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| Palestinian born Basil Harb with his beloved daughters Nancy & Barbara- Christmas in Bakersville, California |
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| Nancy Harb Almendras at 19, 46 years ago visiting her Aunt Jameela in Ramallah, Palestine |
"Forty-six years ago I was nineteen and doing my junior year abroad in
Heidelberg. I wanted to see my late Aunt Jameelah in Ramallah so I flew
in to the Tel Aviv Airport (Lydda is Palestinian town that was there
before). Although I had an American passport, my last name was Harb so I
was interrogated; at least one of the interrogators was a young Russian
girl. They wanted to know my grandfather's name. Three hours later
after being strip searched and having every candy bar
that
I'd brought from Germany for my aunt and uncle opened up and
scrutinized, I was free to go to the terminal. Nineteen year-old Nancy
Harb from Bakersfield, California,was no threat to the Israeli
government. Its purpose was to humiliate me so that I wouldn't return
to the place where my father was born.
I got off relatively well. Maysoon Zayid,
the Palestinian comic who is disabled, wrote about the time she was
menstruating and the Israelis wouldn't let her have her pads. It's all
orchestrated to humiliate us so that we won't return. Some of us have
too much pride to return. I will never forget the late Palestinian
renowned artist, Vladimir Tamari, whose family hails from Jaffa,
telling me in Tokyo, that he would not return because he did not want to
endure being humiliated by some immigrant to Israel. We are well off
and have done well for ourselves in Asia, America, and Europe. Our
humiliations pale compared to the suffering, occupied people of Gaza and
the West Bank. Think of this when you tune in to Eurovision this week." Nancy Harb Almendras on May 14th 2019
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Eurovision 2019 was in Israel ?!!!!!!
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Israel’s Eurovision: ‘Dare to Dream’ Unless You’re Caged in Gaza- Just an Hour’s Drive Away, Palestinians Yearn for Freedom & Equality Abier Almasri
This week, Israel hosts the international song contest Eurovision in
Tel Aviv, under the slogan of “Dare to Dream.” Many across Europe have
come hundreds of miles to Israel for the festivities but, even though I
live less than an hour’s drive away in the Gaza Strip, I’m not allowed
to make the trip.
Israel, in coordination with Egypt, has turned Gaza into an
open-air prison,
caging in the two million of us Palestinians living in the small
territory. For almost 12 years, Israeli authorities have largely limited
travel to “exceptional humanitarian cases” – an unlawful generalized
travel ban not based on any individualized assessment of security risk.
The number of people travelling out of Gaza in 2018 via the Erez
Crossing in was about
1 percent of what it was in September 2000, before the closure was imposed.
Despite our difficult reality, I dared to dream for years of
traveling and seeing the world and nearby Jerusalem, also just a short
drive away. Last year, the Israeli army permitted me to leave Gaza for
the
first time in my life, as a 31-year-old, to attend meetings for Human Rights Watch in New York. I later received another permit to visit
Israel and the rest of Palestine for the first time, taking in every moment, knowing I may never have the opportunity again.
I am more fortunate than most people in Gaza, 80 percent of whom depend on
humanitarian aid and
more than half of whom are unemployed.
I wish those attending Eurovision could visit me in Gaza and
experience our reality, such as rolling power cuts that last most of the
day, and the psychological torment of feeling trapped and unable to
travel through no wrongdoing of your own.
We Palestinians of Gaza may not be able to attend Eurovision, but we will never stop
daring to dream.
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Dear Madonna and Eurovision 2019 contestants.....
"Let me tell you what supporting peace really means.
It means affirming the fact that Palestine is under occupation and that Israel
has violated numerous UN resolutions calling for the withdrawal of its
troops from Palestinian territories. It means recognising that Israel
and its illegal settlements operate under apartheid, where Palestinians
are segregated, surveilled, oppressed, and killed into submission. It
means acknowledging that Israel was built on a land whose original
native population was violently ethnically cleansed and dispossessed.
The very venue your hosts are having you sing at,
the Expo Tel Aviv, was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village
Al-Shaykh Muwannis, which like 530 others were completely razed to the
ground in 1948 to make way for settlers coming from your countries in
Europe. We, the six million Palestinian refugees scattered around the
world, are the living proof that Palestine was a thriving and civilised
land before the arrival of the European Zionists.
Those few Palestinians who were able to remain in
their land and were given Israeli citizenship, face more than 50
discriminatory laws which make them non-equal citizens. In fact, last
year Israel finally officially acknowledged
the apartheid it had imposed for decades on the non-Jews within its
borders by proclaiming itself a Jewish state. But even before this
declaration, anti-apartheid fighters, like Nelson Mandela and Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, had repeatedly compared Israel to South Africa and said
that the parallels are clear.
If Europe took action and boycotted the racist murderous regime of apartheid South Africa, why aren't you doing so with Israel? Why do you insist on rewarding the perpetrators of the second-gravest crime against humanity, apartheid?
Why are you pretending not to see the colonisation of Palestine? Over
the past few days, you have been singing just a few kilometres away
from a vast network of segregated infrastructure and checkpoints that
separate some 650,000 Jewish settlers who live in
illegal settlements built on occupied Palestinian land from the Palestinian population. Meanwhile, the true owners of the land in the
West Bank have no state to protect them, no rights to the resources of the land, including water, no
real freedom of movement, and no real economic prospects to live a dignified life."
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