HolyLandJustice.org

Sat, Apr 14, 2018Fri, Apr 13, 2018

300 meters in Gaza: Snipers, burning tires and a fence

drone-image-1200 — A protest in Khan Younis on Mar 30. The photographer, Yasser Murtaja, was killed by an Israeli sniper in the same location the following week. (photo: Yasser Murtaja, Ain Media)

A fence that divides Israel and Gaza has become the latest flashpoint in the decades-old conflict.

By David Halbfinger, Iyad Abuheweila and Jugal Patel | The New York Times | Apr 13, 2018

Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants, and marching on the fence highlights their desire to reclaim the lands and homes from which they were displaced 70 years ago in the war surrounding Israel’s creation.

A fence that divides Israel and Gaza has become the latest flashpoint in the decades-old conflict, with Israeli soldiers unleashing lethal force against mostly unarmed Arab protesters who have been demonstrating every Friday for the past several weeks.

The image above shows how each side is arrayed in Khan Younis, one of five demonstration sites where 34 Palestinians have been killed since the protests began nearly three weeks ago.

The protests resumed on Friday, and the Palestinians plan to keep the weekly protests going with large turnouts until May 15, when many plan to try to cross the fence en masse. The Gazans are protesting Israel’s blockade, which has been choking off the impoverished coastal strip for more than 10 years. They also want to reassert the rights of refugees and their descendants to reclaim their ancestral lands in Israel, 70 years after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced.

Continue reading “300 meters in Gaza: Snipers, burning tires and a fence”

Fri, Apr 13, 2018Fri, Mar 9, 2018

Film: Disturbing the Peace (Fri, Apr 27)

disturbing-the-peace-2

Pushing for Change: Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series V

“Disturbing the Peace” is a story of the human potential unleashed when we stop participating in a story that no longer serves us, and with the power of our convictions, risk and push to actions that create new possibilities. This film follows former enemy combatants who have joined together to challenge the status quo and say “Enough.”


	Date:	Friday, Apr 27, 2018
	Time:	7:00 – 9:00 pm
	Location:	Bloedel Hall St. Mark’s Cathedral 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event website
	Admission:	Free

Event Details

Our concern is to help balance the limited and confusing media coverage of the Holy Land. We use compelling films as an entry point for reflection and discussion. As Christians, we respond to Christ’s call to seek justice and love the oppressed. As Americans, we ask: Can we reconcile this calling with our government’s massive financial support of Israeli military operations? We hope the time will come when Jews, Muslims and Christians will again come together in harmony in the Holy Land.

In this series, we see how people pushed to bring about a safe country for the Jewish people, and how today others are still push- ing for safety and change. Do our efforts for change lead to peace and justice . . . or not?

More information here →

Thu, Apr 12, 2018Fri, Mar 9, 2018

Film: In the Image (Tomorrow)

amneh

Pushing for Change: Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series V

This film explores the daily lives of Palestinian women living in the West Bank. It portrays their stories in a novel and eye-opening manner through footage captured by the women themselves. Their courage is inspiring as they persist in working for change — and to pave the way for future peace in the region.


	Date:	Friday, Apr 13, 2018
	Time:	7:00 – 9:00 pm
	Location:	Bloedel Hall St. Mark’s Cathedral 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event website
	Admission:	Free

Event Details

More information here →

Wed, Apr 11, 2018Tue, Apr 10, 2018

“Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot”

Palestinians Israel — Protesters wave Palestinians flags in front of Israeli solders on Gaza’s border with Israel, east of Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, Apr 4, 2018. (photo: Adel Hana / AP)

Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem has launched a campaign titled “Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot,” calling on Israeli troops to refuse orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators.

By Elliott Gabriel | Mint Press News | Apr 6, 2018

“Our legitimate protest against Israeli military occupation, colonization and apartheid is granted in international law and must be protected by the international community. . . . The 70-year-old practice of Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people must end.”
— Dr. Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to Washington

Tens of thousands of residents in the besieged Gaza Strip plan on returning to the Israeli-controlled border Friday [Apr 6] in defiance of menacing promises from Tel Aviv to use massive and disproportionate force. The event will occur exactly one week after the Israelis massacred 17 unarmed demonstrators with live ammunition on Palestinian Land Day.

The protest is the latest in a six-week-long set of nonviolent protests meant to commemorate the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people and the absorption of ancestral Palestinian land by the country now known as Israel.

The series of events will last until the 15^th of May, a date making the 70^th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel — known to Palestinians as Nakba Day, or “The Day of Catastrophe” — when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were brutally displaced by Israeli militia in 1948.

Continue reading ““Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot””

Tue, Apr 10, 2018Sun, Mar 11, 2018

Inspiring Hope: The Kids4Peace Seattle Annual Benefit (Apr 24)

Please join our brothers and sisters at Join Kids4Peace Seattle for their fifth annual spring celebration!


	Date:	Tuesday, Apr 24, 2017
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	Temple De Hirsch Sinai 1441 16^th Ave Seattle, WA 98122
	Information:	Event information here → Email questions here →
	Tickets:	$50 per person Register here →

Event Details

Help us recognize the many successes of the past year as we also look forward with excitement to upcoming programs. You will hear directly from youth involved in Kids4Peace and get updates on our work in the US and Jerusalem.

