Just finished A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ABED SALAMA: ANATOMY OF A JERUSALEM TRAGEDY, by Nathan Thrall
This is both a snapshot of the contemporary state of #palestine and an approachable #history of the area wrapped in heartbreaking personal stories, all rotating around a single catastrophe that could only happen in a city built on #racists#apartheid infrastructure
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question by Edward W. Said & Christopher Hitchens, 2001
Since the 1948 war which drove them from their heartland, the Palestinian people have consistently been denied the most basic democratic rights. Blaming the Victims shows how the historical fate of the Palestinians has been justified by spurious academic attempts to dismiss their claim to a home within the boundaries of historical Palestine.
I've only read a few Palestinian prisoners stories and I have to stop each time. I'm usually one who can sit and read for hours. It's devastating but necessary reading - we MUST get these stories to as many eyes as possible.
"We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again."
"We call upon our colleagues in the homeland and internationally to support our steadfast attempts to defend and preserve our universities for the sake of the future of our people, and our ability to remain on our Palestinian land in Gaza. We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again."
The #ICC can issue for signatories countries an arrest warrant on #Netanyahu because it has jurisdiction over international crimes committed in #Palestine since 2012
BUT
If #Israel doesn't recognise the #ICC, its territory isn't included in the jurisdiction, and the crimes of Hamas where carried out there, then how can the #ICC issue a legally binding arrest warrant on Hamas leaders?
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
“Britain in Palestine 1917-1948 investigates the contradictory promises and actions which defined British Mandatory rule in Palestine and laid the groundwork for the Nakba (the catastrophe) and the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The roots of the contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental landscape of Palestine and Israel can be traced back to this period, making it essential viewing for understanding Britain’s legacy in the region and the situation on the ground today.”
#Video length: eighteen minutes and thrity seconds.
Activestills Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel by Vered Maimon & Shiraz Grinbaum, 2016
This book is a joint contemplation about the body of
work produced by the Activestills photography collective
from its inception in 2005 up to 2016.
It includes the perspectives of activists, journalists,
historians and theoreticians of photography, and the
collective’s members themselves.
The president of #Barnard College lost a faculty-wide vote of no confidence on Tuesday, as criticism mounts over the school’s response to a pro- #Palestine 🇵🇸 encampment
It is the first no confidence vote against a president in the college’s history.
"With calls for divestment only growing louder, we asked students nationwide to share how their schools have responded to protests calling for a ceasefire and in support of #Palestine"
Seeing videos of #Palestine protestors in so many campuses being abused by coward pig cops #ACAB. I am so in love with all these brave college students. I am not surprised professors don't have the guts to join then. At least it is very rare that one does. Security in #academia is a powerful drug. Be careful you don't lose your integrity with your confort, @academicchatter.
[...]
If Israel escalates by attacking Iran and striking at the country’s infrastructure, then Iran’s counter will be to take a page out of Russia’s book and commence the one line of attack which Israel, the US and their allies cannot withstand any better than Ukraine – that’s Electric War.
For the seven months which have elapsed since Hamas began its operation against Israel on October 7, and Israel commenced its genocide against the Palestinians, there has been no targeting by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the Syrian and Iraqi groups of Israel’s highly vulnerable maritime gas platforms, gas pipelines, coal and oil-fired electricity generating plants, the coal and oil storages nearby, solar and wind power units, or the electricity grids keeping the country alight.
The Arab inhibitions and calculations are understandable. Iran’s will disappear if Israel triggers a new round of attacks.
[...]
"Iran received messages from mediators to let the regime do a symbolic strike to save face, asked Iran not to retaliate,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed to The Cradle
"Iran has received messages from mediators to let the regime do a symbolic strike to save face and asked Iran not to retaliate,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed to The Cradle.
He added that Tehran “outright rejected” the proposal, delivered by mediators, and reiterated warnings that any Israeli attack on Iranian soil would be met with a decisive and immediate response.
The reply was delivered directly to the Swiss envoy in Tehran by officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and not the foreign ministry. According to The Cradle’s source, the decision for the IRGC to reply directly was meant “to send a strong warning to the US.”
“Iran successfully embarrassed all of the integrated radar network and anti-missile systems of the US and the [Israeli] regime. The US even activated its parked satellites over the region to do maximum protection and failed miserably,” the Iranian military official added.
The revelations come as US defense officials have told western media that they expect a “limited response” from Israel against Iran, which will reportedly focus on targets outside of Iranian territory.
Nevertheless, US officials stressed that Tel Aviv had not briefed the Pentagon on a “final decision” as discussions within Israel’s fractured war cabinet continued.
“The US does not intend to take part in the military response,” they confirmed. However, they expect Israel to inform Washington about response plans in advance.
[...]
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani told state TV on Monday night that Tehran’s response to any Israeli retaliation would come in “a matter of seconds, as Iran will not wait for another 12 days to respond.”
In an era of post-truth, the strategy of rigidly defending your version of truth and attacking other people's view of the truth is a largely self-destructive excercise that just creates a never ending argument
Understanding the logics and rationales of those people we disagree with is a far better way but requires humility and nuance
Naomi Klein in Doppelganger and Büscher in The Truth About Nature show us how this can be done with #Covid, #Palestine and #ClimateChange
(Tasnim) Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi cautioned the Zionist regime to avoid further adventurism, lest it receive a blow much harder than the lawful retaliatory strike
that Iran launched against the Israeli military targets early Sunday.
[VIDEO] Scenes of Al-Qassam targeting enemy soldiers and vehicles on the afternoon of the 27th of Ramadan in the Al-Zana area, east of the city of Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip [subbed].
Today in Labor History March 30, 1856: The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Crimean War, between Russia and the victorious Ottoman Empire (allied with the UK, France and Sardinia-Piedmont). The flashpoint was a conflict over the rights of Christian minorities in Ottoman-controlled Palestine, and control of its holy sites.
The Crimean War was one of the first to utilize modern armaments, like explosive shells, railways and telegraphs. Much of these armaments came from Alfred Nobel’s family armament factory. It was also a particularly deadly war. Around 670,000 soldiers died in only four years, the majority from preventable infectious diseases (e.g., typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery), not from battle wounds. Mortality rates for soldiers were 23-31%, compared with U.S. troop mortality rates of only 2% during the Vietnam War.
In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Russia sold Alaska to the U.S. out of fear that the UK would simply take it from them in their weakened military state. The last living veteran of the Crimean war was a Greek tortoise, named Timothy, who had served as a ship’s mascot during the war. He died in 2004, nearly 150 years after the war ended. Despite their victory, the Ottomans gained no new territory, and the war nearly bankrupted them, contributing to their decline as a super power. The Crimean War also helped forge the alliances and grievances that would lead to the First World War, and quite likely to the conditions leading up to Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea and its current fight with Ukraine.
Florence Nightengale became famous as a nurse during this war. Tolstoy fought in the 11-month Siege of Sevastopol. His experiences in this war contributed to his pacifism and anarchism. After witnessing a public execution in France, one year after the Crimean War ended, he wrote, “The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.” The war also influenced his novel, “War and Peace.”
Any of the Palestinian memoirs/biographies are great in so many ways. You can come in with little idea of the Middle East and get a human story as well as where that falls in the history/context of something people call complicated, but isn't.
#Palestine / If Biden Wants Israeli-Palestinian Peace, He Must Break With the Past (Prof Avi Shlaim, December 22, 2020)
Shlaim argued back in 2020 that only by breaking from past failed policies of coddling Israel can #Biden capitalize on new regional dynamics to make meaningful progress toward a two-state solution.
Shlaim suggested that the traditional U.S. approach of unconditional support for Israel, while posing as an "honest broker" in peace negotiations, has been incoherent and self-defeating. The Oslo peace too was a charade that allowed Israel to continue expanding settlements while paying lip service to a two-state solution that became increasingly untenable.
#interview Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir on "Face the Nation," October 1973
Israel's leaders' megalomania and hubris were always so evident, it's embarrassing to think Netanyahu and his Ultranationalist coalition are perceived an anomaly.
[~18:15] There's no problem of a solution. If you're talking about refugees, they should have been out of the camps 20 years ago. We almost took out of the camps many refugees in the Gaza Strip since the 6-day war, but there is room for the refugees in Jordan and there is no doubt that if they want a peaceful solution, Jordan is the natural place for Palestinians if they want to live there.
[~18:50] There are 20 independent Arab countries, but if the Palestinians want to come to more of self-expression, there's no doubt that between Israel and Jordan there would be one Arab state - Jordan. And that part across the border of Israel, that's an Arab state, that's Jordan. They call it Palestine, Jordan, Palestine, doesn't make a bit of difference.