umkahlil

Whispers of Palestine

https://www.ismail-shammout.com/
Not to be outdone by the Tunisians or the Egyptians, 120,000 Israelis are marching in the streets because of  the high cost of housing and groceries.  It's even being referred to as #J14, i.e., July 14, reminiscent of the dates attached to the Tunisian and Egyptian people's uprisings.

Quotables:


Remi Kanazi

I am sorry to resume my blog on such a grim note.  According to Palestine Festival of Literature, Mutassim was an aspiring journalist.  He was only twenty-two years old.  He was killed by random fire and Israel soldiers pillaged houses during an early morning raid. In addition another Palestinian, Ali Khalifa was killed.  Israel routinely raids Palestinian refugee camps and villages,ransacks houses and arrests young men. Ma'an News Agency provides more information.

The Diab family.  Three generations of Palestinian refugees, their village was depopulated in 1948 and its buildings destroyed.  Israel has ruled out any repatriation of the millions of Palestinians in the Diabs' position because that would jeopardise the Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state. 
Avigdor Lieberman.  He's from Moldova.  He came to Palestine in 1978.  If you are a former bouncer from Soviet Moldova, welcome to Palestine.







And this lady is from LA.  She plans to join the Israeli Defense Forces in October.

Helen Thomas is vilified for speaking plainly and truthfully, as so many Palestinians and their supporters have been since the artificial imposition of a "Jewish" state in Palestine.

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. These people are occupied.


"Go home. Poland Germany and America and everywhere else."

Helen Thomas, American-Arab, Dean of White House Press Corps

When the 2010 AP Literature and Composition Test Free Response Questions were released, there were initially twenty responses of a relatively mundane nature on the AP Lit teacher listserv.  Teachers were concerned over which part of the prompt on which students would mess up; i.e., "I'm sure my kids will have blown the phrase 'both alienating and enriching' and instead written on only one or the other."  Edward Said's name wasn't mentioned, nor was anyone concerned about his designation as "Palestinian-American."  Just normal teacher talk, and many agreed that the three free response questions (there is one in which students analyze a poem; one in which students analyze a prose passage, and then the third question (the "controversial" one) to which students must answer  based upon a novel, play, or epic they've read.  This is the prompt which ultimately inspired a lot of noise and obfuscation (although I admit it was a big, BIG deal for me to read the prompt for the first time; I felt as if I was flying).

"Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic Edward Said has written that "Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience.  It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted."  Yet, Said has also said that exile can become  "a potent, even enriching" experience.

Select a novel, play, or epic in which a character experiences such a rift and becomes cut off from "home," whether that home is a character's birthplace, family, homeland, or other special place.  Then write an essay in which you analyze how that character's experience with exile is both alienating and enriching, and how this experience illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.  You may choose a work from the list below or one of comparable literary merit.  Do not merely summarize the plot.

The American
Angle of Repose
Another Country
As You Like It
Brave New World
Crime and Punishment
Doctor Zhivago
Heart of Darkness
Invisible Man
Jane Eyre
Jasmine
Jude the Obscure
King Lear
The Little Foxes
Madame Bovary
The Mayor of Casterbridge
My Ántonia
Obasan
The Odyssey
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The Other
Paradise Lost
The Poisonwood Bible
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Road
Robinson Crusoe
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Sister Carrie"

My message to the AP Literature Listserv:

I have taught AP Literature and Composition for 17 years, and I am also a Palestinian-American; my father immigrated to the United States in 1951. This is my first time to comment on this board.

About a year ago, when I read that Edward Said was a recommended non-fiction writer in the AP Literature and Compostion Course description, I felt elation, affirmation and a bit less "exiled."

My students took Form B, and until I saw Form A on the College Board website last Thursday, I didn't know that a prompt inspired by Edward Said was used. I was excited, overjoyed and incredulous when I read the prompt.
Edward Said is Palestinian; Edward Said experienced exile, and Edward Said is a brilliant thinker and considered by many in academia to be one of the great intellects of the twentieth century. He is revered and respected not only by Palestinians, but also by many, many others.

The initial responses on this board on May 8 were rational and ones I would expect from teachers of literature. Much of what ensued later was mere obfuscation and noise. Dixie Dellinger, in her post in regard to "prejudice" gets to the heart of the matter.

"I don't want to be in this fray either, since it arose because of The Test, but I see it as pretty simple at the core. It's a matter of prejudice, one of the most emotional and least rational of mental constructs . . .

