You refer to Israel as “a militarised society in which dissent
is punished” and liken 7 October to an “incredibly violent jailbreak”.
I was being precise. The idea that 7 October was an invasion is
completely wrong. This is a captive population in a ghetto, basically.
You can’t exercise self-defence against a population that you are
occupying militarily. The BBC will shout down a Palestinian guest and
say, well, that’s not what the Israelis would say. Of course it’s not
what the Israelis would say – they’re upholding an apartheid regime in
which they’re exacting a genocide on a captive population. To say that
Israel is a militarised state in which dissent is punished is precise.
They don’t let journalists into the Gaza
Strip; they put in prison people who like a social media post from
Gaza. I’m just trying to be precise with language – that’s the least we
can do.
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‘I remember being very taken by a poem that described waves breaking on a shore like eggshells’: Isabella Hammad. Photograph: Maria Spann/for The Observer
Isabella Hammad: ‘I heard Edward Said speak when I was seven’
How do you feel about the future?
I’m not an oracle. But many, many people who don’t have anything to do
with Palestine are devastated by what they’re seeing, which has
shattered all sorts of illusions they had about their societies and
their governments and about what’s humanly possible in terms of
destruction. I don’t know that it’s necessarily an optimistic thing to
say, but there’s no going back from this, whatever that means.
Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrativeis published on 26 September by Fern Press (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
At least 35 children killed and thousands of people fleeing amid airport chaos as new wave of Israeli airstrikes hits Lebanon
Israel’s army radio and Lebanon’s National News Agency both reported a fresh wave of Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon on Tuesday morning as thousands continued to take to the roads to flee the south of the country.
An
official from Unicef said that at least 35 children had been killed so
far in the airstrikes, which have killed nearly 500 people and wounded
thousands of others. Reuters, citing an official from the World Health
Organization, reports that some hospitals have been overwhelmed by the
number of dead and injured, which come on top of last week’s pager and
walkie-talkie detonations that killed dozens and wounded thousands of
others. That attack was widely attributed to an Israeli attempt to
target Hezbollah operatives, although nobody has claimed responsibility for the mass sabotage of the electronic devices.
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“I have one overriding message today: an appeal to Member States for a spirit of compromise," says @antonioguterres ahead of the Summit of The Future. This once-in-a-generation UN summit must be a breakthrough moment for #OurCommonFuture.
The Summit of the Future is an opportunity to create a digital world that's inclusive, open and safe for everyone, paving the way for #OurCommonFuture...
‘Create a future fit for our grandchildren’, Guterres urges, ahead of gamechanger Summit
The
United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to
adopt a resolution that demands that Israel “brings to an end without
delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
With
a recorded vote of 124 nations in favour, 14 against, and 43
abstentions, the resolution calls for Israel to comply with
international law and withdraw its military forces, immediately cease
all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land,
and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the
occupied West Bank.
The General Assembly further demanded that
Israel return land and other “immovable property”, as well as all assets
seized since the occupation began in 1967, and all cultural property
and assets taken from Palestinians and Palestinian institutions.
The
resolution also demands Israel allow all Palestinians displaced during
the occupation to return to their place of origin and make reparation
for the damage caused by its occupation.
The resolution stems from the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
in July, in which the Court declared that Israel’s continued presence
in the Territory “is unlawful”, and that “all States are under an
obligation not to recognize” the decades-long occupation.
The
Assembly “strongly deplored the continued and total disregard and
breaches” by the Government of Israel of its obligations under the UN Charter,
international law and UN resolutions, stressing that such breaches
“seriously threaten” regional and international peace and security.
It
also recognized that Israel “must be held to account for any
violations” of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including of international humanitarian and human rights laws.
The
text says Israel “must bear the legal consequences of all its
internationally wrongful acts, including by making reparation for the
injury, including any damage, caused by such acts.”
The General
Assembly highlighted the need for the establishment of an international
mechanism for reparations to address damage, loss, or injury caused by
Israel’s actions.
It also called for creating an international register of damage caused, to document evidence and related claims.
International conference
The
resolution also includes a decision to convene an international
conference during the Assembly’s current session to implement UN
resolutions pertaining to the question of Palestine and the two-State
solution for the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace
in the Middle East.
