In 1948, some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from more than 400 villages as the new state of Israel was declared on a large part of their homeland – an event known to Palestinians as the nakba, or “catastrophe”. The refugees – mostly descendants of those driven from their homes – now number around five million, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Occupation
Six mass grave sites dating back to the 1936 Palestinian uprising and the 1948 Nakba were discovered around the Jaffa cemetery, the al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage reported Wednesday, revealing hundreds of bodies of Palestinians killed by Zionist forces.
We are all part of the same old story, nothing has changed since the bad old days of apartheid South Africa and Segregated America. We must stand united with all our brothers and sisters against racism, colonialism, segregation and apartheid.
The performance, developed by students as part of a course on Theater and Social Change and members of the organization Justice for Palestine, was broken up by campus public safety. “This is not theater; we can tell it is political,” one officer voiced. “Everything that is political has to be approved by the college.”
“You know why Israel’s leaders can’t make peace?” a Palestinian friend asked recently. “Because if the conflict ever ended, Israeli Jews would start tearing out each other’s throats.” But any Palestinian who hoped the protest movements emerging in Israel might signal the beginning of Israeli society’s disintegration should think again. There are plenty of reasons to doubt that most Israeli Jews are ready to break free of the militaristic and nationalist thinking that has dominated Zionism for decades.”
A major new report has found that the European Union has failed to fulfil its own commitments to ensure Israel improves living conditions for Palestinians.
If Israel’s government is to be believed, Palestinians have sunk so low as to be capable of faking their own deaths. Or wait, maybe the Israeli accusation of fakery is itself the indication of a horrifying new nadir. An Israeli report has concluded that Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian whose death in 2000 in Gaza was captured by a French public TV channel, was not killed by Israelis – and may in fact not be dead at all.
This is an appeal for you to follow the recommendations of the International Court of Justice regarding the building of the Separation Wall and all of the Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank. They are totally illegal under international law, the 4th Geneva Convention, and the UN Charter of Human Rights which gives indigenous people, in this case the Bedouin of Susya and surrounding areas of the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley, the right to practice their traditional way of life, and the right to a home on their own land.
“The Nakba did not begin in 1948. Its origins lie over two centuries ago….” So begins this four-part Al-Jazeera series on the ‘Nakba’ (the ‘catastrophe’), about the history of the Palestinian exodus that led to the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel.
Chomsky, a US professor and well-known supporter of the Palestinian cause, joined British academics from the universities of Cambridge, London, Leeds, Southampton, Warwick, Newcastle, York and the Open University to tell Hawking they were “surprised and deeply disappointed” that he had accepted the invitation to speak at next month’s presidential conference in Jerusalem, which will chaired by Shimon Peres and attended by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
Former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami: “Israel’s line was busy, or there was no one on the Israeli side to pick up the phone.”
Zionism is viewed [by Moshé Machover] as a colonial-settler project, not a national liberation movement. Its particular aims, “based not on exploiting the labor of the indigenous people but aiming to exclude and expel them,” are more characteristic of the U.S. model than the South African one. The fact that the Israeli state is not only a product of this settler project, but a force for its extension and expansion, produces the ever-present danger of new ethnic cleansing.
When the government tries to silence a history, a light is shed on the nation’s biggest taboo. This is the story of those who fought to erase Palestine and created an Israeli landscape of denial.
Israeli security officials given approval to search email accounts of ‘suspicious’ travellers despite petition over invasion of privacy.
Journalist Amira Hass drew heavy criticism from Israeli media about her op-ed in last week defending the right of Palestinians to throw stones, and was accused of incitement to violence by the Yesha Council (of West Bank settlements), appeared on Democracy Now this week to discuss her article.
[W]e were saddened to hear that you have been awarded the 2013 Israeli Wolf Prize for Architecture, not because you are not deserving of such awards, but that it is being offered to you by the Israeli state, in a very cynical move that would give them the respectability that is not deserved. It is ironic that the award is for architecture, since the practice of architecture in Israel defies international norms and codes of ethics and demeans the humanity and high ideals of our profession.
Statements challenging the national narrative aren’t exactly common in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day. So it was particularly refreshing to read … about a different sort of speech delivered in honor of the day.
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I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because, especially in our instantly connected world, an injustice committed against one, or against one group of people, is an injustice against all, against every one of us; a collective injury.
Assuming the Arab League makes good on its commitment … the fund will serve only to highlight the very problems it seeks to alleviate… The reality is that Mr Abbas and the Arab League are at least a decade too late to protect East Jerusalem. In the current circumstances, such a cash fund will do little more than salve consciences.
Since 1901 KKL-JNF, known as Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the UK, has worked successfully for the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine and their project has not been completed… Today sees a fresh and determined initiative to strip JNF UK of its charitable status. This effort can succeed with your help, for the JNF UK is vulnerable as never before. Whereas this racist body used to enjoy virtually automatic patronage from the leaders of all three major UK political parties, today Cameron, Clegg and Miliband have each turned their back on this openly racist ‘charity’ as being increasingly impossible to defend.
