Who says Palestinian resistance is dead?

Tahrir Square, Cairo, May 2011.
(Ahmed Asad / APA images)

For decades, Palestine was the focus of nearly every protest in the Arab world. It was the acceptable outlet of frustration for almost every regime in the region, the bone they would throw their frustrated masses. But it was also the vehicle for mobilization and a training ground for political organizing that became useful for activists later on.
To be clear, none of this is to say that much of the emotion and solidarity was not genuine; most often, it was very much so. However, protests for Palestine or against Israel were also instances of populations of Arab countries projecting their own dissatisfaction in a politically “safe” way in light of the repressive nature of the regimes under which they lived.
Recently, while trading stories with a Syrian friend about protests, she recalled that her first protest as a child had been one for Palestine — in fact most of the protests she had participated in or witnessed growing up as an Arab living in the West were about Palestine. I nodded and smiled, not at all surprised. The reality is that Palestine, for better or worse, was the issue that most Arabs — both living in the Arab world or in their respective diaspora communities — spent a majority of their lives protesting.

Why is the BBC so afraid of the word "Palestine"?

Aza Raskin / Flickr

This week, the BBC issued its final ruling on a controversy which has been raging for nearly a year after the words “Free Palestine” were censored from a freestyle rap played on Radio 1Xtra.
Appearing on the popular Charlie Sloth Hip Hop M1X last February, the artist Mic Righteous performed a rap which included the lyrics: “I can scream Free Palestine for my pride/still pray for peace.”
BBC producers replaced the word ‘Palestine’ with the sound of breaking glass and this is the version that was aired and which can be seen on a video on the BBC website (the censorship occurs at 2:59).
The edited performance was repeated in April on the same show.

BBC upholds censorship decision

Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has spent the last eight months trying to find out why the decision to censor an artist who raised the issue of Palestine was made.
During the course of a long correspondence, the BBC’s head of editorial standards for audio and music, Paul Smith, wrote that the show’s producer “did not edit out the word ‘Palestine’ because it was offensive — referencing Palestine is fine, but implying that it is not free is the contentious issue.”
In that single sentence, a senior BBC executive revealed the BBC’s complete disdain for the Palestinians and their suffering, and its shameful disregard for international law when it is being broken by Israel.
The United Nations is clear in its recognition of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and UN Resolution 242 calls for the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank and Gaza. The chant “Free Palestine” is basically shorthand for the same demand.

"We won’t be silenced," say students arrested over Peres boycott call

Khalil Gharra (www.arabs48.com)

Three Palestinian students at the College of Engineering in Jerusalem (JCE) have been put under house arrest for a week and instructed not to contact any of their peers for using the social media website Facebook to urge a boycott of a speech by Israeli President Shimon Peres.
A couple of weeks ago, students received a message from the college authorities, notifying them of a visit by Peres scheduled for 10 January. The message emphasized that attendance during Peres’ speech was “compulsory.”
Three Palestinian students then posted on the college’s Facebook page that they would not attend the speech and asked others to follow suit. In response almost all the Palestinian students of the college boycotted the speech.
Following the event, the three students who urged the boycott were called for an interrogation at an Israeli police station. They were accused of threatening other students, as well as racism. They were then put under house arrest for a week, outside Jerusalem, and were instructed not to contact other students.

“Intense debate”

Khalil Gharra, one of the three targeted students, told The Electronic Intifada, “There was an intense debate on the Facebook page of the college’s first year students between students who rejected the college’s policy regarding the compulsory attendance of Peres’ speech and others who supported it.”

Study: Israel "retaliates" to Palestinian "provocation" in UK press

British press more often than not describe Israel as retaliating to Palestinian attacks. (Mohamed Al-Zanon/MaanImages)

A new study by Arab Media Watch demonstrates a strong tendency in the British press to represent Israel as “retaliating” in coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The study, the first to investigate this aspect of British press coverage of the conflict, examined a period from January to June 2008. It found that when the British press represents a party as retaliating or responding in the conflict, that party is Israel 72 percent of the time. The tabloid press showed a particularly marked bias, representing Israel as retaliating in 100 percent of all representations of “retaliation.”

New documentary presents shallow view of Arafat

“What would you sacrifice for what you believe in?” This is the tagline to a recently-launched 80-minute biopic of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the first in a series of documentaries entitled The Price of Kings, from London-based filmmakers Spirit Level. The series claims to “reveal the sacrifices made by some of the world’s most influential, controversial and powerful leaders,” offering “unrivaled access to the protagonists and close family members at the heart of modern history.”
In the case of Yasser Arafat, the filmmakers’ prize interviewee is his widow Suha. Her recollections start with childhood memories of Israeli military curfews imposed on her home city of Nablus, when the army was searching for “Abu Mohammed” — the guerrilla Arafat under one of his noms de guerre.

