#Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

[vyorei]

Calls for the ICC's Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for Israeli authorities and Military personnel

Fuck yeah, shove Netanyahu and Gallant and all their child-murdering cronies in the goddamn Hague

[lessergoodnow]

Attacks against human rights defenders and obliteration of civic space in Gaza unacceptable, says UN expert

16 September 2024

Israeli Defence Forces continue to intentionally starve and kill civilians, while human rights defenders face enormous challenges conducting their peaceful work, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor said today.

In recent months the oldest human rights organisation in Gaza, the Palestinian Human Rights Centre (PCHR), has seen staff members killed and its offices damaged beyond repair in air strikes and ground attacks by the Israeli Defence Forces.

“There is literally no place left for human rights defenders and civil society actors to continue documenting the litany of human rights violations to which Israel is subjecting the people of the Gaza Strip,” the Special Rapporteur said.

Two women lawyers from the PCHR were killed in February 2024. Nour Abu al-Nour died along with her two-year-old daughter, her parents, and four siblings in an air raid on her house in Rafah on 20 February 2024. Two days later, Dana Yaghi and 37 family members were wiped out in an Israeli air raid on a house to which they had relocated for safety in Deir el-Balah, 14 km south of Gaza City.

“It is a terrible tragedy that justice for these two women human rights defenders, their family members and their children, seems so far away. Human rights defenders keep hope alive for justice through their work but are becoming victims themselves. This is why Israeli authorities seem so intent on targeting and silencing them,” she said.

The PCHR headquarters in Gaza City and branch offices in Jabalya, Khan Younis, and Rafah have all been severely damaged in air raids and ground attacks, forcing staff to relocate and rent office space and logistical support at skyrocketing prices, while some international funding has been suspended. They have also been subjected to a vitriolic online smear campaign by the Israeli group, NGO Monitor, which has falsely accused PCHR of being linked to terrorists.

“Human rights defenders have told me that they will continue their work despite this online defamation, which is targeted at drying up their international support and intimidating them,” Lawlor said.

“This organisation continues to bear witness, document and record gross human rights violations and war crimes. Many Palestinians have spoken to them on condition of anonymity. Such is their fear of Israeli repercussions if they are to be publicly identified.”

Recent media reports have highlighted Israeli surveillance of PCHR, and other Palestinian human rights organisations, including Al-Haq and Addameer in the Occupied West Bank, for much of the past decade, in relation to information they were submitting on Israeli human rights violations to the International Criminal Court.

“I repeat my call for human rights defenders to be recognised as essential in times of armed conflict, and to be protected. As independent observers, lawyers and researchers, they document and preserve evidence of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law and ensure the possibility of accountability and justice,” Lawlor said.

The physical integrity of Human Rights Defenders should be protected against attacks and harassment, unlawful killings should be promptly and independently investigated in accordance with international law, and measures adopted to protect them against future serious violations, she said.

The expert has previously raised these concerns with authorities in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territory.

[sayruq]

Trinity College Cambridge, the University of Cambridge's wealthiest constituent college, has decided to divest from all arms companies, Middle East Eye can reveal.This came after MEE revealed in February that Trinity had £61,735 ($78,089) invested in Israel's largest arms company, Elbit Systems, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army. MEE also reported that the college had millions of dollars invested in other companies arming, supporting and profiting from Israel's war on Gaza. In response to this report, on 28 February the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based rights group, issued a legal notice to Trinity College warning that its investments could make it potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes. The ICJP indicated in its legal notice that "officers, directors and shareholders at the college may be individually criminally liable if they maintain their investments in arms companies that are potentially complicit in Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity". MEE has learnt from three well-informed sources close to Trinity's student union that the college council, responsible for major financial and other decisions, voted to remove Trinity's investments from arms companies in early March. According to these sources, the college decided not to announce that it would divest from arms companies after an activist defaced a 1914 portrait of Lord Arthur Balfour - who authored the infamous Balfour Declaration - inside the college on 8 March.

