Archive for the ‘articles’ Category

Germany Gave My Family Reparations. Palestinians Deserve the Same From Israel.

June 16, 2021

TRUTHOUT

An aerial view of a collapsed building

A drone views the ruins of buildings in Gaza city, leveled by an Israeli airstrike, on June 11, 2021, in Gaza, Palestine.MAJDI FATHI / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

By Jane Hirschmann

June 14, 2021

I am a first-generation American. My Jewish parents fled Germany as the horrors of the Holocaust were unfolding. They left behind family who perished in camps and were killed as they fled from their homes while being chased and shot at by Nazis.

My great-grandfather, grandfather and father had a thriving butcher business in Frankfurt. They lived in the apartment building next to the butcher shop. My father always said he barely realized he was Jewish until Hitler arrived. It was always Deutschland über alles.

My mother’s family were wheat traders in Wetzlar. After the rise of Hitler, my mother fled Germany first so that she could learn the language in her new country and make enough money to bring over her parents and brother. They came to the U.S. without much money and like many, had to build a life from the bottom up.

Once the war was over, Germany gave my father reparations for the loss of his business as well as for the crime of persecution. He received a monthly check until his death at the age of 91. Both of my parents were welcomed back by the German government and told they could get their passports and citizenship returned.

Those born to Holocaust survivors who can prove that their father was forced from his homeland between the years 1933-1945 have the right to become German citizens along with all of their children, grandchildren and all future progeny forever. Last year, my children, grandchildren and I became German citizens, and were given European passports.

As I think about my own family and its history, I wonder why the 750,000 Palestinians forced from their homes and land in 1948 when Israel was founded are not entitled to the same treatment my family received after WWII ended. But the war on Palestinians was never over. Instead, Israel continues to this day its policy of ethnic cleansing, as evidenced by the current expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah and other parts of East Jerusalem.

B’Tselem, a human rights organization in Israel, and Human Rights Watch have documented and denounced the continuing maltreatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government and the settler movement, including the confiscation of Palestinians’ lands and houses; the restrictions on movement; the limitations on rights of free speech and assembly; the denial of building permits; the denial of many basic civil rights and the terrorizing by Jewish settler extremists backed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Human Rights Watch has concluded that conduct toward the Palestinians amounts to persecution and apartheid, which are crimes against humanity under international law.

It is somewhat ironic that thousands of Jews in Israel are getting reparations and passports from Germany because of expulsion, loss of property and persecution, yet Israel will not allow Palestinians to return to a land from which they were expelled.

We recently witnessed the brutal bombing of Gaza, where 2 million Palestinians have been strangled by a 14-year blockade. Using the most sophisticated weaponry made in the United States, the IDF has targeted civilian population centers, hitting 18 hospitals and clinics, apartment buildings and killing scores of children and other innocent bystanders.

I ask myself: How is it possible that the victims of the Holocaust and their progeny can so brutally victimize another people on racial grounds? I ask myself why Palestinians don’t have the same rights to reparations and return afforded to my family after Germany accepted responsibility for their crimes. Shouldn’t Palestinians be entitled to reparations and the right of return? Shouldn’t they have the same rights to self-determination that Israel itself claims?

Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes from which they were displaced is well-established in international law. The first source of support is UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of December 1948, in which the UN General Assembly, “Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible.”

It is somewhat ironic that thousands of Jews in Israel are getting reparations and passports from Germany because of expulsion, loss of property and persecution, yet Israel will not allow Palestinians to return to a land from which they were expelled.

I simply cannot reconcile these profound contradictions that obviously preclude any possibility for peace in the region.

I am deeply ashamed and angry that these acts are committed in the name of the Jewish people and that my government provides the money and arms to support these Israeli crimes.

Jane Hirschmann is an author, psychotherapist and longtime organizer for justice, a co-chair of Freedom2Boycott NYS Coalition and co-founder of Jews Say No!.

Resources on Defunding the Police and Police Abolition

June 11, 2020

 

Jews Say No! stands with all those fighting for a just world and understands deeply that the powerful organizing taking place today against anti-Black racism and anti-Black violence reflects the long, hard, and deeply committed work of so many organizations and individuals, particularly Black activists.
We know people are receiving lots of resources, but we wanted to particularly share some that we have appreciated and learned from that focus on defunding the police and police abolition since we know many of us may be thinking seriously about these issues for the first time. We also make some suggestions of people and groups to follow, including where we can directly contribute to some of the Black-led and police and prison abolition organizing.
 
In solidarity,
Jews Say No!

Articles that focus on defunding the police and police abolition:

America, This is Your Chance  Michelle Alexander in the NYTimes  

 The State is Failing Black People  NYTimes  Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

 No More Money for the Police    NYT Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris

Don’t Let Cops Join Our Protest The Appeal, Derecka Purnell

Police “Reforms” You Should Always Oppose   Truthout 2014 Mariame Kaba

Is Prison Necessary? NYTimes Rachel Kushner with Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Are Prisons Obsolete?  feministes-radicales by Angela Davis

Learn more about abolition  Abolition study resources

The End of Policing Verso Books Alex S. Vitale

What would it mean to ‘defund the police’?  NBC News Jon Schuppe

Organizations and individuals/websites/resources  on prison and police abolition, transformative justice, and envisioning a just future:

What are we talking about when we talk about “a police-free future?” MPD 150 A people’s project evaluating policing

MPD 150 FAQ  Frequently Asked Questions

Transform Harm

8 can’t wait coalition

Building-an-Abolitionist-Trans-Queer-Movement  Dean Spade

Critical Resistance

Survived & Punished

Black and Pink

INCITE!

Reclaim the Block 

Dream Defenders 

Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective

National Bail Fund Network  Contribute to local and national bail funds 

Defund Islamophobia Now

December 19, 2018

The Defund Islamophobia report is described in the article below.

Ben Gingell via Shutterstock)Ben Gingell via Shutterstock)

by Donna Nevel and Elly Bulkin

Imagine a scenario in which the communal fund of a major U.S. religious or cultural organization gave money to virulently anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi groups. Imagine the totally justified outrage that would accompany those revelations. Imagine how Jewish communities would react: with indignation and the demand that the fund immediately stop supporting hate and anti-Semitism. This would absolutely be the right thing to do.

Now imagine what has actually happened: New York’s Jewish Communal Fund (JCF) has been financially supporting hate directed toward Muslims. It has funded the work of some of the most virulent purveyors of Islamophobia in the country. When Jewish mainstream organizations learn about this support for anti-Muslim racism, imagine that they react with the same outrage as if it had been directed toward Jews. Let’s hope that will be the case when they learn the facts.

report recently released by three progressive Jewish organizations (two of which we work with), documents how the JCF is funding Islamophobia. JCF federal Form 990 filings reveal that, going back to at least 2001, it has funded anti-Muslim hate groups, with six of them receiving a total of $2,082,212 between 2013 and 2017, the last years for which 990 forms are publicly available.

These organizations are key parts of what was described in a Center for American Progress 2011 report—Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America— as “the Islamophobia network in America.” They include the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) whose public face is Pamela Geller, a notorious Muslim-basher who promoted a nationwide anti-Muslim ad campaign that placed vitriolic anti-Muslim ads in public buses and subways; the Clarion Project, which has produced Islamophobic propaganda films and uses inflammatory images to demonize and smear Muslims (along with Palestinians); and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a major purveyor of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, which the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as “the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement.”

But that’s not all. JCF also funds the Investigative Project on Terrorism, led by Steven Emerson, perhaps best known for claiming immediately after Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that the attack had “a Middle Eastern trait” because it “was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible;” the Middle East Forum, whose Daniel Pipes alleged that President Obama “enforced Islamic law;” and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which the Center for American Progress has described as the go-to source for those in the Islamophobia network who want to “make the case that Islam is inherently violent and promotes extremism.” JCF has also accepted financial support from two funders of the Islamophobia network: the Abstraction Fund and Gotham Charitable Foundation Trust.

The Center for American Progress describes the leaders of the Islamophobia network as “misinformation experts.” They not only provide misinformation to media outlets, but they also have relationships with government officials, whose support lends credibility to these anti-Muslim bigots, allowing them to secure funding from government and private sources.

Anti-Muslim racism has a long, ugly history in the United States, which has accelerated since 9/11 and intensified still further under the current administration’s policies. Islamophobia has become deeply entrenched within U.S. society—on the streets, in government, in institutions, in the media.

JCF has the power and obligation to stop funding anti-Muslim hate groups. Its rules give it the right to reject any and all grant recommendations, with includes individuals with donor-advised funds who designate a specific organization for funding. According to JCF’s handbook, “all grant recommendations are nonbinding,” with JCF retaining the power “to decline grant recommendations.” Although JCF gives to many worthwhile projects and grantees, that does not make it acceptable to give a single penny to anti-Muslim hate.

