Tag: Ethnic Cleansing - Page 3 - International Solidarity Movement

Candles in the Dark

It is nearing Christmas time in Bethlehem. And there is room at the inn this time.

A family from Gaza had to go to a far away hospital for their child’s illness. Then October 7th occurred, and then the genocide.

This Gazan family found refuge in a hostel in Bethlehem. They have been here for months already and will continue to be until it is safe for them to return. I spent one night in the same hostel. And the mother knocked on the bedroom door I was in. When it opened, I saw that she had made an extra plate of home-cooked food.

I couldn’t do anything but cry for the next hour, thinking to myself how the family most likely has no home to go back to, perhaps no neighborhood, perhaps no city, and in all likelihood have lost dozens of members of their extended family, and they still have the thoughtfulness, compassion, and grace to offer a stranger a meal.

It is not the first time a Palestinian has shown me similar care and generosity. Everywhere in Palestine I have been given tea, coffee, food, sweets, gifts of all types, embraces of friendship, and overflowing kindness.

In Masafer Yatta, the Jordan Valley, and other areas in Palestine, shepherding families and other villagers face threats of their whole communities being wiped out by murderous settlers who tell them they have 24 hours to leave or be killed. Still, these same families will spend the little money they have to supply their international and Israeli solidarity guests with tea, coffee, snacks, homemade bread and more.

Food shared by Palestinian villagers in Wadi Tiran.

In Gaza, I have heard there are thousands of open doors to the Palestinian homes that are still standing. Gaza families keep their doors open for when (not if) their neighbors’ homes are bombed and their neighbors are made homeless with nowhere else to go. And in the United States, where I am from, we lock not only the doors to our homes but our churches too. I pray that one day, Americans in peace and prosperity will have as much generosity and compassion to those made homeless as the Palestinian people of Gaza have even while experiencing starvation and genocide.

There is a poet in Gaza, Refaat Alareer, who was targeted and killed by a missile strike. He had written a poem about what he would like to occur in the event of his death. He asks us to make kites (white ones, with long tails) so that a child in Gaza can see them flying and think about how an angel is bringing back love.

If there is one thing right now that I wish the world could see through my eyes, it is the strength to love that I witness Palestinians still have even when they are experiencing a genocide. This humanity amid inhumanity breaks the shell enclosing my understanding and teaches me what holy is.

Mahmoud Darwish, the famed Palestinian poet, reminds us to think and say, “if only I were a candle in the dark”.

*Mahmoud Darwish quote from Palestine Advocacy Project*

Being in Palestine at this time, I see much darkness, but also many candles.

I can still see even after all the unspeakable crimes against humanity waged against the Palestinian people, how if settler colonialists would simply come as guests and friends, come as a brother returning home, instead of a conquerer laying waste to the land and its people, how there would be a table spread before them by Palestinians with so many wonderful things and an empty seat and a full plate waiting with voices reiterating again and again: ahlan wa sahlan, ahlan wa sahlan.

Palestinian people have been denied their right to return to their homes and land for over 75 years. They still have the keys. But these examples of boundless humanity in the worst situations teach me about a different kind of return. Palestinians offer me, other internationals, and their Israeli oppressors when they turn from their oppression, the right to return to their, to our, humanity.

Worldwide Pressure Escalates with Global Strike for Gaza

Striking Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been joined by millions in countries across the world for the Global Strike for Gaza, which was announced by a coalition of major Palestinian factions. The cadence of the strike declarations accelerated rapidly throughout the day in demand of an immediate ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

The global strike action was coordinated in response to the dashing of efforts toward an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. Comfortably seated with his arm stretched high, US Ambassador Alternate Representative of the US for Special Political Affairs in the United Nations Robert A. Wood lit a fire of rage and condemnation across every continent following his signaling that the United States would use its veto power to kill a UN resolution, supported almost thoroughly through the UN security council, to block an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

Entire nations shut down. A strike was born.

Sign on shop in Jordan announcing closure due to strike. Photo Credit: (MEE/Mohammad Ersan)

Occupied West Bank:

Across the territory, shops fell silent. Schools remained closed. Government offices shut down. Masses gathered in Ramallah’s Al-Manara Square for what was, by many accounts, the largest crowd gathered in protest in the area in some time. Palestinian children made art work and protestors carried a banner naming Gaza’s martyrs while large protests occurred simultaneously in al Khalil. Shops in occupied East Jerusalem remained shuttered through the day as the global strike action flashed across the planet with several countries joining in nationwide efforts to deal economic blows to the heart of the powers who profit from the continuation of occupation force’s genocide in Gaza.

Silence in the streets of Nablus. Photo Credit: [Zain Jaafar/AFP]

Lebanon:

Secretary-general of Lebanon’s Council of Ministers, Mahmoud Mekkiya delivered the announcement to the nation; all governments and national institutions would be shuttered in solidarity with the global call out. In reports out of major Lebanese cities, “workers downed tools” and the call for global strike was supported in calls for nationwide solidarity by the ministers of education and culture and several heads of finance. People across Lebanon engaged in the strike in solidarity with Gaza as well as southern Lebanese villages which have also been impacted in occupation forces bombardment.