[starlightshadowsworld]

Turkey has filed a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court.

For their ongoing genocide of the Palestinians.

"Today... we have filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court in The Hague against the Hitler of the 21st century of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who must stand trial for the genocide he committed in the Gaza Strip and all crimes against humanity."

And it's not just Turkey.

Algeria has filed a case against Israel with the International Criminal Court.

With their president Abdelmadjid Tebboune saying "Where is humanity? And where is the global conscience that has become absent regarding the genocide being committed?”

Algeria's case is being backed by Colombia.

3 Palestinian organisations Al-Haq, al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights are filing their own case against Israel in the International Criminal Court.

[fairuzfan]

AMAZING article about what it means to participate in anti-Zionism work both online and in person.

If your anti-zionism does not in any way acknowledge that it is a way of thought and practice led by and for Palestinians, then you need to reevaluate your "anti-zionism" label.

Some passages that felt especially relevant to tumblr:

If we accept, as those with even the most rudimentary understanding of history do, that zionism is an ongoing process of settler-colonialism, then the undoing of zionism requires anti-zionism, which should be understood as a process of decolonisation. Anti-zionism as a decolonial ideology then becomes rightly situated as an indigenous liberation movement. The resulting implication is two-fold. First, decolonial organising requires that we extract ourselves from the limitations of existing structures of power and knowledge and imagine a new, just world. Second, this understanding clarifies that the caretakers of anti-zionist thought are indigenous communities resisting colonial erasure, and it is from this analysis that the strategies, modes, and goals of decolonial praxis should flow. In simpler terms: Palestinians committed to decolonisation, not Western-based NGOs, are the primary authors of anti-zionist thought. We write this as a Palestinian and a Palestinian-American who live and work in Palestine, and have seen the impact of so-called ‘Western values’ and how the centring of the ‘human rights’ paradigm disrupts real decolonial efforts in Palestine and abroad. This is carried out in favour of maintaining the status quo and gaining proximity to power, using our slogans emptied of Palestinian historical analysis.

Anti-zionist organising is not a new notion, but until now the use of the term in organising circles has been mired with misunderstandings, vague definitions, or minimised outright. Some have incorrectly described anti-zionism as amounting to activities or thought limited to critiques of the present Israeli government – this is a dangerous misrepresentation. Understanding anti-zionism as decolonisation requires the articulation of a political movement with material, articulated goals: the restitution of ancestral territories and upholding the inviolable principle of indigenous repatriation and through the right of return, coupled with the deconstruction of zionist structures and the reconstitution of governing frameworks that are conceived, directed, and implemented by Palestinians.  Anti-zionism illuminates the necessity to return power to the indigenous community and the need for frameworks of justice and accountability for the settler communities that have waged a bloody, unrelenting hundred-year war on the people of Palestine. It means that anti-zionism is much more than a slogan. 

[...]

While our collective imaginations have not fully articulated what a liberated and decolonised Palestine looks like, the rough contours have been laid out repeatedly. Ask any Palestinian refugee displaced from Haifa, the lands of Sheikh Muwannis, or Deir Yassin – they will tell that a decolonised Palestine is, at a minimum, the right of Palestinians’ return to an autonomous political unit from the river to the sea. When self-proclaimed ‘anti-zionists’ use rhetoric like ‘Israel-Palestine’ – or worse, ‘Palestine-Israel’ – we wonder: where do you think ‘Israel’ exists? On which land does it lay, if not Palestine? This is nothing more than an attempt to legitimise a colonial state; the name you are looking for is Palestine – no hyphen required. At a minimum, anti-zionist formations should cut out language that forces upon Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies the violence of colonial theft. 

[...]