In addition to JCF’s funding of anti-Muslim racism, activists in Chicago exposed in 2017 similar funding of Islamophobia by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago through its donor-advised funds. Its funding between 2011 and 2014 included the Middle East Forum and Investigative Project on Terrorism, recipients of nearly $650,000 from JUF. In the 2013-2017 fiscal years, the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (the local Jewish federation) also funded anti-Muslim hate, including giving more than $360,000 to three of the anti-Muslim hate groups highlighted in the JCF report.

More recent research on the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, which is “housed and staffed” by the Federation, documents substantial financial support for anti-Muslim hate going back to 2003. Nearly $2 million in the 2013-2017 fiscal years went from the Federation and Diller to the six groups that are the focus of the New York City report, as well as substantial funding to other anti-Muslim groups. It was heartening to learn that the Diller Family Foundation agreed to stop funding the blacklist website Canary Mission, which targets pro-Palestine activists, just hours after a report about its $100,000 donation appeared in the Jewish press. At this moment, however, there has been no public sign that it is ending its support of anti-Muslim racism.

White supremacists, including those with the power of the state behind them, feel emboldened these days to act upon their violent and aggressive combination of racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, transphobia, homophobia, and more. It’s critical to be principled in the commitment to challenge all forms of injustice—in words, actions, and the insistence that community institutions be accountable. This means that the JCF and others need to cut off all funding to anti-Muslim hate groups, now and in the future.

Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, and Elly Bulkin, a writer, are co-founders of Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism (JAAMR).

Israel’s Environmental Colonialism and Eco-Apartheid

December 18, 2018
The construction of Israel’s mammoth apartheid wall has separated Palestinian farmers from their fields and destroyed Palestinians’ legally owned fertile agricultural land.

By Ben Lorber

July 12, 2012 – Links international Journal of Socialist Renewal — Since the idea of Zionism first gripped the minds of a few intellectuals and the limbs of many agrarian pioneers in the early 20th century, the state of Israel has presented its settlement of the land of Palestine, and its uprooting of the Palestinian people, as a rejuvenation of the earth. By “greenwashing” the occupation, Israel hides its apartheid behind an environmentalist mirage, and distracts public attention not only from its brutal oppression of the Palestinian people, but from its large-scale degradation of the earth upon which these tragedies unfold.

Determined to “make the desert bloom”, an international organisation — the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemet LeYisrael (JNF-KKL, or JNF) planted forests, recreational parks and nature reserves to cover over the ruins of Palestinian villages, as refugees were scattered far from, or worse, a few hilltops away from, the land upon which they and their ancestors had based their lives and livelihoods.

Today, as Israel portrays itself as a “green democracy”’, an eco-friendly pioneer in agricultural techniques such as drip irrigation, dairy farming, desert ecology, water management and solar energy, Israeli factories drain toxic waste and industrial pollutants down from occupied West Bank hilltops into Palestinian villages, and over-pumping of groundwater aquifers denies Palestinians access to vital water sources in a context of increasing water scarcity and pollution.

(more…)

JEWISH COMMUNAL FUND SUPPORTS ANTI-MUSLIM HATE GROUPS

November 29, 2018

The Shame of the UJA-Federation of New York

HOW ITS JEWISH COMMUNAL FUND  SUPPORTS ANTI-MUSLIM HATE GROUPS

The Jewish Communal Fund (JCF), the funding arm of the UJA-Federation of New York (UJA-Federation), has for years funded a host of anti-Muslim hate groups—contributing more than $2 million to six such groups just in 2013-2017. While JCF is understandably proud of its funding of numerous community, health, and other such organizations, it seems decidedly reluctant to call public attention to its support for these Islamophobic groups. We call upon the JCF to make a firm, public commitment to stop contributing to these anti-Muslim groups and to others that share their ideology.

READ MORE

 

How the Jewish National Fund Bluewashes Israeli Apartheid

November 18, 2018

Children in Gaza fill bottles of clean water at a purification station in Deir al-Balah. Up to 95 percent of Gaza’s groundwater is not potable. (Ashraf Amra APA images)On 19 June in New York City, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), in collaboration with the UN’s Department of Public Information and NGO Relations, will convene a panel of “experts” to discuss water management and sustainability in “arid countries.”

The presentation is just the latest example of how the JNF, founded at the turn of the century in order to colonize the land of Palestine with the Jewish people of the world, is attempting to alter its settler-colonial image by establishing itself as a leader and champion of environmental and water conservation causes. The organization is presenting at the UN as an approved member of its nongovernmental organization network.

