Artist Frans Al-Salmi was murdered 30 June 2025 by Israel when the IDF bombed a beautiful seaside cafe in Gaza

Artist Frans Al-Salmi was murdered this morning by Israel when the IDF bombed a beautiful seaside cafe in Gaza

 

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi : Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestinian-American journalist (1971–2022)

Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera, before she was killed by Israeli forces while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Palestinian territories, and seen as a role model for many Arab and Palestinian women.

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi

 

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi

Art by Palestinian Frans Al-Salmi

Child of Handala - a modern interpretation of the 21st-century generation of Palestinian Nakba survivors.

CHILD OF HANDALA

Child of Handala

Passion Makes Perfect

Child of Handala is a modern interpretation of the 21st-century generation of Palestinian Nakba survivors.
A re-ignition of the immortal symbol "Handala". A unique intellectual lens into the world's current events.

 https://www.childofhandala.blog/

https://twitter.com/ChildofHandala 

https://www.facebook.com/Child.of.Handala/ 

https://www.instagram.com/child.of.handala/

https://www.pinterest.com/childofhandala/child-of-handala/

 

 

 

Like Palestinians in the rest of east Jerusalem, most Armenians do not hold Israeli citizenship but only residency...

Only around 2,000 Armenians remain in the Old City quarter after waves of immigration primarily to the United States and Europe since the 1960s.

Like Palestinians in the rest of east Jerusalem, most Armenians do not hold Israeli citizenship but only residency... READ MORE   https://news.yahoo.com/jerusalems-armenians-vow-keep-fight-102652851.html

Jerusalem's Armenians vow to keep up fight against 'settler' project

Wafaa Essalhi and Majeda El-Batsh

Fri, December 29, 2023 

 [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]

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some images from Jerusalem's Armenian Quarter

 St. Mark's Chapel, Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem

St. James' Cathedral, Armenian Quarter, Jerusalem

Jerusalem Old City Shrines & Gates

#AlQuds - #Jerusalem...#Palestinian Shopkeeper, early 1900s Palestine

All I want for Christmas is a Right of Return FREE PALESTINE

In 1948, in response to the mass displacement and forced exile of the native non-Jewish men, women and children of historic Palestine, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194, including paragraph 11 which provides, in part, that:

…the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors 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.

Resolution 194 endorsed the right of Palestinian refugees to choose whether to repatriate to what is now Israel or to be resettled elsewhere, and codified the accepted principles of customary international law. It has been reaffirmed by the General Assembly every year since its adoption.

The right of return for all refugees also is well-established under other international law, including:

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted in 1948): “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” (Art. 13(2)).

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is less complicated than you've been taught

The WEST BANK archipelago

The WEST BANK archipelago

https://brilliantmaps.com/palestine-archipelago/

Map created by Julien Bousac

The map above shows what Palestine’s West Bank would look like if all non-Palestinian land suddenly turned into water.

All that would remain would be an archipelago of small islands with the sea of Israel to the west and the Jordanian ocean to the east.

The map is designed to show just how broken up Palestinian land in the West Bank really is. And while originally published in French, it is quite clear in the main point it’s trying to make.

For books on this topic have a look at:

• Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge
• The West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Geography of Occupation and Disengagement
• Crossing the Green Line Between the West Bank and Israel
• The Palestine-Israel Conflict: A Basic Introduction, Third Edition

America's Mainstream Media & Fake News (thank you Jonathan Cook for your honor & honesty) ... illustrated by some randomly plucked up truth telling cartons, memes, and a map

America's Mainstream Media (truth telling cartoon meme found today on X)

Jonathan Cook

@Jonathan_K_Cook

Writer, journalist, self-appointed media critic. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism

Just remember when the 'respectable' media warn us about fake news that the biggest fake news we're being exposed to – every day, for weeks on end – is peddled by the 'respectable' media: that Israel is 'eradicating' Hamas, rather than the truth that it is carrying out ethnic cleansing and a genocide of the Palestinian people. 

This week the UN warned that Palestinians will be killed in even bigger numbers than from the bombing by disease brought about by Israel's denial of food and water, and its destruction of health and public sanitation infrastructure. 

 This isn't some tragic side effect of Israel's policies. Israeli planners knew this would happen from the start.

The Art of Memory & Hope = Palestine #olives # grapes #pomegranates

 

1947 Map of Palestine

 

Palestine as seen by the heart ... artist unknown

 

Olive Harvest in Palestine

Marvelous photo of a multi-generational Palestinian family’s olive picking in the occupied West Bank village of Duma. Photo credit- Omar Dawabsheh

Unknown little girl in Palestine Traditional Thobe Dress Holding freshly picked Olives

Olive Tree in Palestine

Falastine Tree

Old Photo of an Ancient Olive Tree in Palestine

Palestine- view from an olive tree

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) is a non-profit organization that offers journalists facts, analysis, experts, and digital resources about Palestine and Palestinians.

