Tag: Prisoner - Page 9 - International Solidarity Movement

Portrait with Fire: Khader Adnan

24th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, al-Khalil team | Anata, occupied Palestine

“Some people think being jailed is a destiny. I say freedom is a destiny.”

In Heather Christle’s stirring poem, Self Portrait with Fire, bending to conceal flaming legs, (s)he sets the grass on fire. On this day, sitting with Khader Adnan, Palestinian freedom fighter, it is hard not to imagine everything in contact with the intense and pensive man beside me catching flame.

Khader Adnan, a baker, a student of economics, a father and a former captive of Israeli occupation prisons has brought himself to the brink of death by starvation twice in protestation of the illegal system of jailing of occupied Palestinians termed Administrative Detention.

During the latter of the two strikes, the sight of the world sharply dove in freefall to one hospital bed in one Israeli hospital to one prisoner who was in critical condition but with enough wherewithal to persist in his fight- he set the grass on fire.

In the chaos of the recent escalation of violence in the West Bank that frequently comes to flash fever pitch crescendos punctuating Palestine’s days and her nights, Khader Adnan speaks. “Let me ask you a question,” he begins, referencing the allegations of Palestinian knife attacks on settlers and Israeli occupation soldiers, “Why would an educated young person with so much ahead of them take a knife and attack someone only to be immediately killed but for the pressure, the frustration and hopelessness of the situation they are forced to live in?”

Khader Adnan looks in a mirror at himself at his home

Hopelessness. His words bring to mind the gut wrenching twitter post from the young Palestinian martyr, Ihab Jihad Haninni (20) who was shot and killed on Friday, October 16 by occupation forces at Beit Furik checkpoint, “Perhaps tomorrow will be better than today, God willing.”

The space between Ihab’s tweet and this day has been filled with tomorrows that were not better; tomorrows that were increasingly worse.

It is a shared devastation that settles heavily over the Palestinian landscape littered with the places the young have gasped their final breath.

For Ihab and the many others who were martyred before him- and for those martyred since, Khader’s lionizing words honor them, “The best houses in all of Palestine are the houses of the martyrs.” Words that flow in direct inverse of the Israeli government’s currently enacting illegal collective punishment procedures against the families of the martyrs by delivering their homes demolition orders; some which they will fill with concrete, some they will smash into with bulldozers.

Khader Adnan Poster: “If the people of the world had a heart for the suffering of Palestine, this would be the photo of the year.”

For a state with no organized military force by land, air or sea; a state webbed by the ever developing strands of illegal settlement and industrial blocs, by siege, by rabid, occupational government sanctioned racism, by hopelessness; hunger strike has been the Achilles heel of the mighty apartheid state delivered in what Khader termed the battle of the empty stomachs.

Having so little left and seemingly being ignored by the mainstream world media, it is through refusing what little remains which succeeded in allowing the hands of Palestinian suffering to touch the outer world. Hunger striking works. “Some think being jailed is a destiny but I say freedom is a destiny and you attain freedom through hunger strike,” Khader affirms.

Indeed, it is likely the only reason he sits across from us with his young daughter, still jailed within the occupation of the West Bank yet free from the jail within the jail.

Khader’s hunger strike was, “for the purpose of freedom. I didn’t strike to change anyone’s attitude about the situation here. It was for freedom.”

His hunger strike’s both came after enduring multiple stints on Israeli administrative detention which both involved what Khader called, “hideous and aggressive treatment” by his captors. During his July 2014 arrest, an arrest which was executed against the backdrop of a brutal bombing attack against the already besieged Gaza strip, Khader was subjected to humiliation and brutality.

“They cursed my honor as a husband and a father. They made sexual comments about my wife, cursed her. Cursed my religion, threatened my children. They rubbed their hands on the bottom of my shoes and rubbed the dirt on my face. I was slammed against the wall until my nose was bleeding. They blindfolded me. They pulled hair out of my beard.”

Is there any reason that this type of abhorrent treatment is completely allowable for Palestinians, including young children who frequently report these types of abuses, yet are protected against in the western world? Are we quantifiably more human? Unless the answer is yes, this should stir the world into mass resistance.

Amidst a hypocrisy so shrill, a terrorism enacted so horrendously as last summer’s Operation “Protective Edge”, Khader was again placed on administrative detention for nearly the tenth time. “They thought then was a good time to arrest me because everyone was so busy paying attention to the bombing in Gaza that no one would care about another Palestinian going to jail, especially one who was known for hunger strike.”

