Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Here facing immorality

By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | February 3, 2013

Here is where Israeli colonial settlements continue to expand on our lands. Here is where Israeli elites make billions from injustice while nature and people suffer. Here is the forefront of a global struggle. Here is where western hypocrisy gets exposed. Rhetoric about democracy and liberty in Syria and Iran is stripped naked when people see Western supported colonialism, racism and subjugation in Palestine. Here is where billions of Western taxpayer money is used to destroy life while enriching land thieves and war criminals. Here where we lost most of our land to colonial settler activity and suffer regularly from racist settler attacks. Here is where morality is shed daily because of paranoia and inferiority/superiority complexes (chosen but eternally victimized Jewish “people”). Here is where immorality has become a norm of society (see good analytic piece in Haaretz below). Here is where yesterday the Israeli occupation army and racist colonial settlers attacked villagers in Burin. Several Palestinians were injured (one 16-year old Palestinian was shot by live ammunition from settlers). 18 were brutally arrested/kidnapped including our friend Ashraf Aburahma from Bilin. Ashraf was himself arrested many times in nonviolent demonstrations. In one videotaped event, he was handcuffed, blindfolded and THEN shot at close range by occupation soldiers.

But here also is where we must and we will change things. Here the struggle goes on (La Luta Continue, tastimur almasira) to hang on to our humanity. We Palestinians with help of people of conscience from around the world must do better to challenge immorality (including “mental occupation”). We must work harder to undermine apartheid and repression. More people come to visit and participate with us in our struggle thus lighting candles in the darkness. We must accelerate this and be more bold. Nothing scares the elites in the apartheid state or their Western and Arab/Palestinian collaborators than actions like civil disobedience and BDS (boycotts, divestments, and sanctions) and other forms of practical resistance. There are signs of a new uprising/intifada. It will be the 13th or 14th wave/uprising on the way to liberty. We hope it is a global uprising against injustice and that is why many of us talk with internationals on a daily basis about morality, justice, and human rights. Of course there will be pain along the way (as happened yesterday in Burin) because no freedom is acquired without struggle and sacrifices. May the families of those thousands of martyrs killed in the struggle be comforted. May the injured heel. May the prisoners be released (some are now close to death as they engaged in a hunger strike). May all the suffering end. May more people shed immorality and join us to work to accelerate the end of injustice.

Do visit Palestine frequently even if only in your mind.

Just one story of thousands in the land of immorality: The struggle of Burin village

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/14847

Pictures

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.560035280673447.130173.136633479680298&type=3

Videos before the evictions and arrest but shows settlers throwing stones

https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=K5mtU5SPRYU

Video of beating and kicking a Palestinian during the arrests

Standing defiant. Khalid Daragmah’s family protect their land in a sea of settlements

http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/resources/interviews/5144-standing-defiant-khalid-daragmahs-family-protect-their-land-in-a-sea-of-settlements

Follow-up: In my talks and in taking delegations around, I sometimes mention some things which happened in the past like the story of the “fugitive cows” in Beit Sahour or the destruction of a playground in Beit Jala. Here and in future emails I will send some follow-up on these stories and on stories I had shared in previous emails. They are not only relevant to those who heard directly from me about these things but to the thousands of others who receive those emails.

The Story of 18 fugitive cows of Beit Sahour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJcfJTELmoM

Video of the Israeli destruction of a playground to build an apartheid wall on Palestinian land

Analytical pieces

Never Again – unconditionally:

“As Jews, with our own painful history of oppression, we are compelled to speak out against human rights violations committed by the State of Israel – in our name – against the Palestinian people.” These are the first words of a group of South African Jews in their public statement in the Mail & Guardian of 14 December 2012. They recognize not only their own wounds and humanity…………

http://marthiemombergblog.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/never-again-unconditionally/

Big Brother: When secrecy becomes a norm in Israel, it comes as a price premium

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/big-brother-when-secrecy-becomes-a-norm-in-israel-it-comes-with-a-price.premium-1.500560

Related articles

February 4, 2013 Posted by | Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Naksa

