Annie's New Letters (& notes): 2025

Saturday, November 8, 2025

Lilies of Gaza – Women Artists in Times of War

PALESTINE: Lilies of Gaza – Women Artists in Times of War- artist unknown

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1196569622518951&set=pcb.1196569662518947

Bright Stars of Bethlehem

“Our aim is that our people, who admire stars, will dare to look up and dream, to believe in goals to strive for, and develop a new sense of hope, community, beauty, and faith.” Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb

Bright Stars of Bethlehem raises awareness and support for Dar al-Kalima University, the first and only university for arts, culture, and design in all of Palestine. Bright Stars is a 501c3 nonprofit organization born out of the vision of Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb and his outreach ministry in Bethlehem in the mid-90s. The desire to help the people of Palestine flourish and have life in abundance has gained supporters around the US. Rev. Raheb, with key US supporters, created an independent U.S.-based nonprofit organization founding Bright Stars of Bethlehem in 2004. https://www.brightstarsbethlehem.org/about

AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES & QUOTES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]

LA Times: In the West Bank’s last Christian village, faith, fear and an uncertain future

The Church of St. George, a Byzantine structure, has drawn tourists to Taybeh, the last wholly Palestinian Christian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

(Maya Alleruzzo / For The Times)

By Nabih Bulos Foreign Correspondent

Photography by Maya Alleruzzo/For The Times

Nov. 6, 2025

Taybeh, the last entirely Palestinian Christian village in the occupied West Bank, confronts settler violence and possible economic collapse.
‘If we don’t get support soon,’ says the town’s deputy mayor, ‘we’ll be extinct.’
A U.N. agency has tallied more than 1,000 attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank so far this year.

TAYBEH, West Bank — “Come visit Taybeh,” begins the brochure touting the touristic attractions here, the last entirely Palestinian Christian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Though it counts Jesus among its many visitors over the years, said Khaldoon Hanna, Taybeh’s avuncular deputy mayor, these days “no one is coming.”

He sighed as he looked around the restaurant he owns on the village’s Main Street. It felt abandoned, with little trace of activity in the kitchen and a layer of dust coating most tables. Only one faucet worked in the bathroom, but it didn’t feel worth it to repair the rest.

“In the last two years, I haven’t had more than 20 tourists come in here,” Hanna said.

How could they, Hanna said, when you have to negotiate a growing gantlet of Israeli roadblocks just to get here? Or face off emboldened settlers who make increasing forays into the village to burn cars or destroy property... READ MORE https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-11-06/taybeh-profile-of-palestinian-christian-town-hed-tk

Torture in Israeli prisons rose sharply during war, says freed Palestinian author - Nasser Abu Srour says prisons became like ‘another front’ in Gaza conflict and tells of struggle to adjust to life outside

A Palestinian protester holds a placard in 2015 bearing a portrait of Nasser Abu Srour during a demonstration marking Palestinian Prisoner Day in the West Bank town of Bilin, near Ramallah. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

Julian Borger

Tue 4 Nov 2025 02.00 EST

A celebrated Palestinian author who was freed last month after more than 32 years in Israeli prisons has said the use of torture increased dramatically during his last two years of captivity as Israel came to treat its jails as another front in the Gaza war.

Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt, where most remain in limbo.

Abu Srour, 56, recounted a sharp increase in the use of beatings and the deprivation of food and warmth after the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.

“The prison guards uniform changed, with a tag on the chest written on it the word ‘fighters’, or ‘warriors’, and they started acting like they were in a war and this was another front, and they started beating, torturing, killing like warriors,” he said.

A UN commission listed 75 deaths of Palestinians in Israeli custody between 7 October 2023 and 31 August 2025... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/04/freed-palestinian-author-nasser-abu-srour-israel-prisons-gaza-war

Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight. Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse and teenager who have been deprived of natural light since January

Rakefet, part of the prison complex in Ramla, pictured, was reopened under the orders of the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, in 2023. Photograph: Nir Elias/Reuters

Emma Graham-Harrison in Jerusalem

Sat 8 Nov 2025 03.00 EST

Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.

The detainees include at least two civilians who are being held without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.

The two men have been kept in the subterranean Rakefet complex since January, and described regular beatings and violence consistent with well-documented torture in other Israeli detention centres.

Rakefet prison was opened in the early 1980s to house a handful of the most dangerous organised crime figures in Israel but closed a few years later on the grounds that it was inhumane. The far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered it back into service after the 7 October attacks in 2023.

The cells, a tiny exercise “yard” and a lawyers’ meeting room are all underground, so inmates live without any natural light.

The jail was initially designed for a small number of high-security inmates occupying individual cells, holding 15 men when it shut in 1985. In recent months, about 100 detainees have been incarcerated there, official data obtained by PCATI shows.

Under the ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel released 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who had been held indefinitely without charge or trial, as well as 250 Palestinian prisoners who had been convicted in Israeli courts.

