Gaza Unsilenced Page 15

  During the attack on Gaza, the dead bodies of children became contested politicized objects. While some reporters and anonymous Twitter commenters highlighted the horror of the murder of innocent young civilians, the Israeli state sanctioned these actions, transforming children into approved tools to further the eliminatory regime of dispossession in Palestine. Yet despite the death and the hardship these particular Palestinians face, Lama’s narrative and the story of other children like her show that Palestinian children have already created their own kind of resistance. Even in the rubble, subjected to vicious shelling and an uncertain atmosphere of uprooting and loss, children find a way to draw their home, whether or not they actually still have a physical house, and speak out against the Israeli oppression by refusing to stop singing. These children find new ways to live, to play, to bring back the sun and create life.

  Children’s dead and living bodies bear great significance and meaning, revealing the relationship between living, death and living death within Israel’s colonial regime of death. The all-too-ample evidence of Israel’s arbitrary power over the lives and bodies of Palestinian children and their abused and stolen childhoods challenges the securitized claim that “Israel has the right to self-defense.” The senseless deaths of Palestinian children, and the hardships and discrimination they experience in life even when they are permitted to live, show that the claim that Israel is simply “protecting itself” is racialized, immoral, and unethical. The very claim collectively disciplines and punishes the entire Palestinian community and inscribes deadly terror on children’s lives and deaths. Palestinian children’s space—their homes, their playgrounds, their schools and even their drawings—become specific spaces of power where Israeli forces can exhibit their control.

  In the context of a past history and continuing infliction of displacement, dispossession and violence, the attacks against Palestinians in Gaza should be considered an act of genocide. Israel targets and kills Palestinian children, not just because they pose a threat as “future terrorists,” but because they are the builders of the next generation. This feeds into the larger eliminatory strategy and therefore requires immediate political intervention—not just in the form of a ceasefire or truce, but by ensuring that these crimes against humanity and, in particular, against the Palestinian population, can no longer be committed by Israel or supported by the international community.

  Mondoweiss, August 22, 2014, http://bit.ly/1q6E56R

  Palestinian Civil Society in Israel Demands Urgent Action on Gaza

  The Arab Association for Human Rights

  We, the undersigned organizations, express extreme concern at the rapidly deteriorating situation within the Gaza Strip and urge the international community to take immediate action to halt the deadly aggression being waged against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. We also urge the UN to initiate a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

  Since Israel launched its military offensive dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” on July 8, 2014, over 175 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, 80 percent of whom the UN humanitarian office (OCHA) reports to be civilians, and over 1,280 have been injured.

  The victims have included entire families, women, children and the elderly. Israel has launched over 1,500 air strikes in the past seven days, deliberately targeting homes and other civilian facilities and has fired dozens of shells at Palestinian communities located near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel and along the coast; approximately 900 houses have so far been destroyed.

  In a further escalation of events, Israel has bombed a number of houses without any prior warning whilst civilians have been inside, dramatically raising the death toll and the number of casualties. Targets bombed by the military where civilians have been present have included a café, an emergency medical building, a facility for the disabled, three ambulances and a clearly marked media car. Schools, mosques, an ambulance center, nongovernmental organization offices, fishing boats and a hospital have also been struck.

  We, the undersigned organizations, strongly condemn Israel’s unlawful targeting of civilians, civilian areas, and civilian property, which is illegal under international law and amounts to collective punishment.

  We call for an immediate end to hostilities against the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza, and for thorough, independent and genuine investigations to be launched into all violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. We emphasize that this indiscriminate violence persists amidst the context of the continued closure of Gaza, which restricts freedom of movement and access to basic humanitarian resources. Furthermore, the Netanyahu government has failed to present any viable or equitable solution to the situation.

  The Palestinian Arab community in Israel has mobilized in protest at the increase in violence towards Palestinians by both the state and individuals, within the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. As well as the recent assault on Gaza, this has also included the brutal murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair, nationalistic attacks on Arab individuals by Jewish extremists on ethnic grounds, and demonstrations which have met with no police interference calling for “death to Arabs.”

  However, Palestinian protesters have been met with excessive use of force by security services and mass arrests and detention, including that of minors. Almost 400 Palestinians have so far been arrested in the continuing protests, and scores of people remain in detention.

  We strongly oppose the culture of racism and incitement towards Palestinians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, which has been exacerbated by recent statements by the Israeli political leadership who have sought to inflame ethnic tensions and mobilize support for violence towards Palestinians.

  Provocative statements made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leading politicians have sought to inflame tensions and promote an “us versus them” mentality. Furthermore, social media campaigns which have included contributions from Israeli military personnel, have widely promoted indiscriminate violence towards Palestinians.

  We call on the international community to monitor closely the recent escalation of attacks on civilians in the Gaza Strip, and to raise concerns of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity based on the Rome Statute.

