Author: Skip Schiel

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We Live Near The Border With Gaza, And We Want The Violence To End (Other Voice)

An Open Letter to Israeli Leadership

Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman,

We, members of Other Voice — residents of the Western Negev who live close to the border with the Gaza Strip — are writing to you, yet again, in our call for a long-term political program to end the hostilities with Gaza.

Pnina and Micha Ben Hillel live in kibbutz Nir Am

The situation in our region and in the Gaza Strip is unthinkable, unbearable and unacceptable. The deep hostility, the never-ending rounds of violence, the mortar and rocket attacks, the tunnels, the kites — all of these have made our lives a living hell. And on the other side of the border, the people live with 3-4 hours of electricity a day; they have no potable water; the sewage runs in the streets and into the sea; their health system is collapsing and they have soaring numbers of unemployment. Two million people are living without hope that they will have a sustainable future.

The government is trying to persuade us — the Israeli public, and mainly the residents of the region surrounding Gaza — that the Gazans are our enemies. We see them, however, not as our enemies, but as our neighbors.

The Hamas regime is tyrannical and has caused great harm, mainly to its own people. We neither justify nor legitimate its behaviors and its decisions. Nevertheless, it is the authority in Gaza — whether we like it or not — and so we have to find a way to speak to its members.

We call upon you to change direction. Instead of more rounds of violence, instead of another war, we need to reach a long-term ceasefire. We need to put into place a political program that will promise the people in Gaza electricity for 24 hours a day, potable water, employment, freedom of movement, air to breathe and removal of the blockade.

Israel is the strong side in this equation. We have the power and the ability to reverse this unacceptable and unbearable situation, and to create a situation in which life and hope blossom on both sides of the border. The disaster that has been going on for too long is not a natural — it is human-made. We created it and we can change it. We want to live in peace with our neighbors in Gaza. We need to live in peace with them.

Sincerely,

Members of Other Voice

An Open Letter to Hamas’ Leadership

Dear Yahya Sanwar and Ismail Haniyeh,

We are your neighbors to the east; we live in Israeli communities that share the border with the Gaza Strip. Our peoples have been at war for decades, and as the years go by, the hostilities and hatred have deepened — on both sides. This state is toxic both for your people and for ours.

Ye’ela Raanan on her bike in kibbtuz Kissufim, her home

We have been, and remain, enemies. But this can, and must, change. We are also neighbors — we live just a few kilometers away from one another. This tragedy that has befallen both of our peoples is not a natural disaster — it is a human-made one. We created it and we can change it.

Enough hatred. Enough revenge. Enough showing strength through rockets, mortars, tunnels and arson kites.

We have written Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin – the leaders on the Israeli side. We have written them what we have written you. Our message to them is that it is time to reach a long-term ceasefire, make and implement a political plan, end the blockade, help rehabilitate the Gaza Strip, help make sure that every person in Gaza has full access to electricity, clean water, enough medicine, air to breath and freedom of movement and rights.

We do not know if you will read this letter, or toss it into the waste basket. We are writing in hopes that you will read it and think about what an opportunity this is — to completely change what has been, and to bring hope to your people. Hope and a good life for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip also means hope and a good life for Israelis, on our side of the border.

We are not your enemies. We are your neighbors. We want to live as neighbors, at the very least, in co-existence.

We know that we can do this. We can make this happen. You have the power to make a huge difference on your side. We have also demanded from our leaders to do the same here.

We are not your enemies. We are your neighbors, and we want a life of dignity and peace for all people – in the Gaza Strip and in the Western Negev.

Sincerely,

Members of Other Voice

Original article

Other Voice website

Other Voice Facebook page

Photographs by Skip Schiel

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Killed for Protesting (in Gaza): 6 Things to Know about the #GREATRETURNMARCH

From our Staff and Members/Gaza (Jewish Voice for Peace) April 5, 2018

Palestinian protesters in Khan Yunis, Gaza (SkyNews)

On March 30th, 2018 tens of thousands of Palestinians marched peacefully in Gaza in the Great Return March, beginning a six-week tent city protest along the Gaza/Israel border from Land Day, March 30th, to Nakba Day, May 15th.

The Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the forced displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians that began with Israel’s establishment in 1948, and that continues to this day.

The #GreatReturnMarch, organized by civil society and grassroots activists, called for an end to the siege of Gaza and the right of return for Palestinian refugees according to international law.

On the first day of the march, the Israeli military killed 19 Palestinians and wounded over 1,400. No Israeli soldiers were harmed. Videos show Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed Palestinians as they ran away from the gunfire and even as they prayed.

No one should be killed for taking part in a peaceful protest, and Jewish Voice for Peace and our members will not sit quietly while the Israeli military kills Palestinians for demanding their rights.

Here’s what you need to know about the what happened in Gaza during the #GreatReturnMarch and how you can support Palestinian protesters.

The Great Return March is an ongoing mobilization and we will be updating this page as the demonstrations in Gaza continue. Update, June 14th, 2018: Since March 30th, the Israeli military has killed at least 135 Palestinians and wounded more than 14,600 others.

Download this resource as a PDF.

READ MORE

Mother of shot Gaza medic: ‘She thought the white coat would protect her’

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A martyr forever caught on camera

El-Fattah, photo by Mahmoud Abu Salama

By Haneed Abed Elnaby

It is estimated that as many as 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza have participated in the Great Return March since the nonviolent border protest launched March 30. Many are from a new generations of Palestinian refugees who are rediscovering the spirit of resistance manifested during the first and second intifadas.  One of them was Abed El-Fattah Abed Elnaby, 18. He was my second cousin.

He was among the first martyrs—a number that since has grown to 49. One of nine shot and killed by Israeli snipers that first day, Abed El-Fattah achieved a kind of posthumous fame when what has now become an iconic photograph, taken moments before he was shot by Gaza photographer Mahmoud Abu Salama—appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Here is the story behind that photo:

Abed El-Fattah was both the tallest and the youngest among the four sons in the family. (He also had five sisters!) He was known as a joker, but was a quick learner in school with a special aptitude for math.  However, the boy left school when he was just 16 to help support his family. He trained as a plumber and put in additional hours at a baker, helping to pay one of his sister’s university tuition.  Abed El-Fattah even bought his own clothes with his earnings.

Why did he decide to risk his life, meager as it was, to not only participate in the protest but approach the front lines? His family members tell me Abed El-Fattah yearned to see his family’s original village of Simsim (سمسم), located just 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) northeast of Gaza. On May 12, 1948, pre-state Israeli forces ran the villagers out of their town. The concept of a daily march to the border to call for Palestinians’ right to return to their ancestral homes captured his imagination, and he had been listening to the news every day.

On March 30, Abed El-Fattah woke up at 8 a.m. and worked at his brother’s falafel restaurant until around 2.p.m. Then he went home for his mother’s lunch, but didn’t eat much. Instead, he began preparing himself for the march, putting on new clothes he had purchased the day before. It was as if he wanted to look like a gentleman for what would become the day of his death. Dressed, he left home in a taxi. His friends next door (Zyed Abu Oukar and Yousef Masoud) and his brother Muhammad, with whom he was very close, followed shortly after.

Many of the protesters carried tires, which had become a symbol of the first and second intifadas. Tires were used at that time to block the vans driven by Zionist soldiers. But this time, many among the thousands gathered along the border began burning the tires to obscure the view of the Israeli snipers, who were targeting them with live ammunition.

According to Muhammad, Abed El-Fattah did not join them. However, when snipers began shooting at a younger boy carrying a tire close to the border fence, he darted toward and grabbed it from him so the teen could run faster. Both were running back toward the crowd of demonstrators when the Israeli snipers shot five bullets: One hit Muhammad, who was close by; he was spared only because the bullet was deflected by the mobile phone in his front shirt pocket. Another hit Abed El-Fattah in the head. He was rushed to a hospital, but he could not be saved.

“My soul was taken from me,” his father says.

How do you begin to describe such a loss? I could write about his grieving family and friends, who are haunted by his memory. Or I could describe the community mosque and his sister’s house he had helped build. Or I could interview Fadwa, an elderly woman in the neighborhood who can’t walk so is confined to a wheelchair. Abed El-Fattah knew she had no children to look after her, so became her surrogate son, bringing her food and helping her with chores almost every day. Now, she moans about how deeply she misses him.

“He is still with us, though, because he is in our hearts,” says his mother with tears in her eyes.

And despite their bottomless grief, his brothers continue to participate in the march with their father, in the hope that change will come, and that maybe, just maybe, they can see Simsim.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Another view of the execution

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Mubarak Awad, Palestinian Mentor of Nonviolent Resistance

Israeli military vehicles are seen next to the border on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as Palestinians demonstrate on the Gaza side of the border on Friday. Amir Cohen/Reuters

The strategy of The Great March of Return, Palestinians in Gaza demanding their right of return to their villages and towns, curiously parallels the nonviolent resistance methods taught by Mubarak Awad before Israel exiled him in 1988. (Posted two days before Memorial Day in the United States, a day dedicated to participants in violence, honorable people no doubt but perhaps misguided.)

Mubarak Awad (photo courtesy of Meir Amor)

Here’s part of an interview conducted in 2000:

An old man came to me whose land the Israelis had taken. He wanted it back. So I told him to get 300 or 400 people from his village—children, young people, old people—anybody who wanted to come.

The settlers had put a fence around the land. We could take the fence down and just sit there and if the Israeli military wanted to kill us, let them kill us. I told him, on one condition: Not a single person should throw a stone.

If we are all going to be massacred, let it be. And we did that; we took the land back from the settlers. That created an echo with a lot of Palestinians, who started coming to me at the Center instead of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Taking fear away from people and replacing it with courage is the essence of nonviolence.

The full interview in Peace Magazine, “Nonviolence in the Middle East: A talk with Mubarak Awad”

Mubarak Awad is the founder of Nonviolence International. Meir Amor, an Israeli peace activist living in Canada, interviewed him.

In May 1988, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ordered Awad arrested and expelled. Officials charged that Awad broke Israeli law by inciting “civil uprising” and helping to write leaflets that advocated civil disobedience that were distributed by the leadership of the First Intifada. No evidence was provided to support the charge and Awad appealed the decision to the Supreme Court. The court ruled that he had forfeited his right to residence status in Israel when he became a U.S. citizen and he was deported in June 1988. (Wikipedia)

MORE INFORMATION

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Why Are Palestinians Protesting in Gaza?

by MIKE MERRYMAN-LOTZE (in Counterpunch)

A wounded Palestinian demonstrator is evacuated during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip May 14, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

Once again, the Israeli military has turned its guns on Gaza — this time on unarmed protestors, in a series of shootings over the last few weeks. Gaza’s already under-resourced hospitals are straining to care for the 1,600 protesters who have been injured, on top of 40 killed.

According to a group of United Nations experts, “there is no available evidence to suggest that the lives of heavily armed security forces were threatened” by the unarmed demonstrators they fired on.

The violence is getting some coverage in the news. But the conditions in Gaza that have pushed so many to protest remain largely invisible. So do their actual demands.

The Great Return March was organized by grassroots groups in Gaza as a peaceful action with three key demands: respect for refugees’ right to return to their homes, an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Seventy years ago, Palestinians were expelled from their homes en masse when their land was seized for the state of Israel. Many became refugees, with millions of people grouped into shrinking areas like Gaza. Fifty years ago, the rest of historic Palestine came under Israeli military occupation.

While these refugees’ right of return has been recognized by the international community, no action has been taken to uphold that right. Meanwhile, the occupation has become further and further entrenched.

