Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
There are some hard parallels to be drawn between Gaza’s resistance and The Hunger Games
Raed Mu’anis was my best friend. The small scar on top of his left eyebrow was my doing at the age of five. I urged him to quit hanging on a rope where my mother was drying our laundry. He wouldn’t listen, so I threw a rock at him.
I didn’t mean for the rock hit him, but it did. My father dragged me to Raed’s house kicking and screaming to apologize, while carrying a red rubber ball and a small doll as gifts. I was mostly embarrassed that I hurt my best friend.
Several years later, Raed - now 15 - was shot by Israeli soldiers as he helped our neighbours dig a grave for a kindly man who was killed by Israeli troops earlier in the day, while performing Eid prayers.
On that day, my father had taken us to extend holiday greetings to relatives in a nearby refugee camp in Gaza when the ‘Eid Massacre’ took place in my home camp of Nuseirat.
Every holiday there seemed to be a massacre. Nuseirat - the rebellious camp of resilient refugees - was chosen to be taught a lesson on that particular Muslim holiday. Raed was one of that day’s many victims. Six were killed and scores of others wounded.
A friend told me that Raed was bleeding profusely as he ramblingly moved around shortly after the Israeli army chopper shot him. He arrived at my house, which was adjacent to the graveyard, and desperately knocked at the door yelling my mother’s name: “Auntie Zarefah, please open the door!”
But my mother was already dead. In Raed’s wounded state he forgot that she was buried in the ‘martyrs’ graveyard’ where my grandparents, both refugees from historic Palestine, had also been laid to rest. The tiny grave of my oldest brother, Anwar was also there. He died at the age of two because my father had no money to treat him at a proper hospital. Raed is now buried only a few feet away.
I could have never imagined myself drawing parallels between Nuseirat, and its heroic people, and a Hollywood movie; the struggle of my people is too sacred to make such comparisons. But I couldn’t help it as I watched the latest from the Hunger Games franchise, ‘Mockingjay’.
A feeling of anger initially overwhelmed me when I saw the districts destroyed by the heartless rulers of the Capitol. As I watched the movie, not only resistance of Palestine, but particularly that of Gaza, was on my mind.
The Capitol - with unmatched military technology and access to an enormous media apparatus - was unstoppable in its brutality. Its rulers, who claimed to have superiority over all the inhabitants of the dystopia of Panem, had no moral boundaries whatsoever.
The Hunger Games, the story’s version of a reality television show, was created as an annual event to celebrate the victory of Capitol over a previous revolt by the districts. It also served as a reminder of what the Capitol was capable of, if anyone dared to rise up again in the future.
The show’s participants - mostly children who were chosen or volunteered in a process called the ‘reaping’ - came from every district. The contestants had to kill one another for the amusement of the Capitol, which drew its strength from the division and oppression of others.
But the districts rebelled. And they ought to have done.
They resisted because there can be no other response to systematic oppression but resistance. District 13 was annihilated early on so that the rest of the districts dare not entertain any ideas aside from the Capitol’s insistence that resistance is futile. Panem’s ruthless president was adamant at referring to those who defied the Capitol as “radicals,” and not “rebels.” At times, the Capitol tried to turn the districts against one another, inciting civil war.
The Gaza connection became too stark to miss when Katniss, one of the early ‘tributes’ and the symbolic ‘Mockingjay’ of the resistance uttered these words soon after the Capitol bombers destroyed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children, killing everyone: “I want to tell the people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a cease-fire, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.”
The similarities in this drama were eerily similar to the bombing and complete destruction of al-Wafa hospital in Gaza in late July of this year - the only rehabilitation centre in the strip for thousands of victims of previous Israeli atrocities.
Her message to the Capitol: “You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that? Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!”
It is as if the author of the Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, knew so much about Gaza. As if she had fashioned her stories to tell of a real fight between a brutal Capitol, called Israel, and rebellious districts called Palestine. It is as if Gaza was the inspiration behind District 13 because despite attempts at repeated annihilation for the last 65 years - and in particular the last two genocidal wars in 2008-9 and 2014 - the resistance is still alive.
Does Collins know that Katniss, who didn’t choose such a fate, but had to step up in defence of her people, is represented in thousands of men, women, and yes, children of Gaza?
Does she know that her stories were already written and enacted by real people, who may never have heard of her franchise and may never live to watch her movies? Does she know that criminal leaders such as President Snow are not something of fantasy, but they actually exist, here today in the persons of Benjamin Netanyahu and countless other Israeli leaders who call for the absolute annihilation of Gazans at a whim?
As for Gaza’s Hunger Games, the similarities are uncanny.
Just before Israel imposed sever economic sanctions on Gaza, to punish Palestinians for the result of their democratic elections, top Israeli government advisor, Dov Weisglass made a spine-chilling promise in 2006: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” This was not a passing statement.
After much legal wrangling, an Israeli human rights group, Gisha, managed to obtain documents which showed that since then Israel has enacted a “deliberate policy of near-starvation” in Gaza and that “security” had nothing to do with the Gaza blockade.
In Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, over 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 5,500 wounded. But in Israel’s latest war the price tag for resistance was increased to 2,137. More are still dying from their wounds.
Gaza stands in ruins. Entire neighbourhoods were destroyed, villages erased and whole families annihilated. Hundreds of schools, hospitals and mosques have been blown up in an unprecedented orgy of death and destruction.
Yet the resistance has not been defeated in Gaza. Because resistance is not men and women with guns. Resistance is an idea, pure in its intentions, romantic, at times, maybe, but certainly the work of an entire collective, who has chosen to die fighting, if they must, but never live carrying the shackles of a slave.
Not even the chilling words of Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) were enough to intimidate Gaza. In his Facebook plan to destroy the resistance on 1 August, 2014, Feiglin called for the, “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.” He then went on to call for all its remaining inhabitants to be pushed into concentration camps near the Sinai desert.
“In these areas, tent encampments will be established, until relevant emigration destinations are determined,” Feiglin wrote.
Feiglin, and his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu - among many others in Israel’s political and military establishment - are real life leaders of the Capitol, which is allowed to operate with complete impunity against the oppressed districts of Palestine.
And like the Mockingjay, which was resurrected against great odds, Gaza will remain the rebellious district. The blood of its “near-starved” children will someday unite all districts against the Capitol. Then, all the voices that doubted the wisdom of the resistance will be diminished by the loud, but harmonious chanting of a united people. As the resistance continues, Palestinians everywhere will express their victory and defiance by raising four fingers, Egypt’s ‘raba’a’ - just as the rebels of the 13 districts expressed by raising three.
- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo Credit: Statues by Palestinian artist Eyad Sabbah,40, stand amidst the rubble of buildings destroyed during the 50 days of conflict between Israel and Hamas last summer, in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City on October 21, 2014 (AFP)
The proposed 'Jewish nation-state' bill has prompted a huge amount of discussion and controversy within and outside of Israel.
But missing in most of the international coverage is the extent to which Israel already defines itself as a Jewish state, and in so doing, institutionally and legally discriminates. Here are three key ways in which Israeli law has created an ethnocracy, not a democracy.
One. In the first few years after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the Knesset passed three laws that established the foundations of a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians (most of whom had been ethnically cleansed and prevented from returning).
The combined effect of the Law of Return, the Absentee Property Law, and the Citizenship Law meant the following: any Jew in the world could move to Israel and become a citizen, while expelled Palestinians were stripped of their citizenship and their properties expropriated by the state.
Two. There is no such thing as Israeli nationality, with "the Population Registry's use of the term 'nationality' referring not to citizenship but rather to ethnic identity." In October 2013, Israel's Supreme Court ruled against an effort to establish an Israeli nationality distinct from a Jewish one.
In doing so, the judges affirmed a 1972 Court decision that affirmed "there is no Israeli nation separation from the Jewish nation", and that to create one "would negate the very foundation upon which the State of Israel was formed" – that is, as a Jewish state.
Aeyal Gross noted in Haaretz that this distinction, along with "the identification of the state with one specific national group, creates a hierarchy and exclusion" expressed not just with "symbols" but also "in terms of allocating resources, governmental power, jobs, discrimination (formal or informal) and the need to indicate in the Population Registry who is a Jew and who isn't."
Three. There is no guarantee of equality for Jewish and Palestinian citizens enshrined in Israeli law. As the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) reported in 2012, there is neither a "definition" nor "prohibition of racial discrimination."
In fact, the Basic Law itself includes a crucial caveat, or limitation clause, that allows the "rights" contained within it to be 'violated' by laws "befitting the values of the State of Israel" – namely, "as a Jewish and democratic state."
On these foundational elements, and others, are built a host of discriminatory policies and practices. These serve to protect a Jewish majority created through the mass expulsion of Palestinians, and ensure benefits and privileges for Jews at the expense of those Palestinians who remained.
Reporting on the new bill, The Times ran with the headline 'Israel wavers on 2nd-class Arabs law'. An editorial in The New York Times claimed that "Israel's courts and laws" have consistently given "equal weight" to Israel's definition as both 'Jewish and democratic'. This is simply not true.
It is absurd, as the New York paper put it, to suggest that "Israel's very existence...has been based on the ideal of democracy for all of its people." Palestinians have always been second-class citizens (at best), and Israel already defines itself as a 'Jewish state' rather than a state of all its citizens.
So yes, the new wave of far-Right legislation signals something new – but let's not forget that what we are witnessing is an intensification of racial discrimination, not its emergence.
Published Tuesday 25/11/2014 (updated) 26/11/2014 13:32
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- An Israeli bus driver ran over two Palestinians at the al-Jalama checkpoint in Jenin, killing one person and injuring another, Palestinian security sources said Tuesday.
Palestinian security sources told Ma'an that Noor Hassan Naim Salim, 22, and Alaa Kayid Salim, 20, from Nablus were injured after being ran over by an Israeli bus.
Hussein was taken to an Israeli hospital with serious injuries and later died. Salim was taken to Jenin governmental hospital with light injuries.
Israeli police and ambulances arrived at the scene and the bus driver was arrested.
The first part in a series about the lives of Palestinian women affected by the Jewish settlements of Hebron's Old City. (read more)
chatter of clouds
Nov 27, 14 1:00 am
In Hebron, Palestinian women face down daily settler home invasions
Published yesterday (updated) 27/11/2014 03:16
Jihad al-Atrash sits beside three of her sons, one of whom has since lost the ability to walk properly after a settler attack on their home. (Ma'anImages/Alex Shams)
The Wall and Israeli settlements have annexed thousands of dunums of land in the West Bank town of Abu Dis.
EXCLUSIVE IMAGES
At the heart of the current upsurge of resistance in Jerusalem is the struggle against Israeli settler-colonialism and its various tools. The ongoing attacks against al-Aqsa mosque, settler violence, land and property confiscation, as well as racist building and planning restrictions and house demolitions are all organs within this wider project. Another cog in that wheel, and one which has played a significant role in supporting Israel's designs for Jerusalem is the 'Apartheid' or 'Annexation Wall'.
Israel has always defended its 'need' to build the Wall as a tool of 'security' - a claim which is easily dissected as Zionist hasbara with some straightforward realisations. The Wall remains unfinished and in several areas of the southern West Bank it remains possible to walk across the Green Line, albeit at risk of being shot by Israeli military patrols. Given that undocumented workers use these routes regularly to reach work in Jerusalem, these routes could similarly be used by Palestinians to carry out the 'suicide bombings' that Israel claims the Wall has stopped. As Israel knows well, it was a Palestinian decision that led to the cessation of such operations and not the Wall. Above this, with well over one million Palestinian 'citizens of the State of Israel' and 'Jerusalem ID holders' living west of the Wall, it is simply irrelevant in the prevention of Palestinian resistance in those areas as has been highlighted again over recent months. More accurately, with at least 85% of the Wall's route being inside the West Bank rather than on the 1967 borders Israel's true intentions become much clearer.
Instead of a 'security requirement', the Apartheid Wall is a powerful colonial tool which has annexed around 10 percent of the West Bank. It has played a significant role in reinforcing the annexation of Jerusalem and strengthening the colonisation and population transfer project in the West Bank. It has tightened Israel's grip around the bantustans of Area A and reinforced the isolation of communities in Area C. Farmers are today separated from their lands by nine metres of concrete, and families have been literally split in half.
As 2014 draws to a close 25 years have now passed since the Berlin Wall fell - but what human lessons have been learned? Ten years have also passed since the ICJ's advisory opinion on the illegality of the Wall - but what legal action has been taken? The Wall today remains a powerful colonial weapon in Israel's vast arsenal, and another stark reminder of man's inhumanity to man.
Thursday November 27, 2014 10:27 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Thursday at dawn, fifteen Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, and in occupied East Jerusalem, and took them to a number of interrogation and detention centers. Settlers attack a Palestinian near Jenin.
The Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) stated that dozens of soldiers invaded different neighborhoods in Hebron city, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, and Beit Ummar nearby town, and kidnapped eight Palestinians.
The kidnapped have been identified as Abdul-‘Alim Da’na, 65, a political leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Sa’adi Mohammad an-Natsha, Ramadan Qfeisha, Ashraf Talal Abu Sneina, Khaled Taiseer Rajabi, Ahmad Mohammad Ekhlayyil, 19, Mahmoud Mohammad Ekhlayyil, 18, and Yousef Mohammad Za’aqeeq, 21.
The soldiers also handed resident Jihad Nasser Ekhlayyil, 20, a military warrant for interrogation in the Etzion Military base, south of Bethlehem.
In addition, soldiers invaded a bakery in the ‘Asseeda area in Hebron, and detained the workers for several hours. The soldiers also fired gas bombs at a number of homes in the area.
In occupied Jerusalem, soldiers invaded the al-‘Eesawiyya town, and the Shu’fat refugee camp, in the center of the city, and kidnapped four Palestinians.
Eyewitnesses said the soldiers kidnapped Waleed ‘Awni Mahmoud, Mohammad Issa ‘Obeid, and Abdul-Qader Dari from al-‘Eesawiyya, and Sha’ban Hammad from Shu’fat refugee camp.
Also in Jerusalem, soldiers invaded and ransacked a number of homes in the Old City, and nearby neighborhoods, and interrogated several Palestinians.
Soldiers also invaded handed ‘Adel Issa Hijazi, 42, from Bethlehem, a warrant for interrogation in the Etzion military base. Hijazi was trying to cross the Za’tara Israeli military roadblock, south of the northern west Bank city of Nablus.
In addition, soldiers invaded the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, broke into and searched several homes, and kidnapped three Palestinians.
WAFA said the soldiers kidnapped Mohammad Shaker Nayfa, 19, Yousef Omar Sarhan, 19, and Nasr As’ad Zaghal, 24, while a fourth resident, identified as Raed Ziad Hajar, was handed a warrant for interrogation.
On Wednesday evening, a number of extremist Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian in Qalqilia, near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
Eyewitnesses said the settlers invaded a car repair facility in Nabi Elias area, in Qalqilia, and assaulted the owner, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Bakr, causing various cuts and bruises that required hospitalization.
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — Ibrahim al-Muslimi, a 60-year-old farmer, is repeatedly exposed to gunfire in his farmland in the northern Gaza Strip, less than a kilometer from the Israeli border.
Summary⎙ Print Israel is still not abiding by the terms of the cease-fire deal that ended the Gaza war in August, and still harasses and fires at Palestinian farmers and fishermen.
Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza on Nov. 24 to prevent the export of vegetables from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and some Arab countries, in clear violation of the truce agreement signed between the Palestinian factions and Israel under the auspices of Egypt. One of the most important points of the truce was the opening of the crossings and providing guarantees to lift the siege on Gaza.
The general manager of marketing and crossings at Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture, Tahseen al-Sakka, told Al-Monitor that the Israeli occupation is not doing what it agreed to with respect to opening the crossings for export. Israel abided by the agreement for a total of three weeks.
Sakka said, “Since the start of the export through Israeli crossings until the beginning of the ban, we exported around 250 tons of various vegetables, but we were surprised [Nov. 17] when Israel prevented farmers from exporting their vegetables and denied dozens of trucks that were supposed to go to the West Bank and a number of Arab countries, under the pretext that they were unsafe and noncompliant with the specifications, which led to heavy losses for farmers.”