“I told representatives in the west bank that I was going on a hunger strike. I did small hunger strikes. I did a 7 day strike- to hit the alarm.”

And predictably, the unchecked Lord of the Flies like behavior of those made mighty with guns and global funding escalated in violence and antagonism, “Once I went on hunger strike, treatment was worse. Abuse was worse. They escalated so I escalated. I refused to eat, I refused to drink and now I refused to speak. Not speaking was an escalation. They interrogated me and I said nothing.”

And inside of the hospital room where Khader Adnan, whose condition was becoming critical once his strike climbed into the high forties in days, lay weak and shackled, refusing to allow visitation by physicians after being told that he would not be granted visitation unless under the watchful eye of Israeli military personnel. And though weak and near death, antagonism from the gleeful choir continued.

“It was an annoyance of no privacy, the Israeli guards and soldiers inside my room were constantly talking about military plans and thoughts while I laid there. They brought their food into my room, ate hot meals beside my bed and talked about delicious foods and spices, things to make me uncomfortable and hungry.”

Even more repugnantly, “There was a camera in my room filming me all day and night. This was not for my protection. They were violating my privacy and trying to humiliate me. I was told that photos and video of me was being broadcasted on Israeli television; that they were watching me like a live television show. Dehumanizing me.”

The extremist right wing Israeli Yesh Atid and Likud parties in response, finalized an earlier version of a force feeding draft law, a law that would involve the intravenous intrusion or gastric feeding tube insertion into an unwilling Palestinian hunger striking prisoner’s body to undermine their starvation protests against what is, in fact, a widely recognized illegality and violation of human rights.

The committee, headed by Likud MK Miri Regev, was blasted by many, including MK Ahmad Tibi (Ra’ am-Ta’al) who stated that “Today is a black day for the Knesset.” As well as another Arab Israeli MK, Basel Ghattas of the Balad party, who said the bill was an “idiotic law by an idiotic prime minister.”

When asked about whether he feared that he might be subjected to what is tantamount to torture, Khader stated, “I did not think that they would use this tactic on me because I was under 24-7 observation.”

As for the law itself, “I see it as a failure for the Israeli government. This was and is a failure in them knowing how to deal with this process. And of course, this failure faces the success of the process as a whole- how hunger strikes gain awareness, how they raise empathy for those inside occupation prisons.”

“Without hunger strikes, prisoners do not get released. The propaganda and lies coming from Israeli and the western world is something people have to break away from. Come and visit Palestine. See the situation for yourself. See the real crime happening here and who is committing it.”

Khader’s father who watches over the interview and walks us through the streets of the village Arraba as the sun falls on another day in occupied Palestine leaves us at the taxi with these words, “Tell the truth. Tell the people what Israel is doing,” before abruptly walking away. This man, this elderly man who has spent his life grappling with a force that has, with entitlement, claimed all he ever had, including his son who nearly lost his life twice resisting it.

Christle’s poem occurred to me throughout the interview, an interview with a beloved son of a beloved land. The poem referencing, in regards to the person on fire, the adoration of the people; “Obviously they loved me, were warm and pink and vocal on a promising spring day…”

Inshallah the spring day is soon coming. Promisingly so.

Dheisheh Refugee camp: One family’s story

12th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Sun streams through the bedroom window of Amira, an elderly woman in her mid 70’s who has spent a lion’s share of her life living inside Palestinian refugee camps. Amira, who cannot speak and is completely immobile in her bed, shifts her emotional stare to her daughter Nisreen as she speaks about their lives inside of Dheisheh Camp after Amira and her husband’s 1948 forced displacement from their village Az-Zakariyya.

Az-Zakariyya was just one of hundreds of Palestinian villages terrorized by Zionist gangs in the 1948 Nakba, the ongoing catastrophe that originally displaced over 700,000 Palestinians. The village had a population of 1,180 on 15,320 dunums in 1945. Named in honor of the prophet Zachariah, most of its indigenous residents fled to the nearby hills, after Israeli forces executed two residents. The next two years saw the finalization of the forcible “transfer” of Palestinian’s from their homes in Zakariyya to make way for the illegal movement of Israeli settlers onto the land- and into homes still occupied by the belongings of the rightful home owners who left everything they owned, believing they would quickly return. Most of them settled in Dheisheh refugee camp. All of them are still waiting to return.

