Christmas Is Palestine... where it all began

Christmas Card by Palestinian artist Taisir Masrieh

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                                         This Week in Palestine The Treasures of the Nativity

                         Special Issue https://thisweekinpalestine.com/flip-260-5-special-issue/

Christmas night, watercolors, painted by Sliman Mansour for Palestine

Leila Giries' home in the Palestinian village of Ein Karem before and after it was destroyed in the 1948 war. Credit: Courtesy Leila Giries

'Everyone needs to see 'Farha''

Not a day goes by that Giries doesn't wonder what life would have been like if her family was not forced to leave their home in Ein Karem, now part of Jerusalem.

 

"When I went back 37 years later, I realized I remembered every single house and building that used to be there," Giries said. "That's how many times I traveled to Palestine in my mind, every single day, wanting to go back home."

 

She still has the bag her mother grabbed for her as they ran for their lives while the village burned, she said. It's framed and hanging on a wall in her California home, alongside the key to her family's Palestinian home, which was reduced to rubble.

 

Like most Palestinian refugees, Giries is forbidden from returning to live in Israel. Many Palestinian refugees and their descendants -- which the United Nations says now number 5 million people -- live in UN camps established in neighboring countries. Others are internally displaced throughout the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Mahmoud Salah, another survivor of al-Nakba, said the violence depicted in "Farha" was eerily similar to what he saw as he fled from the Palestinian village of Sar'a. After his family was expelled, they traveled by foot for six months, sheltering in caves and under trees as they searched for food and safety. He remembers every detail of that journey, from flyers dropped from airplanes urging Palestinians to flee, to the screams of villagers who lost loved ones.

 

To this day, Salah says he still thinks about life before al-Nakba, memories vivid with the beautiful colors of his homeland. "Since the day we were forced to leave, my eyes have been searching, searching for my village, for the books I left behind, for what of mine has been taken and destroyed," Salah, 90, told CNN from his home in Orland Park, a suburb of Chicago.

He said having his experience denied for so long only added to the pain and anger. "That feeling of being forced out of our home, our country, will never leave us.... READ MORE

 Written by Alaa Elassar, CNN

 https://www.cnn.com/style/article/farha-palestinian-film-nakba-darin-sallam-reaj/index.html

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TOT THE ORIGINAL LINK TO READ THE STORY IN FULL

 

Palestinians relive the raw and painful history of al-Nakba in Netflix's new film 'Farha'

"Farha," released December 1 on Netflix, is inspired by the story of a young Palestinian girl and the violence she witnessed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes by armed Jewish groups in what Palestinians have since called al-Nakba or "the catastrophe."

'We told the truth': Darin Sallam on portraying the Nakba in Netflix's 'Farha'

'We told the truth': Darin Sallam on portraying the Nakba in Netflix's 'Farha': The director explains how she came to make the film and the huge impact it has had with its depiction of events in 1948

WHY DID MOROCCO RAISE THE FLAG for PALESTINE ? ... Football 2022: Following a dramatic penalty shootout, Morocco became the first Arab side to make it to the World Cup quarterfinals.

World Cup quarterfinals 2022: This is the second time Moroccan players have raised the Palestinian flag after winning a match.

 

In context: lsrael killed 53 Palestinian children this year. The last one was a young girl looking for her cat when she was shot with 7 bullets. 

Bombings, shootings, arrests Apartheid Israel attacks Palestinian football from all angles. 

https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/israeli-settler-violence 

 

Players of the Palestine Amputees Association during routine practice in Gaza.

PHOTO: @mahmoud_ajjour

Netflix's Farha: Nakba film resonates with Palestinians globally

Netflix's Farha: Nakba film resonates with Palestinians globally: Thousands of people have praised the film for its depiction of the Nakba and shared their own family's story of being forced to flee Palestine

Annie's Notes:

 In 1948 armed Zionist invaders, seeking to usurp Palestinian homes and lands for Jewish immigrants, intentionally terrorized the native non-Jewish men, women and children of historic Palestine.  

Many Palestinians were murdered, many more fled, thinking it was only a temporary situation...  Those armed Zionist invaders in shaping their preferred "Jewish State" created a massive refugee crisis that continues on today as racist Israel refuses to respect the Palestinian refugees' inalienable legal and moral right to return to their original homes and lands.      

UN Resolution 194 of 1948 demands that Israel needs to respect the Palestinian Refugees Right of Return. 

However, armed Zionists continue to persecute, impoverish, oppress, and murder Palestinians, exasperating religious extremism all through out the region, starting with Israel's own state funded Jewish "scholars" & settlers.

Meanwhile here in the West, America's elected leaders, many churches, mainstream newspapers, official tweets, news programs, and celebrities basically ignore this tragic situation. Our own hard earned tax dollars are diverted away from our own country's needs to buy more perks and privileges, and weapons, for racist Israel.

Israel is REAL RACISM, not just hurt feelings.  

 Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

Refugees, Borders & Jerusalem
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."Eleanor Roosevelt

UN Resolution 194 from 1948 : The refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

 Live by the Golden Rule

Star Street, Bethlehem... In the run up to Christmas across the world, take a look at this picture, this small street where historically pilgrims entered the city of Bethlehem walking towards the Nativity Church, and remember, it all started there....in Palestine

Star Street, Bethlehem...

