Saturday, March 16, 2024
Birthday under bombardment by Fares Abulebda [in Gaza]
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Fares Abulebda |
Friday, March 15, 2024
Over 200 european organisations urge immediate suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement amidst Gaza crisis
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| The Transnational Institute is an international research and advocacy institute committed to building a just, democratic and sustainable planet. |
Dublin, 14/03/2024: Today, a coalition of 206 European civil society groups, 20 of which were based in Ireland, submitted a letter to the EU Commission, the EU Council, and the European Parliament, calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement in light of the violation of Human Rights by the State of Israel.
In January, in view of South Africa’s case alleging genocide against the Israeli government, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that some of the accusations indicate that genocide could be plausible in specific instances. The ICJ ordered the Israeli Government to take all measures within its power to prevent acts within the scope of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Coalition believes that the fact that the ICJ considered South Africa’s claims as ‘plausible’ and has issued provisional measures against the Israeli Government, then this should raise serious alarm bells in the EU. However, Israel’s economy continues to enjoy privileged access to the EU market through the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
The Coalition believes that civil society should stand united in calling for the suspension of the EU-Israel Agreement, and that it’s time for the EU to uphold its commitment to human rights and democratic principles and take concrete action to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The coalition’s letter to the EU stresses that prior to the current hostilities, Palestinians have faced systematic rights violations, including land expropriation, forced evictions, property demolition and restrictions on movement, persisting since 1948.... READ MORE https://www.bilaterals.org/?suspend-the-eu-israel-association-50079
[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]
What Israeli soldiers' display of Palestinian women's lingerie reveals about the Zionist psyche
"... Amnesty International's 2022 report
on the Israeli system of apartheid found that Israeli authorities have
abused and sexually harassed Palestinians in detention for decades. More
recently, the UN disclosed reports
of Palestinian women and girls being "subjected to multiple forms of
sexual assault", including rape, at the hands of Israeli prison guards.
Earlier this week, Unrwa announced an upcoming report
detailing Israeli forces' torture and abuse of more than 1,000
Palestinians of all genders in Gaza. After watching several videos of
soldiers gleefully digging through Palestinian women's underwear, one
cannot help but agonise over the violations taking place behind the
scenes. This agony looms over the disturbing photo posted by 25-year-old Israeli solider Benjamin, a French citizen, to his dating profile. Legs spread wide, gun in hand, he smirks at a range of Palestinian women's lingerie hanging on a wall.
This exhibition of genocidal spoils curated by the occupiers raises a host of haunting questions: where are the people who once wore those garments now? Did Israeli soldiers force them from their homes at gunpoint or even kill them before posing for their photoshoots? Did any of them tear the lingerie from women's bodies, and if so, what horrors could these Palestinians have been subjected to?
To what end does the Zionist soldier in pursuit of a romantic partner openly mock Palestinians' capacity for profoundly loving, sexual relationships? Why does the Zionist soldier offer his own partner necklaces and shoes looted from dead and displaced Palestinians, and what do such gestures reveal about settler-colonialism's mutilation of romance?"
[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]
Israel's no-state solution... Palestinian sovereignty has always been out of the question for Israel, as have equal rights under one binational state.
"... In sum, Israel as an occupying power has consistently pursued not two states, operationalised through withdrawal and land-for-peace, but no state (for Palestinians), operationalised through settlement expansion and “peace-for-peace”.
In the latter - despite its innocuous name - Palestinians are offered neither withdrawal nor equal rights in exchange for Israel’s peace, but rather a “peace” in which they are spared from massive Israeli bombing (and, now, starvation) campaigns.
This threat of hugely asymmetric attacks on civilian populations is used to guarantee Israel’s security as it maintains its occupation and system of preferential rights, and as it enacts the “lower intensity” everyday violence of occupation and segregation on the Palestinians."
"The Achilles heel of the peace process was assuming that Israel views Palestinian statehood as necessary to its security, so that the benefits of withdrawal would outweigh Israel's interest in expansionism"
An untenable strategy
Read More ... https://www.newarab.com/analysis/israels-no-state-solution-and-endurance-palestine
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The European Union's top diplomat Josep Borrell has accused Israel of using the starvation of the people of Gaza as a means of warfare.
The New Arab Staff
EU's Borrell says Israel using starvation as 'weapon of war' in Gaz
Addressing the UN Security Council in New York, Borrell stated that the lack of aid entering the Palestinian enclave is "manmade".
"This humanitarian crisis... is not a natural disaster, is not a flood, is not an earthquake, it is manmade," the EU diplomat said.
This comes as aid agencies warned that land routes are the quickest and most effective method of getting aid into the starving territory, yet Israeli restrictions on such routes mean that only a fraction of the necessary aid is getting in.
This has seen aid efforts shift away from land routes to other methods, such as by air and, most recently, sea.
A Spanish vessel loaded with critically needed food supplies departed from Cyprus towards Gaza on Tuesday, although the UN has stated that this, as well as airdrops, do not substitute for land-based aid delivery.
In a preliminary ruling in January that stated Israel was plausibly committing genocide in Gaza, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) also ordered Tel Aviv to “facilitate immediate humanitarian aid to Gaza”.
However, human rights agencies and the UN have both noted that Israel has failed to live up to this demand, with famine now looming in the Strip, conditions Borrell says are being deliberately created by Tel Aviv.
“[The humanitarian crisis is] manmade and when we look for ....
Read More: https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-using-starvation-weapon-war-gaza-borrell
[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]
Thursday, March 14, 2024
TikTok... Freedom, justice and equality are not empty words.
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| Lessons not learned |
Dear Elected Leaders,
So all this fuss and bother about TiKToK because TiKToK was created
by the very foreign country called China... but our Congress has no
condemnation for another very foreign country called Israel while Israel
has spent decades interfering with our elections using AIPAC $$$ and
pressure, plus many a propaganda campaign to pollute and undermine our
Fourth Estate, and the very essence of our democratic ideals.
There is a very good reason why American tax payers' money should not be funding religion here or there. There being Israel, a very foreign country that wants our money and weaponry so it can continue to persecute, impoverish and displace the native non-Jewish men, women and children of historic Palestine.
Freedom, justice and equality are not empty words. These ideals
helped end slavery and Jim Crow laws. These ideals helped build a more
real democracy and helped give women the right to vote. These ideals
helped shape international law after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.
But freedom, justice and equality have not shaped Israel's "democracy" or its political and religious leaders' choices.
Israel is actually using starvation as a weapon of war right this minute.
And America's Congress is empowering Israel's cruel starvation and
intentional torture of the native non-Jewish Palestinians trapped in Gaza by Israel's Apartheid laws and walls.
Defunding UNWRA is a horrible idea, and so is saying that Israel is our friend. As many a mother has said through the years: "With friends like that you don't need enemies."
TicToc the clock is ticking on American hypocrisy and racist Israeli crimes.
Say yes to compassion and decency... Say yes to Palestine... and say NO to Israel.
As for TiKToK, fix the Israel problem first. Pegasus is not just a pretty horse.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes
"Think of Others" Mahmoud Darwish of Palestine
Palestinian Poet Marwan Makhoul: "In order to write poetry that isn't politcal, I must listen to the birds; and in order to listen to the birds, the warplanes must be silent."
Susan Sarandon: "You don't have to be Palestinian to care about what's happening in Gaza. I stand with Palestine. No one is free until everyone is free."
Bloody Extremists
What Was Palestine Before the Nakba?
We must regard all people as we regard ourselves | Patriot News PennLive letters Mar. 10, 2024
Pamela Olson's "Fast Times in Palestine" is a primer on the realities in Palestine for newbies... & It's free to download from her website
Huwaida Arraf: "May this holy month of Ramadan bring comfort to those in need; sanity and compassion to those lacking it, particularly world leaders; and may it strengthen our determination and resolve to keep fighting for true liberation, justice and peace. Ramadan Mubarak."
A Glimpse of Palestine's Beauty shared by Mazin Qumsiyeh of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability
Rima Isam Anabtawi: "Ramadan Kareem, to those who observe. May it be as serene and peaceful as "this very old Anatolian prayer rug, and may the beauty of your month endure as long."
"We may not be born in Palestine but our hearts are" Hibah Musthafa
Susan Muaddi Darraj explains a crucial point about Israel, Palestine, & America... #LandTheft
150 Days- Gaza Municipality Damages thanks to Israel's War on Palestine
Displaced Palestinian families prepare for Ramadan in Rafah, Gaza.❤ photo by Fares Abulebda
Israeli Restrictions on Palestinian Food Sovereignty
WARNING: “Children in the Gaza Strip are dying slowly [of starvation] before the eyes of the world.”
America The Absurd
In 1948 Israel could have chosen to include all indigenous Arabs- Christian and Muslim- as part of the process to make a real democracy for all human beings, but Zionists did the opposite by creating a huge refugee crisis.
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?
The UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, believed that the Palestinians displaced had a right to return to their homes and wrote several UN reports to that effect.
"It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries."
Bernadotte was assassinated on Friday 17 September 1948 by members of the group Lehi, a Zionist terrorist organization, commonly known in the West as the Stern Gang
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
What Was Palestine Before the Nakba?
A stunning photo archive reveals a
time before the [Apartheid] walls and checkpoints, when Palestine was not defined by its
ailments but by its industries and cultures
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Three
generations from the village of Dhahiriyya (located between Hebron and Beersheba), February 9, 1940 |
by [poet] Mohammed El-Kurd
in The Nation
I am writing this introduction in English and Arabic, and it is in these moments that the profound chasm between these two languages reveals itself. In English, there is a need to riddle the page with facts and figures detailing the essential cruelties of an atrocity that should be—and should have long been—internationally recognized. I’m tempted to squeeze into these lines a history lesson, to list the names of the various terrorist paramilitaries that formed the Israeli military that’s terrorizing us today; the number of massacres, exiles, refugees; the endless hectares of stolen land; the pregnant bellies split open in Deir Yassin. There is no need for such contextualization in Arabic: The Nakba breathes down our necks, invading our national identity and contorting our earliest encounters with our sense of self. It is relentless. It happens in the present tense, everywhere on the map. For some households, it began when a grandfather was dispossessed in Jaffa and sought refuge in Gaza, where it continues in the rumble of the warplanes across the blockaded enclave, introducing his grandchildren to their first—or perhaps third, or sixth—war. Not a corner of our geography is spared, not a generation.
And it is seemingly ubiquitous, following us even in exile. A Palestinian born in Lebanon’s Ein El-Hilweh refugee camp, and not in their grandparents’ Akka—which is both far and near, less than 100 kilometers away—will live tortured by their aborted potential, deprived of citizenship and freedom of movement. And it is absurd: Settlers with New York accents, armed with rifles, can escape criminal charges in the United States to squat in a Jerusalemite’s home, backed by their army, judiciary, and God (their favorite real estate agent)....READ MORE https://www.thenation.com/article/world/palestine-before-the-nakba/
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/palestine-before-the-nakba/
Mohammed El-Kurd is a writer and poet from Jerusalem, occupied Palestine, currently serving as The Nation's first-ever Palestine Correspondent. He is the author of RIFQA (Haymarket) and the forthcoming nonfiction project tentatively-titled A Million States In One (Haymarket). His 2023 Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Princeton will be adapted into a book.
We must regard all people as we regard ourselves | Patriot News PennLive letters Mar. 10, 2024
Ed Nyce: "U.S. government decision-makers need to regard Palestinians and Israelis as of equal value.
If tens of thousands of Israelis were killed in five months by an entity naming security as its reason, would the U.S. provide money, weapons, and diplomatic cover to those doing the killing? I hope not.
Every Israeli life – Jewish, Palestinian citizen of Israel, Druze – is precious beyond words. The same is true of every Palestinian life in Gaza and the West Bank – Christian, Muslim, child, teen, adult..." READ MORE https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2024/03/we-must-regard-all-people-as-we-regard-ourselves-pennlive-letters.html
Pamela Olson's "Fast Times in Palestine" is a primer on the realities in Palestine for newbies... & It's free to download from her website
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| Pamela Olsen, author of Fast Times in Palestine |
Pamela Olson
Also available on Kindle, Audible, & Paperback
(all proceeds donated to orgs that support Palestinian rights)
View my Gaza FAQs and Facebook
Pamela Olson, a small town girl from eastern Oklahoma, had what she always wanted: a physics degree from Stanford University. But instead of feeling excited for what came next, she felt consumed by dread and confusion. This irresistible memoir chronicles her journey from aimless ex-bartender to Ramallah-based journalist and foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.
With dizzying speed she found herself attending Yasser Arafat's funeral, tour-guiding Israeli friends around the West Bank, dating a Palestinian from a conservative village, being held at gunpoint and injured by a stun grenade, and witnessing the 2005 Disengagement from inside the Gaza Strip. The gripping narrative focuses not only on violence, terror, and politics but also on the daily rounds of house parties, concerts, barbecues, weddings, jokes, harvests, and romantic drama that happen in between.
Funny, gorgeous, shocking, and galvanizing, Fast Times in Palestine challenges the way we think not only about the Middle East but about human nature and our place in the world.
- Named a Top 10 Travel Book of 2013 by Publishers Weekly
- Named a Best Travel Book of Spring by National Geographic
- Click to view the Table of Contents with links to excerpts
- https://pamolson.org/
Monday, March 11, 2024
Huwaida Arraf: "May this holy month of Ramadan bring comfort to those in need; sanity and compassion to those lacking it, particularly world leaders; and may it strengthen our determination and resolve to keep fighting for true liberation, justice and peace. Ramadan Mubarak."
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"May
this holy month of Ramadan bring comfort to those in need; sanity and
compassion to those lacking it, particularly world leaders; and may it
strengthen our determination and resolve to keep fighting for true
liberation, justice and peace. Ramadan Mubarak." Huwaida Arraf |
A Glimpse of Palestine's Beauty shared by Mazin Qumsiyeh of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability
"Due to difficult circumstances, we are still doing weekly or twice a week field trips. Last ride was Saturday. Under difficult circumstance, we still did yet another field trip this past weekend. We had amazing discoveries "
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Rima Isam Anabtawi: "Ramadan Kareem, to those who observe. May it be as serene and peaceful as "this very old Anatolian prayer rug, and may the beauty of your month endure as long."
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"Ramadan Kareem, to those who observe. May it be as serene and peaceful as this very old Anatolian prayer rug, and may the beauty of your month endure as long" #ramadanmubarak   |
Sunday, March 10, 2024
"We may not be born in Palestine but our hearts are" Hibah Musthafa
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Artist: Hibah Musthafa Instagram: hibah_musthafa |