Thursday, April 27, 2017

Liberation Day: Italy, Palestine | Jewish Voices | Hunger Strike: Day 10 | 50 Years of Occupation | More ..

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Liberation Day: Why Italy Must Celebrate Palestinian Resistance, Too

A few days ago, a friend of mine, who is a teacher asked me to take part in a meaningful project: to talk to her students about what I learned during a recent visit to Palestine.
She wanted to teach them that what they read or watch on television are not abstracts, and that behind the words and images are real people, with feelings of sorrow, joy, and love.
When I entered the "Eduardo De Filippo" institute, in Villanova di Guidonia, near Rome, I felt tense; I am not a trained teacher. Would I be able to interest them in the lives of a nation on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea?
I decided to make the images, the stories and the faces talk.
I wanted them to know about the daily nightmare of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints.
They saw people in Hebron, who are forced to put net atop their streets and shops to block objects, stones and garbage thrown by the illegal Jewish settlers who live there, protected by a large contingent of Israeli soldiers.
They saw how people live in a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem and another in Jordan.
They saw the Israeli system of segregated roads and the wall of shame.
They saw Gaza left in the dark, with flashes of light that come with Israeli bombs; they saw desperate Gazan travelers waiting to cross at the Rafah-Egypt border, seeking escape.
They saw the black-and-white photos of the Palestinians who were exiled during the Nakba, who are still denied their right to return.
They briefly witnessed how horrible life is under military occupation.
But I also told them that Palestinians are not only victims: they are able to resist, to mobilize themselves, they fall in love, they have children and they pray.
I showed them dakba dances, pictures of the delicious maklouba, hummus, knafeh.
They needed to know that Palestinians are able to live; in fact teach life; and that life keeps flowing like a river, thanks to the resilience that this undefeated nation constantly prove, in spite of the horrors of occupation and war.
The children's response was surprising: they were moved and very attentive. In the following days, they kept talking about it to their teacher.
But above all, they immediately demonstrated a quality that perhaps adults lose with time. Quoting Ernesto Che Guevara, they showed the ability to "feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world."
The children wondered why nobody would do anything to help Palestinians. They sought solutions. They spoke of a solution that looked very similar to the "one state solution". Co-existence with rights and dignity for all came natural to them.
Oddly, our Western leaders still borrow from a defunct political discourse, that seek dead-end formulas like the so-called "two peoples two States" - useful to seek moral self-absolution, perhaps, but will certainly not solve the problem.
A few days after I spoke at the school, I read an article about Italy's April 25 march; the Liberation Day commemorating the end of the Second World War and the end of Nazi Occupation thanks to Italian partisans.
Matteo Orfini, PD Commissioner in Rome, made a singular statement: "The ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) parade has become a divisive element when it should be an opportunity to unite our city around the values of resistance and anti-fascism."
As a result, the Democratic Party, (the main center-left party in Italy) has decided not to attend the Liberation Day march in Rome.
The statement sounded quite obscure, without context, until I learned through the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Rome's Jewish community decided to boycott the march, citing the participation of Palestinian groups.
They called the Palestinians "heirs of the Mufti of Jerusalem", and bragged about the Jewish Brigade, a group of 5,000 Jewish volunteers in the British Army who served in Europe and in Italy during World War II.
Their underhanded intention was clear: exploiting the direct involvement of Jews in the struggle for Liberation from Nazi-Fascism.
By deliberately decontextualizing the meeting between Amin al-Husseini and Hitler they serve a dual purpose: they corrupt the historical heritage of Palestinians and they totally deny the fact that Israel is now an occupying power and that Palestinian people are the victims and resisters of that military occupation and the colonial policies.
The Israeli flags that proudly wave during the march is in fact the symbol of Israeli occupation and Palestinian oppression.
I am not surprised at all: this historical revisionism is a main feature of Israeli propaganda (hasbara).
Sadly, Orfini''s opportunistic statement doesn't surprise me either.
The Liberation Day is an important holiday for the men and the women who truly fought "on the mountains of Italy" against the German occupiers.
But it is also an important holiday for their children and grandchildren, who could learn a lesson of dignity: the dignity of a people able to resist, a people who refused to crumble in the midst of occupation; a people who built a national identity based on the values of freedom and justice.
The PD representatives have already betrayed those values: they do it on an historical level, every time they do not challenge the revisionism that compares the partisans to the Italian Social Republic; they do it every time they turn a blind eye to the horrors of Israeli occupation, the Wall of shame, neocolonialism; and every time they deny the Palestinians the right to resist.
Celebrating history makes no sense, if we are not able to apply those lessons to the present day.
As for the left, it has no hope, if it uses Che Guevara as a capitalistic symbol to be exploited on t-shirts, but is not able to "feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world", like the children in Villanova did.
- Romana Rubeo is a freelance translator based in Italy. She holds a Master's Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature and she is specialized in Audio-Visual and Journalism Translation. An avid reader, her interests include music, politics, and geopolitics. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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EDITORIAL