But far from operating as a nongovernmental organization, the JNF actually works in close tandem with the State of Israel to promote its agenda of maintaining a Jewish settler-colonist state.

For example, the JNF holds a privileged status in Israel. It holds 50 percent of the seats on the Israel Land Administration (ILA) Council, the public authority that controls 93 percent of state lands. The JNF’s bylaws prohibit the organization from leasing land to “non-Jews.” In fact, in August 2004, the ILA admitted that the JNF tenders land only to Jews. Thus, Israel hands off the dirty business of explicitly discriminatory land policies to the JNF, neatly avoiding direct violation of many of the human rights treaties the state has signed.

But despite this function within Israel, in the last decade the JNF has presented itself to the United Nations as a nongovernmental, non-political organization. In July 2004 it was approved as a nongovernmental organization by the UN Department of Public Information. Thrilled with the credibility the status bestowed, Yehiel Leket, World Chairman of the JNF, said, “Our acceptance by other countries into the United Nations legitimizes our award-winning efforts in water, environment and sustainable development.”

Aggressive displacement

Of note, however, in 2006, the JNF’s application for consultative status was rejected by the UN on the basis that the organization was “too political,” and had been involved in projects in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Israel denied the political nature of the JNF, stating it works on “sustainable development and environmental conservation issues.” At the vote, Israel pointed out that the organization had withdrawn from its participation in a project in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

But even if the JNF is not operating directly in the Palestinian territories outside the Green Line (Israel’s internationally-recognized armistice line with the occupied West Bank), it has played a critical role in the aggressive displacement of Bedouin communities in the Naqab (Negev) — in particular, in Al-Araqib. Furthermore, despite Israel’s concerted efforts to depoliticize the issue of water, it is inherently a political one — as is JNF’s involvement in it.

The JNF began to alter its agenda from being an organization exclusively dedicated to settling Jews in Palestine and covering over Palestinian villages destroyed by Zionist militias to a seemingly less controversial agenda in 2002: “Beginning in 2002, Jewish National Fund made its debut on the international front as an environmental organization,” the organization states on its website.

JNF’s profile on the website of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs lists climate change, forests, freshwater and human settlements as among its fields of expertise.

JNF’s membership with the UN’s Department of Public Information allows it to sponsor or facilitate panels and workshops at UN conferences around the world, affording it the chance to conduct bluewashing events like the one taking place tomorrow.

Bluewashing

This “bluewashing” agenda seeks to extract the issues of water in Palestine from the broader political circumstances, focusing on technical solutions to water scarcity and emphasizing Israel’s conservational approaches to wastewater and agricultural practices. The salient facts are ignored — Israel exercises total control over all the natural water sources in the region, deliberately gives Palestinians insufficient water and even denies their ability to collect it, and thus maintains a system of water apartheid.

For Palestinians, the water crisis is constant: as many as 200,000 Palestinians are not connected to running water, and the average Palestinian consumes just 70 liters a day while the World Health Organization recommends at least 100 liters per day. Gaza’s sole aquifer is over-extracted, making 90 to 95 percent of the water unfit for drinking. Bluewashing is a flagrant attempt to paper over these facts and create new ones.

The panel

All of this brings us to tomorrow’s panel, which will be moderated by the JNF’s Vice President of Government Relations, Joseph Hess, and includes Clive Lipchin of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Seth Siegel, an AIPAC member and commenter on water issues in the region, and Sharon Megdal, a professor at the University of Arizona.

Clive Lipchin is the Director for Transboundary Water Management at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The Arava Institute was founded in 1996, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, and as such promulgates a mission that values cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli groups in “environmental studies” outside of any political context.

While its mission may appear anodyne, Arava has been a partner with the JNF since 2002. In 2010, New York City-based Palestine activism group Adalah-NY called for a boycott of a virtual event planned by the Arava Institute, writing: “The JNF and Arava are clearly close partners, using one another to bolster their images and funding.”

According to the JNF’s 2011 990 form, it gave $523,825 to the Arava Institute in 2011 alone, making it JNF’s largest single recipient of cash aid.

Blaming Palestinians

Seth Siegel sits on the national board of AIPAC and runs a brand-licensing agency. According to his biography, Siegel has a forthcoming book about water resources in Israel.

In February, he wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he excoriated Palestinians’ mismanaging of water and blamed Hamas for Gaza’s scarcity of potable water, writing, “Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race … But as water problems grow, one hopes that ideology will give way to pragmatism and may open a door to an Arab and Islamic outreach to Israel.”

