"All day there was shooting and bombing. We didn't have anything to eat, we didn't have water to drink. We couldn't sleep. We were sitting and suddenly there was bombing on our house and everyone started to run. I looked to my side, took hold of my boy Mohammad and I started to run. As I ran I looked back and saw on the floor my mother, two cousins and three of my children. All dead."
--Wael Samouni, after Israelis bombed his home in Gaza City, killing his wife, three of his children, his brothers wife and their daughter, January 5, 2009.
*
"We started searching but it was hard with the dust, the darkness and the smoke. We went back home and searched everywhere. We found arms, legs, half a head. We didn't find a complete body. They are targeting civilians, children, old women. They want to crack down on Hamas, but Hamas is not in the houses. It's on the front line. Go there and kill them. Not us."
--Samer Abu Asha, after the Israeli rocket attacks incinerated his brother, Amer Abu Asha, along with his two wives, three sons and one daughter, January 5, 2009.
*
"I saw women and men parents slapping their faces in grief, screaming, some of them collapsed to the floor. They knew their children were dead. In the morgue, most of the killed appeared to be children. In the hospital, there wasn't enough space for the wounded."
--AP photographer Matt Hamdan writing about the victims of today's Israeli bombing of a UN school in which more than 350 Palestinians civilians - mostly women and children - had taken refuge, January 5, 2009.
*
"I saw a lot of women and children wheeled in. A lot of the wounded were missing limbs and a lot of the dead were in pieces."
--Shifa Hospital official Fares Ghanem, speaking about today's Israeli bombing of a UN school
*
"Hermetically under siege, after decades of occupation and years of Intifada in which Israel destroyed the little infrastructure that the Strip ever had, following many months of total embargo on everything except basic food products, which brought the economy to a halt, with daily invasions of Israeli tanks and extra-judicial killings by Israeli airplanes, and now with gasoline supplies cut and electricity supply to be reduced soon, the Gaza Strip (1.5 million people, 80 percent refugees) is no longer the world's biggest open-air prison. It's a huge laboratory for human experimentation, run by the Israeli army."
--Ran HaCohen, Beware of Barak, Dec. 27, 2007
The Experiment
The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza
action music fidak ya ghaza(2).mp3
G Is For Genocide, W Is For War
By Mary Sparrowdancer (*)
Webster's defines war as "a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations." It defines genocide as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group." While many people have been deliberately misled by the mainstream media to think that there is an ongoing "war" between the state of Israel and "Palestinian terrorists" bent on taking Israel's land away, the truth is that only one side in this "war" has tanks, drones, Apache attack helicopters, F-16s, unconfirmed nuclear weapons, a deadly navy complete with gunboats, an army equipped with sophisticated and offensive weaponry, a sophisticated air force and billions of dollars in military funding. Only one side is even recognized as a state. The other side consists of millions of largely unarmed Palestinian refugees who have been running for their lives for almost 60 years now. They have been running for their lives on their own ancestral lands, which have been violently confiscated from them by the state of Israel. It is the Palestinians who have had their land taken away. Not Israel.
Israel declared itself a state within Palestine in 1948. It declared itself a state for Jewish people only, and since then has continuously confiscated the ancestral lands of the Palestinians and then renamed each piece of the confiscated property, "Israel." Most do not realize that Israel is not a contiguous "state," at all. It is a place of strange borders, fences, checkpoints, and apartheid walls snaking through Palestine, sometimes cutting Palestinian farmers off from their backyard farms and orchards, and in some places dotting the countryside with hundreds of Israeli "settlement camps," and "outposts." This has fragmented Palestine and Palestinian society. Israeli colonization is causing borders to be unclear and constantly shifting, and this is a recipe for endless unrest and disaster.
For the 60 years that Zionist Israel has been taking land that does not belong to it, there has not been one day of peace. The Palestinians, including unarmed women, children, and the elderly, have been repeatedly driven from their homes and made homeless. Many families have experienced this more than once. They have been forced to live in tents or caves, or refugee camps, only to be driven from their land again whenever Israel decides it needs more land to call "Israel." Israel has also driven Palestinians off their lands when it has decided to build huge walls wherever it pleases, as it did between Palestinian Gaza and the Gaza border of Egypt. Gaza, with its 1.5 million inhabitants, is now completely cut off from the rest of the world. Israel has made it into the largest prison camp on earth.
