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Latest tactic: Rebranding the Nakba as a Jewish tragedy

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is the latest in cultural rebranding, a strategy bent on erasing historical or cultural fact and taking up a modified version of the fact as one’s own.

According to this individual, the Nakba represents the ethnic cleansing of Jews, too, by Israeli and Arab armies. In other words, a Palestinian tragedy has been rebranded into a Jewish one. It’s a distasteful move, partly because it is written under the pretense of historical accuracy but also because it simply ignores Palestinian agency.

The Nakba, commemoration on May 15 every year, marks the first full day of Israel’s establishment as a state. It also honors the 750,000 Palestinians forcefully displaced from their homes and made into refugees—not on May 15, 1948 but over a course of years well before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence. [Read more...]

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Nice try: Terrible reasoning for why Israel should cut Gaza’s power supply

May 14, 2012 By 3 Comments

Consider this a Nakba special. Here, an individual (to be initialed AE) presents his reasoning for why Israel should cut power supplies to the Gaza Strip this coming summer to make up for any of Israel’s power deficiencies. His text will be in bold. My responses will be in italics.

Israel isn’t directly at fault for the lack of power in Gaza. True, Israel did bomb the power plant in 2006 but its been 6 years and, while Israel (and Egypt) attempted to stop building materials from getting into Gaza they were obviously unsuccessful (there was plenty of smuggling as evidenced by the huge amount of rockets fired from Gaza (just from the beginning of 2007 until mid-June of 2008 there were 4,117 rockets fired from Gaza)

Right off the bat, a contradiction. This is going to be good. First, AE contends that Israel is not to be held responsible. But then he immediately cites the 2006 bombings that destroyed much of the main power system in the Gaza Strip. And let us not forget the carnage of 2008-2009 that intentionally damaged Gaza’s power grid. Thinking he can get away with seeming so intellectual, AE also throws in some stats: 4,117 rockets fired from Gaza from 2007 to 2008. What he forgets to mention is Israel fired 14,617 heavy artillery shells into Gaza in just 18 months, from September 2005 to May 2007, according to Human Rights Watch.

Presumably, the Gazans could have used the building material for a power plant but, once again, they prioritized murdering Israeli civilians over caring for their own citizens.

I take it AE doesn’t consider it murder when a uniformed military force lays siege to a surrounding strip of territory for twenty-two straight days.

Israel should not be obligated to give free electricity to those who chose to use the building materials that could have been used to create that electricity in order to attempt to kill as many of the civilians who are providing the electricity as they can.

First, Israel does not “give free electricity”. It sells it. By this point, one would assume this is common knowledge. And second, maybe this is just a grammatical concern of mine but AE should learn how to construct complex sentences with more than one object. In this case, civilians are not the ones providing electricity. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Opinion Tagged With: , , ,

Northwestern University SJP gets Palestine-dressed Rock on school webpage

May 14, 2012 By 1 Comment

Palestine-themed art at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois made the university’s webpage today in preparation for Students for Justice in Palestine’s week-long commemoration of the Nakba.

Painting the Rock is a longstanding tradition at Northwestern, where students typically reserve the boulder and use it as “an accepted avenue of expression” to promote activities, events, campaigns, and causes, according to the Northwestern University website. Students took advantage of this opportunity to mark 64 years of displacement and exile in the occupied Palestinian territories. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Activism, Footage Tagged With: , ,

Celtic FC supporters show solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers

May 14, 2012 By 4 Comments

Celtic FC supporters raised Palestinian flags on May 13 during a match against Scottish Premiership rivals Heart of Midlothian FC. Members of the Green Brigade, one of Celtic’s most widely recognized fan groups, displayed at least eight Palestinian flags in their section of the stadium in solidarity with the thousands of Palestinian hunger strikers currently imprisoned in Israeli jails.

It should be no surprise that politics made its way into the stadium. Especially within Europe’s various football leagues, politics and sports mix quite regularly. It is, however, both an interesting and a welcome gesture to see the great Palestinian prisoner hunger strike receive attention beyond the traditional sphere of politics. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , , , , ,

A moment with mama

May 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“Heaven lies beneath your mother’s feet.” It’s a hadith that I’ve grown up reciting to myself. But fourteen or fifteen years ago, almost before I could even read, beneath my mother’s feet was a grooved aisle, matte brown in color. We were riding the #3 bus home from a long day at the library.

