Tag: Shin Bet

“. . . Prison did not turn him into a desert . . .” (Ahmed Dahbour)

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❶ PSCC: Smear campaign targeting popular struggle activists

  • Background: “Conceptualising and Theorising Antisemitism and Racism: The Structural Context of Israel-Palestine.” Journal of Holy Land & Palestine Studies.

❷ Israeli forces suppress Friday rallies over Jerusalem recognition
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Israeli forces detain former Palestinian prisoner during raid on Hebron-area town
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) Israeli forces open fire at fishermen, detain 2 in northern Gaza
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴄ) Israeli forces detain four Palestinians from West Bank
❸ Israeli interrogation tactics lead to false confessions, Israeli court says
❹ POETRY by Ahmed  Dahbour
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ PSCC:  SMEAR  CAMPAIGN  TARGETING  POPULAR  STRUGGLE  ACTIVISTS        Palestine News Network – PNN   
Dec. 29, 2017 ― The Israeli occupation has been escalating its systematic intimidation of Palestinians since Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on the 6th of December 2017, The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said in  a statement.
___Since Trump’s statement, 15 Palestinians were killed, including disabled Gaza activist Ibrahim Abu Thoria. Moreover, Israeli Forces continue to escalate their wave of arrests.
___As of Wednesday morning, the coordinator of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, Munther Amira, 48, has been arrested by the Israeli occupation forces while participating in a demonstration at the northern entrance of Bethlehem city.
___Munther is currently facing charges of incitement and he is still under investigation. However, Munther is not the the only case. In the last few days, more than 8 activists have been arrested from Aida Refugee camp, and another 6 from the village of Bilin.   MORE . . .  

Shaw, Martin.
“CONCEPTUALISING  AND  THEORISING  ANTISEMITISM  AND  RACISM:  THE  STRUCTURAL  CONTEXT  OF  ISRAEL-PALESTINE.”
JOURNAL OF HOLY LAND & PALESTINE STUDIES, vol. 14, no. 2, Nov. 2015, pp. 149-164.
[. . . .] From its beginnings, Zionism shared common European assumptions about the inferiority of non-European peoples, and often portrayed Palestinian Arabs in classically racist terms . . .  the project of colonisation set up a structural conflict, in which . . .  racism was fostered. After 1948, this was reinforced by the process of dispossessing Palestinians, and the continuing conflict which this set up. While Palestinians inside Israel became citizens, they were manifestly second-class, since they were not members of the ‘Jewish nation’ to whom the state belonged. Palestinians outside Israel were perceived as more dangerous for Israel, with their responses to dispossession seen as a source of violent threats. In this context, the potential for racism could be said to have become structural for Israeli Jews . . .
___On the Palestinian side, too, a structural potential for racist characterisations of Jews was created. Israel had expelled or oppressed all Palestinians, in different ways, in the name of ‘the Jewish nation’. Nearly all Jews whom most Palestinians encountered were involved in and benefited from relations of oppression and exploitation towards them. The Jewish state encouraged a homogenous view of ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’: it is not surprising that some Palestinians also identified the two, extending hostility from the state to Jews as such, even if many Palestinians and organised currents in Palestinian life have always recognised a distinction. This ‘subaltern’ anti-Jewish sentiment may be called ‘antisemitism’, and sometimes borrowed anti-Jewish stereotypes from classical repertoires, but its causes were the structural situation in which Palestinians found themselves.
[. . . .] . . . new manifestations of antisemitism in Europe are misunderstood if they are presented as separate not just from Israel’s violence in 2014, but from the wider pattern of racism which that violence stimulated. Yet no official or academic study of this antisemitism has simultaneously problematised the anti-Palestinian racism which has been produced in Israel, despite the fact that this has been on a much larger scale and has had much more serious consequences than the expressions of antisemitism in Europe. [. . . .] Even the most sophisticated academic attempts to assimilate antisemitism to the larger field of racism have raised only one side of the significance of Israel for racism, namely the ‘new antisemitism’ involved in some opposition to Israel. They have neglected the larger complex of racism of which contemporary antisemitism is a part . . .  an adequate conceptualisation of antisemitism as racism will lead us to examine the general field of racism in and surrounding the structural context of Israel- Palestine. Such an examination should explore the relationship between antisemitism in Europe . . .  and the more extensive and deepening anti-Palestinian racism in Israel-Palestine . . .  SOURCE . . . 

