Category Archives: Palestine

Nearly half of Israeli Jews support expelling Arabs | News | DW.COM | 08.03.2016

Fear and Loathing Spreads Faster than the Flu!

Forty-eight percent of Israeli Jews strongly agreed or agreed to the statement “Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel,” the poll released on Tuesday by the non-partisan Washington-based Pew Research Center found.

Source: Nearly half of Israeli Jews support expelling Arabs | News | DW.COM | 08.03.2016

Being Jerusalemite : A Jordanian Refugee in Israel | nadiaharhash

{Dehumanization Plus!}

But as if there is a curse following the Palestinian being, she sent me an hour later a photo with her new residency written on it: “A Jordanian refugee in Israel”. She tried at the beginning or rationalize with them saying that this was wrong. She is not a Jordanian refugee in Israel. They insisted she was. She was trying to explain to them that she was Jerusalemite. She tried or explains her status and they insisted she was lying and that she was a refugee. Somehow, apparently, together with the crisis of refugees she was a cause of threat as an assumed refugee. Actually a confirmed refugee after that new residency that gave the employee a reason to panic and consider her a potential threat, to a level where she forced her to leave, and when my daughter refused insisting that this was a mistake, they called the police or get her out. The woman was telling her: You are a liar. You are a refugee. This is not even a passport that you are carrying “. My daughter called me crying, trying to get out the whole feeling of humiliation she got experienced being dragged out of a place by the police in front of people watching her in what felt like a public humiliation act. She was questioning something else: “ Am I a Jordanian refugee?” the whole thing made her question her own identity. What she knows as basic rights. All those laws that define her special status as a person living under occupation with a special status. A status that the international law, with a country likes France that secures the status quo of Jerusalem that secures the status of Jerusalemites. While we spend our lives carrying a nationality that is not ours. Living in our country as “immigrants”, moving around with a document that is not a passport that calls on a state of panic each time we check through borders. And then an employee who decided to carry on the Zionist vision of Israel with Jerusalem as the unified capital with the no dignified, some day extinct people, also forces us on new definitions. Did this woman decide a law? Or was it her own idea? This is a question that the French government should answer .

Source: Being Jerusalemite : A Jordanian Refugee in Israel | nadiaharhash

a revolution is coming | nadiaharhash

We are talking about a population that is killed every day under occupation measures from one side and witness corruption that is drowning a whole nation in its hollow holes to a level where nothing is left except a scream in a voice of a protest. People are practically starving. What the government is doing in order to find a solution is of course denying that anything is happening. For the whole month now, the teachers have been on strikes. Tens of thousands of students are not going to school. And what is the prime minister saying? It is a conspiracy against him. What solution did any of those too many policy and decision making from all directions are offering? Imposing a state of fragmentation within the society. Implementing forceful measures/ putting checkpoints. Threatening teachers. Using mosques as ways of urging people to rebel against the teachers. The ministry of education has turned into an intelligence force against teachers, where teachers are called and threatened. Replacements of teachers were suggested. Some people came out to say that the president has nothing to do with this. Of course he doesn’t have anything to do with this. The president is in another universe. I think he believes he is running another state. I completely understand him I have to say. Who wants to be a president of a stateless state? The deterioration of the situation and what is following it is a striking indicator of the failure of this government. It is of course normal, since every person comes to power and transforms the whole concept of nation building into a single building of his own throne. They create a legacy of themselves, to themselves and they behave as if the people are there to serve them. We become their inherited properties. This continuous abuse of the nation can only have a consequence as such of today. The stories that we hear about the restrictions and the threats, aside from all those grounding embarrassing statements from those who claim power are to shameful from one side and continue to prove that these people can no longer be there. There is this issue that these people are not chosen by the people. We didn’t choose this government, which is officially temporarily and with a dignified framework as a technocratic government that will ensure the elections. It came to stay forever. Exactly like everything else. I don’t know if it is worth to keep calling for the president to interfere. To do something to save the situation before it goes into more destruction. I admit that the massive protests of today gave me a breeze of hope. This nation is alive. And no measures for oppression and restrictions (and sadly I don’t refer to occupation here) can stop them.

Source: a revolution is coming | nadiaharhash

Video: Chicago Jew gets called Hitler for supporting Palestinian rights | The Electronic Intifada

“Unhinged” In the video at the top of this post, Deheeger, who is filming, can be heard repeatedly declaring, “I am Jewish, I support Palestinian human rights.” As Deheeger is carted out by police, camera in hand, one enraged person after another jumps out of their seat to taunt and curse at him. “You support killing Jews!” says one man. “Get the fuck out of here!” says another. Near the end, a woman shouts, “Hitler! Hitler!” “They were so unhinged,” Deheeger said. “One guy even came up and punched me in the arm.” The rage is striking given that Deheeger’s statement was hardly controversial. He was simply stating that Palestinians are people worthy of human rights. “I’m not even sure if they see us as people any more when we stand up and do this stuff,” he added, referring to the hatred for anti-Zionist Jews espoused by Zionists who remain deeply invested in Israel’s colonial project. “They see us as race traitors.” “It really just highlighted the amount of racism and violence that’s intertwined with the issue of Israel and Palestine in the Jewish community. And it’s passed down to kids,” said Deheeger, recalling his own support for Zionism when he was still in high school.