Israel is also preventing Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Gaza from accessing the agreed-upon area of six nautical miles in the truce agreement. It either shoots them or destroys their boats and arrests them out at sea.
Rashad Farhat, a fisherman from the town of Rafah, complained about the frequency of the Israeli navy attacks within the small zone, which is still well within the 20 nautical miles agreed to in the 1993 Oslo Accord. Farhat accused Israel of violating their rights.
Farhat told Al-Monitor, “None of the fishermen have crossed the six miles, but the Israeli warship known as the Corvette always haunts us and shoots us to scare us and make us retreat to distances close to the beach. Many of the boat-destruction operations occurred during the past two or three months, while many fishermen were arrested and a number of boats were confiscated and towed to the port of Ashdod.”
Farhat said that the agreement to allow them six nautical miles was only talk, because Israel continues to restrict the fishermen to a distance of three or four at most.
Harassment of farmers and fishermen forms just a part of Israel’s continued violations of the cease-fire deal that ended the Gaza war. On the morning of Nov. 23, Israel killed a Palestinian hunter near the border with Israel, east of the city of Jabaliya in northern Gaza. In the evening of that day, Israel seriously injured a child in the village of al-Shawka, southeast of Rafah, according to a statement Al-Monitor secured from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza, Iyad al-Bozom, said that Israel has routinely violated the Palestinian-Israeli truce agreement since it was signed on Aug. 26. In October alone, there were more than 15 cases of Israeli shootings, mostly against fishermen, in addition to three injuries and five cases of arrests at sea, Bozom said.
“According to the agreement, the blockade would be lifted, the crossings would be opened and reconstruction materials would be allowed to enter in exchange for a cease-fire between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Unfortunately, however, since the first day of the signing of the agreement, the occupation has not abided by its terms and until this very moment, the agreed upon reconstruction materials failed to enter,” he said.
“The occupation made several breaches by frequently attacking fishermen and trying to consolidate a specific area for fishing as a fait accompli,” Bozom said. “The shooting operations also sometimes affect border areas and farmers.”
Bozom warned that in light of Israel’s violations and its noncompliance with the terms of agreement, the conditions are ripe for an explosion.
The latest Israeli violations of the new truce agreement and Israel’s attempt to evade many of its provisions seem to be quickly paving the way for the termination of the cease-fire deal and setting the stage for war instead.
Today during the weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh, Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, and stun grenades at protesters. 14-year-old Ahmed Barghouti, was shot in the leg with live ammunition and was taken directly to Ramallah hospital for treatment.
An eight-year-old Palestinian girl is opposing the Israeli occupation of her West Bank village—with a mobile telephone.
Jana Tamimi makes news reports about the regular conflicts with Israeli soldiers in Nabi Saleh, filming video on a camera phone and posting it online.
Jana Tamimi. Reuters video
She films her reports about her village at a time when demonstrations against Israeli settlements are taking place on a weekly basis after Friday prayers.
Tamimi said she wants to deliver the voice of her people to the world so they can gain more international support.
"When we started to go out for marches there weren't a lot of photographers with us so I had an idea to document and deliver our message. The message of all Palestinians and Palestinian children to the world so they come to support us and to free Palestine and live under freedom and get our rights," she said.
Israel on Thursday afternoon released nine-month-old Balqis Ghawadra and two-year-old Baraa Ghawadra who were detained by authorities the day before during a visit to see their jailed father.
Executive director of the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) Abdullah al-Zaghari said the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem transferred the two siblings to the PPS after Israeli authorities handed them over to the hospital’s administration.
The two children had been detained, alongside their mother, in a social affairs office in the southern Israeli-occupied city of Beersheba since Wednesday, Zaghari said, adding that the mother, Nihal Ghawadra from Bir al-Basha near Jenin, was still in custody.
PPS said Israeli authorities told them Nihal allegedly attempted to smuggle a cell phone to her jailed husband, Muammar Ghawadra, and was hence detained alongside her son and daughter.
Muammar Ghawadra was released in 2011, under the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, after serving eight years of a life sentence in Israeli prisons.
In June, Muammar was imprisoned again without charge.
Director of the the Ahrar Center for Prisoners Studies and Human Rights Fouad al-Khuffash slammed on Wednesday the detention as a “flagrant violation of human rights and a crime against humanity,” and called on local and international human rights organizations, as well as Palestinian authorities, for a speedy intervention.
According to UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF), Israel is the only country in the world where children are systematically tried in military courts and subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment."
Meanwhile, Khuffash also said that 63 of the Palestinian prisoners released in the Shalit agreement have been re-imprisoned without charge.
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) often ignore laws and arrest Palestinians without warrant.
More than 6,500 Palestinians, including 300 minors, are currently behind bars.
UNICEF stated in a 2013 report that over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated, and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, some as young as nine, at a rate of "an average of two children each day.”
According to a report published Friday by the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), nearly 40 percent of the 600 Palestinian children that have been detained in annexed Jerusalem since last June “have been subjected to sexual abuse during arrest or investigation by the Israeli authorities.”
The PPC, an independent Palestinian organization set up in 1993, said the "daily arrest campaigns" inflicted on young Palestinians living in Jerusalem are a "collective punishment against Palestinian residents of Jerusalem."
PPC attorney Mufeed al-Haj said that other violations were reported during the apprehension of children, including but not limited to night and predawn raids on family homes, physical and sexual abuse.
A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 revealed that Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.
Occupation means all types of restrictions on movement and freedom in #Palestine. Here is a Palestinian teenage boy being told, arbitrarily, to get off his bike by Israeli soldiers, by the illegal settlement in the Al Rajabi building in Hebron just now.
Even access to the sheer joy and freedom of riding your bike down a steep hill just climbed is repressed in this case.
Along with the more visible forms of military occupation and racism, these 'small' everyday repressions of physical and emotional freedom make up the fabric of daily oppression and harassment here in Hebron. Let us not let them go unremarked.
(...) Amid a rising tide of Israeli fascism, the mainstream media narrative of an Israel under constant and unrelenting attack from wildly violent and murder-celebrating Palestinians is more than just dishonest. It is dangerous propaganda that shields Israel’s unchecked extremism from scrutiny, guaranteeing and inciting further atrocities against the defenseless and disenfranchised Palestinian population, some of whom will respond with violence.
Profiles of the Jewish victims killed in the synagogue attack have appeared in one media outlet after another, interspersed with quotes from heartbroken loved ones. The same cannot be said of the countless Palestinians attacked, maimed and killed by Israeli violence, whose names and photos rarely make it into mainstream news accounts.
Here are some of their harrowing stories from the last two weeks alone, stories that will be replicated thanks in no small part to a mainstream media that sees them as unworthy victims. (read more)
29th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Today in al-Khalil (Hebron) families gathered to stage a peaceful demonstration protesting the continuing closure of the Shuhada checkpoint. The rally consisted of approximately 50 Palestinians, of all ages. The protesters met outside of the closed checkpoint at 1 pm, armed with nothing but Palestinian flags.
The protest moved towards the checkpoint, as soon as it reached the checkpoint´s outer barrier the soldiers from the other side threw a tear gas grenade and two stun grenades at the dense group of protesters.
The protesters dispersed immediately, elderly men had to be assisted by other protesters due to tear gas inhalation. Several young Palestinian boys then threw stones at the checkpoint, but were stopped by other protesters.
The dispersed demonstrators stayed in the area near the checkpoint after the first aggression by the Israeli occupation forces, but several more tear gas grenades and stun grenades forced the protesters to leave the area completely. Young Palestinian boys then began to throw stones again and clashes broke out. The soldiers responded to the stones with excessive amounts of tear gas and stun grenades. Much of the tear gas was either deployed or drifted into the busy business streets in the Bab a-Zawiya area, effecting hundreds of Palestinians.
An ISM activist present stated afterwards, “They [the Israeli occupation forces] rarely use tear gas at clashes on Fridays where the street is empty. Today they used a lot of gas, even though the streets were full with people minding their own business.”
The clashes continued until 4 pm this afternoon. Many shopkeepers decided to close their shops to protect their goods from the tear gas.
Shuhada checkpoint has been closed for the past 8 days as part of a policy of collective punishment directed at the Palestinians in surrounding neighbourhoods after the checkpoint was burnt during clashes last Friday. The checkpoint connects Bab a-Zawiya, a neighbourhood in H1 (supposedly under full Palestinian authority control) to Tel Rumeida, an H2 residential area under full Israeli military civil and security control. For the past days, Israeli soldiers have been denying passage through the checkpoint to Palestinians including children, elderly people and teachers from nearby schools who needed special permission to pass.
28th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Kufr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine
During the weekly Kufr Qaddum protest today, an 18-year-old Palestinian demonstrator, and an ISM volunteer, were both shot in the chest with .22 live ammunition.
Patrick receiving treatment from paramedics in the ambulance on the way to hospital.
The Italian activist, known as Patrick, was wearing a yellow high visibility jacket when he was shot.
11 Palestinian demonstrators were wounded at the Kufr Qaddum protest. 18-year-old Sami Jumma was shot twice with live ammunition, once in the hand and once in the chest. He required surgery and is now in a stable condition. The remaining 10 injured protesters were shot with rubber-coated steel bullets and four required hospital treatment. One of whom was a 10-year-old child, although all four have now been discharged.
“We were standing with a group of Palestinian demonstrators when Patrick was shot. The military had fired three rounds of tear gas, and then a shot rang out an Patrick stumbled back. There was between five and ten minutes from the last tear gas canister fired and the bullet that shot Patrick. He was just standing there, peacefully protesting, wearing a hi-viz jacket, he wasn’t doing anything and they just decided to shoot him.” Stated an ISM activist present at Kufr Qaddum.
Patrick is currently stable, the bullet entered through his chest and it is now lodged in his chest cavity, he remains in hospital under observation.
In 2003, Israeli forces closed the road connecting Kufr Qaddum with the city of Nablus, and since then at least three people have died due to the increased travel time to the closest hospital. A journey that used to take 10 minutes now takes over 30. In 2011, Kufr Qaddum began their weekly demonstrations.
Ally Cohen, ISM media coordinator said, “The bullet entered Patrick’s chest near a main blood vessel, but thankfully did not puncture it. If God forbid it had, the lengthened journey to the hospital because of the closed road could have cost Patrick his life.”
Saturday November 29, 2014 22:38 by IMEMC News & Agencies
Secertary General of Fateh Movement in Jerusalem taken into custody
The Israeli Minister of Internal Security has decided to transfer 20-year-old Islam Izzat Natsheh, from Anata, to conditions of administrative detention (imprisonment without charge or trial) for 6 months, in response to the young man's recent Facebook posts. Sadeq Ghaith, from Silwan, was also placed under similar orders.
According to Wadi Hilweh Information Center, in Silwan, Amjad Abu Asab, head of an East Jerusalem committee for families of detainees, explained that the Internal Security Minister transferred Natsheh to administrative detention just four days after he was arrested from his house, in the village of Anata.
Natsheh was interrogated in Al-Maskobyeh for his posts on Facebook and with special regard to a prayer expressing his wish to obtain martyrdom, several days ago. According to Ma'an, Mr. Abu Asab said that Israeli interrogators accused him of planning a terror attack as a result of his post. Al-Natsheh, however, reportedly denied the charge, saying that the post represented "just a wish."
After being unable to prosecute him, the Internal Security Minister decided to transfer him to administrative detention.
The minister issued a similar decision against one Sadeq Gheith, arrested with his brother Adnan, last Tuesday, following a raid on his house in Silwan. His brother is the Secretary-General of the Fateh Movement in Jerusalem, and remains imprisoned.
Ma'an further explains that "administrative detention" refers to the tactic of keeping a prisoner without charge or trial for extended periods of time, often for reasons of "security" concerns.
The tactic, dating back to the days of British Mandate Palestine, is routinely used on Palestinian prisoners by Israeli authorities, even though international law stipulates that it only be used in exceptional circumstances.
According to Israeli human rights groups B'tselem, in August of 2014, 473 Palestinians were being kept in administrative detention in Israeli prisons, down from a high of nearly 1,000 in 2002.
Furthermore, over 1,000 Palestinians from East Jerusalem have been arrested by Israeli forces since June, in one of the biggest campaigns of intimidation and incarceration the city has seen in modern history.
Monday December 01, 2014 13:54 by IMEMC & Agencies
The Israeli army issued an order illegally confiscating dozens of Dunams of Palestinian agricultural lands, belonging to residents of Rantis village, west of the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
File - Radio Bethlehem 2000
Head of the Rantis Village Council Moayyad Wahdan stated that the army handed a military order illegally confiscating 48 Dunams of lands, north of the village.
Wahdan added that the order only stated the lands would be used for military purposes,.
He said the villagers intend to challenge the order in Israeli courts in an attempt to void it.
The village lost hundreds of Dunams of agricultural lands in three main areas when Israel started the construction of the Annexation Wall in Rantis village lands in 2004.
The Annexation Wall has turned various Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem into isolated cantons, led to massive illegal annexation of Palestinian farmlands and orchards, and is limiting the ability of the Palestinians to enter their own lands and orchards that became completely isolated.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory ruling considering the Israeli Annexation Wall illegal, a direct breech of International Law, and called on Israel to remove it. Tel Aviv ignored the ruling. http://electronicintifada.net/content/international-cou.../1743
For at least the second time in recent months, an offensive article has been deleted from The Times of Israel after coming under fire. This one said Palestinians and African Americans are “angry” and “bloodthirsty.”
Following an uproar on social media, a viciously racist blog post was removed from The Times of Israel. Titled “Nine Parallels between Palestine and Ferguson,” the post attacked African American protestors in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson and Palestinians as violent, “savage,” irrationally “angry” and deserving of the institutionalized state violence wielded against them.
(A web cache of the article can be found here. A copy is also included at the bottom of this post.)
In the now-deleted post, the writer, Robert Wilkes, a member of the advisory board and media response team at StandWithUs, embraces the increasingly popular comparison between Ferguson and Palestine. But Wilkes does so by proudly likening anti-Palestinian Jewish Israelis to American police, the real victims according to him.
The post was removed despite its author being defended as an “amazing guy” by a staffer at StandWithUs, a right-wing group that works closely with the Israeli government.
This is at least the second time in recent months that an offensive article has been deleted from The Times of Israel after coming under fire on social media. A similar scenario played out during Israel’s summertime assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, after The Times of Israel published an item titled ”When Genocide is Permissible.” (continue to article to read more)
Psst, Is Isreal going crazy? (or, how a racist colony hell bent on exterminating the local people through any tactics, ranging from racist laws to genocidal massacres ,drifts to the right )
chatter of clouds
Dec 2, 14 11:38 am
In response to the article "Psst, Is Israel going crazy" :
It’s not a big claim to fame but I have been saying for years that Israeli society is crazy. I escaped from Israel largely because of that… Phil Weiss’s analysis [Psst! Is Israel Going Crazy?] is correct except for one point and that is that those sentiments he describes have always been there. It’s not like it’s something new that just sprang up recently.
I have grown up with this all around me. I recognise the language. I was brought up (I was born in 1964) to believe that the ‘Arabs’ (the word ‘Palestinian’ was largely not used in my childhood) could not be trusted, that ‘they’ are not like ‘us’, that they are treacherous and would stab me in the back if I relaxed and trusted them. We were always kept apart from the Palestinian citizens of Israel, let alone the Palestinians living in the West Bank or in Gaza. Gaza in fact was a symbol of a cursed, hellish place. When someone annoyed you you said to them Lech le’Aza, ‘Go to Gaza’, the equivalent of ‘go to hell’. That was part of normal day-to-day Hebrew in my youth. Like I mentioned in the past, the first time I met a Palestinian as an equal human being was in Australia in my early thirties…
Without knowing it, I grew up with classic colonial rhetoric. Colonisers motivated by fear and possibly guilt, have always demonised the people they have hurt. For some people it is easier to inflict suffering if they don’t see the other as a fellow human being. Dehumanisation helps to reduce empathy and shut down the conscience. It is being done everywhere where there is injustice and abuse. (go to article to read more)
Monday December 01, 2014 23:29 by IMEMC News & Agencies
In a report issued on Monday, by Ahrar Center for Detainees' Studies and Human Rights, Israeli occupation forces were said to have killed 9 Palestinians and detained 650 others, over the month of November.
