❶ Committees formed to assess damage caused by Israel at Aqsa Mosque

• Background: “The Rule of Difference: How Emergency Powers Prevent Palestinian Assimilation in Israel.” Israel Studies Review.

❷ Israel under fire for attacks on Palestinian journalists and media institutions
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Israeli police assault journalists, detain 8 Palestinians at funeral in Jaffa
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) ‘They killed him because he was an Arab’
❸ POETRY by Mahmoud Darwish
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ COMMITTEES  FORMED  TO  ASSESS  DAMAGE  CAUSED  BY  ISRAEL  AT  AQSA  MOSQUE 
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA 
July 31, 2017.   Minister of Jerusalem Affairs and its Governor Adnan Husseini said Monday that the Islamic Waqf Department has formed four committees to assess damage and inspect property at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
[. . . .] The minister added that the next stage requires specialized experts to know if the occupation forces put cameras or listening devices in the mosque.
___Husseini said that if the final report shows that the occupation authorities have made any changes in the mosque or the theft of any of its belongings, then work will first focus on returning these documents and then on pursing Israel in international courts on ground of stealing and damaging important historical documents and property in order to punish Israel for its crime.  MORE . . .

Mehozay, Yoav. “THE  RULE  OF  DIFFERENCE:  HOW  EMERGENCY  POWERS  PREVENT  PALESTINIAN  ASSIMILATION  IN  ISRAEL.”
Israel Studies Review, vol. 27, no. 2, Winter2012, pp. 18-40.
Since Israel’s inception in 1948, the country has been under a state of emergency. This condition has persisted for more than six decades, despite the fact that periods of war have generally been punctuated by more peaceful times. This continued state of emergency poses a direct threat to the state’s rule of law and its democratic institutions. Under a state of emergency, a government can—to protect the state and its people—employ exceptional measures that violate civil rights or introduce sovereign arbitrariness. Thus, Israel’s lasting emergency regime has had a significant impact on the state’s mode of governance, and it raises questions about the role of emergency powers.
___Israel’s decades-long emergency seemingly began as a pragmatic solution. The 1948 declaration of a state of emergency was originally invoked as a temporary solution to wartime conditions (i.e., Israel’s War of Independence)—not a permanent governing mechanism. Yet, quite quickly, this makeshift solution became a systemic, permanent mechanism in the hands of the Israeli authorities. This development suggests that the Israeli authorities have gone beyond the protection of the state and its people and have used emergency powers to satisfy political objectives as well.
[. . . .] Ultimately, I join these two prongs of political power—allocation of resources and representation—under a single political objective: Israel’s rule of difference, or its anti-assimilation policy, which is also to say Israel’s adjunct security conception. First, the state’s authorities have transferred most state land to Jewish control and have quarantined Palestinians in the process. Second, the state has denied Palestinians real political representation, which has made them unable to challenge this doctrine through the political process. Overall, I discuss how Israel’s adjunct security policy of anti-assimilation shapes the political uses of emergency powers, how this policy motivates the Israeli authorities to maintain a state of emergency, and how the rule of difference has become institutionalized in state policy [. . . .]    SOURCE . . .