"We do not indulge that prejudice because of the students' feelings. We acknowledge them, but we do not validate or legitimize them. "

Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign: Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign, in Israeli jail

Holy Family Catholic Church in Ramallah

It never ceases to amaze me that Palestinians promote Zionist writers and thinkers. Case in point is Uri Avnery, a man who has never renounced Zionism; in fact, he is a proud Zionist. Helena Cobban in Counterpunch points out that Avnery seems to plead with Dov Yermiya, who recently renounced Zionism, to reconsider. Avnery, who obviously knows better or should know better if he could get beyond his tribal affinity, writes about a vision of Zionism that was in its incipient stages more "idealistic." One wonders what's idealistic about a state built upon the ruins of another culture and civilization; one wonders what's idealistic and laudable about a state which has refugees at its gates seeing Jews from all over the world reaping the benefits from ill gotten gains, yet Avnery rivals the best of the Zionist proselytizers:

“You, Dov, have invested in this state much too much to turn your back on it in a gesture of anger and despair. The most hackneyed and worn-out slogan in Israel is also true: ‘We don't have another state!’

“Other states in the world have sunk to the depths of depravity and committed unspeakable crimes, far beyond our worst sins, and still brought themselves back to the family of nations and redeemed their souls."

Would that Avnery was concerned for the Palestinian refugees he and his fellow European Jews have supplanted rather than bringing an ex-Zionist back into the fold.

Cobban's story

Isn't She Lovely?

One would think a leading professor in African-American studies might venture out of his field in regard to the oppression of other people. Evidently, this is not the case for Henry Louis Gates, Jr (thanks David and Mondoweiss):

"’The Case for Israel’ is indispensable reading for those of us who are deeply disturbed by the rise of anti-Semitism in American society, even on college campuses." -Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Chairman, Department of African and African-American Studies at Harvard

"On one of his many visits to Israel, Dershowitz analyzed the Israeli government's program of collective punishment against the Palestinians – demolishing the homes of innocent relatives of those involved in suicide bombing. It is a practice outlawed under international law," writes Bamford.

"Nevertheless, Dershowitz decided to recommend a more effective policy – leveling the buildings in entire villages. 'The next time the terrorists attack,' he said, 'the village's residents would be given twenty-four hours to leave, and then Israeli troops would bulldoze the houses.'"

https://www.antiwar.com/orig/capozzola1.html

PACBI Press Release

Occupied Ramallah, 12 July 2009

PACBI has been heartened by the untiring efforts of BDS activists in the US and UK in organizing demonstrations and pickets at Leonard Cohen’s performances in advance of his planned concert in Tel Aviv later this summer. The call, “don’t Play Israel !” has been heard loud and clear.

After exhausting all attempts to convince Cohen to apply his avowed humanistic principles in a morally consistent way by refusing to entertain Israeli apartheid and whitewash its crimes, we called on all supporters of a just peace in our region to shun Cohen's concerts and CDs and to protest his appearances everywhere. In an open letter to Cohen in May, we warned that we considered his performance in Israel a form of complicity in its grave violations of international law; we reminded him that by violating the Palestinian boycott against Israel he would bring back the ugly memory of artists who violated the boycott against apartheid South Africa and insisted to perform at Sun City, drawing condemnation and revulsion by people of conscience the world over [1].

We are now pleased to announce that we have received confirmation from the Palestinian Prisoners' Club Society that they will not be hosting Leonard Cohen in Ramallah. A strong consensus has emerged among all parties concerned that Cohen is not welcome in Ramallah as long as he insists on performing in Tel Aviv, even though it had been claimed that Cohen would dedicate his concert in Palestine to the cause of Palestinian prisoners. Ramallah will not receive Cohen as long as he is intent on whitewashing Israel‘s colonial apartheid regime by performing in Israel.

PACBI has always rejected any attempt to "balance" concerts or other artistic events in Israel--conscious acts of complicity in Israel‘s violation of international law and human rights--with token events in the occupied Palestinian territory. Such attempts at "parity" not only immorally equate the oppressor with the oppressed, taking a neutral position on the oppression (thereby siding with the oppressor, as Desmond Tutu famously said); they also are an insult to the Palestinian people, as they assume that we are naive enough to accept such token shows of "solidarity" that are solely intended to cover up grave acts of collusion in whitewashing Israel‘s crimes. Those sincerely interested in defending Palestinian rights and taking a moral and courageous stance against the Israeli occupation and apartheid should not play Israel , period. That is the minimum form of solidarity Palestinian civil society has called for.