Tickets are $50 per person; there will be an opportunity to make an additional pledge of support at the event. The ticket price is fully tax-deductible, and all donations go directly to support the work of Kids4Peace as we develop a new generation of peace leaders.

Wine and coffee will be served, along with a delicious dessert buffet. Continue reading “Inspiring Hope: The Kids4Peace Seattle Annual Benefit (Apr 24)”

Tue, Apr 10, 2018Tue, Apr 10, 2018

I’m not ashamed to be Israeli — but I’m disgusted with having become Pharaoh

730403452 — Palestinian paramedics carry a protester injured during clashes with Israeli forces following a tent city gathering at the Israel-Gaza border, Apr 2, 2018. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP)

Living in Israel has turned me into a person who can live with a government that relates to African asylum-seekers and millions of Palestinians as property.

By Bradley Burston | Haaretz | Apr 2, 2018

Living in Israel has hardened my heart. It has made me into a person who cannot believe that Israel will do the right thing. That Israel will make any effort at all to even begin treat the true cancer in our body — the occupation.

The best people I have ever met live in Israel.

They are tireless. They come in all colors and creeds. Their reservoirs of hope, goodness, giving for others, respecting the Other, striving for a better, more human, society — despite everything, despite hatred and graft and incitement and ill-will — are as boundless as they are inexplicable.

Then there is Caroline Glick.

Continue reading “I’m not ashamed to be Israeli — but I’m disgusted with having become Pharaoh”

Mon, Apr 9, 2018Mon, Apr 9, 2018

Israeli forces kill photojournalist at Gaza rally

af9eb61e9daf4750bc3e348a1c1a2f37_18 — Yaser Murtaja, 30, was shot in the abdomen in Khuza’a in the southern Gaza Strip on Apr 6. 2018. (photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters)

Seven other journalists were wounded in Friday’s protest.

By Al Jazeera | Apr 7, 2017

The Palestinian health ministry reported that on Friday 491 people were injured by live ammunition after Israeli forces fired on protesters who had gathered near the Israeli border in the besieged Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian journalist shot by Israeli forces during a mass demonstration along the Gaza border has died of his wounds.

Yaser Murtaja, a photographer with the Gaza-based Ain Media agency, was shot in the stomach in Khuza’a in the south of the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Murtaja, 30, was hit despite wearing a blue flak jacket marked with the word “press,” indicating he was a journalist.

Continue reading “Israeli forces kill photojournalist at Gaza rally”

Mon, Apr 9, 2018

This is Israel at 70: Zionism as Racism

1-5975665-3212737108 — Asylum seekers protest at the Rwanda Embassy in Herzliya, Israel, Feb 7, 2018. (photo: Moti Milrod / Haaretz)

It hurts me to write what I’m about to. But it also hurts me to live in this place today.

By Bradley Burston | Haaretz | Apr 4, 2018

Don’t get me wrong. I understand where much of this comes from. Jews of all ethnicities bear the scars and the genetic memory of every manner of heinous racism, up to and including genocide.

It’s all too true, at the same time, that in a tragic given of human nature, the abused is at great risk of becoming an abuser.

This is Zionism as racism. This is Israel at 70.

This is a country which so demeans and dismisses and conflates Palestinian lives, that after a horrendous casualty rate in massive demonstrations at the Gaza border over the weekend, Eli Hazan, a spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, referred to the men, women, children and elderly protesters camped hundreds of meters from the border fence, and told i24 News Monday without flinching:

“All 30,000 are legitimate targets.”

Continue reading “This is Israel at 70: Zionism as Racism”

Sun, Apr 8, 2018Thu, Apr 5, 2018

May is likely to be an ugly month in Gaza

1600x-1 — Palestinian using a slingshot at a protest in Gaza. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP / Getty Images)

When an entire people have concluded they have nothing to hope for and nothing to lose — that all their dreams will remain deferred for the foreseeable future — an explosion may be inevitable.

By Hussein Ibish | Bloomberg View | Apr 3, 2018

Both Palestinian Islamists and nationalists are out of options, out of ideas, and out of luck. The Palestinian public is out of patience and nearly out of hope. That’s a combustible formula.

The violence last Friday in Gaza, in which 18 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli troops near the border, was the worst since the war of 2014. But everything is in place for a significant escalation in coming weeks, particularly in mid-May.

A series of major tripwires are clustered tightly together: commemorations of the 70^th anniversary of Israel’s founding on May 14–15; mourning by Palestinians who regard the same event as their “catastrophe” and observe May 15 as “Nakba Day”; and the scheduled opening of a US Embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, courtesy of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Things are likely to get worse because Palestinians increasingly feel they have nothing left to lose. The “March of Return” last week drew unprecedented crowds of up to 30,000 Palestinians from all parts of Gaza society. In a festive and surreal atmosphere, vendors sold ice cream to picnicking families as young men risked their lives by approaching the border.

Continue reading “May is likely to be an ugly month in Gaza”

Sat, Apr 7, 2018Fri, Mar 9, 2018

Film: In the Image (Friday)

amneh

Pushing for Change: Mideast Focus Ministry Film Series V


	Date:	Friday, Apr 13, 2018
	Time:	7:00 – 9:00 pm
	Location:	Bloedel Hall St. Mark’s Cathedral 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event website
	Admission:	Free

Event Details

More information here →