Six Israeli assaults on Gaza in 16 years. Visualizing Palestine, Dec 28, 2023 Over the course of Israel’s 16-year blockade since 2007, the captive Palestinian population in Gaza has endured six Israeli military assaults, with devastating immediate and long-term consequences. The current Israeli assault is the most destructive by far. This video shows the cumulative impact of the failure to hold Israel accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It didn’t start on October 7. The total killed by July 22 is over 39,000.
1. We haven’t heard reports of deaths, will check into it; 2. The people were killed, but by a faulty Palestinian rocket/bomb; 3. OK, we killed them, but they were terrorists; 4. OK, they were civilians, but they were being used as human shields; 5. OK, there were no fighters in the area, so it was our mistake. But we kill civilians by accident, they do it on purpose; 6. OK, we kill far more civilians than they do, but look at how terrible other countries are! 7. Why are you still talking about Israel? Are you some kind of anti-semite?
Test this against the next interview you hear or watch.
FILE – Health care workers walk in and out of the entrance at NYU-Langone Hospital on Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, in New York. A nurse was fired by the hospital after she referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as “genocide” during a speech accepting an award. Labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, was being honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who had lost babies when she drew a link between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — A nurse was fired by a New York City hospital after she referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as a “genocide” during a speech accepting an award.
Labor and delivery nurse Hesen Jabr, who is Palestinian American, was being honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who had lost babies when she drew a link between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza.
“It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” Jabr said, according to a video of the May 7 speech that she posted on social media. “This award is deeply personal to me for those reasons.”
Jabr wrote on Instagram that she arrived at work on May 22 for her first shift back after receiving the award when she was summoned to a meeting with the hospital’s president and vice president of nursing “to discuss how I ‘put others at risk’ and ‘ruined the ceremony’ and ‘offended people’ because a small part of my speech was a tribute towards the grieving mothers in my country.”
She wrote that after working most of her shift she was “dragged once again to an office” where she was read her termination letter and then escorted out of the building.
A spokesperson for NYU Langone, Steve Ritea, confirmed that Jabr was fired following her speech and said there had been “a previous incident as well.”
“Hesen Jabr was warned in December, following a previous incident, not to bring her views on this divisive and charged issue into the workplace,” Mr. Ritea said in a statement. “She instead chose not to heed that at a recent employee recognition event that was widely attended by her colleagues, some of whom were upset after her comments. As a result, Jabr is no longer an NYU Langone employee.”
Ritea did not provide any details of the previous incident.
Jabr defended her speech in an interview with The New York Times and said talking about the war “was so relevant” given the nature of the award she had won.
“It was an award for bereavement; it was for grieving mothers,” she said.
Do Palestinians deserve to be free? “A complex and controversial issue,” says ChatGPT (Twitter, 5/8/23). Do Israelis deserve to be free? “Yes, like all people.”
“This is quite something,” remarked Nadi Abusaada in a May 8 tweet. As many of us have done, the Palestinian academic found himself experimenting with the seemingly boundless powers of OpenAI’s ChatGPT software. But during this activity, he uncovered something disturbing.
“I asked @OpenAI whether Palestinians deserve to be free,” he said. The natural-language processing tool responded to Abusaada’s query ambivalently:
As an AI language model, I do not have personal opinions, feelings or beliefs. The question of whether Palestinians deserve to be free is a complex and controversial issue with many different perspectives and opinions….
But then he posed the same question about Israelis. This time, the chat box did not equivocate:
Yes, like all people, Israelis deserve to be free. Freedom is a fundamental human right that should be protected and guaranteed for all individuals, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity or religion. It is essential that Israelis, like all people, are able to live their lives free from violence, oppression and discrimination….
worldbeyondwar.uw Antiwar Film Series – Details on this month’s films and others we’ll show this summer …
Tues, June 4 at 6 pm, Central Library, 201 W Mifflin St, Room 302.
Light, a brand-new documentary about Palestine from the unarmed civilian accompaniers of Community Peacemaker Teams [May 2024, 69 mins, trailer] and Israel’s Shocking AI Tools & Ukraine’s Surveillance of Journalists (April 2024, 24 mins, Al Jazeera’s Listening Post)
Coming Attractions – Please save these dates for our next films – July 23 & Aug 20. Stay tuned – we’re hoping to soon show:
Where Olive Trees Weep [2024], a new documentary about Palestine;
A Bold Peace [2016] about how Costa Rica abolished their military 74 years ago;
Soldiers Without Guns [2019] about how unarmed soldiers from New Zealand used music and Maori culture to help end the bloody civil war on the island of Bougainville, and
Disneyland of War [2016] about Veterans for Peace who challenge the glorification of war.
A ship of Freedom Flotilla Coalition anchors at Tuzla seaport in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, April 19, 2024. Activists and aid workers from numerous international aid NGO’s are gearing up for another attempt to break through the Israeli blockade and deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)WPR Wisconsin Today interview with Cassandra Dixon
Wisconsin-based human rights activist Cassandra Dixon was all set to accompany a cargo ship carrying 5,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Palestinians last month.
