Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 4:42 am Post subject: Muslim-Americans Asked Bush to Defend Islam
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20021120165049952
Muslim-Americans Asked Bush to Defend Islam
Wednesday, November 20 2002 @ 04:50 PM GMT
"There was a resounding silence from the president and other elected officials — and we felt that their silence equaled acceptance .."
By Barbara Ferguson
WASHINGTON - President Bush’s recent show of support of Islam and Muslims has been praised for his rebuff of right-wing evangelical leaders who made a series of offensive, ignorant and racist statements against Islam and Prophet Mohamed.
It now appears the president’s statement came after a series of serious nudgings by the Muslim-American community, who felt Islam was being deliberately slandered.
“Basically we have been seeing this rising tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the US — from right-wing commentators and evangelical Christian leaders – and there has been a barrage of anti-Muslim hate speech.
“There was a resounding silence from the president and other elected officials — and we felt that their silence equaled acceptance. On several occasions, we asked the president to speak out on this issue, and he, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, finally did,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director at CAIR, the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations.
“I think it was clear that this rhetoric was so damaging to America’s image around the world, that they just had to do something,” said Hooper. He said he didn’t know if the president would continue to speak out in defense of Islam. “We don’t know, but when they start a policy line like this, other officials carry it forward, so hopefully that’s the case, here.”
“It is encouraging that President Bush responded, and that (Secretary of State) Colin Powell also spoke out positively. We welcome it and we appreciate it,” said Rizwan Jaka, president of ADAMS (the All Dulles Area Muslim Society), in Herndon, Virginia.
“It is something that was needed, because people were starting to wonder why the administration had not responded thus far.
“There were definitely a lot of people in the community who were starting to feel quite frustrated and disappointed that these attacks were occurring against Muslims, and nobody in the administration was responding.”
-Arab News (arabnews.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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Jefferson Davis
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Posts: 31591
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 5:19 am Post subject:
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Trust me from personal expeerience, some of these right wing Christian fundies are wack jobs. You can buy an expensive 3"x5" "prayer cloth" and place it up to your television to the evangelist's outstretched hand and the Good Lord Almighty speaks through the evangelist over the airwaves to your TV and into your special prayer cloth.
The wish you desire and God granting it are heavily dependent on the size or continuing support of their ministry. Cancer not cured?, you didn't give enough.
Monty Python on acid couldn't come up with some of these ideas.
And BTW, that's Freedom of Religion.
Amen.
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Jefferson Davis
Joined: 07 Sep 2002
Posts: 31591
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 5:25 am Post subject:
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{con't} The best part.
When your hand using my annoited super dooper special prayer cloth touched the screen.
Did you feel that? Praise Jesus!, Did you feel that!!???
Do you know what that was????
"static electricity?"
No!!!! it was my gift to you from the Lord. You're prayers if sincere are answered.
Thanks a bloody lot.
You're welcome.
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Guest
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 6:52 pm Post subject:
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There is never any moral equivalence between one act of murder and another because each one is a unique tragedy in itself and not to be explained away. All life is sacred and it is immoral to take someone elses life to achieve your political ends.
Many Palestinians abhor what is being done in their name but are too frightened to speak out. Those of us who support an immediate and unconditional end to the Occupation and who don't live under the tyranny of Arafat's uncontrolled thugs DO have the freedom to speak out and we must. So I will say this as clearly as I possibly can: these acts of murder, and all acts of murder by Palestinians against Israeli civilians (whether inside or outside the
Green Line) are immoral, crazy, evil, and we demand that they be stopped by the Palestinian people!
The Palestinian people are not done any favours by remaining silent on this issue. In fact, it is very important that the Israeli people be reassured that should they agree to end the Occupation, they will NOT be empowering a people who are ready to excuse away this kind of immorality and violence. Those of us who support peace must be very clear in our condemnation of these hateful and immoral actions. Just as we have been clear in our
condemnation of Israeli violence and the hidden but very real violence that is a daily reality of the Occupation, so we unequivocally condemn Palestinian violence as well.
