Author: Kairos Puget Sound Coalition

The Zionist narrative is arguably responsible for the welcoming and forgiving attitude the entire world has towards the horrendous, unforgivable crimes committed by Israel since its founding in 1948.

By Miko Peled | MintPress News | Sept 20, 2021

One of the great tragedies of Palestine is that almost every day there is a commemoration of one massacre or another, the death of a child or destruction of a home or village, leading one to think that the Palestinian narrative is one of death and destruction, which is what Israel wants people to think.

PALESTINE — As these words were being written, the final two Palestinian freedom prisoners who escaped from Gilboa Prison were caught by the Israeli authorities. Palestine is still reacting to this courageous escape and the consequent re-capture of the six political prisoners who escaped and defied the entire Israeli security apparatus. However, even though they managed to free themselves from this high-security prison, they found a world that doesn’t care. The rest of the world did not step up to save these brave men and did not provide them with sanctuary, and so they were caught.

Continue reading “From glorious millennia to death and destruction: Zionists rewrite Palestine’s story”

This multi-generational family peace project, beloved and celebrated around the world, is in danger of confiscation and destruction.

By United Methodist Kairos Response | Sept 2021

Twenty years ago, in 2001, the Nassar family named their farm Tent of Nations, receiving visitors from around the world to foster a connection between the land and people.

The Tent of Nations peace project is located on the Nassar family’s 100-acre farm, six miles from Bethlehem. It is in Area C of the West Bank, occupied Palestinian territory; Area C is under full Israeli military control.

This wonderful farm is being slowly strangled by the never-ending Israeli military occupation, surrounded by expanding Israeli settlements that are illegally colonizing the West Bank.

Continue reading “Help to save Tent of Nations”

Increasing settler violence violate the laws of Shabbat.

By Maya Rosen | Jewish Currents  | Sept 9, 2021

Amid a broad escalation of violence against Palestinians in the occupied territories, Shabbat has become the most violent day of the week in the South Hebron Hills.

WHEN I TURN MY PHONE BACK ON after Shabbat ends, I can measure the violence of the day by the number of unread messages that appear on my screen. Sitting in my home in Jerusalem, I scroll through dispatches from friends in the South Hebron Hills, a rural area in the southern West Bank, describing the day’s mob attack by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. If I have just a few dozen texts, then the encounter probably consisted of masked settlers throwing rocks at Palestinians or invading villages to physically assault residents. But if I find a few hundred messages waiting, I know settlers have likely set fire to Palestinian homes or even fired live rounds of ammunition at Palestinians or activists supporting them.

Amid a broad escalation of violence against Palestinians in the occupied territories, Shabbat has become the most violent day of the week in the South Hebron Hills. Unprovoked attacks on Palestinians have become something of a Shabbat afternoon pastime for the religious Zionist settlers in the region. Palestinians who live there even report seeing Israelis from elsewhere who have traveled to the area to spend the weekend beating up residents. Much like Sunday lynchings in the Jim Crow South—where white mobs murdered Black people on the Christian Sabbath, when they had time to participate in violence at their leisure—Saturdays have become an excuse for violence in the South Hebron Hills, transforming the Jewish day of rest into a social soiree of brutality.

Continue reading “Shabbat terror in the West Bank”

Unilever the focus of pressure from the American Jewish community to reverse Ben & Jerry’s decision to withdraw sales in the occupied territories.

By Philip Weiss |  Mondoweiss | Sept 7, 2021

Daroff spoke six weeks ago to the Jewish Broadcasting Service, but no media have quoted him; and he is such a powerful figure in the Jewish community that his remarks deserve notice.

In late July, Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would stop selling ice cream in the occupied Palestinian territories next year, and since then its parent company, Unilever, has come under a pressure campaign from Israel and its American mouthpieces to reverse the decision.

The Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, which comprises dozens of groups and calls itself the “voice of organized American Jewry,” has said the decision was “antisemitic” and warned Unilever that 33 states have laws aimed at penalizing the BDS campaign against Israel. The Conference said these states’ pension funds can divest from Unilever if it does not override the independent Ben & Jerry’s board.

Continue reading “CEO of leading Jewish org denies there’s an occupation and calls Ben & Jerry’s chair ‘apologist for Hamas’”

Israeli military arrested, handcuffed, and interrogated Palestinian journalists who had just covered a peaceful protest inside a “closed military zone.” According to the Israeli military’s own regulations, journalists are allowed in such areas.

By Hagar Shezaf | Israel Palestine News, reposted from Haaertz | Aug 31, 2021

 “When I photographed the arrest they detained me as well, but we were on our way out, going home,”
— Mashour Wahwah, journalist working for the Palestinian news agency WAFA

Israeli soldiers arrested seven Palestinian journalists who covered a protest in the South Hebron Hills on Friday. According to the journalists, they were told they were being arrested since the area had been declared a closed military zone, but the military’s own rules permit journalists to be in such areas.

Mashour Wahwah, a journalist working for the Palestinian news agency WAFA, told Haaretz that he was there to document the gathering of Palestinian residents of the area, whose land is slated for expropriation by Israel. “The prayers ended, and we wanted to return home, but suddenly the army arrested one of the residents,” he said. [NOTE: learn more about Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land here.]

Continue reading “Israeli soldiers arrest seven journalists covering peaceful West Bank protest”

Silencing political active women a tactic being used to intimidate women into submission.

By Benay Blend | Palestine Chronicle | Aug 31, 2021

“The challenge for prisoners is to transform [their] detention into a state of a ‘cultural revolution’ through reading, education and literary discussions.”
— political prisoner and Palestinian leader Khalida Jarrar

In late August 2021, Palestinian prisoner Anhar Al-Deek, who is nine months pregnant, wrote a moving letter to her family.

“What should I do if I give birth far from you? I am tied up, how can I give birth via cesarean section when I am alone in prison?” she asked, then added, “I am exhausted, and I had severe pains in the pelvis and severe pain in my legs due to sleeping on the prison beds. I do not know how I want to sleep on it after my delivery operation.”

Continue reading “On Israel’s history of targeting pregnant Palestinian women”

The new prime minister avoided the drama that tended to follow his predecessor’s visits to Washington.

By Mitchell Plitnick | Responsible Statecraft | Aug 30, 2021

The Palestinians are the big losers in this meeting.

When Benjamin Netanyahu met a U.S. president, there was always an air of tension. Whether it was caused by the rancorous relationship between Netanyahu and Barack Obama or the lovefest with Donald Trump that set Democrats’ teeth gnashing, there was always some discomfort on Capitol Hill.

New Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was determined to strike a very different tone in his first meeting with President Joe Biden on Friday. He aimed to mend the fences Netanyahu tore asunder between Israel and the Democratic Party, while also avoiding the appearance of acquiescence to Biden in areas where they differ on policy, most notably the Iran nuclear deal and the prospect of a Palestinian state. His success was unqualified.

Continue reading “Biden and Bennett tone down US-Israel relations”

15-year-old Tareq Zbeideh describes how he was kidnapped, tied, and beaten by settlers while picnicking with his friends near a settlement outpost.

By Oren Ziv and Ahmad Al-Bazz | +972 Magazine | Aug 26, 2021

Homesh [former settlement] was supposed to return to Palestinian hands, but in recent years settlers have set up a new outpost there.

For the last two weeks, Tareq Zbeideh has been lying wounded in his bed in the northern West Bank town of Silat a-Dahr for the past week, after being kidnapped and brutally attacked by Israeli settlers on July 17.

According to Zbeideh, 15, he was enjoying a picnic with friends near the former settlement of Homesh — one of the four Israeli settlements removed from the occupied West Bank during the Gaza Disengagement in 2006 — when settlers hit him with their car and tied him to the vehicle, before dragging him to an isolated area and beating him. The attack lasted half an hour, during which Zbeideh says the settlers tied him to a tree, beat him with a belt, sprayed him with pepper spray, electrocuted him, and then burned him with the car’s cigarette lighter.

Continue reading “‘I thought I would die’: Settlers abduct, brutally attack Palestinian teen”

Palestinian advocates say Israel is a laboratory for spy technology, where young recruits in the military’s most secretive intelligence units monitor Palestinians.

By Daniel Estrin | National Public Radio | Aug 25, 2021

“The defense industry and the high-tech industry are the two sacred cows of the Israeli economy.”
— Shay Aspril, Israeli journalist 

JERUSALEM — Israel takes enormous pride in its high-tech industry. But one of its star cybersecurity companies, NSO Group, is at the center of an international spying scandal that has concerned U.S. officials, and the Israeli government plays a role.

The Pegasus Project, a consortium of international media outlets, says a leaked list of some 50,000 phone numbers showed that governments around the world sought NSO’s cellphone hacking technology Pegasus to spy on people or mark them as potential targets, whether inside or beyond their own borders.

Continue reading “What to know about the spying scandal linked to Israeli tech firm NSO”