be on them at a time. As Mariam, Lamis and I teased each other about who was the most nervous, and joked about our unsuitable shoes, I tried not to think about a heavily pregnant woman making that trip on a daily basis, or about the fact that she would soon be doing it while carrying a newborn baby.
-Fatima was evidently pleased to see Mariam and welcomed me with typical Palestinian hospitality. She was very close to her due date and was having a difficult pregnancy, suffering from ongoing nausea and sleeplessness. The calm confidence with which Mariam talked to her was both inspiring and reassuring to see, with Fatima clearly very comfortable discussing her concerns with the midwife. Towards the end of our visit, Fatima’s neighbor, Aziza, came in to ask if she was feeling better. I continued to learn more about the multi-layered difficulties of life there as Aziza took me into her own home and told me about her situation.
-Her husband had spent many years in prison and was only released to die at home when he became very ill. Aziza is now the sole carer for her children, and to add to the pressure she recently took in a family of Palestinian refugees from Syria. She showed me around a small room in which nine people are now living, with an adjoining kitchen. It was a cold day but neither Aziza nor Fatima had any heating in their homes; Aziza was sitting close to the stove to stay warm.
-Accompanying Mariam and Lamis on this home visit opened my eyes to the far-reaching impact of their work. Fatima is clearly benefiting from Mariam’s consistent support and advice, but the positive effects do not stop there. While both Mariam and Lamis have lived in Lebanon their whole lives, neither had previously spent time inside the Palestinian camps and they both admitted that they were initially anxious and even scared at the thought of it.
-After countless home visits, Mariam and Lamis are now well-integrated into life inside Ein al-Hilweh and thoroughly familiar with the camp. Lamis even told me that she goes there to do her shopping, having discovered some gems in the camp markets.
-Fatima is expected to give birth to a baby girl next week. Mariam will continue to make post-natal home visits to Fatima in the coming months to monitor both her and the baby’s health, a relationship that will endure despite Lebanon shutting Palestinians out of the system.
-Some names in this article have been changed. A version of this article was first published by New Matilda.
-Anne Irfan holds a master’s degree in Middle Eastern history and currently works for the nongovernmental organization Medical Aid for Palestinians.
+New regulations add another hoop Palestinians must jump through to secure their right to live in Jerusalem.
+
+APA imagesEarlier this year, new regulations made it mandatory for all residents in Jerusalem with temporary family unification permits to obtain Israeli medical insurance.
+
+The law, which came into effect on 1 August, will cost those affected a monthly fee in addition to a large backdated one-time charge.
+
+It has caused an angry uproar among Jerusalem’s Palestinians, who see it as yet another attempt by Israeli authorities to target their community and make their precarious existence in the city even more challenging.
+
+For a start, the law solely affects the thousands of Palestinians with green West Bank ID cards, who are only able to enter Jerusalem with Israeli permits, married to those who hold the blue ID cards and are permanent residents of the city. Permanent resident status was imposed on the Palestinian population after Israel occupied the eastern half of Jerusalem, and eventually annexed it – in violation of international law – to the territory on which the state was declared in 1948.
+
+Green ID card holders already live in the city under difficult conditions, constantly fearing that their permission to stay in the city – and therefore with their families – will be revoked, as Israel has revoked the residency rights of at least 14,000 Palestinians since 1967.
+
+Every year, these people have to prove to the satisfaction of bureaucrats at Israel’s interior ministry that their “center of life” is Jerusalem. It is not enough for them, in other words, to be married to Jerusalem ID holders to hold rights in the city. Rather, they must constantly prove that they reside in the city; that they pay bills in the city, including the Arnona or property tax; that they work in the city; that their children go to school there.
+
+And it doesn’t stop there. Spouses and children must also produce proof that they are registered with a medical insurance company and that their spouse works in the city. If the family falls short in any of these demands, the annual visit to the Israeli interior ministry for permit renewal could very well end up with a stamp of rejection.
