❶ Palestinian murdered after buying candies for his disabled kids
❷  UN responds to Israel closing case into airstrike near UNRWA school during 2014 Gaza war

• Background: British Journal of Psychotherapy 

❸ 4 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in critical condition, handcuffed to hospital beds
❹ POETRY by Samih al-Qasim
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❶ PALESTINIAN  MURDERED  AFTER  BUYING  CANDIES  FOR  HIS  DISABLED  KIDS
Days of Palestine
Aug 27, 201
Israeli occupation forces murdered on Friday Palestinian citizen in West Bank city of Silwad after buying some candies for his disabled children.
___At first, the Israeli occupation forces and the Israeli parrot media claimed that his approached an Israeli military post with his car near the illegal settlement of Ofra. ___Palestinian eyewitnesses insisted that the Israeli narrative about the incident was false as the Palestinian did not plan to harm any Israelis.
[. . . .]  Official Palestinian medical sources identified the Palestinian as Iyad Hamed, a resident of Silwad who was married and had three disabled children.
___Later on, when a video showed the man buying the candies for his disabled children went viral on the internet, the Israeli occupation admitted that its soldiers had shot the Palestinian mistakenly.   MORE . . .   

❷ UN  RESPONDS  TO  ISRAEL  CLOSING  CASE  INTO  AIRSTRIKE  NEAR  UNRWA  SCHOOL  DURING  2014  GAZA  WAR
Ma’an News Agency
Aug. 26, 2016
The United Nations Friday responded in a statement to Israel’s announcement Wednesday that the military had exonerated itself from any wrongdoing in a missile attack near an UNRWA-run school in Rafah during the 2014 Gaza war, which killed 15 people. . . .   ___According to the statement released by UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness, on August 3, 2014 . . . Israeli forces launched a missile at a road outside of an UNRWA school, which was designated as an emergency shelter for displaced Palestinians on July 18 and was at the time sheltering at least 2,900 Palestinians.
___The strike resulted in the killings of 15 civilians, while at least another 30 were injured.
___ “This raises serious questions about the conduct of military operations in relation to obligations under international humanitarian law and respect for the inviolability and sanctity of United Nations premises under international law,” Gunness said in the statement.     MORE . . .   

• Kemp, Martin. “DEHUMANIZATION,  GUILT  AND  LARGE  GROUP  DYNAMICS  WITH  REFERENCE  TO  THE  WEST,  ISRAEL  AND  THE  PALESTINIANS.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 27.4 (2011): 383-405.  SOURCE.

[. . . .]
Central to the defensive ends served by the denigration of the Palestinians is the avoidance of a profound depression that would follow from the acknowledgement of Israel’s responsibility for the Naqba . . .  [That drives] the Israelis to dehumanize the Palestinians, [but] breaking with this necessity and embracing their humanity is a requirement for both peace and for Israel’s survival. . . . Israel’s ‘large group tent’ is in large part held together by the projection of Israel’s profound and unresolved conflicts onto the Palestinians, and that dehumanization of the latter is . . .  difficult to reverse. One conclusion might be that political Zionism has not offered an escape from the dynamics of oppression, merely a reversal of roles.
[. . . . ]
. . . it could be imagined that the collective psyches of the West and Israel are each grappling with a crippling burden of culpability. I suggest this, and that each engages the other in their efforts to minimize the consequences. The West, aware of the pain that guilt would occasion for itself achieves distance by reassuring Israel – identified with the fate of ‘the Jews’ – that it has no need to feel guilty. The West has regularly upheld Israel’s position that it is the Palestinians who need to make up for something, and that it is their failure to do so that explains the protracted stalemate. For the West to concern itself with the lived experience of the Palestinians would be to challenge an Israeli psyche in part held together by its refusal to acknowledge those realities.
[. . . .]
Responding to [the] suggestion that we attend to the moment when the terrorist decides to ‘abandon their species decency’, G. Awad writes: “Less dramatic, but also lethal, is the slow and cumulative abandonment of a deeply ingrained species decency where there is no defining moment: this can be seen in the increasingly destructive actions of the Israelis against the Palestinians. A powerful oppressor can, more often than not, afford to wait things out and take his time; an occupation or an embargo can slowly yet effectively destroy the soul and the body of ‘the others’. The powerful can kill without dirtying their hands or exposing themselves to imminent danger . . . many Arabs and Muslims, even if they are horrified by the nature of the suicide bomber’s attacks on innocent civilians, do not see such attacks as being any more horrible than the slow, methodological killing of their innocents by the powerful” (Awad, G. “The minds and perceptions of ‘the others.’” 2003).

❸ 4  HUNGER-STRIKING  PALESTINIAN  PRISONERS  IN  CRITICAL  CONDITION,  HANDCUFFED  TO  HOSPITAL  BEDS 
Ma’an News Agency  
Aug. 27, 2016
Four Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners are reportedly in critical condition at Israel’s Assaf Harofeh Hospital, according to a statement released Saturday by the Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs, as 120 other Palestinian prisoners continued hunger strikes in a mass solidarity movement.
[. . . .]  
___ each of the prisoners declared a hunger strike in protest of being placed in administrative detention — an Israeli policy of detention without charge or trial almost exclusively used against Palestinians.
___The committee said in the statement that the hunger strikers were in “dire health conditions,” as they have lost a significant amount of weight and have been suffering from pains and numbing in their bodies.      MORE . . .   

“I  MAY  LOSE  MY  DAILY  BREAD,”  BY  SAMIH  AL-QASIM
I may lose my daily bread, if you wish
I may hawk my clothes and bed
I may become a stonecutter, or a porter
Or a street sweeper
I may search in animal dung for food
I may collapse, naked and starved
Enemy of light
I will not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.
You may rob me of the last span of my land
You may ditch my youth in prison holes
Steal what my grandfather left me behind:
Some furniture or clothes and jars,
You may burn my poems and books
You may feed your dog on my flesh
You may impose a nightmare of your terror
On my village
Enemy of light
I shall not compromise
And to the end
I shall fight.

“Poems of Resistance: 7 Poems for Palestine.” SCOOP  WORLD  INDEPENDENT  NEWS. January 2011. Web. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1101/S00522/poems-of-resistance-7-poems-for-palestine.htm
About Samih Al-Qasim