Siegel’s noxious mendacity makes his role as hasbarist easy to recognize. However, other water experts fall in line with him, ably assisting in bluewashing efforts that emphasize solutions like desalination rather than confronting Israel’s systematic denial of Palestinians’ water rights.

Sharon Megdal is a professor at University of Arizona has been traveling to Israel to study the water situation in earnest since 2009. She is the co-author of a 2012 publication, Shared Borders, Shared Waters: Israeli-Palestinian and Colorado River Basin Water Challenges, which advocates for a kind of “science diplomacy” to resolve difficult transboundary water conflicts, such as in Palestine.

In December 2004, the JNF wrote the following to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Rights in Israel:

“The JNF is not the trustee of the general public in Israel…Its loyalty is given to the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in the state of Israel …The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people, and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.”

While this admission was in reference to the region’s land, is there any reason to think that this organization would handle the region’s water resources with equity for all the people living there? By hosting this event tomorrow, the UN becomes complicit in the JNF’s bluewashing project.

Originally published in Electronic Intifada

Andrew Kadi contributed to this report.

Charlotte Silver is an independent journalist and regular writer for The Electronic Intifada. She is based in Oakland, California and has reported from Palestine since 2010. Follow her on Twitter @CharESilver.

Financing Racism and Apartheid

October 29, 2018

Synopsis

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is a multi-national corporation with offices in about dozen countries world-wide. It receives millions of dollars from wealthy and ordinary Jews around the world and other donors, most of which are tax-exempt contributions. The JNF’s aim is to acquire and develop lands exclusively for the benefit of Jews residing in Israel.

The fact is that the JNF, in its operations in Israel, had expropriated illegally most of the land of 372 Palestinian villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. The owners of this land are over half the UN registered Palestinian refugees.  The JNF had actively participated in the physical destruction of many villages, in evacuating these villages of their inhabitants and in military operations to conquer these villages. Today the JNF controls over 2500 sq. km of Palestinian land which it leases to Jews only. It also planted 100 parks on Palestinian land.

In addition, the  JNF has a long record of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel as reported by the UN.  The JNF also extends its operations by proxy or directly to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank and Gaza. All this is in clear violation of international law and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids confiscation of property and settling the Occupiers’ citizens in occupied territories. Ethnic cleansing, expropriation of property, and destruction of houses are war crimes. As well, use of tax-exempt donations in these activities violates the domestic law in many countries, where the JNF is domiciled.

This report compiles the facts about JNF activities, supported by new maps and tables detailing JNF violations of international and domestic law.

 

To read the full report click HERE or click on an individual section below.

List of Contents

1.     What is JNF?
2.     Its Objectives
3.     The Land Acquired by JNF in Palestine
3.1.  During the British Mandate (1920 – 1948)
3.2. After Creating the State of Israel (1948 – )
3.3. Early Conflict Between the State and JNF and its Resolution
3.4. The Demise of the Kibbutz
3.5. Split between ILA and JNF
4.    Illegal Practices of JNF
4.1. Ethnic Cleansing and Destruction of Property
4.2. Discrimination and Apartheid against the Palestinian Citizens of Israel
4.3. Violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention
4.4. Violation of Domestic Law where JNF operates outside Israel

Laura van Rij interview with Sari Nasir

July 17, 2018

 

Laura van Rij (LR): What is your connection to Lifta?

Sari Nasir (SN): I was born in Lifta in 1938, but in 1948 we were kicked out of there. I remember how they drove us out. They told my father: ´you better take your family away because we don´t want to happen to you what happened to the people of Deir Yassin´. I think the Deir Yassin massacre frightened many of the people of Lifta.

LR: Did they leave everything behind when they fled?

SN: Most of the things, except for the key. I rememberthat my mother wouldn´t leave, we had to force her. She was forced to leave. She cried, I remember her tears. And I remember she said: ´please, let me close the doors´. They told her that we would only go away for a couple of days, that we would come back. I have childhood memories of fleeing to the other side of Jerusalem. How bombs would fall and how people would be injured, blood all over them.

LR: Where did you stay in Jerusalem?

SN: I remember my parents had a hard time finding a place to sleep, to get us children under one roof. We found a room in the Indian hospice in Jerusalem, in the old city. My uncle asked if his children could stay there as well, but they could not. That was why the families were scattered, they could not stay together. Half of them went to Ramallah, others Jerusalem, Damascus, Lebanon…

LR: How was Lifta before 1948?

SN: Lifta was a traditional village, and a very tight community. Usually if a girl married someone from outside the village, they would say she became a stranger, they didn´t like this. They wanted her to stay in the village. The families were traditional extended families. My family, for instance, was big, five boys and five girls.

