I'm a Sri Lankan desi by way of Dubai by way of Minnesota.
Israel Arresting Children To Prevent Third Intifada
SILWAN, East Jerusalem — Most are ripped from their beds in the middle of the night. Others are taken while playing in the street, or leaving school. Many are blindfolded and shackled on their way to interrogation, which lasts for several hours at a time, all without a lawyer or family member present. Many are beaten, verbally abused, and pressured to sign confessions for crimes they didn’t commit.
The experience of Israeli arrest, interrogation and detention causes severe psychological damage, and leaves lasting scars on Palestinian detainees, their families and communities. It is especially traumatic, however, for the over 7,500 Palestinian children under the age of 18 that have been arrested by the Israeli authorities since 2000.
“Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,” UNICEF found in a recent report, detailing Israel’s practice of arresting Palestinian children.
While the phenomenon of arresting Palestinian children is widespread, the frequency and brutality with which these arrests are carried out are often influenced by the political situation on the ground. Certain geographic areas are also targeted, including Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem that count a large Israeli settler presence, where Israeli policies are most severe, or where Palestinian resistance is strongest.
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We are fighting for the sake of the freedom of our land and the return of our refugees in Palestine and the diaspora, not to add more deportees to them. This systematic practice by Israel that aims to empty Palestine of Palestinians and bring strangers in their place is a crime. Therefore, I refuse being deported and I will only agree to be released to Jerusalem, as I know that the Israeli occupation aims to empty Jerusalem of its people and turn Arabs into a minority group of its population. The issue of deportation is no longer a personal decision, it is rather a national principle. If every detainee agrees to be deported outside Jerusalem under pressure, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people.
I would prefer dying on my hospital bed to being deported from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is my soul and my life. If I was uprooted from there, my soul would be uprooted from my body. My life is meaningless away from Jerusalem. No land on earth will be able to embrace me other than Jerusalem. Therefore, my return will be only to Jerusalem and nowhere else. I advise all Palestinians to embrace their land and villages and never succumb to the Israeli occupation’s wishes. I don’t see this issue as a personal cause that is related to Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a conviction and a principle that every Palestinian who loves his homeland’s sacred soil should hold. Finally, I reaffirm for the thousandth time that I continue my hunger strike until either freedom and return to Jerusalem or martyrdom!
We have recently witnessed the umpteenth attempt to silence voices that denounce paternalistic, neo-imperialist politics and argue against Islamophobic positions and homonationalist activism. On 7th September 2009, the book Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality (2008) edited by Adi Kunstman & Esperanza Miyake, was declared out of print by its publisher, Raw Nerve. The collection, which was the first academic volume on queerness and raciality in Britain, contained an important article which exposed the use of gay rights discourse as an instrument to justify neo-imperialist, anti-migrant and Islamophobic policies, namely ‘Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the “War on Terror”‘ by Jin Haritaworn, Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem. In ‘Gay Imperialism’ the authors – themselves academics and activists writing from different trans/queer of colour, queer Muslim and migrant feminist positions – pointed out how the equation of ‘Muslim’ with ‘homophobic’ (as well as sexist) has contributed to the tightening of borders, the re-construction of the West as the champion of civilisation and modernity, and the victimisation and patronising of Muslim queers.
On the censorship of ‘Gay Imperialism’ and Out of Place
In Germany, migrants from ‘Muslim countries’ applying for nationality are required to pass a discriminatory ‘Muslim Test’ which asks questions such as: What would you do if your son was gay? In the Netherlands, applicants are asked to react to a video showing two men kissing. Drawing on the work of Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991) and of Jasbir Puar (2007) the article shows how it is not incidental that the attention drawn to non-Western and Muslim gender and sexual regimes comes at the same time as the ‘War on Terror’, the increase in restrictive migration policies and the general upsurge in Islamophobia. The authors point out how, ‘gay rights’ and gender equality, even though they were achieved very recently and not at all exhaustively, have become symbols of the civilisation and modernity of Western countries.