Jordan:

Streets were bare across Jordan as a stunning show of solidarity surged through “the transportation sector, aviation, trade, banks, ports, as well as schools and universities.” Thousands gathered in the streets of Amman and across Jordan in massive protests. Handmade signs announcing solidarity strikes were placed across hundreds of shops as the nation grinded to a halt in a powerful cry to end the continued atrocities being committed in Gaza.

Photo Credit: English News.cn (Photo by Mohammad Abu Ghosh/Xinhua)

Turkey:

In observation of the strike, the country saw abandoned streets throughout the day, with images circulating across social media of empty streets and gated shops in the typically bustling city of Istanbul.

Photo Credit: Palestine Online @OnlinePalEng

While many countries held full nationwide shutdowns in honor of the strike call, others which did not, saw massive protests in major cities across the world. Entire communities vocally joined the strike in solidarity. #StrikeForGaza was trending across social media, businesses announced individual shutdowns, millions across the world did not report to work or school and millions more refused all financial transactions for the day, no physical purchases, no shopping, no online orders. Boycott actions are a powerful tool to cost companies standing on the side of genocide, occupation and apartheid millions of dollars in profit. Momentum continues to build for an end to the bombardment which has now claimed nearly 20,000 lives. Thousands of the missing lie among the rubble.

One day prior to the global strike, the world marked the 75th anniversary of International Human Rights Day as the bombs continued to fall on Gaza.

Far Right Settler March Demanding Control of Al Aqsa Mosque Disbanded for Inciting Violence

8 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Occupied East Jerusalem

Marking the first night of Hanukkah, on December 7, around 150 ultra-nationalist, Kahane terrorist linked extremist settlers demanding “full Jewish control” of Al Aqsa Mosque shouted racist abuse and waved banners of violent incitement against Al Aqsa Mosque. The violent-extremist group was granted authorization to march through the Muslim Quarter, but was stopped before it could start when Israeli police confronted the mob for violating the terms of its protest permit and inciting violence. Signs calling for the bulldozer-demolition of Al Aqsa, one of the holiest structures in Islam, were reportedly confiscated.

Clashes between Israeli police and far-right activists at a march through Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday night. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi.

Permission was granted on the eve of the event, against every indication that march organizers would not be following the tepid ‘restrictions’ placed on the march including an attendance cap and disallowance of the route reaching the holy site. Extremist, settler-colonial citizen forces are granted the right to murder and showered with arms by their government with which to do so. But under pressure through public outcry against the provocative event, occupation police dispersed the demonstration.

Far right march organizers had circulated a declaration through social media linking the events in Gaza with continued zionist incitement to wrest control of Al Aqsa from the Islamic Endowment waqf. Extremist settlers, instead, want to place it under the control of the same occupying force which is committing daily atrocities against occupied and besieged Palestinians, atrocities which have shocked the world.

The Haram Al-Sharif and the Al Aqsa Mosque, was the first place Muslims prayed toward and remains a sacred site of great importance in Islam. It has long been a flashpoint for far right extremist settler and occupation forces’ violence and antagonization of Palestinians through continuous incursions; its majesty the backdrop of the repeated and arbitrary denial of access to Muslims.

Across a timeline littered with incursions into the area, May saw hundreds of settlers marking “Flag Day” by rampaging through occupied East Jerusalem where soldier and settler alike hurled racial insults and assaulted Palestinians in the area. And in early October, far-right extremists repeatedly stormed the Al Aqsa Mosque compound coinciding with the Jewish Sukkot seven day pilgrimage festival. Incited by Jewish ultra-nationalist groups, extremist settlers continued an antagonistic campaign of repeated trampling of the courtyard at the holy site even as faithful Palestinians were being violently denied entry, an arbitrary age-restriction which is ongoing.

Al Aqsa Compound stormed by extremist settlers on October 5, 2023. photo credit: The New Arab.

Al-Aqsa’s administrative workers, including Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, one of Al Aqsa’s main Imams, have endured repeated targeting. Sheikh Sabri has faced terrorist death threats by settler vigilantes, a raid of his home to announce an arbitrary travel ban against him, and an outrageous eviction and notice of impending demolition of his home just days ago. This home demolition is especially egregious because it involves the collective punishment of 100 Palestinians who also live in separate homes inside the threatened structure.

People of all faiths, including Palestinian Muslims, have an inalienable right, echoed in OCHA’s International Standards article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of freedom from religious-based discrimination. Palestinians regularly attempt to reach Al Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers, but are blocked by Israeli barricades, police, and military who attack the worshippers while they are praying week after week. Human rights defenders holding a non-violent presence to document the restriction, assault, and harassment of Palestinian Muslims at their holy site, have had their phones and passports confiscated and have been forced from the site by occupation soldiers. Despite these provocations, and the recent jailing and forced deportation of a Belgian human rights defender while documenting an illegal home demolition, international human rights defenders continue to document and intervene in human rights violations.