Additionally, the Assembly requested the UN
Secretary-General to present proposals for a mechanism to follow up on
Israel’s violations of article 3 of the International Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, as identified by the
ICJ.
Article 3 refers to racial segregation and apartheid and the
undertaking by International Convention’s States Parties to prevent,
prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under
their jurisdiction.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider
General Assembly votes on a draft resolution on the ICJ advisory opinion.
Call on States
In its resolution, the General Assembly called
upon all UN Member States to comply with their obligations under
international law and take concrete steps to address Israel’s ongoing
presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
The Assembly urged
States to refrain from recognizing Israel’s presence in the Territory
as lawful and to ensure that they do not provide aid or assistance in
maintaining the situation created by the occupation. This includes
taking measures to prevent their nationals, companies, and entities
under their jurisdiction from engaging in activities that support or
sustain Israel’s occupation.
Additionally, the Assembly called on
States to cease importing products originating from Israeli settlements
and to halt the transfer of arms, munitions, and related equipment to
Israel in cases where there are reasonable grounds to suspect they may
be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Moreover, the
resolution urged States to implement sanctions, such as travel bans and
asset freezes, against individuals and entities involved in maintaining
Israel’s unlawful presence in the Territory. This includes addressing
issues related to settler violence and ensuring that those engaged in
these activities face legal and financial consequences.
Adjournment
Finally, the Assembly temporarily adjourned its tenth emergency special session and authorized the President of the General Assembly to reconvene the session upon request from Member States.
The special session is a continuation of the tenth emergency special session of the General Assembly that last met in May amid the ongoing crisis in Gaza, during which it adopted a resolution, laying out additional rights for the State of Palestine’s participation in Assembly meetings.
That resolution did not grant Palestine the right to vote or put forward its candidature to UN Main Organs such as the Security Council or the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
It also did not confer membership to the State of Palestine, which requires a specific recommendation from the Security Council.
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Far from bowing to US/Israel pressure, Van Rensburg team finalises complicity case
A team of forty-seven South African lawyers is finalising its lawsuit against the UK and US for their complicity
in Israel’s genocide and other war crimes against Palestinians. The
group, which is led by Wikus van Rensburg, is the same team that filed
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court
of Justice (ICJ), successfully obtaining the finding of ‘plausible
genocide’ that effectively put Israel on trial before the court for the
crime.
The lawyers plan to use civilian courts to prosecute those who aid
and abet Israel in its crimes through civilian courts, in cooperation
with UK and US lawyers.
Rensburg told Turkish media outlet Anadolu Ajansi that it was time for the UK and US to be held to account for their complicity:
The United States must now be held accountable for the crimes it committed. No one says stop, enough is enough.
What happened in Iraq is an example of this; no one held the US
accountable for the crimes it committed in the Middle Eastern country as
the issue was not given the necessary importance.
The US is busy spending more money and more resources to (allow
Israel) commit the crime. If the ICJ trial against Israel is concluded
in favour of South Africa, the US may face sanctions even if it does not
accept the verdict. The ICJ ruling will also strengthen a case against
the Joe Biden administration.
The US must now be held responsible for the crimes it has committed.
It must accept its responsibilities. You could not avoid responsibility.
The US must now be held accountable for the crimes it committed.
Israel has been lobbying its US allies to use sanctions
and diplomatic pressure try to pressure South Africa and the UN’s
courts to drop the case, as well as to coerce the International Criminal
Court (ICC) not to issue arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu and his defence minister Yoav Gallant. Far from bowing to the
pressure, South Africa has responded by taking its legal preparations
for the complicity cases forward.
Killing people before even arresting them and giving them a fair hearing and trial is WRONG.
Upholding the rule of law, specifically the rule of fair and just laws is crucial for everyone's sake- world wide.
We are in this collectively- no exceptions.
Assassinations are a very bad idea, no matter who or what the
excuse. So please don't admire or excuse Israel for doing it, or HAMAS
or Hezbollah, as they all abuse religion and use violence in order to
gain as much money and power as they can grab.
The more the violence escalates, stoked by Israel armed to the teeth
with American made weaponry, the more I realize that right now America
and The West is VERY VERY RACIST... the powers that be are racist, with
some hating Arabs, some hating Muslims, some hating Jews, and some just
hating period.
Stop the hate- and the pollution of war.