❷ ISRAEL  UNDER  FIRE  FOR  ATTACKS  ON  PALESTINIAN  JOURNALISTS  AND  MEDIA  INSTITUTIONS
Ma’an News Agency
July 30, 2017.   Israeli forces have been the target of fierce condemnation in recent days for attacks on Palestinian journalists and media institutions, following an overnight raid targeting a media production company in Ramallah on Saturday and multiple attacks on journalists who were covering mass protests in the occupied Palestinian territory against now dismantled security measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
___In a predawn raid Saturday, Israeli forces broke into the headquarters of PalMedia, a media production company that provides broadcast services to several media outlets, including Russia Today, al-Mayadeen, al-Manar, and al-Quds news, ransacked the offices, and destroyed equipment over accusations of alleged “incitement.”
___Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi denounced the raid in a statement, in which she said that “Israel’s policies of violence and repression are a blatant attempt to break the steadfastness of the Palestinian people” and represented a violation of international human rights law regarding freedom of expression.
___“Clearly, Israel is engaging in an ongoing policy that deliberately targets media institutions and journalists in Palestine who courageously work to represent the Palestinian human narrative and report on Israel’s military occupation and its persistent policies of apartheid and ethnic cleansing,” she said.   MORE . . .
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) ISRAELI  POLICE  ASSAULT  JOURNALISTS,  DETAIN  8  PALESTINIANS  AT  FUNERAL  IN  JAFFA
Ma’an News Agency
July 30, 2017.   Israeli police assaulted Israeli journalists and detained eight Palestinian citizens of Israel, six of them minors, as hundreds participated in a funeral march Saturday night in Jaffa city in southern Israel for 22-year-old Mahdi al-Saadi, who was shot dead by police early Saturday morning.
[. . . .] . . .locals argued that al-Saadi posed no threat to Israeli police when he was fatally shot and that he could have been detained without using lethal force. The incident sparked major street protests in Jaffa against against police brutality and racial profiling Saturday afternoon, triggering clashes with Israeli police. An atmosphere of tension and outrage prevailed in the city during the funeral march and late into the night.
[. . . .] During the funeral procession, Israel’s Channel 2 News reporter Gilad Shalmor and photographer Gal Zeitman were beaten and their equipment was destroyed by Israeli police as they were trying to cover the event, according to Israeli news site Ynet.    MORE . . .
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) ‘THEY  KILLED  HIM  BECAUSE  HE  WAS  AN  ARAB’  
Al Jazeera English
Zena Tahhan
July 30, 2017.   The family of a young Palestinian man fatally shot by Israeli police in Jaffa are demanding justice for what they believe was a “cold-blooded killing”.
___Mahdi al-Saadi, a 22-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel, was shot in the chest and killed in the early hours of Saturday morning. Israeli police also shot another young man at the same scene, Sleiman Abu Taleb, who was taken to hospital in critical condition.
___”I was travelling, and I got a phone call from my wife telling me that they killed our boy. The police did not get in touch with us or tell us what happened. He was killed for no reason – in cold blood. They killed him because he was an Arab,” Jamal, Mahdi’s father, told Al Jazeera.
___Israeli police say the young men were suspects in a shooting at a store in Jaffa around 4am (01:00 GMT) on Saturday.     MORE . . .

“VICTIM  NO.  18,”  BY  MAHMOUD  DARWISH
Once the olive grove was green.
It was, and the sky
A grove of blue. It was my love.
What changed that evening?
At the bend in the track they stopped the lorry of workers.

So calm they were.
They turned us round towards the east.
So calm they were.
Once my heart was a blue bird, O nest of my beloved.
The handkerchiefs I had of yours were all white. They were, my love.
What stained them that evening?
I do not understand at all, my love.
At the bend in the track they stopped the lorry of workers.

So calm they were.
They turned us round towards the east.
So calm they were.
From me you’ll have evening,
Yours the shade and yours the light,
A wedding-ring and all you want,
And an orchard of trees, of olive and fig.
And as on every night I’ll come to you.
In the dream I’ll enter by the window and throw you jasmine.
Blame me not if I’m a little late:
They stopped me.
The olive grove was always green.
It was, my love.

Fifty victims
Turned it at sunset into
A crimson pond, Fifty victims.
Beloved, do not blame me.
They killed me. They killed me.
They killed me.

(Fifty Arab villagers, including many children and women, were stopped and machine gunned by Israeli soldiers at Kafr Qassem on October 29, 1956. More . . . )

From: Darwish, Mahmoud. THE  MUSIC  OF  HUMAN  FLESH. Trans. Denys Johnson-Davies. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980. Found at http://poetsfrompalestine.blogspot.com/2010/01/victim-number-18.html 

Remembering Mahmoud Darwish