LR: What do you tell your children about Lifta?

SN: We tell them how we left and how we look forward to going back. If you ask children in the diaspora now where they are from, they say I am from Lifta. My children, who are in the United States, still want to go back. The younger people are more enthusiastic about Lifta, they read about it, write about it… They are proud that they are from Lifta. The Israeli´s made a mistake by thinking the Palestinians would forget. The Palestinians are here to stay, no matter how they try to change the landscape of Palestine. We are more attached to it than ever, we remember it more than ever.

LR: Do you ever visit Lifta?

SN: Oh yes, I went several times. I went to my house and my grandfather´s house. I tried to remember how scenic Lifta was, very scenic. I remember that I went with my grandfather to the common place of the village, a room for the men to go and sit at the end of the day, and talk about what is going on.

LR: Was it like a coffee house?

SN: No, it was like a guesthouse. It was close to my grandfather´s house. I would go there and sit with my father and grandfather. In winter they had a stove to heat the place. I would fall asleep while listening to their talking and at the end they would wake me up and we would go home.

LR: Do you remember the shooting in the coffee house?

SN: Yes, I remember that. It was in 1947 I think. I saw it with my own eyes. The coffee house was right on the main road in Upper Lifta. Men would go there to talk and smoke the shisha. My grandfather used to go there a lot, but for some reason he didn´t go that day. I was there with my uncle when suddenly cars came, we heard shooting. I looked and many men were running away. Others ran and fell, and people were shouting. My uncle told me to stay away, he didn´t want me to see dead people, but I insisted. I wanted to see. Many were killed or injured… It was a message I think, that we should leave. They used this method to try to drive us out. And they did.

LR: How were the relations with the Jewish people before 1948?

SN: We were friends. I played with Jewish children; we would eat at each other’s house. But look what happened then. They started preparing themselves to take over, the Haganah and others, the Stern gang… You know, there are many images that crowd my memory.

LR: If you could return now, you would go immediately?

SN: Of course, immediately. Even my children who are in the States would come back. Palestine has become a legend, a symbol that people attach themselves to because it is collective.

LR: It would be a very difficult life in the beginning. 

SN: Yes, very difficult. You have to rebuild everything, but at least you are on your land. You are in the land that belongs to you. Wherever Palestinians go, they suffer. They are always singled out as strangers, as foreigners. You know it´s really painful to think about what happened and what is happening. There is nothing one can do about it now. But we always hope for better days.

The interview is for the project “It’s all about people – Narratives from Lifta” done by Laura van Rij as part of her M.A. in public history at The University of Amsterdam.
Interview location: The children´s and community center of Jabal Nazzal, Amman, Jordan
June 26, 2013

In Jerusalem we have the latest chapter in colonialism

June 18, 2018

 Originally posted at The Guardian December 12, 2017

By Karma Nabulsi 

Donald Trump’s intervention is not a mere aberration. It’s part of the continuing story of injustice in Palestine

One hundred years ago, on 11 December 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. As General Allenby’s troops marched through Bab al-Khalil, launching a century of settler colonialism across Palestine, prime minister David Lloyd George heralded the city’s capture as “a Christmas present for the British people.”

In a few months’ time, we mark another such anniversary: 70 years since the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, the catastrophic destruction of the Palestinian polity; the violent dispossession of most of its people with their forced conversion into disenfranchised refugees; the colonial occupation, annexation and control of their land; and the imposition of martial law over those who managed to remain.

The current US president’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel bookends a century of such events: from the Balfour declaration in November 1917 to the partition plan of 1947; from the Nakba of 1948 to the Naksa of 1967— with its annexation of Jerusalem, the occupation of the rest of Palestine, further mass expulsions of Palestinians including from East and West Jerusalem, and the invaders’ razing of entire ancient neighborhoods in the city.

Donald Trump’s declaration could easily be read as one more outrage in his growing collection of chaotic and destructive policies, this one perhaps designed to distract from his more prosaic, personal problems with the law. It is viewed as the act of a volatile superpower haplessly endorsing illegal military conquest and consolidating the “acquisition of territory by force” (a practice prohibited and rejected by the UN and the basic tenets of international law). And it is seen alongside a long list of domestic and international blunders.

However, this analysis obscures what happens each day in occupied Palestine, and hides what will surely happen next—unless governments, parliaments, institutions, unions and, most of all, citizens take measures to actively resist it.

