Wednesday, May 15, 2024

May 15th poem-a-day from the Academy of American Poets:We Live We Live by Brandy Nālani McDougall- For Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, with lines from his poems

poem-a-day

May 15, 2024

We Live We Live

Brandy Nālani McDougall

^{For Palestinian poet Reefat Alareer, with lines from his poems

We live.

We live.

We do.

——Refaat Alareer}

You were killed today December 7th
my birthday It was today son of Shujaiya

in an Israel airstrike you were killed
visiting your brother’s home in Gaza City

Today, the anniversary of when my grandfather
only 12 years old climbed onto the roof

                        of his dormitory                      to watch the bombs
            fall on the American naval base         built over Puʻuloa

Your brother               your sister                   and four of her
            children were killed, too                     You were

just a few years younger than me

This morning after Israel’s birds of death

screeched down toward you my children woke up
on their own in Honolulu though it was still dark

                        their breath      like soil           their voices     like soil
            their kisses     like soil           blinking when touched by rain

And my youngest        rubbing her eyes                     asked if
            it was my birthday—              And am I now 47?—

before singing in our ancestors’ language
we are learning to speak together after

the wreckage of English and Americans
And my oldest who is learning to speak

                        in speech therapy        giggled            in her grogginess
            then sang                     her own song too

And what did I do       to deserve                    such tenderness
            this early morning?    Or to live                     this long

having heard bombs and guns fired only
from a distance? Having stood safely

                        scared as a child                     and angry        as an adult
            at the sound     of our lands and waters— Kahoʻolawe

Pōhakuloa Mākua Wahiawa battered
bruised burned poisoned in live fire practice?

By bombs that may have fallen on you or close
to you on those you loved full-hearted recklessly

those you learned to cling to even harder bombs
that may have hurt or killed children like mine who

could still sing? And you what did you do
to deserve your shorter poet’s life except

tell the truth and sow the seeds of songs
in your students except grow your love for them

for your people for your land and country
for the promise within the wreckage

that is this English echoing
all the way here to Honolulu where I resisted

opening my TikTok feed to savor my children’s sleepy
sweetness a little longer before facing

that birthdays are death days too?

                                    That each day              bombs and schools
                        hospitals and houses               fall                   each day children

are pulled from rubble children are pulled away
  crying from rubble that buried their mothers
       that they feel   alone that their hurt seeps
                        down into the dirt       as they look heaven in the eye

somewhere in Gaza? That they have written
their names and their parents’ names on their limbs

so their bodies or maybe just these parts
if that is all that’s left can be known

to anyone who finds them?

That                 if they if you   must die
            so easily uprooted       from the earth             so harshly unsung

let it be a tale and why not write poems to birth
the strongest words of love like rocks?

                        like seeds?                   like songs?      like names?
            And why not               hold those rocks         in your hands?

Your arms? Pull them to your chest like children
lighting the darkest of birthday mornings?

Why not feel their full weight and cling
even harder to live to live dear poet

of Shujaiya of Gaza of Palestine
just before they just before you

take flight?

https://poets.org/poem-a-day?mc_cid=72282341f5&mc_eid=544ee8b5c2

[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]

About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year.

I wear the traditional black and white scarf to celebrate my heritage. That’s enough to make you a target in the US today

".... Whipping up hatred against symbols of Palestinian identity has dangerous consequences. Last November three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont were shot; it’s thought that they may have been targeted because they were wearing keffiyehs. Around the same time, a British-Indian man living in Brooklyn was attacked in a playground while with his 18-month-old, because he was wearing a keffiyeh. A woman called him a terrorist, threw her phone and a hot cup of coffee at him and said she hoped that “someone burns your child in an oven”.

Cowardly though it may be, the anti-Arab atmosphere in the US has made me afraid of wearing my own keffiyeh out of the house. Particularly, as I recently had a very unpleasant interaction when wearing my watermelon sweater (the same one Ben Affleck’s daughter was criticised for wearing). Still, being worried about getting harassed on the street is nothing compared with what people in Gaza and the West Bank are dealing with. Please don’t let hate-mongers try to distract you: it’s not keffiyehs or protesting university students that you should be outraged by, it’s children being starved to death."