According to Al Ray, the report noted that 42 out of 650 people taken from the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, were minors, in addition to 17 women.
30 of the minors were taken from Jerusalem.
The report also mentioned that six journalists and two cameramen were taken from Jerusalem, as well, while lawyer Ibrahim Nawaf Al Amer was abducted from the city of Nablus, after a raid on his family's home.
Fuad Khafsh, director of Ahrar, said that Israeli forces storm the cities of the occupied West Bank when and wherever they please, every day and night.
He noted that the reported numbers are documented by the center, and that it was possible for there to be other cases which could not be documented by the center.
Orhan Ayyüce
Dec 2, 14 1:08 pm
Another major parliament joins the struggle to help Palestinians.
Liberal Zionists have adopted the same arguments in defense of Israeli occupation that conservative opponents of sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime used in the 1980s.
“While the majority of black South African leaders are against disinvestment and boycotts, there are tiny factions that support disinvestment — namely terrorist groups such as the African National Congress,” libertarian economics professor Walter Williams wrote in a 1983 New York Times op-ed.
Williams’ claim was as absurd then as it appears in hindsight, but his sentiment was far from rare on the American and British right in the 1980s.
Yet today’s so-called progressive and liberal Zionists employ precisely the same kinds of claims to counter the growing movement, initiated by Palestinians themselves, for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
Indeed, looking back, it is clear that Israel’s liberal apologists are recycling nearly every argument once used by conservatives against the BDS movement that helped dismantle South Africa’s apartheid regime.
chatter of clouds
Dec 4, 14 11:30 am
Another step in a chain of events towards the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem from Palestinians :
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Bulldozers heavily escorted by Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished 20 stores and an ancient structure in Shufat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, sources told Ma'an.
Locals said large numbers of Israeli police officers and troops from various divisions raided the camp and deployed in the streets and on rooftops.
Troops then surrounded an ancient building known as the Cola building and all adjacent stores, denying local residents access to the area before blowing up the main doors of all the stores.
The building and the stores belong to the Dajani family from Jerusalem. One of the owners, Abu al-Walid Dajani, told Ma'an Israeli authorities carried out the demolition without notifying the owners. He said excavators demolished the building and 20 adjacent stores.
The area where the demolitions took place measures about 800 square meters, Dajani said.
The building and the stores were built in 1963, he added. It had been populated and the stores were used as shops until the mid-1980s when the First Intifada broke out. Israeli authorities then prevented the family from using the structures.
Dajani denied Israeli claims that the building and the stores were built without permits. He said the Dajani family originally owned 11,500 square meters in Shufat camp before Israel confiscated 2,000 square meters for the construction of the separation wall. In 2008, Israel confiscated 6,000 square meters more, on which they set up a military checkpoint.
In 2012, Israeli forces confiscated the rest of the land along with the structures built on it. Dajani attempted to reclaim his land and properties through Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, to no avail. Courts always cited security pretexts, he told Ma'an.
Israeli authorities ordered him to pay a property tax of 485,000 shekels to the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem, he added.
A spokesman of the Fatah movement in Shufat camp, Thaer Fasfous, told Ma'an that four large excavators demolished the Cola building and 20 stores. He added that 10 of the demolished stores were open and running until the day they were demolished.
Among the functioning stores was a coffee shop, a car repair workshop, a taxi office, a grocery, a chicken butchery, a frozen meat shop, and a shop which sold tree saplings, in addition to two stores used as warehouses for the al-Khatib Supermarket.
During the demolitions, Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets to prevent local residents from assembling, Fasfous said. A nearby school was also evacuated.
Israel rarely grants construction permits to Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and regularly demolishes structures built without permits.
Israeli bulldozers have demolished at least 359 Palestinian structures in the West Bank so far in 2014, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
During the 1967 war, Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan, occupied it, and later annexed it in a move never recognized abroad.
Salem military court has sentenced activist Murad Eshtewi, from Kufr Qaddum village, to 9 and a half months of prison, with an additional 10,000 shekel fine. Israeli forces arrested Eshtewi on April 29th, 2014 in the middle of the night accusing him of participating in and arranging Kufr Qaddum demonstrations.
The unjust decision of the military court states the following:
9 and a half months of actual prison time.
10,000 shekel non-refundable fine.
A 5-year probation period after his prison term, where he cannot participate in any Kufr Qaddum peaceful demonstrations, or he will face a sentence of no less than 12 months in prison.
A 3 year probation period after his prison term, where he cannot participate in any peaceful demonstrations against the Israeli military anywhere else, otherwise he will face a sentence of no less than 6 months in prison.
Murad has been detained in Majedo Military Prison since his arrest in April, and has been suffered from many health problems during this time. His lawyer, Adel Samara, states that Murad has lost over 9 kilos in weight due to harsh and unsuitable holding cells.
In a letter from Murad, he stated the following:
“The accusations that I am charged with is unfair because it is our legal right to protest and participate in demonstrations against the occupation and to struggle for our self-determination as Palestinians.” He added that the peaceful marches in Kufr Qaddum will continue even if the occupation suppresses them over and over again.
Since the arrest of Murad, the Israeli army has raised its level of brutality in dealing with Kufr Qaddum demonstrations. 15 protestors have been shot by live bullets, last week alone recorded two live bullet injuries, a local youth and an Italian supporter, shot in cold blood just for participating in peaceful protests.
Murad calls on the international community and the United Nations to support Kufr Qaddum, to open the road closed by Israeli forces, to support the fair quest of a free Palestine, and to end the occupation and its settlers.
“They fine us so they can pay for more guns and weapons to kill us with,” Murad added. Finally, Murad calls on the people of Kufr Qaddum to keep on struggling against occupation and to never give up.
Number of Homes Demolished Since 1967IsraelPalestinians07,00014,00021,00028,000
CategoryIsraelisPalestinians
Israel0null
Palestiniansnull28000
28000
“Any humanitarian looking at the sheer number of innocent civilians who have lost their homes can only condemn Israel’s house demolition policy as a hugely disproportionate military response by an occupation army... It is a policy that creates only hardship and bitterness, and in the end can only undermine hope for future reconciliation and peace.”
– Peter Hansen, Commissioner General of UNRWA
Statistics Source: The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions estimates that over 28,000 houses have been demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967 (as of March 2012). According to ICAHD:
"Since 1967 Israel has demolished more than 28,000 Palestinian homes, businesses, livestock facilities and other structures vital to Palestinian life and livelihood in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The motivation for demolishing these homes is purely political, and racially informed: to either drive the Palestinians out of the country altogether (the 'quiet transfer') or to confine the four million residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza to small, crowded, impoverished and disconnected enclaves." (Read the whole report)
"It is impossible to know how many homes exactly because the Israeli authorities only report on the demolition of 'structures,' which may be homes or may be other structures. When a seven-story apartment building is demolished containing more than 20 housing units, that is considered only one demolition."
In addition to the homes demolished by Israel, thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed or significantly damaged by Israeli bombing and shelling. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that during Israel's Operation 'Cast Lead' assault on Gaza from Decemeber 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009,
"3,540 homes were destroyed in the course of the hostilities, 2,870 homes were severely damaged and 52,900 homes sustained minor damage. Some 2,618 homes destroyed or damaged beyond repair during 'Cast Lead' await rebuilding, primarily due to the blockade and restrictions on the entry of construction materials through the Kerem Shalom crossing."
While Palestinians have not demolished any Israeli homes, there is one known case of a Palestinian destroying an Israeli home in an explosion.
In the wake of the recent events in the synagogue at Har Nof, Uri Avnery has written an article which you can read here. Like all his work, Avner[y]’s article is informative, original and beautifully written. But it has a glaring omission.
Here, Dan McGowan fills him in:
Dear Uri:
I know that you realize that the Har Nof neighborhood in West Jerusalem, where four rabbis and a police officer were recently murdered, is built on the lands of Deir Yassin, the Arab village which no longer exists, that was the site of the 1948 massacre, which according to Menachem Begin, was pivotal to the founding of the Jewish state. This was an early massacre in the Nakba; there were many more to follow, but it struck fear among Palestinians, causing many to flee, also giving the Jews an angle for campaigns of terror, which they visited on other Palestinian villages, basically “Get out or we’ll do to you what we did in Deir Yassin.”
It is interesting to ask why the media, which has been all over this synagogue massacre, mentions nothing about what happened on this site on April 9, 1948?
Why does Wikipedia fail to even cite Deir Yassin in its history of Har Nof?
The attached picture of Har Nof [see below] is taken from Yad Vashem, the most prestigous Holocaust memorial. The water tower at the top right is next to the main buildings of Deir Yassin, which today serves as a mental hospital, mostly for those suffering with too much religion, an affliction also known as “The Jerusalem Syndrome.”
At Yad Vashem all visitors, and especially American politicians, are repeatedly told to “Never forget.” At Deir Yassin the message is “Never mind.” There is not even a signpost among the old Arab buildings to indicate that it was once a prosperous Arab village of about 750 people.
In building the Har Nof settlement much of the Deir Yassin cemetery was destroyed. The rest is littered with trash and condoms. Har Nof children have been seen digging up the Arab graves. (Imagine the outcry had they been desecrating Jewish graves.) Apartment buildings of Har Nof are literally built on the old quarry where villagers were executed and their bodies dumped and burned on April 10, 1948.
The ironies are breathtaking. But some of us still remember.
Daniel McGowan Professor Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces shot and injured a 14-year-old Palestinian girl at Qalandiya checkpoint on Thursday evening, witnesses told Ma'an.
Yathrib Salah Rayyan, 14, from Beit Duqqu village northwest of Jerusalem, was shot twice by Israeli soldiers as she walked in the car lane leading to the military checkpoint, witnesses said.
Israeli forces made sure the teenager was immobile before taking her away in a military jeep to an unknown destination.
Rayyan was 30 meters from the checkpoint when she was shot, witnesses said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an that a "female Palestinian suspect" approached a "civilian security guard" at Qalandiya carrying a knife.
Israeli border police fired shots in the air and then detained the suspect, who was not shot during the incident, she added.
Witnesses at the scene refute claims that she attempted to stab a soldier.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian youth was shot with live fire in the lower extremities during clashes west of Ramallah.
Israeli forces opened fire in Beitillu village after residents protested the closure of the village for the past week.
The new Israeli cabinet proposal to define Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is doing one good thing: mainstreaming harsh criticism of Israel in the United States. Shimon Peres’s prediction that the bill would “destroy Israel’s democratic status at home and abroad” seems to be coming true. Americans for Peace Now openly characterizes the proposed law, which passed the rightwing cabinet, as a form of “fascism.” The New York Times called the proposed law “heartbreaking” last week, and the editors are still upset this week, Omar Barghouti reported further up Broadway, at Columbia University on Tuesday night:
I had a meeting with editors and journalists at the New York Times this morning. They’re really stuck with this one!
In his speech that night, Barghouti said that the law is important because it makes the contradiction between an ethnocracy and a democracy completely obvious to people. “The last mask of Israel’s so called democracy has been dropped,” he said. “The oxymoron of the Jewish and democratic identity of the state of Israel is unraveling.” He said the law is also a blow to the “Israelification” of Palestinians inside Israel — where there are 50 laws that discriminate against them and in favor of Jews.
Israeli Occupation Forces clash with Palestinians protesting the Apartheid Wall near Maqam Nabi Musa, where Muslims believe the grave of Moses is located, 11 km south of West Bank city Jericho and 20 km east of Jerusalem, on November 28, 2014. Anadolu / Issam Rimawi
Published Wednesday, December 3, 2014
A 14-year-old Palestinian was shot and injured by Israeli troops early Wednesday morning in clashes east of Nablus in the northern West Bank, sources said, hours after a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was detained by Israeli forces from the courtyard of his family home in annexed East Jerusalem. (read rest of article)
Recent images of people lacking shelter from the storm in the Gaza Strip are a reminder that although Operation Protective Edge ended 3 months ago, Gazans are still suffering its dire consequences. Tens of thousands of homes ruined, infrastructure destroyed, families mourning the loss of loved ones – hardship exacerbated by the existing stringent restrictions on movement and on import of materials for rehabilitation. Shadi is the second in a series of voices from Gaza that we... will bring you in the coming weeks.
12-year-old Shadi lost his father in Operation Protective Edge, and his home was destroyed. He now lives in an improvised tent with his mother, three brothers, and a sister: “My life has really changed since my father was killed. We have no happiness now… It’s cold at night and I’m afraid when I hear dogs bark and the wind whistle. We don’t have a bathroom of our own… We sleep on the floor and sometimes I wake up from mosquito and bug bites or because I feel bugs or ants crawling on me.” Read his full testimony here: http://bit.ly/1zUWpmW
Eight years of siege and three wars in six years have left the Gaza Strip in a state of perpetual disaster with no end in sight. After this summer’s assault, tens of thousands of Palestinians are sentenced to living in rubble wastelands that are scarcely recognizable from the thriving neighborhoods they once were.
“The survivors are the real victims of war,” Hamza Saftawi, 23, said. “They have to live in the aftermath.”
Moaeen Naim Maqbel, 54, and 13 of his family members live in a half-standing home in Shujaiya. Having worked inside Israel since age 15, the home Maqbel built over a span of decades was hit by Israeli shelling in 2008/2009, 2012, and was irreparably damaged this summer.
His family now spends their nights outside in the dark. A small fire they built provides minimal warmth and light. “I worked in Israel starting when I was 15 and saved money for this house. It was hit in 2008/2009, 2012, and now it’s destroyed,” Maqbel told me.
From where they sit, the lights of the Israeli kibbutz and military base of Nahal Oz are visible just several hundred meters away. “We can see they have electricity even on their borders where there aren’t any people. But there are people living here without electricity,” he explained. “We aren’t human, or what? Our life is hell. We are living like animals — maybe the cows live better than us.” (read rest of article)
6th December 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, Israeli soldiers invaded Nabi Saleh during the Palestinian village’s weekly Friday demonstration and shot one young Palestinian in the leg with .22 caliber live ammunition. The soldiers also fired tear gas canisters at demonstrators, along with more rounds of the .22 live caliber bullets.
“At one point, after the boy had been shot, a soldier fired three tear gas canisters straight at internationals and Palestinians who were just standing there, trying to see what was going on up the road,” recalled one ISM activist present at the scene. “He [the soldier] was quite close to us, and could easily see that no one was throwing any stones. The canisters landed no more than a few meters away.”
The young Palestinian who was shot is between seventeen and eighteen years old; he was rushed away from the scene and taken to a hospital for treatment. Nabi Saleh has been suffering from a spate of violence recently at the hands of Israeli forces, who shot three Palestinians including 38-year-old Nariman Tamimi at a demonstration two weeks ago and 14-year-old Ahmed Barghouti last Friday.
The Kufr Qaddum weekly demonstrations have been met with similar violence. Last week a Palestinian youth and an Italian ISM volunteer were both shot with .22 live ammunition in the chest. During yesterday’s protest a Palestinian journalist was shot in the leg with a .22 live bullet.
dropped in to see what this circus of a thread has evolved into...dribble.
tammuz is a fucking troll.
Total chicken shit coming to an architecture forum and reposting 1000+ news stories that nobody reads or gives a shit about. Not the place for your revolution shithead. Give it up. This thread belongs deep in the archives, or better, deleted.
The latest discussion in Israel about the Jewish nation state law has brought to the fore the very possibility of the unraveling of the entire Zionist project. And these are not my words, these are the words of certain very important leaders in Israel, who say that. What’s happening is that the oxymoron of the Jewish and democratic identity of the state of Israel is unraveling.
I can understand the frustration of the extreme right in Israel. ‘Why is the whole world, even the US, against us with this new law? Why are they so mad? We’ve been doing it all along, we’re just making it a bit more formal.’