We have the guidelines in place: Full respect for international law and basic human rights.
Please, we can build a better world, a fairer more sane and more just world, for ALL men, women, and children.
Life is precious and can be beautiful when gardens are allowed to grow, and goodness can be shared.
View of the Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge, Connecticut.
Photo Meg Dalton/Connecticut Public
Carlos Valladares
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“We can stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s greatest artists.”
So says Faisal Saleh, founder of the Palestine Museum US. Since 2018,
he has directed the space. He also owns the building—an office complex
in Woodbridge, Connecticut—and so is free from worry over upsetting the
various bureaucracies who might hesitate to showcase Palestinian art.
A soft ban on Palestinian artists is, and has been, all too pervasive.
(Saleh tells me: “The name ‘Palestine’ is radioactive right now.”) This
year’s Venice Biennale, with its theme “Foreigners Everywhere,” panders
to an idea of inclusivity. But when the Palestine Museum proposed the
exhibition “Foreigners in their Homeland” as a collateral event, the
proposal was rejected. Palestine also does not have a national pavilion,
since Italy does not recognize it as a sovereign nation. Besides,
according to Saleh, any art from Palestine is instantly tagged as
Political with a capital-“P.” Thus, art and expressions are swept away
to escape a boogeyman controversy. What gets left behind? Tough-minded
work that deals with the struggle of love, anger, jealousy, fear,
survival, loss, and, beyond this, a desire for what can come.
No matter: Saleh staged the exhibition anyway, renting Venice’sPalazzo
Mora, where “Foreigners in their Homeland” is up until November 24,
2024. Most of the Venice artists have works on view in Connecticut, too,
in the Palestine Museum’s permanent collection.
Loss—and the question of how to regain one’s bearings—is a common
touchpoint in the works at the museum. Saleh wants to raise the profile
of those Palestinian artists who know intimately the contours of loss,
who long with passion for a space to give form to their dreams. When we
face Khair Alah Salim’s painted solo cellist, who plays to her audience
of three unpeeled oranges in an orange haze, we see how it is a
clandestine joy—and a right too often taken as a privilege—to render a
face, to paint fixed, concentrated eyes.
Raghda Zaiton: “Waiting,” 2020.
Photo Carlos Valladares
The museum doubles as a library of Palestinian literature, with texts in Arabic, English, and French. I have spent hours just poring through these books—primarily donated,
Saleh tells me, by Connecticut locals, now sitting on shelves nestled
below the paintings. There are classics like Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
(2007); there are novels of identity crises with dashes and sweeps of
the Kafkaesque and the science-fictive, like Emile Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist
(1974); there is poetry by luminaries like Naomi Shihab Nye (who writes
about my home country, Honduras), as well as Fadwa Tuqan, Fady Joudah,
and the essential Mahmoud Darwish. Throughout the museum, one
experiences a harsh montage of image and text. There are the
Palestinian kids’ drawings of daily scenes of a military violence they
know so well. And there is Darwish, instructing “Be a child again,” in In the Presence of Absence
(2006). “Teach me poetry. Teach me the rhythm of the sea. Take my hand,
so we can cross this threshold between night and day together.”
What else is in the museum? There are photographs by Najib Joe Hakim,
whose series “Home Away from Home: Little Palestine by the Bay”
(2014–ongoing) centers portraits of Palestinians in the Bay Area.
Alongside these photographs, one can also hear the subjects’
voice-recorded testimonials on Soundcloud.... READ MORE
Ramallah, September 9, 2024—20
percent of the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces and
settlers in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 2000
have been killed after October 7, 2023 at a rate of one child every two
days, Defense for Children International - Palestine said in a report
released today.
The
report, “Targeting Childhood: Palestinian children killed by Israeli
forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank,” details and analyzes
Palestinian child fatalities in the occupied West Bank, including East
Jerusalem, between October 7, 2023, and July 31, 2024. Israeli forces
routinely targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition and aerial
attacks, prevented ambulances and paramedics from reaching wounded
children, and confiscated children’s bodies in violation of
international law.
“Israeli
forces are killing Palestinian children with calculated brutality and
cruelty all throughout the occupied Palestinian territory,” said Khaled
Quzmar, general director at DCIP. “The international community must act
urgently to enact an arms embargo and sanctions to protect Palestinian
children’s lives.”
