Saturday, November 18, 2023
The Western World will be putting up Nativity Scenes in their homes and churches which are about Middle Eastern people seeking refuge & look awful lot like those being bombed in Gaza
Water is life. The denial & destruction of it is genocide. .. Visualizing Palestine
97% of Gaza's water was unsafe to drink even before the most recent Israeli military assault, which has devastated water infrastructure.
Now, a dire situation has become catastrophic.
Water is life. The denial & destruction of it is genocide.
The last Palestinians resisting in the olive groves: ‘The settlers are trying to take away the food we put on the table so they can then take our land’
West Bank farmers claim that they were already suffering attacks by settlers before October 7, but that now the Israeli army has also joined in the harassment
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Friday, November 17, 2023
8-year-old Mohammed from Gaza sits on the rubble of his family's house
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| “I wish for a ceasefire.” |
UNICEF continues to call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, unrestricted humanitarian access and immediate and safe release of all abducted children.
Children in Gaza need lifesaving support
UNICEF and partners are on the ground.
The escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip is having a catastrophic impact on children and families. Children are dying at an alarming rate – thousands have reportedly been killed and thousands more injured. An estimated 1.5 million people in the Gaza Strip have been displaced – more than half of them children. They’re running out of water, food, fuel and medicine. Their homes have been destroyed; their families torn apart.
“In all wars it is children who suffer first and suffer most.”
Even wars have rules. No child should be cut off from essential services, nor fall from the reach of humanitarian hands. No child should be held hostage or used by any means in armed conflict. Hospitals and schools must be protected from bombings, and they must not be used for military purposes, in accordance with international humanitarian law. No child should suffer the threat of bombs from their beds. The cost to children and their communities of this violence will be borne out for generations to come.
What is UNICEF calling for?
To respond to the situation for children in Israel and the State of Palestine, UNICEF is calling for:
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An immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
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The immediate, safe and unconditional release of all abducted children and the prevention and end to any grave violations against children, including killing and injuring.
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All access crossings into the Gaza Strip to be opened and safe movement for humanitarian workers and supplies across the Gaza Strip to ensure sustained and unimpeded access of humanitarian aid to affected populations wherever they are. This must include water, food, medical supplies, and fuel.
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Urgent medical cases in Gaza to be able to safely access critical health services or be allowed to leave, and for injured or sick children evacuated to be accompanied by family members.
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Respect and protection for civilian infrastructure such as shelters and schools, and health, electric, water and sanitation facilities, to prevent loss of civilian and children’s lives, outbreaks of diseases, and to provide care to the sick and wounded. All parties to the conflict must respect international humanitarian law.
UNICEF continues to press world leaders on every occasion for humanitarian access to the whole of Gaza.
Latest updates
Read the latest news or explore updates from social media
Dear America- STOP RACIST HATE
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| 1948 Palestinian refugees refused their natural, logical, moral, ethical and legal right to return to original homes and lands. |
Dear America,
America was very racist before, during and after World
War II and the Nazi Holocaust. In some ways we are better now, but in other ways we are worse:
Funding Israel as Israel subsidizes religious zealots to harass Palestinians and usurp Palestinian land is wrong- and racist.
Arming Israel as it bombs refugee camps, hospitals, and bread bakeries in Gaza is wrong- and racist.
Ignoring Israel's blatant and long term violations of international
law [1948-2023] and the indigenous Palestinians' basic human rights is
wrong- and racist.
STOP RACIST HATE- start by ending America's misguided support for the
heavily armed and generously subsidized Jews-preferred Israel as Israel
aggressively destroys Arab Palestinian homes and lives everywhere and
in every way it can.