Amira sits immobile in her bedroom which frequently has teargas shot by Israeli forces seeping inside the windows

Recently as a sharp escalation in violence has swept across the occupied Palestinian territories, an escalation which has martyred 25 young Palestinians and injured nearly 1,500, Israeli forces have mostly turned their attention away from the camp which until recently had nightly raids, shootings and violent attacks by the occupying army. “Before the escalation began, they were here every night, every day. They fire teargas here at the entrance to the camp and it comes into my mother’s bedroom through the windows. She cannot move to get away from it.” But this is only one transgression in a long and tragic list of horrors that Amira’s family has endured since their village was violently depopulated.

Nisreen holds the keys to her family's home in the depopulated Palestinian village Zakariyya — Nisreen holds the keys to her family’s home in the depopulated Palestinian village Zakariyya

Amira’s 9 children have all been touched by the occupation, as have all Palestinians existing within occupied, besieged and apartheid-ruled Palestinian territories, including inside the green line. Three sons and six daughters. “All of my brothers have been arrested and placed in Israeli prisons, one of my sisters as well,” Nisreen relays. “One of my brothers was arrested on the day of his marriage after the army attacked the wedding and then jailed him for three years. My mother is so tired now because of all of this. She would leave for Naqab prison to visit him at 4am, only to arrive and be told by the soldiers that she wasn’t allowed to see him that day.”

Amira’s husband, deceased after a battle with cancer, returned to his village with a German documentary crew in the late 1980’s during a film project they were making about the Nakba. He was in his early twenties when his village was violently stolen. As most who leave a familiar space, he returned with a heavy nostalgia for the density of memories of sights, sounds and smells. The elderly man was not long on his land before an Israeli woman rushed out throwing stones at him and the film crew yelling at them to get off of her land.

Village Zakariyya, evacuated violently during the Nakba, circa 1926.

Nisreen’s brother Firas endured similar humiliation when he visited the village with the assistance of a permit he obtained through his work. “I saw my family’s home. The people who are living there now ran out and yelled at me to leave. I told them this was my family’s home and they said as a joke, ‘When you return, I will give it back to you.'” One might wonder about the immediate and boiling hatred conveyed by those who sit smugly inside of someone else’s home, on someone else’s land; wonder about the fury that must incite within the people who endure that hatred, yet Firas smiles warmly as he plays with his two year old son- one of his three children.

Firas, after thirteen arrests by the occupying forces, has lost more than four and a half years of his life to Israeli prisons. “I was once interrogated for 18 days straight. The soldiers arrest you, they start beating you immediately and then all the way to the jail where they bring you. It is very rare to find interrogators who use psychological tactics on you. It’s just beating and violence. That’s all they have.”

Firas didn’t finish his high school education until he was in his twenties. “Because the Ministry of Education is related to the Civilian Administration, which is ruled by Israel, after being imprisoned you cannot get permission to return to your school unless you become a collaborator working with the Israeli government. Because of this, many do not return to school.” Another transgression against Palestinian’s whose lives they rule, streets they own, homes they steal and whose children they imprison.

Nisreen takes us through the part of the camp where her family lives. It is like most other Palestinian refugee camps, overcrowded and insufficient for the massive population existing inside of it. Dheisheh camp is home to over 15,000 registered Palestinian refugees, all living on less than one kilometer of land. Nisreen shows us a construction site spraying clouds of dust into the air of the narrow streets, “We cannot build out, so we build up.”

We spend an hour at LAYLAC at the entrance to the camp; the Palestinian Youth Action Center for Community Development. Its director, Naji Owda’s passion for the amazing things LAYLAC is doing- and has done since its 2010 inception, is vibrantly evident. “We have 40 volunteers currently. People come from all over the world to work with us. We work in public spaces. We make actions in the street to connect with the people.” LAYLAC has an impressive, if not overwhelmingly so, list of community actions, festivals and projects both in its wake and in its immediate future.

