It will be a blood-red Christmas in Palestine

This week has left many Palestinians in great sorrow and grief with several attacks and killings. When you think it cannot get any worse, well in fact it does and with a great blow; starting with the tragic death of a four-year-old boy on Tuesday.

With the 2018 Gaza Border Protest called ‘Great March of Return’ many were protesting to demand that Palestinian refugees and their descendants be allowed to return to the land they were displaced from in what is now Israel. They were also protesting the blockade of the Gaza Strip and the moving of the United States Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The result of this violent but revolutionary protest ended in a lot of blood and tears marking itself as the deadliest days of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 2014 Gaza War.

Considering this campaign started in March 30, the number of deaths and injured people is horrendous being; some 180 Palestinians shot dead and nearly 6,000 others injured by live fire along Gaza’s eastern and northern perimeter. Nearly three dozen of those killed were children, four-year-old Ahmad Yasir Sabri Abid sadly being the most recent one. Palestinian child fatalities due to Israeli fire have spiked in 2018, with more than 50 killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – one death per week on average.

Tuesday resulted in another fatality of Omar Hassan al-Awawdeh, 27, in Idhna village near the West Bank city of Hebron. Israel claimed that soldiers shot al-Awawdeh after he drove through a checkpoint without stopping and accelerated towards a Border Police combatant. No Israeli forces were injured during the incident.

We live in a hypocritical world where the interests of men come first and justice and democracy are exceptional. We take these two crucial parts of society for granted because I presume most of us have never been robbed and unjustifiably stripped down of their dignity by a foreign invasion. Most people also feel no need to inform themselves and take action in regards to the atrocities happening in Palestine because they reason that since it is not in their neighbourhood and not directly affecting them then why should they get involved? However this is not ethically right and certainly not how we should react to such things. This is a selfish and shallow approach where we just think of us and our benefits. If men had to act this way all throughout history many things would not be as we know them today.

It is even sadder to think that people even choose to support the Israeli government and all the liars who form part of  it. Netanyahu tries to deceive millions around the world over and over again that it is the people of Gaza throwing missiles and bombing towns. How can they when they have no great military power, America in the case of Israel, to support them? This is what Netanyahu said back in 24 September 2009 at the United Nations General Assembly:

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It was very painful. We dismantled 21 settlements -- really bedroom communities and farms. We uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We just yanked them out from their homes. We did this because many in Israel believed that this would get peace. Well, we didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. But life in the Israeli towns and cities immediately next to Gaza became nothing less than nightmare. You see, the -- the Hamas rocket launchers and the rocket attacks not only continued after we left, they actually increased dramatically -- they increased tenfold. And again, the UN was silent. Absolutely silent.

This brings us to another death when on early Thursday a Palestinian was shot dead by police in Jerusalem. Majd Mteir, a 25-year-old resident of Qalandiya refugee camp near Ramallah, was killed while attempting to stab police officers in the Old City. Two police officers were moderately and lightly wounded. Video published by Israeli media shows a man, presumably Mteir, lunging towards officers and a knife lying on the ground. Another man was killed on Thursday afternoon who allegedly attempted to attack soldiers with his car when he was shot dead near Ramallah.

On top of all of these deaths, there were also numerous attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian cars throughout the whole week. All of this feels so heavy on the heart especially because not many people around the world, despite the amazing increase of awareness and support towards Palestine this past year, are working hard enough to stop Israel and give the Palestinians back there home and freedom. It is incomprehensible to think of how much these people have suffered and how little they have been given in return. This cannot go on, it simply cannot. Bells won’t be ringing, choirs won’t be singing and the streets of Palestine won’t be covered in white winter snow but with the blood of innocent souls.

IN THE SHADOWS 

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 22-year-old Palestinian man in the West Bank city of Tulkarem on Tuesday. You did not hear about it in the mainstream news media and you certainly won’t hear about it now. This is the harsh reality of the bias in almost all of the leading news outlets. It occurred during a pre-dawn raid when Muhammad Habali was in the streets of Tulkarem along with other protesting men holding nothing but a long, thin, broom-like stick as a means of armoury. This homicide was recorded on a mobile device by one of the men who were with the victim protesting. As these men started holding back from retaliation, Habali turns his back towards what seems to be where the soldiers are, according to the video, and starts walking away. As he does so he is shot down in cold blood and I must say this is certainly not for the faint-hearted to watch.

Palestinians pray by the body of Muhammad Habali 22,
during his funeral in Tulkarem

As usual the Israeli military found ways to cover up and sweep their criminal act under the carpet of piled up lies by saying that its forces opened fire during “a violent riot … in which dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks.” Also an important point to keep in mind and analyse in regards to this unjustifiable act is the fact that this happened during a pre-dawn raid. This is a very common time when Jewish military forces attack on sleeping Palestinians. They know that pre-dawn raids work in their advantage as it gives them the power of undertaking land and all private properties without a warrant or notice of Palestinians while they are typically asleep. The lack of witnesses mainly being journalists enables them to work in private. Illegal arrests, kidnapping, house raids, you mention it, all would be easier for them to do as not many people will be there to repel them.

Of the nearly 300 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces so far this year, more than 30 were shot and killed in the occupied West Bank – several during raids on cities, villages and refugee camps. What is so sickening about all this is that nobody pities all these innocent lives lost but when a Jewish settler living on stolen land is killed or most of the time threatened by Palestinians, there is an outbreak and the whole thing is made to seem as if it’s the end of the world. Something which is even more sickening is when great, powerful people give into the Zionist movement and start supporting Israel in all of its atrocious acts, one recent case being Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 
Is it True-deau?
Going back to Nov. 7 at the House of Commons in Canada is a clear case of the strength of Israeli lobby groups on powerful people around the world. The newest sweetheart poster boy of neoliberal politics, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, simply whitewashed one crime with another when he apologised on behalf of Canadians for the atrocious fact that Canada rejected a ship carrying some 900 Jewish refugees running away from the murderous Nazis in 1939. 