These are the moments that tug on my heart, the ones that make me so proud of mama.

Wearing a white hijab and sunglasses, mama would take me multiple times a week to the Harold Washington Library right off of Congress Ave. Still relatively new to America, she wore her identity proudly and never feared venturing off into the city of cold winds and tall sights.

Our routine was almost scripted. There used to be a very intriguing miniature house in the center of one of the floors. Nearby would be a librarian sitting by a small arrangement of empty chairs. At the head of every hour, the librarian would begin a small interactive program. I wanted to be an astronaut at the time so when the children’s section was designed with floating rocketships and round planets, mama made sure to take me to the library more often than usual. There I’d join the librarian as he’d flip through the pages of brilliant space books. He’d point to a planet.

“Saturn! The rings!”

Mama, standing near that miniature house, would flash me a smile.

One time, we looked at animal books. She would always bring a canvas bag of some sort to help carry the books home. We used to borrow fifteen or more books at a time and if I couldn’t read them myself, she read them to me. I never realized how heavy that bag must have been until just now but it never left her hands. [Read more...]

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Breaking: Activists shut down UN building to raise awareness about Palestinian hunger strikers

May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Update: The UN has released a statement in response to the demonstration. It can be found here. Details can be found below.

Demonstrators in Ramallah surrounded a United Nations building in Ramallah to demand attention to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

At 7:30 AM, about 25 youth activists reportedly blocked access into and out of the UN Ramallah Common Premises building. Later reports indicate upwards of 40 demonstrators involved in this morning’s action. A few minutes into the action, the hashtag #UNclosed began to trend worldwide on Twitter.

Palestinian Authority police officers arrived at the scene at about 7:50 AM. According to Ahmad Nimer, one of the demonstrators, the police officers outnumbered the activists and threatened to use force to move the demonstrators from the scene. The police have not yet made any moves.

The action transitioned into full-fledged sit-in outside of the UN building’s gates and doors. Eyewitness accounts say that UN employees were having difficulty getting inside the building but some are said to have found passage through doors that were not blocked.

Khader Adnan, who was recently released after going on a 66-day hunger strike, telephoned the demonstrators to express his support and to further demand an end to Israel’s illegal detention of Palestinians without charge.

An announcement from the upper management informed UN staff members that they will not be working from within the building today. It is unclear whether staff members were given the day off or if they were instructed to work from home. Meanwhile, demonstrators announced plans to remain at the UN building until 5:00 PM. Linah Alsaafin explains more about the purpose of the demonstration here:

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The attendance increased three hours into the demonstration as community members began to join in on the sit-in. Many of these individuals are reported to be relatives of imprisoned Palestinians.

The protesters delivered a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Activists in Amman, Jordan, also took part in a solidarity action at a local UN building, according to Ola Al-Tamimi.

At about 5:27 PM, the UN official Twitter account tweeted the following message:

The UN released an official statement just hours after the demonstration, stressing “the importance of averting any further deterioration in the condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody who are on hunger strike”. The full text can be found here.

Currently, between 2000 and 2500 Palestinian prisoners are on an open-ended hunger strike that has just entered into its 23nd day. Two individuals, Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab, have both entered day 72 of their hunger strikes.

The prisoners and their supporters have released a list of demands which can be found here: ‘A Situation Room on the Issue of the Mass Hunger Strike‘.

Here are some images from the scene:


(Source)


(Source)

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Activism, News Tagged With: , , , ,

When the history books are rewritten, let us not fall under the distracted few

May 7, 2012 By 2 Comments

Movements against oppression are one. Although unique in their own respects, the mere resilience of the Syrian and Palestinian people challenges the establishments and institutions that, in both cases, seek to deny them a free tomorrow, a “goodnight” and a “good morning”. They are by no means identical movements; the historical contexts diverge in so many respects. But who is to judge their relatedness when lives—equal and identical—are pushed beneath the crosshairs?