Protesters at University of Michigan in the US, this month. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

My Palestinian keffiyeh is a symbol of my identity. I should not be afraid to wear it in public

Arwa Mahdawi

I wear the traditional black and white scarf to celebrate my heritage. That’s enough to make you a target in the US today

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/14/palestinian-keffiyeh-symbol-of-my-identity-should-not-be-afraid-to-wear-it-public

The Guardian: ‘No water, food, health care, toilet’: Desperation deepens in Gaza’s camps

Tents set up by displaced Palestinians in al-Mawasi near the border with Egypt in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Hundreds of new shelters set up near Khan Younis as Palestinians flee fighting in Rafah

Malak A Tantesh in Khan Younis and Jason Burke in Jerusalem

Wed 15 May 2024 00.00 EDT

Last modified on Wed 15 May 2024 02.06 EDT

Soaring above the rows of tents 10 deep on the dunes stretching back from the Mediterranean sea is a reminder of better times in Gaza: a ferris wheel.

Now, the cafes, paths and miniature train of the Asda’a amusement park are obscured by hundreds of shelters, put up by some of the half a million newly displaced people who have made their way to this sandy strip of coastline near the city of Khan Younis to escape fighting in the north and south of the territory.

Massa al-Arbeed, 10, had only just arrived from Gaza City, with her brother and mother.

“We have had to leave a lot behind because this is perhaps the sixth time we have moved,” al-Arbeed told the Guardian. “So I’m just sitting here.

“There are no games or dolls to play with, or even a house to take shelter in, and because we move a lot, I’ve lost touch with all my friends and now I don’t know anything about them.”

Always anxious, sometimes injured or sick, frequently hungry and thirsty, most of the inhabitants of the tented city that has risen among the dunes and scrubby fields are seeking shelter from the relentless Israeli offensive that has reached Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza.

Another hundred thousand have moved from northern Gaza... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/15/no-water-food-health-care-toilet-desperation-deepens-in-gazas-camps

Tuesday, May 14, 2024

The New Yorker: The View from Palestinian America In Kholood Eid’s photographs of Missouri, taken six months into the war in Gaza, the quiet act of documenting life is a kind of protest against erasure. By Zaina Arafat Photography by Kholood Eid

Nida Mutan participates in a march in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 7th. The day marked six months after the October 7th attacks and the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

In 1987, when Palestinians rose up against the Israeli occupation in what would become known as the first intifada, I was six years old. Each evening, when Peter Jennings delivered the six-thirty news, my family would gather in our wood-panelled basement, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and watch for images of Nablus, where we’re from. We saw young Palestinians, in jeans and bandanas, throwing a seemingly endless supply of stones; Israeli soldiers, in tan uniforms and combat boots, guarding checkpoints, looking both vigilant and bored; coffins shrouded in Palestinian flags. Our lives in America were at a cool remove from the conflict. I spent those evenings spreading Barbies across the floor, and my baby brother spent them in his bouncy chair. My father would pour Doritos into a bowl and argue with the news. Only my mother kept quiet, her eyes fixed on a homeland that seemed to be receding.

Ours was a scene that played out in many Palestinian American families, and it replayed with every flareup and every encroaching Israeli settlement. And yet the images on television did not always match the ones I saw during visits to Palestine: my grandmother laying out sheets of newspaper to roll stuffed grape leaves on the veranda; the call to prayer, and the little green lights shining from every mosque; the zaffe drum procession echoing from outdoor weddings. To be a Palestinian in the diaspora is to miss one’s home, the blād—the mountains and the sea, the family members left behind, the distinct bitterness of our olives and our sumac- and za’atar-dusted mezze spreads—even as one enjoys the privilege of distance from Palestine’s hardships. It is to possess a luxury that is missing from Palestine itself: a choice.