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Guest
Posted: Thu Nov 21, 2002 11:23 pm Post subject: Same Old Story...
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Same old story --- anti any of Israel's policies and your --- anti-Semitic.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth on the history of Palestine (Or at least the history as the entire rest of the world know it.) to the Madrid Peace talks in 1991.
1888 First wave of Jewish immigration begins.
1896 Theodore Herzl calls for the creation of a Jewish State, notably giving the option of Argentina, Uganda and Palestine
1903 Second wave of Jewish immigration.
1917 Balfour declaration in backing a creation of a Jewish State in Palestine while at the same time Lawrence of Arabia promise the creation of a Palestinian homeland for the Arabs. (Just like the British to give away something that is not theirs.)
1922 First British census of Palestine by religion 89% Arab Christian, Muslim with traces of Armenian Christian, 11% Jewish.
1928 After clashes at wailing wall 133 Jews, 36 Palestinians dead.
1929 Attacks amounting to massacres take place on Jews in Jerusalem, Heron and Safed.
1933 Palestinians call a general strike to protest Britain's pro Zionist policies especially in land disputes.
1936 --- 1939 The Ist Intifada for freedom by the Palestinians. The British hang 109 and kill a further 2500.
1937 Zionists with a nod from the British launch attacks on Palestinians. Estimated 500 killed.
1940 Lehi with Shamir makes contact with Italy and Nazi Germany offering to join forces to fight British for a Jewish Palestine.
1944 Zionist campaign of terror against the British. Both Begin and Shamir will become wanted as terrorist by the British and what will become Interpol.
1945 Truman asks Atlee to allow 100,000 Jews to go to Palestine. Tens of thousands more soon follow. Zionist terrorists blow up the King David Hotel killing 91. Israel becomes known every where else in the world as a country founded on terrorism
1947 Britain refers the question of Palestine to UN. Resulting partition gives 47% of the country to Palestinians. Unfortunately they are 75% of the population and own 90% of the land. The prevailing wisdom for the injustice was to make up for the Holocaust. Unfortunately once again there were no Palestinian guards in the SS.
1948 Zionist massacre 248 Palestinians in Deir Yassim. War breaks out and history repeats itself as the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians begin. As the myth of Israel says they flee from their land not wanting to live with the Jews where the truth is they were forced with the threat of death. By the records of even the Israeli historians less than 20% of the Palestinians join in the fighting against the Jews. Palestinians are never reinversed for their land to this day and where any Jew in the world or Jew for one day as in the case of the Russians can come to Israel and receive financial help. Of course this is not allowed in the case of the southern African tribe whose DNA matches the Jewish priests because they are of of color.
1949 After the defeat of the Arab forces, the armistice leave Israel with 77% of Palestine and over half of the Palestinian population is forces to become refugees.
1950 King Abdullah in a back room deal starting in 1948 formerly annexes the West Bank. He will pay for the selling out of the Palestinians a year later with his life. Israel enacts the right of return for any Jew in the world to settle in the Israel barring the rightful owners from ever seeing their land.
1951 120,000 Jews leave Iraq for Israel. Israeli agents proven to be behind large number of these attacks to encourage emmigraion.
1953 Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip become a regular event. In Qibya, West Bank, Israeli soldiers blow up homes killing 50.
Suez Crisi. Israel invades egypt with the cooperation of Britan and France. With pressure from US and possible Russian intervention Israel pulls back. In Kufr Qassim, West Bank, Israeli soldiers kill 49 unarmed Palestinians.
1964 PlO formed.
1965 Fatah guerillas attack Israel for first time.
1966 Israeli soldiers attack Samu, West Bank killing 18 and destroying 150 homes.
1967 Six day war. Israel in so called preemptive attack (As in if US would have attacked Moscow during the Cuban Missile Crisis) Israel captures Gaza, Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli planes cripple the USS Liberty, killing 34 sailors in what is a combination of the the Liberty overhearing the execution of Egyptian prisoner and the possibility of passing on battle plans to Arab forces.