+
+Back charge
+
+Enter the new regulations. The immediate problem faced by many was simply that they weren’t aware of the new rules. Insurance companies say they sent letters to the Israeli residency holders of each affected family, addressed to the spouse with the residency permit.
+
+But, said Nasrat Dakwar, an attorney for the Society of St. Yves Catholic Center for Human Rights, while the letters were sent, many weren’t received.
+
+Then there is the charge. The letters – whether received or not – informed the partners of blue ID card holders that they would have 60 days from 1 August to pay a back charge of NIS 7,695 (approximately $2,000), plus a new monthly fee of NIS 285 ($75) in order to be registered for full medical insurance.
+
+There was no explanation as to why the huge back charge was imposed, nor were recipients fully informed that this payment was mandatory.
+
+It will certainly be difficult for many to pay. According to a 2015 study by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a staggering 75 percent of Palestinians in Jerusalem live in poverty. Israel’s National Insurance Institute considers an individual below the poverty line if they make less than $792 a month.
+
+Rana, from the Ramallah-area village of Beitin in the West Bank, has been married for 15 years to a Jerusalemite. She only found out about the new medical insurance regulations from a friend, she said, and did not receive anything in the mail.
+
+“It’s a financial burden of course,” the mother of four said. “I don’t know how people will pay. We are even paying in installments. But we have no choice.”
+
+She really has no choice. Dakwar says not only has it become mandatory for all Palestinians with residency permits to be registered with medical insurance companies, but they will be signed up whether they do so themselves or not.
+
+Should people miss the 60-day cut-off date for payment, Israeli medical companies will still register their names without their knowledge. When the unknowing “client” eventually finds out, the debts have already piled up.
+
+“What’s worse, if you finally have the means to pay the original NIS 7,695 a month or two after the cut-off date, you will have to pay interest for the delay and also have to wait for an additional two months for the actual medical services to start,” Dakwar said.
+
+“They keep you in a loop of debt without services, which is a huge predicament for many.”
+
+Back charges
+
+The second catch is that the law differs for Palestinians with West Bank IDs who are married to Jerusalem’s permanent residents, like Rana, and those whose spouses are Israeli citizens. Most notably, the latter group is only made to pay $450 in back charges.
+
+“Israel has something called a ‘gradual procedure’ for those wishing to obtain Israeli residency in Jerusalem or Israel. For those who marry Jerusalem residents, this period is 27 months from the time the family reunification application is accepted by the Israeli interior ministry; these applicants receive what is called a B1 permit. For persons who marry an Israeli citizen, the waiting period is only six months,” explained Dakwar.
+
+That explains the discrepancy between spouses of permanent Jerusalem residents, whose back charge was calculated at NIS 285 multiplied by 27, and Israeli citizens, who are only being made to pay the equivalent of six months’ insurance payment.
+
+In 2003, however, the Israeli parliament passed a constantly renewed temporary order freezing all unification rights for Palestinians, making it impossible for them to obtain Jerusalem IDs or Israeli citizenship. Thus, the 27 months are irrelevant in terms of obtaining permanent residency.
+
+The Society of St. Yves is appealing this provision of the law, which lawyers are calling discriminatory, in the Israeli high court.
+
+The law is not only biased against permanent residents of Jerusalem, says Dakwar, but is also unfair since no medical services were received during this period. “Basically you are retroactively paying for 27 months of medical insurance you never received,” Dakwar said.
+
+Attorney Mohammad Abbassi from the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center says there is another problem with the new law.
+
+“Most permanent residents have already privately signed up with medical insurance companies and pay a monthly fee,” he explained. “The new law does not consider the amounts already paid over the months or years they have been members. In reality, many people are paying double for a certain amount of time.”
+
+This is true for Rana, who has been a client with the Israeli Meuhedet health services for three years and has paid monthly fees for the duration. What’s more, she is up for a temporary Jerusalem ID card this December because her family reunification application was accepted before 2002, a stipulation only recently introduced by the Israeli interior ministry.