Dixon planned to board a passenger vessel docked in Istanbul and was ready to join the cargo ship through the international group Freedom Flotilla Coalition. She was part of a group of nearly 1,000 volunteers including doctors, lawyers and journalists from over 30 countries.
The cargo ship, named Akdeniz, passed multiple inspections. But before it could officially depart for the Gaza Strip, the nation of Guinea-Bissau removed its flag in a move the coalition called “highly unusual” and “blatantly political.” Ships sailing in international waters are required to be registered with a country.
“People were devastated,” Dixon said. “It seemed within reach to deliver the aid, so it was heartbreaking not to be able to.”
In a recent interview on “Wisconsin Today,” Dixon said the aid included food and medical supplies that would provide life-saving support to Palestinians who are facing starvation as the war in Gaza continues.
AI-generated renderings show skyscrapers, solar fields, water desalination plants, a new high speed rail corridor, and oil rigs off of Gaza’s shoreline. (Courtesy Israel PMO)
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office recently released a PowerPoint that gives a glimpse into what the Likud Party has in mind for Gaza’s future, and the Levant region at large. On May 3, Netanyahu unveiled Gaza 2035: A three-step master plan to build what he calls the “Gaza-Arish-Sderot Free Trade Zone.” The plan was first reported by The Jerusalem Post and later by Al Jazeera.
The Gaza-Arish-Sderot Free Trade Zone would encompass the 141 square miles that make up the Gaza Strip, where more than 34,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the past several months, and where experts say that famine is underway. The zone also would include the El-Arish Port to Gaza’s south in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Sderot, an Israeli city north of Gaza.
UN officials issued a report on May 2 stating that over 70 percent of Gaza’s building stock has been destroyed, and that it would cost $40–50 billion to rebuild. This prompted one UN official, Abdallah al-Dardari, to say: “We have not seen anything like this since 1945.”
Under the auspices of Gaza 2035, the new free trade zone would be administered by Israel, Egypt, and what the Israeli Prime Minister calls the Gaza Rehabilitation Authority (GRA)—a proposed Palestinian-run agency that would oversee reconstruction in Gaza and “manage the Strip’s finances.”
The PowerPoint affirms that the GRA would not deliver Palestinian statehood and makes no reference to a two-state system. Instead, by 2035, Gaza and the West Bank would be placed under the “nominal administration” of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel would be responsible for the free trade zone’s security. yNet correspondent Ron Ben Yishai called Gaza 2035 Benjamin Netanyahu’s “Singapore vision.”
The Biden administration maintains that Israel’s invasion of the southern Gazan city is “limited,” despite an International Court of Justice order and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Pro-Palestinian protesters hold up red hands as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on President Biden’s proposed budget request for the State Department, on May 22. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
The United States, which prides itself as a global leader on human rights and international law, was conspicuously silent Friday after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to comply with its “obligations” under the Genocide Convention and “immediately halt its offensive” in Rafah.
The absence of any public statement from the Biden administration was a stark contrast to an almost identical ruling by the ICJ in March 2022, ordering Russia to “immediately suspend the military operations” it had just begun in Ukraine. Noting that the court “plays a vital role in the peaceful settlement of disputes under the U.N. Charter,” the State Department effusively welcomed the order and called on Moscow to comply.
The administration has sharply rejected any comparison between the two situations, noting that one began with attack on Israel by a terrorist group and the other with an unprovoked invasion by one U.N. member state into another.
Instead of issuing a statement on the Israel ruling, the National Security Council authorized spokespeople to respond to any questions with a single sentence: “We’ve been clear and consistent on our position on Rafah.”
That position — that Israel’s invasion of Rafah has been a “limited” incursion to root out remaining Hamas fighters while avoiding undue civilian harm, and to free around 100 living and dead Israeli hostages that remain captives — conflicts with the ICJ conclusion that Rafah is a “change in the situation” since its last warning earlier this year that Israeli actions in Gaza risk genocide.
Israel lashes out at West Bank in wake of ICC request
Airstrikes continue across the Gaza Strip as the Israeli ground invasion continues in Jabalia and Rafah, displacing thousands. Meanwhile, the Israeli army launched a wide-ranging invasion of Jenin refugee camp, killing 12 people.
HUNDREDS ATTEND THE FUNERAL FOR THE 12 MARTYRS OF THE ISRAELI ARMY’S INVASION OF JENIN AND JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, MAY 23, 2024. (PHOTO: MOHAMMED NASSER/APA IMAGES)
Casualties
35,709 + killed* and at least 79,990 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
519+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
634 Israeli soldiers have been announced as killed by the Israeli army since October 7, and at least 3,568 have been announced as wounded.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on May 22, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on May 22, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded according to Israeli media reports exceeds 6,800 as of April 1.
Key Developments
Israel kills 323 Palestinians, wounds 624 since Monday, May 20, across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 35,709 and the number of wounded to 79,990, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Spain, Norway, and Ireland recognize the State of Palestine.
Israel revokes the 2005 disengagement law for the northern West Bank, allows resettlement of evacuated illegal settlements and outposts.