  We also urge the UN to initiate a fact-finding mission to investigate these events. We further encourage you to keep in contact with the undersigned Palestinian civil society organizations in Israel for information, assistance, materials or advice on the above.

  [Signed]

  Arab Association for Human Rights

  Adalah

  Mada al-Carmel—Arab Center for Applied Social Research

  Women Against Violence

  Kayan Feminist Organization

  Mossawa Center—The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel

  Association for Arab Youth—Baladna

  I’lam Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel

  The Galilee Society—The Arab National Society for

  Health Research & Services

  Arab Cultural Association

  Hirakuna—Forum for Social Solidarity, Voluntarism and Young Leadership

  AlZahraa Organization for the Advancement of Women

  AlQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society

  The Arab Association for Human Rights website, July 14, 2014, http://bit.ly/1Ihtspt

  Israel Arrests Activist for Hosting Skype Chat with Resistance Icon Leila Khaled

  Patrick O. Strickland

  Israel, reputedly the only democracy in the Middle East, is willing to arrest its own citizens for communicating on the Internet.

  That was the experience of Samih Jabarin when he recently arranged for Leila Khaled, the Palestinian resistance icon, to address the al-Warsheh cultural center in Haifa—a city in present-day Israel—via Skype.

  As soon as Khaled had completed her opening remarks and invited questions from members of the audience, three Israeli secret polic
e officers entered the center unnoticed and quietly escorted Jabarin, its owner, from the building. He was released after interrogation later that night (July 11), but al-Warsheh was closed by police two days later.

  Shabak, Israel’s secret service (also known as the Shin Bet), had previously tried to pressure Jabarin into canceling the event.

  “The Shabak called me that Friday morning [July 11] and demanded that I come to their Haifa offices for interrogation,” he told the Electronic Intifada. “I refused because it was dangerous—how could I be sure it wasn’t some extremist from Im Tirtzu or another right-wing Zionist group?

  “’Okay,’ they told me, ‘we will have to arrest you tonight,’ which they did.”

  Intimidation

  Interrogators “tried to intimidate me by mentioning my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter’s name several times, just to show me that they know about my family,” he said. He was also warned that he would be punished for arranging a conversation with Khaled, who one of his interrogators called “that scum terrorist.”

  Although Jabarin has not been charged with any offense, he was threatened with prosecution on numerous different charges. In the past, Palestinian citizens of Israel who visit Arab countries or make contact with Palestinians abroad have faced a draconian charge known as “contact with a foreign agent.”

  Jabarin said, “We decided to talk to Leila Khaled as a way to break the division” between Palestinians in Israel and those elsewhere. “Her history is important to us and it’s part of our history. We aren’t content watching videos of her talks online or reading her writing. She’s part of our people and we will speak to her if we want,” he added.

  Best known for her roles in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970, Khaled is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. During her Skype presentation, she told dozens of local Palestinian activists that “you are living under Israeli occupation as well,” like Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

  “Racist Laws”

  “You live under the Zionist occupation and its racist laws every day,” Khaled added.

  Comprising approximately twenty percent of Israel’s total population, an estimated 1.7 million Palestinians carry Israeli citizenship and reside in cities, towns and villages across present-day Israel. According to Adalah, a group which advocates for the rights of Palestinians in Israel, they face more than fifty discriminatory laws that stifle their political expression and severely limit their access to state resources, including land.

  Jabarin is one of a few hundred Palestinian citizens of Israel to have been arrested since early July. The wave of arrests was the largest targeting the community since October 2000, when Israeli police shot dead thirteen Palestinians in Israel during demonstrations that month.

  This month’s protests were held in response to the brutal murder of sixteen-year-old Muhammad Abu Khudair in occupied East Jerusalem. Approximately thirty children were among 128 Palestinian citizens of Israel to be imprisoned for longer than a week.

  The arrests have continued as Palestinians in Israel stage almost daily protests against Israel’s ongoing military assault against the Gaza Strip. On July 18, Israeli police officers attacked a Haifa demonstration in solidarity with Gaza, arresting at least 29 people.

  Jabarin said that the closure of al-Warsheh is part of a broader crack-down on Palestinian citizens of Israel. “The government is scared of anything that stresses Palestinian identity inside” present-day Israel, he said.

  Two well-known figures—the British member of parliament George Galloway and the Pakistani-British author Tariq Ali—had been scheduled to speak via Skype to an audience at al-Warsheh on July 18. But their talk has been postponed due to the closure.

  “Physical Separation”

  Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and author of more than a dozen books, said that Israel’s strategy of dividing Palestinians politically, culturally and geographically dates back to the state’s establishment in the wake of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. An estimated 156,000 Palestinians became citizens of the newly declared state, many of them internally displaced from their property.

  Since Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 War, Palestinians in Israel “are ruled differently than those in the West Bank, than those in Jerusalem and those Gaza,” Pappe told the Electronic Intifada.