“We have a theater department, a department for social work, alternative education and children’s rights. Sometimes we don’t even have enough money for the basics to get by, but we manage, we always manage.” Members of LAYLAC will soon be traveling to France as well as locally holding theatrical actions at the Yalla Yalla Festival happening in Bethlehem on October 23rd. Owda, who was jailed in Israeli prison 7 times, has conducted hunger strikes both inside and outside of prison to simultaneously protest and better conditions for prisoners, as well as participating in solidarity strikes from the steps of the Red Cross building where he slept with others to show support for striking prisoners. “I’m not one to cry about the occupation. We do good work here. We tell our story. We don’t create anything. We teach about our lives. Our daily lives.”

LAYLAC community center in Deheishe refugee camp

Ending our stay at Dheisheh camp means sitting with Nisreen’s family who are all laughing and talking over hot tea with mint. Firas’s son is about to blow out candles on a birthday cake. “Its not his birthday,” Nisreen says laughing, “Every time we make a cake, we sing happy birthday to him.” In a room nearby, Amira rests silently after a lifetime of struggle that shows no sign of relenting. And Firas’s words rest heavily in the air, “The camp is our identity, but its not our personality. I belong to my village. The house I live in inside the camp is owned by the UN. Here I do not even own the tree in front of my home. But in Zakariyya, I have land, my father’s land. I have the documents that say I own all of the trees on our land. We never stop dreaming that we will return home. Every generation here, even the children, know about the village they’ve come from. They sit with the elders and ask for stories about where they are from. Our dreams were bigger than this. I never miss an opportunity to see my village, to see each stone, to see how each stone has been moved.”

Young Palestinian man held in metal box in al-Khalil

10th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

As a part of the recent surge in violence, there has been an escalation in random ID checks and detentions across occupied al-Khalil,(Hebron) In the full Israeli military controlled H-2 section of al-Khalil this afternoon, several young Palestinian men were detained, interrogated and one was beaten during nearly five hours of interrogation.

At the Shuhada Street checkpoint at around 2:oo pm, a 17 year old Palestinian man was put into a small metal box where Israeli forces placed a large stone against the door to trap him inside. There is very little ventilation in the small space where he was contained and the sweltering afternoon sun only exacerbated the issue.

Israeli forces detained a young Palestinian man in a small metal box and trapped him inside by placing a stone against the door.

After approximately 30 minutes, an Israeli military jeep arrived at the checkpoint and half a dozen Israeli soldiers and border police surrounded the box and two went inside, presumably questioning the young man while one studied a laminated poster depicting Israeli forces captured photos of dozens of young Palestinians they wish to arrest before the teenager was finally released.

Israeli forces look over a poster of photos of young Palestinians they wish to arrest while detaining young man in metal box.

Detention of Palestinians occurred several times throughout the day. At around 3pm, also at the Shuhada Street checkpoint, Israeli forces detained, and subsequently marched to the Shuhada Street military base for interrogation, a 19 year old Palestinian man from the Abu Eisheh family. The young man was given the ambiguous explanation that he was being taken for questioning regarding an issue with settlers.

His father, an advocate for Palestinian’s arrested in H-2 Israeli military controlled al-Khalil, came as close as Shuhada Street segregation allowed to speak to Israeli forces across from the military base about his son’s arrest. The elder, who is helpful in communications during Israeli military detention of Palestinians due to his fluency in Hebrew, was told by the soldiers that they “knew him” and asked if he “thought he was the boss or the big king of al-Khalil” due to his concerned interventions during criminal detentions. Israeli forces were heard saying to ignore him because he “is an Arab,” and Israeli police completely disregarded him and international solidarity activists requesting information on the status of his son.

Nearly five hours later, the young man was released and spoke with ISM international human rights monitors about the violent treatment he received during his interrogation, which after five hours ended in his dismissal, another pointless instance of harassment and incursion into the daily lives of the occupied Palestinian people. “The soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed me during the entire five hours they held me. They kicked me again and again and hit me in my face.” Several bruises were visible on the young man who wished only to have his raw and cut wrists photographed.

19 year old Palestinian man detained, handcuffed and blindfolded for five hours shows the injuries to his wrists during Israeli military detention in al-Khalil

Violence continues to sweep like wild fire across the occupied Palestinian territories. Many Palestinians were injured today in demonstrations and confrontations with Israeli forces.

The broken wheel of Israeli ‘justice.’ The case of Mahmoud Abujoad Frarjah

4th October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Gaza, occupied Palestine

Sireen Frarjarh and her husband Mahmoud Abujoad Frarjah met eyes numerous times during this past Tuesday’s trial in an Ofer military court hearing. The trial was to determine if the young, newly married Palestinian man from the Deishah refugee camp in Bethlehem, would be held in detention until the conclusion of his court proceedings. The judgement, to continue Mahmoud’s detention was passed down by the blind eyes of the Israeli ‘justice’ system for an alleged crime over a year old.

