Category: Writing

Articles by Mya Guarnieri

Unwelcome

by adminin Israel, Writing

dsc05730Tablet, June 3, 2011

It was one of the wordiest, most sophisticated protest placards I’ve ever seen a child hold. The pink sign, gripped by two Filipino-Israeli boys, read in Hebrew: “Prime minister, how long will children, innocent of crime, pay the price for the situation you created with your own hands?”

There were the usual catchy slogans, too, at Tuesday afternoon’s demonstration against deportation. Protesters chanted things like, “Kids aren’t criminals. Why are they being arrested?” (It rhymes in Hebrew.)

As the pink sign suggests, however, the struggle against the deportation of migrant workers and their children has gotten complicated. In the past, it was simple: These children speak Hebrew; they go to school here; they want to go to the army. They’re Israeli. So, they must stay here, in Israel.

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Complaint against US boat threatens Gaza voyage

by adminin Writing

dsc06273Maan News Agency, June 25, 2011

Organizers of the second Freedom Flotilla say that an administrative complaint has been filed against the US Boat to Gaza, the Audacity of Hope, claiming that the vessel is not seaworthy. This could delay or altogether prevent the ship from leaving Athens.

The harbor master received notification of the complaint Thursday afternoon, two days after suspected Mossad agents showed up at the ship.

The complainant is unknown. As of time of writing, a Greek lawyer representing the second Freedom Flotilla was working to obtain more details.

Israel has been open about its intentions to stop the flotilla using any means possible—including diplomatic avenues, lawsuits, and a media smear campaign.

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Flotilla organizers say Israel pressuring Greek government

by adminin Politics, Writing

flotilla_palestinian_flag1Maan News Agency, June 25, 2011

Organizers of the US Boat to Gaza say that the Greek government has come under intense pressure from Israel. The Israeli government is allegedly using trade agreements with the Greeks as leverage.

Spokesman of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gregory Delavekouras confirmed that Israel had contacted Greece about the US Boat to Gaza, which organizers have leased from Greek owners, as well as the flotilla in general.

“We’ve been in touch with Israel, we know their position, they’ve made it very clear,” he said.

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Savvy flotilla prep in full swing at Athens port

by adminin Lead Story, Writing

dsc06290Maan News Agency, June 25, 2011

Non-violence training and anti-sabotage measures are in place for the volunteers, activists and media arriving in Athens as the Freedom Flotilla II prepares to sail to Gaza.

In hopes of preventing sabotage which organizers said docked two boats from the 2010 flotilla, the ships for the June voyage have been moored in undisclosed locations, and press members have been asked not to release photographs of the vessels.

Upon arrival, those registered to sail to Gaza and attempt to break the Israeli blockade will participate in seminars designed by flotilla organizers on how to handle expected confrontations with Israeli forces when the boats approach the Gaza shore.

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Israel quashes West Bank protests

by adminin Israel, Writing

naksa_day_mya_guarnieri1Maan News Agency, June 5, 2011

An estimated 300 Palestinians who gathered at the Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem were met with tear gas and rubber coated bullets on Sunday, as they marked the 44th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

“To Jerusalem we go,” read signs held by protesters, who marched to the checkpoint separating the central West Bank from Jerusalem, located on the route of the separation wall, built some 5 kilometers on the Palestinian side of the 1967 border.

“Freedom is a human right,” another sign said, held by one of the few men who were able to bypass a heavy Israeli military cordon outside the checkpoint, which severed the crowd in two.

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The entitled people

by adminin Israel, Writing

israeliflagphotosouciant1Souciant, June 8, 2011

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before a special joint session of the United States Congress. A foreign leader, he looked at home as he thumbed his nose at US President Barack Obama. Just days before, Obama had reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to two states—one for the Palestinians, the other for Israelis—based on pre-Six Day War borders. Netanyahu defied Obama as he told Congress (and international audiences watching the live broadcast) that Israel would not withdraw to the 1967 lines.

Netanyahu’s words were the final nail in the coffin of the twenty-six year old ‘peace process’, which had begun under the sponsorship of his former archrival, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They also marked a gulf between Congress and the President. And it is here, in this space, that a unique opportunity for the American public suddenly emerged.

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Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism

by adminin Israel, Writing

antizionismnotantisemitism1Mondoweiss, May 24, 2011

I’m fed up with criticism of Israel being shouted down as anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. Here’s one simple reason why: a majority of the Jewish people lives in the Diaspora.

Just because this place, this strip of land, claims to represent us all doesn’t mean it does. And just because Israel claims to be the embodiment of the Jewish people’s longing for self-determination doesn’t mean it is.

Is brainwashing school-children self-determination? Is stuffing those same kids into uniforms and plunking them down, illegally, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories self-determination? Is keeping the nation chained to a conflict opposed by a majority of Jews self-determination?

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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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