Author: HolyLandJustice.org

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In a victory for BDS, Argentina’s national soccer team cancels a game in Israel

 

Argentina’s Lionel Messi, center, hugs teammates after scoring his hat trick during a friendly soccer match between Argentina and Haiti in Buenos Aires on May 29, 2018. (photo: Victor Caivano / AP)

In a mammoth victory for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, the squad of Lionel Messi will not be playing in Jerusalem.

By Dave Zirin | The Nation | Jun 6, 2018

“This is major. Though it may not be the first sports boycott . . . one of the most visible teams and renowned players in global futbol has refused to normalize Israel’s national institutions at a critical political juncture.”
— Noura Erakat, human rights attorney and professor at George Mason University

he group Jewish Voice for Peace called it “a watershed moment“ and “the biggest victory for BDS [the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement].” Israeli defense minister Avignor Lieberman seethed that this week has seen a win for “Israeli-hating inciters.”

What spurred such an impassioned reaction on both sides? It wasn’t Lorde canceling a concert and it wasn’t Natalie Portman refusing an award. This time it is the Argentina National Soccer Team saying no to the Israeli state. With three days notice, the renowned squad has canceled a friendly World Cup warm-up match in Jerusalem, a game that sold out last month within 20 minutes of tickets’ going on sale. Now no one will be watching anything.

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Doctor recalls slain Palestine paramedic’s bravery

Dr. Marc Sinclair with volunteers and Razan Al Najjar (third from left) in Gaza. (photo: Marc Sinclair / Khaleej Times)

Razan is remembered for her speech and the way she always talked about her determination.

By Sherouk Zakaria |Khaleej Times | Jun 4, 2018

 “On one side, you have kids with slingshots and people who burn tires, and on other side, there’s sophisticated army of snipers and soldiers.”
— Dr. Marc Sinclair

 

Along the fence dividing the Gaza Strip from Israel lie a bunch of tents of volunteers who drag injured demonstrators away from the danger zone to provide necessary help using basic medical tools.

One of the young women in white paramedic’s uniform was Razan Al Najjar, the 21-year-old volunteer emergency medical worker who was recently shot dead as she tried to aid a demonstrator, during the ongoing Palestinian protest campaign.

“Razan was a very outspoken and proud woman. She was sure of her role and what she could do to contribute on ground,” said Dr Marc Sinclair, a Dubai-based pediatric orthopedic surgeon who founded the Little Wings Foundation charity that treats children in Palestine.

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Boycott is best response to illegal Israeli killings

A sign at a pro-Palestinian protest in Paris on May 12, 2018. (photo: Etienne Laurent / The Irish Times

The EU is complicit in the enabling of Israel’s violation of Palestinians’ rights.

By Omar Barghouti | The Irish Times | May 15, 2018

Despite Israel’s descent into unmasked, right-wing extremism and its decades-old military occupation and oppression of Palestinians, the EU continues to treat it as if it were above international law.

Today, Palestinians everywhere will commemorate the 1947–1949 Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) — the ethnic cleansing of the majority of indigenous Palestinians from our homeland and the systematic destruction of hundreds of our villages and towns to establish Israel as an exclusionary state.

In 1948, when Zionist paramilitaries forced the family of my late grandmother, Rasmiyyah, out of their spacious home in the picturesque city of Safad at gunpoint, the seminal process of settler-colonialism that was enabled by the Balfour Declaration became personal to my family. The Nakba has shaped my identity and the identity of millions of other Palestinian descendants of refugees.

To suppress the massive peaceful demonstrations in Gaza, where the majority are Nakba refugees and their descendants, demanding an end to the 12-year-old siege and refugees’ rights, Israel has enacted a shoot-to-kill-or-maim policy, killing dozens and injuring thousands, many with live ammunition. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has condemned these crimes, while Amnesty International has called on world governments “to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel” as an effective measure of accountability.

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Young evangelicals waver in support for Israel

evangelicals
US evangelical Christians march in the Sukkot holiday parade in Jerusalem on Octc20, 2016. (photo: Abir Sultan / EPA)

Generational split reflects concern over Palestinians, spurring outreach by some churches and groups.

