HolyLandJustice.org

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Mideast Focus Ministry for their First Friday Film series.

	Date:	Friday, Apr 5, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	St. Mark’s Cathedral Bloedel Hall 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	Free Admission

Event Details

This is Home is an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in America and struggling to find their footing. Displaced from their homes and separated from loved ones, they are given eight months of assistance from the International Rescue Committee to become self-sufficient. As they learn to adapt to challenges, including the newly imposed travel ban, their strength and resilience are tested. It is a universal story, highlighted by humor and heartbreak, about what it’s like to start over, no matter the obstacles.

After surviving the traumas of war, the families arrive in Baltimore, Maryland and are met with a new set of trials. They attend cultural orientation classes and job training sessions where they must “learn America” — everything from how to take public transportation to negotiating new gender roles — all in an ever-changing and increasingly hostile political environment. Their goals are completely relatable: find a job, pay the bills, and make a better life for the next generation. Continue reading “Film: This is Home — A Refugee Story (Apr 5)”

State tells court it will retroactively legalize structures in Alei Zahav, invoking new legal mechanism for the first time.

By Yotam Berger | Haaretz | Feb 10, 2019

According to a Civil Administration document submitted in the past to the High Court, there are at least 1,048 structures built on West Bank land mistakenly thought to be state lands. According to the same document, 1,122 additional structures in the West Bank were built in breach of planning laws more than 20 years ago.

The state informed the Jerusalem District Court that it will retroactively legalize structures built in part on private Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Alei Zahav.

In doing so, the state will for the first time invoke a legal mechanism the attorney general approved in December, senior sources say. Alei Zahav is a secular settlement located close to Route 5, which links Ariel and the Greater Tel Aviv area.

According to the legal mechanism approved in December, it is permissible to retroactively authorize illegal construction on private Palestinian land if the land was allotted “in good faith,” meaning if the state erroneously believed that it was state lands when it allotted it.

Continue reading “Israel says will legalize West Bank homes built on private Palestinian land”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Rachel Corrie Foundation for a day of advocacy for Palestinian Rights.

	Date:	Friday, Mar 15, 2019
	Time:	9:00 am – 4:30 pm
	Location:	United Churches of Olympia Social Hall 110 11th Ave SE Olympia, WA  98501
	Information & Registration:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	$10 suggested donation

Event Details

Our goals during this fun, action-packed day are:

• to strengthen statewide organizing for advocacy on Palestine
• to continue to inform and educate state legislators about issues related to Palestinian rights.

Schedule

• Gathering and Socializing: 9:00–10:00 am
• Welcome and Introductions 10:00–10:05 am
• Presentations & Training: 10:05 am
• Lunch with Legislative District Groups: 11:30 am
• Walk and Transport to State Capitol: 12:15–12:30 pm
• Group Photo in Front of Capitol: 12:30–12:45 pm
• Visits and Deliveries of Materials to Legislative Offices 1:00–3:00 pm
• Return to United Churches Location: 3:00–3:15 pm
• Debriefs: 3:15–4:00 pm
• Closing and Collecting Ideas, Contacts, Evaluations, and Plans for Follow-up and Ongoing Work: 4:00 pm
• Homeward or on to dinner in Olympia! 4:30 pm

More information here →

Palestinian villagers living in the West Bank saw their dream of running water come true until the Israeli Civil Administration put an end to it.

By Amira Hass | Haaretz | Feb 22, 2019

‘I asked why they demolished the water lines.’ . . . One of the Border Police officers answered him, in English, telling him it was done ‘to replace Arabs with Jews.’

The dream that came true, in the form of a two-inch water line, was too good to be true. For about six months, 12 Palestinian West Bank villages in the South Hebron Hills enjoyed clean running water. That was until February 13, when staff from the Israeli Civil Administration, accompanied by soldiers and Border Police and a couple of bulldozers, arrived.

The troops dug up the pipes, cut and sawed them apart and watched the jets of water that spurted out. About 350 cubic meters of water were wasted. Of a 20 kilometer long (12 mile) network, the Civil Administration confiscated remnants and sections of a total of about 6 kilometers of piping. They loaded them on four garbage trucks emblazoned with the name of the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan on them.

The demolition work lasted six and a half hours. Construction of the water line network had taken about four months. It had been a clear act of civil rebellion in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King against one of the most brutal bans that Israel imposes on Palestinian communities in Area C, the portion of the West Bank under full Israeli control. It bars Palestinians from hooking into existing water infrastructure.

Continue reading “For 6 months, these Palestinian villages had running water — Israel put a stop to it”

Pitting marginalized groups against each other poses a real threat to Jews, Muslims, and Blacks alike in our country.

Jordan Goldwarg, Aneelah Afzali | Common Dreams | Feb 27, 2019

It is important to ask why marginalized community members are the main targets of outrage, and who benefits when marginalized groups are pitted against each other.

As an American Jew and an American Muslim, we find the cycle of attacks on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour, Angela Davis, and others deeply troubling. These attacks reflect a weaponization of the “anti-Semitism” charge against certain individuals (especially Muslim and/or Black leaders supporting Palestinian human rights), which turns progressive allies against each other and ignores the real source of physical threat to our Jewish (and Muslim and Black) siblings.

