Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Palestinians deserve the same security, equality and right... as the Israelis CNN opinion by Dean Obeidallah
Palestinians deserve the same security, equality and right to a homeland as the Israelis
If
history serves as a guide, however, after a ceasefire is reached, the
conflict will slowly fade from the headlines, the world will go back to
its business and the Palestinians will largely be forgotten -- yet
again. For those who sincerely want to see a just and lasting peace in
the Middle East, this time must be different. The world, and especially
the Biden administration, cannot look away but must engage on the
question of Palestine. It's 2021 -- a homeland for Palestinian
Christians and Muslims is long overdue, as is safety and equality for
Palestinians.
The
Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been a part of my life for as long as I
can remember. My Palestinian father, born in the 1930s in what was
then Palestine (controlled by Britain
until 1948), but now the West Bank, would tell me stories about it when
I was a child in the late 1970s. This wasn't a political discussion,
rather it was one focused on how my relatives and other Palestinians
navigated daily life under Israeli military occupation.
The limited freedom of movement, the myriad of Israeli military
checkpoints that denied personal self-determination, my grandmother's
land being stolen by Israeli settlers, etc... READ MORE, AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE ORIGINAL LINK TO READ THE ARTICLE IN FULL
Saturday, May 15, 2021
Diana Buttu: The Palestinian Dispossession at the Heart of the Gaza Conflict
"Israeli courts are not operating in a vacuum but rather are an integral part of Israel’s land-grabbing enterprise. But even as the courts — particularly its Supreme Court — are implicated in this project, they are treated overseas with reverence as impartial adjudicators of law, even though the laws they enforce are at odds with international norms. Israeli Supreme Court judges are frequently invited to speak at law schools around the world to describe the “difficulties” they face when adjudicating cases.
They will rubber stamp more evictions, all the while using the tool of law to provide a veneer of integrity.
But as the families of Sheikh Jarrah, like the families of Silwan and other Palestinian neighborhoods where Israeli settlers are targeting Palestinians for expulsion, know, the Israeli courts will not rule in their favor. They will rubber stamp more evictions, all the while using the tool of law to provide a veneer of integrity. In so doing, in advancing Israel’s creeping colonization of Palestinian territory, they are also foreclosing any opportunity of a peaceful resolution.
It isn’t just in the realm of settler takeovers that Palestinians have witnessed the unjust application of Israeli law. The courts have sanctioned scores of discriminatory laws to preserve Israel’s status as a “Jewish state.” They have sanctioned the construction of Israeli bypass roads and settlements in the occupied West Bank and have only begrudgingly stopped the small number of outposts built on private Palestinian land. They have approved the use of home demolitions as a form of punishment, authorized assassinations (euphemized as “targeted killings”), approved mass deportations, and licensed the cutting off of fuel and electricity to the besieged Gaza Strip.
The court enables and provides legal cover to an unequal system, which, according to both B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, meets the definition of apartheid..." READ MORE- AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE ORIGINAL LINK TO READ THE ARTICLE IN FULL
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| A view of Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem/Getty images |
The Palestinian Dispossession at the Heart of the Gaza Conflict
The violence in Gaza rightly captures headlines, but it conceals the silent and relentless dispossession at the heart of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
Nakba & Refugees 1948 never ending- continues on today
from IMEU https://imeu.org/
Nakba means "Catastrophe" in Arabic. It refers to the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 when approximately 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced into exile by Israeli troops. Because the Palestinians were not Jewish, their presence and predominant ownership of the land were obstacles to the creation of a Jewish state. Their exodus, or Nakba, was already nearly half-complete by May 1948, when Israel declared its independence and the Arab states entered the fray. https://imeu.org/topic/category/nakba-refugees
Tax-Exempt U.S. Nonprofits Fuel Israeli Settler Push to Evict Palestinians
U.S. charities are funding Israeli settler organizations working to evict Palestinians from their East Jerusalem homes.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world's major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.
It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution...
0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and at least 48,488 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)
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| Israel currently has 261 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information) |
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During Fiscal Year 2018, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $10.5 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)
32 Israelis were killed in Palestinian rocket attacks and over 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)
Friday, May 14, 2021
"We reject the “two-sides” narrative that ignores the differences between one of the most heavily militarized states in the world and a Palestinian population resisting their oppressors."
The Middle East Section Of The American Anthropological Association
We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against ongoing settler colonialism and condemn Zionist violence against them, including forced evictions and retaliatory violence by Israeli state forces against Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and within the state of Israel. We condemn the recent forced evictions of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem–part of a now decades long campaign of ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem–and Israeli violence perpetrated against families trying to defend their homes.