By Ian Lovett | The Wall Street Journal | Jun 3, 2018

“The New Testament, I think, would be in favor of human rights.”
— Jackie Westeren, a rising senior at the evangelical Wheaton College

Growing up in evangelical Christian churches, Caleb Fitzpatrick learned quickly to be a steadfast supporter of Israel. From a young age, Mr. Fitzpatrick said, he was taught that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, “was a hero” and that “Christians are supposed to back Israel on everything.”

But the Tampa, FL, native, who just finished his junior year at Liberty University, an evangelical school, has become critical of Israel for what he says is its mistreatment of Palestinians.

“Human rights is a core issue to me,” Mr. Fitzpatrick, 21, said. “It’s less important to me who has dominion over the northern part of historical Israel.”

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The Arab world needs to move beyond the liberation of Palestine

A Palestinian demonstrator covers her face with the colors of the Palestinian flag during clashes with Israeli security forces following a protest on the Gaza-Israel border, Apr 6, 2018. (photo: Mohammed Abed / AFP)

Israel is going nowhere, and we in the Arab world have to deal with it. That means offering Israelis prosperity, security and friendship; all Israel needs to do is overcome their prejudices and give Palestinians their rights.

By Khalaf Al Habtoor | Haaretz | Jun 4, 2018

Israelis and Palestinians should revolt against the useless old leadership and outdated playbooks keeping them on different sides of the fence. Tear down those figurative and material walls. People power could be a game changer. The men in suits bent on consolidating power have let you down. Peace engendered by the very people who have the most to gain (and to lose) could work where all else has failed.

For the people caught in the enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their own leaders and Western intermediaries have failed.

Summits, conferences, accords and a roadmap going nowhere have been a waste of time and effort. Earlier attempts at finding solutions brokered by US presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were genuine — but were stymied. Those that followed were either fig leaves or half-hearted.

Today, there is not only “nothing on the table,” there is no table. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced there would never be a Palestinian state on his watch — a statement he later retracted for international consumption — he meant every word. Just days ago, his government announced it would consider approving the construction of 2,000 more settler homes on the West Bank.

And, quite frankly, I am beginning to think President Donald Trump’s blueprint for peace is a figment of his imagination.

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Israel resists recognizing degrees from Al-Quds University in Jerusalem

The Al-Quds University has campuses in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and in Abu Dis, shown here, just outside of Jerusalem. (photo: Majdi Mohammed / AP)

Although medical degrees from Al-Quds receive recognition, degrees in social work and education continue to be denied.

By Nir Hasson | Haaretz | Jun 3, 2018

“In an effort to bring about the closure of the Jerusalem campus, a political directive was given not to recognize degrees granted by the main campus in Abu Dis. As a result, most Al-Quds graduates who are Israeli residents are denied the possibility of working in Israel.”
— Al-Quds University attorney Shlomo Lecker

The Social Affairs Ministry is dragging its feet on recognizing hundreds of Palestinian social workers who graduated from Al-Quds University, in order to officially avoid recognizing the university.

The Jerusalem municipality says the city has a shortage of Arabic-speaking social workers and the Al-Quds graduates could help fill the gap. But the Social Affairs Ministry denies that any shortage exists.

For years, state agencies, led by the Prime Minister’s Office, have tried to push Al-Quds out of Jerusalem. Most of the university’s facilities are actually in Abu Dis, which lies just outside Jerusalem’s municipal borders in the West Bank. But the university still maintains some facilities inside Jerusalem.

Unlike Israeli universities, Al-Quds does not fall under the auspices of Israel’s Council for Higher Education, and it operates as a foreign university. But it cannot receive Israeli recognition as a foreign university the way universities in the West Bank do, because of its location in Jerusalem, which Israel considers its capital and its sovereign territory.

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China is fed up with Israel’s negligence at construction sites

A Chinese construction worker in Tel Aviv. (photo: Tomer Appelbaum / Haaretz)

Given the wave of racism swamping Israel, it’s hard to imagine public pressure ending the careless disregard; as long as it’s not Jews, who cares that dozens of workers are killed every year?

By Editorial | Haaretz | May 31, 2018

Chinese inspectors only work on sites where Chinese citizens are employed. On the sites excluded by China, no government — certainly not Israel’s — protects the workers properly.

Only a combination of greed and racism can explain the numerous fatalities on Israeli construction sites and the indifference with which these incidents are received. On Wednesday a worker was killed on a building site in Bnei Brak operated by Yesh Lee Or Construction. The man, who was identified as Munir Salah, was the 17th person to die this year in a construction-site accident.