❷ ISRAELI  FORCES  SUPPRESS  FRIDAY  RALLIES  OVER  JERUSALEM  RECOGNITION 
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA 
Dec. 29, 2017 ― Israeli forces Friday afternoon violently suppressed Palestinian rallies that continued to rock the occupied territories for the fourth consecutive Friday in protest of the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
___Israeli forces cracked down on several rallies in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, injuring three Palestinians.   MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴀ)  ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  FORMER  PALESTINIAN  PRISONER  DURING  RAID  ON  HEBRON-AREA  TOWN  
Ma’an News Agency
Dec. 29, 2017 ― Israeli forces detained a former Palestinian prisoner and fired tear gas at locals during a raid early Friday morning into the Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank.
___Locals told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided the town early Friday morning and searched several homes in the town. . .   Soldiers allegedly ransacked homes and broke the glass of doors and windows during the raid.   MORE . . . 
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴃ)  ISRAELI  FORCES  OPEN  FIRE  AT  FISHERMEN,  DETAIN  2  IN  NORTHERN  GAZA
Ma’an News Agency
Dec. 28, 2017 ― Israeli naval forces opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday morning.
___Locals said that Israeli naval ships chased down fishing boats off the coast of northern Gaza and opened fire at them. No injuries were reported.
___Israeli naval forces detained two fishermen . . .   the boats of the fishermen were confiscated.
___The Israeli army regularly detains and opens fire on unarmed Palestinian fishermen, shepherds, and farmers along the border areas if they approach the so-called ‘buffer zone’, as the authorities have not made clear the precise area of the designated zone.   MORE . . .    ..
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴄ)  ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  FOUR  PALESTINIANS  FROM  WEST  BANK  
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA
Dec. 29, 2017 ― Israeli forces Friday detained four Palestinians in multiple predawn raids across the West Bank, said security sources and an activist . . . Faqqua village, northeast of Jenin . . .  Fandaqumiya village, northwest of Jenin . . . Qalqiliya city . . .  Beit Ummar town, north of Hebron.    MORE . . . 
❸ ISRAELI  INTERROGATION  TACTICS  LEAD  TO  FALSE  CONFESSIONS,  ISRAELI  COURT  SAYS  
Days of Palestine
Dec. 29, 2017 ―  An Israel judge ripped into the Shin Bet, an Israeli intelligence service, for its interrogation tactics, saying they could lead people to confess crimes they did not commit.
___The panel of Be’er Sheva District Court judges has issued the opinion blasting the security service as part of a ruling explaining their acquittal last month of Khalil Nimri, a Palestinian accused of terrorism.
___Israeli newspaper Haaretz said that the court found that Nimri, who had been charged with planning an attack on Eilat hotel, had confessed under interrogation to acts that it was doubtful that he committed.
___”The Shin Bet needs to take a good look at itself so that interrogation techniques, which do indeed sometimes uncover dangerous acts of terrorism, aren’t also liable to induce innocent people to admit to acts that they did not commit,” the judges wrote.    MORE . . .

“THE  PRISON,”  BY  AHMAD  DAHBUR 
(To Abu Faris. . . who has been there)

Prison teaches that the heart is a desert,
That light is a desert.
It curses the fire and the land of the commandos.
Prison teaches that water is a chameleon,
That the landscape is a snake,
That echo is treacherous, and the wind an enemy.
Prison teaches that the guide’s sight grows dim,
And that the homeland departs.
Prison is a black kingdom in the sand;
Prison is a sword guarding the eyelids;
Prison . . . not the homeland!
So how, my beloved homeland, will the beloved ones survive?

Here we are, no complaints and no regrets,
We never say: an aimless wandering!
Blood gushes forth from the depths of our love.
Prison assaults but does not hit the mark;
Our wounds hit back,
Reaching out like water . . . like the wilderness,
Promising the light with a new light.
From deep within us, signaling twice!
Our cub child,
And the fire of salvation.
We see it, yes we do.
We are not dreaming,
We almost step into his joyous landscape
We almost do.
This is the moment of travail in our difficult labor,
We hug the newborn―
He who springs from our very ecstasy,
Whose kicks we feel in our guts,
Who teaches the hungry what he knows
And declares in words well understood:
Revolution, revolution . . . till life.