UN resolution 242 is passed calling for an Israeli withdrawal from these territories. It will become one of over 50 resolutions ignored by Israel excluding US vetoes
1967 United States takes over from France as weapons supplier for Israel.
1968 In Jordan, Palestinian guerillas inflict damage on Israeli forces for first time.
1969 A year long war of attrition begins between Israel and Egypt.
1970 Israeli planes bomb Bahr al Baqr school in Egypt killing 46 children. Palestinian guerillas expelled from Jordan.
1972 Black September slaughter 13 Israelis at Munich Olympics.
1973 Israel shoots down a Libyan airliner which has strayed off course over Sinai killing 104. (In International or Egyptian airspace)
1975 Civil War in Lebanon begins when Christian Phlangists with Israeli intelligence attack the PLO in Beirut.
1976 Civil War continues. Phlangist's massacre Palestinians in Karatina. Palestinians massacre Phalangists in Damour. Syria enters from the East.
!978 Israel invades southern Lebanon. Camp David accords are completed after Israel with much pressure agrees to dismantle the settlements in Sinai.
1980 With continued incursions escalation's mount between IDF and PLO.
1981 Israel bombs the nuclear facility in Iraq.
1982 Israel dismisses three West Bank mayors which sparks off serious rioting. Dozens of unarmed Palestinians killed.
Beirut is under siege for 67 days. Israel begins tactic of attacking high rise apartment building at night with excuse of killing Arafat and PLO. In on instance of collateral damage 105 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians killed in eight story residence. Thousands of civilians killed by Israeli strikes.
Eight hundred and sixty-four old men, women and children are massacred at Sabra and Chatila under the watchful eye of the IDF who had to allow them into the camp. SHARON LATER VILIFIED AND FOUND INDIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR MASSACRE. He still cannot travel to many countries most notably Belgium or he will be arrested for crimes against humanity.
1985 Israel withdraws from Lebanon but retains a security border.
1987 The Intifada begins. The only time in the history of man that a group of children create a rebellion even catching the PLO by surprise. In Algiers the Palestine National Conference declares independence for the state of Palestine. At years end there are over 500 Palestinians killed and 40,000 injured. In this more gentle Intifada the children are for the most part just throwing rocks but for the most part shot by live ammunition.
Israel enacts tactic of might, power and beatings in an attempt to break the Intifada. Israel condemned by international press and humanitarian groups for their use of torture and collective punishment reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
1989 Mass Soviet immigration begins. Laws are very lax on proving Jewish background with the coining of JEWS FOR ONE DAY who after being given money for arriving especially in the Settlements and go on to establish churches.
1991 Peace talks begin in Madrid with Shamir who later admits this is all a charade and playing for time. Strategy still in effect with Netanyahu and Sharon. Bush stops funding for Israel for their continued building in the occupied territories. Conventionnal wisdom considers the ultra powerful Jewish lobby the foundation of his defeat in 92.
Anytime anyone has more rights because of the accident of their birth or their religion that is racism. Zionism is racism. Israel --- the greatest myth ever perpetrated on the American public.
Support Amran Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa running for labor as Prime Minister. Platform includes giving back all the territories. Join Peace Now --- Israel.
Viva la Palestine! --- The Spanish Civil War of our generation.
Footnotes; Portions taken from J. C. Tordai an A.P. photographer who I rode with in Gaza in 1991 as a refugee affairs officer with the UN and from Harvey Morris, at the time the Deputy Foreign Minister at the Independent. Their joint publication is a photojournalistic piece called INTO THE PROMISED LAND. Niether a chickendove or a chickenhawk all facts have been witnessed or verified by academic research.