We feel that this is an occasion to reaffirm our position first articulated two years ago in relation to visits to the occupied Palestinian territory by artists, performers, and academics who wish to show solidarity with Palestinians while primarily coming to Israel to perform or participate in academic or artistic activities. As we noted then, Palestinians have always warmly welcomed solidarity visits by international visitors; however, most Palestinians firmly believe that such solidarity visits should not be used as an occasion to organize performances, film screenings or exhibits in mainstream Israeli venues or to give lectures at Israeli universities ; collaborate in any way with Israeli political, cultural or academic institutions; or participate in activities sponsored or supported -- directly or indirectly -- by the Israeli government or any of its agencies [2].

The Cohen team's motives may not be so innocent, however. We believe that the plan for Cohen to perform for Palestinians is an effort to defuse the bad publicity and animated demonstrations by BDS activists at performance venues in several cities. Cohen's managers probably felt that by adding a Ramallah gig at the last minute, they could deflate the growing protest and the PACBI call for boycott against the tour. While this is a reflection of the positive effect the boycott call has generated, it also shows that Tel Aviv is still on the tour agenda. More protests and more publicity about the boycott are needed, and this is why the demonstrations and pickets in London , Liverpool and elsewhere are so welcome.

www.PACBI.org
pacbi@pacbi.org



[1] https://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1006
[2] https://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=539

In response to some idiotic Zionist diversionary post how partioning Palestine was any different than the partition of Pakistan and India

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/obama-israel-cairo-speech

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 1:26pm (about 8 hours ago)

I'd be more than happy too talk about the partition:

Partition was seen by the Palestinians as imposing unilateral and intolerable sacrifices on themselves . . . The area of the Jewish state according to the UN plan would actually be larger than that of the proposed Palestinian state (5,500 square miles as compared with 4,500 square miles) at a time when the Jews constituted no more than 35 percent of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. Within the proposed Jewish state, Jewish land ownership did not in fact exceed 600 square miles out of the total area of 5,500 square miles. Nearly all the citrus land (equally divided in ownership between Jews and Palestinians), 80 percent of the cereal land (entirely Palestinian-owned), and 40 percent of Palestinian industry would fall within the borders of the proposed Jewish state. Jaffa, the Palestinian state's major port on the Mediterranean, would be altogether cut off from its hinterland, and Gaza would lose its traditional links with the wheatlands of the Negev.

Hundreds of villages would be separated from communal fields and pastures. The Palestinian state would lose direct access both to the Red Sea and to Syria. The economic union between the two states, on which partition had been postulated, was know beforehand to be impracticable. The patchwork of subunits into which partition would divide the country bore little relationship to the human and social realities on the ground.

Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948.Washington DC: Institute For Palestine Studies, 1991.

In response to Berchmans
05 Jun 09, 3:07pm (about 7 hours ago)

umkahlil
.
## What effrontery. To insist that Palestinians recognize the "right" of of European and American Jews to dispossess them. Like these, who forgot to put their make-up on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxt9HwfPwPo ##
.
The link was horrific. Shocking...I hope this is not what young Israelis in general are like ..I hope they were completely drunk and not like that when they get back into uniform. They really think they are about to die. WTF? They seem to live in a parallel world...WTF is the news there like? No wonder so many Israelis come to CIF ! :)
B

The maker of the video writes:

As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

https://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/max-blumenthal-feeling-the-hate-in-jerusalem-on-eve-of-obamas-cairo-address.html

But really, no more shocking than destroying more than five hundred villages and ethnically cleansing more than half of those who became refugees before any Arab army entered Palestine . . . no more shocking than Petra's pretty, polished propaganda. No more shocking than the hysterical rants of those here who divert from the issue, no more shocking than the majority of Israelis who sneer at Obama's very own words:

"Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail."