Today, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action) released the results of YouGov polls commissioned in five battleground states. The polls show roughly a fifth of Democratic and Independent voters in key states are less likely to vote for President Biden in November because of his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Forty percent of voters polled say tangible, de-escalatory policy changes will make them more likely to vote for Biden in November: imposing a permanent ceasefire, full humanitarian aid to Gaza, and conditioning military aid for Israel’s war.
Surveying 500 registered Democratic and Independent voters each in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, the statewide polls provide a detailed look at voters’ perceptions of Israel’s war in Gaza and how it impacts their votes in November.
Among the states polled, anti-war votes could cost Biden the election in Arizona and Wisconsin in particular—in part due to the especially narrow margins of victory in those states: 10,457 and 20,682 in Arizona and Wisconsin, respectively. However, the polls show anti-war votes will matter in Pennsylvania and Michigan as well, where a third of Democrats and Independents consider a ceasefire and full entry of humanitarian aid as minimum changes to secure or solidify a vote for Biden. Read the full report here.
My name is Amy Yoder McGloughlin. I am the pastor at Frazer Mennonite Church in Malvern, PA, and a member of the Mennonite Action steering committee.
I’m thrilled to invite you to Mennonite Action’s mass meeting this Thursday, May 23 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. I will be moderating a conversation with Sarah Augustine, co-founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, Samiha Hureini, co-founder of the Youth of Sumud movement, and activist Ali Awad.
Over the last several years, I’ve been reflecting on my own transactional relationship with the land on which I reside. I buy it, so it belongs to me, and it is for me to treat as I please—right? But Palestinian folks and Indigenous people here on Turtle Island have a different relationship to land.
On my last trip to Palestine, I started asking Palestinian friends how they would describe the land on which they live. I heard answers like, “The land is a member of my family” and “The land is my personality.” Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass that “You can love the land and the land can love you back.” These are deeply personal relationships, and I am learning so much from Palestinians and local Indigenous folks about how I too can love the land and enjoy a relationship with her as if she is a member of my family.
In the conversation with Sami, Sarah, and Ali, we’ll explore their understanding of land, how we can learn from their wisdom, and what it means to be in solidarity with both of these communities.
During the call, we will also hear an update about Mennonite Action’s next events and actions. I look forward to being with you in community. If you have not yet registered, please do so here.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Sunday that an Israeli airstrike targeting a house at Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least 31 people, updating an earlier toll. “The civil defence crew were able to recover 31 martyrs and 20 wounded from a house belonging to the Hassan family, which was targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Nuseirat camp,” Gaza civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told journalists. He said rescue workers were continuing to search for missing people under the rubble.
The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an “apocalyptic” outcome, the UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Speaking on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha, he said: “If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more. It will be present.” “And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic,” he added.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said the kingdom demanded an international investigation into what it said were many war crimes committed during Israel’s war in Gaza. In remarks made during a press conference with the head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Safadi said those responsible for documented crimes should be brought to justice.
The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said rescue teams have recovered the bodies of 150 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army in recent days.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, Al Jazeera Arabic’s journalists on the ground reported Israeli raids in Rafah in the south of enclave and in the vicinity of the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, where raids were also reported in the sheikh Zayed and Zeitoun neighbourhoods.
Palestinians across the globe are marking the 76th anniversary of the Nakba — which means “catastrophe” in Arabic — when those establishing the state of Israel violently expelled over 700,000 Palestinians.
Palestinian historian Abdel Razzaq Takriti says closer to 900,000 Palestinians were forced out or massacred during Israel’s founding, which is being celebrated inside Israel with calls to ethnically cleanse and settle the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
“The Nakba is continuing. This is a colonial continuum,” says Takriti. “It’s not enough to commemorate. It’s not enough to talk about it. We have to stop it right now. … The first step to doing that is to stop the genocide in Gaza.”
Takriti lays out four principles for Nakba education: refuting Nakba denialism, recognizing the Nakba is part of an ongoing process of settler colonialism, stopping that process, and then reversing it by restoring Palestinian national rights.
Join Eyewitness Palestine on Wednesday, May 29th at 12PM ET for our Live from Haifa webinar, featuring a special virtual delegation led by Khulood Basel, who will take us around Haifa on a custom tour of the city.
Khulood will take us around the Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Salib, where families who remained during the Nakba and those who were able to return from forced displacement re-settled.
Don’t miss this special virtual delegation to see the remarkable and ancient port city and learn more about its incredibly rich history with a uniquely qualified Palestinian native tour guide!
Participation in this event is free as Eyewitness Palestine is seeking to highlight voices in Palestine as broadly as possible. Donations are appreciated.
June 1 starting 9 am: Marker removal, Olbrich Park
Madison Veterans for Peace asks you to join them for Memorial Day and a Week to Remember to honor those lost in war while learning from the past.
If you can help them put up simulated grave markers at Olbrich Park beginning at 9 am on Saturday, May 25 please RSVP to jhfour@gmail.com. They can also use help bringing them down on Saturday, June 1 beginning at 9 am.
