Guest Contribution – Sixteen Minutes to Palestine

No clearer reminder of the occupation than the raining of missiles on its land

October 15, 2012 By Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

“One Occupied Gazan Summer” is a three-part personal narrative by Mariam I. who explores her thoughts and retraces her steps during her most recent visit to the Gaza Strip. Read part one here and part three here.

Part two of three. Oddly, while I was in Gaza, even the moments of national celebration reminded me of how occupation and siege shaped our lives. I remember the end of the prisoners’ mass hunger strike that began on April 17 and ended on May 14. It was my first day in Palestine. I was thrilled, smiling uncontrollably, suppressing gleeful giggles, and using my utmost restraint to keep from flipping cartwheels up and down the alleys of my refugee camp. Then news of the end of the hunger strike broke and as all of the televisions in the densely populated camp were turned to the same channel and poor insulation, open windows, and gaping roofs allowed the sound to escape into the alleys, it felt like the women on the news ululating in celebration were with us in this very camp. Their cries of celebration were as real and present as the Israeli drones circling above our homes.

I remember when Thaer Halahleh decided to end his hunger strike. I remember exactly where I was when the radio news reporter announced that Halahleh was being released to his family. I had just spent several hours with my uncle’s family at a Gaza beach and we were in a taxi on our way home to our central Gaza Strip refugee camp. We were driving past al-Mughraga village and I was choking on the rancid smell of sewage and rotting garbage. I don’t know if I was holding my breath from the excitement of Halahleh’s release or from my disgust of the smell forcing itself down my throat. Either way, I was sitting between my thirteen year old cousin and my mother whispering to each of them about how incredible Halahleh’s heroism was and how thrilled I was to receive the news of his release, all the while excited giggles escaped from me and I held myself down to the backseat to keep from jumping through the roof of the car from my joy.

The next morning was another story. On my way to work, the car radio was playing the message of a prisoner’s mother to her son. She was telling him how much she missed him, how she prays for him often, how she is proud of him, how he is a hero, how his entire family is awaiting his release, how he must remain patient and steadfast. And as she indirectly shared with her son, through the ears of the entire nation, messages of motivation, love, and encouragement, I wept silently and uncontrollably in the backseat of a taxi at 7:45 in the morning. I arrived at work face red, swollen, and lined by streams of tears. The plight of the prisoners and their families was no longer just a news story; it was a real mental and emotional struggle that countless Palestinians had to live through every day. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Personal Tagged With: Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Hunger Strike, Occupation, One Occupied Gazan Summer, Prisoners, Thaer Halahleh

In Gaza, everything stops at night, including the wind

October 9, 2012 By Guest Contributor Leave a Comment

Part one of three. As summer ends and fall begins, I find myself reflecting on the three months of summer I spent in Gaza this year. Though the sweet moments I miss most are the ones I spent laughing with my cousins deep into the night and getting lost with friends in neighborhoods we’d never before seen, the hardest moments to forget are the subtly brutal ways siege and occupation impacted our daily lives.

I remember two weeks in June of muted activity and total fear of non-emergency movement in the Gaza Strip. I had made my first set of plans with the girls from work; I was excited to finally have some kind of non-family-centered social life and to bond with a couple of girls my age. We were going to have lunch at a hotel in the Sudaniyyeh area of northern Gaza City.

I’d heard a lot about this place; it was fancy, extravagant, had a beautiful swimming pool, was impossible to afford for the overwhelming majority of Gazans, and hadn’t made any profit since it was built. I was a little too excited when I got dressed that morning. I remember hesitating before I decided to wear sandals to work. They are horribly too informal for a law student intern trying to make a good impression. But hey, I was going out with the girls. My boss would have to learn to deal with my sandaled feet.

I hopped out of my cheap, decrepit taxi and half-skipped to work. The girl who spearheaded the plans was the receptionist, Nour. As soon as I walked in, overly chipper and with a bounce in my step, I asked Nour if she was excited for our lunch date. She frowned and looked at me sympathetically as she explained that the Sudaniyyeh area, where the hotel was located, was totally off limits for our lunch plans. This area was known to be targeted during surges of Israeli attack, like the one we were experiencing. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Personal Tagged With: Electricity, Gaza City, Gaza Strip, One Occupied Gazan Summer, Refugee Camp

FC Barcelona’s betrayal of Gaza’s children

September 29, 2012 By Guest Contributor 3 Comments

Guest contribution by Maryam I.