Palestinian and Jewish Voices Must Challenge Israel's Past Together

Israel has resorted to three main strategies to suppress Palestinian calls for justice and human rights, including the Right of Return for refugees.
One is dedicated to rewriting history; another attempts to distract from present realities altogether and a third aims at reclaiming the Palestinian narrative as essentially an Israeli one.
The rewriting of history happened much earlier than some historians would assume. The Israeli hasbara machine went into motion almost simultaneously with Plan Dalet (Plan D), which saw the military conquest of Palestine and the ethnic cleansing of its inhabitants.
But the actual discourse regarding the 'Nakba' - or the 'Catastrophe' - that has befallen Palestinian people in 1947-48 was constituted in the 1950s and 60s.
In an article entitled: "Catastrophic Thinking: Did Ben-Gurion Try to Rewrite History?" Shay Hazkani revealed the fascinating process of how Israel's first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion, worked closely with a group of Israeli Jewish scholars to develop a version of events to describe what had taken place in 1947-48: the founding of Israel and the destruction of Palestine.
Ben-Gurion wanted to propagate a version of history that was consistent with Israel's political position. He needed 'evidence', to support that position.
The 'evidence' eventually became 'history', and no other narrative was allowed to challenge Israel's take on the 'Nakba'.
"Ben-Gurion probably never heard the word 'Nakba,' but early on, at the end of the 1950s, Israel's first Prime Minister grasped the importance of the historical narrative," Hazkani wrote.
The Israeli leader assigned scholars in the Civil Service to the task of fashioning an alternative history that continues to permeate Israeli thinking to this day.
Distracting from history - or the current reality of the horrific Occupation of Palestine - has been in motion for nearly 70 years.
From the early myths of Palestine being a 'land with no people for a people with no land' to today's claim that Israel is an icon of civilization, technology and democracy surrounded by Arab and Muslim savages, Israel's official distortions are relentless.
So while Palestinians are gearing up to commemorate the war of June 5, 1967, which led to the, thus-far, 50-year military occupation, Israel is throwing a big party, a major 'celebration' of its military occupation of Palestinians.
The absurdity is not escaping all Israelis, of course.
"A state that celebrates 50 years of occupation is a state whose sense of direction has been lost, its ability to distinguish good from evil, impaired," wrote Israeli commentator Gideon Levy in the 'Haaretz'.
"What exactly is there to celebrate, Israelis? Fifty years of bloodshed, abuse, disinheritance and sadism? Only societies that have no conscience celebrate such anniversaries."
Levy argues that Israel has won the war of 1967 but has "lost nearly everything else."
Since then, Israel's arrogance, detestation of international law, "ongoing contempt for the world, the bragging and bullying" have all reached unprecedented heights.
Levy's article is entitled: 'Our Nakba'.
Levy is not attempting to reclaim the Palestinian narrative, but is succinctly registering that Israel's military triumphs was an affliction, especially as it was not followed by any sense of national reflection or attempt at correcting the injustices of the past and the present.
However, the process of claiming the term 'Nakba' has been pursued cunningly by Israeli writers for many years.
For those scholars, 'the Jewish Nakba' refers to the Arab Jews who arrived in the newly independent Israel, largely based on the urgings of Zionist leaders for Jews worldwide to 'return' to the biblical homeland.
A 'Jerusalem Post' editorial complained that "Palestinian propaganda juggernaut has persuaded world public opinion that the term 'refugee' is synonymous with the term 'Palestinian.'"
By doing so, Israelis attempting to hijack the Palestinian narrative hope to create an equilibrium in the discourse, one that is, of course, inconsistent with reality.
The editorial puts the number of 'Jewish refugees' of the 'Jewish Nakba' at 850,000, slightly above the number of Palestinian refugees who were expelled by Zionist militias upon the founding of Israel.
Luckily, such disingenuous claims are increasingly challenged by Jewish voices, as well.
A few - but significant - voices among Israeli and Jewish intellectuals around the world are daring to re-examine Israel's past.
They are rightly confronting a version of history that has been accepted in Israel and the West as the uncontested truth behind Israel's birth in 1948, the military occupation of what remained of Palestine in 1967, and other historical junctures.
These intellectuals are leaving a mark on the Palestine-Israel discourse wherever they go. Their voices are particularly significant in challenging official Israeli truisms and historical myths.
Writing in the 'Forward', Donna Nevel refuses to accept that the discussion of the conflict in Palestine starts in the war and occupation of 1967.
Nevel is critical of the so-called 'progressive Zionists' who insist on positioning the conversation only on the question of occupation, thus limiting any possibility of resolution to the 'two-state solution.'
Not only is such a 'solution' defunct and practically not possible, but the very discussion precludes the 'Nakba', or the Catastrophe, of 1948.
The "Nakba doesn't enter these conversations because it is the legacy and clearest manifestation of Zionism", Nevel wrote.
"Those who ignore the 'Nakba' - which Zionist and Israeli institutions have consistently done - are refusing to acknowledge Zionism as illegitimate from the beginning of its implementation."
This is precisely why the Israeli police have recently blocked the 'March of Return', conducted annually by Palestinians in Israel.
For years, Israel has been wary that a growing movement among Palestinians, Israelis and others around the world have been pushing for a paradigm shift in order to understand the roots of the conflict in Palestine.
This new thinking has been a rational outcome of the end of the 'peace process' and the demise of the 'two-state' solution.
Incapable of sustaining its founding myths, yet unable to offer an alternative, the Israeli government is now using coercive measures to respond to the budding movement: punishing those who insist on commemorating the 'Nakba', fining organizations that participate in such events and even perceiving as traitors any Jewish individuals and groups that deviate from its official thinking.
In these cases, coercion hardly works.
"The March (of Return) has rapidly grown in size over the past few years, in defiance of increasingly repressive measures from the Israeli authorities," wrote Jonathan Cook in 'Al-Jazeera'.
It seems that 70 years after the founding of Israel, the past is still looming large.
Fortunately, the Palestinian voices that have fought against the official Israeli narrative are now joined by a growing number of Jewish voices.
It is through a new common narrative that a true understanding of the past can be attained, all with the hope that the peaceful vision for the future can replace the current one - one which can only be sustained through military domination, inequality and sheer propaganda.
- Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include "Searching Jenin", "The Second Palestinian Intifada" and his latest "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story". His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