They invite everyone to the annual Peace Rally at Gates of Heaven Synagogue, James Madison Park, 1 pm on Monday, May 27.
7 pm CT Online Jewish Voice for Peace invites you to join them and partner organizations for an Israel Bonds divestment campaign launch event and teach-in.
There has never been a more important moment to campaign to end U.S. support for the Israeli apartheid and the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians. Billions in “Israel Bonds” – direct loans to the Israeli military and government – are being purchased by our local governments, state governments, unions, pension funds, religious institutions, and other institutions every day. Together, we can withdraw key support for violence against Palestinians by demanding that our community institutions stop buying Israel Bonds.
Come learn from organizers about Israel Bonds and Israel Bonds divestment, including what you can do in your community to break the bonds with genocide and apartheid!
Brian Blackmore, national Director of Engagement for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), will introduce a new tool called “Investigate” which can be used to look up how certain investments support Israel’s military occupation, militarization of the U.S./Mexico border, and prisons.
All those interested in divestment campaigns (a key issue in the recent student encampments) are invited to attend. You are also invited to check out this guide to divestment developed by AFSC’s Action Center for Corporate Accountability at afsc.org/divest.
Ilan Pappé speaks at a Lannan Foundation event in January 2019. (Photo: Lannan Foundation/YouTube/screen grab)
“The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation,” the renowned author said.
In what one observer called “a whole new level of insanity and paranoia,” renowned Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappé—a staunch critic of Zionism—was detained and interrogated this week by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as he entered the United States at Detroit’s airport.
In a Wednesday Facebook post, Pappé said that he was questioned by FBI agents for two hours after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Monday.
He wrote:
The two-men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world! Am I a Hamas supporter? Do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? What is the solution to the “conflict” (seriously this what they asked!) Who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America… What kind of relationship [do] I have with them?
“They had [a] long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?” he added, “and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter.”
“I know many of you have fared far worse,” Pappé wrote, referring to Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and rector of Glasgow University in Scotland who last month was denied entry to Germany—and by extension all 29 Schengen Area nations—before the ban was overturned earlier this week.
“The good news is—actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel’s becoming very soon a pariah state, with all the implications of such a status,” he added.
This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.
PART I.
IMPUNITY
By the end of October, it was clear that no one was going to help the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta. A tiny Palestinian community, some 150 people perched on a windswept hill in the West Bank near Hebron, it had long faced threats from the Jewish settlers who had steadily encircled it. But occasional harassment and vandalism, in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, escalated into beatings and murder threats. The villagers made appeal after appeal to the Israeli police and to the ever-present Israeli military, but their calls for protection went largely unheeded, and the attacks continued with no consequences. So one day the villagers packed what they could, loaded their families into trucks and disappeared.
Who bulldozed the village after that is a matter of dispute. The Israeli Army says it was the settlers; a senior Israeli police officer says it was the army. Either way, soon after the villagers left, little remained of Khirbet Zanuta besides the ruins of a clinic and an elementary school. One wall of the clinic, leaning sideways, bore a sign saying that it had been funded by an agency of the European Union providing “humanitarian support for Palestinians at risk of forcible transfer in the West Bank.” Near the school, someone had planted the flag of Israel as another kind of announcement: This is Jewish land now.
Such violence over the decades in places like Khirbet Zanuta is well documented. But protecting the people who carry out that violence is the dark secret of Israeli justice. The long arc of harassment, assault and murder of Palestinians by Jewish settlers is twinned with a shadow history, one of silence, avoidance and abetment by Israeli officials. For many of those officials, it is Palestinian terrorism that most threatens Israel. But in interviews with more than 100 people — current and former officers of the Israeli military, the National Israeli Police and the Shin Bet domestic security service; high-ranking Israeli political officials, including four former prime ministers; Palestinian leaders and activists; Israeli human rights lawyers; American officials charged with supporting the Israeli-Palestinian partnership — we found a different and perhaps even more destabilizing threat. A long history of crime without punishment, many of those officials now say, threatens not only Palestinians living in the occupied territories but also the State of Israel itself.
“Where Olive Trees Weep” offers a searing window into the struggles and resilience of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. Following Palestinian journalist and therapist Ashira Darwish, grassroots activist Ahed Tamimi and others, the film explores the themes of loss, trauma, and quest for justice.
Ancient landscapes bear deep scars, having witnessed the brutal reality of ancestral land confiscation, expulsions, imprisonment, home demolitions, water deprivation, and denial of basic human rights. Yet, through the veil of the oppression, we catch a glimpse of the resilience — the deep roots that have carried the Palestinian people through decades of darkness and shattered lives.
Bearing witness to their harrowing experiences, one cannot help but ask: What makes the oppressor so ruthlessly blind to its own cruelty?
Washington, DC | www.adc.org | May 15, 2024 – Today we commemorate 76 years of Nakba – The Catastrophe. This day is a solemn reminder of the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland at the hands of Zionist militias and settler military forces. Decades of killing, ethnic cleansing and dehumanization.