+
+She, however, paid the $2,000, saying she didn’t want to risk her status in Jerusalem, including the chance Israel would cancel her family reunification process altogether.
+
+Allowing only the right type
+
+While both Dakwar and Abbassi say the new medical insurance regulations have nothing to do with the family reunification process, Rana’s fears are not unfounded. Israel has repeatedly withdrawn family reunification permits from Palestinians in Jerusalem for a slew of reasons, such as having a family member involved in attacks on Israelis.
+
+And some companies appear to be preying on these fears. Dakwar said unsigned flyers were distributed in East Jerusalem warning people that their family reunification processes would be disrupted if they didn’t pay immediately.
+
+“There was no name at the bottom of the flyers, but we all know who it was,” he said, referring to Israeli medical insurance companies. “It was sheer intimidation.”
+
+He, and Abbassi, believe the motive behind the law is purely monetary.
+
+“They want to make money and by making it mandatory, they keep it flowing,” Dakwar pointed out.
+
+“The idea [of medical insurance for residents] is a good one in general,” he said. “It is the execution that is so wrong.”
+
+If Rana is finally granted a temporary Jerusalem ID – valid for two years before a review is conducted to decide whether she can be granted permanent residency – the $2,000 she paid will not be returned. This is another complaint Dakwar says St. Yves has taken up with the Israeli health ministry.
+
+But Rana insists there is more to the law than simply an attempt to secure more revenue.
+
+“Israel wants a certain type of Palestinian in Jerusalem and this is one way to achieve this goal. The Israelis want those who can afford to financially feed into the occupation and then remain as unobtrusive as possible so they don’t sabotage their status in the city.”
+
+Rana opted not to use her last name because of her upcoming interview at the Israeli interior ministry. Her sentiments mirror thousands of others who keep a low profile in the city just so they are not kicked out of their homes.
+
+Israel’s plan, however, is not foolproof either. People will pay the onerous medical insurance fees, they will pay their Arnona taxes and high rents and endure the tough Israeli measures exclusive to the eastern sector of the city.
+
+They do so to prove something else: Jerusalem is their home and they will not leave.
+
+Joharah Baker is a freelance writer who has worked with Palestinian, regional and international media. She is also a translator for a number of Palestinian organizations.
 Tags
 
-Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
+Jerusalem
+
+family unification
 
-refugees
+Nasrat Dakwar
 
-Lebanon
+Society of St. Yves Catholic Center for Human Rights
 
-Ein al-Hilwe
+medical insurance
 
-palestinian women
+Jerusalem residency
 
-women's health
+Mohammad Abbassi
 
-health
+Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center

combined/texts/104.txt

@@ -1,68 +1,32 @@
-Even before the establishment of Israel, the Zionist Yishuv worked tirelessly to cultivate a certain image for itself. Civilized, democratic, inventive, and above all, moral. This is why the claim of the moral superiority of the Zionist militias, and later the IDF, is central in the narrative of the Israeli state’s foundation.
-Similar to other elements of this narrative, such as depicting the Zionist settlers as outnumbered underdogs facing an Arab goliath, this talking point becomes impossible to argue when presented with a factual historical record. As Shlaim notes, especially when it comes to the history of the 1948 war that:
-
-“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.”
-
-Therefore, much of the written “history” of the 1948 war is bare-faced propaganda with little basis in reality. This becomes exceedingly clear when it turns out that, for example, Israeli military forces outnumbered and outgunned the entirety of the Arab armies in the 1948 war, which is the complete opposite of the popular narrative of the scrappy Zionist underdog, persisting against the odds.
-A central aspect of the claims to the IDF’s morality is the concept of the “purity of arms”. Shlaim continues:
-
-“Of particular relevance here is the precept of tohar haneshek, or the “purity of arms,” which posits that weapons remain pure as long as they are used only for defensive purposes. This popular-heroic-moralistic version of the 1948 war is the one that is taught in Israeli schools and used extensively in the quest for legitimacy abroad. It is a prime example of the use of a nationalist version of history in the process of nation building.”
