SELECTED   NEWS   OF   THE   DAY. . .

|  ISRAELI  FORCES  INJURE  DOZENS  OF  PALESTINIANS  IN  GAZA
Israeli forces injured a number of Palestinian protesters, on Tuesday evening, east of the Deir al-Balah City in the central besieged Gaza Strip.   ___A Ma’an reporter confirmed that Israeli forces opened fire at dozens of Palestinian youths taking part in protests near the security border fence in central Gaza.   ___Five Palestinians were shot and injured by Israeli forces, while a number of others suffered from tear-gas inhalation after Israeli forces fired tear-gas bombs towards protesters to disperse them.   More . . .
|  ISRAELI  SOLDIERS,  POLICE  HARASS  OLIVE  PICKERS  IN  AS-SAWIYA  VILLAGE
October 7, 2018 | International Solidarity Movement
As-Sawiya. Occupied Palestine A group of Israeli soldiers, one Israeli policeman, and one Israeli settler harassed a group of Palestinian and international olive pickers in As-Sawiya village yesterday, demanding identification and threatening to expel the harvesters from the area. Soon after the group began work, they noticed security vehicles from the nearby.    More . . .

COMMENTARY    AND    OPINION. . . .

|  CRITICISM  OF  ISRAELI  POLICY  IS  NOT  ANTI-SEMITIC
By James J. Zogby
I was provoked to write this discussion of what is and what isn’t anti-Semitism by an article in Haaretz on the “controversy” created by the awarding of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to George P. Smith. According to the reporting, Dr Smith is not only a brilliant scientist whose work has helped lead to the creation of new drugs that can treat cancer and a range of autoimmune diseases, but he is also an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and a critic of Israeli policies.       [. . . .] As I read through the article looking for evidence of Smith’s sins, I found quotes saying that he “wished ‘not for Israel’s Jewish population to be expelled’ but ‘an end to the discriminatory regime in Palestine’”. At another point, Haaretz quotes from an op-ed written by Smith condemning Israeli policies in Gaza which he concludes by expressing his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS)   More . . .

NOTICES  FROM  ORGANIZATIONS. . . .

UNRWA USA
Today, as the world marks WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY, we honor the tens of thousands of children in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the West Bank who suffer from psychological trauma and mental health concerns. Despite unprecedented financial challenges, UNRWA continues to exert every effort to ensure that Palestine refugees, both young and old, are provided the essential support and life skills to cope with the challenging environment.   Donate . . .
Houston, Texas, Gaza 5K Marathon . . .

POEM  FOR  THE  DAY. . . .

“THE  GUEST,”  REJA-E  BUSAILAH
READ  BY  THE  POET
(The title of this post is a line from his autobiography quoted by Mondoweiss.)
REJA-E  BUSAILAH autobiography:  In the Land of My Birth: A Palestinian Boyhood.  Institute for Palestine Studies (November 22, 2017).   In this remarkable book, Reja-e Busailah takes us on two parallel journeys. The first is to Palestine before the Nakba, which we discover with all our senses: smelling, touching, and feeling the place thanks to an autobiographical narrative laced with poetry and the memory of words rooted in the land. And the second is to the self, which the author has fashioned into a reflection of life: here, the young boy uses the light of words to help illuminate our own vision, enabling us to transcend the surface of things and plumb their depth. What Busailah has done is to make words into eyes with which to see what the seeing eye cannot. He makes the reader privy to secrets that only sightless poets, from Homer to Abu al-`Ala¿ al-Ma¿arri, glean, beholding with words what their eyes could not discern. With In the Land of My Birth: A Palestinian Boyhood, Busailah has given us what life denied him, and in his hands, the memoir is transformed from a personal story into the chronicle of a country whose memory others have sought to erase. In this way, the tapestry of Palestine is rewoven, its map redrawn, thanks to the actual experience of life. This book also enriches the corpus of Arab and Palestinian autobiographical literature. (Mondoweiss)