  Israel today “uses a policy of ghettoizing Gaza in order not to have to deal with a Palestinian community inside Israel and the West Bank together with a Palestinian community inside Gaza,” he said. “There is a real physical separation.”

  Yet Pappe argues that widespread access the Internet and the rise of social media have proven a challenge to Israel’s policy of fragmenting Palestinians. “The Internet has in many ways undone the geographical and political borders that separate Palestinians,” he said.

  Samih Jabarin vows to keep on organizing educational and cultural activities, availing of the opportunities afforded by modern technology. “We will open al-Warsheh again even if it means going to prison,” Jabarin said. “We know our comrades will continue it. Even if we have to reopen in a different place or under a different name, we are going to keep doing this as long as there’s an occupation.”

  The Electronic Intifada, July 26, 2014, http://bit.ly/1bM7XTR

  Arrabeh’s Eid in Gaza’s Shadow

  Hatim Kanaaneh

  The video referring to Rafeef Ziadeh’s recitation of her poem, “We Teach Life, Sir” is available at http://bit.ly/1nL4lzc.

  Shortly after an unremarkable Galilee summer’s sunset the “Allahu akbar” cries of half a dozen muezzins confirmed the sighting of the new moon and the commencement of celebrating Eid Al-Fitr ending the fasting month of Ramadan. I perked my ears attentively straining to pick up any special announcement marking the 22nd day of the ongoing massacre in Gaza. I didn’t have to wait for long. When the young man leading the prayers in the mosque closest to the household hosting our breaking of the fast reached the end of the fifth and last formal prayer of the day he waxed inventive in asking for God’s favors on our collective behalf. He started with the usual requests of forgiveness of our transgressions and shortcomings in performing our duties toward Him and for mercy on all of us and on all of our parents “for tending me in childhood.” He then progressed to ask for God’s punishment of our oppressors specifying two by name, the Zionist enemies and their Egyptian collaborators. He needn’t be more specific. He must have assumed, correctly I should add, that all his flock knew what sins General Sisi had committed: banning the Moslem Brotherhood and sealing the Rafah border with Gaza. Still, the young imam saved the harshest of curses for the Zionist infidels: “Please God, dry up all of their women’s uteruses!” he pleaded. I broke out laughing at the anatomically specific ill wish. My communist host objected. He didn’t quite agree to the cursing of General Sisi but he would like to allow the drying up of the Zionist uteruses.

  “How is that different from ‘Death to Arabs?’” he wanted to know.

  “But the young man is an employee of the Ministry of Religious Affairs,” I argued. “He collects a monthly salary from the Zionists’ treasury, for God’s sake!”

  “So do members of the police force protecting fascist gangs attacking Arab civilians for no reason except their race. It is Israel’s version of democracy and balancing of the forces of evil.”

  The cacophony of loudspeakers exploding one after the other from seven different directions ended the dawn’s bucolic peace waking me from a fitful sleep. For a moment I almost understood the attitude of a colleague, a Polish immigrant physician as I recall, who informed me in my Ministry of Health days that she had encouraged officials of the Jewish city of Upper Nazareth where she lived to run their collected sewage refuse openly down the valley to the Arab village of Reineh because of the latter’s disturbing of the Jewish resident’s sleep with their dawn time calls for prayer. My two children at markedly divergent time zones aroun
d the globe were text-messaging us throughout the night. Israel’s deadly incursion into Gaza and the ensuing air travel confusion in and out of Israel’s own airport had thrown a monkey wrench in our family’s scheduled annual summer get-together in Arrabeh. But my outrage quickly dissipated.

  I decided to take advantage of the morning’s cool weather to pick some dew-washed figs and cactus fruits from my orchard. But first I had to check the Internet: The death toll had exceeded the magic figure of one thousand. Somehow, that wasn’t as sad as my friend Ramzy Baroud’s pained status on Facebook decrying his family’s fate. They were on the run again, refugees from their shelter as refugees in Gaza. I wanted to advise patience, forgiveness and magnanimity. Then I wondered how magnanimous I would have felt if I and my family had been driven out of our home in Arrabeh to have a Polish or a Brooklyn immigrant family live on my father’s land, collect its olive crop and enjoy its figs and cactus fruit, and then to have them now send their son in an American jet fighter bomber to chase me further away from ‘their homeland?’

  As I picked my daily supply of summer fruit, the sudden silence that descended on the empty village streets after the end of the morning prayers in the mosques had a deadly quality. There were no children with toy guns out celebrating on the streets, no flares and no fireworks. I went for a stroll on the newly paved desolate street in our neighborhood risking the likelihood of a village rumor about my sanity. The neighbors had lined the entire sidewalk with a thousand candles in memory of Gaza’s martyred children. The butcher sat on a chair and twirled his moustache. A lone skinned lamb hung by the door. Usually on a day like this he would have two or three of his children helping him out. He offered me the standard sip of black coffee: