May 2010
46 posts
Call from Gaza for global response to killings on...
PRESS RELEASE GAZA, PALESTINE 31.MAY.2010 CALL FROM GAZA FOR GLOBAL RESPONSE TO KILLINGS ON THE FREEDOM FLOTILLA We, Gaza based Palestinian Civil Society Organizations and International activists, call on the international community and civil society to pressure their governments and Israel to cease the abductions and killings in Israel’s attacks against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla sailing for...
Goldstone v hasbara
Newsweek’s Dan Ephron interviews Richard Goldstone:
Goldstone: What was the intent of smashing up the infrastructure of Gaza? To punish the people for supporting Hamas? Is it to help get peace? None of it has been explained.
Ephron: Well, maybe to make Gazans turn against their leadership, to make it clear this is what happens when terrorists are in power.
G: And it doesn’t work....
More on the ethnic cleansing inside the green...
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Rawia, can you talk about the current crisis facing the indigenous populations living inside the State of Israel? Explain what these so-called unrecognized villages are, and tell us about the level of institutionalized racism, discrimination and home demolitions right now.
Rawia Abu Rabia: First, we’re talking about the indigenous Bedouin community who are part of the...
WatchLive Google Map Tracking of the Gaza Flotilla
“There are other mechanisms used to take over land as well, such as the Jewish...”
– ei: Interview: ethnic cleansing inside the green line (via clingtomymouth)
Max Ajl on Israel and the The Freedom Flotilla
I think that if the Israeli government were interested in perpetuating its apartheid for a little longer, it would let the boats in. The WHO—as mainstream as organizations get—has recently called on Israel to lift the siege on Gaza. John Ging has called for a sea-lift to bring supplies in, effectively putting UNRWA’s stamp-of-approval on the boats. The Israeli government,...
Eva Jasiewicz on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla
When Rachel Corrie stood in front of the bulldozer driver that killed her, she acted on radical trust — that the soldier would see her humanity. She lost, because the soldier had lost his humanity. Yet Rachel’s faith abides in each of us. Because if our oppressors are losing their humanity then we must never stop showing them that we have it. We are undertaking this mission in the...
Rand Paul would love Israel
Keep in mind Palestinians are 20% of the population:
…The new report found that overall six percent of the country’s 57,000 public sector workers were Arab, only marginally higher than a decade ago.
But Tibi noted that the figures were substantially boosted by the large number of “counter staff” in the interior, welfare, health and education ministries employed to...
The bottom line.
But there are other areas of comparison: Palestinians, according to Qumsiyeh’s calculations, control only 8.3 percent of the land in Israel and the Occupied Territories. The same was true in — you guessed it — South Africa, where whites had the land, and forced blacks into small portions, 8 to 9 percent, of the land.
link
Criticizing the Israeli government at your concert...
BDS activists in the United States stress that by calling on artists to boycott Israel, they are following demands from Palestinians on the ground who believe that this is an effective way of pressuring Israel. The movement also has supporters in Israel. Ofer Neiman, a Jerusalem activist, said the purpose is to show that occupation “has a price tag attached.” He rejected the notion that having...
Zionism and Liberalism are incompatible:
And this is the problem in a nutshell: the Zionist conception of citizenship is an illiberal one. It’s not a coincidence or a losing of the way that has led liberal American Jews away from Israel, it’s a fundamental incompatibility between Zionism and liberalism. And as Israel has become stronger and stronger, and its digressions more and more flagrant (from Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 to Gaza in...
An Open Letter to Elton John
Dear Elton John: It’s funny how people can be close friends, and yet react so differently to things. You’re apparently close friends with Elvis Costello - so close you hosted his wedding to Diana Krall at your ‘castle’ in Windsor. After just three weeks of people appealing to Elvis Costello not to perform in Israel, he’s decided not to go. (His thoughtful statement is...
Ten facts about the Nakba
goingbacktopali:
clingtomymouth:
astrangerdanger:
Sixty years ago, more than 700,000 Palestinians lost their homes and belongings, their farms and businesses, their towns and cities. Jewish militias seeking to create a state with a Jewish majority in Palestine, and later, the Israeli army, drove them out. Israel rapidly moved Jews into the newly-emptied Palestinian homes. Nakba means...
Boycott Ahava cosmetics because it steals...
AHAVA DEAD SEA COSMETICS
According to whoprofits.org, “Ahava manufactures cosmetics products using minerals from the Dead Sea. The company has a factory and a visitors’ center in the Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Shalem in the occupied West Bank. 34% of the company shares are held by the settlement of Mitzpe Shalem… 6% by Kibbutz Kaliya (settlement).” All Israeli settlements violate...
Another boycott victory: Elvis Costello cancels...
statement from his website:
It is after considerable contemplation that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July. One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament. Then there are occasions when merely having your name added to...
An epidemic of purposeful ignorance among American...
Peter Beinart - The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment
In 2004, in an effort to prevent weapons smuggling from Egypt, Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished hundreds of houses in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Watching television, a veteran Israeli commentator and politician named Tommy Lapid saw an elderly Palestinian woman crouched on all fours looking for her...