The more America supports Israel the more power and weaponry angry armed
extremists and their propagandists world wide gain, ensuring more terrorism and more enemies...
more injustice... more poverty... more suffering... more hypocrisy...
more lies... and more misinformation perpetuating more racist hate and evil in this world.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
American Homemaker & Poet
NOTES
To quote a well known American hero... "Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation
to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our
nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's
children." I Have A Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963
Palestinians in the West Bank say Israeli settlers attack them, seize their land amid the war with Hamas CBS News with video
"The Ministry of Health in the West Bank says almost 200 Palestinians
have been killed in the territory since Oct. 7, and the United Nations
humanitarian relief agency OCHA says almost 1,150 people have been
displaced from their homes there due to settler violence and land access
restrictions." ... READ MORE & Watch the CBS News Video
Dear world, we see you By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH November 16, 2023
"Do mainstream news outlets like Fox, NBC, CBS etc even have a fact checking department anymore? ..." Susan Muaddi Darraj
A rare picture of the harvest season from the Bin Amer Meadow located between the Galilee region and the Nablus Mountains in the north circa 1930 PALESTINE
Wadadad Khoury Salah from the town of Jaffna Qadaa Ramallah now, and when she was young
Prayer Vigil November 20, 2023 6 p.m. Washington DC: CEASEFIRE NOW (stop the violence, stop the injustice, stop the racist hate, STOP ISRAEL'S WAR ON PALESTINE )
Stand for Humanity
For the Palestinian Christians in Gaza who are being ethnically cleansed along with their Muslim neighbors.
Statement on the Celebration of Advent and Christmas in the Midst of War Novemeber 10, 2023 The Patriachs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem
"So yes I am a Palestinian refugee and I am from Yaffa. Deal with it." Ambassador Majed Bamya
Demonstrations
Pro Palestinians demonstrators chanted "Free Palestine"
... Pro Israeli demonstrators chanted "No Ceasefire"
If you've ever wondered what you'd do during slavery, the holocaust, or the civil rights movement- you're doing it right now
Zeina Azzam poem- Write My Name....
The Sorrowful Mother, from Coreggio, in Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
A Palestine Madonna (photo of a Palestinian mother with her baby taken in the 1930s)
Palestine-- Palestinians with ladders at olive trees and people picking olives off the ground. circa 1880-1922 Library of Congress
Sliman Mansour: Painting Palestine’s Story
What should America believe in & what should America invest in?
There is nothing humanitarian about a pause in which your two options are to either leave your home forever or die ....
Oh hey, a friendly reminder that you can understand, acknowledge, and sympathize with very real generational Jewish trauma and still push for a free Palestine. - Susan Muaddi Darraj
Israel's War on Palestine did not begin on October 7th #1948-2023
Many Palestinian families still have the keys to the houses they left in 1948.
1948's Universal Declaration of Human Rights | United Nations
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world...
To quote a well known American hero...
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| Martin Luther King Jr statue in Washington Dc |
"Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."
I Have A Dream speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/i-have-a-dream-speech#i-have-a-dream-speech-text
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
Palestinians in the West Bank say Israeli settlers attack them, seize their land amid the war with Hamas CBS News with video
"The Ministry of Health in the West Bank says almost 200 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since Oct. 7, and the United Nations humanitarian relief agency OCHA says almost 1,150 people have been displaced from their homes there due to settler violence and land access restrictions." ... READ MORE & Watch the CBS News Video
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[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
Dear world, we see you By Joharah Baker for MIFTAH November 16, 2023
Gaza has cracked the world wide open. The masks have fallen from just about everyone and when all this is said and done, the Palestinians will take inventory on both friend and foe.
This horrendous assault on the Gaza Strip has laid bare some very uncomfortable truths. For one, the grossly unbalanced world order has not changed, even as the bombs fall mercilessly on Gaza. While our guts already knew this, it was still shocking to witness how the slaughter peeled back the layers of falsehoods, concealing the ugly truth. The world is still a binary equation of colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed and white vs black and brown, and there is no question under which category the Palestinians fall.