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has always consistently discriminated by law against the indigenous Palestinians. Other than ethnically cleansing them of course. So why is everyone so angry that they’re trying to codify the Jewish identity of the state. Some say it’s at the expense of the democratic identity. What democratic identity? When you have 50 laws that discriminate against a minority of your citizenry, that’s not democracy…
What Netanyahu and his far right government are doing is resolving this oxymoron. It cannot exist any longer. Let’s be very honest, Forget democracy. This is an ethnocracy… this is a Jewish supremacist state. So– no pretense of democracy. And that’s a very important development because it’s revealing Israel’s true nature. The last mask of Israel’s so-called democracy has been dropped.
Barghouti moved on to the tactics and success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
We’ve got to see it as our goal, as part of what we do in this country in the BDS movement… to disabuse Americans of the myth of empire being beneficial to all… Only then will most people in this country realize that Israel does not serve American interests writ large, but the 1 percent’s interests. The great majority of Americans cannot possibly benefit from what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people.
Shabtai Shavit, former Mossad chief, wrote in Haaretz a couple of weeks ago, that for the first time in his life, he’s really concerned about the future of the Zionist project. Shabtai Shavit is no lefty. He’s not your typical Che Guevara but an honest to goodness hard core Zionist. He’s really, really concerned… He’s saying, Europe is closing in our faces, European markets, even the US, our best friend, the relationship can’t be worse, it’s an unprecedented lowpoint. And the third point he mentions as an indicator of this hopelessness, university campuses in the west, like yours, are hothouses for the future leadership of their countries. He says, We’re losing the fight for support for Israel in the academic world. An increasing number of Jewish students are turning away from Israel. The global BDS movement has grown and quite a few Jews are members.
That’s one of the very rare times that an Israeli leader mentions the Jewish dimension of the BDS movement. It’s ignored completely.
Benjamin Netanyahu, his re-election campaign dogged by polls showing mounting voter disapproval of his performance as prime minister, has struggled of late to win decisive endorsements, even within his own Likud party.
From at least one sector, however, Netanyahu has received an endorsement as ringing as it was unsolicited – that of Omar Barghouti, a leading figure in BDS, the international movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.
Barghouti, speaking recently at an event held at Columbia University Law School in Manhattan, credited broadly negative world response to Netanyahu and his government's hardline policies, for much of the movement's success in recent years.
"We’ve got to give credit to Netanyahu," Barghouti said in remarks quoted on the pro-BDS Mondoweiss website. "Without him we could not have reached this far, at this time".
"It could have taken much, much, much, much longer, but with the help of the Israeli government, our biggest closet supporters in the world, we’re going much faster".
Barghouti said the government's deliberations over the Netanyahu-backed Jewish Nation-State bill, cast Israel as a nation which has always been anti-democratic and discriminatory toward Arabs - as BDS long argued – as well as suggesting the specter of an eventual end to Israel itself.
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Two Israelis assaulted Palestinian workers at a gas station in the Jerusalem village of Ein Karem late Sunday, the victims' relatives said.
Mutasem Issam Shweiki, 24, and Shadi al-Mashni were hospitalized following the attack and treated for bleeding from the mouth, nausea, and bruising.
Shweiki's father said Israeli police arrested the suspects and confiscated surveillance cameras at the gas station.
Ein Karem, believed to be the birthplace of John the Baptist, was a vibrant mixed community of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews before the majority were forced to flee amid an attack by Jewish militias in 1948.
Monday December 08, 2014 11:21 by IMEMC & Agencies
Soldiers bulldoze lands near Nablus
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Monday at dawn, at least sixteen Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, including a woman who was kidnapped in the yards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem.
Local sources in the Hebron district, in the southern part of the West Bank, have reported that the soldiers kidnapped seven Palestinians; six in Hebron city, one in Halhoul town.
The sources said the soldiers broke into and ransacked several homes in Hebron city, and kidnapped Raed Salah Mohtaseb, 26, Mohammad Mousa Abu Hussein, Tareq Mohammad Abu Hussein, 26, Bilal Abdul-Rahman Abu Hussein, 25, and his brother Hamza, 24.
Soldiers also invaded a religious court in the Old City of Hebron, and kidnapped resident Ibrahim Ishaq al-Khatib, 23, while holding his wedding ceremony.
In addition, soldiers invaded Halhoul town, north of Hebron, and kidnapped a Palestinian identified as Anas Khaled Abu Rayyan, 24.
Army also invaded the towns of Ethna and Yatta, installed roadblocks at the northern entrance of Hebron city, and the entrances of Sa’ir and Halhoul towns, before stopping dozens of cars, and searched them while inspecting the ID cards of the passengers.
Furthermore, soldiers invaded Beiteen village, east of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, and kidnapped two Palestinians.
The two have been identified as, the local mosque’s Imam Sheikh Yousef Jaber, and Sa’ad Darwish, the brother of Saje Darwish, who was shot and killed by the Israeli army on March 10, 2014. http://www.imemc.org/article/67217
In Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, soldiers kidnapped ‘As’ad Khaled Abu al-Hasan, 20, from his home in ‘Askar refugee camp, Yazan Khaled Eshtayya, 21, Mojahed Ghazi Khalil, 22, from the Balata refugee camp, and Asadallah Qett, 23, from his home in Madama village, south of Nablus.
Several military jeeps also invaded Qabatia town, south of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, broke into and searched a number of homes, and kidnapped two Palestinians identified as ‘Odai Ahmad Abu ar-Rob, 21, and Shadi Talal Zakarna, 27.
In related news, several soldiers and Israeli extremists invaded the yards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem, and kidnapped a woman identified as Om Radwan ‘Amro, near Bab Hatta, one of the gates leading to the mosque.
The woman was kidnapped after several Israeli fanatics stormed the yards of the Mosque, and conducted provocative acts targeting Muslim worshipers.
Earlier on Monday morning, small groups of Israeli fanatics, accompanied by police Special Forces, broke into the yards of the Mosque, through the Magharba Gate.
The Police also continued its policy of withholding the ID cards of young Palestinian men and woman, before allowing them to enter the mosque.
Furthermore, Israeli military bulldozers uprooted a Palestinian land, near Jaloud village, south of Nablus, in preparation to expand two illegal settlements, built on Palestinians lands.
Abdullah al-Hajj, head of the Jaloud village council, said the soldiers bulldozed a land, south of the village, adding that the land is near Akhya and Esh Kodesh settlements.
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers have been expanding an illegal settlement outpost in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian official said Monday.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an this was the second day in a row that settlers had leveled land to expand the outpost of Ahiya near the Palestinian village of Jalud.
The excavation work is being carried out on private Palestinian lands owned by Abdullah al-Hajj Muhammad and Rashid al-Hajj Muhammad from Jalud.
Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.
Some settlers act without approval to expand settlements or create new ones in the West Bank, building outposts that are illegal even by Israeli government standards.
In some cases, these settlement outposts are "legalized" by Israel, and in rare cases they are dismantled.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are rarely granted permission to build in the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control, or in East Jerusalem.
Published Sunday 07/12/2014 (updated) 08/12/2014 11:34
(MaanImages/File)
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces detained 12 Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the northern Gaza Strip early Sunday, sources told Ma'an.
A researcher for the Gaza-based al-Mezan Center For Human Rights told Ma'an Israeli naval forces detained fishermen from four boats near the al-Sudaniyya area.
Forces first detained Mahmoud Zayid and his brother Ahmad from Beit Lahiya.
They then detained three more fishermen from Gaza City and later six more, the researcher said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Israeli gunboats confiscated the four fishing boats, taking them to an unknown destination.
The researcher said the arrests were the largest "detention campaign" against Gaza fishermen since a ceasefire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces was announced.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said that over the course of the night, five fishing boats were apprehended after veering from the permitted fishing zone.
Twelve fishermen were arrested, the spokeswoman said.
A ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza on Aug. 26 stipulated that Israel would ease its blockade on the Strip and lighten restrictions on fishermen.
Since the agreement, Israeli forces have opened fire regularly at Gaza fishermen, saying they have veered outside the "designated fishing zone" which ends six nautical miles from shore.
Prior to the recent agreement, Israeli forces maintained a limit of three nautical miles on all Gaza fishermen, opening fire at fishermen who strayed further, despite earlier agreements which had settled on a 20-mile limit.
The restrictions crippled Gaza's fishing industry and impoverished local fishermen.
Doctor Mads Gilbert, banned by Israel from returning to Gaza, spoke to Al Jazeera about the plight of residents there.
"I saw beheaded children in Gaza, I have pictures.
"I don’t show them because they are simply too inhumane, but nobody is accusing Israel of a massacre of children...This, what we see in Gaza, is by definition pure state terrorism...
"As a doctor, I say don’t send more bandages, don’t send more drugs, and don’t send equipment. Stop the bombing, lift the siege, treat the Palestinians as humans, include them in the human family, protect them by international law and find a peaceful political solution to the occupation of Palestine. That’s the preventative medicine of this mayhem that is going on." Dr Mads Gilbert
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- The head of the Palestinian Authority committee against the separation wall and settlements died Wednesday after Israeli soldiers assaulted him in a village near Ramallah, committee sources said.
Ziad Abu Ein, 55, died after an Israeli soldier beat him on the chest with his helmet in the village of Turmsayya in the Ramallah district, the director of the committee's information center, Jamil al-Barghouthi, told Ma'an.
Abu Ein also suffered severe tear gas inhalation as Israeli soldiers fired canisters in the area.
A Palestinian security source told AFP that Israeli forces beat Abu Ein with the butts of their rifles and their helmets during a protest march.
Israel is on a mission to destroy Palestine and its people, and as part of that mission Israel holds thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in its jails. This is not new nor should it come as any surprise to anyone. But the Israeli invasion of US politics, media, national security and foreign policy all started at a point when someone said, “There is a first time for everything.”
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Wednesday shot and injured a Palestinian teenager in the head during clashes at the entrance of al-Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah, medics said.
Raouf Hussein Snubar, 14, was hit in the head with a live bullet, causing fractures to his skull, medical sources told Ma'an.
They said he was in serious but stable condition.
Several other Palestinians were injured with live fire and rubber-coated bullets, and others suffered from tear gas inhalation
chatter of clouds
Dec 12, 14 12:28 am
Imagine if an Israeli minister got killed at a non-violent protest? Imagine the reaction of mainstream western media, of western politicians? Now...where's that reaction when a Palestinian official gets killed by Israel's terrorism?
11th December 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Turmusaya, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, an Israeli soldier killed Palestinian Authority (PA) Settlment minister, Ziad Abu Ein, at a non-violent demonstration in the village of Turmusaya.
ISM spoke to Abdallah Abu-Rahme, coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee and present at the demonstration yesterday. “Yesterday was International Human Rights Day and we were going to plant olive trees in Turmusaya, on Palestinian land close to an illegal settlement outpost. We were completely non-violent but Israeli soldiers had gathered and made a line blocking us from the land, not allowing anyone to pass. Ziad Abu Ein, was standing face-to-face with a soldier, who then hit him on the head and in the face. He fell to the ground and when we took him to the ambulance, they told us he was dead.”
Photo by Oren Ziv and Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org
Settlers have been attacking the village of Turmusaya for many years. Close to Turmusaya lies the illegal settlement outpost of Adei Ad and yesterday Yesh Din (an Israeli human rights organization) and four Palestinian villages, petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice demanding that the military remove the illegal settlement outpost.
The petition argues that, “the outpost should be removed not only because it is constructed in part on private Palestinian land, but also because it constitutes a focus of criminal activities and grave violence against the Palestinian residents of the area with the goal of usurping their land and displacing its owners.” Wrote Yesh Din in a statement they released yesterday.
The death Palestinian Minister Ziad Abu Ein was the result of beating, teargas-induced asphyxiation and obstruction by the Israeli army to transfer him to a hospital on time, a Palestinian official said, citing official forensic results.
Today is the 12th day of Israel's murderous attacks on Gaza.
The Palestinian body count is 336, 70 of whom are kids. This has become a murderous spree of killing for the zionist terrorist army, supported by government of this racist colonial entity and by their people , many of whom have been turning increasingly into blood thirsty mobs urging the murder of Palestinian
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From Israeli calls for Palestinian blood ring at fever pitch :
On the eve of Abu Khudair’s lynching, Member of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) and government faction whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse the land, declaring “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy.” She advocated their complete destruction, “including its elderly and its women,” adding that these must be slaughtered, otherwise they might give birth to more “little snakes.”
... Since the beginning of July, raging crowds of Jewish Israelis just like these have marched through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth and Beer Sheva, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Leftists,” swarming and attacking vulnerable victims. While a tiny contingent of radical Israelis have formed a loose “anti-fascist” network that tries to patrol city streets and prevent additional lynchings, they are extremely few in numbers and cannot be everywhere at all times.
While Israeli leaders unleash conscripted soldiers to bombard Gaza, they dispatch ultra-nationalist vigilantes to conquer cities inside Israel. With the incitement to murder Palestinians (and the few Israeli allies they have) continue unabated, it seems to be only a matter of time before the bubbling bloodlust boils overs into a bloodbath.
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I am sure that you, the people behind Archinect, are well aware of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, this racist colonial entity that has been described by Moshé Machover as being far worse than the south african apartheid system: "talk of Israeli ‘apartheid’ serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term."
The global BDS movement is a peaceful movement that has been, in the face of Israeli racist, oppressive and genocidal policies against the Palestinians, garnering great traction around the world as people everywhere are increasingly grasping the nature of the Zionist establishment that is called Israel. Through a deliberate, effective boycotting Israeli products, academics, businesses, items of interest, the movement contributes to the economic and moral isolation of Israel.
As you might know, there is also the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel , whose mission statement states the following:
“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions..."
I notice that there are Israeli businesses being hosted within Archinect's firm listings (for example). As are listings of Israeli universities within the academic section. I highly urge Archinect, the people behind it, Paul, the editors, the writers....to desist from ignoring your responsibilities apropos taking a stand against this racist entity and to remove all Israeli related material from Archinect. You, like everyone else has that responsibility, because you have the knowledge and you have the right of choice. To ignore this is to be complacent and to be regressive.
As a virtual space that spans the social, the professional and the academic, as a gathering of professionals including architects, designers, artists, engineers and others, as a gathering of minds that by implication suggests a progressive humanist endeavor, please instate an anti-zionist, anti-israeli policy (that covers israeli academics, businesses, media, etc) in the spirit of the BDS movement.
The Mockingjay of Palestine: ‘If we burn, you burn with us’
#Occupation
Ramzy Baroud
Tuesday 25 November 2014 20:25 GMT
Topics:
Occupation
Tags:
Mockingjay, The Capitol, Resistance
There are some hard parallels to be drawn between Gaza’s resistance and The Hunger Games
Raed Mu’anis was my best friend. The small scar on top of his left eyebrow was my doing at the age of five. I urged him to quit hanging on a rope where my mother was drying our laundry. He wouldn’t listen, so I threw a rock at him.
I didn’t mean for the rock hit him, but it did. My father dragged me to Raed’s house kicking and screaming to apologize, while carrying a red rubber ball and a small doll as gifts. I was mostly embarrassed that I hurt my best friend.
Several years later, Raed - now 15 - was shot by Israeli soldiers as he helped our neighbours dig a grave for a kindly man who was killed by Israeli troops earlier in the day, while performing Eid prayers.
On that day, my father had taken us to extend holiday greetings to relatives in a nearby refugee camp in Gaza when the ‘Eid Massacre’ took place in my home camp of Nuseirat.
Every holiday there seemed to be a massacre. Nuseirat - the rebellious camp of resilient refugees - was chosen to be taught a lesson on that particular Muslim holiday. Raed was one of that day’s many victims. Six were killed and scores of others wounded.
A friend told me that Raed was bleeding profusely as he ramblingly moved around shortly after the Israeli army chopper shot him. He arrived at my house, which was adjacent to the graveyard, and desperately knocked at the door yelling my mother’s name: “Auntie Zarefah, please open the door!”
But my mother was already dead. In Raed’s wounded state he forgot that she was buried in the ‘martyrs’ graveyard’ where my grandparents, both refugees from historic Palestine, had also been laid to rest. The tiny grave of my oldest brother, Anwar was also there. He died at the age of two because my father had no money to treat him at a proper hospital. Raed is now buried only a few feet away.
