Chris Hedges: Israel’s War on Journalism... "Israel spins out its lies and fabrications, from Hamas using Palestinians as human shields, to mass rape and beheaded babies, to a captive press that slavishly amplifies them. By the time the lies are exposed, often weeks or months later, the media cycle has moved on and few notice."

 

There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.

 

And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.

 

The Palestinian reporters in Gaza who fill the void often pay with their lives. They are targeted, along with their families, for assassination. At least 128 journalists and media workers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, have been killed and 69 have been imprisoned,

according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.

 

Israel bombed a building on Friday in southern Lebanon housing seven media organizations, killing three journalists ... READ MORE https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1850217151925465400

[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]

 "The bad: I work at a school where I witnessed and participated in the freedom of speech being quashed by a small group of vocal and powerful parents. I teach Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and George Orwell’s “1984” and guide students to connect literature to current events. Last year, it was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. This year, Israel and what continues to happen in Gaza. I asked: What qualifies as genocide? I said: Consider your tax dollars and your parents’ tax dollars and your teacher’s tax dollars that contribute to bombs falling from the sky on women and children and babies in Gaza. Not to think about that, I said, was bad." 

Adam Patric Miller: Looking at the good, the bad and the ugly of last school year 

A man wears a keffiyeh near the U.S. Capitol during a pro-Palestinian rally May 18, 2024, on the National Mall in Washington.(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

July 19, 2024

This is the part of summer break when I check my blood pressure at the community center and find out it has dropped enough so the machine no longer recommends that I consult my doctor Immediately. I have space and time to reflect. This last school year has provided me with three things to consider: the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: My students showed up to classes with energy; they worked to achieve, with some joy, what their teacher required of them; and, by year’s end, each demonstrated they can read and write better, whether the topic is a boating accident that almost killed a person or a graphic novel about a girl growing up during the time of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. One of my students, a boy with dark curly hair and an offbeat sense of humor, stopped by my office to say, “Hey, Mr. Miller. I just want you to know I’m sorry about what’s been happening.” That relates to the ugly but is still part of the good — he showed care for his teacher and thought about complicated events for himself.... READ MORE  https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/07/19/opinion-school-break-teaching-gaza-war/

  [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] 

“It’s super dangerous. It sets a really, really bad precedent. It’s aiming to criminalise our liberation struggle and our call for justice and peace and equality,” Husam Marajda

‘Anti-Zionism is antisemitism,’ US House asserts in ‘dangerous’ resolution

Palestinian rights advocates denounce a Republican-led measure as a push to smear Israel’s critics amid the war in Gaza.

 

By Ali Harb

Published On 6 Dec 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/6/anti-zionism-is-antisemitism-us-house-asserts-in-dangerous-resolution

Washington, DC – Palestinian rights advocates are denouncing a congressional resolution that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, calling it a “dangerous” measure that aims to curb free speech and distract from the war in Gaza.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the measure on Tuesday in a 311-14 vote, with 92 Democratic members abstaining by voting “present”.

The symbolic resolution was framed as an effort to reject the “drastic rise of anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world”.

But it contained language saying that the House “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. It also condemned the slogan “From the River to the Sea”, which rights advocates understand to be an aspirational call for equality in historic Palestine.

Instead, the resolution described it as a “rallying cry for the eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people”. It also characterised demonstrators who gathered in Washington, DC, last month to demand a ceasefire as “rioters”. They “spewed hateful and vile language amplifying antisemitic themes”, the resolution alleges.

Husam Marajda, an organiser with the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), said the resolution is an effort to “cancel” Palestinian rights advocates by accusing them of bigotry and labelling their criticism of Israeli policies as hate speech.

