Painting by Jawad Ibrahim (We Are Not Numbers.org)
Mentors and artists from around the world have joined with youth in Gaza to create a platform for mentoring youth to tell the human stories behind the numbers in the news.
By Basman Derawi | We Are Not Numbers | July 26, 2020
I swallow my sour saliva and try to hold on to what I believe.
Hello, God.
How are you today?
I don’t know what day
of the global lockdown it is.
Here, we are always
in lockdown.
News swirls in the rumor mill
that is social media:
Young people committing suicide.
Not just one, but five.
I swallow my sour saliva
and try to hold on to what I believe.
I want to die, but I want to live first:
out of prison, in a place where
I can move freely,
light is not a privilege
and hope is realistic.
People protesting anti-BDS laws in New York, June 9, 2016. (photo: Erik McGregor / Getty Images)
The global, peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has grown in prominence worldwide.
By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | July 30, 2020
‘Mahmoud is a leading Palestinian human rights defender who is highly regarded in Palestine and around the world for his tireless and passionate advocacy of Palestinian rights,’ Barghouti said. — Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement
Israeli occupation forces detained the general coordinator of the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement in a night raid early Thursday.
Peter Beinart, from the Center for American Progress.
Peter Beinart challenges Jewish culture because he refuses to use the Holocaust lens of perpetual victim-hood when considering Palestinian resistance.
By Yakov Hirsch | Mondoweiss | July 26, 2020
This ‘Holocaust lens,’ Beinart claims, is what makes it so difficult for Jews to see Palestinians as created ‘b’tselem Elohim,’ in the image of God.
In his recent essay arguing for equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, Peter Beinart says the Jewish dehumanization of the Palestinians is the biggest threat to a peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians, and he points to the misinterpretation of the Holocaust as a reason for that dehumanization. This “Holocaust lens,” Beinart claims, is what makes it so difficult for Jews to see Palestinians as created “b’tselem Elohim,” in the image of God.
That dehumanization includes the idea that Palestinians are motivated by antisemitism in their opposition to Israel. The claim, Beinart says, is a function of “Jewish trauma.” And, Beinart argues, it says more about us than it does about them:
Bari Weiss, as a sophomore at Columbia University, speaks at a press conference organized by Columbians for Academic Freedom, a group she co-founded, on March 31st, 2005. (photo: AP Photo / Tina Fineberg)
Some of the Harper’s letter signatories use their defense of free speech to silence support for Palestinian rights.
By Mari Cohen & Joshua Leifer | Jewish Currents | July 23, 2020
…failure to recognize the tension between their free speech advocacy on the one hand, and their pro-Israel advocacy on the other, reveals an unwillingness to reckon with the relationship between speech and power.
TWO WEEKS AGO, an open letter published in Harper’s Magazine and signed by more than 150 public figures, most of them writers or academics, ignited a new round of debate over “cancel culture” and its discontents. The letter portrayed freedom of expression in the United States as dangerously imperiled: “We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.” A week later, Bari Weiss, one of the letter’s high-profile signatories, resigned her position at the New York Times op-ed desk and self-published her resignation letter. Echoing the Harper’s letter, Weiss’s statement decried an increasingly “illiberal environment” in public discourse writ large and at the Times in particular. She wrote that her colleagues—and the public—have become unwilling to accommodate views that don’t adhere to “the new orthodoxy.”
Yet, as some critics have noted, Weiss has a long history of claiming to support free speech while trying to curtail the speech of Palestinian rights advocates, from her college days through her years at the Times. And she is not the only signatory of the Harper’s letter who has sought to silence those with whom she disagrees. Cary Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, is a prominent opponent of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has written extensively about the need to combat anti-Zionist scholarship in the name of academic freedom.
Federal agents in Portland, Oregon. (photo: via Social Media)
Israeli arms sales, surveillance and police training contributes to the militarization of police now being seen across cities in the US. In reality the disappearing has been happening for a long time.
By Benay Blend | The Palestine Chronicle | July 21, 2020
…it is possible to draw attention to Israel’s role in ‘snatching and disappearing people all over the world,’ but in particular the Southern Cone, Palestine, and now in the United States.
“What was old has become new again,” wrote local activist Lee Einer in a Facebook post this morning. Einer is referring to Donald Trump’s use of federal law enforcement officers, dressed in camouflage but with no identification, riding in unmarked cars, rounding up Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon. Since July 14th multiple videos have documented officers whisking people off in cars with no explanation as to why they are being detained.
Reporting for The Nation, Jeet Heer contends that these actions are “illegal and unconstitutional.” Nevertheless, it is likely that they are operating under the aegis of Barack Obama’s approval of the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act which permits the detention of Americans if suspected of being terrorists.
A police water cannon douses dozens of protesters in central Jerusalem during clashes that followed a mass demonstration outside the Prime Minister’s Residence, July 14, 2020. (photo: Oren Ziv)
A protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned into a chaotic and historic night, during which Israeli-Jewish leftists turned their anger on the police.
By Oren Ziv | +972 | July 15, 2020
…it became apparent that while the organizers of the protest have been reticent regarding tying the recent anti-Netanyahu protests to other struggles in Israel-Palestine, the demonstrators were far more open to more radical messaging, including about resisting the occupation and police brutality.
The organizers of Tuesday night’s “Siege on Balfour” protest, outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, never expected the latest demonstration against Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption to turn into full-blown clashes with the police that would last into the early hours of the morning. It is hard to imagine that anyone thought 50 people would be arrested.