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20 percent of the Palestinian
children killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West
Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 2000 have been killed after
October 7, 2023 at a rate of one child every two days.
Israeli forces deliberately target
and shoot unarmed children with live ammunition and trained snipers.
Israeli forces and settlers shot and killed 116 Palestinian children in
the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 7,
2023 and July 31, 2024.
Israeli forces have killed 25
Palestinian children in aerial attacks in the occupied West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, between October 7, 2023 and July 31, 2024.
Some children were directly targeted while others were collateral damage
as Israeli forces deployed aerial attacks in densely populated civilian
areas.
Israeli forces and authorities
systematically deny Palestinian children their right to medical care
when preventing ambulances, paramedics, or bystanders from providing
medical care to a child shot with live ammunition or struck in an
Israeli airstrike. In 43 percent of cases in this report, Israeli forces
deliberately prevented injured Palestinian children from receiving
medical care by detaining and firing live ammunition toward ambulances,
paramedics, and civilians attempting to provide aid.
Israeli authorities and forces
systematically, deliberately, and specifically embolden Israeli settler
violence towards Palestinian children. Israeli forces present during
armed Israeli settler attacks fail to prevent the aggression, fail to
help the Palestinian victims, and often collaborate with the settlers in
inflicting lethal harm. In two cases, Israeli forces and settlers fired
toward Palestinian children simultaneously, and DCIP was unable to
determine which perpetrator fired the fatal bullet.
Israeli forces killed at least 49
Palestinian children during the intensified large-scale and deadly
incursions into Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied West Bank,
including East Jerusalem, between October 7, 2023 and July 31, 2024.
The fatal shootings of child
protesters in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and the use of
expanding bullets during the crackdowns constitute war crimes
prosecutable at the ICC. In October 2023, Israeli forces shot and killed
four Palestinian children with expanding bullets designed to increase
in size upon impact, inflicting fatal internal injuries.
Israeli authorities’ practice of
confiscating and withholding Palestinian bodies is a violation of
international humanitarian law and international criminal law, which
include absolute prohibitions on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
Israeli authorities have confiscated 18 Palestinian children’s bodies
in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between October 7,
2023 and July 31, 2024.
Israeli authorities work to ensure
Israeli forces continue enjoying impunity and face no consequence for
the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian children. There are no known
accounts of accountability during this reporting period.
Is there an attempt to chill debate on Palestine and Israel on both sides of the Atlantic?
The
United States, and the West in general, are in a “dire period” of
repression of speech on Palestinian freedom or criticism of Israel,
argues Dima Khalidi, founder of Palestine Legal.
Khalidi tells host Steve Clemons that despite strong constitutional
protections for free expression, “there seems to be this exception when
it comes to Palestine”, as witnessed by the wave of censorship,
intimidation, firings and restrictions on activism in the wake of
Israel’s war on Gaza.
The situation is similar across Europe, says British journalist
Richard Medhurst, who’s been covering Gaza closely and was arrested for
“speech crimes” upon arrival in London recently.
He argued that it was OK to combine the Star of David and swastika
symbols because, he said, the star is used not only as a religious
symbol, but a political symbol. It is found on the Israeli Air Force
insignia.
Atta
also disagreed with the concept that Jewish residents could feel
threatened by the mural. He said he thought Jewish people "should be
able to relate" to how painful a genocide is for a population."
2024: The mural is posted on a building at North Holton
and East Locust streets owned by Ihsan Atta, a Palestinian-American
landlord who is the registered agent for the property management company.
The mural replaced one
on Breonna Taylor that was well-known to those in the area. Taylor, a
Black woman, was shot and killed in her home in 2020 by Louisville
police during a botched raid. The police killings of Taylor and George
Floyd in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests about police violence.
Another prominent mural of Floyd on a building also owned by Atta
remains at the corner of East North Avenue and North Holton Street. Milwaukee
Sarah Friedland won Best Debut Film at the Venice Film Festival, accepting the Lion of the Future award in the Italian city at the weekend.
Familiar Touch won won three prizes at the festival’s 81st
edition—one for best debut feature, another for Chalfant as best actress
in the Orizzonti section (which the performer accepted in Italian), and
a third for Friedland as best director.
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