FC Barcelona recently took part in an effort to normalize Israeli occupation by inviting both Gilad Shalit, a trained and armed Israeli occupation soldier held captive in Gaza for five years, and Mahmoud Sarsak, a Palestinian professional soccer player who was detained and imprisoned by Israel for three years without being charged of any criminal offense, to watch an FC Barcelona match.

Editor’s note: Apparently, an Israeli “ex-minister” is reported to have solicited Shalit’s invitation from FC Barcelona. Soon after, Palestinian embassy officials requested invitations for Sarsak and two Palestinian Authority officials to which FC Barcelona quickly obliged in an attempt to quell mounting pressure against the football club’s decision to host an occupation soldier. Sarsak says, “I officially recieved an invitation today from Barcelona but I will not attend the Clasico because I refuse the comparison of my case to the case of Gilad Shalit. I carry a message of love and peace and he carries a message of war and killing. I was arrested because I love football and he got arrested because he was killing people!”

This effort to create the illusion of similarity between the captivity of an armed invading soldier and the persecution of an athlete who never participated in armed resistance is not only offensive but alienating as well. Alienating to a segment of the world’s population often ignored and marginalized but just as often subjected to unfathomable violence and trauma by a representative of the same forces FC Barcelona is now hosting at one of their matches. Alienating to the children of Gaza. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Opinion Tagged With: FC Barcelona, Gaza Strip, Gilad Shalit, Mahmoud Sarsak, Soccer

Netanyahu’s thought process before bringing a bomb diagram to the UN

September 28, 2012 By Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Netanyahu showed up to the General Assembly of the United Nations with a folding diagram of a round bomb to make an equally dramatic slash comical point about Iran’s duck of a nuclear program. An unnamed source just sent us this writeup of Netanyahu’s thought process, complete with embedded thoughts and personal revelations.

Okay, today is the day. I think I will wear a different blue tie today. Perfect, this is the one. Lighter and brighter than Obama’s. And now to make my speech lighter and brighter than his. I have to come up with something so wild and intellectually stimulating, something that’ll make the cut for Ynet’s unbelievably high standards.

I’m stumped. You know, this is my fault really. I set the bar way too high with my duck analogy. They warned me that I wouldn’t be able to top it and, well, look. Here I am, sitting alone in my room wondering how I’m going to tie this tie and how I’m going to crash the UN with an epic performance that rivals the fake compassion and the phony pledge for peace that I normally give.

Hm, maybe I can say something honest. Imagine the headline: “Israeli PM admits to inhumane slaughter of hundreds in Gaza”. Or this one: “Sabra hummus a global embarrassment, Netanyahu admits”. Babyboy, please. Who am I kidding. The UN is no place for honesty.

How about acknowledging the occupa— okay Bibster, let’s not take it that far ever again. Imagine the look on Vicky Nuland’s face as Matt Lee throws up a quote of me thanking Congress for generously bankrolling my very own military occupation. Talk about damage control. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Guest Contribution Tagged With: Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Mahmoud Abbas, United Nations

National SJP Conference an important opportunity to challenge campus censorship

September 25, 2012 By Guest Contributor 4 Comments

Guest contribution by Rahim Kurwa

The upcoming National SJP Conference is an important opportunity for students around the country to meet, educate each other, and formulate strategies for the growing campus Palestine solidarity movement. Recent experiences of SJPs on the West Coast illustrate the urgent need for collaboration across schools.

This summer has seen a massive fight over student rights at the University of California, where a recent Campus Climate investigation has recommended broad forms of censorship designed to limit students’ ability to freely criticize Israeli state policies. By claiming that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, the University’s Campus Climate committee justifies recommendations to ban speakers from campus and force groups to provide balanced speakers at political events about the Middle East.

SJPs, Jewish solidarity groups, and free speech groups have responded to the report by highlighting the exclusion of Jewish students who themselves criticize Israeli policy, the lack of evidence to the claim that SJPs have engaged in offensive speech, and the constitutional illegality of several of the report’s recommendations. There has been wide public outcry against the report and a petition to rescind it has been signed by 2,500 people. In response, pro-Israel groups lobbied the California State Assembly to pass a resolution (HR 35) supporting the investigation and doubling down on the claim that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. Later reporting revealed that the University of California had advised the authors on the bill’s language before eventually dissenting from its final language. In comparison to other fights, such as the effort to deny tenure to Joseph Massad at Columbia University, HR 35 is a serious development in the censorship of student groups as it marks the first time a state legislature has stepped in to encourage censorship at a university. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Activism, Guest Contribution, Opinion Tagged With: Anti-Semitism, Campus Climate, Censorship, National SJP Conference, SJP

Reflections: Justice for Vittorio in Gaza but Israeli impunity continues

September 18, 2012 By Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Guest contribution by Shahd Abusalama

It is ironic that justice has come for Vittorio Arrigoni and his family as we commemorate the anniversary of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre, one of the most atrocious crimes ever committed against us, against anyone. Thirty years have passed since it happened in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon by a Lebanese Phalangist militia trained, supported, and secured by Israel. The blood spilled in less than three days, the elderly and the babies killed and tossed into rubbish heaps, women raped and brutally killed: the horrors unleashed on a vulnerable village knew no bounds. The memories of this atrocity are too painful to forget and the wounds it left in the Palestinian people’s hearts are just too deep to heal.

Justice was done for Vittorio — Vik, we called him — by Hamas, an organization that almost the whole world branded as a ‘terrorist’ organization and opposed when they were democratically elected in 2006. But justice for the thousands of victims of Sabra and Shatilla, a slaughter in which Israel was entirely complicit, has not yet been achieved.

And neither has justice for Rachel Corrie, killed in 2003 by a soldier of “the world’s most moral army.” He ran over her body with his Caterpillar bulldozer while demolishing a Palestinian home in Rafah that she gave her life trying to save. Less than a month ago, almost a decade after Rachel’s murder, an Israeli court in Haifa ruled that it was merely an “accident” for which the State should not take responsibility.

I decided not to attend the final court hearing for those suspected of killing Vik on Monday. I tried it once last April but it was just too painful to watch the endless procedures mask the horror of the truth people were trying to find. I remember how I sat and shook, bit my nails, bowed my head, and watched my tears hit the floor. I remember how intolerably annoying it was to hear the murderers’ voices speaking of morals and respect while they had no shred of moralality, respect, or humanity. I remember how I couldn’t bear to remain until the end and escaped the court to express my anger and sorrow at his murder outside. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Personal Tagged With: Rachel Corrie, Sabra and Shatila, Vittorio Arrigoni

Denied Entry

September 4, 2012 By Guest Contributor 2 Comments

Guest contribution by Wedad Yassin

On July 3, 2012, I was detained by Israeli police and soldiers in Al-Khalil (Hebron) simply for being Palestinian and walking on the wrong road.

My friends and I were walking in the Old City and found ourselves on Shuhada Street. We were almost at the end of the street when we were stopped and told that we were not allowed. Why?

“Because,” the soldier said, “this road is for Jews and tourists only.”

Reflexively, I pulled out my American passport and flashed my visa and said, “according to your law I am a tourist. Here is my visa.”

The soldier looked back at me with confused eyes. I did not at all fit the description of a “tourist” the way it’s described in the Israeli school system, for example. I am Arab, I am Muslim, and I wear the hijab. Tourist? No. I’m the perfect example of a “threat.”

After seven hours of interrogation, my friends and I were released from the station at midnight, all thanks to the lawyer who helped us and found absolutely no legal basis to preventing Palestinian pedestrians from walking on this road. The only things prohibited—and for no legitimate reason—are Palestinian-owned vehicles.

Again, this experience happened in July, two months ago.

Today I’m sitting in Amman in Jordan, writing this piece far from home because on August 31st, I was denied re-entry into my homeland. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Personal Tagged With: Al-Khalil, Allenby, Apartheid, Borders, Israel

Restaurant Review: Experiencing culinary magic in Sderot

August 30, 2012 By Guest Contributor 5 Comments

Guest contribution by Linah Alsaafin

Author’s note: A friend of mine in an act of sadism passed a link to me of Israeli food review of a restaurant in Birzeit on the delightful 972mag site. I couldn’t get over the tone of the article, the disgusting colonial voice, so I went ahead and wrote my own mock version of reviewing a fake restaurant in Sderot.

Legend has it, based on my conversations with two and a half Palestinians pretending to be Israelis who have visited the place, that the finest restaurant in Israel is located in the illegal Jewish only settlement of Sderot, in the southern district of Israel. My friend Ali and I, hoping of driving through the busy port city of Askalan, decided to hire a yellow licensed Israeli car and dressed as first world inhabitants, took the chance of going through Hizma checkpoint without our IDs being checked by Israeli soldiers. Fate smiled on us that day, and we breezed through without being stopped, leaving Ramallah’s claustrophobic streets behind and enjoying the spacious five lane roads as the Apartheid Wall, decorated in pastel colored tiles on this side, became a distant memory.

The restaurant of Wonderkop86 is located in the heart of Sderot’s town center, a stone throw’s (excuse the pun) away from the Rocket Graveyard Museum that houses the Qassam rockets fired upon the settlement by the Islamists in the neighboring terrorist hub that is Gaza (less than a mile away). The center boasts a mural that used to have a poster of US President Barak Obama holding up an “I love Sderot” t-shirt in the middle after his visit in 2008, but which now hosts a fantastic photo-shopped picture of a woman, altered to look more like a white Jew, crouching in a bomb shelter.

Nothing in Askalan’s modern bustle foretells a place such as this, and none of the city’s restaurants compete for atmosphere. We took a seat and were immediately welcomed by manager Shira Weisman and served peanuts, a favorite Israeli drinking snack and appetizer. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Guest Contribution Tagged With: +972 Mag, Food, Sderot

Sister struggles and Nasrallah’s illogical conflict of interest

August 27, 2012 By Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Guest contribution by Eman Sahloul

As the Syrian revolution scrapes the end of its eighteenth month in protest, the loyalty war rages on outside its borders amongst government figures, activists, and “activists”. As someone very much in tune with news, rumors, and international relations—better described as the who’s-covering-who’s-butt affair—I have become particularly interested by one certain contention: Palestine, Syria, and Hassan Nasrallah.

This conflict of interest, as some may call it, has been addressed by several from a strictly political and historical standpoint. I can reiterate for maybe the eleventh time the arguments I and others have made.

I could point out once again that the Assad regime took part in peace talks with Israel in 2008, clearly contradicting its big-shot statements that Israel doesn’t exist.

I could go at length about the utter nonchalance the Assad regime displayed after Israel captured, or rather strolled into, the Golan Heights in 1967, despite how much the regime parades its resistance title.

I can refresh everyone’s seeming mental abeyance on the 1976 Tal Al-Zaatar massacre in Lebanon, where the murder of over 3,000 Palestinians was carried out by yours truly, the Syrian Army. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Guest Contribution, Opinion Tagged With: Hassan Nasrallah, Humanity, Hypocrisy, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria

RedEye’s “Turban Primer” enables racist attitudes to persist

August 8, 2012 By Guest Contributor 2 Comments

Guest contribution by Muhammad Shareef

I love the RedEye. It usually features a glimpse into what’s going on around Chicago, sometimes expanding on larger national events, but more importantly balancing its informational articles with just enough entertainment pieces to have turned me into a loyal reader each morning for the past three summers.

Yesterday morning was very different. I was shocked by the “Turban Primer” article published barely two days after a gunman shot and killed six worshippers at a Sikh Temple in Milwaukee. I usually refuse to dwell on isolated cases of racism, even those that explicitly target myself, because I recognize that almost all of the people I interact with are amazingly broad-minded human beings. But the “Turban Primer” was too blatant for me to ignore. So I write this with the simple hope of highlighting what I’ve come to notice.

The article shows five cartoon drawings of various men wearing turbans with the following descriptors: Sikh men, Iranian leaders, Taliban members, Indian men, and Muslim religious elders. The descriptors are followed by simplistic captions that are much better suited for Pokémon cards than for a publication of the Chicago Tribune. But looking beyond the ignorance in stereotypically categorizing turban “styles”, an editor at the RedEye saw it fit to educate the Chicago-area community on how to distinguish a Muslim wearing a turban as if to say that a mistake similar to Sunday’s should not happen again. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Guest Contribution, Media & Journalism, Opinion Tagged With: Islam, Racism, RedEye, Sikhism