The common choice to centre the Oslo Accords, international humanitarian law, and the human rights paradigm over socio-historical Palestinian realities not only limits our analysis and political interventions; it restricts our imagination of what kind of future Palestinians deserve, sidelining questions of decolonization to convince us that it is the new, bad settlers in the West Bank who are the source of violence. Legitimate settlers, who reside within the bounds of Palestinian geographies stolen in 1948 like Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, are different within this narrative. Like Breaking the Silence, they can be enlightened by learning the error of colonial violence carried out in service of the bad settlers. They can supposedly even be our solidarity partners – all without having to sacrifice a crumb of colonial privilege or denounce pre-1967 zionist violence in any of its cruel manifestations. As a result of this course of thought, solidarity organisations often showcase particular Israelis – those who renounce state violence in service of the bad settlers and their ongoing colonisation of the West Bank – in roles as professionals and peacemakers, positioning them on an equal intellectual, moral, or class footing with Palestinians. There is no recognition of the inherent imbalance of power between these Israelis and the Palestinians they purport to be in solidarity with – stripping away their settler status. The settler is taken out of the historical-political context which afforded them privileged status on stolen land, and is given the power to delineate the Palestinian experience. This is part of the historical occlusion of the zionist narrative, overlooking the context of settler-colonialism to read the settler as an individual, and omitting their class status as a settler. 

It is essential to note that Palestinians have never rejected Jewish indigeneity in Palestine. However, the liberation movement has differentiated between zionist settlers and Jewish natives. Palestinians have established a clear and rational framework for this distinction, like in the Thawabet, the National Charter of Palestine from 1968. Article 6 states, ‘The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.’ When individuals misread ‘decolonisation’ as ‘the mass killing or expulsion of Jews,’ it is often a reflection of their own entanglement in colonialism or a result of zionist propaganda. Perpetuating this rhetoric is a deliberate misinterpretation of Palestinian thought, which has maintained this position over a century of indigenous organising.  Even after 100 years of enduring ethnic cleansing, whole communities bombed and entire family lines erased, Palestinians have never, as a collective, called for the mass killing of Jews or Israelis. Anti-zionism cannot shy away from employing the historical-political definitions of ‘settler’ and ‘indigenous’ in their discourse to confront ahistorical readings of Palestinian decolonial thought and zionist propaganda. 

[...]

In the context of the United States, the most threatening zionist institutions are the entrenched political parties which function to maintain the status quo of the American empire, not Hillel groups on university campuses or even Christian zionist churches. While the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) engage in forms of violence that suppress Palestinian liberation and must not be minimised, it is crucial to recognise that the most consequential institutions in the context of settler-colonialism are not exclusively Jewish in their orientation or representation: the Republican and Democratic Party in the United States do arguably more to manufacture public consent for the slaughtering of Palestinians than the ADL and AIPAC combined. Even the Progressive Caucus and the majority of ‘The Squad’ are guilty of this.

Leila Shomali and Lara Kilani

[zvaigzdelasas]

A court in Germany has overturned a Europe-wide travel ban imposed by German authorities on Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, the British Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks saving lives in Gaza at the beginning of Israel’s ongoing genocide.

In recent weeks, Abu Sitta has been barred from entering France and the Netherlands in order to speak about the Israeli war crimes he witnessed during his 43 days working as a doctor under Israel’s savage and indiscriminate bombardment.[...]

The draconian German ban constituted “a serious breach of freedom of movement and expression in Europe and now a judge has ruled that the travel ban should be overturned,” said the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) and European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), which assisted in the case.

“This is a significant victory for freedom of speech and a significant turning point in challenging the chilling environment that many Palestinian human rights advocates have to operate in,” the two civil rights groups added.

The ban on Abu Sitta had also drawn criticism from Human Rights Watch, which asserted that the “attempts to prevent him from sharing his experience treating patients in Gaza risks undermining Germany’s commitment to protect and facilitate freedom of expression and assembly and to nondiscrimination.”

15 May 24

[ghada-zaki]

I am Ghada Ikrayyem, I am 23 years old and I am a Palestine refugee from Gaza.