A new series of photographs by Kholood Eid, a New York-based photographer who grew up in Missouri and the West Bank, tries to depict what this tension does to a person. Her photos are full of sharp contrasts: joy and sorrow, light and dark, past and present. In one photograph, a young protester—wearing a kaffiyeh and a T-shirt printed with a watermelon, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity—holds a sunflower. In another, through the railings of a staircase, home-cooked lentils and rice sit on the Eid family’s dining-room table. In a photograph of a framed picture from the late nineteen-eighties, Abdelaziz, Eid’s close childhood friend, clings to her mother’s embroidered thawb at a protest, reminding the viewer of the ongoing nature of Palestinian activism.... READ MORE https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-view-from-palestinian-america

Abdelaziz [Eid’s close childhood friend] was about six years old when her mother (left) took her to a protest for Palestinian liberation. “I often tell folks that growing up Palestinian American left me ‘protested out,’ as generations of Palestinians have been calling for liberation,” Eid said. “That said, our resilience has always been a defining characteristic of our people, and there is beauty and strength in perseverance.”

In these challenging times, it is heartening to witness the remarkable solidarity and support from university students across the #USA many #European countries & others around the world standing with #Gaza. #StandWithGaza #StudentsForPeace #HumanRights #StopGenocideInGaza

Nidal Bitar | نضال البيطار

@NidalBitar

In these challenging times, it is heartening to witness the remarkable solidarity and support from university students across the #USA many #European countries & others around the world standing with #Gaza. #StandWithGaza #StudentsForPeace #HumanRights #StopGenocideInGaza

‘Our struggles are connected’: Atlanta protesters link Cop City to Gaza war: Campus protesters say issue of police training center and its connections to Israel has been on their minds for months

"... The issue of transparency is of particular importance to students at Emory, with an endowment of $11bn – the 11th-highest in the US, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Students across the metro area – not just at Emory – have also long been protesting against a direct connection they see between policing in Atlanta and Israel: the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (Gilee), a non-profit program that sends US police officers to Israel and vice versa, for training and other activities.

The Rev Keyanna Jones, a Baptist minister and part of an Atlanta-based faith coalition against Cop City, was asked by Emory student organizers to speak about this and other connections on 25 April, as part of the launch of a protest encampment.

Jones arrived at Emory and had barely gotten through her remarks at a press conference when officers from Emory, Atlanta and Georgia state patrol rushed the quad. “I looked around and saw pepper balls and rubber bullets being shot,” she said. “I saw three young women in hijabs. One was paralyzed; she could not move … I went over and told them, ‘If you don’t move, you’re going to get hurt!’”

One of the women kept screaming, “What is happening?” Jones recalled. Finally, the three ran away from the quad.

At the time, it was probably the fastest shutting down of a student protest encampment of the dozens occurring across the country. It also was probably the first in which police used Tasers on protesters...."

Protesters at Emory University demonstrate against the war in Gaza. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

‘Our struggles are connected’: Atlanta protesters link Cop City to Gaza war

Campus protesters say issue of police training center and its connections to Israel has been on their minds for months

Timothy Prattin Atlanta

Mon 13 May 2024 10.00 EDT

Last modified on Mon 13 May 2024 10.03 EDT

The student-led protests at Emory University in Atlanta have distinguished themselves from others occurring across the US in at least one way: protesters are seeking transparency about and divestment from Israel but also from a $109m police training center known as “Cop City”.

A broad-based movement against the training center, now in its fourth year... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/13/cop-city-emory-atlanta-israel

Israel attacked aid workers despite knowing their locations: Human Rights Watch documents eight Israeli strikes on humanitarian groups that had provided their coordinates in advance

Men walk through rubble past damaged buildings with humanitarian aid packages collected from a drop over the northern Gaza Strip on 23 April 2024 (AFP)

By MEE staff

Published date: 14 May 2024 12:14 BST | Last update: 14 mins 14 secs ago

Israeli forces have carried out at least eight attacks on aid convoys and premises in Gaza since October, despite aid groups providing their locations to Israeli authorities in advance, according to a new report.

Human Rights Watch said in a report on Tuesday that the eight Israeli attacks killed at least 15 people, including two children, and wounded at least 16 others.

They included attacks on World Central Kitchen, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), the International Rescue Committee and the American Near East Refugee Aid Organisation.

In an Israeli air strike on MAP and the International Rescue Committee on 18 January, UN investigators who visited the attack concluded it was likely carried out with a US-made munition with parts supplied by the UK. The strike wounded three people.

