Al-Nakba Series on the Palestinian ‘catastrophe’ of 1948 that led to dispossession and conflict that still endures. “The Nakba did not begin in 1948. Its origins lie over two centuries ago….” So begins this four-part series on the ‘nakba’, meaning the ‘catastrophe’, about the history of the Palestinian exodus
Maps Palestine Remix In 1947, Palestinians controlled 94% of historic Palestine but after one year, they were left with only 22% of that land. It was divided into two parts: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since May,1948, Palestine has disappeared completely from the world map. Al Jazeera presents a detailed, interactive map tracking the history of the vanishing Palestine over the last 100 years. For more check out :www.palestineremix.com
Commemorating 67 years of our Ongoing Nakba. 750,000 Palestinians dispossessed, over 400 villages destroyed, more than 2 dozen massacres and 4.2+ million acres of land confiscated. See the new Quick Nakba Facts on the ethnic cleansing of
Last week, Palestinian nonprofit the Welfare Association for Youth announced the results of its 2014 photography contest called “Gaza in Your Eyes.” Out of hundreds of submissions, 13 young people were named winners. Each of their photos is strikingly different, but they all manage to capture the perseverance of beauty and hope against a backdrop of destruction.
Clearly this picture shows that it takes 6 settler colonial apartheid Israeli soldiers to prevent one Palestinian from planting a few olive trees. Imagine the cost involved if 10,000 Palestinians decided to do the same? Do the math and resist!
48 young olive trees destroyed in South Hebron Hills
October 3, 2013
At Tuwani - This morning Palestinians discovered 48 olive trees destroyed alongside bypass road 317 near the South Hebron Hills area village of Qawawis.
The olive tree grove belongs to Ali Shetat from Qawawis and had been planted six years ago. At 10 am this morning the owners, several internationals and B'tselem staff members gathered near the destroyed trees, waiting for the police. After 20 minutes the Israeli police and army arrived on the scene and documented the incident.
On May 10, 62 olive trees were cut during the night in a field next to bypass road 317, near the village of At Tuwani.
On a small wall near the olive grove the slogan “price tag for those who steal” was found. The “price tag policy” (Hebrew: מדיניות תג מחיר) is, according to B'tselem, the name given to “acts of random violence aimed at the Palestinian population and Israeli security forces” by radical Israeli settlers.
The number of Palestinian-owned trees uprooted and damaged in the South Hebron Hills area from the beginning of 2013 now stands at 139. This is a substantial increase over 2012, when 101 olive trees were damaged.
Just in the last two months and right before the olive harvest season, 22 olive trees were destroyed in this area.
Olive trees are an essential resource for the Palestinian community in the South Hebron Hills area, and their damage causes serious economic loss
An elderly Palestinian woman tries in vain to protect her olive trees as Israeli settlers, protected by the Israeli army, cut down 800 Palestinian-owned olive trees near the town of Shuyukh, east of Hebron.
Activist Tom Hurndall shot dead by Israeli sniper 14years ago for attempting to help Palestinian children. R.I.P Hero, I pray he be given the higest place in paradise, Insha Allah
The anniversary of the massacre of Deir Yassin and the beginning of Al Nakba! Imagine the terror and horror they must have felt as they were pushed to the Sea…Yes they pushed the Palestinians into the Sea, not the other way around! Deir Yassin massacre occurred on April 9, 1948, and also that by May 15, all of the major cities of Palestine had been cleansed of Arabs and about one half of the 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinian refugees has been ethnically cleansed by the Zionists. This was the beginning of the expulsion of the Palestinian Arabs from Haifa and from Palestine…Start of the Al Nakba!
Sitti Aziza, Allah yer7amha outside her home in Deir Yassin, Palestine (1985)
My great-grandmother, Aziza Radwan, was a survivor of the Deir Yassin massacre that took place 66 years ago today. At the time of the massacre, she was at the village bakery as she was every morning at dawn. My grandmother was 10 years old at the time of the massacre. She recounts the details of that day often.
“When we reunited with my mother three days after the massacre, she told us about how the Zionists kept her and other women prisoner in the bakery, proudly waiving around large daggers wet with the blood of others,” she describes.
“They shot the baker and his son, [Hussein and Abdel Raouf Al-Sharif from Hebron], and threw them both in the oven, as a warning to the women.”
My grandmother recounts her mother’s haunting words.
‘If you scream, I will kill you with this knife that has killed many before you.”
The harrowing images of that day remain seared into memory. The legacy of steadfastness and patient endurance will remain alive in the flames of the struggle of the Palestinian people worldwide - in our homeland, in the diaspora, and everywhere the oppressed rise up and resist.
At the Families Belong Together event at the Austin capital in 2018, I signed up for IfNotNow, told by the volunteers that I did not have to be Jewish to support the movement.
If you haven’t heard of INN, here’s their own summary from their website:
IfNotNow is building a movement of Jews to end Israel’s occupation and transform the American Jewish community.
Today I got a text from them about a US House Bill that needs consideration. The summary:
Our tax dollars are complicit in apartheid.
Funded by billions of dollars in US military funding, the Israeli government is detaining Palestinian children, stealing Palestinian land, and demolishing Palestinian homes.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Recently, Rep. Betty McCollum introduced H.R.2590 to Congress. In it’s own words, the bill’s purpose is to “promote and protect the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and to ensure that United States taxpayer funds are not used by the Government of Israel to support the military detention of Palestinian children, the unlawful seizure, appropriation, and destruction of Palestinian property and forcible transfer of civilians in the West Bank, or further annexation of Palestinian land in violation of international law.”
This should be a common-sense approach — and its something our government does when making deals with other countries — but due to decades of pro-occupation lobbying by AIPAC and other Israel hawks, this is not yet the norm in our politics .
I used their letter-writing tool to contact my unfortunate rep, Michael McCaul, uber conservative. Hopefully your rep is a little more open to discussion. I digress, however.
Please use the links and information above to write a letter to your US House Representative and ask them to sign Representative McCollum’s bill to help and protect the people of Palestine.
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