“It’s super dangerous. It sets a really, really bad precedent. It’s aiming to criminalise our liberation struggle and our call for justice and peace and equality,” Marajda told Al Jazeera... 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]

'Opposing the policies of the government of Israel and Netanyahu’s extremism is not antisemitic,' Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said on social media [File: Nathan Howard/AP Photo]

Israel killed more journalists in Gaza in 7 weeks than all 20 YEARS of the Vietnam war & all 6 years of World War II

Israel has killed more journalists in Gaza in 7 weeks than all 20 YEARS of the Vietnam war & all 6 years of World War II 

63 journalists killed in Vietnam by both sides 

69 killed in World War II by all parties 

70 killed in Gaza by Israel alone

Think of Others- a poem by Mahmoud Darwish [of Palestine]

 

Think of Others- a poem by  Mahmoud Darwish [of Palestine]

May 11, 2022: Palestinian American Arab Christian Journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was assassinated by Israeli sniper fire while she was documenting and exposing Zionist violence & Israeli crimes

"The violent scenes in Jerusalem are a symptom of a culture of impunity among the Israeli leadership and the police force it oversees"

On Wednesday, May 11, 2022, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 51-year-old Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

U.S. military aid to Israel should be immediately suspended and Israel must not be allowed to investigate itself.  Read more & Add your name

 

#JeSuisCharlie

From Seattle Sketcher Gabriel Campanario: Today was a sad day with senseless loss of life in Paris, where 12 people were murdered by gun-toting terrorists in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Read more: http://seati.ms/1xRizHk
More Seattle Sketcher: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/seattlesketcher/






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STAY CONNECTED... Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to: Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

"So let us put the narrative of injustice away and find the joy, if it’s the last thing we ever do. " Tala Abu Rahmeh, Palestinian poet and writer

Wadi Qelt, Jericho. Photo by Ramzi Hazboun.

 [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]

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=4116&ed=223&edid=223

Contemporary Palestinian Literature In Search of Joy
By Tala Abu Rahmeh
 
“…there is no rain
anywhere, soft
enough for you.” Michael S. Harper

I used to have this recurring dream that I was wearing a red dress and walking down the steps to a jazz parlour in Harlem. It would take me a second to see through the smoke but then I would see him, John Coltrane, holding the saxophone and taunting gods with Naima. He would sway and I would wake up to the realisation that he’s been dead a while, and I no longer knew what my story was.

I always thought I knew what I would write about. My life has been cluttered with images of bombs and the small details of debris. I knew how to construct the perfect phrase about the exact sound of a shell escaping the tank and landing in the middle of my heart. The geography of my first book had the thick lines of the Apartheid Wall and the graves of all my grandparents, dead on the way and in exile.

Then, as destiny willed it, my mother died from cancer. As I tried to hold myself through grief it hit me, what if Palestine is no longer my story? What if this loud whimper matters more than all the other big bangs? I was slowly losing footing into my poems that suddenly became all about morphine and infested limbs.

Through my exploratory journey into modern Palestinian literature, I found myself to be an ever-found alien. The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi defined my loneliness, Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani unravelled a multi-faceted anger, and Madih Adh-Dhill Al-‘Ali by Mahmoud Darwish dusted the pieces of all that was broken in me and forced me to look at them, one by one. Nevertheless, I was still an alien. My pain over the loss of my mother had never transformed into a metaphor for a lost country. As much as I tried to reshape it, it still nudged me awake in one simple statement, “Your mother is dead.”

What is it about this country that made us feel guilty for being our particular selves? Why is it that in the past 60 years we have only accepted literature that held together the collective narrative, but never our own? Our modern history is built on singular stories of lost children and destroyed villages, so why do we matter less today? In the past 15 years, authors have tried to drag their details into the bigger picture, but even those novels were mostly written in English, with the Westerner being the target audience. Even this article is written in English (obviously).

Is it the Palestinian literary scene or the reader that needs an overhaul? I’m thinking both. You might wonder who I am to think that I can gather years of Palestinian literature and relay a statement, and you might be right to ask if it weren’t for the simple fact that I have not read one Palestinian book written during the past period that ignited the fire of my soul. Well, maybe I’m expecting too many particularities, but why is it that it’s easier for me to relate to a writer in Kansas that it is to one in the West Bank?