In the run up to Christmas across the world, take a look at this picture, this small street where historically pilgrims entered the city of Bethlehem towards the Nativity Church, and remember, it all started there....in Palestine...

 

A couple (زوج), mud on wood, 1989 by Sliman Mansour #FreePalestine

A couple (زوج), mud on wood, 1989 by Sliman Mansour

A couple (زوج), mud on wood, 1989 by Sliman Mansour

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"During the first Intifada (1987 – 1993), Palestinians boycotted Israeli goods as a form of resistance. Artists in their turn boycotted Israeli art supplies. Four Palestinian artists Vera Tamari, Nabil Anani, Tayseer Barakat and myself formed a group and called it the “New Visions” group. Artists turned towards their environment and used materials such as wood, leather, mud, henna, natural dies and found objects. This new approach helped to develop Palestinian art and formed a link between Palestinian art produced for several decades after Alnakbah and the contemporary art produced by young Palestinian artists." Sliman Mansour  

What Is Anti-Palestinian Racism?

 "Anti-Palestinian racism entails the dehumanization and erasure of the Palestinian people. Anti-Palestinian racism can be implicit, overt, systemic and structural. It is perpetrated across Canadian society, including by political, intellectual, social and economic elites. Anti-Palestinian racism includes: denying that Palestinians are a people who belong to historic Palestine, devaluing Palestinian life, denying or excusing violence against the Palestinian people, pressuring institutions to exclude Palestinian perspectives, and stereotyping Palestinians and those who defend Palestinian rights as un-Canadian, anti-Semitic or supportive of violence."  https://pcaan.org/?fbclid=IwAR0xK7xoVBjO-sJabxu4pkSqa-RoNxikmV7npmgJg8U5PLEOH_cfjuvutas

About

The Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network (PCAAN) is a growing national and interdisciplinary network of Palestinian-Canadian academics and artists concerned with Palestine and Palestinians, including in relation to Canada and Turtle Island.

Our Mission

We help challenge anti-Palestinian racism in its various expressions. We provide Canadians a network through which they have access to Palestinian-Canadian academic and artistic voices, expertise, and opinions regarding past and current events related to Palestine.

Why We Do It

Palestinian Canadians are increasingly represented in the Canadian academic and  artistic landscape. At the same time, we are witnessing rising anti-Palestinian racism in Canadian academic and artistic circles. We believe it is our obligation to raise awareness of the realities of the Palestinian people.

PCAAN

Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network

“Oppressive pines: Uprooting Israeli green colonialism and implanting Palestinian A’wna” by Ghada Sasa

Articles, Research 

Abstract

This article provides a comprehensive overview of Israeli green colonialism, denoting the apartheid state’s misappropriation of environmentalism to eliminate the Indigenous people of Palestine and usurp its resources. I focus on the violence of ‘protected areas’, encompassing national parks, forests, and nature reserves. This article argues that Israel primarily establishes them to (1) justify land grab; (2) prevent the return of Palestinian refugees; (3) dehistoricise, Judaise, and Europeanise Palestine, erasing Palestinian identity and suppressing resistance to Israeli oppression; and (4) greenwash its apartheid image. I situate Israeli green colonialism within the broader histories of Western environmentalism – particularly its perpetuation of the human–nature binary – and Zionism. Furthermore, I identify various means through which Palestinians and their land resist this phenomenon. I also explore Palestinian environmentalism, which is influenced by the concepts of a’wna (collaboration), sumud (steadfastness), and a’wda (return), in addition to the Islamic concept of tawhid (unity). I offer it as an alternative environmentalism, which is holistic, anti-racist, feminist, socialist, and nonlinear, while rejecting the trope of the ecological savage. Overall, the intrinsic link between all humans, and them and the environment must be recognised, to realise a just and sustainable society, in Palestine and beyond.

Sasa, Ghada. (2022). Oppressive pines: Uprooting Israeli green colonialism and implanting Palestinian A’wna. Politics, online first, 1-17

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02633957221122366

 

EXPLORE MORE

Visualizing Palestine....

 

Rising Tide/Apartheid

 https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/between-rising-tide-and-apartheid

Attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank are rising at a staggering rate: 170% Increase From 2017 to 2022 #Zionism

Visualizing Palestine

 

Rima.... a poem by Anne Selden Annab in Growing Gardens for Palestine

 

Growing Gardens for Palestine

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Rima

Rima Najjar in a traditional Palestinian Embroidered Thobe

 

Rima 

 

Rima- connected

by family and Palestine.

She travels the world online and on foot,

following the art and the history

of and for Palestine.

Rima's goodness

(her greatness)

has a reach far beyond

the leap of literary awareness

and books, far beyond

the rainbow colors and hues of paint

and tile and trees and flowers in spring

all for and of Palestine.

Rima shares, shares the beauty she finds,

shares the challenges and routes

whereby humans connect

over and over through the years.

Rima shares knowledge and facts

and empathy and compassion

and character

Rima is as exquisite

as the roses her sister tends.

Where music and art for Palestine might be

she is there, in body or spirit

she is there for and of Palestine.

poem copyright © 2022 Anne Selden Annab

Yaffa , Palestine, 1933

Yaffa , Palestine, 1933