By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | Jun 4, 2012

It seems like yesterday that we watched Israeli tanks rolling down the hills towards our sleepy town of Beit Sahour 45 years ago today.  As a child it was the most frightening sight.  The second stage of the Zionist expansion on the land of Palestine unleashed terror that our generation had not experienced but my parents generation had during eth Nakba when between January 1948 and the end of 1949, some 530 villages and towns were ethnically cleansed. The changes I witnessed the 45 years since the “6 day” invasion of 1967 have been nothing short of monumental. Those hills that the tanks rolled down on are all now filled with colonial settlements that scar the ancient landscape. The Israeli quarries have literally dug up other hills and trucked stone and soil away to build the “Jewish state” while destroying Palestinian lives. But I do not want to take time here to write of these violations. I think anyone can find thousands of documents and reports from independent human rights groups and international agencies describing the horrors of colonization, apartheid, and occupation in this “holy land”.  Nor will I address how people who teach their children about Jewish suffering over the ages teach them that it is OK to inflict this suffering on native/indigenous people. Nor do I want to write on this occasion of the treachery of western countries who profess human rights and international law actually become complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nor do I want to address the treachery of Arab leaders (yes including some Palestinians) who were complicit in helping make 7 million of us refugees or displaced people.  I do want to talk about us, the people, and especially about mental occupation.

Occupiers/colonizers are of course always dependent not just on military might but also on propaganda and psychological manipulation to reach their goals.  For example, from the late 19th century, the Zionists successfully infiltrated the minds of their victims with notions like “Arabs” and/vs. “Jews”. With this one simple concept, Zionists succeeded in 1) equating a linguistic group with a religion and elevating Jewishness to a supposed national structure (“a people”), 2) removing Arab Jews as a viable group whose allegiance lies naturally with their fellow Arabic speaking people, 3) fostering anti-Jewish feelings (mistakenly called anti-Semitism) to help their cause in conflating Zionism with Judaism. Before that they coined and popularized the term anti-Semitism to confuse the Europeans and claim they are Semites. From those early efforts in the 19th century, the people of the world were subjected to sustained intensive efforts at brainwashing.

We actually understand these propaganda efforts as natural and expected in efforts to propel racist ideologies.  What we do not understand is why many native Palestinians accepted defeat and even adopted the Zionized version of history.  Even some of our school textbooks perpetuate the mythologies that keep the Zionist nightmare a reality.  It is easy to keep it alive when we, the victims keep the myth of the exodus from Egypt to Masada to the falsified history of Josephus to the suppression of our Canaanite ancestry to the notion that Jewishness is somehow biological.  Some of this is due to those who are religious confusing metaphors and myths with historiography.  Some of it is due to ignorance: e.g. ignorance of the fact that the Philistines were actually Canaanite people and not from Crete or that both ancient Arabic and Hebrew were dialects of Canaanite Aramaic.   Some of it is pure foolishness; for example that somehow we can “return” Palestine to an idealized (fictional) Islamic or Jewish state.  Would it not be better to admit the wrong that was done to the native people, do some restorative justice, and begin to discuss among ourselves how we Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, and others can live TOGETHER in a country in full equality? How about a new joint political movement to reform and to dismantle the dysfunctional Israeli and Palestinian political structures so as to build a new reality?  Aren’t 64 years of Nakba and 45 years of Naksa long enough? There are 11.5 million Palestinains in the world and billions of fellow human beings who know what is right to contend with at best half a million deluded Jewish Zionists (and the equally deluded Christian Zionists who support them).  What prevents justice (ie. peace) is apathy and ignorance.  Is it not time to shed these?

Cover-up of the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. We should remember the victims of the Israeli attack 45 years ago and the cowardice of the US government which succumbed to the Israel lobby and buried the incident http://www.ussliberty.org

The 2011 Humanitarian Overview addresses the key advocacy priorities identified by the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), the main humanitarian coordinating body for UN agencies and NGO partners in the the occupied Palestinian territories. http://www.ochaopt.org/annual/

Israel is new South Africa as boycott calls increase

After Madonna began her world tour there last week, campaigners urge cutting of cultural tieshttp://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/israel-is-new-south-africa-as-boycott-calls-increase-7813538.html

Boycott Israeli Blood Diamonds, Dublin 2-6-2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPb5bFEJX7c

Don’t Let Mahmoud Sarsak Die – Act Now!: http://freehaifa.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/dont-let-mahmoud-sarsak-die-act-now/

ACTION:  Consider introducing resolutions for boycotts, divestment and sanctions at your union, church, organization, group, political party, association. You may also start a petition to have your town, city council, state or other government entity divest from Israel and companies that support the Israeli apartheid system.  To help, we put together some relevant information on this link http://www.qumsiyeh.org/calltobds/ and will try to keep it updated for use in promoting BDS (send me anything you think should be added)

Here are other links with lots of information
http://www.pacbi.org/
http://www.bdsmovement.org/
http://www.kairospalestine.ps/
http://qumsiyeh.org/boycottsanddivestment/
http://www.christianzionism.org/
http://www.righttoenter.ps
http://www.qumsiyeh.org/christianlinks/

Related articles

June 4, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment