Photo credit: Unknown
Date taken: April 4, 2013
Location: Palestine
Alaa Al-Ali hugs his mother for the first time in twelve years after being released from an Israel prison earlier this week. His family hails from the village of Silwan along the outskirts of Jerusalem’s Old City. [Read more...]
This map of the Gaza Strip includes refugee camps, border crossings, major cities, and towns. Latest update: April 4, 2013.
Photo credit: Alan Gignoux
Date taken: 2004
Location: Burj Al-Barajneh refugee camp, Beirut, Lebanon
Zeinab Al-Saqqa, a refugee living in Burj Al-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon, is shown in this portrait wearing the wedding dress she wore before being evicted from her home in the Palestinian village of Al-Nahr. The dress is the only possession she brought with her when she fled for her life. [Read more...]
I recently met an inspiring young Palestinian woman just months away from becoming a certified physician. She did not speak of her accomplishments but it was very obvious that she had worked hard to excel in college, in medical school, on her national board exams, and in her life outside of being a model student. Even so, she expressed guilt at having been too busy with school to follow the news and the politics as much as she would have liked.
This raised a very interesting question: Must you be outwardly or actively political to contribute to the struggle for Palestinian rights?
My initial answer was no. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became in that answer. [Read more...]
We’ve seen a tremendous surge in college activism and organizing for Palestine in the last few years. Divestment campaigns against companies exploiting the occupied West Bank are growing in size and number (Go California!). Actions and demonstrations for Palestinian rights happen almost daily. MEChA and SJP continue to build together on local, regional, and national levels. Deep-pocketed pro-occupation groups fruitlessly pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into elaborate programs designed to intimidate student organizers. Things are looking up, and the seemingly infinite amount of energy and creativity pouring out of campus groups gives us great hope for a future without occupation, racism, apartheid, and impunity.
But don’t take this progress as any indication that these hardworking organizers live stable lives. Oh no. Here’s a glimpse of an average day.
Wake up, 10:07 AM
Class is in twenty-three minutes and your apartment is ten to twenty minutes away from class depending on how nice the weather is. You probably shouldn’t have spent all night philosophizing on Twitter about the socioeconomic barriers to population migration dynamics in the 19th century nation-state. You tell yourself the same thing every day but never learn. You throw on the first shirt you see — a faded black “Palestine Awareness Week 2010″ shirt — and wrap a kuffiyeh around your neck, taking extra time to cover the “2010″. You zip up your coat and wonder why kuffiyehs are so big. You unzip, give the kuffiyeh another wrap, and zip up. Now you’re out the door. [Read more...]
The American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) launched their newest outdoor advertisement on Monday, calling for an end to Israeli apartheid and to U.S. aid to Israel. The U.S. gives over $3 billion in aid to Israel every year.
The advertisement appeared in 25 stations on the New York City Transit Authority’s Metro North line, according to AMP’s press release. The full-color advertisements will run for four weeks.
Drawing attention to Israel’s apartheid policies against the Palestinian people, the advertisement features a quote from South African social rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu who said that his visit to the Holy Land “reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”.
AMP strategically timed the release of this advertisement to coincide with President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East where he pledged further support to Israel and refused to condemn Israel’s settlement expansion, its military occupation of the Palestinian territories, its illegal detention of Palestinians without charge or trial, or even its role in the murder of American activist Rachel Corrie ten years ago.
The term apartheid is being used more and more to characterize Israel. Considering how its separation wall isolates entire Palestinian communities, how its transport system effectively keeps Palestinians and Israeli Jews from traveling on the same buses, and how its courts toss out most criminal cases against settlers or soldiers, the term is certainly appropriate.
Nevertheless, the initiative is sure to spark controversy from folks like Pamela Geller who previously placed anti-Islam and pro-Israel advertisements in New York subway stations.
Guest contribution by Banen Al-Sheemary
An edited version of the piece ran on Informed Comment earlier today.
Ten years ago today, I remember sitting in front of the television watching the sky turn bright yellow from the massive blasts. Slowly, I turned away from the screen to see my parents’ reaction: absolute silence.
That was the first time I had seen my parents watch the TV news without voicing an opinion. I only saw their sullen silence as they watched their beloved country explode into flames.
My twelve-year-old self had already been indoctrinated with the quintessentially American good guy / bad guy mentality, to which many unfortunately adhere. I struggled to understand the logic behind the invasion of Iraq. Was Iraq a bad country? What had we done wrong? Why is it America’s right to invade and change it? I looked over at my parents again and I could tell their hearts were reeling.
“Believe it. Liberation is coming,” said an arrogant George W. Bush as he spread more war propaganda in his visit to Dearborn, a city in Michigan with the largest Iraqi diaspora community in the United States. All I knew was that the ruthless Saddam Hussein would soon be gone. But what I didn’t know was what would become of Iraq.
Soon I would find the answer: under the guise of cynically named Operation Iraqi “Freedom,” the Iraq I knew would be completely destroyed. [Read more...]
Photo credit: Mohamed El-Reefi
Date taken: January 16, 2013
Location: Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Palestine
A fisherman rests and inspects his leg before leaving the Gaza City’s mina, or port. [Read more...]
Guest contribution by Anthony Betori
Editor’s note: Exactly ten years ago, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli military armored bulldozer in the occupied Gaza Strip as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home. Nobody has been held accountable for her death.
Rachel, thank you but I am so sorry
I am so sorry that you are not here
that you were killed by
hatred
Rachel, I am lonelier because
You are not here
and this fight is one soul weaker
one soul lesser
But Rachel, mostly I am thinking
about what you were thinking
as that bulldozer took
You
away from us
Rachel, I am wondering
what it was that you thought
as hope ended
as justice died [Read more...]
Iran can teach the world a thing or two about charity, and markets
While preparing for a final paper for my Organ Transplantation course, I came across this wonderful paragraph about the aptly-named “Iranian model” of organ allocation:
“Only one country, Iran, has eliminated the shortage of transplant organs—and only Iran has a working and legal payment system for organ donation. In this system, organs are not bought and sold at the bazaar. Patients who cannot be assigned a kidney from a deceased donor and who cannot find a related living donor may apply to the nonprofit, volunteer-run Dialysis and Transplant Patients Association (Datpa). Datpa identifies potential donors from a pool of applicants. Those donors are medically evaluated by transplant physicians, who have no connection to Datpa, in just the same way as are uncompensated donors. The government pays donors $1,200 and provides one year of limited health-insurance coverage. In addition, working through Datpa, kidney recipients pay donors between $2,300 and $4,500. Charitable organizations provide remuneration to donors for recipients who cannot afford to pay, thus demonstrating that Iran has something to teach the world about charity as well as about markets.” (Emphasis mine.)
This comes from an article published in January of 2010 at a time when anti-Iran hysteria was well beyond its infancy but nowhere near as visible as it is today. [Read more...]