Friday, January 26, 2024

Please DARE SPEAK OUT to advocate a just and lasting peace for all people, not just your chosen favorites.

An indigenous Palestinian woman in traditional dress overlooking Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Photo circa 1929

Dear President Biden (...etc)

American racism is shaping inhuman policies when it comes to our foreign policies- specifically our politicians' & religious leaders' callous negligence regarding the very real plight & suffering of the native non-Jewish people of the Holy Land.

Yes I know AIPAC generously rewards American politicians who empower the political entity called Israel, while sabotaging and undermining those who don't... and elections are coming up.

Yes I know our mainstream media elects to feature Zionist perspectives & propaganda at every opportunity, and that there are harassment campaigns aimed at silencing American support for the men, women, & children of historic Palestine. But please stand up & speak out for truth and justice any way, and in every way you can.

I believe in beauty & goodness, fair & just laws, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I also believe in righting historic wrongs. This morning I was delighted to see an absolutely gorgeous Gustav Klimt portrait of Fraulein Lieser that once belonged to a wealthy Jewish family in Austria. That painting was believed to have been lost in the Nazi Holocaust. Thankfully the portrait was recently discovered, and its sale will benefit the current owners as well as the Lieser heirs "because of Washington Principles, an international agreement to return Nazi-looted art to the descendants of the people they were taken from". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68102376

Did you know that Israel has stolen and/or destroyed countless Palestinian books, art, homes, and even entire communities since 1948.

Israeli violence and impunity is escalating, thanks in a large part to American money and support.

Please DARE SPEAK OUT to advocate a just and lasting peace for all people, not just your chosen favorites. Until Israel is willing to allow a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state our government should consider the Israel/Palestine conflict a civil rights movement within one Apartheid state called Israel.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

Religion should be a personal choice, not a state funded project.

The Basarat Home in Palestine USURPED by Zionists... but never ever forgotten by its rightful owners and heirs.

Revealed: review of internal state department documents shows special mechanisms have been used to shield Israel from US human rights laws

THE NATION: A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.”

South Africa 🇿🇦 said “never again” and lived up to it.

Remembering Tom Hurndall 1981-2004 Killed by an Israeli Snipper as he carried Palestinian Children to safety

Nesrine Malik in The Guardian: It’s not only Israel on trial. South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

Kitaba by Tala Abunuwar: We are not free till all of us are free! Thank you South Africa 🙏

With love from Palestine to South Africa

Mosab Abu Toha: "She is reading from a book..."

'Stunned, angry, and infuriated': Journalists address US silence on colleagues killed in Gaza

Ben & Jerry’s has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, making it one of the first multinational companies to do so since Israel began bombing civilians in Gaza over 100 days ago.

I have hope

Responses to genocide are often determined by where the crime is committed, and what the victims look like... How can so many in the West so easily ignore genocide?

Susan Muaddi Darraj: There are 12 different ways to say "friend" in Arabic, and I believe South Africa embodies all of them.

Violence is the feel good answer in movies & on TV- not in real life.

Revealed: Congress backers of Gaza war received most from pro-Israel donors

The human cost and the environmental cost of war in the Middle East is horrifying, and yet America's mainstream newspapers, TV news, and politicians itch to have more & more war, investing in Israeli violence at every turn.

Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

Revealed: review of internal state department documents shows special mechanisms have been used to shield Israel from US human rights laws

‘Different rules’: special policies keep US supplying weapons to Israel despite alleged abuses

Top US officials quietly reviewed more than a dozen incidents of alleged gross violations of human rights by Israeli security forces since 2020, but have gone to great lengths to preserve continued access to US weapons for the units responsible for the alleged violations, contributing – former US officials say – to the sense of impunity with which Israel has approached its war in Gaza.

An estimated 24,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces since Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, a death toll that has spurred condemnation of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the US president, Joe Biden, who has been criticized for failing to rein in Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombing of Gaza.

An investigation by the Guardian, which was based on a review of internal state department documents and interviews with people familiar with sensitive internal deliberations, reveals how special mechanisms have been used over the last few years to shield Israel from US human rights laws, even as other allies’ military units who receive US support – including, sources say, Ukraine – have privately been sanctioned and faced consequences for committing human rights violations... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/18/us-supply-weapons-israel-alleged-abuses-human-rights

[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]

A mural of slain of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin, adorns a wall in Gaza City on 15 May 2022. Photograph: Adel Hana/AP

THE NATION: A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.”

...Teachers Want the Largest Union in the Country to Rescind its Biden Endorsement Over Gaza

January 22, 2024

When Israel escalated its military operations against Gaza in October, Rahaf Othman was so distraught, she said, she “couldn’t think straight.” The 45-year-old Palestinian American, who teaches social studies at Harold L. Richards High School in Oak Lawn, Ill., recalled that she “started getting nightmares from my own experiences when I was in Palestine. I was functional at work, but barely functional. My brain was mush. I was getting traumatized every time I turned on my phone.”