The inmate has not lost his features in the sand,
Prison did not turn him into a desert.
From his hunger, water and vegetation sprang.
When silence wounds him,
He can break it with a sigh,
But he endures.
His testimony:
Near death, there were exhaustion and fatigue,
His executioner pressing him to promise
A word . . . a groan, or to divulge his secret,
But all in vain.
His countenance was radiating in the sand
Like an oasis,
For prison had not turned him into a desert.

About Ahmad Dahbur. And here.
From THE  PALESTINIAN  WEDDING:  A  BILINGUAL  ANTHOLOGY  OF  CONTEMPORARY  PALESTINIAN  RESISTANCE  POETRY.  Ed. and Trans. A. M. Elmessiri. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011. Reprint from Three Continents Press, Inc., 1982. Available from Palestine Online Store. 

“. . . Where’s my father now? So we might join hands . . .” (Waleed al-Halees)

Harold KnightLeave a comment

PLEASE NOTE: The content of this blog is changed: it presents fewer news items and gives more background for those items. This will provide deeper understanding of the issues shaping the news. All articles without direct links can be found through an EBSCO search in any library with online databases.

b'tselem
A still from July 2013 video footage taken by Israeli human rights watchdog group B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories – shows five-year-old Wadi Maswadeh and his younger sister with an unknown adult surrounded by soldiers before Wadi’s arrest

❶ Israeli forces detain alleged ‘Hamas cell’ behind Jerusalem bus explosion
❷ Switzerland gets active on Palestinian reconciliation
❸ Report: “Israel Issued 729 Administrative Detention Orders This Year”
❹ Opinion/Analysis: WHY  B’TSELEM’S  LATEST  REPORT  IS  GROUND  BREAKING
❺ POETRY by Waleed al-Halees
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ ISRAELI  FORCES  DETAIN  ALLEGED  ‘HAMAS CELL’  BEHIND  JERUSALEM  BUS  EXPLOSION
Ma’an News Agency
May 29, 2016
The Israeli army announced on Sunday that Israel’s internal security service agency had apprehended six Palestinians belonging to a “Hamas terror cell” allegedly behind a Jerusalem bus explosion in April.
___An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that the Shin Bet agency had detained Palestinians in the occupied West Bank district of Bethlehem in past weeks, over their alleged involvement in a group which planned an explosion on a bus in southern Jerusalem on April 18 [. . . .]
___The Hamas movement claimed responsibility for the explosion . . .    MORE . . .   

Why and how young men choose to join violent terrorist/military organisations – often using their bodies as deadly weapons – is a matter that continues to puzzle social scientists and the policy world, as well as society at large. This enduring question, which is ultimately about humanity and the allure of violence, has become particularly salient given the changing nature of the global landscape concerning security development. [. . . .]
___Hamas is particularly interesting because of its unique positioning as a legal, democratic, legitimate political actor, as a terrorist organisation, as a paramilitary force, and as a social association. Hamas has used both suicide bombings and rocket attacks as part of its political struggle against Israelis, and has been classified as a terrorist organisation by the EU and the US, as well as by Russia, Israel, Japan and Canada. However, the Arabic “Islamist” party democratically won the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, with a political platform that underlines Shari’a as the basis of the law. Thereafter Hamas has reduced their “terrorist” activity.

  • Malmström, Maria Frederika. “Porous Masculinities: Agential Political Bodies Among Male Hamas Youth.” Etnográfica: Revista Do Centro De Estudos De Antropologia Social 19.2 (2015): 301-322.   ARTICLE . . .   

❷ SWITZERLAND  GETS  ACTIVE  ON  PALESTINIAN  RECONCILIATION
Al-Monitor (Palestine Pulse)
Ahmad Melhem
May 27, 2016
Paul Garnier, the Swiss ambassador to Palestine, visited the Gaza Strip through the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing, which is controlled by Israel, twice in a short period. The first visit was on April 6, and the second on May 9. These visits attest to the Swiss’ intensified action regarding reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, hoping to overcome the division that has plagued the Palestinian scene since 2007.      MORE . . .  

Oslo is history. Twenty years have passed since the last significant peace accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The intervening years have been marked by an intifada and three military interventions in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces that have left around seven thousand Palestinians and one thousand Israelis dead. The so-called “Peace Process” is in tatters and there seems to be no way of re-stitching it.
___But the West still can’t let go of the nostalgic image of Bill Clinton inviting the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in September 1993. The handshake was real, but the accord itself was illusory.

