❶ Israel Detains 24 Palestinians in Jerusalem, West Bank
❷ Group: 43 journalists jailed by Israel since October
❸ Committee: Journalists’ life at risk in Gaza due to Israeli bans
❹ Army Demolishes A Palestinian Home In Qalandia, Injures 8 Palestinians And Kidnap One
❺ Opinion/Analysis: Opinion/Analysis: AMBIVALENCE AS AN ENDORSEMENT OF OPPRESSION
❻ POETRY by Tawfiq Zayyad
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAEL  DETAINS  24  PALESTINIANS  IN  JERUSALEM,  WEST  BANK
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
April 20, 2016
Israeli forces on Wednesday overnight detained at least 24 Palestinians, including children, most of them during a military raid in the district of al-Issawiya in East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS).
___Israeli policemen broke into al-Issawiya, on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem, at predawn, where they raided dozens of homes, searched them and sabotaged their furniture. The police detained more than 20 Palestinians, including children, and summoned others for interrogation.      MORE . . .    

❷ GROUP:  43  JOURNALISTS  JAILED  BY  ISRAEL  SINCE  OCTOBER
Ma’an News Agency
April 16, 2016
The Committee to Support Palestinian Journalists said on Saturday that Israel had detained 43 journalists in the occupied Palestinian territory since October 2015, including two foreign reporters.
___The New York-based committee said in a report that during detention and imprisonment, journalists have reported torture, medical negligence, and unreasonable and illegal rulings by the Israeli authorities.
___The committee condemned the increasing number of detentions of journalists, and called for their immediate release.      MORE . . .  

❸ COMMITTEE:  JOURNALISTS’  LIFE  AT  RISK  IN  GAZA  DUE  TO  ISRAELI  BANS
The Palestinian Information Center
April 20 2016
The Committee to Support Journalists warned Tuesday of the dangers with which journalists’ lives have been fraught in Gaza due to the Israeli restrictions on the entry of press vests and shields. The committee said the Israeli occupation authorities have frequently banned journalists’ access to a set of helmets and bulletproof vests donated by international and Arab parties.     MORE . . .

❹ ARMY  DEMOLISHES  A  PALESTINIAN  HOME  IN  QALANDIA,  INJURES  8  PALESTINIANS  AND  KIDNAP  ONE   
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
April 20, 2016
Israeli soldiers invaded, on Wednesday at dawn, Qalandia refugee camp, north of occupied Jerusalem, demolished one home and injured at least eight Palestinians, including three with live fire; one of the wounded was among the abducted residents.
___The soldiers surrounded the home of Hussein Abu Ghosh, 17, forced the family out and demolished the property’s inner walls, rendering it uninhabitable.
___Abu Ghosh was killed by the army, along with another Palestinian on January 26, 2016, after stabbing an Israeli settler woman to death [. . . . ]
___The invasion into the refugee camp was carried out by more than 40 armored vehicles and a military bulldozer.      MORE . . .   

❺ Opinion/Analysis:  AMBIVALENCE  AS  AN  ENDORSEMENT  OF  OPPRESSION
Alternative Information Center – AIC
April 17, 2016
Demands to separate politics from culture is a nonsensical idea that only BDS activists and supporters are told to accept.
___Tomorrow, Monday April 18, New York noise band A Place to Bury Strangers will make their Israeli debut at the Tel Aviv Club Barby. Rapper Freddie Gibbs will do the same on May 23, followed by the alternative rock band Real Estate on May 25.
___Efforts are underway to stop these and the nearly twenty other performances by high-profile international musicians this summer. These include direct appeals to artists, though Tali Shapiro, an Israeli BDS activist says artists’ agents and managers sometimes shut these channels down. Shapiro maintains a Facebook page where she posts articles on Israel’s human rights record and tags artists in the posts.      MORE . . . 

“WE  SHALL  REMAIN,”  BY  TAWFIQ  ZAYYAD  – 1970

It is a thousand times easier
For you to pass an elephant through the needle’s eye
To catch fried fish in the Milky Way
To plow the sea
To teach the alligator speech, a thousand times easier
Than smothering with you oppression
The spark of an idea
Of forcing us to deviate
A single step
From our chosen march.
Like twenty impossibles
We shall remain in Lydda, Ramlah, and Galilee.

Here upon your chests
We shall remain
Like the glass and the cactus
In your throats
A fiery whirlwind
In your eyes.

Here we shall remain
A wall on your chests.
We wash dishes in the hotels
And serve drinks to the masters.
We mop the floors in the dark kitchens
To extract a piece of bread
From your blue teeth
For the little ones.

Here, we shall remain
A wall on your chests.
We starve,
Go naked,
Sing songs
And fill the streets
With demonstrations
And the jails with pride.
We breed rebellions
One after another.
Like twenty impossibles we remain
In Lydda, Ramlah, Galilee.

Here, we shall remain.
You may drink the sea;
We shall guard the shade
Of the olive tree and the fig,
Planting ideas
Like the yeast in the dough.
The coldness of ice is in our nerves
And a burning hell in our hearts.
We squeeze the rock
To quench our thirst
And if we starve
We eat the dirt
And never depart
Or grudge our blood.

Here―we have a past
―a present
―and a future.
Our roots are entrenched
Deep in the earth.
Like twenty impossibles
We shall remain.
Let the oppressor review his account
Before the turn of the wheel.
For every action there is a reaction:
Read what is written in the Book.
Like twenty impossibles
We shall remain―in Lydda, in Ramlah
And Galilee.

From: Aruri, Naseer and Edmund Ghareeb, eds. ENEMY  OF  THE  SUN:  POETRY  OF  THE  PALESTINIAN  RESISTANCE.  Washington, DC: Drum and Spear Press, 1970.
Available from Amazon.
About Tawfiq Zayyad