Paul Romano
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2002 5:27 am Post subject: 54 Years Later, We Live
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20021122183731556
54 Years Later, We Live
Friday, November 22 2002 @ 06:37 PM GMT
"My history begins not on the date of my birth, but in November 1948, 54 years ago on this month. The setting, Tarshiha, a village in northern Palestine 20 kilometers south of Lebanon .."
By Fadi Kiblawi
(PC) - Today I am remembering my eldest elders, those who initiated the long struggle of resistance against the arrogance of ultra-nationalism and the violence of exclusion. They, my ancestors, taught me that a people with pride are a people who do not surrender, who resist, who have dignity. They taught me to be proud of my religion, the color of my skin, my language, my culture. They have shown me that more than 54 years of exploitation and persecution have not been able to exterminate us. We have resisted since that time because history has been made with our blood.
My history begins not on the date of my birth, but in November 1948, 54 years ago on this month. The setting, Tarshiha, a village in northern Palestine 20 kilometers south of Lebanon. On this month, an Israeli aircraft, one of only two that the young state had, began shelling Tarshiha, ethnically cleansing the inhabitants who fled. My family walked from Tarshiha, to Bint Jbeil to Tbnin in Southern Lebanon to Beirut, to find Bourj-al-Barajna, one of 3 Palestinian refugee camps in the capital city. My parents remained trapped in Lebanon, until the early years of the civil war, in which they escaped to Kuwait. From Kuwait, the land of my birth, but not of my blood, we came to the States, where you find me today. Much of my family still lives in the camps of Lebanon, while much more have been spread throughout the world, wandering, statelessly and endlessly, carrying one dream. Is there any right more basic than that which allows one to return, to live, on his own land?
Despite this, today I am more than a fundamental part of a country whose governing officials have a foreign vocation and look with disdain and repugnance at my past. For them I am a bother, a thorn on the side, an obstacle that must be eliminated, silently. Their cruelty is seen today as a form of charity. Death looks for silent paths; it looks for the complicit darkness and the silence that hides. They have already tried to exterminate us, being the Palestinian existence, the Palestinian voice, the word “Palestinian.” Different doctrines and many different ideas have been used to cover ethnocide with rationality.
Today, the thick mantle with which they try to cover their crime is what they call “democracy” but with which democracy takes shame, and refuses to be associated with. Reality calls it Ethnocracy and it represents death and misery for the original people of these lands, and for all of those of a different religion but with a single indigenous heart that we call Palestinian. But let us affirm that it is not the origin of blood that defines those who resist. Those who struggle together, who will come out and stand in solidarity and break the silence that the powers try to impose, are brothers and sisters…regardless of the color of our skin or the language that we learned as children.
Today, the conquerors continue to persecute the indigenous who are rebellious around the world. They pursue the indigenous people, who cover themselves with the flag of the red, black, white, and green…the flag that history and those obtrusive Universal Declaration of Human Rights decrees as Palestine.
But they will never impose their empire of silence on us. Speaking and listening is how true men and women learn to walk. It is the word that gives form to that walk that goes on inside us. It is the word that is the bridge to cross to the other side. Silence is what the state offers our pain in order to make us small, to erase us. When we are silenced, we remain very much alone. Speaking, standing together, we heal the pain, and accompany one another. They use the word to impose their empire of silence, to erase that shameful past. We use the word to renew ourselves. They use silence to hide their crimes. We use silence only to listen to one another, to touch one another, to know one another.
Our word is our weapon, and with it rings the truth of decades of occupation, oppression, and dispossession. We say the WORD remains. We speak the word, shout the word, we raise the word and with it break the silence of our people. We kill the silence by living the word. We leave them in the lies they speak and the words they hush, and we join together in the word and raise it in a way which will liberate.