  • Casertano, Stefano. “Broken Peaces.” World Affairs 177.5 (2015): 69-74.     ARTICLE . . .    
hamas
Rally celebrating the surprise 2006 Hamas election victory in the West Bank (Photo: BBC News, July 11, 2014)

❸ REPORT:  “ISRAEL  ISSUED  729  ADMINISTRATIVE  DETENTION  ORDERS  THIS  YEAR”
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
May 28, 2016
Riyad al-Ashqar, the media spokesperson of The Palestinian Prisoners’ Center for Studies, has reported that the Israeli occupation authorities issued 729 arbitrary Administrative Detention orders, since the beginning of this year, and that most of the orders were renewals of previous ones.
___Al-Ashqar stated that these numbers are a %35 increase of the same period of last years, when Israel issued 493 orders.        MORE . . .  

Thus, if the authorities could guarantee better conditions to detainees by holding them in Israel, rather than in the OT as required under Article 76 of the Convention, they were conforming with ‘the substantive provisions of the Geneva Convention relating to conditions of detention’. The rhetoric in this judgment would seem to imply that, by holding that the Convention should be interpreted for the benefit of the protected persons, the Court was departing from the approach described above that prefers state interests to the rights of individuals, and was holding that the Convention should be interpreted for the benefit of the protected persons. However, the rhetoric was employed in the concrete case so as to justify the authorities’ refusal to comply with the strict requirements of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The decision therefore appears to be consistent with the general approach of the Court mentioned above, which favors the interpretation that supports the government’s position.

  • Kretzmer, David. “The Law of Belligerent Occupation in the Supreme Court of Israel.” International Review of the Red Cross 94.885 (2012): 207-236. ARTICLE . . .  

❹ Opinion/Analysis: WHY  B’TSELEM’S  LATEST  REPORT  IS  GROUND  BREAKING
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO
Asa Winstanley
May 28, 2016
B’Tselem is probably the most influential Israeli human rights group there is.  The group was founded during the first Palestinian intifada, and thus has been working on compiling evidence of violations of Palestinian human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for more the 25 years.   [. . . .]
___A turning point in the group’s history came this week, as it published a new report titled “The Occupation’s Figleaf”. In it, B’Tselem announced that it would no longer refer complaints of abuses to Israel’s military law enforcement system in the West Bank. [. . . .]
___ The B’Tselem report explains the group’s reasons for this seminal decision: “There is no longer any point in pursuing justice and defending human rights by working with a system whose real function is measured by its ability to continue to successfully cover up unlawful acts and protect perpetrators.”      MORE . . .   

Colonialism is not just about a seminal moment of conquest but rather the implementation of various designs that over decades actively and radically alter laws, land use policies, property rights, and that also reconfigure urban spaces with new city planning strategies.
___Race and new racist logics are crucial to these violent transformations — and they are usually quite violent in one way or another. Israeli governance, I assert in the book**, is consistent with settler-colonialism, a specific form of colonial rule that seeks to replace one group of people with another.  [. . . .]
___What I witnessed in Jerusalem and other places was a Palestinian population increasingly “warehoused” in deeply circumscribed and policed areas — almost completely under Israeli control. These towns, villages, neighborhoods, and refugee camps are often surrounded by Israel’s destructive (and illegal) separation barrier. At the same time, those who resist Israeli military rule (even children as young as 10) are routinely detained and most of these detainees, Israeli and other human rights organizations tell us, are badly beaten or tortured.Interview withThomas Abowd. “Jerusalem: Colonized City.”

  • Against The Current 31.181 (2016): 25-28.     ARTICLE . . .
  • ** Colonial Jerusalem. The Spatial Construction of Identity and Difference in a City of Myth, 1948-2012 (Syracuse University Press, 2014).

____
from “DAYS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  A  PALESTINIAN  BOY,”  BY  WALEED  AL-HALEES  (B. 1952)
[. . . .]
Where’s my father so I might tell him
his seed is not content merely with life,
a faint hope for life?
that a warm womb
is equal to all kinds of life.
Where’s my father now?
So we might join hands
and laugh, spitting, gripping life with force
(no life can be had but by force)
―I swear I’ve lied to God just now
for life taken by force only equals
all the warm wombs of women.
Forgive me, Mother,
Slowly I became the wise child of this life!
[. . . .]
―Translated by Lena Jayyusi and Naomi Shihab Nye

from ANTHOLOGY  OF  MODERN  PALESTINIAN  LITERATURE. Ed. Salma Khadra Jayyusi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Available from Columbia University Press. Waleed al-Halees (b. 1952), a contemporary Palestinian poet from Gaza who currently lives in a compulsory exile, composed a poem entitled, “A Poem on a Closed Summer” in which ‘ among other things ‘ he mentions the hardships and agonies he encounters, but he never despairs.

