Mohammed suffered a stroke, but Israel says he’s not ill enough for his son to get a travel permit to visit him. He needs care, but that is irrelevant. According to Israeli criteria, travel permits are only granted if first-degree relatives are dead or dying.
Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar has been incarcerated in an Israeli jail without a trial for 20 months. Another period of ‘administrative detention’ will soon expire. One of the Israeli accusations is that she attended a book fair…
As Palestinians in Hebron navigate life without the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) observers, it is worth looking back on how oppressive and violent life was even with outsiders watching. Eric Garner would find the city eerily familiar.
Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier charged with manslaughter after shooting a wounded Palestinian in the head, now has a paid position on the political campaign of an Israeli Prime Minister candidate.
Azaria served 14 months for the killing. He returned to Hebron a folk hero and celebrity.
The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) has observed & documented Israeli violations of international law for 22 years. Netanyahu has cancelled their mandate following a leaked TIPH report of widespread Israeli abuse. Palestinians fear the worst without the watchful eye of TIPH; Israeli settlers say it will be “a breath of fresh air.”
With a 4% approval rate on building permit applications from Palestinians, and application costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, a large number of Palestinians make the risky decision to build without a permit. When Hassan Othman’s “illegal” home was discovered, he saved part of the $80 thousand demolition fee by hiring equipment to do it himself.
Israel has demolished over 48,000 Palestinian structures since 1967
This 16-year-old child did not grow up or die in a vacuum. We need to examine the reportage, the context of her life, and own our own complicity in her death.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are constantly reminded of the fragility and conditionality of our (second-class) Israeli citizenship, and the illegitimacy of our Palestinian identity – and that’s amplified as elections approach.
The Palestinian identity of Israeli citizens is conceptualized as a perpetual threat precisely because it resists the constant revisionist efforts of the state. By virtue of existing, Palestinians contest the erasure of their own narratives and histories.
Intellectual honesty is about confronting those things that make us uncomfortable, not ignoring them. Israel arrests Palestinian children; see 7 of the many videos of these actions. The US gives Israel over $10 million per day and Congress is currently considering legislation to give Israel even more. That makes it obligatory for Americans to learn the facts, and act on them.
The question “Does Israel have the right to exist?” is intellectually dishonest and intended, almost always, to silence critics and criticism of Israeli policies. Anyone who does not answer with a resounding Yes is guaranteed the label “anti-Semite.”
This was Tamika Mallory’s recent predicament – but she went in full speed and declared that “all people have the right to exist.”
The proper question is, “Is the way in which Israel exists right?”