Abeer Zeibak Hadad is a Palestinian filmmaker living in the Israeli mixed city of Jaffa. This year her first feature film – Dum’a – was released in Israeli theaters. The film is the first in the Arab world to deal with sexual assault of women and girls. The film has been screening throughout the country. This week, two days before International Women’s Day Dum’a was screened to hundreds of high school girls in Qalanswa, a Palestinian city half an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv.
Ahmed Tibi
Because I believe in ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, equal rights for Palestinians and Jews, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees forced from their homes and lands in 1948, I support boycotting — and calling on others to boycott — all Israeli companies that help perpetuate these injustices.
MP Haneen Zoabi: “You are creating a monstrous state that will enter the thoughts and emotions of citizens. Is accepting my history considered incitement? … The Nakba is a historic truth, not a position or freedom of expression.”
In Israel there is ethnic democracy: democracy for 80 percent of the public and exclusion and discrimination for 20 percent, and a regime of oppression and dictatorship in the occupied territories. I and my colleagues, my fellow Arab Knesset members, are sitting just a few meters away in the plenum hall from Israelis who have killed members of our people and are imposing a regime of occupation. Will anyone say this testifies to support for their deeds?
Something evil is occurring in Israeli society. Racism and xenophobia are consuming its enlightenment and tolerance, and democracy is becoming more and more endangered. Phenomena that had been on the sidelines are now moving to the forefront.
Palestinian Authority: “It’s not clear how the same firefighters who got permits to go out and help snuff the fire now are now refused permits to their honoring ceremony… We did this despite the occupation because it was our humane duty… We knew the occupation would still be here after our assistance.”
Former US president Jimmy Carter and two other Elders visit the weekly Friday Sheikh Jarrah demonstration in Jerusalem.
If Israel is the Jewish state, then what right do we Palestinian interlopers have to be here at all? None. And so it should be little surprise that Lieberman is simultaneously pushing a plan to trade Palestinian citizens of Israel into a rump state in the West Bank.
Palestinian freedom and equal rights are unlikely to be secured by a United States committed to false notions of Israeli security. Since his Cairo speech, President Barack Obama has failed to pursue new policies. In the Middle East, he is regarded as full of fine but empty words. Empty because securing Palestinian freedom and equal rights requires standing up to Israel.
Yousef Jabareen: “There has been an atmosphere of incitement against the Arab community in general and especially against its leaders since [Netanyahu’s] right-wing government was formed a year ago, [b]ut in the past few days the incitement has peaked.”
Jonathan Cook: In addition to the removal of Ms Zoubi’s [Knesset] privileges, she is also facing the revocation of her citizenship. The measure has been used only twice before in Israel’s history — both times against Palestinian citizens accused of terrorism.
The state land authority has been allowed to hire or purchase land only for Jews. Non-Jews are not allowed… land that was ours in the past and confiscated. In the early 1950s, we [Palestinian Arab citizens] owned 80% of the private land. Now we own 3% of the private land.
We have rights not just in this land, but also rights over this land. This is a historic axiom. Even if the generation that experienced the events of Land Day in 1976 does not get to see the desired change, our message will be passed to all future generations as they mark Land Day each year.
MK Taleb El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al): [The law] “proves the failure of Zionism, which needs to legislate a law in order to force the Zionist narrative and to rewrite history during which the Zionist movement committed crimes against humanity on the Palestinian people.”
“I, Ahmed Tibi, a tall, proud Arab, is happy to be on the same side as prominent Arab intellectuals who came out forcefully against Holocaust denial in the Middle East and other places around the world.” And “Those who were victims of that horrible death, which is a byproduct of a malicious exercise of power – a destructive… must be attentive to the cries of the bereaved mother whose home was destroyed and whose children were buried underneath it; to the pain and cries of a doctor who lost his daughters; to the victims of the other, even if the other is his victim, the victim’s victim.”
MK Ahmed Tibi: “Since the foundation of the state, the Israel Lands Administration is solely used as Jewish land administration. The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews. Despite the bitter attempt over the decades, not even one Arab town has been established since the state’s foundation.”
“IDF dogs are trained to pounce and attack any Arab who shouts Allah Hu Akbar, as a Pavlovian reaction,” said [MK Ahmed] Tibi. “So here I say: Allah Hu Akbar. Are there any dogs here to attack me?”
“Since the foundation of the state, the Israel Lands Administration is solely used as Jewish land administration. The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews… [N]ot even one Arab town has been established since the state’s foundation.”
During the discussion, Tibi added that the proposed law reminded him of the “thought police” in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
We have no interest or desire in a clash – the opposite is true. Popular protest is legitimate. However, we shall never accept a situation whereby one side feels like a knight while the other feels like the horse; one side is the master and ruler while the other is the servant and slave.