 

 

“. . . their dignity sets them free . . .” (Samah Sabawi)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
jewish terrorists
Screenshot of a video showing extremist Israeli Jewish wedding-goers celebrating killings of the Dawabsha family. (Jerusalem: Channel 10)

❶ 24 shot, injured by Israeli forces in clashes after funeral in Abu Dis
❷ Analysis: Terrorism as defined by Israel
❸ Israeli police detain 5 after Israeli wedding incited murder
❹ Analysis: Palestinians and Israelis will pay a heavy price for unchecked Jewish settler terror
❺ Opinion/Analysis: Arab group in Israel paves new future for town’s next generation
❻ Poetry by Samah Sabawi
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
24  SHOT,  INJURED  BY  ISRAELI  FORCES  IN  CLASHES  AFTER  FUNERAL  IN  ABU  DIS
Dec. 30, 2015
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Clashes broke out late Tuesday in Abu Dis following a funeral held for a Palestinian killed earlier this month, whose body was held by Israeli authorities for 26 days.
___Locals told Ma’an that 24 Palestinians were shot and injured by rubber-coated steel bullets while 19 others suffered from severe tear gas inhalation when clashes erupted between locals and Israeli military forces.  More . . .
❷ THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR (MEMO)
TERRORISM  AS  DEFINED  BY  ISRAEL
Dr Fayez Abu Shamaleh
Dec. 30, 2015
The burning to death of the Dawabsheh family in July created a conflict between the Israeli Shin Bet internal security agency and the Jewish settlers who sympathised with those who carried out the deadly arson attack. While the Shin Bet knows how dangerous the extremist Jewish groups are and the consequences of their heinous acts that reflect on the existence of the state itself, the rabbis and settler leaders continue to attack the agency. . . .
___ “See, the murder in Duma was just a means,” said [Education Minister Naftali] Bennett. “They want to bring down the house on our heads. That is their goal. It is antithetical to the substance of religious Zionism. They want to dismantle the State of Israel. They are terrorists . . . .  More . . .
❸ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI  POLICE  DETAIN  5  AFTER  ISRAELI  WEDDING  INCITED  MURDER
Dec. 30, 2015
[Blogger’s note: why would Israel prosecute when it refuses to prosecute Ali Dawabsha’s murderers?]
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli police have arrested five Israelis involved in a Jerusalem wedding ceremony that incited violence towards Palestinians [in video footage that went viral], Israeli media reported Tuesday.
___The groom of the wedding . . . was arrested in addition to an Israeli soldier and two minors, Israeli daily Haaretz said.
___Israeli police also arrested renowned extremist settler Daniel Pinner from the illegal settlement of Tapuah, who was among a number of others seen dancing with a gun in video footage of the wedding . . . .
___At one point during the ceremony, a masked Israeli youth . . . stabs a photo of Ali Dawabsha, an 18-month-old Palestinian burned alive in an arson attack carried out by Jewish extremists over the summer. More . . .

abu dis funeral
Clashes broke out late Tuesday in Abu Dis following a funeral held for a Palestinian killed earlier this month. (Ma’an News Photo)

❹ Analysis
THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR (MEMO)
PALESTINIANS  AND  ISRAELIS  WILL  PAY  A  HEAVY  PRICE  FOR  UNCHECKED  JEWISH  SETTLER  TERROR
Professor Kamel Hawwash
Dec. 29, 2015
The recent Israeli wedding video in which revellers danced with knives and guns, and stabbed pictures of Palestinian baby Ali Dawabsheh, who was burnt to death by Jewish settlers, should trouble Israel’s supporters and society. . . .
___ However, there has been a worrying rise in settler violence, coordinated under the label of “price tag” attacks which target Palestinians on both sides of the Green (1949 Armistice) Line. They have included attacks on mosques and churches . . . .
___As settlers develop a terror infrastructure, safe in the knowledge that the state basically condones it, those Israelis who want to see a peaceful resolution to the conflict could soon face settler violence for advocating any evacuation of settlements under a peace agreement. . . . More . . . 
❺ Opinion/Analysis
+972 MAGAZINE
ARAB  GROUP  IN  ISRAEL  PAVES  NEW  FUTURE  FOR  TOWN’S  NEXT  GENERATION
Amjad Iraqi
Dec. 27, 2015
Three weeks ago, the building of the municipality of Tira, a Palestinian Arab town in the Muthalath (“Triangle”) area of Israel, was bustling with over two hundred people gathering in its auditorium.
___Five speakers took the stage and delivered captivating talks on five different topics, all of which were nothing short of inspiring. Fadi Matar, the 24-year-old founder of the organization behind the event, described the process of making it happen in a community not used to such initiatives. . . .
___The “Tira Talks” were organized by the Academiyu al-Tira (“the students/educated of Tira”), a local collective of Arab university and college students from the town. More . . .