For over a decade, the people of Gaza have lived under a military-imposed blockade that severely limits travel, trade, and everyday life for its 2 million residents. The blockade effectively bans nearly all exports, limits imports, and severely restricts passage in and out.

In over 20 visits to Gaza over the last 10 years, I’ve watched infrastructure degrade under both the blockade and a series of Israeli bombings.

Beautiful beaches are marred by raw sewage, which flows into the sea in amounts equivalent to 43 Olympic swimming pools every day. Access to water and electricity continually decreases, hospitals close, school hours are limited, and people are left thirsty and in the dark.

These problems can only be fixed by ending the blockade.

As Americans, we bear direct responsibility for the horrific reality in Gaza. Using our tax money, the U.S. continues to fund the Israeli military through $3.8 billion in aid annually.

A group of U.S.-based faith organizations has called out U.S. silence in a statement supporting protesters and condemning the killings: “The United States stood by and allowed Israel to carry out these attacks without any public criticism or challenge,” they said. “Such U.S. complicity is a continuation of the historical policy of active support for Israel’s occupation and U.S. disregard for Palestinian rights.”

The signatories include the American Friends Service Committee, where I work, an organization that started providing humanitarian aid to refugees in Gaza as far back as 1948.

While the U.S. does give money to the United Nations and international aid groups working in Gaza, it’s barely a drop in the bucket compared to our support of the military laying siege to the territory.

As my colleagues in Gaza have made clear, what they need isn’t more aid. That humanitarian aid is needed because of the blockade. What they need is freedom from the conditions that make life unlivable — like the blockade itself — and a long-term political solution.

Ignoring the reasons Gaza is in crisis only hurts our chances to address this manmade humanitarian horror.

Mike Merryman-Lotze has worked with the American Friends Service Committee as the Palestine-Israel Program Director since 2010.

Join the debate on Facebook

 

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

We forget where we came from. Our Jewish
names from the Exile give us away,
bring back the memory of flower and fruit, medieval cities,
metals, knights who turned to stone, roses,
spices whose scent drifted away, precious stones, lots of red,
handicrafts long gone from the world
(the hands are gone too).

—Yehuda Amichai (from Jews in the Land of Israel)

Other perspectives, the first with photos:

Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza ‘massacre’ (May 14, 2018)

With the Great Return March, Palestinians Are Demanding a Life of Dignity (April 6, 2018)

‘We want to return to our lands without bloodshed or bombs’ (March 30, 2018)

Bloody Monday, Every Day of the Week, by George Capaccio (May 18, 2018)

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Palestinian Christians and Muslims call on faith communities to help end the occupation

Palestinan Christains and Muslims marched together to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in protest to a new Israeli Tax policy and a proposed property law which caused Christian leaders to shut the doors of the church Sunday in protest.

Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no justice. (Isaiah 59:15b)

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it. (Luke 19:41)

Christ the Saviour (Pantokrator), a 6th-century encaustic icon from Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai. NB – slightly cut down

We the undersigned, a group of Palestinian-American Christians from several church traditions, call on all faith communities to:

  • Denounce the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
  • Lift up, in your places of worship, the plight of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, recognizing that Israeli policies of occupation and apartheid are leading to the virtual extinction of the indigenous Christian population in Palestine.
  • Recognize the urgency of ending Israel’s genocidal siege and attacks on the entire Palestinian hostage population of the Gaza Strip.
  • Continue to use economic pressure as well as other nonviolent means to compel Israel to end its apartheid practices and policies against the Palestinian people.

We express deep concern at the increasingly hostile direction of Israeli policies and actions, emboldened by the equally aggressive foreign policy stance of the Trump administration toward the Palestinian people. President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is the final nail in the coffin of the so-called “peace process,” which has now been unmasked as a farce, exposing the United States not as an “honest broker” but as Israel’s unquestioning advocate. There is little doubt that the Trump administration’s Jerusalem decision, although condemned by the overwhelming majority of the international community, will encourage Israel to act with even greater impunity.

The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, as well as the rest of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights, is now in its fifty-first year, the longest military occupation since the end of the nineteenth century. Palestinian Christians and Muslims are calling on the church to use its influence to end the occupation.

Since its occupation of Arab East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has consistently followed a policy aimed at confining the city’s Palestinian population to ghettos surrounded by a ring of expanding Jewish settlements. It annexed the city and its suburbs into a much-expanded “greater Jerusalem,” and isolated it from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories. This separation of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank has resulted in grave economic and social consequences for all Palestinians in the occupied territories, because East Jerusalem has been the economic and spiritual heart of the Palestinian territories. Even the U.S. State Department recognized in a 2009 report  that “many of [Israel’s] policies in Jerusalem were designed to limit or diminish the non-Jewish population of Jerusalem.” Palestinian Jerusalemites complain that conditions are far worse now.

Last year, a Palestinian mass protest forced Israeli authorities to retreat from a decision to impose obtrusive “security measures” in the form of metal detectors at the entrances to the Muslim holy sites of the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Christians joined their Muslim brothers and sisters in peaceful protest, some praying shoulder-to-shoulder in the streets surrounding the mosques. More recently, it was the turn of the Christian communities to experience a serious attack on their freedom to worship, in the form of debilitating Israeli taxes on church properties. A protest letter signed by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem strongly condemned this decision as a departure from the centuries-old tradition of tax exemptions for places of worship, under both Muslim and Christian rule. Church leaders closed the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for several days in protest, marking only the second time to close this sacred site.

Palestinian protests and international pressure have since compelled Israeli authorities to suspend the legislation in question. However, Palestinians are rightly concerned that Israel will continue to find ways to weaken Palestinians’ control of their land and property. Many are concerned about Jerusalem as the birthplace of Christianity: will it become a city with Christian shrines and cathedrals but devoid of the native Christian population?

On Friday, March 30th, Israel committed a massacre in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians were engaged in a demonstration on Land Day. This annual event commemorates the killing, in 1976, of six unarmed Palestinians in the Galilee who were protesting against the confiscation of their lands. The Gaza demonstrators were protesting against the genocidal conditions that Israel has imposed on the territory of two million inhabitants over the past eleven years; most importantly, they were expressing their right of return to their lands and villages from which the Israeli forces expelled them in 1948. The peaceful protest was interrupted by the Israeli army, which used tanks and militarized drones as well as over 100 well-hidden snipers. Violence began by the Israeli forces who shot a farmer working on his land. This served as incitement to a few protestors—out of a total of about 30,000 peaceful demonstrators, to engage in throwing stones from behind a large, barbed wire fence. The unarmed Palestinians’ actions did not come anywhere close to endangering the Israeli forces. Eighteen Palestinians were shot dead and hundreds of men, women, and children were wounded.

These events occurred on Good Friday, when the Christian world was mourning the crucifixion of Jesus. As the injustices and human rights violations keep piling up against the Palestinian people, we call on all churches and faith communities to take bold steps to end these grave injustices. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step up even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

Signatories

Endorsers

  • American Muslims for Palestine
  • Israel-Palestine Mission Network, Presbyterian Church USA
  • Franciscan Action Network
  • Friends of Sabeel, North America
  • Mennonite Palestine-Israel Network
  • Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore
  • Pax Christi USA
  • Palestine-Israel Network of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
  • Palestine-Israel Network of the  Episcopal Peace Fellowship
  • Palestine-Israel Network of the United Church of Christ
  • United Methodist Kairos Response- Steering Committee
  • Kairos USA

(as published in Mondoweiss on April 26, 2018)

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Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism (book & website)

Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism, contextualizes the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people within other global justice struggles. With a foreword by Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the book is grounded in international law and brings Palestine into focus through a lens of intersectionality, calling all those who struggle for justice against oppression to consider the challenge of seeing Palestinians in the context of other justice struggles. Why Palestine Matters demonstrates that the project of human emancipation is not limited to Palestine, but it also cannot proceed without Palestine. The book is a 108-page, full-color publication with visuals on every page, a discussion guide, and maps. A companion website features enhanced resources for study, including video clips and discussion guide: WhyPalestineMatters.org. Published by the IPMN.org, The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) whose General Assembly mandate engages them “toward specific mission goals that will create currents of wider and deeper involvement with Israel/Palestine.”

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Two programs about anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege, Saturday, April 14, 2018

Image by Katherine Eckenfels

JOURNEYS TO ENGAGEMENT: a panel discussion organized by the NEYM Israel-Palestine Working Group, “Living into NEYM’s Israel/Palestine Minute: Understanding the Interplay of Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Racism.” Our interactive panel—Steve Chase (author of Pendle Hill Pamphlet #445 BDS? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights); Salaam Odeh (mother raised in Jordan, with family in Nablus, Occupied Palestinian West Bank),  and her daughter, Samah Deek; and Steve and Barbara Low (active members of Jewish Voice for Peace, much traveled to Palestine Israel, founder and directors of the GRALTA Foundation)—will examine how anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege affect our understanding of Israel/Palestine today. By sharing their insights & experiences the panel will 1) address ways to overcome feeling the fear, which exists among Quakers, about having this conversation; and 2) suggest how Friends can imagine living more boldly into last summer’s NEYM minute on Israel and Palestine.

Martha Yager, Salaam Odeh, Samah Deek, Barbara Low, Steve Low, Steve Chase (L to R)

Our Israel­Palestine Working Group of New England Yearly Meeting has been meeting since 2015. Each year during NEYM we have organized and facilitated programs including slideshows and movies about the region, workshops, speakers, a Gaza pinwheel display from American Friends Service Committee, photographic displays, and informal lunch sessions. Most recently we have concentrated on helping write and distribute minutes from monthly and quarterly meetings. We are a small, self-­appointed interest group from different sections of New England. Most of us have visited Palestine and Israel numerous times and have been active on related issues for more than one decade. Our website is neym­ip.org. You will find quite a bit of background information and links on the site.

Other religious denominations have devoted substantial time and resources to deepening their understanding of Israel/Palestine, the role of the United States in that dynamic, and in discerning what, if anything, they feel called to contribute to the situation. Many have asked why Quakers are not engaged in these discussions, as our voice as a traditional “peace church” is often looked to for guidance.

Samah Deek

At Sessions last August we passed a minute that ended a long period of paralysis and began to engage us in these issues. We have begun to talk. We are facing our fears. And the minute did something more ­ though it barely mentions Israel/Palestine, it does spotlight the problem of US arms trade and foreign policy in the region as something perhaps we can focus on. Also, it commits us to growing in understanding of anti­Semitism and Islamophobia. This actually gives us quite a bit of space to work in.

We engage in this work with a few assumptions that we want to put on the table. Perhaps the most important is that there is no one Jewish voice or narrative. And there is no one Palestinian voice or narrative. People enter this story from a variety of experiences and histories. A younger generation of Israelis, American Jews and Palestinians and Palestinian diaspora has a different lived experience and they are beginning to shape the dialogue in new ways. We want for people at NEYM to listen deeply to this variety of voices and experiences.

Steve Chase

The other assumption we should name is that we draw from our own experiences challenging our own government ­ we hold that governments are something different from a people. Many of us are fierce critics of US government policies and practices, but many of us also will say that we do so out of love. And that criticizing our government does not necessarily mean criticizing all people who call themselves US citizens. Israel makes criticizing the government more complex by insisting that it is a Jewish state, but we believe that as with any government, its policies are something that can be discussed without impugning all Jews or such criticism being anti­Semitic.