There is no doubt that anti-Semitism is alive and well. The FBI reported a 37% increase in anti-Semitic crimes from 2016 to 2017 (the most recent year for which data is available). Islamophobia has also increased sharply in recent years, as we face some of the highest levels of anti-Muslim hate crimes in our nation’s history along with hateful rhetoric and policies from the highest levels of our government (such as the Muslim Ban). And Black Americans are still victims of hate crimes more than any other group in our country, with a 16% increase from 2016 to 2017.

Continue reading “Progressives must stop weaponizing charges of anti-Semitism against critics of Israel”

Hardened by terror and frustrated by failed peace efforts, Israelis don’t want to hear about the evils of occupation or ways of ending it.

By Chemi Shalev | Haaretz | Feb 17, 2019

While the world might regard the occupation and Palestinian violence as chicken and egg, Israelis have managed to convince themselves it’s the other way round — It’s not the occupation that sows the seeds of terror and violence, but rather the Palestinian propensity for terror and violence that justifies and mandates continued occupation.

As of 2019, there are 6.7 million Jews in Israel, the occupied territories and Gaza, and 6.7 million Arabs, according to the latest official estimates.

Of the Arabs — or Palestinians, if you will — nearly 1.9 million are Israeli citizens, another 1.9 million live under a ruthless Hamas regime fixated on fighting Israel and 2.9 million live in the hybrid West Bank, under military occupation or the semi-autonomous rule of the Palestinian Authority.

An objective observer might surmise that Israel is caught between a rock and hard place, with a sword hanging over its head to boot. It won’t recapture Gaza but won’t release it from its stranglehold either. It won’t surrender the West Bank, for both religious and security reasons — and because Israelis are convinced that it would soon turn into another Gaza as well.

Continue reading “Israeli elections and the big, fat Palestinian elephant in the room”

Tight restrictions on foreign travel and frequent electricity outages are among the many obstacles facing the territory’s burgeoning IT industry.

By Josie Glausiusz | UnDark | Feb 20, 2019

For the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, freedom of movement is a routine challenge. And for technology entrepreneurs and business owners whose livelihoods depend on interaction with the outside world, that challenge is especially daunting. ‘Living in Gaza is like facing a wall, all the time,’ says Ali.

In January 2017, Bassma Ali, the cofounder and business manager of GGateway, an information technology company based in Gaza, was invited to Laos to take part in three weeks of training offered by Digital Divide Data, an organization that provides career development opportunities for underserved communities.

On the day of her departure from Gaza — the embattled 25-mile-long strip of land currently under a decade-long blockade by Israel and Egypt — Ali had to pass through three checkpoints to reach Israel. First, there was Arba’a-Arba’a (Arabic for “Four-Four”), controlled by Hamas, the militant Islamic Palestinian group governing Gaza; second, Khamsa-Khamsa (“Five-Five”), manned by Fatah, the secular Palestinian national movement; and finally, the Erez border crossing, overseen by the Israel Defense Forces.

Even though Ali had applied two months earlier for an Israeli permit to leave Gaza with the help of a representative from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), her permit only reached her at Khamsa-Khamsa at 2:57 pm, just three minutes before the closure of Erez. “I was running to reach the Israeli gate” half a mile away, Ali recalls. “When they closed the gate, I was in tears.”

Continue reading “Boxed in: The struggles of Gaza’s technology entrepreneurs”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Mideast Focus Ministry for their First Friday Film series.

	Date:	Friday, Mar 1, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	St. Mark’s Cathedral Bloedel Hall 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	Free Admission

Event Details

A compelling, ground-level immersion into the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time, Sky & Ground accompanies the Nabi clan, a large, extended Syrian-Kurdish family, as they painstakingly make their way from their home in Aleppo, bombed out by the war, to the Idomeni refugee camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia. Their goal is Berlin, where they will reunite with family members and seek asylum but first they must make the arduous and dangerous journey through Serbia, Hungary and Austria.

Continue reading “Film: Sky and Ground (Friday)”

The goal of Israel and the US is not to end the occupation or secure equal rights for all citizens of a single democratic state. Their preferred option is apartheid.

By Saeb Erekat | Project Syndicate | Feb 12, 2019

The US and Israeli governments may truly believe they are fulfilling a divine prophecy by denying the Palestinian people their rights, or they may merely be appeasing the extremists among their electorates. Either way, they fail to address what the endgame looks like, perhaps because they know the world will not accept it.

Since December 6, 2017, US President Donald Trump’s administration has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, closed the Palestinian mission in Washington, DC, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, and defunded humanitarian support provided by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), among other steps. And yet we Palestinians are hounded by claims that the US really wants to pursue peace and that somehow the only problem has been our reluctance.

Nobody can claim that we did not engage Trump’s administration. We held almost 40 meetings during 2017, answered all questions, and put forward our vision of peace based on the two-state solution. But the US envoys always refused to engage in matters of substance. In fact, on the eve of a visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Washington, the Trump administration broke its commitment not to take unilateral steps and announced the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Whatever the reason — ideological bias, lack of diplomatic experience, or both — the Trump team ended up destroying any prospects for the US to play a positive peace-making role.‫

Continue reading “Apartheid is not peace”