“DEFYING  THE  UNIVERSE,”  BY  SAMAH  SABAWI
Dedicated to her husband Monir

Are your loved ones trapped behind the wall
Do they need the army’s permission
For their prayers to reach the sky
For their love to cross the ocean
And touch your thirsty heart
Are your loved ones trapped

Do you yearn to be in your family home
And when you call, do they always say
“we are fine, alhamdollelah”
Does it surprise you that they are whole
While you… are broken
Must they always worry about you
Urge you to have faith in your exile
Must they always pity you
For not breathing the air
Of your ancestors’ land
Must they always comfort you
Even when the bombs are falling
Do you ever wonder who is walled in
Is it you…or is it them
And when it finally dawns upon you
That their dignity sets them free
Do you feel ashamed of your liberty

About Samah Sabawi.
From: Valentine, Douglas. “Poetry, Palestine and the Language of Resistance Counter Punch.” Counter Punch. counterpunch.org. September 20, 2013. Web.

“. . . Right now this child is innocent . . .” (Philip Metres)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
zzzhebron bodies
Hundreds of Palestinians from Hebron marched in demand that the Israeli government immediately return the bodies of 21 Palestinians who were recently killed by Israeli forces. (Photo: Ma’an Images)

❶ Shin Bet: Jewish terrorists seek to ‘violently overthrow’ government
❷ Kerry: Israel shifting towards unitary state which is ‘impossible to manage’
❸ Hundreds in Hebron demand return of 21 bodies held by Israel
❹ Israeli gov’t builds more settlements in Jerusalem
❺ Opinion/Analysis: The American Jews prying open the conversation on the occupation
❻ Poetry by Philip Metres
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
SHIN  BET:  JEWISH  TERRORISTS  SEEK  TO  ‘VIOLENTLY   OVERTHROW’  GOVERNMENT
Dec. 18, 2015
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet on Thursday cautioned that a Jewish terror organization is seeking to “violently overthrow” the Israeli government . . . .
___Israeli media across the board described the public statement issued by the security agency as a rare response to actors who have slandered the Shin Bet in a campaign to defend Jewish extremists . . . .
___”A Jewish terror organization has been under investigation recently, whose activity is suspected to include serious terror attacks that endangered life and harmed religious sanctity and property,” the Shin Bet statement said, according to Israeli media. More . . .
❷ THE MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
KERRY:  ISRAEL  SHIFTING  TOWARDS  UNITARY  STATE  WHICH  IS  ‘IMPOSSIBLE  TO  MANAGE’
Dec. 16, 2015
The US Secretary of State John Kerry said the Israeli government doesn’t know how it wants to solve the conflict with the Palestinians and with its current policies it will turn into a “unitary state that is an impossible entity to manage”.
___In a lengthy interview with the New Yorker magazine, Kerry explained that he is particularly concerned that the Palestinian Authority could collapse causing its 30,000 security officers to scatter; adding that chaos and increasingly violent clashes with Israel would follow. More . . .
❸ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
HUNDREDS  IN  HEBRON  DEMAND  RETURN  OF  21  BODIES  HELD  BY  ISRAEL
Dec. 17, 2015
HEBRON (Ma’an) — Hundreds of Palestinians from the Hebron district on Thursday marched in demand that the Israeli government immediately return the bodies of 21 Palestinians who were recently killed by Israeli forces.
___Families of those killed, Hebron governor Kamel Hmeid, and a number of Palestinian officials were among crowds that gathered to protest Israel’s policy of withholding the bodies of Palestinians who carried out attacks on Israelis, or who were suspected of doing so. . . .
___The [Israeli] decision [to hold bodies] — one among a series of stringent security measures — was reportedly taken in order to avoid mass funerals that Israeli leadership have termed “nationalistic” events that “incite” against Israel. More . . .
Related . . . ISRAEL’S  POLICY  OF  WITHHOLDING  PALESTINIANS’  BODIES  IMMORAL,  SAID  B’TSELEM
❹ DAYS OF PALESTINE
ISRAELI  GOV’T  BUILDS  MORE  SETTLEMENTS  IN  JERUSALEM
Dec 17, 2015
Days of Palestine, West Bank –Israeli occupation government approved on Wednesday plans to build 891 new settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem.
___Israeli Jerusalem planning committee approved the construction of the new housing units in the southern Jewish-only Gilo Settlement in occupied East Jerusalem, which lies beyond the green line.
___Initial approval for this plan was given in 2012, but was postponed due to some adjustments. More . . .
❺ Opinion/Analysis
+972 MAGAZINE
THE  AMERICAN  JEWS  PRYING  OPEN  THE  CONVERSATION  ON  THE  OCCUPATION
Tom Pessah
Dec. 18, 2015
The Jewish American establishment has been trying to dictate the confines of the conversation on Israel and Palestine on college campuses in the United States. One group of young Jews is trying to erase the red lines being drawn around them by leveraging communal pursestrings to ensure their voices are heard. More . . .