-
-Needless to say, these claims about the IDF use of weapons only for self-defense have no bearing on reality.
-Let us take a brief look at the conduct of the IDF and its predecessors over the years, to show just how baseless this talking point. Naturally, this is by no means an exhaustive list, otherwise this article would be hundreds of pages long.
-
-If the purity of arms dictates that weapons can only be used in defense, I find this difficult to reconcile with the Zionist assault and depopulation of approximately 600 Palestinian villages during the Nakba. I know what you are thinking, perhaps these villages were simply the battlefield and their destruction was a byproduct of the war?
-While this claim is put forward by many advocates of Israel, it has no evidence to support it. The evidence actually points to the purposeful ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to create a demographically viable Jewish ethnocracy, which went far outside the proposed borders of the UN partition plan .
-Deir Yassin is probably one of the better-known examples of Zionist war crimes during the Nakba.
-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 here 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]
-It is important to note that this massacre was carried out before the 1948 war. It posed no threat and was not part of any military action. More recently, Zionist revisionists have tried to frame the massacre as a battle because the village guards put up resistance to the invading militias. In typical Zionist fashion, I’m certain that even had the villagers lain on the ground and died without resistance, they would have found a way to blame them for their deaths anyway.
-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.
-But Deir Yassin is far from the only example. Al Dawayma was a Palestinian village that lay west of Al-Khalil (Hebron). According to Haganah records, the village was considered “Very friendly”. Meaning it had not host or participated in any attacks against the Yishuv. This, like Deir Yassin, did not spare them the brutality of the Zionist militias.
-On October 8th 1948, the village was occupied by Battalion 89 of Brigade Eight, who committed some depraved acts upon the villagers. 20 armored cars invaded the village while soldiers attacked from another flank. The village guards couldn’t even respond, and the village fell with very little resistance.
-The soldiers got out of their vehicles and started indiscriminately shooting villagers to force a panic and hurried depopulation of the village. Hundreds were killed, many of which were women and children. Villagers attempted to seek refuge in mosques and a close by shrine were shot by the dozens. Acts of barbarity were also reported by Zionist troops:
-[Warning:  Explicit descriptions of torture and violence. Click here to skip]
-
-Babies skulls cracked open, women raped and burned alive in houses, villagers stabbed to death.
-
-[End of explicit descriptions of torture and violence]
-The village posed no threat, and was merely in the way of the expanding Jewish state that necessitated a Jewish demographic majority. So, it had to be eradicated.
-
-Despite how often this accusation is hurled at Palestinians, there is actually scant evidence to support it. However, 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 investigations into alleged 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. 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 find it difficult to imagine any weapon or soldier remaining “pure” after using a child as a human shield .
-
-Arbitrary arrest and standing trial in a military court is a staple of daily life for Palestinians. This also applies to Palestinian children who are not spared this blatantly illegal practice. Not only were children abducted from their homes in the middle of the night, most were tortured or abused in one way or another.
-According to Defense of Children and based on 739 testimonies of arrested children, approximately 74% of them experienced physical violence following their arrest. 95% had their hands tied, 86% were blindfolded, 49% were taken from their homes in the middle of the night. 64% faced verbal abuse, humiliation or intimidation. 74% were not informed of their rights. 96% were interrogated without the presence of a family member. 20% were subjected to stress positions, and 49% were forced under duress to sign documents in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children do not speak or understand.
-
-The destruction of non-military infrastructure and incurring massive losses in civilians is a deliberate policy which 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 i 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, and preemptively justifies their bombardment with accusations that Palestinians are using these civilians as human shields, which there is no evidence of.