[…]
There are further parallels between the abolitionist and the Islamophobic discourse: Instead of working with Muslim or non-white non-Western queer organisations (or even simply listening to what they are saying), the tendency for majority white, western gay rights and queer groups is to talk for them, to “save them”- ignoring and re-enforcing the multiple oppressions at stake.
Imperialistic states Israel and the U.S. mainly, but not limited to, use the issue of gay rights to depict themselves as progressive and forward thinking compared to Muslim-majority countries which are depicted as primitive backwards, and inferior in order to justify the “war on terror”, invading and appropriating narratives of non-western, often non-white, queer Muslims. This ideology has recently come to be known pinkwashing, which in its simplest terms is ”the attempt by a state or people to highlight its treatment of gays to show how progressive it is, in turn covering up human rights violations from which it wishes to detract attention.” People love to talk about the censorship and control media in the Middle East but completely overlook this type of censorship, where the issue of non-heteronormative sexuality is used to further Otherize and depict Muslim-majority countries as backwards and not up to par with the progressive and superior imperialistic places like U.S., Israel and Britain apparently are and anything that exposes this truth is declared out of print.
(via loohn)
![thepeoplesrecord:
How Israel gets away with torturing Palestinians to deathFebruary 26, 2013
Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest - February 18 - and the day of his death - February 23 - his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet’s Kishon interrogation facility.
Sabbagh reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat told his lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced to sit in stress positions with his hands bound behind his back.
When it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat - who leaves a pregnant widow and two children - died from cardiac arrest. However, the subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In fact, the autopsy concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in fine cardiovascular health.
What the final autopsy did find, however, was that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body and had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and legs; his lips lacerated; his face badly bruised.
The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel’s Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel’s prisons. According to the prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect.
The legal impunity of the Shin Bet, commonly referred to as the GSS, and its torture techniques has been well established. Between 2001 and 2011, 700 Palestinians lodged complaints with the State Attorney’s Office but not a single one has been criminally investigated.
Writing in Adalah’s 2012 publication, On Torture [PDF], Bana Shoughry-Badarne, an attorney and the Legal Director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, wrote, “The GSS’s impunity is absolute.”
Israel’s High Court has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.
In August of 2012, Israel’s High Court rejected petitions submitted by Israeli human rights organisations Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and PCATI to demand that Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, carry out criminal investigations into each allegation of torture by the Shin Bet.
And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, the High Court of Justice threw out Adalah’s petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.
In May 2009, UNCAT condemned [PDF] Israel for exempting the Shin Bet’s interrogations from audio and video recording, noting that such oversight is an essential preventative measure to curtail torture. Yet despite this admonition, in 2012 the Knesset extended the exemption for another three years.
Rationalising its failure to comply with this most basic requirement of recording interrogations, the State maintains that it is in the interests of “national security” that its interrogation techniques not be made public.
Arafat was killed under torture. Torture is routine. But the following is not routine: upon the announcement of his death, thousands of Palestinians, already unified in solidarity with the arduous struggle waged by Palestinian hunger striking prisoners, responded in force. At least 3,000 prisoners refused their meals; thousands poured into the streets of Gaza and impassioned demonstrations erupted across the West Bank. While the State of Israel continues to deploy its deadly arsenal of weapons to repress Palestinians, the banality of the evil of this regime is, as it will always be, eclipsed by the mighty Palestinian will for self-determination.
Source](http://25.media.tumblr.com/887f5fb2b2a5705931690ca97847515d/tumblr_miu8ic1g9Y1r6m2leo1_500.jpg)
How Israel gets away with torturing Palestinians to death
February 26, 2013Six days after Arafat Jaradat was arrested by the Israeli army and the Shin Bet, he was dead. Between the date of his arrest - February 18 - and the day of his death - February 23 - his lawyer Kamil Sabbagh met with Arafat only once: in front of a military judge at the Shin Bet’s Kishon interrogation facility.
Sabbagh reported that when he saw Jaradat, the man was terrified. Arafat told his lawyer that he was in acute pain from being beaten and forced to sit in stress positions with his hands bound behind his back.