We come to this day asking you to engage in deep listening not political debate. We have five panelists: Steve Chase, who will talk about his journey to overcome the perspectives he had been taught as he listened to new voices and educated himself more; Steve and Barbara Low, both members of Jewish Voice for Peace who likewise have had an evolution in their thinking; and Salaam Odeh and her daughter, Palestinian American activists.

QUESTIONS FOR THE PANELISTS
(from the organizers)

  • What has been your journey in coming to understand Israel/Palestine—both the dream and the reality?
  • What has been your journey in coming to understand the intersections of anti­Semitism, Islamophobia, and racism?
  • How do you differentiate between anti­Semitism and anti­Zionism?
  • What have you had to do to find your voice within your core community?
  • What do people who are most directly impacted by these issues want or need from us as allies?

As we enter this discussion, we ask you to think about the words of a British peace activist as she engaged with the Irish man who murdered her father:

In that moment of empathy, there is nothing to forgive, just understanding. We are all born into sides, into different narratives, into communities with their own stories but when we hear each other’s stories then we are connected through our shared humanity.

Let us listen deeply, with empathy for the hearts holding other stories, other sides, that we may grow in understanding and wisdom, and find our own voices, individually and collectively, for a just peace.

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
(overflowing, some one-third of all those attending the retreat, a good sign of interest; we passed out cards and didn’t have time to answer more than a few questions; we anticipate answering and encourage readers of this post to send in their own answers, using the reply panel at the bottom of this page.)

  • How do we initiate conversations with our Jewish Friends? Some have family in Israel; others are Holocaust survivors
  • Talk about the future – what will this Middle East area look like in ten years? Paint the future, please!
  • What use is NEYM making of AFSC’s programs and initiatives with regard to Israel-Palestine?
  • What is the benefit of looking at how racism affects both Jewish people and Palestinians in Israel? Especially with regard to Ethiopian Jews and other Jews of color? (police brutality, sterilization, socioeconomic marginalization) Does invoking this intersectionality help complicate the suggestion that criticizing the Netanyahu administration/neoliberalism/settler colonialism in Israel is inherently antisemitic?
  • The word “Holocaust” I was cautioned should not be used after I came home from AFSC-sponsored study tour to Guatemala/Central America in 1985. I was struck that I had spent days walking in an occupied land in front of Uzi guns and Reagan was visiting the Bitburg Cemetery – so many connections. I was surprised and appalled when I saw photos of the “settlements” – in my mind, I was imagining a refugee camp w/ tents vs high-rise apartments – these visuals I think would help raise the questions we need to be asking to gain understanding.
  • (NB – Bitburg was a cemetery for German military war dead; he had visited Bergen-Belsen earlier “in an effort to honor all victims of World War II, including German soldiers.” (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/reagan-visits-concentration-camp-and-war-cemetery)
  • Tell us more about “Jews for Peace” (presumably JVP – Jewish Voice for Peace? unless this person meant Americans for Peace Now? – but I suspect it is JVP)
  • What are the most reliable news sources on Israel-Palestine? al Jazeera? Other?
  • Where is the prophetic voice today? What Jewish prophets are talking to Palestinians? What Palestinian prophets are talking (kvetching) with Jews?
  • How much do the victim stories of the Jews who survived Nazism (and who now live in Israel) impact Israel’s policies?
  • Talk about the perspective that Israelis have that they “won” the land from Palestinian land during the Intifada (sic) – (NOTE – some historical confusion in this question; can’t tell if they mean 1948 or 1967; but neither way do the Intifadas seem to apply to the question)
  • Why do you say a two-state solution is not possible? Is it more possible to have a one state solution that provides for equity and equal justice and equal opportunity
  • What do you think will happen with the confrontations at the Gaza border?
  • I’d like to know the experience of typical middle-aged Palestinian Arabs. Have their families lost their homes, their lands? How do they feel about occupation by Israelis and about checkpoints?

QUAKERS AND ANTI-SEMITISM:a workshop organized by Jonathan Vogel-Borne and Allan Korhman

Part of NEYM’s 2017 minute on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (#2017-46), states that we “call upon all individuals and communities to examine how anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and privilege affect our understanding of the conflict.” In this interactive workshop we will explore our stories and perhaps find more understanding about where and how we participate in the personal and systemic evil of antisemitism. We will look at how antisemitism has operated in our Quaker heritage and especially how it affects us today as we struggle to address our nation’s complicity in the continued suffering. Jonathan Vogel-Borne and Allan Kohrman have been engaged in conversation on the topic of Israel-Palestine, Quakers and Jews, for almost 30 years. While not fully agreeing with all of Allan’s position—but because he felt Allan’s voice needed to be heard—Jonathan helped to edited Allan’s pamphlet, “Quakers and Jews” (2004).

ADDITIONAL REPORT BY MINGA CLAGGETT-BORNE

BACKGROUND ON LIVING FAITH

WHAT: Living into New England Yearly Meeting’s Israel/Palestine Minute/statement: Understanding Interplay of Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Racism (as part of an all day gathering, Living Faith

WHEN: April 14, Saturday; the panel is from 10:45 to 11:45 with the option of informal conversations during lunch, and attendance at a related afternoon workshop.

WHERE: Portland Maine, Cheverus High School, 267 Ocean Ave, 04103

“LIVING FAITH”—WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT?

Living Faith is a day-long gathering of Friends from throughout New England. The event is a chance for Friends to worship together, get to know each other, share the different ways we experience and live our faith, and build community.

MORE INFO:

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The Great March of Return (of Gazans to their villages and towns)—Israel Threatens More Force After Gaza Protests Leave Nearly 135 Dead, 14,600 Wounded

Palestinians participate in a tent city protest commemorating Land Day, with Israeli soldiers seen below in the foreground on. March 30. Photographer- Jack Guez/AFP

FROM UN’S OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS (MAY 16, 2018)

Friday’s protests [March 30, 2018], which Israel estimated drew 40,000 people, were the first of six weeks of planned anti-Israel actions meant to dramatize the Palestinians’ plight as refugees. Israel said Sunday that Gaza militants used civilian demonstrators as cover as they fired at soldiers and tried to lay explosives near the border fence. Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the militant Hamas group that rules Gaza and sponsored the protests, called the killings a “massacre.”

Palestinians martyrs (to date, April 1, 2018)

Israel threatened to use greater force to quell violent Palestinian protests along the Gaza Strip border, rejecting allegations it used excessive firepower against demonstrations that left at least 16 Palestinians dead….

READ MORE

TOPSHOT – Palestinian protestors wave their national flag and gesture during a demonstration commemorating Land Day near the border with Israel, east of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on March 30, 2018. Clashes erupted as thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border in a major protest dubbed “The Great March of Return”. / AFP / SAID KHATIB
A young Palestinian looks at a poster listing the villages that demonstrators at the Great March of Return plan to return to once the Palestinian right of return is honored. (Photo- Mohammed Asad)

CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS

Reading Maimonides in Gaza, by Marilyn Garson (2018)
From 2011 to 2015, experience in Gaza’s economic sector

This is How We Fought in Gaza, Soldiers׳ testimonies and photographs from “Operation Protective Edge,” by Breaking the Silence (2014)

Book suggestion: Night in Gaza, by Mads Gilbert (2015)
A participant’s view by a Norwegian medical doctor in hospitals during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014, Operation Protective Edge, with excellent photographs by the author. Israel has now banned him from entering the region for life.

Night in Gaza 2

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Two recent alarming actions by the Trump administration: Jerusalem & UNRWA

A call to Action by United Methodist Kairos Response (January 2018)

Two recent and alarming actions by the Trump Administration are destroying long-held hopes for a peaceful, secure future for many people in Israel/Palestine and are endangering lives. These actions represent irresponsible foreign policy for the United States.

LEARN & ACT

In addition AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) circulates a similar petition

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B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

 

B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

works to end Israel’s occupation in acknowledgment of the fact that ending the occupation regime is the only way to forge a future in which human rights, democracy, liberty and equality are ensured to all persons living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. While it is not B’Tselem’s role to choose between the various political options that can bring about this future, one thing is clear: none of them include continuation of the occupation.

The name B’Tselem, bestowed upon the organization by former Member of Knesset Yossi Sarid, literally means “in the image of” in Hebrew. It is taken from Genesis 1:27: “And God created humans in his image. In the image of God did He create him” and is also used as a synonym for human dignity. The name expresses the Jewish and universal moral edict to respect and protect the human rights of all people.

B’Tselem was founded in 1989 and until recently devoted most of its efforts to documenting human rights violations that come under Israel’s purview as occupying power. This included publishing statistics, testimonies, video footage and reports concerning human rights violations and their implications, in order to promote better living conditions for the occupied population – with the understanding that the occupation was to be a passing matter.

Yet after almost half a century of occupation, during which Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories have created profound changes that indicate long-term intentions, it is clear that this reality cannot be viewed as temporary. Therefore, B’Tselem continues to document and publicize human rights violations while also exposing the injustice, violence and dispossession that lie at the very core of this regime of occupation, challenging its legitimacy in Israel and abroad and helping to expedite its end.

B’Tselem has established a strong reputation among human rights organizations in Israel and around the world. It has received various awards, including the Carter-Menil Award for Human Rights, together with Al-Haq (1989), the Danish PL Foundation Human Rights Award, together with Al-Haq (2011), and the Stockholm Human Rights Award (2014). B’Tselem’s video project was granted the British One World Media Award (2009) and the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum Award (2012), among others.

 

B’Tselem is an independent, non-partisan organization. It is funded by donations alone, from foundations in Europe and North America that support human rights activity worldwide and from private individuals in Israel and abroad.

Receive and distribute our materials

B’Tselem distributes all its material free of charge. If you would like to receive our publications on a regular basis, send us your address via mail or e-mail. Please specify if you would prefer to receive reports in English or Hebrew.

Once a month, B’Tselem sends a newsletter to its e-mail subscribers. The newsletter includes information on individual cases and larger policies concerning human rights, as well as calls for action. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

(November 11, 2017)

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Vic Mensa: What Palestine Taught Me About American Racism

Last summer, I traveled to Palestine with a group of African-American artists, scholars and activists organized by Dream Defenders. I am not anti-Semitic, and the views expressed in this essay are in no way an attack on people of the Jewish faith. My words are a reflection of my experiences on my trip, and my criticism lies with the treatment of Palestinian civilians by the state of Israel, no more and no less. As a black man in America, being stereotyped as a criminal is more than familiar to me, as is being unwanted on the streets of my own home and profiled by law enforcement.

Her eyes looked like she’d been crying for 30 years. Hearing her impassioned pleas for freedom beneath the flaking walls of her home in the Old City of Jerusalem, I don’t doubt that she had. Nora has been embattled in a tortuous legal struggle for her family home since the 1980s. Oftentimes carrying children, in her arms and in the womb, she labors in and out of Israeli courtrooms. She was born in this house. Her children were born in this house. Now just holding on to it has been the fight of her life.

The state of Israel has gone to unbelievable lengths to try to evict her and replace her with Jewish settlers. At one point the Israeli government even had her front door blockaded, forcing her to climb from a window ten feet up and barely bigger than a dog-door. As she guides us outside to the patio that shares a window with the settlers next door, a net filled with trash and stones thrown at her family by her new neighbors sits directly above our heads. How’s that for hospitality?