On 1 April, an Israeli attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy killed six international aid workers and their Palestinian driver, which Israel apologised for and described as a "mistake".

As with all of the eight attacks documented by Human Rights Watch, World Central Kitchen had provided Israeli authorities with GPS coordinates of its personnel in advance, but was still attacked.

"Israel's killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers was shocking and should never have happened under international law," said Belkis Wille of Human Rights Watch. "Israel's allies need to recognise that these attacks that have killed aid workers have happened over and over again, and they need to stop."

'Cannot rely on deconfliction'

According to the UN, 254 of its aid workers have been killed since the war on Gaza began on 7 October. At least 169 Unrwa facilities have been impacted by Israel's war in 368 separate incidents.

Workers from 11 humanitarian groups and agencies told Human Rights Watch that Israeli attacks have forced them to either suspend activities, reduce their staff or restrict their work in other ways.

"I can't risk sending more staff into Gaza because I cannot rely on deconfliction as a way of keeping them safe," a senior employee at one organisation attacked by Israeli forces said.

'Bullshit process and result': US report on Israel's Gaza conduct met with disappointment

International law prohibits indiscriminate attacks targeting civilian objects, like aid convoys, that are expected to cause harm to civilians in a way disproportionate to any military advantage.

In the genocide case against Israel, the International Court of Justice in January issued a provisional ruling ordering the country to enable the entry of urgent humanitarian aid into Gaza.

But since the ruling, Israel has been found to be defying the order by directly bombing aid convoys and impeding aid deliveries through delays and denials of entry.

"On one hand, Israel is blocking access to critical lifesaving humanitarian provisions and on the other, attacking convoys that are delivering some of the small amount that they are allowing in," Wille said. "Israeli forces should immediately end their attacks on aid organizations, and there should be accountability for these crimes."

Israeli civilians have also blocked entry of aid into the enclave, bringing aid trucks to a standstill by holding sit-ins, laying down large rocks and even attacking vehicles directly.

Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-attacked-aid-workers-despite-knowing-location

Spotted in a pro-Palestine demonstration in Ottawa, Canada.... "Israel Did It in 1948... 56...67...82...2002...08...14...21...23..."

Spotted in a pro-Palestine demonstration in Ottawa, Canada.

English guitar legend Eric Clapton kicks off his concert by playing a guitar adorned with the Palestinian flag.🇵🇸

Photo by Emma Lumley: English guitar legend Eric Clapton kicks off his concert by playing a guitar adorned with the Palestinian flag.🎸🇵🇸

Eric Clapton concert from May 9 2024 at the Utilita Arena in Newcastle, England. It was his first show in the city in 20 years.

Love that guitar

Photo by Emma Lumley

Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention...

Monday, May 13, 2024

Please stop aiding and abetting Israeli insanity. Full Stop.

Dear Biden ...etc...

Israeli insanity convinces select Americans who were raised with full and equal rights to hate, harass, impoverish and kill Arabs in Israel/Palestine.

Israeli insanity convinces Israelis, fully subsided by Israel AND America, to go out and uproot Arab olive trees & steal Arab land- rights- and freedom... day after day after day for decades now, ALL fully funded by the American government and protected by most of our mainstream media and commercial entertainment enterprises.

Israeli insanity is dangerous and wrong: Since 1948 Palestinians have been pushed into forced exile and crowded refugee camps that are bombed and invaded by Israel- armed by America.

Our Congress adds insult to injury by cutting funds to UNWRA, the aid agency created by the United Nations to help Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their ancestral homes and lands in 1948 by invading armed Zionist terrorists.

Israeli insanity funds Jewish privilege creating apartheid and escalating injustice in The Holy Land.

Please stop aiding and abetting Israeli insanity. Full Stop.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..." https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

Gaza death toll surpasses 35,000 amid Israeli onslaught & At least 78,755 other Palestinian men, women, and children have been injured in the Israeli onslaught as of May 10th, 2024

Asna Tabassum, the USC valedictorian who had her commencement speech canceled due to her support for Palestinian equality, received a heavy round of applause during her graduation today from the engineering school.