Being the oldest sister among six girls, I've always wanted to set a good example for them. I aim to be a strong woman who breaks through any limitations to reach her goals.

Since I have always been very curious and loved taking on challenges, I chose to become a solar energy technician.

I received a training course on solar panels at UNRWA training centre in Gaza, and thanks to my achievements, I won the International Green Skills Competition from the European Union Training Foundation, which made me one of the most influential women in Palestine in 2021.

Two years ago, the European Parliament invited me in Venice, at the Annual Conference on the Global State of Human Rights, where I spoke in a panel on youth as change-makers.

I was invited to give voice to Gaza youth, and to highlight the importance and impact that education has on women’s careers in a male-dominated environment.

A job followed, opening new doors. And my ambitions didn’t stop there. I enrolled in university, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in commerce, because I wanted to become an entrepreneur in Gaza.

And then the war came. And it took everything from me: my father, my brother, my home, my room, my office, my smile, and my memories. My family and I are traumatized now, because of what we are going through.

I was looking forward to graduating and celebrating with my family. But now all my dreams and everything I owned have turned to ashes under the rubble.

I am the sole provider for my family, we have nothing left.

On the 188th day of the genocide, I have lost everything, literally everything. The Israeli occupation took my father and my deaf brother from me. They killed them with an air strike. They deprived me of my beloved father and my caring, innocent brother. We did not find any trace of my father due to the intensity of the missile’s force, which shattered his body into small pieces. He has no grave, they even deprived us of my father's body. I can't bear more losses. I don't want a luxurious life. I just want to survive. I just want to get out of Gaza with what's left of my family. We have become 10 people instead of 12.

Malnutrition gnaws at my younger siblings. Their frail bodies bear the scars of hunger. I fear their condition will worsen, their innocence fading like a dying ember.

Your donation is our lifeline. With it, we can survive. Time slips through our fingers, and I refuse to lose another loved one. Please, help us evacuate. Your generosity is our only hope, our chance to breathe beyond the blockade.

Thank you for being our beacon of compassion 🙏

Gaza, my beloved home, holds my heart. Yet, as Palestinian refugees, where are our fundamental rights? For 15 years, Gaza has been under blockade and constant fighting, leaving lasting wounds on our people and our lives. And now this terrible war.

I am trying to get out of here with all my families and collect money for this, but it is hard🥺!

Please continue talking about Gaza and what is happening here.

[good-old-gossip]

Palestinian Children, Men and Women were and are being SEXUALLY and PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED after being KIDNAPPED by Israeli Terrorists

An internal UN report, revealed by The Guardian, unveils shocking details of the brutal treatment faced by Palestinian detainees in Israeli detention centres. The report, based on interviews with released Palestinians, documents a litany of abuses including beatings, dog attacks, stress positions, and sexual assault. According to the report, just over 1,000 detainees have been released since December, but it estimates that more than 4,000 men, women and children have been rounded up in Gaza since 7 October. The accusations, which include widespread sexual assault, are consistent with accounts collected by human rights organisations. The UNRWA report says: “Methods of ill-treatment reported included physical beatings, forced stress positions for extended periods of time, threats of harm to detainees and their families, attacks by dogs, insults to personal dignity and humiliation such as being made to act like animals or getting urinated on, use of loud music and noises, deprivation of water, food, sleep and toilets, denial of the right to practice their religion (to pray) and prolonged use of tightly locked handcuffs causing open wounds and friction injuries. “The beatings included blunt force trauma to the head, shoulders, kidneys, neck, back and legs with metal bars and the butts of guns and boots, in some cases resulting in broken ribs, separated shoulders and lasting injuries,” the report states.

[leftistfeminista]

Israel tied a Palestinian coed into a banana position during her menstrual period while denying her underwear or tampons

In a long corridor, Israeli intelligence operatives were standing and clapping sarcastically as jailers were taking handcuffed Mays Abu Ghosh to a military interrogation cell.

“They were mocking me, saying I'd die in the interrogation,” Mays told Anadolu Agency.

Amid her menstrual cycle, Mays was tied to the chair by her hands and ankles and stretched her body into a banana shape for hours, making it impossible to sleep.

“I wasn’t able to walk, the jailers were holding me to the cell,” Mays added.

May's hands were constantly bleeding due to the shackles. She refused to be subjected to another military interrogation session, so the intelligence officer grabbed Mays and slammed her against the wall.

Mays continued: "They didn't provide me with any tampons or undergarments I needed in this delicate period for any woman in the world."

33 days of torture

Gosh, 24, of the Qalandiya refugee camp, is a journalism and media student at Birzeit University who was arrested on Aug. 29, 2019, and then subjected to horrific torture in solitary confinement for 33 days at Al-Maskobya Interrogation Center.

During her confinement at the notorious facility, she lost 12 kilograms (26.5 pounds).

“The officers were constantly trying to convince me that I had gone insane and was trying to kill myself, so they brought social workers, but they were actually other officers,” Mays recounted.

When those officers were in the cell with Mays, she showed them the wounds and bruises she suffered as a result of the abuse she had been subjected to and asked them: "Who wants to kill another person? I'm a student, and you're detaining me."

Mays frequently asked for painkillers to alleviate the pains in her head and muscles, but she was usually denied.

During the interrogation sessions, the officers deliberately forced Mays to hear the screams of detainees subjected to physical torture in military interrogation, while also threatening her that what would happen with her would be even more horrible.

“They threatened me that I'd be out here either dead or paralyzed, and they threatened to rape me too,” she said.

Mays was not allowed to wear a hair scrunchie because the officers were constantly beating, punching, kicking, smacking, and pulling her hair.

“I was tearing the plastic bag they put breakfast food in and using its strips to tie down my hair, but they were taking it from me,” Mays recounted.

Mays was kept in one of the cells for several days with a bug rat that lurked in the sewers and attacked her while she was sleeping, indicating a high risk of infection transmission to Mays.

She was completely isolated for 33 days, unable to communicate with any lawyers or human rights groups. She lived in terrible conditions due to the constant torture she was subjected to, as well as the filthy cell where sewage overflowed, soaking her thin sleeping mattress.

Horrific tales of Palestinian girls in Israeli jails

PALESTINIAN journalism student Mays Abu Ghosh has been tortured in an Israeli jail, her family alleged today as human rights groups warn of systemic abuse of prisoners by authorities.

Her mother said Ms Abu Ghosh’s face was “full of bruises” and barely recognisable after 30 days of interrogation at the notorious Moscovia detention centre in Jerusalem.

“I could not hug her due to the pain hurting all of her body,” she explained.

Ms Abu Ghosh, who is studying at Bir Zeit University, has been held in prison since August 28 when she was detained along with five other young Palestinians.

She has been campaigning against the torture and treatment of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

According to Addameer, Ms Abu Ghosh was forced into a number of stress positions during her interrogation, including the so-called “banana.”

[intersectionalpraxis]

"Gaza’s government says that 15,694 children have been killed and 17,000 are without parents after 250 days of Israel’s war on Gaza."

"At a press briefing in Qatar, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says some changes proposed by Hamas to ceasefire deal are not workable."

"Gaza’s Ministry of Health warns that hospitals, health centres and the only oxygen station in the Gaza City governorate are at risk of going out of service due to a lack of fuel."

"Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad say they submitted a response to a UN-backed ceasefire proposal to mediators in Qatar and Egypt."

“Homes, hospitals, schools, universities, agriculture, the economy… devastated. And still the bombs fall,” says a UNICEF official from inside Gaza."

"Hezbollah announces that one of its senior commanders was killed in an Israeli attack on Lebanon."

"At least 37,202 people have been killed and 84,932 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s attacks stands at 1,139, with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza."