Vic Mensa with his father

Nora’s home is just one heartbreaking casualty of war in the ongoing struggle between Israel and Palestine, in which heinous acts of violence have been committed by both Jews and Arabs. The blood on both sides runs deep. I do not pretend to be familiar with every nuance of the longstanding turmoil that engulfs Israel and Palestine; it is no doubt as aged and tangled as the family trees ripped apart by its brutality. I can only speak to the experiences I had there, to the humiliating checkpoints where Palestinians were not only stripped of their possessions but of their dignity. Walking the ancient streets of the Old City, I watched a Palestinian boy thrown against the wall and frisked by Israeli soldiers in full military gear, carrying assault rifles with their fingers ever present on the trigger. Our guide tells us he’s likely been accused of throwing stones, a crime punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison. Take a moment to process that. Throwing stones. Punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence. Further down the busy street was the startling image of an Israeli civilian walking by a group of Palestinian children complete with an AR-15–style rifle by his side and a pair of flip-flops on. The magnitude of the double standard is dumbfounding.

Just outside of Jerusalem we visited a Bedouin camp, where a sectarian group of Muslims told us they have seen their elementary school demolished ten times, as well as broken into and vandalized by armed settlers that live in the hills above. The Bedouins are a naturally nomadic community who prefer to live in tents and ask for only the freedom to the most basic of human rights; even these are unequivocally denied. Solar panels donated and built by European institutions for the camp were destroyed by the Israeli government, citing a lack of permission to build. Even toys donated by an Italian institution for the children of the camp were confiscated. An elderly man with a face of leather spoke to us in Arabic saying, “Now that you have seen with your own eyes, return home and explain what you saw. Place pressure on the U.S. government to place pressure on Israel.”

Herein lies the purpose of this composition. I write to inform all those who will hear me of the treacherous denial of human rights to the Palestinian people living under occupation. These scenes of oppression and abuse will be forever etched into my memory, burned into my mind’s eye.

The parallels between the black American experience and the Palestinian experience are overwhelming. Staring into the worm-infested water tank on top of a dilapidated house in Aida refugee camp, I can’t help but think of Flint, Michigan, and the rust-colored lead-poisoned water that flows through their faucets. As I gaze over the 25-foot “separation wall,” the economic disparity is acutely transparent; the Israeli side of the wall looks like the Capitol in The Hunger Games, while the Palestinian side reads like a snapshot from a war photographer. It’s as if the South Side of Chicago’s most forgotten and disenfranchised neighborhoods were separated from the luxury of Downtown’s Gold Coast by a simple concrete wall. The sight alone is emotional, and many people in the group cried on that roof. Rage cannot describe how I feel thinking of the insects swimming in that water tank, while just across the wall is an Israeli settlement with an Olympic-size swimming pool.

In a West Bank village called Nabi Saleh, I saw the most graphic account of these crimes against humanity I would be exposed to whilst in Palestine. The people of Nabi Saleh have mounted a long-term, non-violent resistance to martial law that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have responded to with extreme brutality. We sat in silence and watched a series of YouTube videos filmed by villagers of soldiers terrorizing the demonstrating civilians, primarily women and children. The videos show hundreds of metal tear-gas canisters raining on peaceful protests, elderly women punched in the face, children beaten and arrested, and even a villager who’s face was literally removed by a gas can at point blank range. “It’s our Palestinian 4th of July. You have fireworks, we have gas canisters,” jokes our host. It’s hard to find the strength to laugh.

As with the black community in the U.S., the use of incarceration, racial profiling and targeting the youth as methods of control are heavily prevalent in the occupied West Bank. The main difference I see between our oppression in America and that of Palestinians is how overt and shameless the face of discrimination is in the occupied West Bank. As much as we ruminate on our metaphorical police state in Black America, martial law is a very real and tangible condition in Palestine. Thinking of the young men I saw being detained by the roadside, my mind floats to the story of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old boy incarcerated for three years without trial in Rikers Island for allegedly stealing a backpack. Consumed by the cruelty that robbed him of his childhood, Kalief hung himself with a bed sheet two years after his release. In Palestine, I met children as young as 12 years old that had been detained by the IDF. At any given time, hundreds of Palestinian children are detained in Israeli prisons, many of them under the age of 16. It gave me chilling flashbacks to my earliest experiences with police as a black boy in America; officers forced us to the ground with pistols drawn for the common crime of mistaken identity.

For once in my life I didn’t feel like the nigger. As I sat comfortably at a coffee shop, gawking at a group of Israeli soldiers harassing a Palestinian teenager, it was clear who was the nigger. My American passport, ironically, had awarded me a higher position in the social hierarchy of Jerusalem than it did in my hometown of Chicago. As insensitive as it sounds, it was almost a feeling of relief to be out of oppression’s crosshairs for a moment, albeit a very short one.

As we sat in the home of an elderly woman in Hebron, the emotion of the room stuck to the air like tear gas. “Every day is suffering,” she confesses to us. She’s seen 18 of her people killed in front of her home, been jailed 25 times and beaten into the wall by soldiers and even forced to remove her Islamic dress at the checkpoint nearby. She wipes a single tear from her eye as she recounts to us how her husband left her because she wouldn’t leave the home. Still she refuses to hand over the house. “This is my home, it protected me and I will protect it,” she tells us.

This seems to be the overarching attitude of the Palestinians, one of pain but of pride, of darkness but of dignity. They have been made strangers in their own land, second-class citizens in the home of their forefathers, but they refuse to be a memory. They fight as if their existence depends on it, because it does. And all they ask of us is to tell their story.

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Ahed Tamimi & the Struggle for Justice in Nabi Saleh

Recently, the struggle for Palestinian human rights gained international attention surrounding a new icon of resistance–16 year old Ahed Tamimi.

While in the West Bank in late 2016, Abby Martin interviewed Ahed Tamimi about her hardships and aspirations living under occupation and it becomes clear why her subjugators are trying to silence her voice. Her brother Waad and father Bassem also talk about their experiences with Israeli soldiers harassing their village and targeting their family.

In this exclusive episode, Abby outlines the Tamimi family’s tragic tale and unending bravery in the fight for justice and equality in Palestine and how the story of their village of Nabi Saleh is emblematic of the Palestinian struggle as a whole.

FOLLOW // @EmpireFiles // @AbbyMartin // @telesurenglish

Editorial in Ha’aretz; Ahed Tamimi is the Victim (Jan 2, 2018)

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A conference: THE  ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY 2018, March 2, 2018, DC and online

THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY 2018

Just before the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference and mass congressional lobbying day in Washington, DC, the “Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018” conference will be held on Friday, March 2, 2018 at the National Press Club.

This educational event is open to the public and will examine the strategies, tactics and policies of Israel and its U.S. lobby. Key questions to be addressed by invited experts are:

  • What is the current estimated cost and trajectory of major Israel lobby initiatives such as the Israel Anti-Boycott Act law that seek to fine and jail American organizations and individuals engaged in boycotts of Israel over systematic human rights abuses?
  • What impact could other major Israel lobby initiatives—including precipitating U.S. attacks on Iran, renewed U.S. attacks on Syria, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and formal U.S. recognition of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Golan Heights and West Bank—have on America’s global standing?
  • How is American public opinion shifting on key issues such as unconditional military aid to Israel, the influence of Israel on U.S. policymakers, and trust in coverage of Israel by the mainstream news media?
  • What is the current level of Israel lobby “capture” of major U.S. institutions, especially government agencies, think tanks, academia and news outlets?
  • What is Israel’s long-term regional strategy and how does it attempt to engage the U.S. in achieving its objectives through the Israel lobby?
  • How are peace and human rights activists pushing back against the lobby in courtrooms and at the grassroots level?
  • What new roles are artists taking on to challenge Israel lobby initiatives? What is the pushback?
  • How do Israel lobby “gatekeepers” influence campus debate, academic appointments and curriculum?
  • What are the current challenges to liberal Zionist beliefs, public perception of Israel as being interested in peace, and the notion of universal American Jewish support for Israel?
  • Which country has a quantitatively larger influence on U.S. electoral politics, Russia or Israel?
  • Will Israel likely break its agreement not to seek more than $38 billion in U.S. military aid over the next decade? What amount of secret intelligence aid is Israel also receiving, and why are U.S. intelligence agencies fighting to keep it secret?

So what explains the special relationship if there is no strategic or moral imperative and if most Americans do not favor it? Our answer, of course, is the lobby.

– John Mearsheimer

(This video site will provide live coverage, and probably a recording for later viewing.)

The Israel Lobby and American Policy conference is solely sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). 

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AFSC among human rights orgs barred from Israel

PUBLISHED: JANUARY 8, 2018

Yesterday the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was included on a list of 20 organizations whose staff may be denied entry to Israel because of their support for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Motivated by Quaker belief in the worth and dignity of all people, AFSC has supported and joined in nonviolent resistance for over 100 years. We answered the call for divestment from apartheid in South Africa, and we have done the same with the call for BDS from Palestinians who have faced decades of human rights violations.

Throughout our history, we have stood with communities facing oppression and violence around the world. In 1947 we were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in part for our support for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. We will continue our legacy of speaking truth to power and standing for peace and justice without exception in Israel, occupied Palestine, and around the world.

All people, including Palestinians, have a right to live in safety and peace and have their human rights respected. For 51 years, Israel has denied Palestinians in the occupied territories their fundamental human rights, in defiance of international law. While Israeli Jews enjoy full civil and political rights, prosperity, and relative security, Palestinians under Israeli control enjoy few or none of those rights or privileges.

The Palestinian BDS call aims at changing this situation, asking the international community to use proven nonviolent social change tactics until equality, freedom from occupation, and recognition of refugees’ right to return are realized. AFSC’s Principles for a Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine and Israel affirm each of these rights. Thus, we have joined others around the world in responding to the Palestinian-led BDS call.  As Palestinians seek to realize their rights and end Israeli oppression, what are the alternatives left to them if we deny them such options?

Quakers pioneered the use of boycotts when they helped lead the “Free Produce Movement,” a boycott of goods produced using slave labor during the 1800s. AFSC has a long history of supporting economic activism, which we view as an appeal to conscience, aimed at raising awareness among those complicit in harmful practices, and as an effective tactic for removing structural support for oppression.

The 17th century Quaker abolitionist John Woolman spoke to the spiritual foundation of this work when he said, “May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.”

The ban on entry to Israel for activists who support the Palestinian-led BDS movement is part of a larger effort by the Israeli government to silence and constrain human rights and anti-occupation activists. In recent months, more Palestinian activists have faced arrest, death threats, and imprisonment without charge or trial in response to nonviolent activism for human rights.  In addition, organizations inside Israel have been denied funding and access to event venues and have faced threats of trial and imprisonment.

At a time when the Israeli government is moving to expand settlements, redefine Jerusalem, and annex portions of the West Bank, support for nonviolent activism that seeks freedom, equality, and justice is critical.

Therefore, as long as these and other human rights violations persist, we will continue to support Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions efforts as effective nonviolent tools for realizing political and social change.  We hope one day to see Israelis and Palestinians live together in peace. This will only happen when the human rights of all are recognized and respected.

ORIGINAL STATEMENT HERE (JAN 8, 2018)

AFSC: Boycott, divestment and sanctions explained

Other organizations banned because of BDS advocacy

What is BDS?

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Gaza’s airport, once a symbol of statehood, is now a wasteland

Gaza airport (Photo: Mohammed Asad)

By Ahmad Kabariti in Mondoweiss on 

At 8:50 a.m., I stopped a taxi in western Gaza City and asked the driver to go to the airport. The driver gazed at me as I sat next to him. He said: “Which airport? Do you mean the Cairo one?” I replied: “To the Gaza airport. Go to Rafah now, please.”