Mahmoud and his wife Sireen, married just three months at the time of Mahmoud's arrest in Jordan by Israeli authorities. — Mahmoud and his wife Sireen, married just three months at the time of Mahmoud’s arrest in Jordan by Israeli authorities.

On September 9th, Mahmoud was arrested whilst traveling to Jordan on a family holiday. He was blindfolded and detained for 8 hours, during which he was denied water, food and toilet facilities. He was charged with throwing stones at a demonstration a year ago near Rachel’s tomb in Bethlehem. Mahmoud had his initial hearing on Wednesday 16th September, which was then postponed until Sunday, September 20th. And although the judge ruled that Mahmoud should be released on September 29th, he subsequently refused his release.

The backdrop of this case is key. Minimization: Israel committed a human rights atrocity, an international law destroying massacre which claimed the lives of nearly 2,200 Palestinians, nearly a quarter of them innocent children during a military operation handily termed Protective Edge. (To date, no Israeli military or governmental personnel have sat in a courtroom, legs in chains, as were Mahmoud’s, and faced a judge for these heinous, reprehensible acts.) Maximization: Thanks to new legislation which perpetuates the critically and intentionally lopsided imbalance in Israeli courts for those on the wrong end of the class divide, Palestinian (alleged) stone throwers are more likely to face detention without bail until the end of their court proceedings. These regulations are applicable to Palestinian children as young as 12 years old.

Collective punishment was the overall tone of Military Judge Lt. Colonol Shmuel Keidar in his decision in this past Tuesday’s trial to accept the appeal of the military prosecution against the decision to release Mahmoud on bail, “With the security reality that to my sorrow exists in the area, I believe that the court can deviate from the micro-considerations regarding the defendant himself and yes to considerations of general deterrent, the touch considering the wide population in the area. Because of these things I believe it is not wrong to use the the reason of general deterrent straightaway or for detention and should express it as much as the situation needs. For all of these reasons I accept to keep him until the end of proceedings.”

The micro-considerations Keider is so cavalierly referring to here is that the alleged witness to the stone throwing was one man who was arrested and during interrogation gave twenty Palestinian’s names to investigators, Mahmoud’s being one of them. With such baseless evidence, the Keider is willing to continue Mahmoud’s imprisonment until the trial’s conclusion; likely a considerable amount of time.

The micro-considerations being that Mahmoud is of no security risk and is being held and tried on a basis so flimsy it wouldn’t get so much as a peek inside a courtroom in most places the globe over. In the end, Mahmoud is yet another young Palestinian who will fall under the weight of the broken wheel of the Israeli ‘justice’ system.

The fact alone that Israeli lawmakers can seriously argue for harsh sentence structures for Palestinian stone throwers, this is an act of resistance to an internationally noted criminal six decade military occupation, whilst silently they make space between each passing day and the dark hallway of massacre and subjugation left in their wake, is an utter absurdity.

In the end Mahmoud will possibly face the same road most Palestinians in Israeli courts face. In order to avoid languishing in Israeli prison for up to two years while court proceedings drag on to the punchline crescendo of a trial which ends, almost across the board, badly for every Palestinian enduring it- Mahmoud can plead guilty and take a deal giving him several months imprisonment. And it makes it that much easier the next time Mahmoud, or any Palestinian for that matter, is arrested to show a history of supposed criminal behavior with previous guilty pleas and sentences served.

The case of Mahmoud Abujoad Frarjah is another sounding of the death knell for any kind of justice being seen for the Palestinian people.

Israeli forces escalate restrictions and violence against Palestinians during Sukkot-holiday

2nd October 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Al-Khalil team | Hebron, occupied Palestine

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the 28^th – 30^th September 2015 is the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. In the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron), while Israeli settlers from the many illegal settlements within al-Khalil celebrate their holiday, Israeli forces have escalated restrictions and violence against the Palestinian residents, further infringing on their most basic rights.