If only for a moment’s time, it is imperative that we abandon the restrictive geopolitical nature of our borders and extend them in solidarity to those who fight the same fights we fight. Abstraction, which this might very well be, is more forgiving than distraction. And when the history books are rewritten, let us not fall under the distracted few who refused to join hands, abstractedly or otherwise, with those waging war against injustice in Syria, Palestine, all around and in between.

Sami Kishawi

Filed Under: Personal Tagged With: , ,

We have a winner: Documentary on Gaza invasion outdoes the rest at California film fest

May 5, 2012 By 2 Comments

One week ago, a documentary film literally from within the invasion of Gaza debuted at the 13th annual Newport Beach Film Festival in California. The Festival announced its award winners on Friday. The War Around Us proudly earned the Jury Award for Best Feature Documentary.

This is amazing news for two main reasons. First, aside from the fact that this is a major achievement, the film brought one of humanity’s greatest injustices to the big screen, a feat much greater than any award a documentary can ever earn. It brought war and its associated chaos to an American public that is so unaccustomed to experiencing the day to day realities of foreign invasion. Second, the fact that the film won such a prestigious award indicates that it was received well, that it was produced with quality, that it ultimately got its point across.

The film documents the experiences of the only two foreign journalists who were able to cover Israel’s twenty-two day assault on the Gaza Strip. It hasn’t yet been released to the public but I encourage you to visit the website and sign up for updates. I know I’ll be looking forward to the day when the film is distributed through DVD. A trailer is provided below.

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Sami Kishawi

Filed Under: Arts & Culture, Media, News Tagged With: , , ,

Five silly StandWithUs tweets

May 1, 2012 By 1 Comment

Whoever is behind StandWithUs’s Twitter account made my evening. Thanks for the laughs. Here are five of some of StandWithUs’s expert tweeter’s latest tweets.

“Free #Gaza, from #Hamas. The Palestinian people deserve freedom.“

The funny thing about this tweet is its comma placement. It reads as if it were a message signed, sincerely of course, by Hamas. Clearly, StandWithUs’s expert tweeter is not a grammarian. But, who, am, I, to, judge?

Update: StandWithUs never responded to my tweet asking them to correct me if I was wrong in saying that Israel controls Gaza’s air space, two land borders, and one sea border, while also negotiating control with Egypt over its fourth border. Instead, its expert tweeter told me that I’m bad at English and then gave me the “professionalism” talk.

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“The security fence people so often criticize is 97% fence, 3% wall…not exactly an “open air prison”#fact #israelunderfire“

Actually, that’s exactly what it is. Since the structure is apparently mostly made of fencing, common sense says that there are gaps and spaces wide enough to let air in. So, special thanks to StandWithUs for the air circulation. But if the group is really that much of a stickler for terminology, “fresh air prison” might work just as well. Also, as a side note, how did StandWithUs manage to throw in such a dramatic hashtag?

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“#Israel is the only country that entered the 21st century with a net gain in trees – in land that is primarily desert!“

Well, allow me to give StandWithUs another special thanks for making the desert bloom. I wonder if StandWithUs knows that deserts are natural biomes, that they do not represent empty voids of wasted territory waiting patiently for someone to give it a tree or two. I also wonder if StandWithUs is ever going to publish statistics about the number of trees Israel has uprooted, particularly those belonging to Palestinian farmers and landowners. Maybe “do your research” isn’t part of the job description for StandWithUs’s expert tweeter. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Media Tagged With: ,

In Israel, democracy sprays you

May 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Activist Rana Hamadeh raised a Palestinian flag on an Israeli “skunk tank” today during a demonstration in front of Israel’s Ofer Prison near Ramallah. Soldiers quickly moved to arrest her, severely cracking down on at least three other Palestinians in the process.

The following is footage that I found first on Mondoweiss. It shows Hamadeh climbing the military vehicle and then being chased by soldiers. Three other demonstrators formed a protective shield around her. At about this time, democracy—in the form of an orange, stinging mist—rained down on them.

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At 0:29, protesters shield Hamadeh from the impending attack.

At 0:32, one Israeli soldier grabs Hamadeh by the neck.

At 0:34, a tear gas canister is fired at the group. The soldiers are the only individuals protected from such a close high velocity impact. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Activism, Footage Tagged With: , ,
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