Muhsin al-Balawi, the 23-year-old driver, may have been right to be extremely perplexed over my query. He had never been an airplane passenger. He was born three years before the airport opened in 1998.

After 40 minutes of driving south on Salah al-Din Road, the main thoroughfare in the Strip, we hit the end of the asphalt road. Hundreds of yards further stood the departures terminal, which was surrounded by hills made of household waste. 

Bombed runway, 2008, photo by NASA

Everything across this 690 acres stretch of semi-desert field was lifeless. A stench from a ripped apart donkey’s corpse filled the air​​. I was sure I will never visit this place after dark.

This arid zone was once the first airport for Palestinians in Gaza, a step towards a dream of independent state. In 2000, during the events of the Intifada, Israel bombed the control tower, then the runway, and finally the elegant Moroccan-inspired terminals. In 2001, Israeli army bulldozers flattened what remained….

READ ENTIRE ARTICLE

“Dashed dreams: How Gaza’s short-lived airport never took off” by Azmat Khan in Al Jazeera, July 25, 2014

In a historic December 1998 trip, President Bill Clinton cut the ribbon at a ceremony for the Gaza’s International Airport alongside Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Stephen Jaffe/Getty
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What were the top BDS victories of 2017?

The movement for Palestinian rights continues to grow across the world. (Alisdare Hickson/Flickr)

Written by Nora Barrows-Friedman  in The Electronic Intifada, December 28, 2017

It took just four days for a world famous singer to cancel her Tel Aviv show in response to her fans’ urging her to respect the international picket line.

Lorde’s decision on Christmas Eve to pull the Tel Aviv show from her world tour – remarking that booking the gig in the first place “wasn’t the right call” – completed a successful year for the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

2017 saw artists, performers, athletes, politicians, cultural workers, faith-based organizations, students, academics, unions and activists grow the movement for Palestinian rights.

Israel has been taking notice, of course.

Early on in the year, key Israel lobby groups admitted in a secret report – obtained and published in full by The Electronic Intifada – that they had failed to counter the Palestine solidarity movement, despite vastly increasing their spending.

The report outlined Israel’s failure to stem the “impressive growth” and “significant successes” of the BDS movement and set out strategies, endorsed by the Israeli government, aimed at reversing the deterioration in Israel’s position.

Similarly, in March, Israel’s top anti-BDS strategist conceded that the boycott Israel movement is winning – despite the Israeli government’s allocation of tens of millions of dollars and the formation of an entire governmental ministry whose sole focus is to combat BDS.

Speaking at an anti-BDS conference in New York, Israeli ambassador Danny Danon stated that “the BDS movement is still active and still strong. Every day, academic and religious groups, student unions and investment firms are all falling prey to boycott calls.”…

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

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Mondoweiss—News & Opinion About Palestine, Israel & the United States

Mondoweiss is an independent website devoted to informing readers about developments in Israel/Palestine and related US foreign policy. We provide news and analysis unavailable through the mainstream media regarding the struggle for Palestinian human rights.

According to the editors, Mondoweiss is “a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective”. Its founder describes himself as progressive and anti-Zionist. (Wikipedia)

More about Mondoweiss

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OCHA—The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the Occupied Palestinian Territories

OCHA in the occupied Palestinian territory

In 2002, OCHA established its Country Office in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), occupied by Israel since the 1967 war, to support international efforts to respond to the humanitarian situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and in the Gaza Strip.

The major drivers of humanitarian vulnerability in the oPt are the protracted occupation, the systematic denial of Palestinian human rights, and continuing conflict, punctuated by frequent outbreaks of violence. In the West Bank, continuing settlement expansion and the lack of a horizon for ending the occupation are major sources of frustration and conflict. In the Gaza Strip, years of blockade and recurrent outbreaks of hostilities have eroded basic infrastructure, service delivery, livelihoods and coping mechanisms. The overall context is that of a protracted protection crisis driven by lack of respect for international law, and a lack of accountability for violations.

More globally

OCHA oPt works to ensure a coordinated and effective response to humanitarian needs stemming from the conflict, the occupation and other policies, as well as from natural disasters or extreme weather events.

OCHA is the part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA also ensures there is a framework within which each actor can contribute to the overall response effort.

OCHA’s mission is to:

  • Mobilize and coordinate effective and principled humanitarian action in partnership with national and international actors in order to alleviate human suffering in disasters and emergencies.
  • Advocate the rights of people in need.
  • Promote preparedness and prevention.
  • Facilitate sustainable solutions.

For the most up-to-date information, including alerts, daily facts and recent publications, check out our official Facebook page.

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Compassionate Listening Project

An enemy is one whose story we have not heard.

– Gene Knudsen Hoffman, Compassionate Listening pioneer and international peacemaker.

Gene Knudson Hoffman (Quaker inspirer) & Leah Green (founder)

Welcome to the Compassionate Listening Project ~ a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering individuals and communities to transform conflict and strengthen cultures of peace. (Please note that our website is not functioning in Chrome. To see our full website with dropdown menus and full navigation, make sure you’re using Safari or Firefox. We apologize for the inconvenience!)

Our independent facilitators offer:

• Trainings with our highly acclaimed curriculum;
• Skilled facilitation with families, communities and in the workplace;
• Journeys in conflict and post-conflict zones;
• Mentoring new facilitators;
• Publishing books and producing videos;
• Unique community events.

We invite you to spend time on our website; learn about our history, meet outstanding facilitators, read about our trainings, and visit our calendar to join a Journey or look for trainings in your area.

To see the benefits of your generosity in action, we invite you to view a short video of Compassionate Listening in action.

Thank you for your support, both spiritual and material.

Compassionately yours,

Leah Green, Founding Director

MORE HERE

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Israel indicts Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi

By , in Aljzeera, Jan 2, 2018

Palestinian activist Ahed with her mother Nariman [Al Jazeera]

(This reminds me strongly of the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 during the Freedom Struggle in the US —Skip Schiel’s note)

Israeli authorities are seeking 12 charges against Ahed Tamimi, a prominent 16-year-old Palestinian activist filmed slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. Continue reading “Israel indicts Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi”

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The Challenges We Face and Community We Forge: An interview with Sa’ed Atshan

Sa’ed Atshan at Ramallah Meeting in Palestine. Photo courtesy of Sa’ed Atshan.

In February 2017 Friends Central High School in Philadelphia had fired two teacher-advisors to a student group which had invited a Palestinian Quaker, Sa’ed Atshan, to discuss the situation in Palestine-Israel. In this interview, after a long discernment, Sa’ed speaks about what happened and how he approaches what some feel is censorship by a quaker school.

READ THE ARTICLE HERE Continue reading “The Challenges We Face and Community We Forge: An interview with Sa’ed Atshan”

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Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice

Rachel Corrie

Rachel Corrie was a 23-year-old American peace activist from Olympia, Washington, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer on 16 March 2003, while undertaking nonviolent direct action to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition.

Since her killing, an enormous amount of solidarity activities have been carried out in her name around the world.

The Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace & Justice is a grassroots, 501(c)3 non-profit organization that conducts and supports programs that foster connections between people, that build understanding, respect, and appreciation for differences, and that promote cooperation within and between local and global communities. The foundation encourages and supports grassroots efforts in pursuit of human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice, which we view as pre-requisites for world peace. Continuing the work begun and envisioned by our daughter, Rachel Corrie, our initial emphasis has been on Israel/Palestine.

Cindy & Craig Corrie (Photo by Scott Weinstien)
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What is BDS?

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.

Israel is occupying and colonising Palestinian land, discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel and denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the BDS call urges action to pressure Israel to comply with international law.

BDS is now a vibrant global movement made up of unions, academic associations, churches and grassroots movements across the world. Eleven years since its launch, BDS is having a major impact and is effectively challenging international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

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Jewish Voice for Peace Fighting Antisemitism

Jewish Voice for Peace is dedicated to working toward justice, dignity, and equality for all people, and to actively opposing all forms of oppression. Fighting antisemitism is an important part of our work for a more just world.

As a community rooted in Jewish traditions, we understand antisemitism as discrimination against, violence towards, or stereotypes of Jews for being Jewish. Antisemitism has manifested itself in structural inequality, dispossession, expulsion, and genocide, with the most well-known examples being in Europe, with the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, and the Nazi Holocaust in the 1940s. Antisemitism does not impact all of us who identify as Jewish in the same way. The experiences and histories of Jews of color and/or Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews are distinct from those of white, Ashkenazi Jews. Jewish communities around the world have had different experiences with discrimination, bigotry, and violence. In this statement, we will be focusing on two forms of antisemitism that resonate in the United States today: Christian antisemitism and racial antisemitism….

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

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Palestine Israel Tool Kit from the Palestine Israel Network of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship

The holy land where Jesus was born, ministered, crucified and resurrected is today one of the most contentious places on earth. Conflict in the modern state of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is always near the headlines in our media-driven world, but mythology and tradition, injustices and grievances, and competing geopolitical interests in the region make it difficult to separate fact from fiction, truth from propaganda. 

Here we have compiled various resources to help readers learn the basics, broaden knowledge, dispel misunderstandings, and find out ways to join with others to work toward peace with justice in this sacred but troubled place.  

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE AND FOR THE TOOL KIT

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Jerusalem: Why the World Doesn’t Recognize It as Israel’s Capital

For original article, click the image above. Full text of the article is below.
For original article, click the image above. Full text of the article is below.

By David B. Green December 6, 2017 in Haaretz

Jerusalem is holy to three religions. Jerusalem is a powder keg, and the smallest wrong move there could set off a religious war. The Arab-Israeli conflict will never be solved until the Jerusalem question is resolved. Continue reading “Jerusalem: Why the World Doesn’t Recognize It as Israel’s Capital”

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Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism


Interview by Gaye Theresa Johnson and Alex Lubin,
on Literary Hub website,  Sept 1, 2017

A telling excerpt:

…GTJ & AL: Your most recent scholarship is focused on the question of Palestine, and its connection to the Black freedom movement. When did this connection become obvious to you and what circumstances, or conjunctures, made this insight possible? Continue reading “Angela Davis on Black Lives Matter, Palestine, and the Future of Radicalism”

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Israel’s settlements: 50 years of land theft explained

Produced by Zena Tahhan
Published on November 21, 2017

To the casual visitor or tourist driving through the occupied West Bank or Jerusalem, Israeli settlements may appear as just another set of houses on a hill.

The middle-class suburban style townhouses, built fast and locked in a grid of uniform units, stand like fortified compounds, in direct contrast to the sprawling limestone Palestinian homes below.

Settlement homes, mostly constructed of cement with a cosmetic limestone cladding, tend to fashion a similar look: American-style villas topped by red-tiled roofs and surrounded by lush, neatly trimmed green lawns.

The largest settlement, Modi’in Illit, houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews in the occupied West Bank. The mega-settlement has its own mayor, as well as schools, shopping malls and medical centres.

Some settlements even have their own universities.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE.

 

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On the 35th Anniversary of Sabra and Shatila: The Forgotten Refugees

Dr. Ang Swee Chai

By Dr. Swee Chai Ang, September 13, 2017

This September will be the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre in West Beirut. Three thousand unarmed refugees were killed from 15-18 September 1982.