From ALONG  THE  SHRAPNEL  EDGE  OF  MAPS,  BY PHILIP  METRES
For Rabbi Erik (Arik) Asherman***

The midrash says, when Hagar and Ishmael were banished
into the desert, before God builds a well, the angels

say,―What are you doing? Don’t you know the tsuris
the Jewish people are going to suffer at the hands

of the children of Ishmael? & God, according to this midrash,
says,―right now, in front of me, there’s a child. Right now

this child is innocent. When I call on them, the parents waken
their children to introduce them to us. Our nation lives in a bubble

in which it claims every action is carried out according to law.
But I hold in my heart the looks of children who return home

to see their house destroyed, a book piercing through the rubble,
families sitting on packed suitcases, the words

of a Palestinian boy they’d tied to a windshield that I’d freed―
who said that a tall man in a kippa came to his aid.

(midrash―Bible commentary)
(tsuris―trouble or woe)
(kippa―another name for a yarmulke)

Philip Metres is of Lebanese-American descent. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. His faculty homepage says, “Were it not for Ellis Island, his last name would be Abourjaili.”
Metres’ Israeli/Palestinian Literature Project
*** Arik Ascherman (born 1959) is an American-born Israeli Reform rabbi, and co-founder and Director of Special Projects for Rabbis for Human Rights.
From BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND: PALESTINE ISREL POETS RESPOND TO THE STRUGGLE. Ed. By Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler. Sandpoint ID: Lost Horse Press, 2012. Available from Barnes and Noble.

“. . . O God of Glory Listen to the outcry of a dispossessed people . . .” (Samih Al-Qasim)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
palestinian boy
Palestinian terrorist arrested by Israeli Police, November 26, 2015 (Photo: Wadi Hilweh Information Center – Silwan)

❶ Jewish extremists arrested for Dawabsha arson murder
❷ Israel denies outlawed Muslim group entry to Al-Aqsa, assaults members
❸ Army Kidnaps Eight Palestinians, Including Two Children, In Jerusalem
❹ Analysis: Israel’s ‘security’ wall has provided little security
❺ Opinion/Analysis: ISRAEL  IS  WORLD’S  PREMIER  PRODUCER  AND  GENERATOR  OF  TERROR
❻ Poetry by Samih Al-Qasim
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
JEWISH  EXTREMISTS  ARRESTED  FOR  DAWABSHA  ARSON  MURDER
Dec. 3, 2015
BETHLEHEM ― Several Israeli youths connected to Jewish extremist organizations have been arrested by Israeli forces for suspected involvement in a fatal arson attack on a Palestinian family in July, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said Thursday.
___An Israeli police spokeswoman for Arab media, Luba al-Samri, confirmed that police “recently arrested young men suspected of membership in a Jewish terrorist organization, and of carrying out different terrorist attacks.”
More . . .
❷ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAEL  DENIES  OUTLAWED  MUSLIM  GROUP  ENTRY  TO  AL-AQSA,  ASSAULTS  MEMBERS
Dec. 3, 2015
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces assaulted a group of Palestinian women after they were denied entry to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Thursday, witnesses said.
___One of the women, Khadijah Khuweis, told Ma’an that the group, locally known as the Murabitat, were sitting outside the Hutta Gate after being denied entry to the holy site when Israeli officers suddenly began to push them back and hit them. . . .
___One of the women, Ayda Sidawi, fell to the ground after Israeli officers pushed her and was evacuated to hospital for treatment, she added.
___Meanwhile, over 70 right-wing Israeli Jews toured the Al-Aqsa compound under armed Israeli police guard, locals said.
More . . . 