I will keep emphasizing this, as many have for decades -Israel does not have the right to exist -they are a terrorist settler-colonial state. Israel has been and continues to commit mass war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide -and their 'allies' continue to insist they are 'defending' themselves in the most evil and heinous of ways instead of stopping and sanctioning them.

Many will see these figures and numbers as abstract and it boils my blood because EVERY single Palestinian child orphaned has a name and memories and have been loved by those people genocided and taken away from them during such a vulnerable time in their lives, and who themselves has been injured not just emotionally and psychologically for the rest of their lives but most likely has permanent physical injuries because many children in Gaza have amputations. I remember watching a video recently of a 10 year old taking care of their toddler sibling because their mother was killed, and I just wonder how ANYONE can continue feeling numb to this incessant violence. And that despite Hamas offering many deals -many of which INCLUDE hostage exchanges, the US still keeps painting them as terrorists and not the IOF...

I will say all empires fall eventually and they will fall so miserably.

[ninakoll]

some of you might remember the court case led by the human rights centre in my country from december - long story short, my wife along with 4 other protesters were arrested at a demonstration in solidarity with Palestine for the phrase "from the river to the sea." it is a peaceful call for an end to the ongoing occupation, but the cops decided it was a call for violence. court is expensive and the case unfortunately is not over yet.

❣️ here is a link to the estonian human rights centre and their fundraisers!! ❣️ they also are currently helping a refugee trans woman reunite with her partner who is seeking asylum from estonia (the country rejected granting her asylum initially bc they're not married, ignoring the fact gay marriage isn't even possible in russia), so any kind of donation or share would be of a lot of help to the organization and everyone they support.

to personally help out, i'm offering pay-what-you-want commissions for the time being; 🩹 so if you donate at the link (after choosing the sum you can skip the isikukood part, it's for estonian residents id number to get tax reduction!) just let me know. visa/mastercard works, as well as basic EE banks of course!

you can just send me a screenshot that you've donated and let me know how much - anything above 2 EUR - and write to me what/who you'd like me to draw. if you donate over 10 dollars/euros i'll do something fancyful best to my abilities and try to match the amount donated..!!! you can send me a screenshot here thru tumblr or over email: katarina.skott@gmail.com. and please don't hesitate to ask if you're unsure about anything.

👇👇👇 more details on the case so far below!! 👇👇👇

the lowest court level ended up rejecting the protesters' plead of not guilty after extensive hearings, so the organization is taking the case a step further, to the highest court in estonia. what's more hopeful about the case this time around is that it's the supreme court of estonia and they hold legitimate power to change the laws! which would mean, if they look at this case they would hopefully ultimately end up changing the laws concerning freedom of speech, as currently it is a very messily worded law that basically gives the police too much freedom to arrest people, based completely on personal judgment and held biases. dangerous police state stuff. the supreme court is also more likely to handle this case professionally as the previous court level mostly handles divorce + work disputes...

personally... let me tell you, it's so difficult to watch court hearings where everyone is deliberately obtuse and bullying your wife relentlessly about pointless shit like geography and telling them snidely to try slogans like "I'M WORRIED" at protests in the future instead, as to not stir trouble lol. dude, children are dying out there. acab. i'm also very haunted by the casual racism on such a high state level. it's been a whirlwind of exhaustion all while trying our best to stay active and fight for palestinians rights to just exist as well. sooo fucked up our country is like this. trying my best to stay hopeful about the future. immensely grateful to the human rights centre for their love and support through it all and the important work they do every day.

thanks for reading this long text, my inbox is open if you have any questions! thank you all so much for the support!! ;_;

[vyorei]

Multiple rights groups call on the UNSC to urgently adopt the Jordanian ceasefire resolution being presented tomorrow, Friday the 27th of October 2023

[jewishvitya]

Hi, I stumbled upon your political posts (and then Yuri, you might get me to watch it now) and I find your perspective fascinating. Maybe it's because I grew up with rather a lot of exposure to Palestinians and various peace movements, but your experience is alien to me, and I am really thankful to be able to read it.