However, the scale of detentions has been so vast that even after that mass release, at least 1,000 others are still held by Israel under the same conditions.

“Though the war is officially over, [Palestinians from Gaza] are still imprisoned under legally contested and violent wartime conditions that violate international humanitarian law and amount to torture,” PCATI said... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/08/israel-underground-jail-rakefet-palestinians-gaza-detainees

Friday, November 7, 2025

‘Israel has made clear it wants to commit genocide’ ‘Israel has made clear it wants to commit genocide’: Ex-UNRWA official Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), says the Israeli government is not allowing critical aid into Gaza because it wants to continue its genocidal policies against Palestinians. “There is a litany of – quite frankly – fascistic pretexts” for Israel to maintain its restrictions on humanitarian assistance, Gunness told Al Jazeera. “Let’s be clear on the big picture: Israel has made it clear that it wants to commit a genocide against the Palestinians, it wants to ethnically-cleanse them, and it wants to starve them,” he said, noting that there are millions of aid items waiting to be brought into the enclave. “The big picture is that the reason these items are not being let in … is that there is a genocide going on, there is a collective punishment, there is ethnic cleansing, and there’s a policy of starvation.”

Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity kitchen in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, November 5, 2025 [Haseeb Alwazeer/Reuters]

‘Israel has made clear it wants to commit genocide’: Ex-UNRWA official

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/11/7/live-israel-vows-to-destroy-all-hamas-tunnels-in-gaza-as-attacks-continue?update=4091972

Photos: Palestinians protest against Israeli land confiscation in West Bank

https://aje.io/ns9p5r?update=4091938

UN reiterates call to open all Gaza crossings for aid

A spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres has reiterated that more crossings must be opened to allow unimpeded humanitarian assistance to reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters in New York, Farhan Haq noted that only two Gaza crossings are currently operating: al-Karara (also known as Kissufim) and Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom).

“At this stage, our point is that now that the ceasefire has taken hold, we need to be able to use all of the crossing points,” Haq said.

He added that this includes crossings along the border with Egypt and into northern Gaza, which has been particularly hard-hit by Israel’s two-year bombardment. “We want all the others to be opened up as soon as possible,” Haq said. https://aje.io/ns9p5r?update=4091942

Rights group says 168 Palestinian children detained in Israel without charge

Nearly half – 48 percent – of all Palestinian children known to be held in Israeli prisons have not been charged with a crime, a child rights organisation has said.

The most recently available data from the Israel Prison Service showed 350 Palestinian children were detained in Israeli prisons as of September 30, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine) reported.

Of those, 168 children had no recorded charge or trial under way – the highest proportion since DCI-Palestine started monitoring detention data in 2008, the group said.

The “arbitrary” detentions violate the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel has ratified, DCI-Palestine said, adding that Israel’s prison system is “designed to physically remove, suppress and stifle” children.

An unknown number of Palestinian children are also being held in military detention and interrogation centres. https://aje.io/ns9p5r?update=4091890

Talbiya الطالبية was a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem, built in the 1920s by wealthy Palestinian Christian families. In 1948, its residents were forcibly displaced and their homes were seized by Zionist leaders including Golda Meir who took over the house of Hanna Bisharat

Talbiya الطالبية was a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem, built in the 1920s by wealthy Palestinian Christian families.


The looted home of Palestinian Hanna Bisharat: This luxurious house, once called “Harun al-Rashid” for its grandeur, was stolen by Golda Meir after she forced its owners to leave Located in the Talbiya neighborhood of Jerusalem, it was built and belonged to Hanna Bisharat.

The looted home of Palestinian Hanna Bisharat: This luxurious house, once called “Harun al-Rashid” for its grandeur, was stolen by Golda Meir after she forced its owners to leave Located in the Talbiya neighborhood of Jerusalem, it was built and belonged to Hanna Bisharat.

𝐏𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜 ܡܝܠܳܕ ♱⃓

@PalCatholic

Talbiya الطالبية was a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem, built in the 1920s by wealthy Palestinian Christian families In 1948, its residents were forcibly displaced and their homes were seized by Zionist leaders including Golda Meir who took over the house of Hanna Bisharat

https://x.com/PalCatholic

I’m gonna make a thread and add all tweets about Palestinian Christianity, the Christian towns, and the depopulated Christian villages in Palestine under this one so it stays documented. https://x.com/PalCatholic/status/1985425699084386359/photo/1

Gaza’s young artist turn war trauma into art- 16-year-old Yara Youssef Abu Kweik is pouring her emotions into her art. She narrates her story.

In two years of war, children in Gaza have endured unspeakable violence. Tens of thousands have lost parents and siblings to Israel's genocide. Many others have suffered life-changing injuries. They've also witnessed scenes no human should ever see—scenes like these. A whole generation in the Strip is living with severe psychological trauma. With few resources available to help them process their pain, young people are finding creative outlets for their grief. 16-year-old Yara Youssef Abu Kweik is pouring her emotions into her art...

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