No more shocking than denying those people who were born in Palestine and their descendents from stepping foot in their homeland. No more shocking than demonising an entire group. Why do you think a tiny faction of Palestinians engage in violence? Because it is inherent in our nature? Or because of the massive injustice that has been perpetuated on Palestinians? I am not Hamas; I am not Fatah; I am the daughter of a man who had to leave Ramallah in 1951 because his economic prospects were next to nil after Palestine had been truncated in 1948. I would take a bullet before I would acknowledge the "right" of Israel to exist. I am not an extremist. I have the God given right to move freely in the land from which my father and ancestors came, and I will never renounce that right.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 5:14pm (about 5 hours ago)

Another Palestinian protesting the theft of his land killed today:
The slain Palestinian was identified as Yousef Aqel Sadiq Srour, 36, who was shot in the chest with live fire, according to medics at the scene.

https://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38333

And par for the course, the Israelis fired on an ambulance:
A Palestinian ambulance was also fired upon, injuring one of its medics, witnesses said.
https://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38333

In response to Zionist diversion:

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 6:13pm (about 4 hours ago)

I did not say my father was a refugee, but he was a victim of the truncation of his land. Jaffa was a place where many people from Ramallah did business. Once again, the Palestinians are not responsible for what happened to the Jews in Iraq. Many reject the title "refugee," as they were "proud Zionists" who came of their own free will. This is documented in "Hitching A Ride on A Magic Carpet." There were also black ops on the part of the Zionists facilitating the exodus from Iraq. There is no moral equivalence here, but we know that marching orders of Zionists are to mention Jewish refugeees every time Palestine's refugeees are mentioned. This is a bill that came up in the US Congress. Zionism is the root cause of the problem. All else is diversion.

Further Zionists attempts to divert and dissemble and claim that the Palestinians opposed to partition were Nazis (I'm not including their comments):

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 6:44pm (about 3 hours ago)

Petra,

Your claim "and starting in the mid-1920s, the development of the land, exclusively due to Jewish immigrants' efforts (as all historical sources agree) attracted a lot of Arab immigrants" is disgraceful. Any fool can check out the photographs at Palestineremembered.com to disprove your disingenous and egregious denial of the Palestinian presence on the land. And anyone may leaf through the photos of numerous books including Before Their Diaspora by Walid Khalidi to see the Palestinian farmers, potters, businessmen, etc. who were thriving prior to the European Jewish immigration. We were not primitives, but had a well developed agrarian and cosmopolitan society.

The Mufti is another diversion; the term Nakba isn't employed because the truncation of Palestine was considered a picnic by Palestinians.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 7:20pm (about 3 hours ago)
I never claimed that my father was a refugee; for the second time a Zionist says I claimed something I didn't say in order to discredit me. Then you make some claim about my father, whom you know nothing about.

And if the Zionists did so well with the land, why don't you read Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks. He does a great job of claiming how the hills around Ramallah were decimated by the people who claim to love the land so much.

You continue to go out of your way to deny Palestinians rights on their own lands. It's really rich that a German immigrant calls me an extremist for insisting that Palestinians have the right to live on their own land. You are the extremist, Petra, bringing up other situations in order to justify Israel's continuing oppression of Palestinians.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 7:34pm (about 2 hours ago)

Typical Zionist tactic, Petra, throwing up a lot of bs in order to mislead.

I said Palestine was an agrarian and cosmopolitan society; where do I mention the fellahin?
I didn't say anything about the Mufti other than throwing him up is another Zionist diversionary tactic, and I didn't say anything about Jews in Arab lands, which has nothing to do with Palestinians, other than some left of their own accord and some left because of Zionist black op operations.

And Petra, destroying hundreds of villages is wrong. And ethnically cleansing a civilian population is wrong. And trying to justify it is also wrong.

Let me quote Salman Abu Sitta's words to Gershon Baskin:

The Palestinians, and most of the world with them, are determined to pursue justice, eradicate racism and Apartheid. Just as South Africa did. They have no intention of disappearing.
Baskin, true friendship should go to the Israelis to help shake them off their collective amnesia about what they have done and are doing to the Palestinians and to advise them that their salvation lies in shedding racism fully and forever. They have to amend their ways, reverse ethnic cleansing and make reparations.

For it is clear that the history of Jews will ultimately be marked indelibly, and above all other historical events, by what they have done in Palestine.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 8:13pm (about 2 hours ago)
https://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story420.html

It's hypocritical for Zionist apologists to hold Palestinians responsible for the actions of one man, considering the alliance made between the Stern Gang and Nazis.
And this really has nothing to do with the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 8:19pm (about 2 hours ago)

Dr. Abu Sitta has a very pragmatic approach.

The Right of Return is Feasible.

https://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2005/06/dr-salman-abu-sitta-right-of-return-is.html

And no, Ehad, Palestinians did not immigrate to Palestine and steal the land and dispossess the people; we were there; Jewish immigrants from all over the world did this. And there are no excuses for what the Zionists did to Palestine and what they continue to do.
I