I would like to ask, what do you define as Zionism? As the last month taught me that no two people define this term the same. For me it is the ability for the Jewish people to control our own life in a land that we are bound to, and that has no contradiction with the Palestinian doing the same on this land, that they are bound to it as well. No pressure to answer, just pure curiosity.

And if I may offer some hope for our future? On the fourth day of the war, someone who helps in one of the donation centres for the displaced Israelis ask in the group chat if there is a way to pass the extra clothing and equipment to the people of Gaza. In the past two month I got invites for over a dozes or meeting between Israelis and Palestinians, meetings were both sides shared their sorrows and hopes. When an acquaintance was raising money to help a Bedouin family whose house was hit by a rocket, he has to tell people to stop donating. People in my surrounding have been talking about the day after, building plans so they could help build a better place for both people. A long-fought battle in the courts was won, and a group of settlers were ordered to evacuate Palestinian land. Activists have been going to assist in the olive harvests in the West Bank, despite it all.

There is hope for us here.

Hi! Thank you! If you do watch YOI I hope you enjoy it lol.

I know my experience is not very common. Even other Israelis get shocked by the depth of the hatred and the indoctrination sometimes. I try to emphasize that it comes from the most extremist community we have, because I have no idea what the schooling looks like in other areas.

And sure, I'll try to explain, and maybe also why I choose to label myself as anti-zionist.

I don't know that I can give you a dictionary definition, because I define zionism mainly by what it did in practice - the colonizing of Palestine. And when I say colonizing, I'm not making claims about indigeniety or lack of it. I'm defining it through our tactics and our actions. Especially because early in the movement they openly used colonialist frameworks.

Some of the softer definitions of zionism, things like our right to self determination, our right to seek safety - these aren't things I'm against. And I understand that within zionism there were other proposed ideas that weren't necessarily meant to end up with an ethnostate, resulting in ethnic cleansing. So I know zionism is more complicated than what we see in Israel. But what we see now is the reality people are living as the outcome.

If we came here and said "we've been longing to go back here for such a long time, we suffered so much abuse, we want to live alongside you in our shared homeland, can we find a way to ensure our safety and yours" - this would have been a different conversation. Still complicated, because mass immigration is complicated, but different.

In reality, we destroyed communities to manufacture an ethnic majority. Tore a whole society apart and shattered it, spread it all over the world. We killed and expelled and traumatized. I called it the cycle of abuse on the scale of nations - taking horrors we suffered and inflicting them on others. So given the practical results of the zionist movement, I can't treat those softer definitions as the "true" definitions that people should go by.

I keep thinking about Jewish refugees being given the homes of Palestinians with meals still on the table. Because of course we have a right to food and shelter, but not at their expense. And I know you agree with me on this.

When I say I oppose zionism, that's generally because I'm talking about the reality, the impact the movement had on human lives, not an idealized version we might imagine or a philosophy someone wrote about that never came to be.

For me, if I want to talk about our safety in our ancestral homeland and detach it from the horrors committed by Israel, zionism isn't the right framework. And after all the destruction we caused the land to conquer and colonize it, if I want to talk about our connection to it, I think zionism shouldn't be the word I'm using.

There's also an aspect of, by insisting on defining zionism through a nicer idea rather than harm done to real people, I see it as taking away a language that oppressed people are using to talk about their oppression.

I hope that makes sense.

I really want us to find a different way to work towards safety, without it being at the expense of another group of people.

And thank you for that last paragraph. I definitely have hope. It's hard, seeing videos of our soldiers being so gleeful about the destruction. I lost a friend of over ten years because of the callous and cruel things he said over the past couple of months, and I can't bring myself to repeat them. But I know that better things are possible, and I'm glad we're building towards them. I'm terrified that our government won't let us move in that direction, but we're going to push there anyway.