Fifty-four years ago this month, the silence of colonialism, exclusion and ultra-nationalism was imposed on my ancestors, on my eldest elders. But fifty-four years ago this month, our word began to resist, to fight, to live, from that refugee camp in Lebanon. Today, 54 years later, from Tarshiha, to Bourj-al-Barajna, to Kuwait, to the United States, we are still here. There are more of us and we are better. We are of many colors, and many are the languages that speak our word.
Today we say that we will remember the past, and with these memories will work for the future. Today, 54 years after death from foreign lands arrived to bring silence, we resist, and we speak.
Today, 54 years later, we live.
Inspired by the resilient and revolutionary words of Subcommandante Marcos from the Mexican Chiapas
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2002 5:31 am Post subject: Rights Group Brands Tulkarm Killings
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20021121031331591
Rights Group Brands Tulkarm Killings
Thursday, November 21 2002 @ 03:13 AM GMT
"According to eyewitness reports, a group of Musta’ribeen, (Special Israeli forces who disguise themselves as Palestinians) infiltrated the center of the town .."
RAMALLAH, West Bank (PC) - As eyewitness reports become available, it is becoming clear that the killings that were carried out in Tulkarm On Tuesday, November 19th may be categorized as “extra-judicial assassinations”.
According to residents who witnessed the following events, Israeli forces invaded the West Bank town of Tulkarm at 4:40 pm, when the daily fast for the holy month of Ramadan was coming to a close.
According to eyewitness reports, a group of Musta’ribeen, (Special Israeli forces who disguise themselves as Palestinians) infiltrated the center of the town.
The disguised soldiers, wearing civilian clothing surrounded an apartment inhabited by Palestinian activists, members of Al-Aqsa Brigades, the military wing of the Fateh movement.
According to eyewitnesses, a group of youth gathered to defend the activists inside the apartment and began hurling stones at the disguised soldiers. The soliders immediately responded with gunfire, killing 16 year old 'Alam al-Zalqa. He was shot in the chest and died instantly.
According to the human rights group, LAW, the activists attempted to flee, when the Musta'ribeen opened fire on them, shooting 20 year old Tareq Zaghal, who fell on the ground. The Musta'ribeen surrounded him, and once they had confirmed his identity, they shot him in the neck, killing him instantly. Medical sources at Dr. Thabet hospital confirmed that Zaghal's hands were tied behind his back. It appeared that he was shot in the neck after his hands had been tied behind his back.
After a short amount of time, Israeli troops arrived to assist the Musta'ribeen, and opened fire at any moving object. At that time, they opened fire on 30 year old Ziyad Mashaqi a security guard. He received a bullet wound to the neck and was killed instantly.
At around 5:30 in the evening, Ahmad Jayyousi (37) was returning home in a taxi driven by Sha'ban Badeer (30). Israeli forces also opened fire on them without warning. Jayyousi was shot in the neck and hands. Badeer was shot in the chest and shoulders. Both were killed instantly.
10 other civilians were injured, including five children, one of whom was arrested and taken to an unknown destination.
According to LAW's findings, at least 179 Palestinians have so far been killed in extra-judicial executions committed by Israel, including 68 Palestinian bystanders.
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 7:47 pm Post subject: An Interview With Ellen Siegel/Sabra and Shatila
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=200209150104303
Taking a Look Back at Sabra and Shatila; An Interview With Ellen Siegel
Sunday, September 15 2002 @ 01:04 AM GMT
By Sherri Muzher
(PC)- In 2001, I conducted interviews with several Jewish peace activists regarding the current Palestinian Intifada for freedom. Among them was registered nurse Ellen Siegel. Ellen, who worked at Gaza Hospital [Lebanon] during the massacre at Sabra and Shatila, reflected on what she saw during those dark days.
And as we approach the 20th anniversary of the massacre, I would like to share her thoughts.
Please note that at the time of the interview, there was a strong effort to bring Ariel Sharon, often viewed as the mastermind of the massacre, to justice in Belgium. Still, Ellen's comments remain noteworthy and deserve to be repeated.