In preparation for the celebrations of Sukkot, already heavily restricted Palestinian freedom of movement has been almost entirely grinded to a halt by Israeli forces. Especially in the area around the Ibrahimi mosque, food-stalls and entertainment has sprung up for settlers not only from al-Khalil but also visiting from other West Bank illegal settlements. In order to completely barr Palestinians from this main venue of celebration for the settlers and Israeli forces, the mosque checkpoint leading to this area from the Palestinian market has been closed down for two days. Shopkeepers were handed notices by the Israeli army forcing them to again close their shops for the Jewish holiday, imposing more days of forced closures and lost income.

Palestinian schoolchildren forced to squeeze past armored Israeli jeep on their way to school

Families that for generations have lived in this neighbourhood directly next to the Ibrahimi mosque are also barred access. Even if not physically prevented from leaving their houses by closed checkpoints or soldiers randomly denying them entry into the area, large crowds of settlers and soldiers right outside their doorsteps pose an immediate threat for leaving the house. With settlers, at times ‘wearing’ machine guns or hand-guns just like an accessoire, known for their attacks on Palestinians, that seem to escalate especially during the Jewish holidays, Palestinian families are locked up in their houses as if under house arrest, caged inside their homes while right outside their doorsteps settlers and soldiers merrily celebrate their holiday together without even having to think about the local families hoping for the holiday to pass as uneventful as possible.

But in most of the cases, that was not the case, with huge groups of settlers flooding into al-Khalil, Israeli forces did everything possible to facilitate their movement. New checkpoints and road-blocks popped up randomly, leaving Palestinians with their cars parked on the wrong side of them without any possibility to access their cars, soldiers took over several Palestinian houses, using their roofs or even the whole house as a military base to ‘keep an eye’ on Palestinians’ every movement in the maze of obstacles, dead-ends and military checkpoints – almost impossible to navigate in every-day life in a militarily occupied city – further exacerbated by this holiday.

Israeli forces further restricting Palestinian freedom of movement with additional roadblocks

Even in the H1-area of al-Khalil, that is supposedly under full Palestinian control, Israeli forces evicted Palestinian civilians going about their everyday lives attacking them with stun-grenades and rubber coated steel bullets, to facilitate access exclusively for Israeli settlers. Sudden attacks like these didn’t allow even for a few minutes for shopkeepers and vendors to protect their produce from violent assaults by Israeli forces or for families and mothers to hurriedly whisk their small children to safety out of the range of indiscriminate fire. In the area around Bab al-Zawwiyya and Shuhada checkpoint, where Palestinian student Hadeel al-Hashlamoun was ruthlessly gunned down and killed by Israeli soldiers just last week, endless rounds of stun-grenades and rubber coated steel bullets fired at protectors have echoed throughout the days. Israeli forces’ fire has also been directly targeting Palestinian families, with tear gas and stun grenades continuously exploding on the roofs of their homes, leaving them scared and hurriedly closing windows to minimise tear gas slowly seeping into their homes.

Israeli soldier shooting rubber-coated steel bullet from a Palesitnian house

In this escalation of violence, harassment, attacks and restrictions, it doesn’t matter if you’re a small child, a grown up adult or an old person. The stepped up ‘security’ is only imposing further hassles and obstacles on Palestinians’ already severely restricted everyday life. Israeli settlers on the other hand, under the watch of the Israeli forces are free to attack Palestinian families and shops or keep them locked up in their home by blocking their front door. And age doesn’t matter in these cases either, while some of the settlers use their children to block international observers’ cameras, other parents encourage them to join the attacks and insults on Palestinian families. Soldiers idly standing by watching these incidents happen, just a few minutes afterwards, receive pizza delivered by the same settlers or giving them a hug on their way home after their shift is finished.

For Palestinians, every day life is children coming home from school crying, coughing and choking from tear gas shot at them by Israeli forces at one of the many checkpoints they have to cross, passing heavily armed military. Every day life is mothers and fathers anxiously waiting for the return of their children from school if they’re late, hoping and praying they were not randomly snatched by Israeli forces and arrested for ‘dirty hands’ that would indicate they were throwing stones – just because children would never play and get dirty hands. Every day life is families having to endure Israeli settlers attacking a son, brother or father with Israeli forces standing by not intervening and later on arresting the person attacked.

Every day life is a struggle against the illegal Israeli military occupation of every aspect of Palestinian life, a daily struggle against the denial of most basic human rights.

When celebrating a holiday makes this struggle through every day life even more miserable and seemingly impossible, where is humanity?