REPORT

10 Days On, Palestinian Hunger Strikers Refuse Water

A number of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners being held in solitary confinement began refusing water on Wednesday, as more than 1,500 Palestinians entered the 10th day of the mass "Freedom and Dignity" hunger strike.
Head of the Palestinian Committee for Prisoners' Affairs Issa Qaraqe released a statement Wednesday saying that Israeli Prison Services (IPS) forces had "continued to escalate punitive measures" against prisoners, which started on the first day of the strike, with IPS forces transferring prisoners and leaders of the strike to solitary confinement, and preventing lawyers from visiting prisoners, particularly sick prisoners.
According to Qaraqe, IPS officials have continued preventing prisoners - some of whom are refusing all forms of nutrition except salt and water - from accessing commissaries to purchase salt, provided prisoners with dirty sheets and covers, and carried out provocative search raids of prisoners rooms, and arbitrary transfers of prisoners.
The committee noted in statement that "all legal efforts are still being conducted by legal institutions to enable lawyers to visit Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike."
Qaraqe added that officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - which is in charge of coordinating with Israeli authorities to arrange family visitations for Palestinian prisoners - would be visiting prisoners on Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), according to Qaraqe, would be increasing the size of their field crews, as many prisoners had been transferred to prison field hospitals and clinics due to the deterioration of their health conditions.
Hunger-striking prisoner Nael Ali Najjar, from the Gaza Strip, told the committee that he had lost five kilograms since the beginning of the strike. Najjar is currently being held in solitary confinement in Israel's Nafha prison.
Additionally, Qaraqe reported Tuesday evening that hunger-striking Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Abd al-Rabbu "started bleeding," though the nature of his bleeding remained unclear.
The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) meanwhile visited Palestinian hunger strikers in Nafha, in order to monitor the conditions in which they were being held, as well as to transmit verbal messages from the prisoners to their families.
ICRC confirmed that it had increased its visits to Israeli detention facilities holding Palestinians since the beginning of the strike.
Several other prisoners have announced that they will be joining the strike as well.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) released a statement Wednesday saying it was "strongly concerned" over the lives of the hundreds of hunger-striking prisoners, adding that "Israeli forces should be fully held responsible for the deterioration of prisoners' conditions in light of the stubbornness of the IPS to meet their humane demands."
The center noted that by its count, around 6,500 Palestinian prisoners were detained in 22 Israeli prisons and detention facilities, most of which are established in Israel, "constituting a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, particularly Article 76, which obliges the occupying power to detain prisoners from the occupied population in the occupied territories until the end of their sentences."
"Most of those prisoners are residents of the West Bank, including 57 women and 300 children. Moreover, the number of sick prisoners is about 1,800 prisoners, including 180 prisoners who suffer from serious diseases in addition to 26 others who have cancer," PCHR said.
(Maan, PC, Social Media)

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