This panel examines the intersection of Israeli policies of occupation and containment which prevent Palestinian self-determination, with a focus on the experience for Palestinians of living under occupation in Jerusalem and Gaza and the ways Palestinians and their supporters are organizing politically, economically and culturally to protect their human rights and work towards a different future.
Dr. Irene Calis discusses how the frequent comparisons of Israel with Apartheid South Africa may obscure more fundamental questions Palestinians we should be asking. From her recent base in today’s South Africa, where “whiteness” still lives on the back of “blackness,” she argues that the post-apartheid moment should alert Palestinians to take stock and reframe both the form of our campaigns and the terms of any proposed resolution. This requires asking qualitatively different kinds of questions, ones which concern not the nature of the apartheid state, but instead, the nature of our preferred future.
In the art of Bedouin artist, Eid Hadaleen, the instruments of the occupation are reconstructed by the occupied. The originals of the miniatures are Hadaleen’s everyday fare: bulldozer, helicopter, digger, tractor, truck. These modes of transportation and construction are wielded against the Palestinian people with the intended effect of immobilizing them. Yet, through the use of wood, iron, rubber, plastic, glass, parts of furniture and accessories, Hadaleen performs a miniature imitation that suggests on one hand mockery and on another the power of creative responses to the occupation.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders have traded pointed barbs at the UN general assembly, in a rhetorical exchange that underlines the deep differences between the two sides – and the dim prospects for meaningful dialogue.
An analysis of UN data show that a recent surge in reports of deportations of individuals attempting to transit through Israel to work with Palestinians is apparently the result of an official strategy implemented by the Israeli government beginning in January of this year, announced the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor today.
By Mohamed Mohamed
The plight of Palestinians dispossessed in 1948 has in many ways been forgotten. It is imperative that supporters of Palestinian rights never forget the right of return, which is a cornerstone of the Palestinian struggle.
The San Francisco Public Library will host “Home Away from Home: Little Palestine by the Bay” an exhibit by Palestinian photographer Najib Joe Hakim. “Home” combines photography and recorded oral histories to tackle the question, “What does it mean to be Palestinian in America?”
By Zeina Azzam
Perhaps the most hard-hitting sentence in this section of the M4BL platform is, ‘The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.’ This linking of the Washington-Tel Aviv alliance with Palestinian genocide is indeed a forceful statement that points to the use of US tax dollars to serve pernicious and unjust policy decisions. One has only to look at the 2014 Israeli assault of Gaza, which UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said ‘shocked and shamed the world,’ to find proof of such policies.
Panel I: Legacies of the British Mandate and the Changing U.S. Role in the Conflicts of the Middle East; Keynote Address: Ambassador Riyad Mansour; Panel II: Living with Israel’s Hegemony
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