In October 2014, nearly 1200 anthropologists signed “Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions” to support the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. On November 20, 2015, a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions was endorsed by a vote of 1040-136 at the American Anthropological Association business meeting. It was subsequently forwarded to the full membership for an electronic ballot and narrowly missed adoption by a razor-thin margin of 39 votes (2,423 for and 2,384 against).
Seven years later, on April 27, 2021, Human Rights Watch issued a landmark report, characterizing the Israeli state’s systemic discrimination and violence as inflicting “deprivations… so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” A similar conclusion was reached by the Israeli Human Rights organization B’tselem in January 2021. Palestinian activists have long made this argument. It reflects how foregone the reality of the Israeli Apartheid system is that mainstream international human rights organizations now find themselves forced to acknowledge the reality of the situation on the ground, despite tremendous political pressure from the state of Israel and its supporters.
We reject the “two-sides” narrative that ignores the differences between one of the most heavily militarized states in the world and a Palestinian population resisting their oppressors. This is a state which continues to displace, dispossess, and murder those living under its illegal occupation, based in on-going settler colonialism, and a system of ethnic, religious, and racial apartheid. Palestinian resistance to this violent system of occupation and apartheid is a legal right.
As members of a U.S. professional organization that continues to grapple with systemic racism and inequality in our field and our practices, we condemn settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and racial capitalism that connect the United States and Israel. We stand with those working to dismantle these systems of oppression, and we amplify their calls for justice, equality, and human dignity.
Israel’s policies of closure, land confiscation, house demolitions and dispossession of Palestinians, unlawful arrest, injury and killing of Palestinian civilians have continued unabetted since AAA last took up this issue. We call on our colleagues in their classrooms, universities, and beyond to:
- Reject the “two-sides” narrative that erases power hierarchies.
- Recognize the framework of apartheid as applicable to describe Israel’s systematic repression of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and within Israel’s 1948 boundaries.
- Recognize that Israel’s violent repression often constitutes crimes against humanity.
- Reject the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which has been used by Israel’s supporters to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel.[1]
Sincerely,
MES Executive Board
[1] An alternative is presented by the Independent Jewish Voice of Canada that defines antisemitism AND does not suppress criticism of Israel: https://www.ijvcanada.org/jerusalem-declaration/
The membership of the MES and anthropology as a whole are uniquely
poised to contribute to establishing and promoting public understanding
and policy frameworks that accommodate the historical experience and sociocultural diversity of the peoples of the Middle East.
The Middle East Section (MES) of the American Anthropological Association
convenes anthropologists with an interest in the peoples, cultures and
histories of the Middle East. Our membership is noteworthy for its
disciplinary diversity: socio-cultural anthropologists, linguistic
anthropologists, physical anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as
practicing anthropologists from these subdisciplines, all participate
actively in the section, and our membership thrives on the participation
of members from the United States, the Middle East, and from other
parts of the world. http://mes.americananthro.org/about/
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Palestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home. Jews Should Understand.
"Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba.
The Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel’s founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that have occurred since: the about 300,000 Palestinians whom Israel displaced when it conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; the roughly 250,000 Palestinians who could not return to the West Bank and Gaza after Israel revoked their residency rights between 1967 and 1994; the hundreds of Palestinians whose homes Israel demolished in 2020 alone. The East Jerusalem evictions are so combustible because they continue a pattern of expulsion that is as old as Israel itself.
Among Palestinians, Nakba is a household word. But for Jews — even many liberal Jews in Israel, America and around the world — the Nakba is hard to discuss... " PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ THE STORY IN FULLPalestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home. Jews Should Understand.
Monday, February 22, 2021
In Growing Gardens for Palestine "These little seeds hold the DNA of my culture—a culture that’s being attacked, eliminated and destroyed,” says Sansour, a Palestinian artist, scholar and conservationist.
A Palestinian artist, Haya Kaabneh, designed the yakteen seed labels for the Hudson Valley Seed Co.
In Growing Gardens for Palestine
"“These little seeds hold the DNA of my culture—a culture that’s being attacked, eliminated and destroyed,” says Sansour, a Palestinian artist, scholar and conservationist. “And so, when I share it, it becomes literally part of somebody else’s body and psyche. And in this way, we are not alone in our struggle.”
The Hudson Valley Seed Co. and its co-founder, Ken Greene, were in many ways natural partners for Sansour, who was dubbed “The Seed Queen of Palestine” by Al Jazeera back in 2018 when her seed library first started to gain international attention. Greene also runs a non-profit focused on seed justice. His company prides itself on selling unique varieties in a sustainable way and also on telling the story behind each hard-to-find seed...."