The colonialist past is playing out in real time today in Gaza and we, as Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” so succinctly described, are “the brutes”. We are the indigenous brown people, the sub-humans who are inherently violent and who are responsible for our own deaths... READ MORE
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
Thursday, November 16, 2023
"Do mainstream news outlets like Fox, NBC, CBS etc even have a fact checking department anymore? ..." Susan Muaddi Darraj
"Do mainstream news outlets like Fox, NBC, CBS etc even have a fact checking department anymore?
Or do they just let everything that "sounds correct" (i.e. fits the stereotype already in their head) get airtime?"
Susan Muaddi Darraj’s new novel, BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA, will be published in January 2024 by HarperVia. Her previous short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home,
was named the winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction,
judged by Jaime Manrique. The book was published in December 2015 by the
University of Massachusetts Press. It also won the 2016 Arab American Book Award, a 2016 American Book Award, and was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press.
In 2019, she launched the viral #TweetYourThobe social media campaign to promote Palestinian culture. Later that year, she was named winner of the Rose Nader Award, by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), an award given by the Nader family to a person who “demonstrates an unwavering dedication and commitment to values of equality and justice.”
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]
A rare picture of the harvest season from the Bin Amer Meadow located between the Galilee region and the Nablus Mountains in the north circa 1930 PALESTINE
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A rare picture of the harvest Bin Amer's lawn,
which was 90 thousand 364 acres, was described as a "bread basket
without mud" because of the abundance of wheat and grain cultivation in
it |
Wadadad Khoury Salah from the town of Jaffna Qadaa Ramallah now, and when she was young
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| Wadadad Khoury Salah from the town of Jaffna Qadaa Ramallah now, and when she was young |
She is Wadadad Khoury Salah from the town of Jaffna Qadaa Ramallah, an American photographer saw her and admired her for her beauty and decided to take several pictures of her in July 1939, and the beautiful girl appeared in the traditional costume of her town and immediately the photographer returned to his town, he published it in newspapers and magazines The American and the photos are currently preserved in the library of the American Congress.
A few years ago, her picture was displayed in color in the Palestinian Museum in America. Her son recognized her and said that she is still alive, she is over 98 years old and has immigrated to the United States of America..
For the Palestinian Christians in Gaza who are being ethnically cleansed along with their Muslim neighbors.
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| For the Palestinian Christians in Gaza who are being ethnically cleansed along with their Muslim neighbors. |
Statement on the Celebration of Advent and Christmas in the Midst of War November 10, 2023 The Patriachs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem
[AS
ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO
READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP
SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully
Palestine]
"So yes I am a Palestinian refugee and I am from Yaffa. Deal with it." Ambassador Majed Bamya
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| Ambassador Majed Bamya |
Deputy Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the UN, New York. Palestinian from Yaffa. Refugee. The time for freedom is always right now!
For those who keep sending me messages to mock the fact my bio indicates I am a Palestinian from Yaffa and a refugee, highlighting I am too young to have left in 1948 or that I was not born in Yaffa, which is precisely because my family is a refugee family who found itself in Lebanon then and, after the 1982 war, left for the UAE where I was born.
I just want to point out that I am sure those writing these messages see no problem in claiming a right of return to Palestine 2000 years later but are outraged by any mention of the right of return of Palestinian refugees or the fact they are and their descendants still considered refugees 75 years after the Nakba or to see them proclaiming their roots that are still vivid in the memories of their parents and grandparents and still visible in their ancestral land, despite all the efforts to erase it.
Part of my family home built by my grandfather still stands in Yaffa. I visited it as a stranger allowed a glimpse at it by those who now live in it. I still have conversations with Yaffa’s sea. I can imagine what my life could have been if it wasn’t for the Nakba. I can be for peace without betraying that part of my being. I am for peace not because our dispossession and displacement did not take place but despite of them. So yes I am a Palestinian refugee and I am from Yaffa. Deal with it.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Demonstrations
Pro Palestinians demonstrators chanted "Free Palestine"
... Pro Israeli demonstrators chanted "No Ceasefire"
Zeina Azzam poem- Write My Name....