When it announced his death, Israeli Prison Service claimed Arafat - who leaves a pregnant widow and two children - died from cardiac arrest. However, the subsequent autopsy found no blood clot in his heart. In fact, the autopsy concluded that Arafat, who turned 30 this year, was in fine cardiovascular health.
What the final autopsy did find, however, was that Jaradat had been pummelled by repeated blows to his chest and body and had sustained a total of six broken bones in his spine, arms and legs; his lips lacerated; his face badly bruised.
The ordeal that Arafat suffered before he died at the hands of Israel’s Shin Bet is common to many Palestinians that pass through Israel’s prisons. According to the prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer, since 1967, a total of 72 Palestinians have been killed as a result of torture and 53 due to medical neglect. Less than a month before Jaradat was killed, Ashraf Abu Dhra died while in Israeli custody in a case that Addameer argues was a direct result of medical neglect.
The legal impunity of the Shin Bet, commonly referred to as the GSS, and its torture techniques has been well established. Between 2001 and 2011, 700 Palestinians lodged complaints with the State Attorney’s Office but not a single one has been criminally investigated.
Writing in Adalah’s 2012 publication, On Torture [PDF], Bana Shoughry-Badarne, an attorney and the Legal Director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, wrote, “The GSS’s impunity is absolute.”
Israel’s High Court has been extravagantly helpful in securing the Shin Bet with its imperviousness to accountability to international law, and thus enabling widespread and lethal torture.
In August of 2012, Israel’s High Court rejected petitions submitted by Israeli human rights organisations Adalah, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and PCATI to demand that Israeli attorney general, Yehuda Weinstein, carry out criminal investigations into each allegation of torture by the Shin Bet.
And in the first week of February, two weeks before Arafat was killed, the High Court of Justice threw out Adalah’s petition that demanded the GSS videotape and audio record all of its interrogations in order to comply with requirements of the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) to which Israel is a signatory.
In May 2009, UNCAT condemned [PDF] Israel for exempting the Shin Bet’s interrogations from audio and video recording, noting that such oversight is an essential preventative measure to curtail torture. Yet despite this admonition, in 2012 the Knesset extended the exemption for another three years.
Rationalising its failure to comply with this most basic requirement of recording interrogations, the State maintains that it is in the interests of “national security” that its interrogation techniques not be made public.
Arafat was killed under torture. Torture is routine. But the following is not routine: upon the announcement of his death, thousands of Palestinians, already unified in solidarity with the arduous struggle waged by Palestinian hunger striking prisoners, responded in force. At least 3,000 prisoners refused their meals; thousands poured into the streets of Gaza and impassioned demonstrations erupted across the West Bank. While the State of Israel continues to deploy its deadly arsenal of weapons to repress Palestinians, the banality of the evil of this regime is, as it will always be, eclipsed by the mighty Palestinian will for self-determination.
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The appropriation of Palestinian Culture is disgusting.
Harvard Graduate Sara El-Yafi broke down the ridiculousness of this very well.
” Hummus (حُمُّص): Let’s get to the bottom of this once and for all. Hummus is an Arabic word meaning “chickpeas.” Ok? It is an Arabic word. As far as “Israelis” are concerned, they don’t speak Arabic. So unless you change your primary language, you have no argument here. The earliest documented recipe for something similar to modern hummus dates to 13th Century (CE) Egypt. —> Since Israel was created in 1948, Israel is NOT 13th CENTURY EGYPT! And Hummus is therefore NOT ISRAELI.
Tahini (طحينه): ONE: Tahini is a loanword from Arabic: طحينة, or more accurately ṭaḥīnīa طحينية, and is derived from the root ط ح ن Ṭ-Ḥ-N which as a verb طحن ṭaḥan which means “to grind.” TWO: You can only make Hummus with Tahini, since it is the second main ingredient. —> As per the argument of Hummus, we conclude that Tahini is NOT Israeli.”