Leaders across the world appear incapable of naming what is taking place in Palestine, so their received wisdom on the cause and nature of the conflict, along with the “consensus solutions” they offer, prove futile. This century of events instead should be understood as a continuum, forming part of an active process that hasn’t yet stopped or achieved its ends. Palestinians understand it: we feel it in a thousand ways every day. How does this structure appear to those who endure it day in, day out?

Patrick Wolfe, the late scholar, traced the history of settler colonial projects across continents, showing us that events in Palestine over the last 100 years are an intensification of (rather than a departure from) settler colonialism. He also established its two-sided nature, defining the phenomenon— from the Incas and Mayans to the native peoples of Africa, America, and the Middle East—as holding negative and positive dimensions. Negatively, settler colonialism strives for the dissolution of native societies; positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land: “Colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure, not an event.”

After the British marched into Jerusalem in 1917 and declared martial law, they turned Palestine into an Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA). Declaring martial law over the city, Allenby promised: “Every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest, or customary place of prayer of whatsoever form of the three religions will be maintained and protected.” But what did he say of its people? Allenby divided the country into four districts: Jerusalem, Jaffa, Majdal and Beersheba, each under a military governor, and the accelerated process of settler colonialism began.

At the time of the military takeover, Palestine was 90% Christian and Muslim, with 7-10% Palestinian Arab Jews and recent European settlers. By the time the British army left Palestine on 14 May 1948, the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people was already under way. During their 30-years rule, the British army and police engineered a radical change to the population through the mass introduction of European settlers, against the express wishes of the indigenous population. They also suppressed Palestine’s Great Revolt of 1936-39, destroying any possibility of resistance to what lay ahead.

Once any individual episode is understood as part of a continuing structure of settler colonialism, the hitherto invisible daily evictions of Palestinians from their homes assume their devastating significance.

Invisible too has been the force driving the expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land. Without a framing of settler colonialism, the notion of the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, of “spiriting away” the native Arabs “gradually and circumspectly,” makes little sense. In Jerusalem this is how gradual ethnic cleansing is being practiced today.

The new US policy on Jerusalem is not about occupation and annexation; the supremacy of one religion over another so “balance” must be restored; the two-state solution or the failures of the Oslo agreement; or the location of an embassy, or division of Jerusalem.

Nor is it even about the soap opera-level conspiracy the Palestinian people have been abandoned to: where the son-in-law of the US president, who has actively funded the rightwing settlement movement in Israel, has been granted absolute power to fabricate a “peace process” with a crown prince who has just locked up his relatives.

In this dystopic vision, the village of Abu Dis outside Jerusalem is proposed as the capital of a future fragmented Palestinian “state”—one never created, given that (along with all US-led peace processes) its eventual appearance is entirely dependent on Israel’s permission. This is named, in “peace process” language, as any solution to be agreed upon “by the parties themselves,” via “a negotiated settlement by the two sides.”

With colonialism always comes anti-colonial resistance. Against the active project to disappear the indigenous people, take their land, dispossess and disperse them so they cannot reunite to resist, the goals of the Palestinian people are those of all colonized peoples throughout history. Very simply, they are to unify for the struggle to liberate their land and return to it, and to restore their inalienable human rights taken by force—principles enshrined in centuries of international treaties, charters, and resolutions, and in natural justice.

The US has been blocking Palestinian attempts to achieve this national unity for years, vetoing Palestinian parties in taking their legitimate role in sharing representation. Palestinians’ democratic right to determine their path ahead would allow our young generation—scattered far and wide, from refugee camps to the prisons inside Palestine—to take up their place in the national struggle for freedom. The US assists the colonizer and ties our hands.

Former European colonial powers, including Britain, now claim they are aware of their colonial legacy, and condemn centuries of enslavement and the savage exploitation of Africa and Asia. So European leaders should first name the relentless process they installed in our country, and stand with us so that we can unite to defeat it.

Originally published in The Guardian

Karma Nabulsi is a fellow in politics at St Edmund Hall and teaches at Oxford University.

In each of the next seven months we will post  an article from http://ongoingnakba.com/  (previously fowardd.com/)

The Dangers of Conflating Anti-Zionism With Anti-Semitism

June 13, 2018

Jews Say No! vigil, Upper West Side, NYC

The article has serious conceptual flaws as well as factual inaccuracies that mischaracterize and do a disservice to movements for justice, and, as a result, make accusations of marginalizing Jews that are not rooted in reality.

To say, as the author does in her article, that “As a paradigm, intersectionality has failed Jews” makes little sense. As a lens through which to understand multiple dimensions of power — where and how they do or don’t intersect or connect — intersectionality does not “fail” any group.

