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Tent of Nations is an educational and environmental farm next to the village of Nahalin, on a hill top southwest of Bethlehem. The farm has been in Daoud Nassar’s family since 1916 when his grandfather purchased the land known as Dahers’ Vineyard.   For more than 25 years the Nassar family has been embroiled in a legal battle to protect their property from confiscation by the Israeli government. Despite the frustration and constant struggles, they have made their farm—the last Palestinian-controlled hilltop in the area—a symbol of peace simply by farming their land and welcoming guests and volunteers of all nationalities and religions.

By Daoud Nassar – Facebook | May 21, 2021

It was appalling to witness the rapid spread of the fire to more fields damaging thousands of olive, almond, and grape trees.

Today was a very hard day. While we were on our way to the farm after picking up some farming tools from Bethlehem for ploughing, we received a phone call that left us with no words. The neighboring farmers informed us that our farm was set on fire. Our day took a sudden shift as we rushed to the farm, tried to secure water to extinguish the fire with our very limited sources on the farm, and call for help! It was appalling to witness the rapid spread of the fire to more fields damaging thousands of olive, almond, and grape trees. Thankfully, we were able to control the situation with the help of family members and nearby villagers after spending seven hours in the smoke.

It was very devastating to see that all of the new trees that we planted and watered for the past five months were gone in seconds. To this moment, we do not know the cause of the fire or who was behind it. We will inform you as soon as we know more.

Continue reading “Tent of Nations farm set on fire”

Baseless claims that US journalists helped launder about the Associated Press and Hamas prompted a right-wing smear campaign

By Matthew Petti  | Responsible Statecraft | May 21, 2021

Recent college graduate Emily Wilder was fired from the Associated Press on Thursday after right-wing activists dug up her previous involvement in Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, two pro-Palestinian campus organizations.

It started with an Israeli bomb smashing into the Associated Press offices in Gaza. It ended with an AP journalist fired for her pro-Palestinian activism while she was a college student.

The Israeli military has justified its May 15 attack on al-Jalaa Tower — which hosted numerous foreign press bureaus in Gaza — by claiming that the Palestinian militant group Hamas had offices in the building. The Associated Press has denied that claim, and Israel has not publicly provided evidence to support its side of the story.

But right-wing U.S. media and a disgruntled former AP employee have attempted to drum up justification for the airstrike by painting the American news agency as a partisan, pro-Hamas source. Their claims have been given airtime by mainstream journalists, putting the AP — rather than the foreign military that bombed it — on the defensive.

Continue reading “How an Israeli attack in Gaza led to the firing of an AP reporter”

A Palestinian citizen in Israel lives as a second-class citizen, denied basic rights.

By Nimer Sultany | The Guardian | May 19, 2021

In the context of Israel’s rule over us, however, coexistence is a fiction that conceals a reality of separate and unequal lives.

On Tuesday, in my hometown of Tira, which is inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the shops were closed and the streets were empty. A general strike had been declared in protest over Israel’s policies, whether the ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah, the storming of al-Aqsa mosque, or the onslaught on Gaza.

As the Palestinian death toll continues to rise, commentators lament the shattering of coexistence inside Israel between Palestinian and Jewish citizens. Yet in my experience as a Palestinian citizen in Israel, no such coexistence existed in the first place. Coexistence implies a background of equality, freedom and mutual respect. In the context of Israel’s rule over us, however, coexistence is a fiction that conceals a reality of separate and unequal lives.

Continue reading “Peaceful coexistence in Israel hasn’t been shattered – it’s always been a myth”

This conflict won’t be resolved without an honest accounting of the roots of occupation and exclusion.

By Alice Rothchild | The Seattle Times | May 19, 2021

Palestinians have clearly reached a breaking point after suffering from 72 years of racist and exclusionary policies by the Israeli government, its ongoing seizure of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the increasingly rightward, tending toward fascistic, political parties.

Gaza is roughly a 26-by-6-mile strip of land with 2 million people living under a brutal 14-year siege where, until last week, they were struggling to control a rampant COVID-19 outbreak. Now, in just nine days, using the most advanced and lethal weaponry the United States can provide, an estimated 219 Gazans have been killed, including 63 children, 1,500 injured with 72,000 internally displaced. Dozens of educational facilities, six hospitals and 11 primary health care centers have been damaged, and water, sanitation and electrical infrastructure bombed. Israel is not allowing the entry of vaccines, and it damaged the only testing lab. There would be no available hospital beds and a shortage of critical medications and oxygen if someone were to be diagnosed with the virus.

Continue reading “Palestinian oppression and despair in stark relief in Netanyahu’s war”

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”

We must be clear: What started this immediate horror was the intensification of Israel’s ethnic-cleansing campaign against Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

By Jeremy Scahill | The Intercept | May 14, 2021

It is an effort to “both sides” what is an asymmetric campaign of terror waged by a nuclear power against a people who have no state, no army, no air force, no navy, and an almost nonexistent civilian infrastructure.

Warning: This article contains images of violence and death.

The U.S.-backed, armed, and funded extreme right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is currently engaged in a systemic collective punishment campaign against the people of Gaza. More than two million of them are trapped in an open-air prison camp with nowhere to run or hide from this scorched earth operation. Children are being slaughtered. Civilian residential buildings are being razed to the ground. Meanwhile ethno-nationalist militias are rampaging through the streets of Israel and terrorizing their Arab neighbors in a campaign of organized mob violence. We must be clear: what started this immediate horror was the intensification of Israel’s ethnic-cleansing campaign against Palestinians in East Jerusalem, forcibly evicting people from their homes to hand them over to Israeli settlers. The incendiary situation was then exacerbated during a Ramadan siege by Israeli forces at one of the holiest sites in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

Continue reading “But what about Hamas’s rockets?”

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”

A Jewish voice makes the case that the wars will not end until Palestinians can return home.

By Peter Beinart | The New York Times | May 12, 2021

The East Jerusalem evictions are so combustible because they continue a pattern of expulsion that is as old as Israel itself.

Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba.

Continue reading “Palestinian refugees deserve to return home. Jews should understand.”