Decades of generational compounded trauma and grief. Decades of injustice marked by massacres named after the towns and villages where they occurred; proof of the systematic plan to rid Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants: the Palestinian people. From Deir Yassin, to Tantura, to Kufur Qassem, to Lydd, to Qibya, to the current horrific genocide taking place in Gaza, this continuum of annihilation must end now! There are volumes of personal narratives passed down from parents and grandparents, many armed with the keys to their homes, grainy photos of lives stolen and heroic narratives of unfathomable brutality and injustice.
For 76 years, the assault has been as brutal on Palestinian life and history as it has been on the land itself. Olive groves cut down and water aquifers contaminated. Over 500 Palestinian villages permanently erased from maps are now covered with forests of invasive, non-native trees. The village of Al-Tira has been erased by Carmel National Park, and 6 Palestinian villages lay under Birya forest. The village of Sarkas became a garbage dump for a Zionist settlement. Where once stood the Palestinian village of Tantura, and on top of a mass grave of over 200 Palestinian, now is a parking lot for Israel’s Dor Beach.
What can never be erased are stories of Palestinian life from the river to the sea that predates the Zionist entity. On the banks of the Jordan River Palestinians had picnics, enjoying the fruit of their citrus and date trees.To the hills of Ramallah, called by the promise of the cool breeze, many went during the summer heat, where children played in the sturdy branches of mature fig trees. Shepherds roamed the Naqab’s heat, knowing each dune and hardy plant. To Gaza they went for vacations and honeymoons, surrounded by centuries of buried and unearthed rich history. Stories and memories created will forever remain in the golden sand of Yafa, the bride of the sea.
The Palestinian people continue to embrace life and persist. Their stories are a tribute to humanity and the universal quest for freedom and justice. Both the personal narratives and the keys to their homes will continue to be passed down; these are the foundations for the future of liberation for the coming generations.
French Paratroopers Torturing Algerian FLN Member, “Battle of Algiers”
Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Emeritus, Stanford University
Revised from talks delivered at UC Law SF and The Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley
The riveting artistic power of “The Battle of Algiers” rendered Algeria the best-known instance of settler colonialism and armed struggle for decolonization and national independence. The black and white newsreel style of the film and its compelling music uncompromisingly impress on the viewer both the structural and the kinetic violence of the French settler colonial regime and the urban terror unleashed by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1956-57.
A popular reading sees “The Battle of Algiers” simply as a justification of anticolonial armed struggle. In a key scene, after the French have captured Larbi Ben M’hidi, commander of the Algiers sector and the leading intellectual among the “historic nine” founders of the FLN, the French paratroop commander Col. Mathieu (a composite character based on several French officers) brings him to a press conference. A journalist stereotypically asks Ben M’hidi how he can justify planting bombs in public places using women’s shopping baskets. Ben M’hidi replies, “Give us your tanks and planes and you can have our women’s baskets.” Mathieu is impressed by Ben M’hidi’s intellect and dedication, fears his argument may undermine France’s position, and abruptly ends the press conference.
Off camera, paratroop intelligence officers extrajudicially murder Ben M’hidi and hang him to make it appear like a suicide. Gen. Paul Aussaresses, one of the chief French counterterrorism and intelligence officers (i.e., torturers) during the Battle of Algiers, acknowledged in 2001 that he and another man were the killers. [1]
The interpretation of the film simply as a justification of anti-colonial armed struggle is often fortified by a reading of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth emphasizing the first chapter’s excoriating inventory of the pervasive violence of colonialism and its view of “violence as a kind of therapy for the oppressed.”[2] Fanon was the leading exponent of Algeria’s armed struggle for independence to Western audiences. His eloquent denunciation of European colonial violence was widely embraced by leftist militants and intellectuals of the 1960s era.
Hashem Ghazal was a disability rights advocate in the enclave, and was known locally as Gaza’s “Godfather of the Deaf”.
Seven of his children, some whom are also deaf, were severely wounded in the strike.
Born in 1966, Ghazal was a prominent organiser of craft workshops at the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children NGO, located in Gaza City.
The NGO has been active since 1992, and provided speech therapy, income-generating programmes for the deaf, as well as vocational and community training. Ghazal had been with the NGO since 1994.
Online, many remembered Ghazal as a skilled carpenter, who was the first to establish a wood workshop for deaf carpenters, providing opportunities for the community.
In tribute to Ghazal, Palestinian photojournalist Wissam Nassar said: “Hashem Ghazal’s influence remains deeply ingrained in the hearts of those he touched, embodying resilience and unwavering dedication to improving the lives of deaf individuals in Gaza.”
Nassar said he personally worked with Ghazal, adding he experienced “first hand his infectious enthusiasm, genuine warmth, and commitment to inclusivity”.
Watch: Israeli protesters stomp on aid packages destined for Gaza
Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks destined for Gaza on Monday, throwing food packages onto the road and ripping bags of grain open in the occupied West Bank.
The lorries, which were set upon at the Tarqumiya checkpoint west of Hebron, came from Jordan and were headed to the Gaza Strip, where people are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
The White House has condemned the attack, describing the “looting” of aid convoys as “a total outrage”.