Friends Don't Let Friends Buy SodaStream
SodaStream, an Israeli company producing a do-it-yourself, counter-top seltzer and soda maker, has been marketing its ware as a “green alternative” to soda cans and bottles. But buyer beware: SodaStream’s main production site is in Mishor Edomim, a settlement and industrial zone in the occupied West Bank, on confiscated Palestinian land. The company exploits Palestinian labor and sells it’s product with a “Made in Israel” label.
~Global Exchange
Good looking out.
Those commercials are pretty enticing.
A Palestinian family cry after their home was demolished by Israeli forces in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Beit Hanina on February 5, 2013. Although East Jerusalem belongs to Palestinians, they have to obtain building permits from Israel — an almost impossible task — as Israel continues its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in its goal to ‘Judaize’ Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities claim that the building was constructed without proper permits and that its structure was not sound. The 33-member family says it was waiting to receive permits.
Palestinians also struggle to meet the required conditions to apply for a permit. For example, the cost of obtaining permits can be as much as the cost of construction of the actual building.
Not only do they rarely issue permits to Palestinians to build on their own land, Israel continues building settlements on said land. Approximately 192,000 and 330,000 Jewish settlers live illegally in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Palestine. The Jewish-only settlements in which they live are illegal under international law. Furthermore, the Israeli government assists Israeli settlers in taking over Palestinian homes.
Israel refuses to halt settlement construction as a precondition to resume peace talks.
Photographs: Ammar Awad (Reuters) / Bernat Armangue (AP)
…euro-americans in the United States can’t talk about Gaza, because
we can’t talk about Israel. Because we can’t talk about the fact that
the world is not suffering from a Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but
that the world is suffering from the fact that Europe has never been
able to deal with it’s ‘Jewish Question’ without some sort of intense
barbarity and horror from the Inquisition to the Holocaust. And that
Europe ‘solved’ the problem by supporting the radical, terrorist,
extremist Zionists and their mad plan to resettle the ‘homeland.’ We
can’t talk about Israel because we can’t talk about Wounded Knee.
Because we can’t talk about Sand Creek or Carlisle ‘Boarding School.’
Because we can’t talk about forced sterilization or small pox blankets
or Kit Carson and his scorched earth policy in the Southwest. Because
we have Andrew Jackson on our twenty dollar bill. Because we are one
huge settlement on stolen land. We can’t talk about Israel because we
are Israel.
This commentary from Anti-war is spot on. It’s interesting to note how much support the Palestinians actually have in the international community when the 500-pound U.S. gorilla can’t stand in the way. Although it remains to be said that the two-state solution is problematic and extremely dependent on which territorial base-line is selected, non-member status potentially gives Palestinian leaders the ability to petition the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Palestinian territories. Which has given many Palestinians hope that peaceful means of resistance do in fact work.
The other advantage of this recognition is the legitimization of the Palestinian Authority, which Palestinian leaders made very clear would help undermine the violent, radical elements of Hamas by demonstrating to the Palestinian people that violence (i.e. rocket attacks) are not the only appeal they have against the Israeli government’s military occupation.
Counter-point worth reading: Palestinian Move at U.N. Won’t Solve Anything, via Aaron David Miller (former Middle East diplomat under both Democratic and Republican administrations).
Though Palestine’s status change is largely symbolic, the Palestinians view the vote as a crucial step toward recognition on the world stage.
But Israel, the United States and Canada said the move is a detriment to peace talks with Israel and opposed raising Palestine’s status.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, John Baird, told the UN that Canada “has long opposed unilateral action by both sides,” and said outstanding issues between Palestine and Israel are “too complicated” to be resolved with Thursday’s vote in the UN General Assembly.
Baird said Canada supports a “negotiated settlement” between the two sides.
UN recognizes Palestine as non-member observer state | CTV News
Ugh. canada is made of fail.
(via biyuti)
This statement is important.
They’re on record saying that someone else trying to gain equal footing on the world stage is a DETRIMENT to what they perceive as Peace
That’s the West. Even “Canada”
(via hamburgerjack)