I was then a young orthopedic trainee who had resigned from St Thomas Hospital to join the Christian Aid Lebanon medical team to help those wounded by Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. That invasion, named “Peace for Galilee”, and launched on 6 June 1982, mercilessly bombarded Lebanon by air, sea, and land. Water, food, electricity, and medicines were blockaded. This resulted in untold wounded and deaths, with 100,000 made suddenly homeless.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

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“The Occupation of the American Mind” on Democracy Now

The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States, a documentary movie rarely shown publicly in the United States, reveals the PR campaign by the Israeli government to obfuscate and falsify realities of the occupation and blockade of Palestine. Interviewed on Democracy Now, Roger Waters, founding member of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, and Sut Jhally, professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts and founder and executive director of the Media Education Foundation which produced the documentary, discuss the film’s meaning and reception.

Click for interview on September 14, 2017

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US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is a national coalition of hundreds of groups working together for freedom, justice, and equality.

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If Americans Knew

IF AMERICANS KNEW provides information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.

A good source of the Shrinking Palestine Map Cards (and other educational materials)

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Sa’ed Atshan Speaks Out on Disinvitation

(click here) Palestinian professor speaks out on cancellation of Friends’ Central speech, stands with fired teachers

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NEYM unites on a statement about Palestine-Israel

(Dating back to late 2014, after a summer of unprecedented violence over Gaza and inspired by a statement from Britain Yearly Meeting in August 2014, Friends Meeting at Cambridge, followed by Salem Quarterly Meeting, and finally the Yearly Meeting itself unites on the following statement.)

Minute 2017-46 Annual Sessions at Castleton, Vermont, August 8, 2017

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) testimony on peace, justice, and nonviolence is based in our experience of the divine in all of creation and within all persons. Thus, we are deeply troubled by the suffering and injustice caused by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and we are concerned that our government perpetuates that violence by continuing to send billions of dollars of military aid to the region. Continue reading “NEYM unites on a statement about Palestine-Israel”

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Eyewitness Palestine

Go beyond the headlines.  See the land of Palestine/Israel. Connect with Palestinian and Israeli peace-builders. Learn frameworks and strategies for justice. Act to build bridges between people and movements.

An unforgettable experience. Every Eyewitness Palestine delegation is real, honest, heartfelt, and genuine. There’s only one way to truly understand the realities of Palestine/Israel – through the eyes of those who live there.

JOIN ONE OF OUR 2020 DELEGATIONS:

RACE, CLASS & MONEY DELEGATION June 2020 Daily realities of a colonial conflict

MILITARIZATION, REPRESSION & SURVEILLANCE DELEGATION August 2020 Effects of the military-industrial complex

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE& OLIVE HARVEST DELEGATION November 2020 A culturally rich & engaging journey

Planting olive trees in the Jordan Valley (photo by Skip Schiel, 2015)
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Palestine Portal

Palestine Portal is your source for a just peace. Find out what you can do as an individual, at your church, in your community. Connect with organizations and communities across the U.S. and around the world.

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Nonviolence International and Holy Land Trust Create the Sumud Freedom Tour

We invite you to join us this December 21 through January 3, 2008 as part of a coalition of student delegates who will travel throughout Israel and Palestine with the purpose of engaging in an active and educational tour. Participants will meet with agents of change on the ground and learn about methods of nonviolent resistance while also deepening their understanding of global oppression and joining together to form broad, diverse coalitions of change that can have impacts in their own international communities.

Nonviolence International was founded by Mubarak Awad, a leader of the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising in Arabic).

As a young Palestinian man, Mubarak Awad learned about nonviolent direct action from the writings of Gandhi, King, and Gene Sharp; after translating their theories and methods into Arabic, he distributed pamphlets throughout Palestine’s West Bank. When the Israeli government imprisoned Mubarak in 1988, Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, pressured the Israelis to release Awad. Since the early 1990’s Dr. Awad has taught nonviolence in classes at American University in Washington, D.C. where he lives in exile from his place of birth—East Jerusalem. Mubarak’s wife is a Quaker, Nancy Nye, who served as principal of Ramallah Friends Girls’ School in the mid 1980’s. Wilmington Yearly Meeting (Ohio) included in its 2005 epistle: “Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian who is founder of Nonviolence International, gave the Peace Memorial Lecture. As a pacifist he worked with individuals and villages until being deported from his country. He continues working for peaceful solutions to conflicts.”

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Tree of Life Educational Fund

The Tree of Life Educational Fund (TOL) a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation was established by The First Congregational Church of Old Lyme to provide cross-cultural and transnational travel experiences, interfaith conferences and educational opportunities to help participants to become more enlightened and more engaged in making this a more just and peaceful world in which to live.

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New England Network for Justice in Palestine

New england Network for Justice in Palestine is a network connecting a wide range of organizations working for a just resolution of the Palestine/Israel conflict, so that affiliates can share their strengths and capabilities in order to maximize their collective effectiveness.

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Quaker Palestine Israel Network (QPIN)

Coordinating Quaker Efforts to Bring Peace and Justice to Palestinians and Israelis

About QPIN

Over many years, Quakers have worked to support the development of lasting peace with justice in Israel Palestine. In the past few years several monthly meetings and yearly meetings have issued minutes of support for boycott and divestment as a nonviolent approach to advocate for change. Ann Arbor (MI) Meeting, Swannanoa Valley (NC) Meeting, Illinois Yearly Meeting to name just a few have expressed concern and actively advocated for peace and there is a growing energy and movement emerging among Friends. QPIN (The Quaker Palestine Israel Network) was founded in the Fall of 2013 to support the growth of this movement of Friends, to educate about boycott, divestment, and sanctions as a nonviolent approach, and to work together across Quaker meetings and churches and with the interfaith movement for greater impact.

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Quakers With a Concern for Palestine-Israel

Working for a Just and Lasting Peace

How can Friends work for a just and lasting peace? What are Monthly Meetings, Quaker organizations, and individual Friends doing to help? What books, speakers, films, articles and websites can help us understand the issues more deeply? How may Friends reach out to others to learn and to share? Find out more on the Quakers With a Concern for Palestine-Israel website.

FOR THE MOMENT, THIS SITE IS DISABLED. WE HOPE TO RESURRECT IT SOON.

FOR THE MOST RECENT VERSION (AUG 31, 2018) OF THE WEBSITE, TRY THIS.

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The American Friends Service Committee work in Palestine-Israel

 

 

 

Campaigns and news

Among their issues: ending discrimination, building peace, defending immigrant rights, ending mass incarceration, and building economic justice.

Founded in the aftermath of World War I to serve conscientious objectors and provide humanitarian aid to those suffering the war’s results, the AFSC is a quasi-Quaker organization, meaning it operates along Quaker principles, has a largely Quaker board, and functions with a mixture of staff, some of whom are Quaker.

The AFSC shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 with the British Friends Service Council on behalf of Quakers worldwide for its humanitarian and advocacy work. Currently it takes a leading role in bringing peace, justice, and security to all parties in the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Their website

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Teachers fired for supporting students

Layla Helwa (left) and Ariel Eure (right)

Layla Helwa and Ariel Eure supervised a Palestinian peace club that had invited Sa’ed Atshan, a Palestinian Quaker professor, to speak in February, but the talk was canceled at the last minute after some Jewish parents and students and others complained. The teachers were fired for supporting their students’ protest over the cancelled talk.

Read more in article from the Philadelphia Inquirer, updated May 9, 2017…

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Suggested Reading (books and articles)

Compiled by Skip Schiel, 2018 (with suggestions from many others) Revised January 2, 2025

Books on the Israel Palestine Conflict suggested by Listopia on Goodreads

We highly recommend books preceded by an asterisk (*).

*Daybreak in Gaza, Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture is an encyclopedic account of present conditions in Gaza (2023-2025), plus history and archeology. Edited by Mohmoud Muna (proprietor of the Educational Bookstore in Jerusalem) and Matthew Teller, Saqi Books in the UK published the 336 page book in 2024. “Daybreak in Gaza humanises the people dismissed as statistics. It stands as a mark of resistance to the destruction and as a testament to the people of Gaza.”

 

*Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire with a review by Skip Schiel here. A compilation of writing from eleven current or former residents of this besieged, blockaded, violated and enduring group of some 2.2 million human beings, trapped by Israel since 1948 and as of this writing (January 1, 2025) being slaughtered. Organized by the American Friends Service Committee, edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze, this phenomenal 280 page book published in 2022 is available from the publisher, Haymarket Books in print form and as a free e-book.

Apeirogon follows two characters based on real people, Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan SARAH LEE/EYEVINE

*Apeirogon, by Colum McCann

Like the The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan, this book which the author calls a “hybrid novel” presents two overlapping views of two true-life incidents, the death of a young Israeli girl thru a suicide Palestinian operation and of a Palestinian girl by Israeli soldiers.  The respective fathers, serving as the main characters, became close friends. Review by the Guardian. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020)

*The Hundred Years’ War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017

By Rashid Khalidi

“A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.” (Shop Palestine)

2020-336 pages

 

Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks: Jean Zaru

* Occupied with Nonviolence: A Palestinian Woman Speaks, by Jean Zaru
Jean Zaru is the anchor of Quakerism in the Occupied Territories. Long clerk of Ramallah Friends Meeting, world traveler speaking for Quakers in the Holy Land, and friend and mentor to many attempting to understand the dynamics of occupation and siege, the author presents a perspective blending resistance, nonviolence, Christianity, and Quakerism that has influenced many who have read her book, heard her speak, met her, and seek her guidance. (Fortress Press, 2008)

                     

The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East—Videography, Aesthetics, and Politics in Israel and Palestine, by Liat Berdugo, 2021
Drawing on the vast video archive of the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, Berdugo analyses how Palestinians working for justice, Israelis for domination, and international activists for disclosure use the video camera.

Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the United ...

*Against Our Better Judgement, the hidden history of how the U.S. was used to create Israel, by Alison Weir, 2014
A well-documented, encyclopedic, detailed account of often obscured or erased facts of history (IfAmericansKnew.org)

*The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe, 2006
Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe’s groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. (Amazon)

*War Against the People, Israel, the Palestinians, and Global Pacification, by Jeff Halper, 2015
Long-awaited, War Against the People is a powerful indictment of the Israeli state’s “securocratic” war in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper draws on firsthand research to show the pernicious effects of the subliminal form of unending warfare conducted by Israel, an approach that relies on sustaining fear among the populace, fear that is stoked by suggestions that the enemy is inside the city limits, leaving no place truly safe and justifying the intensification of military action and militarization in everyday life. Eventually, Halper shows, the integration of militarized systems—including databases tracking civilian activity, automated targeting systems, unmanned drones, and more—becomes seamless with everyday life. And the Occupied Territories, Halper argues, is a veritable laboratory for that approach. (University of Chicago Press) Interview with Halper about the book and his idea of Global Palestine, 2016, by David Kettenburg

*Mornings in Jenin (novel), by Susan Abulhawa, 2010
Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century of violent history. Amidst the loss and fear, hatred and pain, as their tents are replaced by more forebodingly permanent cinderblock huts, there is always the waiting, waiting to return to a lost home. (Amazon)

Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe, 2010
Described by a UN fact-finding mission as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate, and terrorize a civilian population,” Israel’s Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict. In Gaza in Crisis, Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé, two of the issue’s most insightful and prominent critical voices, survey the fallout from Israel’s conduct in Gaza and place it into the context of Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestine. (Amazon)

*Palestine (graphic novel), by Joe Sacco, 2001
A graphic novel written and drawn by Joe Sacco about his experiences in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in December 1991 and January 1992. Sacco gives a portrayal which emphasizes the history and plight of the Palestinian people, as a group and as individuals. (Wikipedia)

*Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, by Omar Barghouti, 2011
International boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) efforts helped topple South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. In this urgent book, Omar Barghouti makes the case for a rights-based BDS campaign to stop Israel’s rapacious occupation, colonization, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. This considered, convincing collection contributes to the growing debate on Israel’s violations of international law and points the way forward to a united global civil society movement for freedom, justice, self-determination, and equality for all. (Haymarket Books)

*The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan, 2007
In 1967, Bashir Al-Khayri, a Palestinian twenty-five-year-old, journeyed to Israel, with the goal of seeing the beloved old stone house, with the lemon tree behind it, that he and his family had fled nineteen years earlier. To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation. (Goodreads)

*The Question of Palestine, by Edward Said, 1992 (first published 1979)
Still a basic and indispensable account of the Palestinian question, updated to include the most recent developments in the Middle East- from the intifada to the Gulf war to the historic peace conference in Madrid. (Goodreads)

Wrestling in the Daylight, by Brant Rosen
In 2006, Rabbi Brant Rosen, who served a Jewish Reconstructionist congregation in Evanston, Illinois, launched a blog called Shalom Rav, in which he explored a broad range of social-justice issues. The focus of his writing—and his activism—changed dramatically in December 2008, when Israel launched a wide, 23-day military attack against Gaza, causing him to deeply question his lifelong liberal Zionism. Unlike the biblical Jacob, who wrestled in the dark of night at a crucial turning point in his life, Rabbi Rosen chose to make his struggle public: to wrestle in the daylight. Over the two years that followed, Shalom Rav became a public and always highly readable record of his journey from liberal Zionist to active and visionary Palestinian solidarity activist. Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi’s Path to Palestinian Solidarity is Rosen’s self-curated compilation of these blog posts. (Just World Books)

Children of the Stone: The Power of Music in a Hard Land, by Sandy Tolan, 2015 by Bloomsbury USA
It is an unlikely story. Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a child from a Palestinian refugee camp, confronts an occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then, through his charisma and persistence, inspires scores of others to work with him to make that dream real. The dream: a school to transform the lives of thousands of children–as Ramzi’s life was transformed–through music. (Bloomsbury Publishing)

*The Adam of Two Edens: Selected Poems, by Mahmoud Darwish, 2000
“They never left. They never returned. Their hearts were almonds in the streets,” writes Darwish (Mural) in “The Tragedy of Narcissus, the Comedy of Silver.” A revered Palestinian poet—recipient of France’s Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal and the Lotus Prize, and author of 20 poetry collections among other works—Darwish was six at time of the Israeli occupations of 1948; his father was killed and his family fled to Lebanon. As a young man, he was repeatedly imprisoned for reading his poetry and not carrying the proper papers. He has since lived all over the world, and advised the PLO Executive Committee between 1982 and 1993, when he resigned in protest of the Oslo accords. (Publishers Weekly)

Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, by Sarah Schulman, 2012
In this chronicle of political awakening and queer solidarity, the activist and novelist Sarah Schulman describes her dawning consciousness of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Invited to Israel to give the keynote address at an LGBT studies conference at Tel Aviv University, Schulman declines, joining other artists and academics honoring the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Anti-occupation activists in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Palestine come together to help organize an alternative solidarity visit for the American activist. Schulman takes us to an anarchist, vegan café in Tel Aviv, where she meets anti-occupation queer Israelis, and through border checkpoints into the West Bank, where queer Palestinian activists welcome her into their spaces for conversations that will change the course of her life. She describes the dusty roads through the West Bank, where Palestinians are cut off from water and subjected to endless restrictions while Israeli settler neighborhoods have full freedoms and resources. (Duke University Press)

*The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, by Miko Peled, 2016
In 1997, a tragedy struck the family of Israeli-American Miko Peled. His beloved niece Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. That tragedy propelled Peled onto a journey of discovery. It pushed him to re-examine many of the beliefs he had grown up with, as the son and grandson of leading figures in Israel’s political-military elite, and transformed him into a courageous and visionary activist in the struggle for human rights and a hopeful, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. (Goodreads)

*Activestills—Photography as Protest in Palestine/Israel, edited by Vered Maimon and Shiraz Grinbaum, 2016
Using the twin acts of making and presenting photographs, Israeli, Palestinian, and international photographers offer a new reality, often distorted by mainstream media. (PlutoPress)

*On Antisemitism—Solidarity and the Struggle for Justice, by various writers compiled by Jewish Voice for Peace, 2017
An array of views about antisemitism, especially when used as a charge against criticism of Israel. (Haymarket Books)

*Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions? A Quaker Zionist Rethinks Palestinian Rights, by Steve Chase, 2017 (Pendle Hill Pamphlet #445)

“Living with the Holocaust: The Journey of a Child of Holocaust Survivors,” by Sara Roy, 2002 (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 32, no. 1)

The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development (Expanded Third Edition) by Sara Roy, 2016 (Institute for Palestine Studies)

The Hundred-Year Struggle for Israel and Palestine : An Analytic History and Reader (Revised Edition), edited by Victor Lieberman , 2012
The book opens with a general history of the conflict, which is followed by secondary readings that illustrate and enrich that preliminary survey. Readings have been carefully chosen to express a variety of interpretive and political viewpoints. (Cognella Academic Publishing) Sample

Gaza, an Inquest into its Martyrdom by Norman Finkelstein, 2018, an exhaustive and carefully documented analysis of Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), the Goldstone report (about Cast Lead, 2009), the Mavi Marmara (2010), and Operation Protective Edge (2014). His central thesis is Israel’s policies are intended to punish the people of Gaza and make their land uninhabitable. (University of California Press) Review by Marilyn Garson, 2018.

Reading Maimonides in Gaza, by Marilyn Garson (2018)
From 2011 to 2015, experience in Gaza’s economic sector

This is How We Fought in Gaza, Soldiers׳ testimonies and photographs from “Operation Protective Edge,” by Breaking the Silence (2014)

Night in Gaza, by Mads Gilbert (2015)
A participant’s view by a Norwegian medical doctor in hospitals during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014, Operation Protective Edge, with excellent photographs by the author. Israel has now banned him from entering the region for life.

Night in Gaza 2

*Faith & Fratricide, the Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, by Rosemary Radford Ruether (1974)
Since the Nazi holocaust took the lives of a third of the Jewish people of the world, the Christian Church has been engaged in a self-examination of its own historical role in the creation of anti-semitism. In this major contribution to that search, theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explores the roots of Anti-Semitism from new perspectives.

A History of the Jews, by Paul Johnson (1988)

This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world.

Constantine’s Sword: the Church & the Jews,  a History, by James Carroll (2001)
A former priest, Carroll documents the role of the Roman Catholic Church in the long European history of Anti-Semitism. The primary source of anti-Jewish violence is the perennial obsession with converting the Jews to Christianity; an event which some theologians believed would usher in the Second Coming.

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, by Ari Shavit (2013)
“My Promised Land” startles in many ways, not least in its relative lack of interest in providing its readers with a handy politics. Shavit, a columnist who serves on the editorial board of Haaretz, has an undoctrinaire mind. He comes not to praise or to blame, though along the way he does both, with erudition and with eloquence; he comes instead to observe and to reflect. (Leon Wieseltier, New York Times)

The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, by Walter Laqueur (2006)
A history of antisemitism, is no exception: although it begins with the ancient world and provides a brisk survey of the history of antisemitism through the era of the Holocaust, half of its chapters deal with aspects of “the new antisemitism,” the surprising mutations of the old virus that have occurred in the post-Holocaust era. As Laqueur wryly notes, the Nazis made the term “antisemitism” disreputable, and most antisemites now masquerade under other names: “A spade is no longer a spade but an agricultural implement.” (Bruce Thompson)

Why Palestine Matters, The Struggle To End Colonialism, by IPMN.org, The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Contextualizes the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people within other global justice struggles. With a foreword by Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, the book is grounded in international law and brings Palestine into focus through a lens of intersectionality.

Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine, by David Shulman (2007), published by the University of Chicago Press
Shulman’s chronicle of Palestinian and other Israeli activists struggling for justice, featuring his work with Ta’ayush, a joint Palestinian Israeli grassroots organization.
One of the most fascinating and moving accounts of Israeli-Palestinian attempts to help, indeed to save, human beings suffering under the burden of occupation and terror. Anyone who is pained and troubled by what is happening in the Holy Land should read this human document, which indeed offers a certain dark hope. (A. B. Yehoshua)

Dark Hope

Eyewitness Gaza, photographs by Skip Schiel & Teeksa Photography (2012)
Photographed mostly between 2008 and 2010, Schiel depicts his multiple experiences in the Gaza Strip thru his astute lens.

 

 

 

 

 

*J’accuse (Poetry by a leading radical progressive Jewish Israeli) / Aharon Shabtai ; translated by Peter Cole.

*So what : new & selected poems (by a Palestinian, partly about the Nakba and his destroyed village, with a story), 1971-2005 / Taha Muhammad Ali ; translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Gabriel Levin.*My happiness bears no relation to happiness : a poet’s life in the Palestinian century (about the author, story teller and, Nazarine shop owner, Taha Muhammad Ali) / Adina Hoffman. 

*In search of Fatima : a Palestinian story (the Nakba from the point of view of a Jewish Israeli)/ Ghada Karmi.

*Khirbet Khizeh (expulsion of Palestinians during the Nakba from this particular village)/ S. Yizhar ; translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange and Yaacob Dweck ; afterword by David Shulman.

*Gaza : life in a cage / text by Hervé Kempf ; photographs by Jérôme Equer.

Catastrophe remembered : Palestine, Israel and the internal refugees : essays in memory of Edward W. Said (1935-2003) / edited by Nur Masalha.

Drawing the Kafr Qasem massacre / by Samia Halaby ; foreword by Raja Shehadeh ; historical perspective by Salman Abu Sitta.

*The words of my father : love and pain in Palestine (living in Gaza, shot by an Israeli soldier, medically treated by Israeli, this man learn to overcome hate)/ Yousef Bashir.

The innocents abroad (his dour and highly prejudiced account of Palestine in the mid 1800s)/ Mark Twain ; edited and with an introduction by Tom Quirk and notes by Guy Cardwell.

Palestine and the Palestinians : a social and political history / Samih K. Farsoun, Naseer H. Aruri.

*Palestinian walks : forays into a vanishing landscape (intimate accounts of vanishing Palestine landscape, with attempts to reverse that)/ Raja Shehadeh.

*Erased from space and consciousness : Israel and the depopulated Palestinian villages of 1948 (how Israeli erasure works)/ Noga Kadman ; foreword by Oren Yiftachel ; translation from Hebrew, Dimi Reider ; translation consultant, Ofer Neiman.

Before their diaspora : a photographic history of the Palestinians, 1876-1948 (breathtaking, monumental, tear-evoking, and nearly impossible to find)/ with an introduction and commentary by Walid Khalidi.

*Transformed landscapes : essays on Palestine and the Middle East in honor of Walid Khalidi / edited by Camille Mansour, Leila Fawaz.

Auschwitz : a history in photographs / compiled and edited by Teresa Świebocka ; English edition prepared by Jonathan Webber and Connie Wilsack.

Ordinary lives / (photos from a refugee camp in Lebanon) Rania Matar ; essay by Anthony Shadid.

The Northern Ireland peace process : ending the troubles? (with some insights relevant to ending “The Troubles” in Palestine-Israel) / Thomas Hennessey.

Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, by Sa’ed Atshan 

“From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an “empire of critique” from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia.” (2020)

We Begin Here, Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, edited by Kamal Boullata and Kathy Engel, 2007

A massive compilation of poetry in many styles and points of view. Often heartbreaking, often heartening.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
*The Way to the Spring, Life and Death in Palestine, by Ben Ehrenreich, 2016
 
27774750Concentrating mostly on the Tamimi family and their leadership of resistance to the occupation in Nabi Saleh, Ehrenreich portrays a spectrum of approaches, including that of youth. “Even tho I have fairly extensive experience in Palestine-Israel, Ehrenreich, by being so embedded (in the best manner, close to the people, suffering and celebrating with them) reveals many new insights.” (Skip Schiel)
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Salem Quarterly Meeting Statement on the United States Role in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict

Salem Quarterly Meeting (Eastern Massachusetts, USA)
Of New England Yearly Meeting
April 23, 2017 Continue reading “Salem Quarterly Meeting Statement on the United States Role in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict”

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Friends Central disinvites Sa’ed Atshan

Sa'ed Atshan
Sa’ed Atshan, Palestinian Quaker, academic and activist barred from speaking at Quaker School

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Suggested Visual Media

All Sides

Compiled by Joyce Rawitscher and Skip Schiel. Most of these videos can be purchased or viewed online. (Updated January 6, 2025)

Lifelines: Aid workers in Gaza is a short film that provides a window into the lives and work of aid workers in Gaza. The film follows Firas Ramlawi and Serena Awad – two staff members from the American Friends Service Committee – as they provide humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced due to relentless attacks from the Israeli military. Despite being displaced themselves and losing dozens of family members and loved ones, AFSC staff in Gaza have provided life-saving aid to over 1.5 million internally displaced people.

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The Road to Genocide, by Visualzing Palestine (2024)

A powerful graphical depiction supporting the claim of genocide by Israel upon Gaza, including intent (2024). More visuals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Promised Land Exhibit by the Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience and curated by Dr. Steve Feldman, an interactive exhibit of historical photographs and documents with links to audio and video materials that is easily transported and set up. A Jewish perspective on the Israel/Palestine conflict, rooted in Jewish values of truth, justice, and peace, to treat our neighbor, as we would want to be treated.

Five Broken Cameras  
First-hand account of protests in Bil’in, a West Bank village affected by the Separation Wall and Israel’s military occupation. Structured around the destruction of five of Burnat’s cameras as he photographs nonviolent acts of resistance. Follows the evolution of one family over five years of turmoil. Co-directed by Palestinian farmer, Emad Burnat, and Israeli, Guy Davidi. (2011) 90 mins.

Voices Across the Divide
A Palestinian Oral History documentary. Interviews with Palestinians in the United States are woven together with historical photos and footage. Co-producers: Alice Rothchild, M.D., author, filmmaker, activist, retired OB/GYN physician and professor at Harvard Medical School, and leader of delegations of medical professionals to the West Bank, Israel and Gaza—and Sharon Mullally. (2013) 57 mins.

Roadmap To Apartheid
“A harrowing expose of Israel’s unique system of official discrimination.”—author Naomi Klein. Narrated by Pulitizer Prize-winning author, Alice Walker. A feature-length documentary and as much a historical document of the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa as it is a film about why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them. By Ana Nogueira, a white South African, and Eron Davidson, a Jewish Israeli. (2012) One hour 35 mins.

The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States
Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of Gaza have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world—except in the United States. This film takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S. Narrated by Roger Waters and featuring leading observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. media culture, the film explores how the Israeli and U.S. governments, and the pro-Israel lobby (including AIPAC) have joined forces– often with very different motives– shape American media coverage of the conflict in Israel’s favor. The film provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people in the face of widening international condemnation of its increasingly right-wing policies. Media and the Middle East.
(2016) 82 mins.

Where Should the Birds Fly?
A dramatic documentary that chronicles the Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2009 and January 2010. Israel called it Operation Cast Lead. Palestinians called it a massacre. The Goldstone Report called it an illegal and illegitimate use of force against a civilian population. The 22-day attack left approximately 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade and siege since 2007. Filmed by Fida Qishta, a journalist from Gaza. (2013) 58 mins.

Life in Occupied Palestine
Anna Baltzer, a Jewish-American, speaks the truth about her experience in militarily occupied Palestine. Stories and photographs. An excellent introduction to the Israel/Palestine conflict. (2008) 60 mins.

The Iron Wall
By documentary filmmaker, Mohammed Alatar, covers the impact of the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories on a two-state solution, on Palestinian life, and on the prospects for peace. The title comes from right-wing, Zionist Revisionist leader, Vladamir (Zev) Jabotinsky’s theory of the need to create an “iron wall” between Arabs and Jews. Produced by Palestinian Agriculture Relief Committees (PARC). (2006) 52 mins.

My Neighborhood: Portraits from Sheikh Jarrah
A short film series chronicling the human impact of Israeli expansion in East Jerusalem and non-violent efforts to prevent the displacement of Palestinian families. Interviews with a Palestinian teen-ager and a community organizer, an American-born Israeli mother and a former Israeli soldier. (2012) 25 mins.. “Budrus” is an Israeli/Palestinian/American documentary about nonviolent demonstrations conducted by the residents of Budrus, a Palestinian town in the West Bank. The film examines the town’s reaction to Israel’s construction of the Separation Wall. It tells the story of Ayed Morrar, a Palestinian whose work for Fatah had led to five detentions in Israeli jails, but whose momentous, strategic decision that the Wall would be best opposed by nonviolent resistance had far-reaching ramifications. (2009) 82 mins.

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land
Provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict, zeroing in on how structural distortion in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the conflict. It analyzes and explains how—through the use of language, framing and context–the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media. The film argues that the influence of pro-Israel media watchdog groups, such as CAMERA and Honest Reporting, has led to distorted and pro-Israel media reports. Features Noam Chomsky, Robert Jensen, Hanan Ashrawi, Sam Husseini and Robert Fisk, among others.
(2004) 80 mins

The Gatekeepers
A documentary film by Drector Dror Moreh that tells the story of the Israeli internal security service, Shin Bet, from the perspective of six of its former heads. Combines in-depth interviews, archival footage and computer animation to recount the role that the group played in Israel’s security after the Six-Day War in 1967. (2012) 101 mins.

One Family in Gaza
In the words of Director, Jen Marlowe, “Palestinians in Gaza are depicted either as violent terrorists or as helpless victims.” The Awajah family challenges both portrayals. Through one family’s story (the assassination of their son during Israel’s 2010 assault on Gaza), the larger tragedy of Gaza is exposed, and the courage and resilience of the people shine through.
(2010) 23 mins.

Occupation 101: Voice of the Silenced Majority
A thought-provoking and powerful documentary on the historical, root causes of the Israel/Palestine conflict and U.S. political involvement. Focuses on the effects of the Israeli military occupation on the West Bank and Gaza and discusses events from the rise of Zionism to the Second Intifada and Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan. Presents its perspective through dozens of interviews, questions the nature of Israel and U.S. relations and the ethics of U.S. monetary involvement. (2006) 1 hour 30 mins.

Palestine for Beginners
The Palestine Information Project presents this film, a fast-moving guide to the roots of the Israel/Palestine conflict, key historical events and the characters and motivations behind the events. Filmed before a live audience and professionally edited, it includes an additional ten minutes of Q & A. Directed and produced by Edward Mast and Linda Bevis. (2007) 72 mins.

To See If I’m Smiling
A documentary of women who served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the Occupied Territories and how their experiences influenced their lives. Powerfully exposes the way that gender, ethics, power and morality intersect. Written, directed and produced by Tamar Yarom, who studied film at the London Film School and psychology at Hebrew University. (2007) 59 mins.

Eyewitness Gaza
Shows Skip Schiel, member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge, photographing in Gaza. “Though unquestionably didactic, Skip Schiel’s images are also haunting glimpses of the perilous nature of life in Gaza. The photographs never feel invasive or forced; they simply capture moments of intimate truth between photographer and subject.” (Sarah Correia, The Arts Fuse) Directed by Tom Jackson of Joe Public Films (2011) 50 mins.

Jews Step Forward
Jews demand an awakening, a Judaism liberated from Zionism. The movie plays two principle themes against and with each other: traditional Jewish theology and practice of tikkum olam {heal the world), with many examples, against current Israeli policies. Plus conventional Jewish upbringing with evolution of attitudes about Israel, using interviews with American Jews. By Marjorie Wright & Elika Rezaee (2016) 112 mins. Preview

Seeing Through the Wall follows a group of Americans [mainly Jews] who traveled to Israel and Palestine in 2016 seeking to understand what life is like for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories and in East Jerusalem. The journey became an intense encounter not only with the people they met, but also with their own preconceptions, an experience that for many of the travelers was transformative. (2016) 60 minutes. Preview

In Between/Bar Bahar is a “bittersweet debut feature from Maysaloun Hamoud is a spiky treat, an empowering tale of three Palestinian women living in Tel Aviv, each fighting their own battles for independence and fulfillment. Balancing tragicomic relationship blues with sharp sociopolitical observation, Hamoud’s slyly subversive drama draws us deep into an often hidden world. As the title suggests, these women occupy a liminal space, caught between freedom and repression, religion and secularism, the past and the future. Theirs is a world in flux, in which the drugs and partying of the underground scene stand in stark contrast to the strict hypocrisies that dominate the cultural landscape. As one of them tells her devout father: “Some people live in palaces, but God knows what their life is like inside…’” (The Guardian) 1 hour-43 minutes  Preview

Death in Gaza (video)/ HBO presents a Frostbite Films production ; directed and filmed by James Miller. “This poignant and powerful documentary takes a shocking, first-hand look at the culture of hate that permeates the West Bank and Gaza, and which continues to escalate the perennial violence pitting Palestinians against Israelis. Starting out in the city of Nablus (where as many as 80 percent of suicide bombing plots are planned), James Miller and Saira Shah ended up in the Gaza town of Rafah, one of the most dangerous cities in this volatile region. There they spent several weeks focusing on the activities of three Palestinian children – two 12-year-old boys and a 16-year-old girl – who have grown up surrounded by messages of hate against Israel (whose military presence in their town is a constant), and taught that the greatest glory is to die a martyr. The film ends on a day like many other days in Rafah, with death – except that on this day, the fallen victim happens to be the man making this film.” (2006)

Censored voices (video—“Interviews with soldiers returning from Israel’s six-day war are revealed for the first time in this powerful documentary”—The Guardian/ [Mor Loushy, editor].

Holocaust : the liberation of Auschwitz (video)/ Chronos U.K. ; a documentary by Irmgard von zur Mühlen ; script, Irmgard von zur Mühlen.

Mayor, about the mayor of Ramallah. By David Osit. “the movie follows Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, during his second term in office. His immediate goals: repave the sidewalks, attract more tourism, and plan the city’s Christmas celebrations. His ultimate mission: to end the occupation of Palestine.”

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Britain Yearly Meeting’s 2014 statement

A statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict made by Quakers in Britain at their Yearly Meeting in Bath, 8 August 2014

This minute, coming soon after the violence over Gaza during the summer of 2014, inspired many Quaker meetings to decide what they could say and do about the conflicts.

“The hostilities in Gaza are the latest eruption of the deep and long-running conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Root causes of this conflict, including the structural violence of occupation, must be addressed. Such violence damages all the people of the region. The present time, with its faltering ceasefires and talks, is a time of both crisis and opportunity.”