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Members of Sabeel Ecumenical Theology Center at Al-Aqsa Mosque with Palestinian guide, Nov. 4, 2015. (Photo: Harold Knight)

❸ IMEMC-INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER
ARMY  KIDNAPS  EIGHT  PALESTINIANS,  INCLUDING  TWO  CHILDREN,  IN JERUSALEM
Dec. 03, 2015
At least eight Palestinians, including two 11 years of age children, have been kidnapped, on Thursday at dawn and on Wednesday at night, during Israeli military invasions into Palestinian homes, in different parts of occupied East Jerusalem.
___The Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan (Silwanic), said the soldiers have kidnapped Mohammad Nadi Hashlamoun and Ziad Ayyoub Abu Hadwan, from their homes in Ras al-‘Amoud neighborhood, and took them to the al-Maskobiyya interrogation center, west of Jerusalem.
More . . .
❹ Analysis
MONDOWEISS
ISRAEL’S  ‘SECURITY’  WALL  HAS  PROVIDED  LITTLE  SECURITY
Allison Deger and Philip Weiss
Dec. 2, 2015
The current violence in Israel and Palestine has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the separation barrier, the concrete wall/barbed wire fence that Israel began erecting inside Palestine 13 years ago during the second intifada to provide security. The wall is as high as 25 feet in some places, and travels for hundreds of miles inside Palestine, mostly east of the Green Line, grabbing territory that was supposed to go to a Palestinian state under the Oslo accords.
___Most of the Palestinian attacks have taken place on the Israeli side of the separation barrier.
More . . .
Related . . .
❺ Opinion/Analysis
THE PALESTINIAN INFORMATION CENTER
ISRAEL  IS  WORLD’S  PREMIER  PRODUCER  AND  GENERATOR  OF  TERROR
Khalid Amayreh
Nov. 19, 2015
“Germany needs to respond to terror like Israel does,” the head of Germany’s internal intelligence service (BfV), Hans-Georg Maassen, reportedly said this week.
___With all due respect, the German official is wrong for the following reasons.
___Israel, itself a gigantic crime against humanity by any moral standard imaginable, can never be considered part of the solution for the terror epidemic now hitting many countries.
More . . .
Related . . . CONFESSIONS: TALES OF SAVAGERY BY THE ISRAELI MILITARY

“PSALMS  OF  THE  PALESTINIANS,”  BY  SAMIH  AL-QASIM

From here
From this purgatory
Of sorrow
In the Holy Land
The orphaned birds beseech
Mankind
From here
From Jenin
From Old Jerusalem
Alleluia.

Once
A Gaza tune of yearning
Played
Once
The sad refrain
Kindled tragedy
In refugee tents
Once
In Jerusalem
The little ones changed
We shall return
We shall return
Alleluia.

The birds nest on our roof
The sparrow flies
In the horizon
And in exile
Under the hot sun
In the wind
Hearts―eyes
Implored:
God of glory
Return us
Our trial
Has gone on too long!
Alleluia―Alleluia

And then it happened
The metallic eagles swept down
They did not bring the sons of Zion
To Zion
Not the remaining crowds
They did not bring
Pious psalms
To the Wailing Wall
God of Glory!
What did they bring?
Do not ask me
For in my voice a pagan flame
Burns
And listen O God of Glory
Listen to the outcry of a dispossessed people
We have been tested long enough
We have carried the weight of centuries
Long enough
―Why aren’t you convinced? ―
Our days of trial have been too long
So
Return us―Return us
Alleluia―Alleluia―Alleluia.

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.
Additional poetry by Samih al-Qasim 

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The “Security” Wall dwarfs the hood of a car. Bethlehem. (Photo: Harold Knight, Nov. 6, 2015)