Israel's Attack on America's USS Liberty in 1967

Former Congressman Pete McCloskey, longtime supporter of Palestinians and USS Liberty veterans, has passed away at the age of 96

From UC Berkeley’s encampment: Mosab Abu Toha's poem on what a Gazan should do during an Israeli Air Strike

Will our own democracy and established Fourth Estate survive the decades old insidious invasion of a very foreign country that pretends to be our friend, but really is no one's friend, including its own Apartheid building citizens?

Maps illustrating Israel (& Palestine) 1947 Partition plan, the 1949 Armistice Lines, the 1967 borders, the border jumping convoluted Israeli-made Apartheid wall, maps of Jewish-only Settlements and IDF Checkpoints in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza.

UN agency closes East Jerusalem HQ after arson attack by ‘Israeli extremists’ Unrwa chief says compound has faced a number of attacks, with lives of UN staff at serious risk

The New Yorker: The Kids Are Not All Right. They Want to Be Heard. What explains the student movement against the war in Gaza? Sometimes the correct answer is the one right in front of you. By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

A conversation in a cafe

Once upon a time, not terribly long ago... ‏ Miss Palestine with her two Runners-Up: Beauty in a peaceful country (Palestine) before 1947

Queen Rania of Jordan: ‘What’s happening in Gaza today… is a war crime’ ...

Israel Officially Banned the Palestine Flag from 1967 to1993 (Occupation to Oslo) ... WATERMELONS

Israel is banning Al Jazeera, America is banning TikTok. We know why: What the two laws have in common is desire to silence Israel-Gaza war critics.

There is ‘nowhere safe to go’ for the 600,000 children of Rafah, warns UNICEF

Americans should not be helping racist Israel maim, wound and kill the children of Palestine.

Arresting students and banning Tiktok will not stifle the truth about Israeli crimes against humanity.

FYI the Israel/Palestine conflict did not start on Oct 7th 2023. To be fair and honest you must go back to 1917 when the British Empire and Occupation promoted the Balfour Declaration to create a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. At the time Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire and there was a small Arab Jewish population living there, living in peace along with Muslims and Christians.

Fast forward to 1948 when following the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust, modern man made Israel was created. Israel was not created peacefully or by consensus with the Arab residents who had lived there for eons. Israel was created by invading Zionist terrorists who murdered many indigenous Arabs- fragmenting families, and pushing millions of Palestinians into forced exile.

Israel has failed to provide evidence of Unrwa staff terrorist links: report

Israel has dropped almost 75,000 bombs and shells on Gaza in 200 days, twenty times more than the US aimed at Iraq in six years of war. It’s not war. It’s genocide.

There are enough weapons of war and destruction already on planet earth.

Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

The UN Mediator for Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, believed that the Palestinians displaced had a right to return to their homes and wrote several UN reports to that effect.

"It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries."

Bernadotte was assassinated on Friday 17 September 1948 by members of the group Lehi, a Zionist terrorist organization, commonly known in the West as the Stern Gang

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world

PALESTINE REMEMBERED

Sunday, May 12, 2024

Gaza death toll surpasses 35,000 amid Israeli onslaught & At least 78,755 other Palestinian men, women, and children have been injured in the Israeli onslaught as of May 10th, 2024

Destroyed buildings due to Israeli attacks are seen as Palestinians, residing in the region, struggle with significant challenges amidst rubbles in Northern Gaza, Gaza on May 10, 2024. [Dawoud Abo Alkas – Anadolu Agency]

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip has surged since last October to 35,034 people, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said on Sunday, Anadolu Agency reports.

At least 78,755 other people have been injured in the onslaught, the ministry added in a statement.

“Israeli attacks killed 63 people and injured 114 others in the last 24 hours,” the statement said.

“Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last Oct. 7 which killed some 1,200 people.

READ: Israeli forces kill at least 18 Palestinians in Rafah in last 24 hours

Tel Aviv has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

More than seven months into the conflict, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). An interim ruling in January said it is “plausible” that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza, ordering it to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

South Africa on Friday asked the ICJ to order Israel to withdraw from the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1.5 million displaced people have been sheltered, as part of additional emergency measures over the war.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240512-gaza-death-toll-surpasses-35000-amid-israeli-onslaught/

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