Three weeks ago, a worker from China died in an accident on a Shikun & Binui construction site in Jerusalem’s Har Hotzvim industrial park. He was the second Chinese building-site fatality in Israel this year. The government in Beijing, outraged over the frequent deaths of Chinese laborers working in Israel, has barred 36 Israeli building projects from employing its nationals.

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Israel’s “one of a kind” new apartheid wall to choke Gaza: A triple-layered sea barrier

Construction equipment working on an undersea barrier near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. (photo: Israel Defense Ministry)

Unimpeded by an international community that remains largely silent over Israeli crimes, Tel Aviv has subjected the people of Gaza to numerous novel and experimental tools of repression and weapons delivery systems.

By Elliott Gabriel | Mint Press News | May 31, 2018

“Israel has besieged, tormented, and regularly attacked the Gaza Strip. The pretexts change: they elected Hamas; they refused to be docile; they refused to recognize Israel; they fired rockets; they built tunnels to circumvent the siege; and on and on. But each pretext is a red herring, because the truth of ghettos — what happens when you imprison 1.8 million people in a hundred and forty square miles, about a third of the area of New York City, with no control of borders, almost no access to the sea for fishermen, no real way in or out, and with drones buzzing overhead night and day — is that, eventually, the ghetto will fight back. It was true in Soweto and Belfast, and it is true in Gaza.”
— Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University

Whatever one’s opinion may be about the ongoing Israeli dispossession of the people of Palestine and the crippling siege of the Gaza Strip, one can’t fault Tel Aviv for lacking originality.

Such unique means of choking off the Palestinians’ ability to live as normal human beings will be on full display with a new $833 million sea barrier being erected: it will include a submarine barrier, a stone wall, and a layer of barbed wire that will be surrounded by an additional fence.

Hardline Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman described the barrier as a “one of a kind in the world” measure that protects the occupation “with power and sophistication” and prevents the people of Gaza from entering Israeli-controlled territory by sea.

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UN Security Council rejects US resolution on Gaza

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, center, casts the lone Security Council vote in favor of a resolution introduced by the United States blaming Hamas for the recent violence in Gaza. (photo: Mary Altaffer / AP)

UN Security Council resoundingly rejects US-drafted resolution criticizing Hamas over recent Gaza violence.

By Al Jazeera | Jun 2, 2018

“I don’t know when there was last a resolution put to the Security Council that only got one vote in favor.”
— Al Jazeera correspondent James Bays

The United States has voted against a Kuwait-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution calling for the protection of Palestinian civilians, while being the only country to back its own measure condemning Hamas for the recent violence in the Gaza Strip.

More than 120 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded by Israeli forces during weeks-long peaceful protests in the besieged Gaza Strip near the fence with Israel. Among the victims have been medical professionals and journalists.

Ten countries, including Russia and France, voted in favour of the Kuwait-sponsored resolution on Friday.

Four others — Britain, Poland, the Netherlands and Ethiopia — abstained, while the US, a major ally of Israel, was the only country to vote against it.

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The Palestinians have not gone away

Palestinian boys wave national flags. (photo: Hatem Moussa / AP)

Seventy years after the Nakba, Israel has not succeeded in erasing Palestine — or the Palestinians.

By Rashid Khalidi | The Nation | May 10, 2018

After seven decades of attempting to replace one people with another, Zionism faces the unsustainability of such a project in the 21st century. . . . It is losing that battle today, which is a cause for optimism for those who seek peace with justice for Palestinians and Israelis.

With the replacement of Palestine by Israel and the expulsion of most of its Arab population in 1948, it appeared that the Zionist dream had become a reality. A Jewish state had arisen, and there was no competing Palestinian state; ethnic cleansing had produced a massive demographic transformation, and the land of all those “absent” Arabs could be appropriated.

The Zionists’ hope and expectation was that the refugees would simply disappear, and even the memory that this had been an Arab-majority country for more than a millennium could be effaced. As Golda Meir put it, “There were no such thing as Palestinians. . . . They did not exist.” It seemed that the colonial-settler ideal had been realized: The natives were gone, there was plenty of space, their beautiful stone houses could be repurposed, and their “khummus” could be rebranded and mispronounced.

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