Author: Kairos Puget Sound Coalition

Statement of protest and solidarity with the Palestinian people from the mentors of We Are Not Numbers in acknowledgement of the general strike in historic Palestine and the diaspora.

By We Are Not Numbers  | May 18, 2021

I am on the board of We Are Not Numbers and I have been working with mentors in the program to craft this statement to express our outrage and concern for the massive Israeli assault on Gaza. Our job is to support and uplift voices from the region. This statement only has power if it is read and discussed. Please send to friends, family, colleagues, use your social media, call your local newspapers. SPREAD THE WORD. THE MASSACRE IS EVER MORE CATASTROPHIC. I just received an email stating that the Ministry of Health offices were ruined, the only biological and covid testing facility destroyed, 6 hospitals and 9 primary clinics are damaged to ruined, drinkable water is short and non drinkable absent for many. The Israelis bombed the street leading to Al Shifa Hospital. Two schools that are now shelters for the dispossessed have been told they are bombing targets. These are war crimes against medical workers and innocent civilians.
— Alice Rothchild, board member

We the undersigned are mentors for the We Are Not Numbers youth storytelling project. We work with Palestinian writers 18 to 30 years of age to develop their writing skills and share their stories, poetry, and graphic art with the English-speaking public. In this capacity, we have each gotten to know a number of young people, most of whom are living in Gaza, who want to be heard and understood, who have powerful stories to tell, and are rendered largely invisible by the world. Despite the wars, the besiegement, and the relentless attacks they have faced, they braved their experiences and crafted their narratives in ways that humbly allowed us to catch a glimpse of being young, born under siege, and living with intermittent electricity, water, fuel and internet, a drastic lack of employment, drones buzzing overhead and no access to basic public services.

Continue reading “We support Palestine”

This piece written 22 years ago is a reminder the signs of impending crisis in Palestine have been documented for years.   It’s hard to say we didn’t know.

By Edward W. Said | The New York Review | Sept 23, 1999

Only once did my father elucidate the general Palestinian condition: “They had lost everything”; a moment later he added, “We lost everything too.”

I recall how, on November 1, 1947—my twelfth birthday—my oldest Jerusalem cousins, Yousif and George, bewailed the day, the eve of the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, with puzzling vehemence as “the blackest day in our history.” I had no idea what they were referring to but realized it must be something of overwhelming importance. Perhaps they and my parents, sitting around the table with my birthday cake, assumed that I shouldn’t be informed about something as complex as our conflict with the Zionists and the British.

Continue reading “Leaving Palestine”

Unmasking the narrative that surrounds the Israel/Palestine conflict.

By Alice Rothchild | CounterPunch | May 14, 2021

The thing to remember is that this is not a battle between two equal parties; this is a struggle between one of the strongest military powers in the world, backed by the US, bent on disinheriting and humiliating a dispossessed people.

As my grief and outrage mount at the predictable escalations of violence in Israel/Palestine, I once again marvel at the chasms of misunderstanding and miscalculations in describing events as they unfold and the script that frames most mainstream media reporting. (Recently, The New York Times is a notable exception.)
Continue reading “The Nakba continues”

The attempts by settlers to forcibly displace Palestinian families have set off a catastrophe

By Rula Salameh | The New York Times | May 11, 2021

The protests at Al Aqsa against denying us access to our holy sites are related to the same oppressive process of disenfranchisement and occupation.

JERUSALEM — I watched the wailing ambulances bring the injured, the medical staff carry them on stretchers and the nurses guide them into the emergency ward. I saw blood-soaked clothes and gauze-wrapped necks and faces.

On Monday more than 330 Palestinians were wounded by the Israeli police at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Many of those needing medical attention were taken to Al Makassed hospital, about a mile and a half from the mosque, in East Jerusalem.

Continue reading “Why so much rests on the fate of a tiny neighborhood in East Jerusalem”

Fears for a 3rd Palestinian Intifada are growing.

By Yousef Aljamal | Politics Today | May 10, 2021

From relocating these Palestinians to ghettos such as those in Jaffa, to placing them under military orders in what became Israel, to mass expulsion such as the case of the village of Abu Ghosh in 1950 and Al-Majdal in 1949-1950, Israel has proven repeatedly that its settler-colonialism project necessarily means uprooting the Palestinians.

The ongoing Israeli policies of mass expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem is a continuation of a more than seven-decade-long policy of ethnic cleansing against native Palestinians following the creation of Israel on May 15, 1948.

Israel’s nature has been augmented in ethnic cleansing and settler-colonialism from day one, when its creation meant the mass expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from 532 villages in 1948. Israel’s creation on the ruins of Palestine was based on a complete negation of their existence, forcing them out of their lands and houses, and replacing them with colonial-settlers from all over the world.

Continue reading “Sheikh Jarrah: A Third Palestinian Intifada Is Now a Stone’s Throw Away”

Puma is moving its corporate headquarters to Boston and BDS activists there are planning on targeting the shoe maker over its sponsorship of Israel’s football league.

By Michael Arria | Mondoweiss | May 5, 2021

“Puma is really branding itself as a company that supports Black Lives Matter, black athletes have been chosen as spokespeople for them, and yet they’re sponsoring the IFA and engaging the oppression of Palestinians,
— Ragini Shah, a law professor and BDS Boston member

In recent months supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) have been showing up outside a Puma store in the Boston suburb of Somerville to picket and hand out literature.

Puma became a target of the BDS movement in 2018 after the company signed a four-year deal to sponsor the Israel Football Association (IFA), which has multiple teams based in illegal West Bank settlements.

Continue reading “BDS activists are targeting Puma in Boston”

Demolitions and evictions of Palestinians by Israeli authorities continue and human rights organization say this may amount to ethnic cleansing.

By Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor | May 3, 2021

During the preparation of this statement, 28 Palestinian families comprising of about 500 people from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem have been threatened with forced displacement.

During the past four months, Israel has escalated its policy of demolishing Palestinian homes and facilities and removing Palestinians from their neighborhoods, while building thousands of settlement units in East Jerusalem. Such a conduct aims to perpetuate racial discrimination and eliminate the Palestinian Arab presence in the city.

Euro-Med Monitor recorded that during the first four months of this year, 86 violations related to the demolition of Palestinian homes and consolidation of their settlement presence, were carried out by the Israeli forces in East Jerusalem. The month of March alone witnessed 31 violations.

Continue reading “Israel demolished 58 Palestinian facilities, built 5,000 settlement units in Jerusalem so far this year”

Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan but Palestinians have been left behind.  Can  the Biden administration make any progress?

By John Brennan  | The New York Times | Apr 27, 2021

Despite sharply reduced tensions between Israel and the Arab world, the Palestinian people themselves have seen no appreciable progress in their quest to live in their own sovereign state.

On a recent evening I watched “The Present,” a short film by Farah Nabulsi, a Palestinian filmmaker, which was nominated for an Academy Award for live-action short film. (The winner in the category was “Two Distant Strangers.”) Ms. Nabulsi’s 25-minute film is a powerful, heartbreaking account of the travails of Yusuf, a Palestinian man, and Yasmine, his young daughter, as they traverse an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank twice in a single day.

“The Present” establishes its context quickly, opening with images of Palestinian men making their way through a narrow passageway at one of the numerous checkpoints that dot the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians going to work, visiting family or shopping on the opposite side of a security barrier have to bear this humiliating procedure every day.

Continue reading “Why Biden must watch this Palestinian movie”