فلسطين
Write my name on my leg, Mama
Use the black permanent marker
with the ink that doesn’t bleed
if it gets wet, the one that doesn’t melt
if it’s exposed to heat
Make the lines thick and clear
Add your special flourishes
so I can take comfort in seeing
my mama’s handwriting when I go to sleep
Write my name on my leg, Mama
and on the legs of my sisters and brothers
This way we will belong together
This way we will be known
as your children
Write my name on my leg, Mama
and please write your name
and Baba’s name on your legs, too
so we will be remembered
as a family
Write my name on my leg, Mama
Don’t add any numbers
like when I was born or the address of our home
I don’t want the world to list me as a number
I have a name and I am not a number
Write my name on my leg, Mama
When the bomb hits our house
When the walls crush our skulls and bones
our legs will tell our story, how
there was nowhere for us to run
—Zeina Azzam
The Sorrowful Mother, from Coreggio, in Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
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Famous religious paintings. The Sorrowful Mother, from Coreggio, in Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem |
Matson (G. Eric and Edith) Photograph Collection Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/matpc.07287/?co=matpc
A Palestine Madonna (photo of a Palestinian mother with her baby taken in the 1930s)
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About this Collection
The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection is a rich source of historical images of the Middle East. The majority of the images depict Palestine (present day Israel and the West Bank) from 1898 to 1946. Most of the collection consists of over 22,000 glass and film photographic negatives and transparencies created by the American Colony Photo Department and its successor firm, the Matson Photo Service. Over 1,000 photographic prints and eleven albums are also part of this collection.
Digital images for the negatives and transparencies and a
sample of the photographs are available online. https://loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
Palestine-- Palestinians with ladders at olive trees and people picking olives off the ground. circa 1880-1922 Library of Congress
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Summary
 Remember Palestine |
Sliman Mansour: Painting Palestine’s Story
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Sliman Mansour: Painting Palestine’s Story |
Sliman Mansour is an influential and renowned Palestinian artist. His work - which has come to symbolize the Palestinian national identity - has inspired generations of Palestinians and international artists and activists alike. Passionate about the work of Embrace, Sliman has generously gifted some of his artwork to us for use. He recently spoke to us about his life and work.
Born in 1947 and raised in the verdant hills of Birzeit, one of the few remaining Palestinian Christian towns, located in the central West Bank, and later living in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Sliman’s beautifully expressive and emotive artwork embodies steadfastness, reflecting the hopes and realities of a culture in the face of relentless military occupation.
Since the early 1970s, Sliman has translated his experiences of isolation, displacement, community and rootedness using imagery, symbols and natural materials in his artwork. What began as a boycott of Israeli art supplies during the first Intifada (1987-1993) soon became a rich and meaningful expression of Palestinian culture. Local natural materials such as coffee, henna, hay and mud all became tools of choice for Sliman.
Using actual Palestinian land to create artwork allowed him to capture the essence of Palestinian rootedness, juxtaposed with fragmentation in the political and geographical landscape – echoed in the cracks growing in the mud as it dries.
As Sliman reflects, ‘I was moulded by the Palestinian landscape. The land plays an important role in my art and in my nature as a human being. I said to myself ‘rather than drawing the land, I will draw with land.’ People would ‘inhale’ my artwork at exhibitions – they would feel the Palestinian heritage, by touch, by scent, with the senses.’
Passionate about the work of Embrace, Sliman has generously gifted his artwork to us for use on three beautiful cards that we are selling through our webshop. Every penny raised will contribute directly to the work of our partners to transform lives in the Middle East, providing education, healthcare and community development where it is most needed.
These three original works give a glimpse into very different eras of Sliman’s life and creativity – looking at the progression between the pieces, we can trace, with Sliman, the changing landscape of Palestine.
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| Jerusalem Rooftops’ by Sliman Mansour. |
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| Jerusalem Heritage’ by Sliman Mansour. |
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| ‘Hope’ by Sliman Mansour. |