I saw Sabra hummus for sale at my high school cafeteria and decided to act

Boycott Sabra hummus flyers at DePaul University.
(Shirien Damra / The Electronic Intifada)

While walking through the salad bar in my school’s cafeteria a couple months ago, I noticed Sabra hummus for sale. It may look harmless on the surface; however, that could not be farther from the truth. Sabra hummus has become the target of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement because its mother company, the Strauss group, materially and financially supports the Israeli military.
When I saw Sabra on my school cafeteria shelves, I felt a lot of pressure to do something to get the product off my school’s shelves or at least convince my school to offer an alternative brand.
Not knowing where to start, I approached the lunch lady who works in the salad bar and explained to her the link between Sabra and Israel’s human rights violations. She told me she had already heard that Sabra supports the Israeli army human rights violations as a result of the Students for Justice in Palestine’s campaign at DePaul University in Chicago. She added that Sabra hummus was on backorder, meaning that she could not receive any more for the time being anyway, and that she would simply not order any more of the product. I was shocked at how easy ridding our cafeteria of Sabra hummus was.
I was mistaken. When I went back to school the next day, the cafeteria worker told me to provide her with proof of Sabra’s links to the Israeli military for her boss to see.

Palestinian families denied rights by Israel’s racist marriage laws

Taiseer Khatib with his children Yosra and Adnan.
(Dylan Collins / The Electronic Intifada)

One used to be able to take the Hijaz railway from Akka to Jenin and then to Nablus. The railway, built by Sultan Abdel Hamid II at the turn of the twentieth century, was intended to consolidate his own power over the Ottoman Empire, but perhaps its more lasting impact was to unify the inhabitants of Palestine.
Jenin and Akka are less than 50 kilometers away from each other, but in order to travel between the two cities one must pass through a military checkpoint positioned between the wall Israel is building in the West Bank and the rest of historic Palestine.
Taiseer Khatib, from Akka, and Lana, from Jenin, met in the midst of the second intifada, soon after the Israeli military demolished the Jenin refugee camp in what it named Operation Defensive Shield. Taiseer was visiting Jenin to collect information for a doctoral thesis he was preparing to start at York University in Canada.
“We first met in the ministry of health in Jenin. I wasn’t wearing the traditional dress. I was wearing some sandals and that caught her attention and so did my dialect and accent,” Taiseer remembers.
Their experiences of Israeli rule have been somewhat different.
Taiseer’s family history is defined by the Nakba  (catastrophe),  the ethnic cleansing that led to the formation of Israel in 1948.

Demanding justice for Yousef, a quiet boy killed by Israeli settlers

Yousef Ikhlayl, top left-hand corner, attending a demonstration in Beit Ommar less than six months before he was killed by Israeli settlers.
(Palestine Solidarity Project)

On 28 January 2011 at 6:30am, Yousef Ikhlayl, 17, went with his father Fakhri to their farmland on the outskirts of the West Bank village Beit Ommar, where they prepared the land around their grapevines. At approximately 7am, two groups of Israelis from the illegal settlements Bat Ayn and Kiryat Arba were taking a “hike” in the privately-owned Palestinian agricultural land belonging to the residents of Beit Ommar (“Palestinian killed in clashes with settlers near Hebron,” The Jerusalem Post, 29 January 2011).
There was no indication that the settlers were planning on shooting. Yousef’s father reported that the first shot fired by the settlers hit his son in the head. The settlers then began shooting in the air and the surrounding areas to prevent others from approaching, as his father screamed desperately for help.
Yousef was carried to a car that drove him out of the agricultural valley and to the main road, where an ambulance “rushed” him to the hospital in Hebron, passing two Israeli military checkpoints on the way. At the hospital, Yousef was put on a respirator, though he had no brain activity. He passed away soon after.
At his funeral the following day, as is common practice with the Israeli military involving martyr funerals, soldiers numbering in the hundreds invaded Beit Ommar and attacked the funeral with tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and even live ammunition, as the Palestine Solidarity Project reported (“Funeral of Yousef Ikhlayl attacked by Israeli military, dozens injured,” 29 January 2011).
The murder of Yousef Ikhlayl, the impunity with which the settlers acted and the military’s behavior at the funeral are common occurrences in the occupied West Bank. The death of a Palestinian, even a child, is rarely noted and quickly forgotten in much of the world. The killing of Yousef was, however, a profound event for myself, the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP, the organization I co-founded) and popular resistance in the Hebron district as a whole.

FROM IN AND OUTSIDE ISRAEL’S PRISON WALLS

 

The official Palestinian position on the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails serves to undermine their cause; liberation will only come with a shift in strategy.

 Waging liberation in and outside Israel’s prison walls

Liberating Palestinian political prisoners should mean liberating them now.
(Issam Rimawi / APA images)

The success of internationalization can be gauged by the extent to which the issue or question concerned becomes a global concern. It means creating a situation on the ground which makes it impossible for the international system to continue shirking responsibility, or colluding with a dominant or powerful party in usurping the rights of a weaker victim. International mechanisms can then be brought into play to support the restoration of the victim’s rights and enforce compliance on the violator.
In such cases, justice is the victim’s most potent weapon to offset the power and repressive force of the dominant party — in this case, the racist colonial regime of Israel.