After all, protests by Israel’s Jewish left over the past few decades have typically been relatively calm — no burning trash cans or water cannons dousing demonstrators. But on “Bastille Day in Balfour,” all that changed.
The Ethnic Heritage Council of the Pacific Northwest has recognized the work of Rita Zawaideh for her significant contribution to her ethnic community and ethnic heritage, as well as to the community at large.
By Ethnic Heritage Council | July 16, 2020
She is a ‘one-person community information center for the Arab community,’ — Huda Giddens
For decades, Rita Zawaideh has been an advocate and change-maker on behalf of Middle Eastern and North African communities in the United States and around the world. She is a “one-person community information center for the Arab community,” according to the thousands who have benefited from her activism and philanthropy. “The door to Rita’s Fremont office is always open,” says Huda Giddens of Seattle’s Palestinian community, adding that Rita’s strength is her ability to see a need and answer it. “She doesn’t leave a stone unturned in search of a solution,” says Giddens.
Rita was born in Jordan and grew up in Seattle. Through the years she has maintained close ties to the Arab world, as well as to the Arab-American communities throughout the U.S. She founded the Salaam Cultural Museum (SCM) to raise awareness of Arab American cultures and provide support to refugees and immigrants both locally and internationally. Rita is owner and founder of Caravan-Serai Tours, a Seattle travel agency specializing in the Middle East and North Africa. Through her travel agency network she has organized volunteer trips and donation drives for refugees in the Middle East and North Africa since the 1980s. She often labors into the wee hours of the night to solve a person’s problem, putting that person in touch with a lawyer, a city council member, a school principal, a church contact, perhaps even someone who lives on the other side of the country. No one is turned away.
Ayman al-Hasari paints a mural of George Floyd on a wall in Gaza City in a message against racist discrimination and police brutality. (photo: Ahmad Hasaballah / IMAGESLIVE)
Systemic discrimination, settler-colonialism and inequality lie at the heart of a global struggle.
By Adam Mahoney | The Electronic Intifada | July 15, 2020
Then, a 17-year-old student asked me: Is it really as hard being Black in America, as they make it seem?
It took less than a week for me to become accustomed to daily interactions with Israeli soldiers carrying guns. It scared me. So did the number of Make America Great Again hats on people walking the streets of the Holy Land.
I had been traveling throughout occupied Palestine for several days on a student reporting trip facilitated by my school, Northwestern University, when a student’s question led to weeks of reflection.
This particular day, I was sitting in a high school classroom in the Ein Mahel local council in northern Israel. The day was focused on understanding the experience of Israel’s indigenous Palestinian minority. I was just excited for the chance to speak with young folks about their experiences growing up in the most heavily contested region in the world.
A collaboration between The Elders and The Carter Center highlight the plight of youth who were born after Oslo Accords and who have seen three Gaza wars and no change in leadership since being born.
By Jane Kinninmont | The Elders | July 1, 2020
Policymakers working on this area need to be aware of the significant generational change that has taken place since the Oslo paradigm was established.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, traditionally seen as the central conflict in the Middle East, had dropped down the international policy agenda in recent years as progress seemed impossible and as other regional conflicts became far more violent. This year, however, the US president’s “vision for peace”, which largely adopts Israeli positions on the core conflict issues, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s related announcement that he would annex large parts of the occupied West Bank from July this year, have refocused international attention on the conflict and occupation.
In recent weeks there has been worldwide mobilization against annexation, uniting a disparate set of Jewish diaspora groups and scholars, former Israeli security officials, church leaders, US Democrats, European policymakers, and current and former world leaders, including Arab countries who want peace with Israel and see this as a potential dealbreaker. Trump’s rival in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, has said that annexation would “choke off” any hopes of peace. The international community is throwing its weight behind the idea of the two-state solution with an energy and commitment not seen for years. But can it find a constructive and realistic path to deliver two states?
Palestinians look down on the destroyed house of a Hamas militant in the Gaza Strip. Israel lobbied Australia to argue the ICC should not investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine. (photo: Hatem Moussa / AP)
Palestinian Australian activists put out a statement expressing collective solidarity with Palestinians and are met with censoring by silence from mainstream Australian media.
By Randa Abdel-Fattah | MeanJin Quarterly | July 10, 2020
What does anti-racism as practice—not a timeline of online platitudes and curated bursts of outrage—actually mean to the many academics, artists and public figures who are vocal about fighting settler colonial and racist violence, but scatter in the dust when anyone mentions Palestine?
It seems everyone is tweeting about freedom of speech. So let me tell you a story about freedom of speech and the exceptional case of Palestine.
In the days leading up to Israel’s proposed annexation of the West Bank, and in the shadow of Australia being one of only two countries to vote against a UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning the illegal annexation of significant parts of the occupied Palestinian West Bank by Israel, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed. I wondered why those who profess to care about racism, oppression and injustice rarely dare to tether their politics to Palestine. I can name countless public figures, public intellectuals, academics, artists and activists who have been rightly vocal about a long list of global human rights violations and social and racial justice struggles but have never once spoken up in defence of the rights of Palestinians.
In his ground-breaking book Silencing the Past, Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues that the West’s failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution—the most successful slave revolt in history—‘shows us that history is not simply the recording of facts and events, but a process of actively enforced silences, some unconscious, others quite deliberate’.
HolyLandJustice.org 
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