-
-The execution of captured prisoners of war by the IDF has been documented, Prior writes that:
-
-“The Israeli daily Ma’ariv (2 August 1995) exposed the killing of some 140 Egyptian prisoners of war, including forty-nine Egyptian workers in 1956 by the elite paratroop unit 890, on the orders of Rafael Eitan, who later became the IDF Chief-of-Staff, subsequently founded the Tzomet party and now serves as Minister of Agriculture and Environment Quality in the Netanyahu government. Israel’s ‘purity of arms’ culture was further rocked by the revelation of former Labour MK, Michael Ben-Zohar, that he had witnessed the fatal stabbing of three Egyptian PoWs by two Israeli chefs during the 1967 June War. Military historian and also former MK, Meir Pa’il knew of many instances in which soldiers had killed PoWs or Arab civilians. In response to these revelations Prime Minister Rabin regretted that ‘things have been said so far. I won’t add anything to this’“
-
-I don’t know about you, but I personally find that torturing children, taking civilians as human shields, massacring hundreds of defenseless villagers and executing prisoners of war does not sound very “pure” to me. And if you consider all of these atrocities to be committed under the guise of “defense” then we have very different definitions of the word.
-At the end of the day, the IDF is an army, and like other armies it is there to commit violence. The difference is that other armies are acknowledged as such, while the IDF baselessly claims an elevated moral position for itself. But how does the IDF act when such atrocities come to light? Surely if it is such a moral army, then it would punish the perpetrators of these acts.
-Predictably, this is also an area where the IDF fails miserably to live up to its desired image.
-The first instinct of the IDF in such circumstances is to deny the existence of the event, or even try and blame it on the Palestinians. They frame the event as “faked” or part of Pallywood . Only after the overwhelming evidence of these atrocities becomes viral and widespread, do the IDF admit that it was caused by them, and promise to investigate. As usual, these investigations are shams that are designed to shield the IDF from ICC prosecution, rather than seeking actual justice for its victims.
-The case of Razan al Najjar is emblematic of this operational mode. She was a volunteer nurse who was shot tending to the wounded during the Gaza protests of 2018, even though she posed no danger.  The IDF began its usual mantra, blamed Hamas for her death, and even released an edited video to try and defame Al-Najjar and make it seem that she was being used as a human shield. This backfired when the full video was released that made no such claim. The whole issue was buried under the IDF’s “internal investigation” routine.
-But even in the extremely rare cases where the investigations lead to a trial, and in the infinitesimally rarer cases it actually finds a soldier to be guilty, the “punishments” are rather laughable. For example, the commander found to be responsible for the Kufr Qassim massacre where 49 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood was fined 10 measly pennies for giving the order to open fire on civilians. His accomplices were sentenced to very light jail time, but were all pardoned and set free within a year. So even when these insulting sentences are given, it’s rare for an Israeli soldier to actually serve their full sentence.
-Ultimately, the goal of propaganda is not to paint an accurate image of reality. The most effective variants of it is short, easy to remember, and corresponds to your worldview and biases. This is the case for all Israeli propaganda, much of which was considered the conventional wisdom when it came to the question of Palestine. However, thanks to the efforts of scholars and historians from all over the world, these myths and talking points no longer hold the sway they used to. This is not lost on advocates of Israel, which is why they have moved to try and censor and stifle Palestinian voices through legislation. It is up to us to make sure that Palestinian voices are heard and centered and let no Israeli myth pass unchallenged.
+Nearly 80 years before the Holocaust, a group which came to be known as the “Bilu pioneers” came to settle in Palestine. It was comprised of primarily Russian Jewish settlers who viewed their mission in Palestine as a pioneering one towards “the physical upbuilding of the land as contributing toward both a revitalization of the Jewish nation and the reemergence of Jewish masculinity and virility”. While this group predated Zionism as a political movement as we understand it today, it would not be unreasonable to call it proto-Zionist.