SM: I do have one additional question that I really couldn't ask anyone else...you were at the camps during the massacre at Sabra/Shatila. What are your thoughts right now with a potential trial in Belgium?
ES: I was working as a nurse at the Gaza Hospital in Sabra Camp during the massacre in 1982. A terrible crime occurred at Sabra and Shatila. Approximately one thousand people were massacred in cold blood. Those killed were unarmed civilians. When one reads personal testimonies there is no doubt that this was an atrocity.
Ariel Sharon, the current Prime Minister of Israel was the commander of the Israeli Defense Forces at the time of the massacre. Almost every politically knowledgeable Israeli was aware of the deep and long rooted history of hatred between the Palestinians and the Lebanese Christian Phalangists. Israel sent the Phalange into the camps to supposedly "rid the camp of remaining PLO fighters."
They blocked off all the entrances and exits of the camps thereby not allowing the camps inhabitants to escape. They supplied the flares that lit up neighborhoods of the camp which allowed the Phalange to see their way through the alleyways of the camp. On the final day of the massacre, the international health workers were led out of the camp. We saw many soldiers with walkie-talkies, dead bodies, a bulldozer with a Hebrew letter moving soil around
in a large area.
We were lined up against a bullet ridden wall; an Israeli came running and stopped the Phalange from shooting. We were led to the Israeli Forward Command Post where we saw Israeli soldiers on the roof looking down on the camps. Those in command knew WHAT WOULD happen, knew WHAT WAS happening, and did not stop it from happening for at least 48 hours.
The Israeli Commission of Inquiry found Sharon to be "indirectly responsible." His responsibility was more than indirect. As head of an army occupying a capital, Beirut, he was responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants.
As Jews we continue to search for Nazi war criminals, and rightly so. As moral and righteous people we must also seek justice for the crime against humanity that was committed in those camps. I do hope that this case gets to be heard in Brussels. There are a number of nurses and doctors that were present during those days that have requested to testify.
No matter what happens, this story is being heard by a new generation. Sharon's legacy is tainted; history will take note of this massacre. One hopes that one day ALL those responsible will be judged. And that justice will be done.
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 7:50 pm Post subject: In Gaza, Waiting for the Soldiers
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=2002111615425060
In Gaza, Waiting for the Soldiers
Saturday, November 16 2002 @ 03:42 PM GMT
By Kristen Ess
GAZA CITY (PC) - Thirty tanks plowed into Gaza City last night. Thought is that the Israeli’s are checking to see what kind of resistance they will encounter before sending in 100s more.
The tanks usually sit in Netzarim, an illegal Israeli settlement used as a military outpost. Palestinian police moved their truck under a tree for hiding and braced themselves. There is nothing to mount an effective resistance with. No short-range gun, as the Palestinian police have, can reach a settlement or combat a tank or Apache.
Israeli army incursion into
Gaza
Four of the reported 10,000 “wanted” in Gaza, sat up for the night, dressed and ready to be taken. There was nothing for them to do. They did not speak about internal politics; Arafat’s stacking of the cabinet, or the Palestinian National Initiative. There is no point in these times—three were from PFLP and two Fatah. They have a common crisis and sorting out the problems of the Palestinian Authority will not dismantle the Occupation.
These people have spent their lives resisting, the cumulative total of time spent in an Israeli prison amongst the four is more than 50 years. The woman in the group is dressed to be kidnapped, prepared for the attack on her body and her mind.
This is the policy of Israel, which already holds over 5,000 Palestinians hostage in Israeli prisons. She wears two pairs of socks to survive a cold winter inside of a cell. She has already spent 20 years in Israeli prisons for her political beliefs. A man, in exile from the West Bank, wears only a t-shirt. He says, “I will die here in this home. This is the end for us. They put us here, there is nowhere left to go.”