The group reportedly behind the protest said they were demonstrating against the continued detention of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Unverified footage shared on social media showedprotesters toppling boxes from lorries onto the ground, and stomping on them once they had fallen.
Some videos appeared to show vehicles being set on fire later in the evening. The BBC has not been able to independently verify these.
According to reports in Israeli media, the Tzav 9 activist group were responsible for organising the protest.
Israeli media reports describe it as a right-wing group which is seeking to halt humanitarian aid transfers into Gaza while Israeli hostages are held there.
Maj. Harrison Mann said he feels “incredible shame and guilt” to know his work at the Defense Intelligence Agency has contributed to Palestinians’ suffering and death.
Updated May 13, 2024 at 7:43 p.m. EDT|Published May 13, 2024 at 4:22 p.m. EDT
Israeli tanks in southern Israel near Rafah on Saturday, following operations in Gaza. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)
A U.S. Army officer working at the Defense Intelligence Agency has resigned from the military, citing his objection to Israel’s war in Gaza, according to an open letter he published online Monday saying he is distressed that his work has contributed to the deaths of Palestinian civilians.
Maj. Harrison Mann posted his letter on the social networking site LinkedIn, where his work history shows experience as an analyst focused on the Middle East and Africa. His time at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) coincided with the Hamas attack on Israel last year and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, where local health authorities say more than 35,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the fighting began in early October and officials have warned of spreading famine.
U.S. support for Israel has included weaponry and intelligence.
“My work here — however administrative or marginal it appeared — has unquestionably contributed to that support,” Mann wrote in his letter. “The past months have presented us with the most horrific and heartbreaking images imaginable … and I have been unable to ignore the connection between those images and my duties here. This caused me incredible shame and guilt.”
“This unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks wider war,” he wrote.
As soon as a single Palestinian activist showed up at an anti-Dakota Access Pipeline camp on the edge of the Standing Rock reservation in 2016, intelligence analysts for the mercenary security firm TigerSwan were on alert. The analysts, who worked for the pipeline parent company Energy Transfer, confirmed via aerial surveillance that a Palestinian flag was flying above the camp, according to internal records obtained via a public records request and reviewed with support from the Center for Media and Democracy.
The Standing Rock movement was fast becoming one of the most important environmental and Indigenous uprisings of the past 50 years. For TigerSwan, keeping its contract meant convincing Energy Transfer that danger was everywhere. The security firm told its client that Palestinians meant an “Islamic” presence and the possibility of “terrorist type tactics.”
“It’s part of the dehumanization of my people and it directly enables the genocide that we’re witnessing now right now. It’s totally built on racism,” said Haithem El-Zabri, the Palestinian activist that TigerSwan first noticed at Standing Rock. “It’s not limited to a security company — it’s common across the board of government agencies.”
By being at Standing Rock, El-Zabri and other Palestinian activists took on the risk of being subjected to fossil fuel industry surveillance. Now, as historic antiwar protests arise across the U.S., the roles have been reversed, with environmental and Indigenous activists standing in defense of Palestinians. In this case, land defenders of all stripes will absorb the sweeping criminalization of the Palestinian cause being pushed by advocates for Israel.
Resistance returns to the north, UNRWA says 300,000 people fled Rafah
The Israeli army has intensified its renewed assault on Jabalia refugee camp and the Zeitoun area in northern Gaza as resistance factions regroup there, months after the Israeli army said it had “defeated Hamas” in the north.
DISPLACED PALESTINIANS WHO FLED RAFAH TO DEIR AL-BALAH SHELTER AT A CAMP ON THE SHORE, MAY 12, 2024. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
Casualties
35,034 + killed* and at least 78,755 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
498+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
620 Israeli soldiers have been announced as killed by the Israeli army since October 7, and at least 3,415 have been announced as wounded.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on May 9, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on May 12, this is the latest figure.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded, according to Israeli media reports, exceeds 6,800 as of April 1.
Key Developments
Israel kills 130 Palestinians, wounds 241 since Friday, May 10, across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 35,034 and the number of wounded to 78,755, according to the Gaza health ministry.
The U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv says that U.S. assistance to Israel will not be interrupted and that nothing strategic has changed in the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Netanyahu says that Israelis are “determined to achieve absolute victory.”
Israel’s war minister says that war will continue until “dismantling Hamas.”
Israeli forces escalate assault on Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza City.
Israeli bombing intensifies on Rafah as hundreds of thousands flee the city.
Israel kills one Palestinian and wounds 11 in military raids on Nablus in the West Bank.
Israeli settlers torch a house in Duma, south of Nablus.
UNRWA says that it will stay in Rafah “as long as possible,” while warning of societal “collapse.”
UNRWA closes its Jerusalem office following fire in its surroundings. The agency accuses Israeli assailants.
Hezbollah attacks several Israeli military positions across the border amidst new Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon.
Palestinians migrate toward Khan Younis from Rafah, Gaza on May 6, 2024. (Photo: Jehad Alshrafi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“It is a narrow strip of beach on the coast that lacks the basic infrastructure—like toilets and running water—needed to sustain the population,” said the agency chief.