Sorting Olives in Palestine

The tasty Palestinian traditional meal Manakish, consisting of dough topped with thyme, cheese, or ground meat, surrounded by olives

 & a poem from Palestine

The Second Olive Tree

By Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)

                                                                                       Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Hacker

The olive tree does not weep and does not laugh. The olive tree
Is the hillside’s modest lady. Shadow
Covers her one leg, and she will not take her leaves off in front of the storm.
Standing, she is seated, and seated, standing.
She lives as a friendly sister of eternity, neighbor of time
That helps her stock her luminous oil and
Forget the invaders’ names, except the Romans, who
Coexisted with her, and borrowed some of her branches
To weave wreaths. They did not treat her as a prisoner of war
But as a venerable grandmother, before whose calm dignity
Swords shatter. In her reticent silver-green
Color hesitates to say what it thinks, and to look at what is behind
The portrait, for the olive tree is neither green nor silver.
The olive tree is the color of peace, if peace needed
A color. No one says to the olive tree: How beautiful you are!
But: How noble and how splendid! And she,
She who teaches soldiers to lay down their rifles
And re-educates them in tenderness and humility: Go home
And light your lamps with my oil! But
These soldiers, these modern soldiers
Besiege her with bulldozers and uproot her from her lineage
Of earth. They vanquished our grandmother who foundered,
Her branches on the ground, her roots in the sky.
She did not weep or cry out.  But one of her grandsons
Who witnessed the execution threw a stone
At a soldier, and he was martyred with her.
After the victorious soldiers
Had gone on their way, we buried him there, in that deep
Pit – the grandmother’s cradle. And that is why we were
Sure that he would become, in a little while, an olive
Tree – a thorny olive tree – and green! 

 ~

Some Old photos of Historic Palestine Olive Harvest

Old photos of Historic Palestine Olive Harvest

 

THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE: Ethnographic Habitat, Place Memories, and Cultural Identity

Byzantine, Crusader, and Ottoman traces.

[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://thisweekinpalestine.com/retrocog-nition-in-sebastiya/

"Sebastiya successfully combines the ideological framing of history and identity. The exquisite rehabilitation of Sebastiya homesteads and previously abused monuments addresses the relationship between time and space, and points the way for the future development of Palestinian cultural geography...."

Retrocog-nition in Sebastiya

Ethnographic Habitat, Place Memories, and Cultural Identity

By: Ali Qleibo

"...Sebastiya is a living ode to Palestinian life, a museum of memories with which we are already acquainted though Fairuz’s classical ballads. In fact, the lyrics and melodies immortalised by Fairuz haunt the old town of Sebastiya.

Sebastiya is a “place memory” par excellence, wherein the visitor “remembers” events that have been experienced by others, and it is closely associated with retrocognition, which literally means “backward knowing.” In retrocognition, visitors and locals witness events as “a playback of a past scene.” Thus, place memory and retrocognition juxtapose present-day environmental place memory with alterations in time that might let you literally see the past (retrocognition). With retrocognition there is a dream-like state and an altered sense of time.

Each village has its own narrative, its own individuality, and its own unique character. Sebastiya brings together Biblical, Roman, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman archaeological architectural elements, not as cold relics but as an integral expression of Palestinian key symbols and signs within an ecological niche that the Palestinian genius has sculpted through the past five millennia.

In Sebastiya, history and its relationship with narratives constitutive of national identity weave a lyrical poem that celebrates the roots of Palestinian national identity in antiquity. By situating the cultural architectural narrative within the local spatial context and connecting it to wider regional cultural geography and history, the heritage attraction sites become signifiers that help advance the understanding of the highly diversified cultural expressions of Palestinian national identity.

In Sebastiya we find a venue that reveals the composite multi-layered historical and demographic levels of which our cultural identity is an expression. Sebastiya as an iconic heritage site has come to symbolise fundamental aspects of “Palestinianness,” and in so doing presents the nation as a family, a group of relations with shared history, values and beliefs, and common characteristics."

Dr. Ali Qleibo is an anthropologist, author, and artist. A specialist in the social history of Jerusalem and Palestinian peasant culture, he is the author of Before the Mountains Disappear, Jerusalem in the Heart, and Surviving the Wall, an ethnographic chronicle of contemporary Palestinians and their roots in ancient Semitic civilisations. Dr. Qleibo lectures at Al-Quds University. He can be reached at: aqleibo@yahoo.com.
  