I could have never imagined myself drawing parallels between Nuseirat, and its heroic people, and a Hollywood movie; the struggle of my people is too sacred to make such comparisons. But I couldn’t help it as I watched the latest from the Hunger Games franchise, ‘Mockingjay’.
A feeling of anger initially overwhelmed me when I saw the districts destroyed by the heartless rulers of the Capitol. As I watched the movie, not only resistance of Palestine, but particularly that of Gaza, was on my mind.
The Capitol - with unmatched military technology and access to an enormous media apparatus - was unstoppable in its brutality. Its rulers, who claimed to have superiority over all the inhabitants of the dystopia of Panem, had no moral boundaries whatsoever.
The Hunger Games, the story’s version of a reality television show, was created as an annual event to celebrate the victory of Capitol over a previous revolt by the districts. It also served as a reminder of what the Capitol was capable of, if anyone dared to rise up again in the future.
The show’s participants - mostly children who were chosen or volunteered in a process called the ‘reaping’ - came from every district. The contestants had to kill one another for the amusement of the Capitol, which drew its strength from the division and oppression of others.
But the districts rebelled. And they ought to have done.
They resisted because there can be no other response to systematic oppression but resistance. District 13 was annihilated early on so that the rest of the districts dare not entertain any ideas aside from the Capitol’s insistence that resistance is futile. Panem’s ruthless president was adamant at referring to those who defied the Capitol as “radicals,” and not “rebels.” At times, the Capitol tried to turn the districts against one another, inciting civil war.
The Gaza connection became too stark to miss when Katniss, one of the early ‘tributes’ and the symbolic ‘Mockingjay’ of the resistance uttered these words soon after the Capitol bombers destroyed a hospital full of unarmed men, women and children, killing everyone: “I want to tell the people that if you think for one second the Capitol will treat us fairly if there's a cease-fire, you're deluding yourself. Because you know who they are and what they do.”
The similarities in this drama were eerily similar to the bombing and complete destruction of al-Wafa hospital in Gaza in late July of this year - the only rehabilitation centre in the strip for thousands of victims of previous Israeli atrocities.
Her message to the Capitol: “You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that? Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!”
It is as if the author of the Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, knew so much about Gaza. As if she had fashioned her stories to tell of a real fight between a brutal Capitol, called Israel, and rebellious districts called Palestine. It is as if Gaza was the inspiration behind District 13 because despite attempts at repeated annihilation for the last 65 years - and in particular the last two genocidal wars in 2008-9 and 2014 - the resistance is still alive.
Does Collins know that Katniss, who didn’t choose such a fate, but had to step up in defence of her people, is represented in thousands of men, women, and yes, children of Gaza?
Does she know that her stories were already written and enacted by real people, who may never have heard of her franchise and may never live to watch her movies? Does she know that criminal leaders such as President Snow are not something of fantasy, but they actually exist, here today in the persons of Benjamin Netanyahu and countless other Israeli leaders who call for the absolute annihilation of Gazans at a whim?
As for Gaza’s Hunger Games, the similarities are uncanny.
Just before Israel imposed sever economic sanctions on Gaza, to punish Palestinians for the result of their democratic elections, top Israeli government advisor, Dov Weisglass made a spine-chilling promise in 2006: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” This was not a passing statement.
After much legal wrangling, an Israeli human rights group, Gisha, managed to obtain documents which showed that since then Israel has enacted a “deliberate policy of near-starvation” in Gaza and that “security” had nothing to do with the Gaza blockade.
In Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, over 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 5,500 wounded. But in Israel’s latest war the price tag for resistance was increased to 2,137. More are still dying from their wounds.
Gaza stands in ruins. Entire neighbourhoods were destroyed, villages erased and whole families annihilated. Hundreds of schools, hospitals and mosques have been blown up in an unprecedented orgy of death and destruction.
Yet the resistance has not been defeated in Gaza. Because resistance is not men and women with guns. Resistance is an idea, pure in its intentions, romantic, at times, maybe, but certainly the work of an entire collective, who has chosen to die fighting, if they must, but never live carrying the shackles of a slave.
Not even the chilling words of Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) were enough to intimidate Gaza. In his Facebook plan to destroy the resistance on 1 August, 2014, Feiglin called for the, “conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.” He then went on to call for all its remaining inhabitants to be pushed into concentration camps near the Sinai desert.
“In these areas, tent encampments will be established, until relevant emigration destinations are determined,” Feiglin wrote.
Feiglin, and his prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu - among many others in Israel’s political and military establishment - are real life leaders of the Capitol, which is allowed to operate with complete impunity against the oppressed districts of Palestine.
And like the Mockingjay, which was resurrected against great odds, Gaza will remain the rebellious district. The blood of its “near-starved” children will someday unite all districts against the Capitol. Then, all the voices that doubted the wisdom of the resistance will be diminished by the loud, but harmonious chanting of a united people. As the resistance continues, Palestinians everywhere will express their victory and defiance by raising four fingers, Egypt’s ‘raba’a’ - just as the rebels of the 13 districts expressed by raising three.
Till then, the Mockingjay of Palestine, and the thousands of living martyrs will continue to circulate the skies singing the same song as the people of the districts do:
“Are you, Are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.”
If only the other districts would rise…
- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Photo Credit: Statues by Palestinian artist Eyad Sabbah,40, stand amidst the rubble of buildings destroyed during the 50 days of conflict between Israel and Hamas last summer, in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City on October 21, 2014 (AFP)
‘Jewish state’ law furore misses the point: Israel already discriminates
Ben White
Tuesday, 25 November 2014 15:08
Ben White
The proposed 'Jewish nation-state' bill has prompted a huge amount of discussion and controversy within and outside of Israel.
But missing in most of the international coverage is the extent to which Israel already defines itself as a Jewish state, and in so doing, institutionally and legally discriminates. Here are three key ways in which Israeli law has created an ethnocracy, not a democracy.
One. In the first few years after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the Knesset passed three laws that established the foundations of a Jewish state at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians (most of whom had been ethnically cleansed and prevented from returning).
The combined effect of the Law of Return, the Absentee Property Law, and the Citizenship Law meant the following: any Jew in the world could move to Israel and become a citizen, while expelled Palestinians were stripped of their citizenship and their properties expropriated by the state.
Two. There is no such thing as Israeli nationality, with "the Population Registry's use of the term 'nationality' referring not to citizenship but rather to ethnic identity." In October 2013, Israel's Supreme Court ruled against an effort to establish an Israeli nationality distinct from a Jewish one.
In doing so, the judges affirmed a 1972 Court decision that affirmed "there is no Israeli nation separation from the Jewish nation", and that to create one "would negate the very foundation upon which the State of Israel was formed" – that is, as a Jewish state.
Aeyal Gross noted in Haaretz that this distinction, along with "the identification of the state with one specific national group, creates a hierarchy and exclusion" expressed not just with "symbols" but also "in terms of allocating resources, governmental power, jobs, discrimination (formal or informal) and the need to indicate in the Population Registry who is a Jew and who isn't."
Three. There is no guarantee of equality for Jewish and Palestinian citizens enshrined in Israeli law. As the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) reported in 2012, there is neither a "definition" nor "prohibition of racial discrimination."
The closest it gets is Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty (1992), but this contains no specific commitment to equality – or, in the words of Justice Aharon Barak, "not all aspects of equality" are "included within the framework of human dignity."
In fact, the Basic Law itself includes a crucial caveat, or limitation clause, that allows the "rights" contained within it to be 'violated' by laws "befitting the values of the State of Israel" – namely, "as a Jewish and democratic state."
On these foundational elements, and others, are built a host of discriminatory policies and practices. These serve to protect a Jewish majority created through the mass expulsion of Palestinians, and ensure benefits and privileges for Jews at the expense of those Palestinians who remained.
This affects land allocation, housing, regional and municipal planning, citizenship rights, the family, education, dissent, and a host of other areas of life. Even the U.S. State Department acknowledges that Israel practices "institutional and societal discrimination" against its Palestinian citizens. (For more, see my book 'Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy').
Reporting on the new bill, The Times ran with the headline 'Israel wavers on 2nd-class Arabs law'. An editorial in The New York Times claimed that "Israel's courts and laws" have consistently given "equal weight" to Israel's definition as both 'Jewish and democratic'. This is simply not true.
It is absurd, as the New York paper put it, to suggest that "Israel's very existence...has been based on the ideal of democracy for all of its people." Palestinians have always been second-class citizens (at best), and Israel already defines itself as a 'Jewish state' rather than a state of all its citizens.
So yes, the new wave of far-Right legislation signals something new – but let's not forget that what we are witnessing is an intensification of racial discrimination, not its emergence.
Israeli bus hits Palestinians in Jenin, 1 dead
Published Tuesday 25/11/2014 (updated) 26/11/2014 13:32
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- An Israeli bus driver ran over two Palestinians at the al-Jalama checkpoint in Jenin, killing one person and injuring another, Palestinian security sources said Tuesday.
Palestinian security sources told Ma'an that Noor Hassan Naim Salim, 22, and Alaa Kayid Salim, 20, from Nablus were injured after being ran over by an Israeli bus.
Hussein was taken to an Israeli hospital with serious injuries and later died. Salim was taken to Jenin governmental hospital with light injuries.
Israeli police and ambulances arrived at the scene and the bus driver was arrested.
Israeli harassment curtails access to education for Hebron girls
Published Wednesday 19/11/2014 (updated) 21/11/2014 16:03
A checkpoint near the Ibrahimi Mosque. (MaanImages/Alex Shams)
By Alex Shams and Salam Muharam
The first part in a series about the lives of Palestinian women affected by the Jewish settlements of Hebron's Old City. (read more)
In Hebron, Palestinian women face down daily settler home invasions
Published yesterday (updated) 27/11/2014 03:16
Jihad al-Atrash sits beside three of her sons, one of whom has since
lost the ability to walk properly after a settler attack on their home.
(Ma'anImages/Alex Shams)
By Alex Shams and Salam Muharam
This is the second part in a series about the lives of Palestinian women affected by the Jewish settlements of Hebron's Old City. (read more)
The colonial nature of Israel's Wall
Rich Wiles
Wednesday, 26 November 2014 14:00
The Wall and Israeli settlements have annexed thousands of dunums of land in the West Bank town of Abu Dis.
EXCLUSIVE IMAGES
At the heart of the current upsurge of resistance in Jerusalem is the struggle against Israeli settler-colonialism and its various tools. The ongoing attacks against al-Aqsa mosque, settler violence, land and property confiscation, as well as racist building and planning restrictions and house demolitions are all organs within this wider project. Another cog in that wheel, and one which has played a significant role in supporting Israel's designs for Jerusalem is the 'Apartheid' or 'Annexation Wall'.
Israel has always defended its 'need' to build the Wall as a tool of 'security' - a claim which is easily dissected as Zionist hasbara with some straightforward realisations. The Wall remains unfinished and in several areas of the southern West Bank it remains possible to walk across the Green Line, albeit at risk of being shot by Israeli military patrols. Given that undocumented workers use these routes regularly to reach work in Jerusalem, these routes could similarly be used by Palestinians to carry out the 'suicide bombings' that Israel claims the Wall has stopped. As Israel knows well, it was a Palestinian decision that led to the cessation of such operations and not the Wall. Above this, with well over one million Palestinian 'citizens of the State of Israel' and 'Jerusalem ID holders' living west of the Wall, it is simply irrelevant in the prevention of Palestinian resistance in those areas as has been highlighted again over recent months. More accurately, with at least 85% of the Wall's route being inside the West Bank rather than on the 1967 borders Israel's true intentions become much clearer.
Instead of a 'security requirement', the Apartheid Wall is a powerful colonial tool which has annexed around 10 percent of the West Bank. It has played a significant role in reinforcing the annexation of Jerusalem and strengthening the colonisation and population transfer project in the West Bank. It has tightened Israel's grip around the bantustans of Area A and reinforced the isolation of communities in Area C. Farmers are today separated from their lands by nine metres of concrete, and families have been literally split in half.
As 2014 draws to a close 25 years have now passed since the Berlin Wall fell - but what human lessons have been learned? Ten years have also passed since the ICJ's advisory opinion on the illegality of the Wall - but what legal action has been taken? The Wall today remains a powerful colonial weapon in Israel's vast arsenal, and another stark reminder of man's inhumanity to man.
MEMO photographer: Rich Wiles
Soldiers Kidnap 15 Palestinians In West Bank, Jerusalem
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Thursday at dawn, fifteen Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, and in occupied East Jerusalem, and took them to a number of interrogation and detention centers. Settlers attack a Palestinian near Jenin.
The Palestinian News & Info Agency (WAFA) stated that dozens of soldiers invaded different neighborhoods in Hebron city, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, and Beit Ummar nearby town, and kidnapped eight Palestinians.
The kidnapped have been identified as Abdul-‘Alim Da’na, 65, a political leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Sa’adi Mohammad an-Natsha, Ramadan Qfeisha, Ashraf Talal Abu Sneina, Khaled Taiseer Rajabi, Ahmad Mohammad Ekhlayyil, 19, Mahmoud Mohammad Ekhlayyil, 18, and Yousef Mohammad Za’aqeeq, 21.
The soldiers also handed resident Jihad Nasser Ekhlayyil, 20, a military warrant for interrogation in the Etzion Military base, south of Bethlehem.
In addition, soldiers invaded a bakery in the ‘Asseeda area in Hebron, and detained the workers for several hours. The soldiers also fired gas bombs at a number of homes in the area.
In occupied Jerusalem, soldiers invaded the al-‘Eesawiyya town, and the Shu’fat refugee camp, in the center of the city, and kidnapped four Palestinians.
Eyewitnesses said the soldiers kidnapped Waleed ‘Awni Mahmoud, Mohammad Issa ‘Obeid, and Abdul-Qader Dari from al-‘Eesawiyya, and Sha’ban Hammad from Shu’fat refugee camp.
Also in Jerusalem, soldiers invaded and ransacked a number of homes in the Old City, and nearby neighborhoods, and interrogated several Palestinians.
Soldiers also invaded handed ‘Adel Issa Hijazi, 42, from Bethlehem, a warrant for interrogation in the Etzion military base. Hijazi was trying to cross the Za’tara Israeli military roadblock, south of the northern west Bank city of Nablus.
In addition, soldiers invaded the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem, broke into and searched several homes, and kidnapped three Palestinians.
WAFA said the soldiers kidnapped Mohammad Shaker Nayfa, 19, Yousef Omar Sarhan, 19, and Nasr As’ad Zaghal, 24, while a fourth resident, identified as Raed Ziad Hajar, was handed a warrant for interrogation.
On Wednesday evening, a number of extremist Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian in Qalqilia, near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
Eyewitnesses said the settlers invaded a car repair facility in Nabi Elias area, in Qalqilia, and assaulted the owner, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Bakr, causing various cuts and bruises that required hospitalization.
Israel violates terms of Gaza cease-fire
Author: Mohammed OthmanPosted November 25, 2014
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — Ibrahim al-Muslimi, a 60-year-old farmer, is repeatedly exposed to gunfire in his farmland in the northern Gaza Strip, less than a kilometer from the Israeli border.
Summary⎙ Print Israel is still not abiding by the terms of the cease-fire deal that ended the Gaza war in August, and still harasses and fires at Palestinian farmers and fishermen.
Author Mohammed OthmanPosted November 25, 2014
Translator(s)Sami-Joe Abboud
Muslimi, who owns more than 40 dunams (10 acres) planted with vegetables and fruits, told Al-Monitor that farmers in the entire agricultural area adjacent to the border see gunfire on an almost daily basis.
Israel closed its border crossings with Gaza on Nov. 24 to prevent the export of vegetables from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank and some Arab countries, in clear violation of the truce agreement signed between the Palestinian factions and Israel under the auspices of Egypt. One of the most important points of the truce was the opening of the crossings and providing guarantees to lift the siege on Gaza.
The general manager of marketing and crossings at Gaza’s Ministry of Agriculture, Tahseen al-Sakka, told Al-Monitor that the Israeli occupation is not doing what it agreed to with respect to opening the crossings for export. Israel abided by the agreement for a total of three weeks.