Palestinian civilians, including children, are being kidnapped by Israeli military forces. They are being arrested, tortured, maimed and imprisoned without charges or legal representation. They are currently being starved, terrorized, stoned, blown apart by tanks, deprived of their water, and run over by bulldozers and military machinery rampaging through their villages. They have been stripped naked at "checkpoints" and humiliated, tormented by fanatic Zionist "settlers," murdered, run over by hit and run drivers, and generally treated with such barbaric inhumanity that it overwhelms the imagination and defies description. The Palestinians are not permitted to defend themselves or to resist this deplorable treatment. Anyone who dares to "resist" faces imprisonment, or death. Those daring to take part in nonviolent protests are frequently met with violence by the Israeli forces. The Israeli military frequently demands entry into Palestinian homes without search warrants or reasonable cause, sometimes just breaking down the walls with tanks and bulldozers. Once inside, they take whatever properties they want to take, including life savings. (1) (2) (3) (4)
All of this is clearly illegal and in violation of international laws, but is happening because most of these horrifying events are rarely reported in mainstream news, or if they are reported, we are led to believe that Israel is merely "defending" itself, when in fact, it has been a terrorist aggressor since day one. In addition, the atrocities are now also being hidden from view behind those giant apartheid walls that Israel has been constructing throughout the Palestine.
Unfortunately, and shamefully, a large portion of Israel's offensive terrorist activities which have led to the deaths of many Palestinians, Lebanese and others including Americans, has been funded or made possible by US tax dollars: this is our tax dollar at work. While the current US administration was completely unable to defend the US from the planned 9/11 atrocity, (which we have been asked to believe was slowly carried out by a group of unskilled men armed with box-cutters), while we have yet to see an adequate clean up and rebuilding after hurricane Katrina, while we have just witnessed the collapse of an entire bridge due to its deadly state of well-known disrepair, the White House occupants recently pledged an additional $30 billion of your tax dollars for Israel's already staggering military arsenal. This $30 billion pledge, we are told, is for the "defense" of the state of Israel. (5)
Although the Palestinians have waited for nearly 60 years for international humanitarian groups to come to their aid and help them, very little has been done until recently. As seen in the referenced links below, the Palestinians are now arming themselves with cameras, computers, and video equipment, and bravely positioning themselves near the line of fire, documenting the incursions of Israeli miliary tanks and bulldozers into refugee camps. They have been filming their Palestinian brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, their mothers and fathers running for their lives.
If the world would not listen or could not hear the Palestinian cries for help during the past 60 years, we can now see for ourselves what is happening. There is no excuse for us to allow it to continue. Sixty years is a long time to wait for help, and perhaps help is finally about to arrive in the form of awareness. The world seems to be waking up and discovering the other side of Zionism: the surprising anti-Semitic side, in which Zionist Israel has been slaughtering and torturing the Palestinian Semites for 60 years.
Armed only with cameras, the Palestinian journalists have been filming and photographing Israeli atrocities that few outside of the region have known about or even suspected. This, in turn, has made photojournalism one of the most dangerous of all professions in that region, because the Zionists do not want the rest of the world to see what is being filmed, photographed and written about. Israel is now targeting, gunning down, and arresting the unarmed journalists. (6) (7) (8) (9)
Palestinian journalist, Khalid Amayreh, spoke of other problems the journalists also face. Khalid's own family was forced to live in a cave for 22 years after six members of his family were murdered by Israeli soldiers and all of his family's property was confiscated. After eventually receiving a master's degree in journalism, he put the degree to work inPalestine, where lives with his wife and family. In addition to the personal safety issues, Khalid stated some of the other obstacles that journalists face. "There are serious restrictions facing journalists, including arrest, harassment, and especially being prevented from traveling abroad."
The journalists, however, are determined. They will continue risking their lives in order to reveal to the world what life is like in Zionist-occupied Palestine. There are no horror stories more poignant than those of a people who have lost all of their human rights. The truth is now in front of us, and it is staring at us. The truth is staring at us and it is awaiting our response.
