Palestine

Pulitzer Prize-Winning author Nathan Thrall will discuss his book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.”

About the Book Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem.

Abed’s quest to find Milad is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and histories unexpectedly converge: a kindergarten teacher and a mechanic who rescue children from the burning bus; an Israeli army commander and a Palestinian official who confront the aftermath at the scene of the crash; a settler paramedic; ultra-Orthodox emergency service workers; and two mothers who each hope to claim one severely injured boy.

Immersive and gripping, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is an indelibly human portrait of the struggle over Israel/Palestine that offers a new understanding of the tragic history and reality of one of the most contested places on earth...

Ziad Abu Helaiel – political activist and social reformer – was best known for his defiant phrase “Bihimish!” (“doesn’t matter” in Arabic). The phrase was delivered brazenly, dismissively even, to Israeli soldiers who were trying to scare him as he stood in their way, often using just his body to prevent them from shooting solidarity demonstrators in the West Bank during the 2014 war on Gaza.

To say Abu Helaiel, who was beaten to death at his home near Hebron by Israeli soldiers on October 7 this year, was well known would be an understatement. He was famous in the West Bank for the peaceful protests he led against the Israeli occupation, never armed and often standing as a human barrier between protesters and Israeli soldiers.

Thousands of people attended his funeral in the West Bank. Several thousand more tried to attend but were stopped at roadblocks manned by Israeli forces.

In the early hours of October 7, the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel which ended with 1,139 people dead and 251 captured, and triggered the onset of the Israeli war on Gaza, occupation soldiers stormed the courtyard of Abu Helaiel’s house.

“It was about three in the morning when we heard the voice of the soldiers while they were besieging the house and ordering us to open the door,” says Basma.

At that moment, other soldiers stormed into the house to find Ziad and began to beat him mercilessly. He kept repeating that he had a heart condition, but one of the soldiers deliberately hit the heart area. As Abu Helaiel tried to follow them from the house, one of the soldiers slammed the heavy iron front door into his chest, causing him to collapse.

Abu Helaiel had previously undergone a number of heart procedures including a catheterisation of the artery. He lost consciousness for more than half an hour but the house was surrounded by soldiers. “They were preventing the ambulance from reaching us,” Basma says.

Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.

They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a "Hamas claims" or "Gaza family members allege". Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.

In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable – but sadly was all too predictable – CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.

Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews "provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society".

Natasha Leonard October 22, 2024

Dalia Hatuqa
October 20 2024, 6:00 a.m.

Open Letter | Israeli citizens calling for true international pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire. (Israeli Citizens For International Pressure)

https://israelicitizensforin.live-website.com/english/
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In eleven languages: Hebrew, Arabic, French, Russian, Italian, German, Chinese, Spanish, Greek, Turkish.

“We, Israeli citizens residing in Israel and abroad, call on the international community – the UN and its institutions, the United States, the European Union, the League of Arab States, and all states around the world – to intervene immediately and implement every possible sanction towards achieving an immediate ceasefire between Israel and its neighbors, for the future of both peoples in Israel/Palestine and the peoples of the region...”

“Many of us are veteran activists against the occupation, for peace and mutual existence in this land…”

“Please, … save us from ourselves, and use real pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.”

@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe
@israel
#CeasefireNow

Tom Perkins in Detroit
Thu 24 Oct 2024 07.00 EDT

Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Abubaker Abed
Oct 23, 2024

Razia Iqbal
Tue 8 Oct 2024 08.00 EDT

Hind Rajab Foundation <3

Original URL: https://www.ft.com/content/151eb482-6415-48a8-bf3f-baed00018c4e

Israel’s military forcibly entered a clearly marked UN base and is suspected of using the incendiary chemical white phosphorus close enough to injure 15 peacekeepers, according to a confidential report outlining a dozen recent incidents in which the IDF attacked international troops in Lebanon.

The report — prepared by a country that contributes troops, and seen by the Financial Times — underscores how Israeli troops have targeted Unifil, the UN-mandated force deployed along the de facto border between the countries, on multiple occasions. They have damaged several facilities and caused injuries to troops stationed at border posts in southern Lebanon.

Unifil has called these incidents a “flagrant violation of international law”.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21752639

Iranian-German Photographer Asked to Apologize for Saying “Free Palestine”: The German Photographic Society called Shirin Abedi’s award acceptance speech “dogmatic fanaticism” and “anti-Israeli agitation.”
(Hyperallergic, 2024-19-23)

https://hyperallergic.com/960502/iranian-german-shirin-abedi-photographer-asked-to-apologize-for-saying-free-palestine/
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＊With a short video of her giving speech in kufiya＊

“At its October 12 gala, the organization presented the laureates of this year’s awards, including Iranian-German photographer Shirin Abedi, ... Upon receiving her award, Abedi made a minute-long statement that ended with a call to ‘free Palestine.’”

“A few days after the ceremony, German photojournalist Thomas Gerwers, the chairman of DGPh’s Art, Market, and Law Section, sent Abedi a letter asking the artist to issue an apology and accusing her of ‘political propaganda.‘”

“‘… we have a special responsibility for the right of the State of Israel to exist. Without ifs and buts,’ he continued. ‘We have been abused by you …’”

#GermanyLost
@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe

October 18, 2024

‘Copy-paste the West Bank to Gaza’: Hundreds join Gaza resettlement event
(+972 Magazine, 2024-10-22)

https://www.972mag.com/gaza-israeli-resettlement-event-sukkot/
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“‘We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip.’ That was the declaration of Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss at a gathering of hundreds of right-wing Israelis near Gaza on Monday, where they celebrated the Jewish festival of #Sukkot by calling to erect settlements inside the besieged enclave.”

“…this well-organized, calm, and joyous gathering — which was approved and held against all logic in a closed military zone near the border, and was attended by several senior figures in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party — marked a new step in the effort to mainstream the idea of resettling Gaza with Jewish Israelis.”

@palestine@lemmy.ml
@palestine@a.gup.pe
@israel
#StopGenocide

[an interview with former U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker]
Story by Michael Hirsh
October 19, 2024

October 22, 2024

[For anyone who cares about Palestine, this article is very hard to read.]