Source: Video: Chicago Jew gets called Hitler for supporting Palestinian rights | The Electronic Intifada

A disastrous end ..the story of the PA | nadiaharhash

I do believe that we are standing on a verge of a revolution as people. This time, it is inevitable, unless Israel makes a move to save the PA. While we are living under a life of daily attacks and killing, within a context that death of youngsters and corpses laid on the street bleeding is just becoming another normal scene. Like the checkpoint, the separation walls … the daily killings of alleged stabbing or whatever. It is a historical moment in the life of Palestinian people. A time when the occupation is no longer the only oppressive component in life under occupation. An oppression that is equally practiced on the people from the occupier and the guardians of that occupying power. This deterioration amid the ongoing oppression is almost impossible to believe. But yet it is happening. And like those dominoes pieces in a raw, everything is falling in a quick systematic fall. The PA managed to survive especially in the last years, within the absence of the rule of law that is basically represented by conducting elections, through the continuous oppression of the occupation. People tend to shut up infront of the bigger tragedies of life. How could we revolt against the government when Israeli forces kill our children and continue to humiliate our existence in every single manner and given opportunity?

Source: A disastrous end ..the story of the PA | nadiaharhash

Netanyahu: Israel needs walls to defend itself against wild beasts – PNN

Biggest Fail Yet?

“Will we surround all of the State of Israel with fences and barriers? The answer is yes. In the area that we live in, we must defend ourselves against the wild beasts,” he added.Netanyahu’s comments came during a visit to the southern Israeli border with Jordan, where he was viewing the first stage of the planned “security barrier” that will stretch across the entirety of Israel’s eastern border.

Source: Netanyahu: Israel needs walls to defend itself against wild beasts – PNN

A.J. Muste Memorial Institute How do you hold on to hope? What motivates you to keep resisting?

Source: A.J. Muste Memorial Institute Muste Notes Winter 2016

We do not always hold on to hope. But, even if sometimes without hope, we can and will express that we don’t agree. As Palestinians cannot stop being occupied, we owe them at least this solidarity.
Gush Shalom team

 

We hold onto hope when Palestinians approach us and let us know that our presence in the military courts, or in the checkpoints, makes a difference. We also feel hope when we take Israelis of all ages to see the checkpoints and to meet Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and they tell us afterwards how we have challenged their views and perspectives. We say that we will not finish our work until the Occupation is over, and the military administration is dismantled.
—Ela Greenberg, MachsomWatch

 

My hope springs from the many people I meet who desire the same changes I do, people from both sides of the conflict. Despair is both the easiest and most impossible choice for us. I can speak for the people who work with me when I say that we feel personal responsibility to find a way forward. I wake up every morning with an understanding that there is no other choice than a shared society between Israeli Jews and Arabs.
Jamal Alkirnawi, A New Dawn in the Negev

 

When we think of those who are living the struggle every moment—the family whose home Rachel stood before in Gaza, our many friends there and throughout a very turbulent Middle East, our Palestinian friends in the U.S. and throughout the world steadfastly challenging displacement, and our colleagues inside Israel who work endlessly for change despite great threat and many obstacles—we know we must resist with them. It is energizing, because it is right.
Cindy and Craig Corrie, Rachel Corrie Foundation

 

“The Settlers”: New Film Reveals History & Consequences of Israeli Settlements on Palestinian Land | Democracy Now!

As Israel faces international condemnation over its plan to build 153 new settlement homes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the watchdog group Peace Now reports Israel’s defense minister has approved the construction of the new Jewish-only homes last week. The plan sparked swift criticism from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called the settlements “an affront to the Palestinian people and to the international community.” In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Ban Ki-moon’s criticism gives “a tailwind to terrorism” and that the “U.N. lost its neutrality and moral force a long time ago.”

Source: “The Settlers”: New Film Reveals History & Consequences of Israeli Settlements on Palestinian Land | Democracy Now!

Netanyahu: We will allow settlers to return to Hebron houses – PNN

The Israeli prime minister,  Benjamin Netanyahu during cabinet meeting on Sunday said that “Israel will allow the settlers evicted from two houses in Hebron to return once the proper paperwork is in order,” Haaretz reported.Haaretz cited Netanyahu saying that “The government supports the settlements, especially in days like these, when they are under terror attacks,” adding that “at the same time, we are a lawful country and must respect the rule of the law. The moment that the purchase process is authorized, we will allow the population of the two houses in Hebron.”

Source: Netanyahu: We will allow settlers to return to Hebron houses – PNN

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu calls for execution of Palestinians – PNN

Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post reported him saying: “Should we leave them alive in order to then free them in another gesture to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas? The fact that they still have a desire to commit terrorist attacks shows that we are not operating strongly enough,” he said.Explaining more about his fatwa, Eliyahu wrote on his facebook page that “The Israel Police officers who do keep terrorist Palestinians alive should be prosecuted under the law.”He went on: “We must not allow a Palestinian to survive after he was arrested. If you leave him alive, there is a fear that he will be released and kill other people.” He added: “We must eradicate this evil from within our midst.”

Source: Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu calls for execution of Palestinians – PNN