As Israel’s tanks and warplanes continued attacking eastern Rafah on Thursday amid fears of a full-scale invasion, United Nations leaders warned that the area to which Israeli forces are directing Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip city is unsafe.
The Israel Defense Forces this week has circulated a map and claimed that “the IDF has expanded the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi to accommodate the increased levels of aid flowing into Gaza. This expanded humanitarian area includes field hospitals, tents, and increased amounts of food, water, medication, and additional supplies.”
However, in an interview published Wednesday, Tess Ingram of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that “the area that they’re being directed to evacuate to is not safe. It’s not safe because there aren’t the services there to meet their basic needs, water, toilets, shelter.”
“But it’s also not safe because we know that that area has been subject to strikes despite being a so-called safe zone. So we’re really concerned about that impact of a ground offensive on one of the most densely populated areas in the world,” she told The Intercept‘s Jeremy Scahill.
“Israel’s latest evacuation orders and their ground operations will bring more death and displacement.”
Rafah was home to about a quarter-million people before October 7, but since Israel launched what the International Court of Justice has called a “plausibly” genocidal assault on Gaza—killing at least 34,904 Palestinians and wounding another 78,514 as of Thursday—the city’s population has swelled to over 1.4 million.
Washington, DC | adc.org | May 11, 2024 – The ongoing genocide and invasion of Rafah has placed the lives of millions of Palestinians at risk. The Biden Administration, as well as other global leaders have empowered Israel to act with impunity and no accountability. We are calling on our members to take immediate actionand send a message to the Biden Administration, Congress, and the Ambassadors of France, Germany, and the U.K. to the U.S., demanding that immediate global action be taken to end the genocide.
Over 1 million Palestinians, among them 600,000 children, face an immediate forced transfer out of Rafah. This escalation and impending full-scale invasion of Rafah is a direct result of the Biden administration’s unwillingness to end Israel’s seven-month long genocide in Gaza. Longstanding U.S. policy of impunity and unconditional support for Israel has empowered the horrific devastation that we see daily.
Take action now and demand the Biden Administration and world leaders do more to bring an immediate end to the genocide. Over 1 million Palestinians, among them 600,000 children, have been forced to seek shelter in Rafah where they live in tent cities and are suffering from a humanitarian catastrophe.The consequences of the Israeli invasion into Rafah are cataclysmic. Already we have seen occupation forces on the ground as they seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, a vital entry point for aid to Gaza on the Egyptian border. Israel has now taken complete control over the provision of aid, and stopped all movement at the crossing.
The U.S. plays a critical role in providing support to a genocidal regime that is hellbent on continuing its policy of engineered famine, forced displacement, and genocide. The Biden Administration, and world leaders must take action that leads to an immediate, permanent, and unconditional ceasefire, and use any measures available to force Israel to pull out of Rafah.
Support ADC | Become a member American-Arab Anti-Discriminaiton Committee (ADC) 910 17th Street NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20006 United States (202) 244-2990 | adc@adc.org
Israel continues to close Rafah crossing as Biden threatens to halt arms shipments
Ceasefire talks are “paused” as delegations leave Cairo. Sources say Israel wants a full invasion of Rafah despite U.S. opposition, while Hamas reiterates its acceptance of the latest deal. Meanwhile, a new mass grave has been unearthed at al-Shifa.
SMOKE BILLOWS FROM ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES IN RAFAH IN THE SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP, MAY 9, 2024. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
Casualties
34,905 + killed* and at least 78,514 wounded in the Gaza Strip.*
497+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.**
Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,139.
612 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, and at least 6,800 injured.***
*Gaza’s Ministry of Health confirmed this figure on its Telegram channel on May 9, 2024. Some rights groups estimate the death toll to be much higher when accounting for those presumed dead.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. According to the PA’s Ministry of Health on May 9, this is the latest figure.
*** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” The number of Israeli soldiers wounded is according to Israeli media reports.
Key Developments
Israel kills 167 Palestinians, wounds 400 since Monday, May 6, across Gaza, raising the death toll since October 7 to 34,905 and the number of wounded to 78,514, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Biden says that the U.S. will halt arms shipments to Israel if it invades Rafah city.
Israeli radio quoting a former official in the Israeli military industry: Israel cannot deal with threats without U.S. arms.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid says that Biden’s declarations are the result of Netanyahu’s failed direction of the war.
Israeli media says that Israel’s war cabinet will meet today to make a “decisive decision” regarding Biden’s declarations.
Hamas’s negotiating delegation will leave Cairo for Doha, as the group reiterated its acceptance of the latest proposed ceasefire deal.
CIA chief William Burns leaves Qatar for the U.S. as negotiations pause due to the current situation in Rafah.
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry says that patients’ lives are lost every day due to the closure of the Rafah crossing and the prevention of the delivery of medical supplies and critical cases leaving the Strip.
The Gaza-based Palestinian health ministry says that the only dialysis unit in the Rafah district has stopped working.