Trudeau said that “We are sorry for the callousness of Canada's response”. I think he should have been apologising for the callousness of Canada’s response towards the thousands of Palestinians which are actively being illegally imprisoned, tortured, tormented and killed every single day that passes by which he carelessly dismissed and shoved aside by his next statement. He said; 

During this Holocaust Education Week, it is all the more impossible to ignore the challenges and injustices still facing Jews in this country. According to the most recent figures, 17 per cent of all hate crimes in Canada target Jewish people – far higher per capita than any other group. Holocaust deniers still exist. Antisemitism is still far too present. Jewish institutions and neighbourhoods are still being vandalised with swastikas. Jewish students still feel unwelcome and uncomfortable on some of our college and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation. And out of our entire community of nations, it is Israel whose right to exist is most widely – and wrongly – questioned. Discrimination and violence against Jewish people in Canada and around the world continues at an alarming rate. 

It might be true that Jews all over the world and in Canada do still feel a certain hostile, unwelcoming and threatening feeling from other races but what about the thousands of Palestinians constantly terrorised by the illegal settlers and IDF (Israel Defense Forces) in their own hometowns? What about the children who are violently ripped away from their families with both the child and parents screaming for help and weeping with such pain who are taken for physically and mentally abusing interviews or even jailed? What about all the houses mercilessly burned down to the ground and all the fertile land which is destroyed? How inhumane and degrading do you think that must be for Palestinians and how do you think they might feel living in such a world?

It rages me when I go over what he had said but it is indeed a realisation that politicians such as

(Left) Benjamin Netanyahu, (Right) Justin Trudeau 

Trudeau, who for so long seemed to be an ideal politician portraying a kind but fake persona, are more of a threat to humanity and its future than ignorant and irrational people such as Trump. So much like the malicious and deceiving liar Netanyahu, you never know what politicians like Trudeau have planned up their sleeves which is very intimidating. I am very disappointed that someone who I had such great faith in and believed in turned out to be such a deceiving liar. He gave into the Israeli Government’s lies and is now aboard a train of propaganda and hatred towards Palestinians. Will there be a way to bring him back? Only time will tell.

“A free Palestine from the river to the sea”

Marc Lamont Hill was fired from CNN after delivering his powerful speech at a United Nations event this week. On 28 November 2018, was the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people where Hill spoke in regards of this topic. Hill being an active and very-well informed advocate for Palestine spoke the truth about the entire situation which rather bothered some.

Hill is an American academic, author, activist, television personality and professor of Media Studies and Urban Education at Temple University. Speaking up about how Palestine is actively an apartheid and accusing Israel for it, Hill found himself subject to not only a lot of backlash on social media but also at the risk of losing his teaching position. Taken from a part of his iconic speech, the following is a clear understanding of what I have just said:

While the Universal Declaration for Human Rights says that all people are “born free and equal in dignity and rights,” the Israeli nation state continues to restrict freedom and undermine equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as those in the West Bank and Gaza. At the current moment, there are more than 60 Israeli laws that deny Palestinians access to full citizenship rights, simply because they’re not Jewish. From housing to education to family reunification, it is clear that any freedoms naturally endowed to all human beings are actively being stripped away from Palestinians through Israeli state craft.

The same Israeli lobby group who tried to twist and fabricate his speech into a hate speech propagating Jewish genocide and making it seem full of bigotry, which clearly was not, were the same ones who probably pressured CNN to fire him but also want him to lose his job. The sentence "a free Palestine from the river to the sea" was what the political lynch mob tried to accuse of being a genocidal call for the destruction of Israel.

Such accusations are outright lies and a means to silence and punish anyone who dares speak up for the rights of Palestinian freedom and equality from Israel's inhumane occupational regime, settler-colonialism and apartheid. Look at any American news media platform and you will sense this bias.
The whole situation clearly indicates that the smearing and targeting of Hill was a high-level Israel lobby operation likely with involvement of the apartheid regime itself.

A quote which really struck me from Hill's speech was "For every minute that the global has articulated a clear and lucid framework for human rights, the Palestinian people have been deprived of the most fundamental of them." which clearly states that Palestine is robbed of its basic rights and who is to blame? Well at this point in time it is not just the Israeli government and its supporters but also the whole world. It is the whole world which just stood by when the Palestinians needed us the most.

In the closing of his statement "Invited Representative of Civil Society" Hill said,

So as we stand here on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the tragic commemoration of the Nakba, we have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grassroots action, local action, and international action that will give us what justice requires. And that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea.

Hearing this closing statement really touched my heart because he is addressing all the people in the meeting that change is not only subject to words and signed documents but it can also be done locally, internationally and so on if we all understood the situation at hand and showed enough determination and care for a very necessary and long over-due change.

If you look at a map you will understand that by the sentence "from the river to the sea" Hill is indirectly affirming that that piece of land is indeed historic Palestine - once a land of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Rightful homeland to Palestinians and their future generation indeed though his sentence was taken out of context. What he meant was a suggestion to redraw Israel’s borders back to what it was pre-1948 partition granting full citizenship to Palestinians in Israel meaning a nation for all people.