The stark reality is that we are hungry for personal stories, but not when they are written as part of our wider notion of representation. When the story is printed for the public to read, we always need it to look, feel, and sound a certain way, even if that obliterates it. Palestinian writers are always daunted by the potential of straying from their national identity, whatever that may mean. Every time I read a new Palestinian book, I feel the struggle to try to prove a commitment to the “cause” in the veins of the pages.

The individual, especially in the complex layers of literature, does not erase the collective, nor does it threaten the struggle for freedom. Moreover, it is not a selfish concept, simply because our entire existence is an individual endeavour. At the end of each day we are alone, and if that story is not worth telling, nothing is.

Maybe my contemporary argument is that we have lost our capacity for joy. The first time I had this epiphany was when I looked at a portrait taken of all the major jazz and blues artists in Harlem in 1958. During that time, Harlem was barely pulling through under the weight of oppression and brutality, and yet, those beautiful men and women stood around and took a picture that contained one thing more than any other, pure joy. Maybe it was because it was a good day, or maybe because each one of them played their instruments with such individuality that it helped them wade through that water.

Joy in Palestine is a modernist idea that we do not buy. Dancing at weddings or right through a checkpoint might make us happy, but happiness is fleeting, whereas joy is there to stay. Joy is not communal, but incredibly specific. It is the feeling of wonderment over what we are able to create with pens, hands, vocal chords, fingers, and minds. It is the quiet corner in our spirit that, when found, can never be lost or taken away. So let us put the narrative of injustice away and find the joy, if it’s the last thing we ever do.  

Tala Abu Rahmeh is a Ramallah-based young writer and professor of literature and creative writing. She holds an MFA in poetry from American University in Washington, DC. She is a regular contributor to Mashallah News Magazine, and her poems have been published in a number of magazines and books. She is also the cofounder of the blog The Big Olive: the Tales of Two Professors in Palestine, http://thebigolive.tumblr.com/. Tala can be reached at tala.ar@gmail.com.

See PDF www.thisweekinpalestine.com/i186/pdfs/article/contemporary_palestinian_literature.pdf

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Tala Abu Rahmeh | Facebook

 Palestinian poet and writer

Originally from Yaffa, she was born in Amman in 1984.  

After moving to Ramallah, living through the second intifada,

 and graduating from Birzeit University, Tala moved to Washington
DC to study for a Masters of Fine Arts at American University.

Tala's work has earned recognition from Palestine to the US and she
has received the Eliav-Sirtawi Middle East Journalism Award and the 

Expressions of Nakba Competition 2008 Best Written Work Award. 

She will also be featured in the upcoming anthology 25 under 25, which is edited by 
Naomi Shihab Nye, and published by HarperCollins.

She has been a featured performer at the American Poetry Museum, Black Church Maraca, the Peace 
Mural, Katzen Arts Center at American University, and readings ranging from Mahmoud Darwish 
commemorations to Gaza events.

She is currently working on her first book poetry

"Legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Thomas Jefferson

Dave Barry, columnist, 1947 -

• "People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them."
  
  
• The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.”

Mahatma Ghandi:  "The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions."

Thomas Paine: "Of all of the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny of religion is the worst."

"In every country and in every age, the priest [rabbi/imam/...etc...] has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own"
Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). Author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United State

http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
The Library of Congress

Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists
The Final Letter, as Sent

To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
Th Jefferson
Jan. 1. 1802.

John Locke (1632-1704), English political philosopher argued for individual conscience, free from state control

Theories of religious tolerance

Locke, writing his Letters Concerning Toleration (1689–92) in the aftermath of the European wars of religion, formulated a classic reasoning for religious tolerance. Three arguments are central: (1) Earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings generally, cannot dependably evaluate the truth-claims of competing religious standpoints; (2) Even if they could, enforcing a single "true religion" would not have the desired effect, because belief cannot be compelled by violence; (3) Coercing religious uniformity would lead to more social disorder than allowing diversity.
 

CARTOONS