“For the first month, people were asking me what we should do, but I couldn’t think, couldn’t focus.” While in this state, she said she discovered that she could lean on some of her colleagues. “Educators rallied together and created this group, Educators for Palestine. I am grateful they brought me along for the ride.”

Othman is a member of the Illinois Education Association (IEA) Local 218, which covers an area to the south of Chicago, part of the 3 million–strong National Education Association (NEA), the largest labor union in the United States. She is now part of a member effort to press the NEA to put real muscle behind supporting a cease-fire, one prong in a small-but-growing campaign within the US labor movement.

But the rank-and-file campaign goes beyond demanding an end to Israel’s military operations, which have killed at least 22,000 Palestinians, 12,000 of them children. Othman and other members want the NEA to revoke its endorsement of Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential race until the president secures a “permanent cease-fire,” stops “sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel,” and commits “to a fair due process for asylum-seekers and refugees.”... READ MORE https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nea-union-biden-endorsement-gaza/

Saturday, January 20, 2024

South Africa 🇿🇦 said “never again” and lived up to it.

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Remembering Tom Hurndall 1981-2004 Killed by an Israeli Snipper as he carried Palestinian Children to safety

What do I want from this life? What makes you happy is not enough. All the things that satisfy our instincts only satisfy the animal in us. I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven't done.
— Tom Hurndall

They shot our son but they can't kill his spirit.
— Anthony and Jocelyn Hurndall

Thomas Hurndall (27 November 1981 – 13 January 2004) was a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. On 11 April 2003, he was shot in the head in the Gaza Strip by a (IDF) sniper, Taysir Hayb. Hurndall was left in a coma and died nine months later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hurndall

Nesrine Malik in The Guardian: It’s not only Israel on trial. South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

It’s not only Israel on trial. South Africa is testing the west’s claim to moral superiority

Nesrine Malik

Supporters of Palestine have long been told their position is fringe. But this case gives them legitimacy – and tests the limits of human rights

It was only a little over six hours of legal argument, but the genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel at the international court of justice had decades of history bearing down on it. The specifics dealt with Israel’s assault on Gaza, but at its heart, the case was about something wider: closing the gap between Palestinian reality and how the dominant political forces describe it.

For weeks now, anger at events in Gaza has spilled out on to the streets across Europe. Yet this anger has been resolutely ignored, dismissed, banned, or vilified by political leaders. Public support for a ceasefire, now at more than 70% in the UK, is not reflected in the positions of either the government or the opposition. Globally, condemnation of the violence from human rights organisations, the United Nations and even the pope has yet to translate into meaningful action from political leaders.

A UN resolution calling for a ceasefire was blocked by the US. Even the language of protest has been forensically analysed to render it problematic or ignorant; protesters have been accused of... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/israel-trial-south-africa-icj-palestine?CMP=share_btn_fb

Kitaba by Tala Abunuwar: We are not free till all of us are free! Thank you South Africa 🙏

kittaba by Tala Abunuwar

We all just want to be seen and heard. No exceptions! We are not free till all of us are free! Thank you South Africa https://www.instagram.com/p/C2AdPbprumk/

With love from Palestine to South Africa

Mosab Abu Toha: "She is reading from a book..."

'Stunned, angry, and infuriated': Journalists address US silence on colleagues killed in Gaza

Jan 14, 2024

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 82 journalists and media workers have died since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7th, making this war the deadliest in modern history for journalists. Hamza Al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya are the latest journalists to be killed in the war. Hamza is the son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief Wael Al-Dahdouh, who had already lost his wife, daughter, another son, and grandson in an Israeli airstrike. Al-Dahdouh vows to continue reporting through his pain and loss.

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Ben & Jerry’s has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, making it one of the first multinational companies to do so since Israel began bombing civilians in Gaza over 100 days ago.

Dear President Biden - I have hope

Dear President Biden,

I have hope- hope that more concerned human beings will find the courage to nonviolently do all they can to convince Americans to stop funding and fueling Israel's racist rage and genocidal war against the native non-Jewish people of the Holy Land.

Yes you might have stopped reading right there, because you don't want to think of Israel as the villain: Beloved hymns and prayers sing Israel's praises. TV ads/entertainment/news & newspapers polish up Israel's image at every turn with both news & opinion pieces. And preachers hoping for End Times want all Jews to go there to be destroyed. There are many different and contradictory factors stoking the Zionist project.

I know that it is hard to understand and even harder to admit being wrong about our "friend" Israel, but we must. We must realize that even Oslo and the promise of a two state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict has been abused by sovereign Israel to further impoverish and displace the stateless Palestinians.

We should not be funding, arming, and excusing a nation state that bases citizenship rights and freedom on a person's religion or race. Kudos to South Africa for seeing and condemning Israel's Apartheid and genocidal war on Palestine, and kudos to all worldwide who never ever forget Palestine, and the very real plight and suffering of Palestinian individuals and families.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

Religion should be a personal, private choice, not a state funded project