It is staring at us through the unseeing eyes of lifeless and mangled babies and children. It is staring at us through the tears of old men who do not know why they have been gunned down in their front yards. The truth is staring at us through the tears of the mothers who have lost their children during midnight and dawn Israeli military incursions into sleeping Palestinian refugee camps. It is staring at us through the tears of the fathers who, in shock, have carried their dead children through the streets. The truth is staring at us through the tears of an entire nation of people who have lost everything, including every human right ever established, expected, or guaranteed since humanity's earliest civilizations first claimed to be civilized.
Israel, which claims to be a "democracy," is not even operating according to the ancient, pre-draconian Code of Hammurabi. There are no rights at all for the Palestinians over whom the Zionists are lording themselves. With no rules or regulations pertaining to human rights or civil liberties, Israel is a military state that is completely out of control.
The Palestinians do not even have the right to live. Nor do they have rights to their own property. They do not have the right to life, nor do they have the right to eat, to drink their own water, to harvest their own gardens, or to receive aid from the rest of the world. They do not have the right to freely move about in their own land. They cannot pass through their neighborhoods and through other camps and villages unless they have Israeli permission. The permissions are revoked without notice. They must have Israeli permission in order to tend their orchards and farms, and these permissions have also been denied to the farmers who own the land. They have no voice. Some of the orchards have been burned down by Israelis, while others have been uprooted by bulldozers, and the trees carried off and delivered as gifts to the Zionist "settlers." What the Zionists want, the Zionists think they can take.
The justification for this entire nightmare is the Zionist claim that "God gave this land to me." Like everything else that makes no sense whatsoever in this ongoing tragedy, is the fact that a large number of Zionists are atheists. One must at least wonder, therefore, why we should abide by this alleged claim of a divine land grant "by God," which is being claimed by people who are atheists. (10)
The current Zionist US government is supporting this insanity and inhumanity, and recently helped block humanitarian aid into ravaged, hungry, and economically collapsingGaza in what appears to be collective punishment for the 1.5 million Gazans trapped there at the mercy of Israel. The Palestinian "crime" was electing into office a political party that did not meet with Israeli and US approval.
What one finds happening experimentally in Zionist Israel, one soon finds happening in Zionist USA. In mid July, one of the Christian Zionists occupying the White House signed a vaguely worded order that some feel might pose a serious threat to anti "war" activism regarding Iraq. The order appears to give authority to the Treasury to confiscate all property, including homes, land and money of anyone in the US perceived as "undermining efforts" of the government. One can be judged "guilty" by simply making humanitarian donations to "blocked" persons. What the Zionists want, the Zionists think they can take. (11)
The Israeli Zionists have taken away all God-given human rights from the Palestinian people, treating them in a similar manner to the way the American Indians were treated in the US. There is another God-given gift, however. It is a gift that no one can take from anyone, and it is called grace. Grace motivates people to be compassionate.
After the Trail of Tears, in which many American Indians were removed from their ancestral homes and forced to march hundreds of miles into a wilderness area, the subtle presence of grace was still alive and well. The Choctaw Indians were the first to walk the Trail of Tears. It was when the Choctaw Indians heard about the potato famine in Irelandwhere people were starving, that grace flowed through them in a powerful way. The tribe took up a collection. Although homeless and in poverty themselves, the Choctaws raised $710, which they then sent as food money to the Irish people they had never met.
A similar grace can be seen in the cameramen who are now risking their lives in order to help end Palestinian suffering. The risks are very real as you can see in the links below, and some have paid the ultimate price and given their lives for this cause. We, the rest of the world, owe it to them to pay close attention to what they are filming and what they are risking their lives to tell us about. Armed only with cameras, they have placed themselves on the frontlines of a one-sided "war," that is not a war at all. It is genocide, and it needs to be stopped, now.
G is not only for genocide. G can also be for grace.
* * * * * * * * *
Cited references:
1. Video footage of the destruction of Jenin, 2002. Part 1. 8/5/2007video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2373468531206028191&...
2. Video footage of the destruction of Jenin, 2002. Part 2. 8/5/2007video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3216988889570484470&...