UNRWA says that 80,000-100,000 Palestinians left Rafah in “a new forcible displacement.”
Hezbollah announces attacking the Israeli army’s northern division headquarters with rockets. Israel admits one soldier killed and several wounded.
Israeli night raids in West Bank and arrest wave continue, one Palestinian killed after succumbing to wounds from Israeli gunfire in Tulkarem.
MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – Protesters will clear out the encampment on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus on Friday after an agreement was reached with campus leaders, the university announced.
UW-Madison stated the campus leaders and student representatives from Students for Justice in Palestine reached a resolution. The organization also agreed to not disrupt the weekend graduation ceremonies or other campus functions, as well as not to reestablish an encampment on campus.
“This has been a difficult period for our campus, our nation and the world,” the university’s response stated. “We want to be clear that UW–Madison supports peaceful student protest, fully respects the First Amendment, and has done so throughout this year.”
The university stated that it could appreciate that while students were violating campus and state law in camping on university grounds, it knows students were doing so to condemn the war in Gaza.
“We also understand that the encampment made others in our community, especially portions of our Jewish community, feel uncomfortable and unseen,” the university stated. “We reiterate our strong condemnation of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hate and bigotry in all its forms, and we recognize the costs of war and displacement on so many across the globe.”
Protests on Library Mall started on Monday, April 29. Students were seen clearing out tents and other items from the encampment around 3 p.m. Friday.
UW-Madison protesters are clearing out tents on campus after an agreement was reached with campus officials.(WMTV)
MADISON, Wis. — After over a week of protests, the encampment on Library Mall is set to come down after UW-Madison leaders and students reached an agreement Friday.
In a statement, UW-Madison officials said that Students for Justice in Palestine, the primary group organizing the encampment, has agreed to clear the encampment, not disrupt graduation ceremonies and other campus functions and not reestablish an encampment on campus.
“We appreciate reaching resolution with SJP and acknowledge the support they received from their faculty liaisons,” university officials said.
Students had been protesting on Library Mall for just over a week, calling on the university to divest from groups who they said were supporting genocidal actions by the Israeli government against Palestinians in Gaza.
UW-Madison maintained that the encampment violated both campus policy and state law. Furthermore, campus leadership including Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said that they don’t have direct control over how the university’s endowment is invested. That responsibility falls on the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association.
“This has been a difficult period for our campus, our nation and the world. We want to be clear that UW–Madison supports peaceful student protest, fully respects the First Amendment, and has done so throughout this year,” university leaders said. “We appreciate that the encampment, named by SJP the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, although in violation of Chapter 18, was motivated by understandably passionate feelings about the devastation in Gaza, and was a source of community for many participants. ”
As part of the agreement, administrators will set up a meeting on July 1 between SJP, the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association and the Universities of Wisconsin to discuss transparency and principles in how the university’s endowment is invested. Chancellor Mnookin will attend the meeting.
Administrators also agreed to recognize that SJP can engage in the shared government process when it comes to investment principles. Mnookin committed to not interfering with the shared government process.
UW-Madison leaders also committed to a review of the university’s projects, opportunities, study abroad programs and internships that engage with people and places impacted by war.
The university also committed to consulting with Palestinian members of the UW community and inviting at least one scholar from a Palestinian university for each of the next three academic years.
A staff member will be added to the Division of Student Affairs to support students impacted by war, violence and displacement. The position will be posted for hiring by August 1.
University leaders also committed to asking UWPD to use discretion when reviewing cases related to the May 1 confrontation between law enforcement and protesters at the encampment.
Demonstrators at the University of Chicago were given a final notice to leave their encampment on campus which was established to protest the war in Gaza. Police entered the encampment on the campus quad early Tuesday morning and began tearing down tents. Protesters continued to face off with police.
Eli Valley is a Jewish Currents contributing writer. His comics collection Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel is available from OR Books.
Chavurat Tziporah and Jewish Voice for Peace – Milwaukee hosted Shabbat Shirah May 4 at the UW-Milwaukee Popular University for Palestine encampment. Students hold up letters spelling Tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world.”
Jewish professors and students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee protest encampment defended the encampment against accusations that it threatens Jewish safety. They also spoke out against equating anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Participants in the UWM encampment point out that Jews and Christians have surrounded Muslims to protect them as they prayed, and Jews celebrated Shabbat (sabbath service) in the encampment, sharing challah (bread) with all.
The encampment at UWM, set up April 29, is one of dozens at colleges around the country to protest Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. Students demand their universities disclose and end investments that involve Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
HUNDREDS ATTEND THE FUNERAL FOR THE 12 MARTYRS OF THE ISRAELI ARMY’S INVASION OF JENIN AND JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, MAY 23, 2024. (PHOTO: MOHAMMED NASSER/APA IMAGES)
DISPLACED PALESTINIANS WHO FLED RAFAH TO DEIR AL-BALAH SHELTER AT A CAMP ON THE SHORE, MAY 12, 2024. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
SMOKE BILLOWS FROM ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES IN RAFAH IN THE SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP, MAY 9, 2024. (PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/APA IMAGES)