The violent, extremist settler march was an incitement to further violence and marginalization of indigenous Palestinians and the obscene violation of a holy site meant to be a welcoming sanctuary to those whispering prayers within its walls. The organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, blueprints the odds between the Jewish faith and this supremacist Zionist ideology; “Zionist interpretations of history taught us that Jewish people are alone, that to remedy the harms of antisemitism we must think of ourselves as always under attack and that we cannot trust others. It teaches us fear, and that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, a more humiliating checkpoint.” Their statements and demonstrations are part of a growing worldwide Jewish resistance to occupation, apartheid and the systematic dehumanization which maintains them. “Rather than accept the inevitability of occupation and dispossession, we choose a different path. We learn from the anti-Zionist Jews who came before us, and know that as long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish dissent to it.”

Many Palestinian families remember the stories of their great grandparents who recall how Palestinian Arab and Jewish neighbors babysat for each other and were not only at peace, but close friends, prior to the imposition of settler-colonialism. Palestine, “the land of barakah” (the land of blessings, peace, salvation, liberation, and spiritual presence) and site of the stories that have shaped so many Jewish, Christian, and Muslim lives is experiencing a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. The Al Aqsa Mosque, the soul of Jerusalem, is at the epicenter of the fate of this land and its people, with reverberations around the world; a crossroads between liberatory survival and genocidal desolation, of human rights and the restriction thereof, justice and justice denied.

Masafer Yatta Families Displaced Following Home Demolitions

7 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Masafer Yatta, Occupied West Bank

In just over one week, several Palestinian family homes were relegated to fields of rubble after occupation army bulldozers invaded several villages including al Deirat, Umm Lasafa and Umm Qissa. The demolitions left Palestinian children and their families homeless as the targeted destruction and expulsion of Masafer Yatta communities continues to accelerate.

The ruins of a demolished family home in Masafer Yatta. Photo Credit: BNN

On December 6, Occupation forces took the opportunity to demolish a sheep barn in Umm Qissa overnight during their destructive incursion in furtherance of the attacks on the shepherding and farming infrastructure of Palestinian communities in the South Hebron Hills. Coupled with the violent raids, antagonism and invasion of Palestinian homes by extremist ideological settlers, the pattern of harassment towards the achievement of a land ethnically cleansed of indigenous Palestinians grinds forth.

Taking advantage of the gap in coverage with the world’s eyes on the genocide in Gaza, and the isolated nature of the villages of Masafer Yatta, the occupation army has enabled and participated in the increasing momentum of settler terrorist attacks along with the destruction of residences to force Palestinian expulsion.

On December 3, settler extremists invaded Esfay, Maghayir Al-Abid and At-Tuba, leaving behind them the destroyed water network of a wide swathe of villagers of the South Hebron Hills communities. With surgical exacting, occupation forces are removing all elements of a people’s ability to exist; from the slashing of water cisterns to the destruction of water flow pipes, a community without water cannot survive. In image after image filtering out of the embattled villages, homes are seen crashing down under the gears of army-driven bulldozers while armed IOF stand guarding the destruction from intervention.

Credit: OCHA data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank. 12/03

On OCHA’s data on demolition and displacement in the West Bank website rolling figures which “reflect the demolition of Palestinian-owned structures and the resulting displacement of people from their homes across the West Bank since 2009” are updated every 48 hours. The numbers continue to grow and the project of colonial expansion continues to saturate the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian Families in Mleihat Endure Night of Terror Following Settler Home Invasions

12/1/2023 Mleihat, Jordan Valley. Occupied West Bank

Via: Jordan Valley Solidarity

Under the cover of night, several Palestinian homes in the Mleihat Arab community endured violent incursions by settlers in an attack overseen by the occupation army. Disturbing video of the storming of Palestinian family homes last evening in Mleihat displays a nightmarish scene in which a heavily armed extremist used his gun to viciously beat a resident and then pursued him at gunpoint.

During the home invasions, the settlers, one who has been identified as Zohar Sabah, committed violent assaults of Palestinian residents, traumatized children, insulted the women of the home and stole sheep from two Mleihat residents. This hours-long campaign of terror is part of a wider, coordinated project of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land by ideological extremist settlers who have been targeting small, isolated Palestinian communities for years. These assaults have soared in pace and have remained at fever pitch since October 7th with over a dozen farming and shepherding communities effectively terrorized into abandoning their villages under death threats accompanied by the destruction of water infrastructure, the smashing of vehicles, the destruction of farming equipment.

The violence committed against Palestinian family homes of Mleihat last evening is but the latest echo of settler brutality including tactics disturbingly targeting children and weaponizing their proximity to occupation forces against Palestinians through false accusations which place their lives at the whim of occupation troops who have long acted with the affirmed assumption of impunity.

The violent settler invasions of Mleihat last evening goes unanswered by the same authorities and occupation army whose lines have been intentionally blurred with the terrorist extremists who committed, and continue to perpetrate, these acts. There is no recourse for the victims, only endless nights of waiting until the next settler invasion, beating, shooting or theft is violently visited upon them by a gang whose arms continue to be supplemented by the Israeli government even as they offer lip service of “reigning in settler violence.”