More than 10 years ago Israel tightened its grip on Gaza, enforcing a blockade on goods coming in and out of the tiny coastal enclave that left much of the two million-strong population there unemployed, impoverished and hopeless.
Since then, Israel has launched three separate major military assaults that have destroyed Gaza’s infrastructure, killed many thousands and left tens of thousands more homeless and traumatised.
Not a day passes without a prominent Israeli politician or intellectual making an outrageous statement against Palestinians. Many of these statements tend to garner little attention or evoke rightly deserved outrage.
If opposing Israel is anti-semitism then what do you call supporting a state that has been engaged in brutal ethnic cleansing for seven decades. What does that make you?
It’s a question posed by Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew and son of an Israeli general, former Israeli soldier and now a leading voice in the struggle for Palestinian freedom. You couldn’t find a more authentic insider.
What else has Peled been saying about Israel?
The name of the game: erasing Palestine, getting rid of the people and de-Arabizing the country…
It is another anxious Christmas for the inhabitants of Bethlehem. This is the time of year when they have a chance to break out of an isolation enforced in concrete since Israel enclosed the town with a “separation wall” more than a decade ago.
On Christmas Eve, in a centuries-old tradition, Palestinian and foreign pilgrims rub shoulders as they throng into the ancient Church of the Nativity to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Jesus at its reputed location two millennia ago.
2018: The world must save the Holy City from Israel, fearlessly confront false claims, challenge the cruelty and expose the lies. Campaigners for justice — and that includes civil society in all countries — need to re-frame the Palestine-Israel narrative and demolish the Zionist fantasy.
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One sentence summarizes the Zionist expansion from an incursion to ultimate takeover of Palestinian lands – the Zionists act aggressively and the world bodies re-react passively. Institutions that defend the world community and protect regional interests have failed to understand the Middle East crisis, failed to recognize the dangers posed by the Zionist expansion, and have subverted their constituencies. These failures prevent formulation of an acceptable plan and a concentrated effort to resolve the perilous situation.
It is tempting to interpret the announcement of a delay, however brief, in US vice-president Mike Pence’s visit to the Middle East this week as the ultimate travel warning. It follows an eruption of regional unrest over Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
During protests on Friday, Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians and injured more than 250.
When I learned of the death of Kamal al-Assar, a few years ago, I was baffled. He was only in his 40s. I remember him in his prime, a young rebel, leading the neighborhood youth, armed with rocks and slingshots, in a hopeless battle against the Israeli army. Understandably, we lost, but we won something far more valuable than a military victory. We reclaimed our identity.
Kamal al-Assar’s mother, Nuseirat Refugee Camp
Donald Trump’s recognition this week of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, overturning seven decades of US policy in the region and effectively ending hopes of a two-state solution, has provoked dire warnings.
But the focus by commentators on Palestinian reactions, rather than the effect on the Israeli public and leadership, might have underestimated the longer-term fallout from Trump’s move, analysts say.
Pope Francis lost a historical opportunity to truly set his legacy apart from previous popes. Alas, for him, too, political expediency trumped all else. In his visit to Burma (Myanmar) on November 27, he refrained from using the word ‘Rohingya.’
But what’s in a name?
