Month: May 2011

The forgotten intifada

by adminin Writing

intifadat-golan-19821 Maan News Agency, May 25, 2011

On May 17, two days after the Nakba day protests, the Economist ran an article titled, “Here comes your nonviolent resistance.” The writer pointed out that the demonstrations that took place on May 15 were in the spirit of the First Intifada which was, by and large, nonviolent.

My colleague Joseph Dana voiced the same sentiment, and much more gracefully at that in an article he wrote for Alternet:

“Many in the international press are claiming the Nakba day protests show that the Arab spring has arrived in Palestine…It was Palestinians who organized mass unarmed resistance against Israeli occupation in the late 1980s…It is in villages like Bil’in, Budrus and Nabi Saleh that Palestinians have continued this spirit of unarmed resistance every week for the past eight years despite continued Israeli attacks. The Arab spring has not arrived in Palestine; it has always been here.”

I endorse these articles. They offer important, nuanced takes on the Nakba Day protests, the First Intifada, and Palestinian resistance to the occupation.

But they’re both wrong.

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Imagining Israel’s future

by adminin Israel, Writing

6336532Souciant, May 18, 2011

In May of 2011, the Palestinians made a brave attempt to start the Third Intifada.

On the northern borders, the grandsons and granddaughters of those who had been dispossessed during the nakba attempted to exercise their United Nations-acknowledged right of return. These were the grandsons of those who had been driven from their homes, which were later declared “abandoned” by a law created by the new “Jewish and democratic” state. The grandsons of those who were locked out of the land in which they were born; the grandsons of those were then declared “infiltrators” when they tried to return.

Israeli soldiers, ignoring their own protocol, did not shoot to disable. They shot to kill. Some of these grandsons died on the Lebanese border. Others were slain near the line that separates Syria from the Israeli Occupied Golan Heights, which Israeli annexed unilaterally in 1981, a move that was deemed illegal by the United Nations.

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“Israel’s 9/11 coming in September”

by adminin Politics, Writing

dsc05528Maan News Agency, May 15, 2011

As though Israeli leaders aren’t doing enough to scare their citizens about Palestinian reunification and statehood, another “warning” has recently popped up on the streets of Tel Aviv. The walls, rather.

It’s right-wing graffiti — a blue Star of David with the date “9/0/11” below. The meaning is clear. Israel’s 9/11, Israel’s catastrophe, is coming in September.

When I saw it, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was part of a governmental campaign. After all, this is the message Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been peddling to anyone who will listen.

According to Netanyahu, Palestinian reunification– which is a critical step toward a viable Palestinian state– is a “mortal blow to peace.” But the so-called peace process has been dead for some time. And the Palestine Papers were a post-mortem that confirmed what settlement building had suggested — Israel is more interested in land than it is peace.

Netanyahu remarks that Hamas “has not given up the ghost of getting rid of us.” But, in reality, Hamas has said that it would accept a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.

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Palestinian identity under attack in Israel

by adminin Writing

dsc01008Maan News Agency, April 29, 2011

Earlier in April, the Israeli Ministry of Education decided to add a question about the Holocaust to the matriculation exam of Arab students.

Because the state has banned any study of the Nakba– going so far as to strike the word from the textbooks– the move has drawn sharp criticism in Israel’s Palestinian community.

The Abraham Fund — a joint Jewish-Arab organization that advocates for equality within in Israel — remarked that, “It is important that Arab students learn about the Holocaust and understand the history and pain of the Jewish people… At the same time, it is important that Jewish students learn about the history of the Palestinian minority in Israel, especially those aspects tied to the state of Israel and her existence.”

Sawsan Zaher is a Palestinian who was born and raised in Israel. An attorney at Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Zaher recalls that she did not learn about the Nakba until she studied it on her own, in her early twenties.

“I finished high school without being able to study Palestinian history–about what was here before 1948, about the nakba.”

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Bin Laden’s death should not be celebrated

by adminin Writing

flag-half-staffMondoweiss, May 2, 2011
The Huffington Post, May 3, 2011

Osama Bin Laden is dead. And Americans are celebrating.

Last night, the crowds cheered and sang before the White House and in Manhattan. And, today, the jingoistic, congratulatory op-eds hit the papers.

It’s been particularly troubling to me, an American-Israeli, to watch these events unfold from Tel Aviv. I’ve heard too many Israelis justify the occupation of Palestinian territory with statements like, “They’re animals, they celebrate when we’re killed.” I’ve heard the same rhetoric come from American mouths, “The Muslim world cheered after the 9/11 attacks.”

Americans–many of whom consider their so-called War on Terror morally righteous–must ask themselves if the images of their celebrations really look so different than those that they condemn.

We must remember that a tremendous majority of the Arab and Muslim world did not revel in the horror of 9/11. The attacks were largely denounced–from Ramallah to Pakistan and almost everywhere in between.

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