3. A four-minute slide show set to music of Outlandish. Do you know where your tax money is going? Who is paying for the Palestinian Holocaust that is being carried out by Israel? Song lyrics by Gihad Ali. 8/5/2007 www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKQqItZu4Is
4. Tobias, the full-length homemade documentary. Life in Palestine. 8/5/2007video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2347953151064740545
5. New US $30 billion "defense" package for Israel. 8/5/2007news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070729/wl_mideast_afp/mideastisraelus
6. Graphic video footage of cameraman being repeatedly shot. He later had both legs amputated. (8/5/2007) www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3yN1Qnz3LQ
7. Photograph of young Palestinian photojournalist, Mohammed Al Zanoun, before he was shot by the Israelis. www.currentissues.tv/mohammad-az-zanoun.jpg
8. Photograph of young Palestinian photojournalist, Mohammed Al Zanoun after being shot by the Israelis. www.planetenonviolence.org/photo/406543-499518.jpg
9. What Mohammed Al Zanoun was photographing when the Israeli army gunned him down. (Warning: Very graphic.) electronicintifada.net/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/12/4934
10. Young Zionist, trespassing on Palestinian property and explaining the sacred land grant from God, using very graphic terms. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O9W3UsdRyM&NR=1
11. Professor Michel Chossudovsky. July 20, 2007. Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement. "Executive Order entitled 'Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq' provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of whoever opposes the US led war." www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6377
-----------------------------
(*) Mary Sparrowdancer is an independent journalist and the author of a bestselling book, The Love Song. The Special Edition is currently being printed and will be available soon. She is of Irish, Italian and Narragansett (American Indian) descent. She and her two children are among the last of the remaining descendents of the Narragansett Indians.You can visit her website : www.sparrowdancer.com.
--> This article originally appeared on www.rense.com
(I studied graphic arts and sculpture and I also have a degree in journalism. I have 8 years of experience as a graphic creator. I speak fluently French, English, Dutch and a bit of Polish, Spanish and Russian...)
In The Same Prison Together
In The Same Prison Together
By Sonja Karkar (*)
As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will recreate the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.
Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of thinking about people's relationship with God and with each other. It shook the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people. There was indeed much to hope for.
However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel's occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, many Christians will again ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and in their land that Jesus was born. Priests will chant, masses will be said, carols will be sung and nativity scenes will be created, but it is unlikely that many sermons will urge Christian congregations to speak out against the crimes being committed in Palestine.
Only recently, a delegation of eminent Australian Church leaders returned from visiting the Holy Land and reported their distress at "the suffering and fear experienced daily by large numbers of people." [1] The report criticizes Israel's military occupation for the "systematic harassment, physical and psychological oppression, widespread unemployment, poverty, and economic deprivation" [2] of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. No doubt these church leaders will encourage their ministries to spread the word before the momentum is lost, but there are many forces working against justice for the Palestinians. Their statement has already been criticized by the Israeli ambassador and they are likely to face objections not only from Jews who support a Zionist state in Israel, but also from Christian quarters.
A dangerous Christian ideology which endorses the rhetoric of Zionism and the conquest of all Palestine for Israel is making its presence felt in Australia. This Christian fervor for Israel has found expression in a revitalized Christian Zionism that began back in the sixteenth century [3] and is directed today against Islam and Muslims. In the US particularly, it has misconstrued the messianic and apocalyptic legacy of the Christian faith and has replaced the Jewish and communist Anti-Christ of Christian Zionism's earlier imaginings with an Islamic Anti-Christ. This Anti-Christ, it believes, will be defeated in Israel where all mankind will gather for the coming of the Messiah. Dubious theological reasoning aside, that the dispossession, degradation and humiliation of the Palestinians who have lived in this land for millennia, can be condoned on such a pretext is even more abhorrent and preposterous.
Unfortunately, the influence of this Christian Zionism is growing rapidly and threatens the thinking of a whole generation of mainstream Christians regardless of their denominations, including Christians in the Holy Land. Father Rafiq Khoury of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem gives a very disturbing account of Christian Zionism's effect on religion and politics. [4] Where once Christians and Muslims shared common values and aspirations in Palestinian society, Christian Zionism has succeeded in fragmenting this already battered community as it struggles to withstand Israel's punishing occupation. Amongst certain sections of this society, Christians and Muslims are now viewing each other with suspicion, and Christians in Palestine, like those abroad, are beginning to see Islam as the enemy. Needless to say, this has been enormously detrimental to the Palestine liberation movement.