Sakka said, “Since the start of the export through Israeli crossings until the beginning of the ban, we exported around 250 tons of various vegetables, but we were surprised [Nov. 17] when Israel prevented farmers from exporting their vegetables and denied dozens of trucks that were supposed to go to the West Bank and a number of Arab countries, under the pretext that they were unsafe and noncompliant with the specifications, which led to heavy losses for farmers.”
Israel is also preventing Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Gaza from accessing the agreed-upon area of six nautical miles in the truce agreement. It either shoots them or destroys their boats and arrests them out at sea.
Rashad Farhat, a fisherman from the town of Rafah, complained about the frequency of the Israeli navy attacks within the small zone, which is still well within the 20 nautical miles agreed to in the 1993 Oslo Accord. Farhat accused Israel of violating their rights.
Farhat told Al-Monitor, “None of the fishermen have crossed the six miles, but the Israeli warship known as the Corvette always haunts us and shoots us to scare us and make us retreat to distances close to the beach. Many of the boat-destruction operations occurred during the past two or three months, while many fishermen were arrested and a number of boats were confiscated and towed to the port of Ashdod.”
Farhat said that the agreement to allow them six nautical miles was only talk, because Israel continues to restrict the fishermen to a distance of three or four at most.
Harassment of farmers and fishermen forms just a part of Israel’s continued violations of the cease-fire deal that ended the Gaza war. On the morning of Nov. 23, Israel killed a Palestinian hunter near the border with Israel, east of the city of Jabaliya in northern Gaza. In the evening of that day, Israel seriously injured a child in the village of al-Shawka, southeast of Rafah, according to a statement Al-Monitor secured from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza, Iyad al-Bozom, said that Israel has routinely violated the Palestinian-Israeli truce agreement since it was signed on Aug. 26. In October alone, there were more than 15 cases of Israeli shootings, mostly against fishermen, in addition to three injuries and five cases of arrests at sea, Bozom said.
“According to the agreement, the blockade would be lifted, the crossings would be opened and reconstruction materials would be allowed to enter in exchange for a cease-fire between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Unfortunately, however, since the first day of the signing of the agreement, the occupation has not abided by its terms and until this very moment, the agreed upon reconstruction materials failed to enter,” he said.
“The occupation made several breaches by frequently attacking fishermen and trying to consolidate a specific area for fishing as a fait accompli,” Bozom said. “The shooting operations also sometimes affect border areas and farmers.”
Bozom warned that in light of Israel’s violations and its noncompliance with the terms of agreement, the conditions are ripe for an explosion.
The latest Israeli violations of the new truce agreement and Israel’s attempt to evade many of its provisions seem to be quickly paving the way for the termination of the cease-fire deal and setting the stage for war instead.
From ISM's FB page
International Solidarity Movement
Today during the weekly demonstration in Nabi Saleh, Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets, and stun grenades at protesters. 14-year-old Ahmed Barghouti, was shot in the leg with live ammunition and was taken directly to Ramallah hospital for treatment.
Photo and information from TAMIMI PRESS.
From
8-year-old girl is West Bank’s youngest citizen journalist
November 26, 2014 2:39pm
An eight-year-old Palestinian girl is opposing the Israeli occupation of her West Bank village—with a mobile telephone.
Jana Tamimi makes news reports about the regular conflicts with Israeli soldiers in Nabi Saleh, filming video on a camera phone and posting it online.
Jana Tamimi. Reuters video
She films her reports about her village at a time when demonstrations against Israeli settlements are taking place on a weekly basis after Friday prayers.
Tamimi said she wants to deliver the voice of her people to the world so they can gain more international support.
"When we started to go out for marches there weren't a lot of photographers with us so I had an idea to document and deliver our message. The message of all Palestinians and Palestinian children to the world so they come to support us and to free Palestine and live under freedom and get our rights," she said.
Israel releases detained 9-month-old and two-year-old Palestinian children
Published Friday, November 28, 2014
Israel on Thursday afternoon released nine-month-old Balqis Ghawadra and two-year-old Baraa Ghawadra who were detained by authorities the day before during a visit to see their jailed father.
Executive director of the Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS) Abdullah al-Zaghari said the Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem transferred the two siblings to the PPS after Israeli authorities handed them over to the hospital’s administration.
The two children had been detained, alongside their mother, in a social affairs office in the southern Israeli-occupied city of Beersheba since Wednesday, Zaghari said, adding that the mother, Nihal Ghawadra from Bir al-Basha near Jenin, was still in custody.
PPS said Israeli authorities told them Nihal allegedly attempted to smuggle a cell phone to her jailed husband, Muammar Ghawadra, and was hence detained alongside her son and daughter.
Muammar Ghawadra was released in 2011, under the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, after serving eight years of a life sentence in Israeli prisons.
In June, Muammar was imprisoned again without charge.
Director of the the Ahrar Center for Prisoners Studies and Human Rights Fouad al-Khuffash slammed on Wednesday the detention as a “flagrant violation of human rights and a crime against humanity,” and called on local and international human rights organizations, as well as Palestinian authorities, for a speedy intervention.
According to UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF), Israel is the only country in the world where children are systematically tried in military courts and subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment."
Meanwhile, Khuffash also said that 63 of the Palestinian prisoners released in the Shalit agreement have been re-imprisoned without charge.
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) often ignore laws and arrest Palestinians without warrant.
More than 6,500 Palestinians, including 300 minors, are currently behind bars.
UNICEF stated in a 2013 report that over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated, and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, some as young as nine, at a rate of "an average of two children each day.”
According to a report published Friday by the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), nearly 40 percent of the 600 Palestinian children that have been detained in annexed Jerusalem since last June “have been subjected to sexual abuse during arrest or investigation by the Israeli authorities.”
The PPC, an independent Palestinian organization set up in 1993, said the "daily arrest campaigns" inflicted on young Palestinians living in Jerusalem are a "collective punishment against Palestinian residents of Jerusalem."
PPC attorney Mufeed al-Haj said that other violations were reported during the apprehension of children, including but not limited to night and predawn raids on family homes, physical and sexual abuse.
A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 revealed that Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.
(Al-Akhbar, Ma'an)
From their FB page:
Christian Peacemaker Teams - Palestine
Occupation means all types of restrictions on movement and freedom in #Palestine. Here is a Palestinian teenage boy being told, arbitrarily, to get off his bike by Israeli soldiers, by the illegal settlement in the Al Rajabi building in Hebron just now.
Even access to the sheer joy and freedom of riding your bike down a steep hill just climbed is repressed in this case.
Along with the more visible forms of military occupation and racism, these 'small' everyday repressions of physical and emotional freedom make up the fabric of daily oppression and harassment here in Hebron. Let us not let them go unremarked.
From US media erase Israeli state and settler violence
(...) Amid a rising tide of Israeli fascism, the mainstream media narrative of an Israel under constant and unrelenting attack from wildly violent and murder-celebrating Palestinians is more than just dishonest. It is dangerous propaganda that shields Israel’s unchecked extremism from scrutiny, guaranteeing and inciting further atrocities against the defenseless and disenfranchised Palestinian population, some of whom will respond with violence.
Profiles of the Jewish victims killed in the synagogue attack have appeared in one media outlet after another, interspersed with quotes from heartbroken loved ones. The same cannot be said of the countless Palestinians attacked, maimed and killed by Israeli violence, whose names and photos rarely make it into mainstream news accounts.
Here are some of their harrowing stories from the last two weeks alone, stories that will be replicated thanks in no small part to a mainstream media that sees them as unworthy victims. (read more)
VIDEO: Non-violent protest met with tear gas and stun grenades
in Hebron, Reports, Video November 29, 2014
29th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine
Today in al-Khalil (Hebron) families gathered to stage a peaceful demonstration protesting the continuing closure of the Shuhada checkpoint. The rally consisted of approximately 50 Palestinians, of all ages. The protesters met outside of the closed checkpoint at 1 pm, armed with nothing but Palestinian flags.
The protest moved towards the checkpoint, as soon as it reached the checkpoint´s outer barrier the soldiers from the other side threw a tear gas grenade and two stun grenades at the dense group of protesters.
The protesters dispersed immediately, elderly men had to be assisted by other protesters due to tear gas inhalation. Several young Palestinian boys then threw stones at the checkpoint, but were stopped by other protesters.
Video by Christian Peacemaker Teams – Palestine.
The dispersed demonstrators stayed in the area near the checkpoint after the first aggression by the Israeli occupation forces, but several more tear gas grenades and stun grenades forced the protesters to leave the area completely. Young Palestinian boys then began to throw stones again and clashes broke out. The soldiers responded to the stones with excessive amounts of tear gas and stun grenades. Much of the tear gas was either deployed or drifted into the busy business streets in the Bab a-Zawiya area, effecting hundreds of Palestinians.
An ISM activist present stated afterwards, “They [the Israeli occupation forces] rarely use tear gas at clashes on Fridays where the street is empty. Today they used a lot of gas, even though the streets were full with people minding their own business.”
The clashes continued until 4 pm this afternoon. Many shopkeepers decided to close their shops to protect their goods from the tear gas.
Shuhada checkpoint has been closed for the past 8 days as part of a policy of collective punishment directed at the Palestinians in surrounding neighbourhoods after the checkpoint was burnt during clashes last Friday. The checkpoint connects Bab a-Zawiya, a neighbourhood in H1 (supposedly under full Palestinian authority control) to Tel Rumeida, an H2 residential area under full Israeli military civil and security control. For the past days, Israeli soldiers have been denying passage through the checkpoint to Palestinians including children, elderly people and teachers from nearby schools who needed special permission to pass.
18-year-old Palestinian and ISM volunteer both shot in the chest with .22 live ammunition
in Features, Nablus, Reports November 28, 2014
28th November 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Kufr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine
During the weekly Kufr Qaddum protest today, an 18-year-old Palestinian demonstrator, and an ISM volunteer, were both shot in the chest with .22 live ammunition.
Patrick receiving treatment from paramedics in the ambulance on the way to hospital.
The Italian activist, known as Patrick, was wearing a yellow high visibility jacket when he was shot.
11 Palestinian demonstrators were wounded at the Kufr Qaddum protest. 18-year-old Sami Jumma was shot twice with live ammunition, once in the hand and once in the chest. He required surgery and is now in a stable condition. The remaining 10 injured protesters were shot with rubber-coated steel bullets and four required hospital treatment. One of whom was a 10-year-old child, although all four have now been discharged.
“We were standing with a group of Palestinian demonstrators when Patrick was shot. The military had fired three rounds of tear gas, and then a shot rang out an Patrick stumbled back. There was between five and ten minutes from the last tear gas canister fired and the bullet that shot Patrick. He was just standing there, peacefully protesting, wearing a hi-viz jacket, he wasn’t doing anything and they just decided to shoot him.” Stated an ISM activist present at Kufr Qaddum.
Patrick is currently stable, the bullet entered through his chest and it is now lodged in his chest cavity, he remains in hospital under observation.
In 2003, Israeli forces closed the road connecting Kufr Qaddum with the city of Nablus, and since then at least three people have died due to the increased travel time to the closest hospital. A journey that used to take 10 minutes now takes over 30. In 2011, Kufr Qaddum began their weekly demonstrations.
Ally Cohen, ISM media coordinator said, “The bullet entered Patrick’s chest near a main blood vessel, but thankfully did not puncture it. If God forbid it had, the lengthened journey to the hospital because of the closed road could have cost Patrick his life.”
Palestinian Sentenced to 6 Months Administrative Detention for Facebook Post
Secertary General of Fateh Movement in Jerusalem taken into custody
The Israeli Minister of Internal Security has decided to transfer 20-year-old Islam Izzat Natsheh, from Anata, to conditions of administrative detention (imprisonment without charge or trial) for 6 months, in response to the young man's recent Facebook posts. Sadeq Ghaith, from Silwan, was also placed under similar orders.
According to Wadi Hilweh Information Center, in Silwan, Amjad Abu Asab, head of an East Jerusalem committee for families of detainees, explained that the Internal Security Minister transferred Natsheh to administrative detention just four days after he was arrested from his house, in the village of Anata.
Natsheh was interrogated in Al-Maskobyeh for his posts on Facebook and with special regard to a prayer expressing his wish to obtain martyrdom, several days ago. According to Ma'an, Mr. Abu Asab said that Israeli interrogators accused him of planning a terror attack as a result of his post. Al-Natsheh, however, reportedly denied the charge, saying that the post represented "just a wish."
After being unable to prosecute him, the Internal Security Minister decided to transfer him to administrative detention.
The minister issued a similar decision against one Sadeq Gheith, arrested with his brother Adnan, last Tuesday, following a raid on his house in Silwan. His brother is the Secretary-General of the Fateh Movement in Jerusalem, and remains imprisoned.
Ma'an further explains that "administrative detention" refers to the tactic of keeping a prisoner without charge or trial for extended periods of time, often for reasons of "security" concerns.
The tactic, dating back to the days of British Mandate Palestine, is routinely used on Palestinian prisoners by Israeli authorities, even though international law stipulates that it only be used in exceptional circumstances.
According to Israeli human rights groups B'tselem, in August of 2014, 473 Palestinians were being kept in administrative detention in Israeli prisons, down from a high of nearly 1,000 in 2002.
Furthermore, over 1,000 Palestinians from East Jerusalem have been arrested by Israeli forces since June, in one of the biggest campaigns of intimidation and incarceration the city has seen in modern history.
More theft of land...
Army Confiscates Dozens Of Dunams Of Palestinian Lands Near Ramallah
The Israeli army issued an order illegally confiscating dozens of Dunams of Palestinian agricultural lands, belonging to residents of Rantis village, west of the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
File - Radio Bethlehem 2000
Head of the Rantis Village Council Moayyad Wahdan stated that the army handed a military order illegally confiscating 48 Dunams of lands, north of the village.
Wahdan added that the order only stated the lands would be used for military purposes,.
He said the villagers intend to challenge the order in Israeli courts in an attempt to void it.
The village lost hundreds of Dunams of agricultural lands in three main areas when Israel started the construction of the Annexation Wall in Rantis village lands in 2004.
The Annexation Wall has turned various Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem into isolated cantons, led to massive illegal annexation of Palestinian farmlands and orchards, and is limiting the ability of the Palestinians to enter their own lands and orchards that became completely isolated.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory ruling considering the Israeli Annexation Wall illegal, a direct breech of International Law, and called on Israel to remove it. Tel Aviv ignored the ruling. http://electronicintifada.net/content/international-cou.../1743
More Zionist racism...from Ferguson to Palestine
White supremacy and Zionism converge in deleted Times of Israel post on Ferguson
Submitted by Rania Khalek on Sun, 11/30/2014 - 22:38
toi.jpg
For at least the second time in recent months, an offensive article has been deleted from The Times of Israel after coming under fire. This one said Palestinians and African Americans are “angry” and “bloodthirsty.”
Following an uproar on social media, a viciously racist blog post was removed from The Times of Israel. Titled “Nine Parallels between Palestine and Ferguson,” the post attacked African American protestors in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson and Palestinians as violent, “savage,” irrationally “angry” and deserving of the institutionalized state violence wielded against them.
(A web cache of the article can be found here. A copy is also included at the bottom of this post.)
In the now-deleted post, the writer, Robert Wilkes, a member of the advisory board and media response team at StandWithUs, embraces the increasingly popular comparison between Ferguson and Palestine. But Wilkes does so by proudly likening anti-Palestinian Jewish Israelis to American police, the real victims according to him.
The post was removed despite its author being defended as an “amazing guy” by a staffer at StandWithUs, a right-wing group that works closely with the Israeli government.