Major victory for pro-Palestine boycott campaign:...
Dr David Landy of the IPSC welcomes the vote as a significant development
The international Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement today scored a major victory as Dublin City Council passed a resolution calling on the City Manager not to sign or renew any contracts with French multinational Veolia[1] – the operators of the LUAS who have also tendered for the Metro North...
Margaret Atwood: As arrogant as she is ignorant:
Many bloggers with sharper tongues than I have been responding to Margaret Atwood’s self-serving posts about her trip to Israel to accept the $1m Dan David prize with Amitav Ghosh, in defiance of the Palestinian boycott call. Atwood and Ghosh justified their mendacity with a non-sensical speech about literary freedom and, for her part, Atwood hasn’t stopped embarrassing herself with...
Haifa U Students: If Jews Don’t Enroll, Arabs Will...
“Many Jewish students feel uncomfortable going outside,” Minyan said. “The Arab groups disseminate flyers in Arabic so that we will not understand – such as about the planned visit by Hatib… On Women’s Day, they gave out flowers only to Arab women… I would feel more comfortable if there were security personnel and Shabak (ISA) agents walking around, because there is definitely much underground...
First Ship Sets Sail for Gaza!
Israel’s Intimidation Tactics Won’t Stop Us First Ship Sets Sail for Gaza!
Huwaida Arraf
London – 14 May 2010 – At 22:45 local time tonight, the MV Rachel Corrie, a 1200-ton cargo ship, part of the eight-vessel Freedom Flotilla, set sail from Ireland on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. There, ships from Turkey and Greece will join her, then sail to Gaza. This past week reports from...
WatchWatch “They Do Not Exist (Laysa lahum wujud)” (1974)
subvex:
They Do Not Exist (Laysa lahum wujud) (1974) In the late 1960s, a group of young Arab women and men devoted to the struggle for Palestinian freedom chose to contribute to the resistance through filmmaking — recording their lives, hopes, and their fight for justice. Working in both fiction and documentary, they strived to...
Jewish High School Students Object to AP Test’s...
The passage from Said contains no reference to Palestine or Israel. But the test’s description of the late Columbia University humanities professor as a “Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic” has led some pro-Israel students to object that the test has been politicized.
“I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn’t mention the...
Jonathan Ben-Artzi: Yes, apartheid
…”Within Israel, these acts of segregation include towns reserved for Jews only, immigration laws that allow any Jew from around the world to immigrate but simultaneously deny displaced indigenous Palestinians that same right, and national health care and school systems that receive significantly more funding in Jewish towns than in Arab towns. Even former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert...
Watch“Hey Elton!” John Greyson asks Elton John to boycott Israel this summer.
Jonathan Cook: Israel’s Large and Small Apartheids
“…In Israel, by contrast, apartheid rule is entrenched – it achieved its victory decades ago. Palestinian citizens have third- or fourth-class citizenship; they have had almost all of their land taken from them; they are allowed to live only in their ghettoes; their education system is controlled by the security services; they can work in few jobs other than those Jews do not want;...
“Tunnellers in Gaza have already cut through a supposedly bombproof barrier built by Egypt to stop smuggling into the Palestinian territory, the BBC has learned.” (thanks Farah)
via The Angry Arab
John Ging is awesome.
Israeli sources have confirmed that Israel will make an official request to the United Nations for clarification of how an official representative of the United Nations could call for European countries to send ships to Gaza without authorization and prior coordination with Israel. John Ging, the Director of Operations of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), has called...
People always talk about dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s an absurd process that would replace granting freedom to Palestinians. There should be open dialogue within the Jewish community. It should be between the Diaspora liberal Jews like Bromberg who put his life on the line during the civil rights movement and the Israeli Jews who call upon the American Jews to man the...
UCSD Divestment - A Historic Opportunity at Hand
But let us be clear: The controversy surrounding the Peace and Neutrality Through UC Divestment From U.S. Corporations Profiting From Occupation resolution has not been created by any student group on campus, but by the University of California’s decision to invest in corporations involved in tremendous violations of international law.
Two of these corporations are General Electric and United...
Canned meat and tuna, but not canned fruit Mineral water, but not fruit juice Sesame paste (tahini) but not jam Tea and coffee but not chocolate That is what gets into Gaza.
A letter in Support of Students at UC-San Diego
Besieged Gaza,
Palestine
May 1, 2010
To our peers at UC-San Diego,
We write this letter, struggling with the limited time available to us before the electricity cuts off again. During the 22-day Israeli aggression, the occupation forces re-bombed the only electric station in Gaza.
This three-year and counting horrific siege imposed on us by Israel is meant to destroy our will to seek an...
WatchNorman Finklestein at NYU - The Aftermath of the Gaza Invasion. Part 1
Part 2
The Gaza Diet →
clingtomymouth:
this is the “diet” (their words) they have gazans on.
WatchBloggingheads TV - Robert Wright talks to Bassem Nasser in Gaza.
WatchJohn Mearshimer on the future of Palestine.