It would surprise many Christians in the West that Palestinian Christians and Muslims have prayed in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity for centuries. In fact, the Qur'an -- the holy book of Islam -- refers often, and with great reverence, to Jesus and Mary. Muhammad himself preserved an icon of Mary and the child Jesus after the conquest of Mecca and ordered that it remain within the Ka'ba to which Muslims make their obligatory pilgrimage from all over the world. [5]
Since 638 CE, Muslims have had the right to pray in the south aisle of the church when the Patriarch of Jerusalem handed over Palestine to Caliph Omar as he swept into Bethlehem with his Arab armies. [6] Muslims recognize Jesus as the Christ, the mightiest Messenger of God who was born miraculously of the Virgin Mary and who, through God, was able to perform miracles. However, Christians and Muslims part ways on Christ's divinity. Muslims believe that there has always been and continues to be one God only and that joining Christ and the Holy Spirit with God the Father in what is known as the Trinity -- a major tenet of Christianity -- compromises that singular divinity of God.
It has not though affected their recognition of, and reverence for, Jesus and Mary. The highly regarded theologian of the early Christian Church, St. John of Damascus actually thought that Islam was merely another form of Christianity [7], and indeed today, St. John would probably be more comfortable with the practices and beliefs of Muslims than he would with the form of Christianity that has developed in the West, particularly Christian Zionism.
So much of the fear and antagonism we see today against Muslims come from ignorance. In Palestine, Christian and Muslims have lived together in harmony for centuries, and particularly in Bethlehem, they have not only shared Christmas celebrations, but even the Muslim feasts Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Ramadan fast and Eid al-Adha. As one young Bethlehem tour guide commented in 2002:
"We know how to celebrate together, because we know how to weep together. We have suffered as one people under 35 years of occupation. The same week that Mary, a Muslim mother of seven was killed in Beit Jala, Johnny, a 17-year-old, died in Manger Square as he was coming out of the Church of the Nativity, both shot by Israeli snipers. We're all inmates together, Muslims and Christians, in the same miserable prison called Palestine. We have no freedom, no peace, no jobs, no money for winter heating, no traveling to Jerusalem or between towns and villages, no future."
And that is the sum of what is so often forgotten in the search for peace and justice: the escalating inhuman situation suffered by the Palestinians -- Christians and Muslims.
Sing as we might this Christmas, the hopes and dreams of all the years is unlikely to be met in Bethlehem for those who live there. Nor are they likely to be met for the Palestinians barely hanging on to their miserable existence in Gaza, or the Palestinians in the other cities, towns and villages in the Holy Land and even less for the stateless Palestinians long deprived of hope in the refugee camps. Every chorister's hallelujah will just be a death knell for another generation of Palestinians and every Christmas reflection will become meaningless words of Christian faith, unless we are prepared to look beyond the tinsel and the feasting and really do something to stop Israel's crimes against both Christians and Muslims in Palestine.
----------------------
(*) Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia.
Endnotes
[1] Statement by Australian Church Leaders, Bethlehem, 18 December 2007.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Fr. Rafiq Khoury, "Effects of Christian Zionism on religion, Christian local churches and peace research", Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Jerusalem, 2004 (a presentation given at the Al-Sabeel International Conference on 15 April 2004).
[4] Ibid.
[5] Uri Rubin, "The Ka'ba: Aspects of its Ritual Function and Position in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986) 97-131.
[6] Dr G S P Freeman-Grenville, The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine Exploration Fund, January 1994.
[7] William Dalrymple, "What Muslims and Christians share: A Christmas meditation," The New Statesman, 19 December 2005.
--> This essay appeared on electronicintifada.net
The beauty of our beloved country Palestine.
Famous Zionists Quotes
-- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.
-- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989. Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister of Israel 1996 - 1999
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online
The misery behind the Israeli Occupation
For more info please visit www.occupation101.com.