This is at least the second time in recent months that an offensive article has been deleted from The Times of Israel after coming under fire on social media. A similar scenario played out during Israel’s summertime assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, after The Times of Israel published an item titled ”When Genocide is Permissible.” (continue to article to read more)
Leciester, UK votes to ban Israeli goods
Psst, Is Isreal going crazy? (or, how a racist colony hell bent on exterminating the local people through any tactics, ranging from racist laws to genocidal massacres ,drifts to the right )
In response to the article "Psst, Is Israel going crazy" :
Israel has always been crazy
Israel/Palestine
Avigail Abarbanel on December 2, 2014
Fabricated images of Israeli politicians in Nazi uniforms, captured by Times of Israel
It’s not a big claim to fame but I have been saying for years that Israeli society is crazy. I escaped from Israel largely because of that… Phil Weiss’s analysis [Psst! Is Israel Going Crazy?] is correct except for one point and that is that those sentiments he describes have always been there. It’s not like it’s something new that just sprang up recently.
I have grown up with this all around me. I recognise the language. I was brought up (I was born in 1964) to believe that the ‘Arabs’ (the word ‘Palestinian’ was largely not used in my childhood) could not be trusted, that ‘they’ are not like ‘us’, that they are treacherous and would stab me in the back if I relaxed and trusted them. We were always kept apart from the Palestinian citizens of Israel, let alone the Palestinians living in the West Bank or in Gaza. Gaza in fact was a symbol of a cursed, hellish place. When someone annoyed you you said to them Lech le’Aza, ‘Go to Gaza’, the equivalent of ‘go to hell’. That was part of normal day-to-day Hebrew in my youth. Like I mentioned in the past, the first time I met a Palestinian as an equal human being was in Australia in my early thirties…
Without knowing it, I grew up with classic colonial rhetoric. Colonisers motivated by fear and possibly guilt, have always demonised the people they have hurt. For some people it is easier to inflict suffering if they don’t see the other as a fellow human being. Dehumanisation helps to reduce empathy and shut down the conscience. It is being done everywhere where there is injustice and abuse. (go to article to read more)
Rafeef Ziadah - 'We teach life, sir', London, 12.11.11
Israeli Forces Kill 9 Palestinians, Kidnap 650, in November
In a report issued on Monday, by Ahrar Center for Detainees' Studies and Human Rights, Israeli occupation forces were said to have killed 9 Palestinians and detained 650 others, over the month of November.
According to Al Ray, the report noted that 42 out of 650 people taken from the occupied West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, were minors, in addition to 17 women.
30 of the minors were taken from Jerusalem.
The report also mentioned that six journalists and two cameramen were taken from Jerusalem, as well, while lawyer Ibrahim Nawaf Al Amer was abducted from the city of Nablus, after a raid on his family's home.
Fuad Khafsh, director of Ahrar, said that Israeli forces storm the cities of the occupied West Bank when and wherever they please, every day and night.
He noted that the reported numbers are documented by the center, and that it was possible for there to be other cases which could not be documented by the center.
Another major parliament joins the struggle to help Palestinians.
French parliament votes to recognize Palestinian state
In the mean time bibi is panicked...
Israeli coalition collapses after Netanyahu fires ministers
Parliament's Israel/Palestine debate with George Galloway - 1st December 2014
On Zionism, post-Zionism and neo-Zionism:
A “post-mortem” on Israeli challenges to Zionism
From
How today’s liberal Zionists echo apartheid South Africa’s defenders
Rania Khalek
The Electronic Intifada
13 February 2014
na_00_1.jpg
Liberal Zionists have adopted the same arguments in defense of Israeli occupation that conservative opponents of sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime used in the 1980s.
(Najeh Hashlamoun / APA images)
“While the majority of black South African leaders are against disinvestment and boycotts, there are tiny factions that support disinvestment — namely terrorist groups such as the African National Congress,” libertarian economics professor Walter Williams wrote in a 1983 New York Times op-ed.
Williams’ claim was as absurd then as it appears in hindsight, but his sentiment was far from rare on the American and British right in the 1980s.
Yet today’s so-called progressive and liberal Zionists employ precisely the same kinds of claims to counter the growing movement, initiated by Palestinians themselves, for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
Indeed, looking back, it is clear that Israel’s liberal apologists are recycling nearly every argument once used by conservatives against the BDS movement that helped dismantle South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Another step in a chain of events towards the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem from Palestinians :
Israeli forces demolish building, 20 stores in Shufat camp
Published yesterday (updated) 03/12/2014 23:41
(MaanImages)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Bulldozers heavily escorted by Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished 20 stores and an ancient structure in Shufat refugee camp in East Jerusalem, sources told Ma'an.
Locals said large numbers of Israeli police officers and troops from various divisions raided the camp and deployed in the streets and on rooftops.
Troops then surrounded an ancient building known as the Cola building and all adjacent stores, denying local residents access to the area before blowing up the main doors of all the stores.
The building and the stores belong to the Dajani family from Jerusalem. One of the owners, Abu al-Walid Dajani, told Ma'an Israeli authorities carried out the demolition without notifying the owners. He said excavators demolished the building and 20 adjacent stores.
The area where the demolitions took place measures about 800 square meters, Dajani said.
The building and the stores were built in 1963, he added. It had been populated and the stores were used as shops until the mid-1980s when the First Intifada broke out. Israeli authorities then prevented the family from using the structures.
Dajani denied Israeli claims that the building and the stores were built without permits. He said the Dajani family originally owned 11,500 square meters in Shufat camp before Israel confiscated 2,000 square meters for the construction of the separation wall. In 2008, Israel confiscated 6,000 square meters more, on which they set up a military checkpoint.
In 2012, Israeli forces confiscated the rest of the land along with the structures built on it. Dajani attempted to reclaim his land and properties through Israeli courts, including the Supreme Court, to no avail. Courts always cited security pretexts, he told Ma'an.
Israeli authorities ordered him to pay a property tax of 485,000 shekels to the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem, he added.
A spokesman of the Fatah movement in Shufat camp, Thaer Fasfous, told Ma'an that four large excavators demolished the Cola building and 20 stores. He added that 10 of the demolished stores were open and running until the day they were demolished.
Among the functioning stores was a coffee shop, a car repair workshop, a taxi office, a grocery, a chicken butchery, a frozen meat shop, and a shop which sold tree saplings, in addition to two stores used as warehouses for the al-Khatib Supermarket.
During the demolitions, Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets to prevent local residents from assembling, Fasfous said. A nearby school was also evacuated.
Israel rarely grants construction permits to Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and regularly demolishes structures built without permits.
Israeli bulldozers have demolished at least 359 Palestinian structures in the West Bank so far in 2014, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
During the 1967 war, Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan, occupied it, and later annexed it in a move never recognized abroad.
Israeli military court sentences Murad Eshtewi to 10 months in prison and a 10,000 NIS fine for participating in Kufr Qaddum protests
in Nablus, Reports December 4, 2014
4th December 2014 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee | Kafr Qaddum, Occupied Palestine
Salem military court has sentenced activist Murad Eshtewi, from Kufr Qaddum village, to 9 and a half months of prison, with an additional 10,000 shekel fine. Israeli forces arrested Eshtewi on April 29th, 2014 in the middle of the night accusing him of participating in and arranging Kufr Qaddum demonstrations.
The unjust decision of the military court states the following:
Murad has been detained in Majedo Military Prison since his arrest in April, and has been suffered from many health problems during this time. His lawyer, Adel Samara, states that Murad has lost over 9 kilos in weight due to harsh and unsuitable holding cells.
In a letter from Murad, he stated the following:
“The accusations that I am charged with is unfair because it is our legal right to protest and participate in demonstrations against the occupation and to struggle for our self-determination as Palestinians.” He added that the peaceful marches in Kufr Qaddum will continue even if the occupation suppresses them over and over again.
Since the arrest of Murad, the Israeli army has raised its level of brutality in dealing with Kufr Qaddum demonstrations. 15 protestors have been shot by live bullets, last week alone recorded two live bullet injuries, a local youth and an Italian supporter, shot in cold blood just for participating in peaceful protests.
Murad calls on the international community and the United Nations to support Kufr Qaddum, to open the road closed by Israeli forces, to support the fair quest of a free Palestine, and to end the occupation and its settlers.
“They fine us so they can pay for more guns and weapons to kill us with,” Murad added. Finally, Murad calls on the people of Kufr Qaddum to keep on struggling against occupation and to never give up.
Homes Demolished in Israel and Palestine
0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians,
and over 28,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished
by Israel since 1967.
Number of Homes Demolished Since 1967IsraelPalestinians07,00014,00021,00028,000
CategoryIsraelisPalestinians
Israel0null
Palestiniansnull28000
28000
“Any humanitarian looking at the sheer number of innocent civilians who have lost their homes can only condemn Israel’s house demolition policy as a hugely disproportionate military response by an occupation army... It is a policy that creates only hardship and bitterness, and in the end can only undermine hope for future reconciliation and peace.”
– Peter Hansen, Commissioner General of UNRWA
Statistics Source: The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions estimates that over 28,000 houses have been demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967 (as of March 2012). According to ICAHD:
"Since 1967 Israel has demolished more than 28,000 Palestinian homes, businesses, livestock facilities and other structures vital to Palestinian life and livelihood in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The motivation for demolishing these homes is purely political, and racially informed: to either drive the Palestinians out of the country altogether (the 'quiet transfer') or to confine the four million residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza to small, crowded, impoverished and disconnected enclaves." (Read the whole report)
"It is impossible to know how many homes exactly because the Israeli authorities only report on the demolition of 'structures,' which may be homes or may be other structures. When a seven-story apartment building is demolished containing more than 20 housing units, that is considered only one demolition."
In addition to the homes demolished by Israel, thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed or significantly damaged by Israeli bombing and shelling. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that during Israel's Operation 'Cast Lead' assault on Gaza from Decemeber 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009,
"3,540 homes were destroyed in the course of the hostilities, 2,870 homes were severely damaged and 52,900 homes sustained minor damage. Some 2,618 homes destroyed or damaged beyond repair during 'Cast Lead' await rebuilding, primarily due to the blockade and restrictions on the entry of construction materials through the Kerem Shalom crossing."
While Palestinians have not demolished any Israeli homes, there is one known case of a Palestinian destroying an Israeli home in an explosion.
The Har Nof Killings: Dan McGowan’s Letter to Uri Avnery
Posted on November 25th, 2014 at 3:05 pm by admin
The following is reposted from the Deir Yassin Remembered Facebook page:
In the wake of the recent events in the synagogue at Har Nof, Uri Avnery has written an article which you can read here. Like all his work, Avner[y]’s article is informative, original and beautifully written. But it has a glaring omission.
Here, Dan McGowan fills him in:
Dear Uri:
I know that you realize that the Har Nof neighborhood in West Jerusalem, where four rabbis and a police officer were recently murdered, is built on the lands of Deir Yassin, the Arab village which no longer exists, that was the site of the 1948 massacre, which according to Menachem Begin, was pivotal to the founding of the Jewish state. This was an early massacre in the Nakba; there were many more to follow, but it struck fear among Palestinians, causing many to flee, also giving the Jews an angle for campaigns of terror, which they visited on other Palestinian villages, basically “Get out or we’ll do to you what we did in Deir Yassin.”
It is interesting to ask why the media, which has been all over this synagogue massacre, mentions nothing about what happened on this site on April 9, 1948?
Why does Wikipedia fail to even cite Deir Yassin in its history of Har Nof?
The attached picture of Har Nof [see below] is taken from Yad Vashem, the most prestigous Holocaust memorial. The water tower at the top right is next to the main buildings of Deir Yassin, which today serves as a mental hospital, mostly for those suffering with too much religion, an affliction also known as “The Jerusalem Syndrome.”
At Yad Vashem all visitors, and especially American politicians, are repeatedly told to “Never forget.” At Deir Yassin the message is “Never mind.” There is not even a signpost among the old Arab buildings to indicate that it was once a prosperous Arab village of about 750 people.
In building the Har Nof settlement much of the Deir Yassin cemetery was destroyed. The rest is littered with trash and condoms. Har Nof children have been seen digging up the Arab graves. (Imagine the outcry had they been desecrating Jewish graves.) Apartment buildings of Har Nof are literally built on the old quarry where villagers were executed and their bodies dumped and burned on April 10, 1948.
The ironies are breathtaking. But some of us still remember.
Daniel McGowan
Professor Emeritus, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Palestinian girl, 14, shot twice by Israeli forces at Qalandiya
Published today (updated) 04/12/2014 19:21
(MaanImages/File)
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces shot and injured a 14-year-old Palestinian girl at Qalandiya checkpoint on Thursday evening, witnesses told Ma'an.
Yathrib Salah Rayyan, 14, from Beit Duqqu village northwest of Jerusalem, was shot twice by Israeli soldiers as she walked in the car lane leading to the military checkpoint, witnesses said.
Israeli forces made sure the teenager was immobile before taking her away in a military jeep to an unknown destination.
Rayyan was 30 meters from the checkpoint when she was shot, witnesses said.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an that a "female Palestinian suspect" approached a "civilian security guard" at Qalandiya carrying a knife.
Israeli border police fired shots in the air and then detained the suspect, who was not shot during the incident, she added.
Witnesses at the scene refute claims that she attempted to stab a soldier.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian youth was shot with live fire in the lower extremities during clashes west of Ramallah.
Israeli forces opened fire in Beitillu village after residents protested the closure of the village for the past week.
From
Israel’s proposed Jewish nationality law is a flop on Broadway
The new Israeli cabinet proposal to define Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people is doing one good thing: mainstreaming harsh criticism of Israel in the United States. Shimon Peres’s prediction that the bill would “destroy Israel’s democratic status at home and abroad” seems to be coming true. Americans for Peace Now openly characterizes the proposed law, which passed the rightwing cabinet, as a form of “fascism.” The New York Times called the proposed law “heartbreaking” last week, and the editors are still upset this week, Omar Barghouti reported further up Broadway, at Columbia University on Tuesday night:
I had a meeting with editors and journalists at the New York Times this morning. They’re really stuck with this one!
In his speech that night, Barghouti said that the law is important because it makes the contradiction between an ethnocracy and a democracy completely obvious to people. “The last mask of Israel’s so called democracy has been dropped,” he said. “The oxymoron of the Jewish and democratic identity of the state of Israel is unraveling.” He said the law is also a blow to the “Israelification” of Palestinians inside Israel — where there are 50 laws that discriminate against them and in favor of Jews.
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2014/12/proposed-nationality-broadway#sthash.D8zWAsAL.dpuf
Israel shoots Palestinian teen in West Bank, detains 12-year-old in Jerusalem
Israeli Occupation Forces clash with Palestinians protesting the Apartheid Wall near Maqam Nabi Musa, where Muslims believe the grave of Moses is located, 11 km south of West Bank city Jericho and 20 km east of Jerusalem, on November 28, 2014. Anadolu / Issam Rimawi
Published Wednesday, December 3, 2014
A 14-year-old Palestinian was shot and injured by Israeli troops early Wednesday morning in clashes east of Nablus in the northern West Bank, sources said, hours after a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was detained by Israeli forces from the courtyard of his family home in annexed East Jerusalem. (read rest of article)
From B'Tselem FB page:
B'Tselem בצלם
Recent images of people lacking shelter from the storm in the Gaza Strip are a reminder that although Operation Protective Edge ended 3 months ago, Gazans are still suffering its dire consequences. Tens of thousands of homes ruined, infrastructure destroyed, families mourning the loss of loved ones – hardship exacerbated by the existing stringent restrictions on movement and on import of materials for rehabilitation. Shadi is the second in a series of voices from Gaza that we... will bring you in the coming weeks.
12-year-old Shadi lost his father in Operation Protective Edge, and his home was destroyed. He now lives in an improvised tent with his mother, three brothers, and a sister: “My life has really changed since my father was killed. We have no happiness now… It’s cold at night and I’m afraid when I hear dogs bark and the wind whistle. We don’t have a bathroom of our own… We sleep on the floor and sometimes I wake up from mosquito and bug bites or because I feel bugs or ants crawling on me.”
http://bit.ly/1zUWpmW
Read his full testimony here:
Watch the previous video here: https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152440852471570
See More
Mohammed Shukri Mohammed Khrewat, 21, works to straighten rebar from the rubble of the Zafer 4 Tower. (Photo: Dan Cohen)
Eight years of siege and three wars in six years have left the Gaza Strip in a state of perpetual disaster with no end in sight. After this summer’s assault, tens of thousands of Palestinians are sentenced to living in rubble wastelands that are scarcely recognizable from the thriving neighborhoods they once were.