The people have gathered because this is the safest place they can think of. The woman has gotten out of her house, having to sneak past the Israeli tanks that surround the television station, as if she were a criminal. All Palestinians are criminalized by Israel, and in Gaza this because even more clear. And the people sit and wait to die, or to be arrested for “crimes” of Israel’s choosing.
Young girls are crying inside a home that Israeli soldiers ransacked, terrorizing the family before dragging their father away on the eighth night of Ramadan.
15 November, 2002
Israel is attacking the West Bank city of Nablus, still under curfew, killing two boys this afternoon. In Hebron, a Palestinian city that has suffered under Israeli curfew for years, ten armed illegal Israeli soldiers and settlers were killed.
In Rafah the Israeli military continues its campaign of house demolition and random killing of Palestinians.
At this moment, 2:30 am, Israeli Apache helicopters are firing missiles into Gaza City. They fired one, and then the last two came at the same time, exploding a few blocks away in the residential neighborhood that Israel bombed in July. The Apaches, donated to Israel by the US, are circling right now. Lights are coming on in the windows of nearby apartment buildings. A baby is crying upstairs.
My flat mate is going back to bed. He has an exam at his university in the morning. The nervousness, the constant hissing from the sky followed by deafening explosions, the thought that everyday may well be the last day of his life, is slowly killing him like it is most Palestinians in Gaza.
This is part of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign: make life such hell for Palestinians that they leave without the Right of Return or become so demoralized they cannot mount a viable political strategy of resistance or possibly rebuild their destroyed infrastructure. He cannot stay up throughout the night anymore to wait to see where the next missile hits or to worry whether Israeli soldiers will drag him away. He says, “enough,” and shuts
his door.
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
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dangerousdna
Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 13274
Posted: Sun Nov 24, 2002 7:51 pm Post subject: Tanks Near My Window
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http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20021121190245919
Tanks Near My Window
Thursday, November 21 2002 @ 07:02 PM GMT
"Last night the Israeli military attacked an area of the devastated southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis where they shot two boys playing soccer .."
By Kristen Ess
GAZA CITY (PC) - An Israeli tank rumbled throughout the night just outside the window of the bedroom I share with a Palestinian woman living in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah's Block O.
She chit-chats with me about her pregnancy as we fall asleep, ignoring the constant shooting from the tank. Earlier her husband joked that the Israeli soldiers are afraid of the evacuated houses so they shoot. This couple, along with another family next door, are the only people who remain in this area, a stretch of refugee camp between Rafah's Block O and Block J.
As we hold a morning meeting news comes about the bombing in Al Quds (Jerusalem), the city which under international law is the capital of Palestine yet is illegally occupied by Israel.
The Rafah house is shaking from the noise and vibration of the Israeli tank as I speak with friends in Bethlehem, the West Bank city in whose outskirts the bomber rented a house.
Last night, friends tell me, tanks surrounded Bethlehem, Israeli military jeeps sped through the streets, and Apaches circled overhead, waiting to attack. This was before today's operation, which will provide the dissembling rationale for the inevitable Israeli attack on Bethlehem tonight.
In contradiction to international law which prohibits collective punishment, Palestinians expect the Israeli military to fully reinvade. Already four families have been taken from their homes outside of Bethlehem. Friends in and around Bethlehem and it's refugee camps have been calling all day, saying goodbye just in case. This has become too common an occurrence.
Last night the Israeli military attacked an area of the devastated southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis where they shot two boys playing soccer yesterday.
Looking at the bullet ridden buildings and destroyed infrastructure it is difficult to fathom what the Israelis want as they bomb throughout the night, other than to terrify Palestinians into leaving their own land.
In the Gaza Strip there is little hope that Israel's military government and population will be held accountable for its hideous actions before they have wiped out the Palestinians of Gaza, 60% of whom are UN recognized refugees, most stripped of their homes in 1948 in what is now referred to as Israel.
-Palestine Chronicle (palestinechronicle.com). Redistributed via Press International News Agency (PINA).