Palestine before 1948
كلمات .. للوطن
كلمات .. للوطن
توفيق زياد
مثلما كنت ستبقى يا وطن
حاضراً في ورق الدّفلى ،
وعطر الياسمين
حاضراً في التين ، والزيتون ،
في طور سنين
حاضراً في البرق ، والرعد ،
وأقواس قزح
في ارتعاشات الفرح
حاضراً في الشفق الدامي ،
وفي ضوء القمر
في تصاوير الأماسي ،
وفي النسمة .. في عصف الرّياح
في الندى والساقية
والجبال الشمّ والوديان ،والأنهر
في تهليلة أمّ ..
وابتهالات ضحيّة ،
في دمى الأطفال ، والأطفال ..
في صحوة فجرٍ
فوق غاب السنديان
في الصّبا ، والولدنه
وتثنى السوسنه
في لغات الناس والطير ،
وفي كل كتاب
في المواويل التي
تصل الأرض
بأطراف السحاب
في أغاني المخلصين
وشفاه الضارعين
ودموع الفقراء البائسين
في القلوب الخضر ،
والأضلع ،
في كل العيون
مثلما كنت - ستبقى
يا وطن
حاضراً ..
كلّ زمانٍ ..
كلّ حين .
مثلما كنت ستبقى يا وطن
حاضراً في كل جرحٍ
وشظيّة
في صدور الثائرين الصامدين
حاضراً في صور القتلى
وعزم الشهداء
في تباشير الصباح
وأناشيد الكفاح
حاضراً في كل ميدانٍ وساح
والغد الطالع ..
من ..
نزف ...
الجراح
نحن أصحابك بابشر يا وطن
نحن عشاقك فابشر يا وطن
ننحت الصخر ونبني ونعمّر
ونلوك القيد حتى نتحرر
نجمع الأزهار والحلوى
ونمشي في اللهيب
نبذل الغالي ليبقى
رأسك المرفوع .. مرفوعاً
على مرِّ الزمن
نحن أصحابك ..
عشاقك ..
فابشر ،
يا وطن .. !!
This is the time in history to start boycotting.
People of conscience around the world from India to Europe, from Venezuela to the United States have chosen to boycott products made by the State of Israel and companies supporting Apartheid against the Palestinians. This is a world wide non-violent resistance movement which has taken on a new form since the renewed ethnic cleaning by the Israeli government. The U.S Senate voted 100% to support Israel's right to savagely ethnically cleanse the Palestinians , destroy their homes and infrastructure. Over 430 in Congress supported the genocide and 100% in the Senate. Why do our leaders continue to support Israeli blindly who has the 4th largest military in the world against a defenseless mostly civilian population? Why does the U.S. continue to use U.S. tax dollars to fund this genocidal assault against thewill of the people? Please write to your representatives and demand them to have enough backbone to put America first and not the interest of Israel. Tell them no more silence,no more complicity. Ask them to push Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza and stop using international banned chemical weapons against women and children. This is a time in history where you can say, I did not sit at home and do nothing.
العوووو أكل البلد..!!
العوووو أكل البلد..!!
Mirvat Sadeq
ولهم فلسطين ثالثة ، أيضا، تلك القديمة الكاملة القوام، والتي يسمونها التاريخية ، ويخصصّونها للخراريف في دور المسنّين، ولاستخدام الشعراء!
لهم حكومتان، واحدة ليبرالية معتدلة، وأخرى تعلن أنها لن تتخلى عن راية الجهاد!!
لديهم ثلاثة بحور: واحد محتل، وآخر "ميت"، وواحد في غزة جرت العادة أن يموت على شاطئه الفقراء في نزهات ساذجة ، بين الحرب والحرب !
لهم أيضاً ، أقصد الفلسطينيين، برلمانان: واحد يسمى "التشريعي" وآخر "الوطني"، ولهم في كل بلد سفارة ومقبرة للشهداء، ولديهم مستودع ضخم من الفصائل من كل الاتجاهات والعقائد والنظريات، ولديهم رعايا بالغو الانتماء والبكاء من مخيم شاتيلا وحتى أضيق شارع في التبت !