“The survivors are the real victims of war,” Hamza Saftawi, 23, said. “They have to live in the aftermath.”
Moaeen Naim Maqbel, 54, and 13 of his family members live in a half-standing home in Shujaiya. Having worked inside Israel since age 15, the home Maqbel built over a span of decades was hit by Israeli shelling in 2008/2009, 2012, and was irreparably damaged this summer.
His family now spends their nights outside in the dark. A small fire they built provides minimal warmth and light. “I worked in Israel starting when I was 15 and saved money for this house. It was hit in 2008/2009, 2012, and now it’s destroyed,” Maqbel told me.
From where they sit, the lights of the Israeli kibbutz and military base of Nahal Oz are visible just several hundred meters away. “We can see they have electricity even on their borders where there aren’t any people. But there are people living here without electricity,” he explained. “We aren’t human, or what? Our life is hell. We are living like animals — maybe the cows live better than us.” (read rest of article)
More Palestinian protesters shot with .22 live ammunition
in Features, Ramallah, Reports December 6, 2014
6th December 2014 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah team | Nabi Saleh, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, Israeli soldiers invaded Nabi Saleh during the Palestinian village’s weekly Friday demonstration and shot one young Palestinian in the leg with .22 caliber live ammunition. The soldiers also fired tear gas canisters at demonstrators, along with more rounds of the .22 live caliber bullets.
http://schwarczenberg.com/
“At one point, after the boy had been shot, a soldier fired three tear gas canisters straight at internationals and Palestinians who were just standing there, trying to see what was going on up the road,” recalled one ISM activist present at the scene. “He [the soldier] was quite close to us, and could easily see that no one was throwing any stones. The canisters landed no more than a few meters away.”
http://schwarczenberg.com/
The young Palestinian who was shot is between seventeen and eighteen years old; he was rushed away from the scene and taken to a hospital for treatment. Nabi Saleh has been suffering from a spate of violence recently at the hands of Israeli forces, who shot three Palestinians including 38-year-old Nariman Tamimi at a demonstration two weeks ago and 14-year-old Ahmed Barghouti last Friday.
The Kufr Qaddum weekly demonstrations have been met with similar violence. Last week a Palestinian youth and an Italian ISM volunteer were both shot with .22 live ammunition in the chest. During yesterday’s protest a Palestinian journalist was shot in the leg with a .22 live bullet.
https://www.facebook.com/AlMasira.KufurKaddom
dropped in to see what this circus of a thread has evolved into...dribble.
tammuz is a fucking troll.
Total chicken shit coming to an architecture forum and reposting 1000+ news stories that nobody reads or gives a shit about. Not the place for your revolution shithead. Give it up. This thread belongs deep in the archives, or better, deleted.
from Israel has no answer to BDS, Barghouti tells packed hall at Columbia
The latest discussion in Israel about the Jewish nation state law has brought to the fore the very possibility of the unraveling of the entire Zionist project. And these are not my words, these are the words of certain very important leaders in Israel, who say that. What’s happening is that the oxymoron of the Jewish and democratic identity of the state of Israel is unraveling.
I can understand the frustration of the extreme right in Israel. ‘Why is the whole world, even the US, against us with this new law? Why are they so mad? We’ve been doing it all along, we’re just making it a bit more formal.’
Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has always consistently discriminated by law against the indigenous Palestinians. Other than ethnically cleansing them of course. So why is everyone so angry that they’re trying to codify the Jewish identity of the state. Some say it’s at the expense of the democratic identity. What democratic identity? When you have 50 laws that discriminate against a minority of your citizenry, that’s not democracy…
What Netanyahu and his far right government are doing is resolving this oxymoron. It cannot exist any longer. Let’s be very honest, Forget democracy. This is an ethnocracy… this is a Jewish supremacist state. So– no pretense of democracy. And that’s a very important development because it’s revealing Israel’s true nature. The last mask of Israel’s so-called democracy has been dropped.
Barghouti moved on to the tactics and success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
We’ve got to see it as our goal, as part of what we do in this country in the BDS movement… to disabuse Americans of the myth of empire being beneficial to all… Only then will most people in this country realize that Israel does not serve American interests writ large, but the 1 percent’s interests. The great majority of Americans cannot possibly benefit from what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people.
Shabtai Shavit, former Mossad chief, wrote in Haaretz a couple of weeks ago, that for the first time in his life, he’s really concerned about the future of the Zionist project. Shabtai Shavit is no lefty. He’s not your typical Che Guevara but an honest to goodness hard core Zionist. He’s really, really concerned… He’s saying, Europe is closing in our faces, European markets, even the US, our best friend, the relationship can’t be worse, it’s an unprecedented lowpoint. And the third point he mentions as an indicator of this hopelessness, university campuses in the west, like yours, are hothouses for the future leadership of their countries. He says, We’re losing the fight for support for Israel in the academic world. An increasing number of Jewish students are turning away from Israel. The global BDS movement has grown and quite a few Jews are members.
That’s one of the very rare times that an Israeli leader mentions the Jewish dimension of the BDS movement. It’s ignored completely.
Netanyahu lands unexpected endorsement: the Boycott Israel movement
Benjamin Netanyahu, his re-election campaign dogged by polls showing mounting voter disapproval of his performance as prime minister, has struggled of late to win decisive endorsements, even within his own Likud party.
From at least one sector, however, Netanyahu has received an endorsement as ringing as it was unsolicited – that of Omar Barghouti, a leading figure in BDS, the international movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.
Barghouti, speaking recently at an event held at Columbia University Law School in Manhattan, credited broadly negative world response to Netanyahu and his government's hardline policies, for much of the movement's success in recent years.
"We’ve got to give credit to Netanyahu," Barghouti said in remarks quoted on the pro-BDS Mondoweiss website. "Without him we could not have reached this far, at this time".
"It could have taken much, much, much, much longer, but with the help of the Israeli government, our biggest closet supporters in the world, we’re going much faster".
Barghouti said the government's deliberations over the Netanyahu-backed Jewish Nation-State bill, cast Israel as a nation which has always been anti-democratic and discriminatory toward Arabs - as BDS long argued – as well as suggesting the specter of an eventual end to Israel itself.
Israelis assault 2 Palestinian workers west of Jerusalem
Published today 13:13
(MaanImages/File)
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Two Israelis assaulted Palestinian workers at a gas station in the Jerusalem village of Ein Karem late Sunday, the victims' relatives said.
Mutasem Issam Shweiki, 24, and Shadi al-Mashni were hospitalized following the attack and treated for bleeding from the mouth, nausea, and bruising.
Shweiki's father said Israeli police arrested the suspects and confiscated surveillance cameras at the gas station.
Ein Karem, believed to be the birthplace of John the Baptist, was a vibrant mixed community of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews before the majority were forced to flee amid an attack by Jewish militias in 1948.
{Israeli] Army Kidnaps 16 Palestinians In The West Bank
Soldiers bulldoze lands near Nablus
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Monday at dawn, at least sixteen Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, including a woman who was kidnapped in the yards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem.
Local sources in the Hebron district, in the southern part of the West Bank, have reported that the soldiers kidnapped seven Palestinians; six in Hebron city, one in Halhoul town.
The sources said the soldiers broke into and ransacked several homes in Hebron city, and kidnapped Raed Salah Mohtaseb, 26, Mohammad Mousa Abu Hussein, Tareq Mohammad Abu Hussein, 26, Bilal Abdul-Rahman Abu Hussein, 25, and his brother Hamza, 24.
Soldiers also invaded a religious court in the Old City of Hebron, and kidnapped resident Ibrahim Ishaq al-Khatib, 23, while holding his wedding ceremony.
In addition, soldiers invaded Halhoul town, north of Hebron, and kidnapped a Palestinian identified as Anas Khaled Abu Rayyan, 24.
Army also invaded the towns of Ethna and Yatta, installed roadblocks at the northern entrance of Hebron city, and the entrances of Sa’ir and Halhoul towns, before stopping dozens of cars, and searched them while inspecting the ID cards of the passengers.
Furthermore, soldiers invaded Beiteen village, east of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, and kidnapped two Palestinians.
The two have been identified as, the local mosque’s Imam Sheikh Yousef Jaber, and Sa’ad Darwish, the brother of Saje Darwish, who was shot and killed by the Israeli army on March 10, 2014. http://www.imemc.org/article/67217
In Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, soldiers kidnapped ‘As’ad Khaled Abu al-Hasan, 20, from his home in ‘Askar refugee camp, Yazan Khaled Eshtayya, 21, Mojahed Ghazi Khalil, 22, from the Balata refugee camp, and Asadallah Qett, 23, from his home in Madama village, south of Nablus.
Several military jeeps also invaded Qabatia town, south of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, broke into and searched a number of homes, and kidnapped two Palestinians identified as ‘Odai Ahmad Abu ar-Rob, 21, and Shadi Talal Zakarna, 27.
In related news, several soldiers and Israeli extremists invaded the yards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in occupied Jerusalem, and kidnapped a woman identified as Om Radwan ‘Amro, near Bab Hatta, one of the gates leading to the mosque.
The woman was kidnapped after several Israeli fanatics stormed the yards of the Mosque, and conducted provocative acts targeting Muslim worshipers.
Earlier on Monday morning, small groups of Israeli fanatics, accompanied by police Special Forces, broke into the yards of the Mosque, through the Magharba Gate.
The Police also continued its policy of withholding the ID cards of young Palestinian men and woman, before allowing them to enter the mosque.
Furthermore, Israeli military bulldozers uprooted a Palestinian land, near Jaloud village, south of Nablus, in preparation to expand two illegal settlements, built on Palestinians lands.
Abdullah al-Hajj, head of the Jaloud village council, said the soldiers bulldozed a land, south of the village, adding that the land is near Akhya and Esh Kodesh settlements.
Official: Settlers expand illegal outpost near Nablus
Published today (updated) 08/12/2014 20:53
(MaanImages)
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers have been expanding an illegal settlement outpost in the northern West Bank, a Palestinian official said Monday.
Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settler activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an this was the second day in a row that settlers had leveled land to expand the outpost of Ahiya near the Palestinian village of Jalud.
The excavation work is being carried out on private Palestinian lands owned by Abdullah al-Hajj Muhammad and Rashid al-Hajj Muhammad from Jalud.
Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.
Some settlers act without approval to expand settlements or create new ones in the West Bank, building outposts that are illegal even by Israeli government standards.
In some cases, these settlement outposts are "legalized" by Israel, and in rare cases they are dismantled.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are rarely granted permission to build in the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control, or in East Jerusalem.
Israeli forces detain 12 fishermen off Gaza coast
Published Sunday 07/12/2014 (updated) 08/12/2014 11:34
(MaanImages/File)
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces detained 12 Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the northern Gaza Strip early Sunday, sources told Ma'an.
A researcher for the Gaza-based al-Mezan Center For Human Rights told Ma'an Israeli naval forces detained fishermen from four boats near the al-Sudaniyya area.
Forces first detained Mahmoud Zayid and his brother Ahmad from Beit Lahiya.
They then detained three more fishermen from Gaza City and later six more, the researcher said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Israeli gunboats confiscated the four fishing boats, taking them to an unknown destination.
The researcher said the arrests were the largest "detention campaign" against Gaza fishermen since a ceasefire between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces was announced.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said that over the course of the night, five fishing boats were apprehended after veering from the permitted fishing zone.
Twelve fishermen were arrested, the spokeswoman said.
A ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza on Aug. 26 stipulated that Israel would ease its blockade on the Strip and lighten restrictions on fishermen.
Since the agreement, Israeli forces have opened fire regularly at Gaza fishermen, saying they have veered outside the "designated fishing zone" which ends six nautical miles from shore.
Prior to the recent agreement, Israeli forces maintained a limit of three nautical miles on all Gaza fishermen, opening fire at fishermen who strayed further, despite earlier agreements which had settled on a 20-mile limit.
The restrictions crippled Gaza's fishing industry and impoverished local fishermen.
From
Q&A: 'I saw beheaded children in Gaza'
Doctor Mads Gilbert, banned by Israel from returning to Gaza, spoke to Al Jazeera about the plight of residents there.
"I saw beheaded children in Gaza, I have pictures.
"I don’t show them because they are simply too inhumane, but nobody is accusing Israel of a massacre of children...This, what we see in Gaza, is by definition pure state terrorism...
"As a doctor, I say don’t send more bandages, don’t send more drugs, and don’t send equipment. Stop the bombing, lift the siege, treat the Palestinians as humans, include them in the human family, protect them by international law and find a peaceful political solution to the occupation of Palestine. That’s the preventative medicine of this mayhem that is going on."
Dr Mads Gilbert
From
PA official dies after being assaulted by Israeli soldier
Published yesterday (updated) 10/12/2014 19:29
(AFP/Abbas Momani)
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- The head of the Palestinian Authority committee against the separation wall and settlements died Wednesday after Israeli soldiers assaulted him in a village near Ramallah, committee sources said.
Ziad Abu Ein, 55, died after an Israeli soldier beat him on the chest with his helmet in the village of Turmsayya in the Ramallah district, the director of the committee's information center, Jamil al-Barghouthi, told Ma'an.
Abu Ein also suffered severe tear gas inhalation as Israeli soldiers fired canisters in the area.
A Palestinian security source told AFP that Israeli forces beat Abu Ein with the butts of their rifles and their helmets during a protest march.
From Israel’s Invasion of US Justice, By Miko Peled
Israel is on a mission to destroy Palestine and its people, and as part of that mission Israel holds thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in its jails. This is not new nor should it come as any surprise to anyone. But the Israeli invasion of US politics, media, national security and foreign policy all started at a point when someone said, “There is a first time for everything.”
Miko Peled
From Israeli forces shoot, seriously injure Palestinian teen near Ramallah
Published yesterday (updated) 10/12/2014 20:17
RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Wednesday shot and injured a Palestinian teenager in the head during clashes at the entrance of al-Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah, medics said.
Raouf Hussein Snubar, 14, was hit in the head with a live bullet, causing fractures to his skull, medical sources told Ma'an.
They said he was in serious but stable condition.
Several other Palestinians were injured with live fire and rubber-coated bullets, and others suffered from tear gas inhalation
Imagine if an Israeli minister got killed at a non-violent protest? Imagine the reaction of mainstream western media, of western politicians? Now...where's that reaction when a Palestinian official gets killed by Israel's terrorism?
Israeli soldier kills PA minister at non-violent protest
in Nablus, Reports December 11, 2014
11th December 2014 | International Solidarity Movement | Turmusaya, Occupied Palestine
Yesterday, an Israeli soldier killed Palestinian Authority (PA) Settlment minister, Ziad Abu Ein, at a non-violent demonstration in the village of Turmusaya.
ISM spoke to Abdallah Abu-Rahme, coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee and present at the demonstration yesterday. “Yesterday was International Human Rights Day and we were going to plant olive trees in Turmusaya, on Palestinian land close to an illegal settlement outpost. We were completely non-violent but Israeli soldiers had gathered and made a line blocking us from the land, not allowing anyone to pass. Ziad Abu Ein, was standing face-to-face with a soldier, who then hit him on the head and in the face. He fell to the ground and when we took him to the ambulance, they told us he was dead.”
Photo by Oren Ziv and Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org
Settlers have been attacking the village of Turmusaya for many years. Close to Turmusaya lies the illegal settlement outpost of Adei Ad and yesterday Yesh Din (an Israeli human rights organization) and four Palestinian villages, petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice demanding that the military remove the illegal settlement outpost.
The petition argues that, “the outpost should be removed not only because it is constructed in part on private Palestinian land, but also because it constitutes a focus of criminal activities and grave violence against the Palestinian residents of the area with the goal of usurping their land and displacing its owners.” Wrote Yesh Din in a statement they released yesterday.
From Autopsy reveals Palestinian minister was murdered
Thursday, 11 December 2014 10:52
Image of activists helping the collapsed minister
The death Palestinian Minister Ziad Abu Ein was the result of beating, teargas-induced asphyxiation and obstruction by the Israeli army to transfer him to a hospital on time, a Palestinian official said, citing official forensic results.