 ****** 

Message From the editor

 Habitat

Habitat is not your usual word. A look at the English dictionary definition reveals a number of meanings:

• The natural environment of an organism; a place that is natural for its life and growth. For example, a desert habitat and all the wildlife thriving there.
• A place where an organism is usually found. For example, Nablus is a major habitat for knafeh chefs and sweet shops in Palestine.
• A special environment in which organisms reside over an extended period. For example, the village habitat in Palestine is special for both humans and animals.

If we take a look at the beautiful old houses in Palestinian villages, towns, and cities, we find that they easily integrate with their surrounding habitats. They have been built by the descendants of people who have lived and been nurtured in this habitat for thousands of years. A totally different perspective from the one you get when you are struck by the illegal Israeli settlements that intrude on the natural habitat of Palestine and impose ugly structures that have little to do with their surrounding environment.

In the pages of this issue you will discover the unique floral aspects of Palestine, its rich wildlife, and just how little you know about it all. We hope that you will gain a greater appreciation of the village habitat, the way Jerusalem produced its own kind of habitat, and how all of it is endangered mainly because of the occupation but also because of other social and economic factors.

Habitat is not just a word in Palestine; it is a way to affirm and preserve
our identity and way of life!

Ahmad Damen
Content Editor
THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE

http://thisweekinpalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/October-198-2014-low.pdf

Highlights of Palestinian Habitats

The Arab villages lost since Israel's war of independence - Guardian Interactive: ...Pre 1948 ...March 1948 ... May 1948 ...June 1948 ...Oct 1948 ...July 1949 ...Now

[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]

The Arab villages lost since Israel's war of independence - interactive

2 May 2014: Changing landscape: hundreds of Arab villages and towns were abandoned, attacked and de-populated during Israel's war of independence in 1948 – which is still remembered by Palestinians as their catastrophe or Nakba

Washington Post 2013: Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

Israeli hard-liners eye West Bank

 

Peace accords divided the West Bank into three areas controlled by Israel, the Palestinians or the Palestinian civil authority with Israeli military control. Some in the Israeli government have advocated plans for Israel to unilaterally annex Area C and leave areas A and B to be administered by the Palestinian Authority, with oversight by Israeli security forces. Read related article.

"Israel is the most threatened state in the world"

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'Herod the Great' show causes row over artifacts

A general view of Herodion, near Bethlehem.(MaanImages/file)

13/02/2013

[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.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=564808

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- The first major museum exhibition on the divisive biblical figure of Herod the Great has provoked a modern-day row between Israel and the Palestinians over who has the right to dig up his artifacts.

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem on Tuesday unveiled a display dedicated to Herod - branded a baby-killer in the Christian tradition but remembered by many in Israel for rebuilding a Jewish Temple two millennia ago.

Palestinian Authority officials have complained many of the exhibits were taken from the West Bank, under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

The show includes busts and statues of figures from the period when the Romans occupied the Holy Land and appointed Herod the monarch of Judea.

The highlight is a reconstruction of part of Herod's mausoleum housing what experts believe is his sarcophagus.

Palestinians said the artifacts were removed without their consent from Herodion, the builder-king's excavated palace on an arid hilltop near Bethlehem.

The Palestinian Authority minister of tourism and antiquities, Rula Maayah, told Reuters all Israeli archaeological activities in the West Bank were illegal.

"Many dig locations (in the Palestinian territories) fall under Israeli control ... and we are unable to reach them. All the work at digs in the occupied territories are against the law, but Israel carries them out and even if they don't dig themselves they don't allow us to do so," she said.

Israel Museum director James Snyder said archaeological digs on occupied Palestinian territories were carried out according to international conventions and protocols laid down in interim Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.

Snyder said he was unaware of any discussions with Palestinian archaeological officials over the exhibit and there had been no way to study the artifacts properly on site at Herodion.

The relics, he said, would eventually be returned to Herodion once proper facilities to house them were in place.

In the Christian story, Herod ordered his men to kill all baby boys in and around Jesus' birthplace Bethlehem, fearing one would grow up to become "King of the Jews" and challenge his rule.

According to The Gospel of Matthew, Jesus and his family escaped the slaughter by fleeing to Egypt.

Historians said Herod ruled Judea from about 37 BC until his death in 4 BC - four years before Jesus' official birth day, though that date is also contested.

Ma'an staff contributed to this report

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Visitor Information Center .... Ancient King Herod’s Palace is visible from Bethlehem: It is located in the Judean desert, 6 km to the south east of Bethlehem

Ruins of Herodium Seen from Above

MAP of Greater Jerusalem, May 2006. United States. Central Intelligence Agency: Shows settlements, refugee camps, fences, walls, etc.