لديهم برنامجان للتحرير والاستقلال وبناء الدولة : واحد يدعي العقلانية والحكمة وينتهج "طولة البال" كاستراتيجية بعيدة المدى، وآخر مغرم بصناعة الصواريخ من مواسير المياه ويحلم بعكا !
...ولديهم رؤساء عديدون، كلهم قادة وحكماء، بل إن خبراتهم في القيادة جعلتهم ينشئون دولا صغيرة قبل ذلك في الفاكهاني وفي تونس ووو.... واستطاعوا أن يحكموا باقتدار وصرامة في كل الدول إلا في بلدهم !
في العام الماضي تنافس مرشحان مسيحيان على رئاسة الإكوادور، ونجح أحدهما، كلاهما من أصل فلسطيني !!
لديهم أول قبلة للمسلمين، ومن عندهم خرج السيد المسيح .
يُصدّرون الورد من غزة الى هولندا، والبندورة الى أوروبا، والشعر الحر، والملوخية، والزيتون، وصارت حطّتهم السوداء رمزا للاحتجاج والحرية في كل المظاهرات من مؤيدي شافيز الى مناهضي العولمة في دافوس، إلى الناشطين في مسيرات المبايعة للرئيس عمر حسن البشير !
لديهم وزيران للداخلية ونصف الشعب معتقلون في سجون اسرائيل، ووزيران للصحة وثلاثة أرباع الشعب مرضى، وثلاثة وزراء للخارجية ولا أحد يعترف بهم كدولة كاملة السيادة !!
زيّان رسميان للشرطة ولا أمن ولا أمان ، خمسة أعلام للبلد ولا بلد، تلفزيونان ونشرتان جويتان وفيلمان للسهرة.. ولا بطل ينتصر في آخر الفيلم !!
معبران ولا أحد يعبر، مطاران ولا عصفوراً صغيراً واحداً يستطيع أن يطير، جهازان للمخابرات ولا أحد يعلم إن كانت ستمطر مطراً في الليلة المقبلة أم دماً و... قذائف !
لديهم من الثروات والأموال العامة والخاصة ما يكفي لطرح عطاء لإنشاء دولة من خمسة طوابق ، ومن الخبراء ما يكفي لجعلها دولة عظمى ومنتجة، ومن الفاسدين ما يكفي لإفلاسها في خمسة أيام !
دخلوا كتاب غينيس بعدد الشهداء، وعدد العملاء، وعدد الأنبياء، وعدد الشعراء، وبأكبر صحن تبولة أقاموه في رام الله العام الماضي.. رغم الحصار الاقتصادي ورغم شُحّ البرغل والزيت !
لديهم منتخب لكرة القدم يتوزع لاعبوه في أندية أكثر من سبع دول أوروبية، ويحضرون عندما يدعوهم نداء الواجب.... الكرويّ !!
لدى الفلسطينيين ما يكفي لإنشاء دولة ، لديهم كل شيء ، كل شيء ، ربما تنقصهم فقط الإرادة ومنتخب للتنس الأرضي!!
Eye to Eye
Eye to Eye
by Gihad Ali
Look into my eyes
And tell me what you see.
You don't see a damn thing,
'cause you can't possibly relate to me.
You're blinded by our differences.
My life makes no sense to you.
I'm the persecuted Palestinian.
You're the American red, white and blue.
Each day you wake in tranquility,
No fears to cross your eyes.
Each day I wake in gratitude,
Thanking God He let me rise.
You worry about your education
And the bills you have to pay.
I worry about my vulnerable life
And if I'll survive another day.
Your biggest fear is getting ticketed
As you cruise your Cadillac.
My fear is that the tank that just left
Will turn around and come back.
American, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?
The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.
Yet do you know the truth
Of where your money goes?
Do you let your media deceive your mind?
Is this a truth that no one knows?
You blame me for defending myself
Against the ways of Zionists.
I'm terrorized in my own land
And I'm the terrorist?
You think you know all about terrorism
But you don't know it the way I do,
So let me define the term for you,
And teach you what you thought you knew.
I've known terrorism for quite some time,
Fifty-five years and more.
It's the fruitless garden uprooted in my yard.