[sayruq]

The Israeli army is likely to carry out a fresh massacre in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, initiating a new round of forced evacuation orders against its estimated 50,000 citizens who remained in the area. The UN and other international parties need to take immediate action to protect Palestinian civilians. After declaring the town of Beit Lahia to be a "dangerous combat zone" and threatening to "act with extreme force," the Israeli army started to launch heavy air and artillery attacks on the town, followed by fresh evacuation orders. The Israeli army set up shelters for the town of Beit Lahia's residents to evacuate towards known shelters in blocks number 1770, 1766, but these were originally destroyed areas that are unfit for any form of life and lack water supply as well as functioning sewage systems. The two designated evacuation points are unsafe areas and, like all areas of the town of Beit Lahia in particular, and the northern Gaza Strip in general, have previously been subjected to widespread destruction, including shelter centres and public facilities, as a result of the ongoing Israeli military attack since October 7. In light of the ongoing crimes of genocide and forced displacement policy in the Gaza Strip, every area designated by the Israeli army as a military operation area is completely destroyed, subjected to a strict and oppressive siege, and horrifically massacred, as the remaining residents have nowhere safe to flee. In the absence of strong international accountability mechanisms and any swift international action to put an end to these crimes, which have been going on for six months, the military operation that the Israeli army launched in the town of Beit Lahia will result in more serious crimes and violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The town of Beit Lahia was the scene of multiple large-scale military operations by the Israeli army during the previous seven months of its military assault on the Gaza Strip. One such operation occurred at the end of December last year, which resulted in extensive damage to homes, infrastructure, and civil and service facilities, with the town's buildings and infrastructure being destroyed to the tune of approximately 90%. The Israeli army's Beit Lahia military operation is taking place on the 200th day of the massive military assault on the Gaza Strip, which has had horrific consequences due to its direct and deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians amid the shameful international inaction to oblige Israel to abide by international humanitarian law and the orders of the International Court of Justice to stop its genocide crime.

[colinbrooklyn]

Support Palestinian organizations during Project for Awesome 2024 #P4A2024 🇵🇸

You can vote today, tomorrow, and on Sunday before 12 PM EST 🗳️

Vote for Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

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"'Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies what we have witnessed here,' says Dr Mohammed Tahir, an orthopaedic surgeon from London. 'People bring in their children, who are dead on arrival, and want us to try to resuscitate them – even though their bodies show no sign of life. They then leave carrying the limbs of their dead children in cardboard boxes.'

'The Palestinian medical students are the real heroes,' says Tahir. 'They have had their universities destroyed and flock to us for any knowledge we can impart that may help them, help others. They are young volunteers, who aren’t getting paid, but turn up to work every day, trying desperately to prop up a failing health system because the world has failed them.' One day, the doctors say they visited the sites of the destroyed Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals, where the mass graves of hundreds of Palestinians were recently discovered, many stripped naked with their hands tied, according to reports published by the UN human rights office.

'It was apocalyptic,' says Dr Laura Swoboda, a wound care specialist from Wisconsin. 'The sheer destruction was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Decomposing bodies still stuck beneath the rubble. All around us, we could smell death.'

As she walked among the debris, Swoboda says she saw overturned ambulances and a burned-out dialysis centre; medical supplies scattered everywhere and the sound of black body bags flapping in the wind. 'There were notes scribbled on the walls of theatre rooms by doctors who had been hiding there,' says Swoboda.

... 'One day I went to the emergency room and lying on a stretcher was a small boy, the exact same size as my four-year-old son; his ashened baby hands were becoming toddler hands,' says Kattan. 'His name was Mahmoud and he was a victim of an Israeli bombing campaign that left more than 75% of his body burnt. His eyebrows were singed off, his hair smelt of smoke.'

Mahmoud lay crying in pain as Kattan unwrapped his wounds; an ultrasound revealed a shattered spleen and crushed lungs. 'We did not have the resources to save him and he died in front of us – cold and in pain with no one who knew him,' she says, holding back tears. 'I wish I could have protected him. He was only four.'"