PLEASE GO TO THE ORIGINAL LINK TO READ THE ARTICLE IN FULL https://modernfarmer.com/2021/02/palestinian-seeds-come-to-america-stories-and-artwork-included/?fbclid=IwAR2n2lvc-QQXPcQAwZeJkPVQfxAvOvIVJVSs9fkkWZk-ftY6sm46Il3bhZA
Palestinian Seeds Come to America, Stories and Artwork Included
Vivien Sansour is bringing yakteen to the United States.
Photo by Samar Hazboun
Gardeners please note this company, the Hudson Valley Seed Co., has many wonderful seeds and also some good gardening tools. This is the direct link to the Yakteen https://hudsonvalleyseed.com/products/yakteen-1
Friday, February 19, 2021
Dear President Biden... Israeli racism and brutality is clearly wrong. Please help right this horrible wrong in every way you can. Start by noticing and speaking out for the rule of fair and just laws
Dear President Biden,
Thank you for winning!
Please do well by and for America, and also please notice the very real plight of the native non-Jewish Palestinians who are cruelly oppressed & impoverished by racist Israeli laws and policies.
I know Israel is VERY very good at looking good, Palestine not so much, but it has been 70 years in a post Nazi-Holocaust world with Israel still constantly violating the indigenous Palestinian men, women and children's basic human rights. They should know better- and so should we... We have the internet- we can see the suffering when we bother to look!
Israeli racism and brutality is clearly wrong. Please help right this horrible wrong in every way you can. Start by noticing and speaking out for the rule of fair and just laws, including but not limited to the Palestine refugees' inalienable legal and moral right to return to original homes and lands.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
Palestine Solidarity Campaign: "Israeli settlements are villages, towns and cities built illegally on
Palestinian land. In order to build settlements, Palestinians are forced
off their land and their homes are often demolished. In their place,
Israel continues to build new neighbourhoods in which Palestinians are
not allowed to live, and a separate road system that Palestinians are
not allowed to use."
Thursday, December 24, 2020
Merry Christmas from the Holy Land - The Holy Family painting by Palestinian artist Maher Naji
"Let the art and love be our common language." —Maher Naji
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Dear SERRV Ethical Gift Guide
Sent by mail to SERRV International Administrative Office, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Dear SERRV,
I applaud you for carrying marvelous handmade objects from the West Bank, handcrafts made by Palestinians. I have happily ordered several lovely hand made things last month from your catalogue in hopes of beautifying my own home as well as supporting persecuted and impoverished Palestinians.
Your most recent Holiday 2020 catalogue arrived yesterday and I was so excited!!! I was eager to find gifts in it, and spend all my Christmas budget as you are a fair trade company advertising an Ethical Gift Guide.
I saw some charming bread baskets with a bread warmer from Bangladesh which I was about to buy until BOOM … I saw that you are calling the Arab treat and word “Za’atar” as being from Israel.
That was a punch in the stomach. I gasped for air, and tears filled my eyes: My husband’s beloved father was born in Palestine, before Israel came to be, and so we are very much aware of how Israel has spent decades ethnically cleansing the native non-Jewish population of the Holy Land from their ancestral homes and lands.
Imagine being denied full freedom and rights in the land where you were born because the powers that be have deemed you the “wrong” religion.
We read international newspapers in this house, and so are well aware of the constant day in and day out atrocities large and small wrought by Israeli soldiers and religious fanatics who want the land but not the native non-Jewish people of that land.
You are a fair trade company with an Ethical Gift Guide. If you want to advertise Palestinian Arab Za’atar then do so, but please do not hand Israel credit for producing it. Israel has taken Palestinian land and homes, don’t let them also usurp the culture and food of the native non-Jewish Palestinians.
If Israel agrees to be one state, with full freedoms and rights and respect for the indigenous non-Jewish population, including full respect for the Palestinian refugees inalienable right to return, then you can call it made in Israel. Until then please don’t. Just don’t.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
Friday, September 18, 2020
Monday, September 14, 2020
My letter to the NYTimes Sept 8 2020 RE The U.A.E.-Israel Flight Is Nothing to Celebrate by Diana Buttu
Photo
by Photo Ra'id Mukdi, 9 Sept. 2020 of Palestinian children (of Ras
al-Tin, east of Ramallah) during class before by Israeli forces
confiscated tin panels from the school’s roof, 30 chairs and 12
classroom tables. One example of many of how Israel daily harasses and
impoverishes Palestinians. https://www.btselem.org/facing_expulsion_blog?nid=213075
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