It's the bulldozer in front of my door.
Terrorism breathes the air I breathe.
It's the checkpoint on my way to school.
It's the curfew that jails me in my own home,
And the penalties of breaking that curfew rule.
Terrorism is the robbery of my land,
And the torture of my mother,
The imprisonment of my innocent father,
The bullet in my baby brother.
So American, don't tell me you know about
The things I feel and see.
I'm terrorized in my own land
And the blame is put on me.
But I will not rest, I shall never settle
For the injustice my people endure.
Palestine is our land and there we'll remain
Until the day our homeland is secure.
And if that time shall never come,
Then we will never see a day of peace.
I will not be thrown from my own home,
Nor will my fight for justice cease.
And if I am killed, it will be in Falasteen.
It's written on my every breath.
So in your own patriotic words,
Give me liberty or give me death.
Apartheid Wall
The Israeli government call it "the security barrier." Palestinians call it the Apartheid wall." Twice as tall as the Berlin Wall, its projected span is 500 miles (805 kilometers). Artist call it "the greatest blank canvas in the world." Whatever it is called; for the Palestinians it is turning the territories into the worlds largest prison. Collective punishment for all the Palestinian people. How can the civilized western governments stand by and condone this brutal act of terror and injustice against the Palestinian people? How is this possible in this time when the U.S gives Israel $30 billion in aid over ten years? Virtually all of this money is used to buy weapons.
Please watch the Videos.
The Israeli Wall In Palestinian Lands
video.google.com/videoplay
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-
See Maps of the Wall Route
stopthewall.org/news/maps.
www.stopthewall.org/
An interview with Judge Richard Goldstone about Israel's conduct in the Gaza War
www.pbs.org/moyers/journal
Palestine Will Be Free فلسطين سوف تتحرر
Awakening Records is pleased to announce the release of the world's first animated peace music video on Palestine. Palestine will be Free' is performed by Awakening's latest music sensation - Maher Zain.
This is the first time an animated peace music video has been produced on Palestine: "We are recognised as pioneers and constantly pushing the bounds of creativity and innovation. This animated music video for our new star artist Maher Zain is just another step in that direction and certainly not the last", said Bara Kherigi, Director of Awakening Records. Destined to be an international success, the video features the story of a young brave Palestinian girl who never loses hope for a better future despite the harsh realities surrounding her.
The Occupation of Our Lives Introduction.
Dear Reader.
Prior to this time last year, an ugly massacre broke upon the heads of innocent civilians in the city of Gaza. The Gaza massacre was a three-week military conflict between Israel and the Gaza strip that took place during the winter of 2008-2009. Almost 1,400 were killed in the bloodshed and more than 5,300 Palestinians have been injured and 4,000 houses were destroyed. According to Amnesty International chemical weapons were also used in the civilian areas.
A group of Palestinians living in and outside of Palestine joined together to support one cause; that was to help raise awareness and organize campaigns that educated the public about the struggle the people of Gaza and Palestinians as a whole that face on a daily basis due to the occupation. Joining from North, East, South, and West of the globe, a title that held a true meaning to their lives; The Occupation of Our Lives.
As The Occupation of Our Lives believed that people should start paying more attention to what’s happening in Palestine, starting from 1948, where the state of Israel was created, to the Massacres Israel and the Zionists movement have committed against Palestinians such Deir Yassin massacre and the recent Gaza massacre, and the latest invasion of Al- Aqsa mosque.
It’s been almost 62 years since Palestine has been occupied, and The Occupation of Our Lives is on its way of raising awareness and organizing campaigns that provides information to the public about Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians. This group of individuals has not only been created for Gaza but for Palestine in general, because not only Gazans are suffering the pain of occupation but the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Arabs living inside the green line. Palestinians all over the land suffer everyday from the Israeli occupation and it has gone for so long, that the public should start taking reasonable actions and The Occupation of Our Lives is aiding and guiding the public to achieve this goal.
In conclusion, the Occupation of Our Lives needs everyone to join the cause to help stop the killing and slaughtering of Palestinians, to stop the invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque and to stop the racist acts done to the Palestinians living inside the green line.
Sincerely,
The Occupation of Our Lives team.