+Unsurprisingly, and like all colonialist movements at the time, they had the same condescending and racist attitude towards the Palestinians living there. In a rare moment of reflection, one of the group leaders, Chaim Chissin, wrote the following entry in his diary, after failing to grow any crops:
+
+“Whenever the Arabs told us that it was already too late to sow barley, or that the land was unsuited for it, we never hesitated to tell the ‘barbarians,’ with considerable self assurance, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’ll plow deep, we’ll turn the soil inside out, we’ll harrow it clean, and then you’ll see what a crop we’ll have!’ We provided ourselves with big plows, sunk them deep into the soil, and cruelly whipped our horses which were cruelly exhausted. Our self-confidence had no limits. We looked down on the Arabs, assuming that it was not they who should teach us, but we who would show these barbarians’ what a European could accomplish on this neglected land with the use of perfect tools and rational methods of cultivation. The only trouble was that we ourselves knew about European methods of cultivation only from hearsay, and our agriculturalist, too, knew very little [about conditions in Palestine].”
+
+The Bilu pioneers would be followed by other groups, such as the Hibbat Zion. Some would fail and leave, others would remain. However, the shift in the quality and organization of Zionist colonialism would begin in 1897. Convened in the Swiss city of Basel, the first Zionist congress included over 200 delegates from all over Europe. The program of the congress called for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, and to begin coordinating the settlement of Zionists there. The Zionist congress distinguished itself from previous attempts at settling Palestine by being the first to organize and marshal colonization efforts in a centralized and effective manner.
+All of these efforts to colonize Palestine began nearly a century before the Holocaust, and was already picking up steam after the first world war. By the end of the 1800s, Theodor Herzl -the founder of political Zionism- was sending out letters to imperialist powers all over the globe in an attempt to elicit their aid in colonizing Palestine. Perhaps the most infamous is his letter to Cecil Rhodes, arguing that Britain recognized the importance of “colonial expansion”:
+“You are being invited to help make history,” he wrote, “It doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen, but Jews. How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.”
+Following from the above, the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine were a precondition for the success of the Zionist movement, and these were being planned long before even the first world war. This was encapsulated by a conversation overheard and documented by Moshe Smilansky in 1891:
+
+“We should go east, into Transjordan. That would be a test for our movement.”
+“Nonsense… isn’t there enough land in Judea and Galilee?”
+“The land in Judea and Galilee is occupied by the Arabs.”
+“Well, we’ll take it from them.”
+“How?” (Silence.)
+“A revolutionary doesn’t ask naive questions.”
+“Well then, ‘revolutionary,’ tell us how.”
+“It is very simple, we’ll harass them until they get out… Let them go to Transjordan.”
+“And are we going to abandon all of Transjordan?” asks an anxious voice.
+“As soon as we have a big settlement here we’ll seize the land, we’ll become strong, and then we’ll take care of the Left Bank [of the Jordan River], we’ll expel them from there, too. Let them go back to the Arab countries.”
+The second problem with this misconception is that it assumes that world powers operate based on a system of morals, or that they can be compelled to “do what is right”. A cursory glance at history would show how misguided an idea this is. While the French waxed poetic about defeating fascism in the wake of the second world war, they were committing genocide against the people of Algeria. French intellectuals would write about how the various peoples of the French colonies were better off living under their domination. Since then the “Allies” would prop up tyrannical and bloody regimes the world over to protect their interests. As de Gaulle once famously said, France has no friends, only interests.
+This is the context of the establishment of Israel; it was supported by the hegemonic imperialist powers of the time, not because they suddenly grew a conscience, but because it was deemed strategic for their interests. A glimpse at the political landscape today reveals that remarkably little has changed with this arrangement. While Western countries pay lip service to the façade of a “rules based international order”, their actions betray their intentions. Human rights are only as useful as their ability to be instrumentalized to their benefit.
