Saturday, January 20, 2024

South Africa 🇿🇦 said “never again” and lived up to it.

South Africa 🇿🇦 said “never again” and lived up to it.

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Remembering Tom Hurndall 1981-2004 Killed by an Israeli Snipper as he carried Palestinian Children to safety

What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done.

— Tom Hurndall

They shot our son but they can't kill his spirit.

— Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall

Thomas Hurndall (27 November 1981 – 13 January 2004) was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On 11 April 2003, he was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by a (IDF) sniper, Taysir Hayb. Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hurndall

See Also

Rachel Corrie 1979-2003 – American ISM volunteer killed by Israeli bulldozer in Gaza, 16 March 2003: On March 16, 2003, the IDF was engaged in an operation involving the demolition of Palestinian houses in Rafah. Corrie was part of a group of three British and four American ISM activists attempting to disrupt the IDF operation. Corrie placed herself in the path of a Caterpillar D9R armored bulldozer in the area and was run over by the bulldozer and fatally injured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

palsolidarity.org  The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the long-entrenched and systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles. Founded in August 2001, ISM aims to support and strengthen the Palestinian popular resistance by being immediately alongside Palestinians in olive groves, on school runs, at demonstrations, within villages being attacked, by houses being demolished or where Palestinians are subject to consistent harassment or attacks from soldiers and settlers as well as numerous other situations.  READ MORE https://palsolidarity.org/about/
 

& from Wikipedia

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM; Arabic: حركة التضامن العالمية) is a Palestinian-led movement focused on assisting the Palestinian cause in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. ISM is dedicated to the use of nonviolent protests and methods only. The organization calls on civilians from around the world to participate in acts of nonviolent protests against the Israeli military in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[1]

Nesrine Malik in The Guardian: It’s not only Israel on trial. South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

 

It’s not only Israel on trial. South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

Nesrine Malik
Supporters of Palestine have long been told their position is fringe. But this case gives them legitimacy – and tests the limits of human rights

It was only a little over six hours of legal argument, but the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel at the international court of justice had decades of history bearing down on it. The specifics dealt with Israel’s assault on Gaza, but at its heart, the case was about something wider: closing the gap between Palestinian reality and how the dominant political forces describe it.

For weeks now, anger at events in Gaza has spilled out on to the streets across Europe. Yet this anger has been resolutely ignored, dismissed, banned, or vilified by political leaders. Public support for a ceasefire, now at more than 70% in the UK, is not reflected in the positions of either the government or the opposition. Globally, condemnation of the violence from human rights organisations, the United Nations and even the pope has yet to translate into meaningful action from political leaders.

A UN resolution calling for a ceasefire was blocked by the US. Even the language of protest has been forensically analysed to render it problematic or ignorant; protesters have been accused of... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/israel-trial-south-africa-icj-palestine?CMP=share_btn_fb
[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES or quotes or watch videos IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

Kitaba by Tala Abunuwar: We are not free till all of us are free! Thank you South Africa 🙏

kittaba by Tala Abunuwar

We all just want to be seen and heard. No exceptions! We are not free till all of us are free! Thank you South Africa  https://www.instagram.com/p/C2AdPbprumk/

 

With love from Palestine to South Africa

With love from Palestine to South Africa

 

'Stunned, angry, and infuriated': Journalists address US silence on colleagues killed in Gaza

Jan 14, 2024 

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 82 journalists and media workers have died since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7th, making this war the deadliest in modern history for journalists. Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya are the latest journalists to be killed in the war. Hamza is the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, who had already lost his wife, daughter, another son, and grandson in an Israeli airstrike. Al-Dahdouh vows to continue reporting through his pain and loss.

Dear President Biden - I have hope

Dear President Biden,

I have hope- hope that more concerned human beings will find the courage to nonviolently do all they can to convince Americans to stop funding and fueling Israel's racist rage and genocidal war against the native non-Jewish people of the Holy Land.

Yes you might have stopped reading right there, because you don't want to think of Israel as the villain: Beloved hymns and prayers sing Israel's praises.  TV ads/entertainment/news & newspapers polish up Israel's image at every turn with both news & opinion pieces. And preachers hoping for End Times want all Jews to go there to be destroyed.  There are many different and contradictory factors stoking the Zionist project.

I know that it is hard to understand and even harder to admit being wrong about our "friend" Israel, but we must. We must realize that even Oslo and the promise of a two state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict has been abused by sovereign Israel to further impoverish and displace the stateless Palestinians.

We should not be funding, arming, and excusing a nation state that bases citizenship rights and freedom on a person's religion or race.  Kudos to South Africa for seeing and condemning Israel's Apartheid and genocidal war on Palestine, and kudos to all worldwide who never ever forget Palestine, and the very real plight and suffering of Palestinian individuals and families.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES 

Religion should be a personal, private choice, not a state funded project

Responses to genocide are often determined by where the crime is committed, and what the victims look like...  How can so many in the West so easily ignore genocide?

Art by Rami Jubran - Nurturing Life #Palestine

Susan Muaddi Darraj: There are 12 different ways to say "friend" in Arabic, and I believe South Africa embodies all of them. 

South Africa has had enough of the world’s deafening silence on apartheid Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Dear... Violence is the feel good answer in movies & on TV- not in real life.

Revealed: Congress backers of Gaza war received most from pro-Israel donors

The third Arab journalist murdered in less than 48 hours by Israel - at least 111 journalists murdered in the last 95 days by Israel

The human cost and the environmental cost of war in the Middle East is horrifying, and yet America's mainstream newspapers, TV news, and politicians itch to have more & more war, investing in Israeli violence at every turn. 

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

The Basarat Home in Palestine USURPED by Zionists... but never ever forgotten by its rightful owners and heirs. 

How apartheid history shaped South Africa’s genocide case against Israel- in The Guardian

Mourning books (& lives) lost due to rampant Israeli violence & anti-Palestine paranoia

Child of Handala - a modern interpretation of the 21st-century generation of Palestinian Nakba survivors.

Ralph Nader on Gaza Ceasefire & Why Suppression of Palestine Advocacy Is the Real Problem on Campus

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta: The tiny Gaza Strip, only 1.3% of Palestine, became a temporary home for 2.3 million Palestinian refugees.

Dear... Stop racist hate- start by stopping Israeli violence, and the Zionist stranglehold on your brain.

My letter to USA Today 1-5-2024 RE 50-year friendship offers a close look at caring dialogue on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

My letter to the New Yorker RE Mosab Abu Toha's A Palestinian Poet’s Perilous Journey Out of Gaza

Ibtisam Barakat: A Palestinian Whose Childhood Was Destroyed by War Pleads for Peace- Never letting children endure war again is the “never again” that might actually heal our wounded humanity.

But where should people go... 

Israel eases up on bombing parts of Gaza, but only as famine and disease take their hold. 

I hear reports and see TV commercials showing that Anti-Semitism and other forms of racist hate is increasing. We need to stop that trend

Together, we have the power to shift the narrative on Palestine and build a future of collective liberation- Visualizing Palestine NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Like Palestinians in the rest of east Jerusalem, most Armenians do not hold Israeli citizenship but only residency...

The Jewish settlers 'living the American dream' in the West Bank

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?