+Listening to western diplomatic statements justifying sanctions on Russia, for example, you’d be forgiven for thinking international law was a holy set of commandments, faithfully adhered to as a matter of principle. However, you’ll soon snap out of it when you hear the same diplomats prevaricate and collectively shrug when asked to comment on Israeli annexation of territory, or the brutal war crimes in Yemen. Germany, which loves to act contrite and endlessly prattles on about how many lessons it learned from its genocidal past, couldn’t even pretend to care that it is supplying nuclear-capable submarines to an Apartheid state, by the admission of the largest human rights organizations in the world.
+It is not a coincidence that Israel has always enjoyed the backing of the colonial powers of the world, especially the settler colonies which share similar origin stories, and it is not a coincidence that Israel is basically a client state of the world’s imperialist hegemon. Israel was useful to these powers at the time of its establishment, and it continues to function as an outpost for imperialism in the region today.
+The Holocaust was undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies of modern history, where millions of innocents were murdered in an unspeakably cruel and industrialized manner. Also true is that this was not the reason for the creation of Israel, which had its colonial seeds planted nearly a century prior. It was not remorse that motivated the colonial powers to support Israel, powers which were actively committing genocide against multiple colonized populations. Framing the creation of Israel as repentance for the Holocaust is not only historically inaccurate, but deliberately paints the legitimate rejection of its creation at the expense of the Palestinians as complicity with Nazi genocide. It transfers Europe’s guilt onto Palestinians, where they become the embodiment of everything the grandchildren of fascists claim to despise in their grand quest for (empty, symbolic) redemption. A redemption with the theatrics and loud proclamations of regret and change, but none of the substance. At the end of the day, nothing can justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, who share no blame for the barbarity of Europe’s pogroms and genocides.
+Palestine has always been home to countless refugee populations; Jewish people fleeing persecution and finding a safe home in Palestine was never the issue. The issue is that these ideals of coexistence were never reciprocated by the Zionist movement, who showed disdain towards Palestinians from the very beginning and sought to take over the land. It sanctioned its own settlers working with Palestinians, even calling Arab labor an “illness” and forming a segregated trade union that banned non-Jewish members.
+In 1928, the Palestinian leadership even 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 replacing the Mandate with the formation of a unitary state for all those living between the river and the sea, to no avail. These gestures were brushed aside, as they did not benefit the Zionist leadership who never intended to come to Palestine to live as equals.
+For decades Palestinians have been massacred, their homes stolen and destroyed, ethnically cleansed into refugee camps and denied their right of return. The notion that these colonial powers were ever concerned about Jewish safety as they fomented the conditions that made pogroms possible and denied Jewish refugees safety within their own borders is absurd. So too is the idea that Jewish people from all over the world must all live in a singular nation-state in the Middle East where they are a demographic majority to be safe, that the eradication of anti-Semitism around the world is a lost cause, and that whatever violence is wreaked upon Palestinians for the maintenance of this regressive demographics-obsessed state is justifiable.
+It would instead behoove us all to question what it really means to make sure that never again can millions be so dehumanized as to make their dispossession and their violent deaths be widely seen as justified. The way that the Israeli government and Israeli society at large legitimize the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the name of this state, which includes but is not limited to calling Palestinians death-loving terrorists incapable of loving their children, brazenly discussing rape as a form of collective punishment, and pontificating the logistics of the mass-transfer of Palestinians to other countries, is in fact laying the groundwork that makes mass extermination feasible.
+Western countries who were complicit in the Holocaust and in other genocides against colonized peoples did not and cannot wash their hands of these crimes by backing a racist settler-colonial project. To believe so is to deny the actual historical conditions that made creating the state of Israel possible, and to keep us all further away from a world free of racist colonial oppression and its bloody consequences.
 Learn something new?
-Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!
-
-Khalidi, Walid, Sharif S. Elmusa, and Muhammad Ali Khalidi. All that remains: The Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948. Institution for Palestine Studies, 1992.
-Shlaim, Avi. “The debate about 1948.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27.3, 1995: 287-304.
-Pappe, Ilan. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Simon and Schuster, 2007.
+Consider sharing the article, or support us by becoming a patron on Patreon!