Further, the author writes, “Intersectionality would dictate that the oppression of Palestinians is much worse than the oppression of Jews, and thus a much higher priority…. It is at the end of the day a hierarchical structure, one that creates a hierarchy of oppression and determines levels of threat.”

Intersectionality, a term coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, is precisely not about promoting hierarchies of oppression (thereby leaving out the Jews), but is a framework — an analytic tool — that focuses on the multiple effects and overlap of structural oppressions among communities that have been impacted by injustice.

In “What is Intersectionality and Why Do You Keep Insisting that Movements Must Be Intersectional?” by Evonnia Woods, the author makes clear that:

Much of the confusion regarding what intersectionality is stems from the way we have been trained to think, which happens to be the very way of thinking the concept aims to overcome. We are trained to think in binaries/dualisms and hierarchies….

This is why the versatility of how intersectionality can be employed is lost in many people’s understandings of the concept. Intersectionality is a paradigm, a methodology, and a tool for liberation….

We can use intersectionality as a means to garner and evaluate information. We can also use it in social movements to attain liberationequity and justice. Therefore, intersectionality is a concept employed to guide us in how we think (and thus behave), study the social world and fight for fairer life experiences. It is this fight for fairer life experiences from which the notion that movements must be intersectional is derived.In “Under Western Eyes” Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles, Chandra Talpade Mohanty meaningfully frames a conceptualization of intersectional principles and realities that is not about leaving someone behind but, rather, about building meaningful solidarities:

In knowing differences and particularities, we can better see the connections and commonalities because no border or boundary is ever completely or rigidly determining. The challenge is to see how differences allow us to explain the connections and border crossings better and more accurately, how specifying difference allows us to theorize universal concerns more fully. It is this intellectual move that allows for my concern for women of different communities and identities to build coalitions and solidarities across borders.

Rather than recognizing and building from this analysis as articulated by Mohanty and others, Ungar-Sargon, through a misframing of intersectionality as the source of the problem, instead focuses on what she believes is an insensitivity to Jews, and her piece continues in that vein. For example, she takes specific feminists and “the left” to task for not wanting the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to co-facilitate an anti-racist training. While she does acknowledge some problems with the ADL, she largely defends the organization and its new director.

I find it unimaginable that the author is not aware of the abundance of evidence (see here and here, for example) pointing to the ADL’s role, historically as well as presently, in promoting anti-Palestinian policies and Islamophobia, and in targeting activists for justice. The author does mention that the current CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, proudly attended the embassy move in Jerusalem, but doesn’t seem to consider that to be a major problem that speaks to who Greenblatt and the ADL are. (As if this wasn’t enough, Greenblatt’s joyous moment took place as Israel was killing Palestinians in Gaza for protesting for their basic rights.) That fact alone — and there are many others — should make it clear why the ADL wasn’t a fit partner for an anti-racism training.

It’s one thing to suggest that we all need to open our hearts to working with new people and groups; it’s quite another to suggest that it’s “anti-Jewish” to not agree to work with an organization like the ADL that, while promoting itself as an anti-defamation organization, targets communities with long histories facing structural racism and injustice in the US, as well as those who support Palestinian rights. Minimizing that fact is incredibly disrespectful to the many communities that have been at the receiving end of ADL’s discriminatory positions and whose lives have been harmed as a result.

The faulty logic is not only with the author’s mischaracterization of opposition to ADL as being anti-Jewish; one of the most egregious accusations she makes is asserting that, since most Jews support Zionism, if you leave out Zionism from social justice struggles, then you are saying Jews aren’t welcome. She doesn’t show evidence pointing to her pronouncement that most Jews support Zionism, and there is actually evidence to the contrary. But, even if it were true, the fact that opposing Zionism — which is responsible for the Nakba, the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and land — is conflated with excluding Jews, again, shows a distortion of facts to make her point about Jews being excluded. Zionism is an ideology, and even if Jews adhere to it, it is not “anti-Jewish” to oppose it. It is about challenging structures of oppression.

She continuously reinforces the false and dangerous notion that to oppose Zionism is to be against Jews: “On the other hand, Jews feel that when they do show up, there’s always something wrong with them. They are expected to check their Zionism at the door, for example, or to support a Black Lives Matter platform that accuses Israel of genocide (one can be very critical of Israel’s blatant civil and human rights violations and still feel that such an absurd overstatement would be impossible to endorse).” She does make herself clear that she has no respect for the accusation of genocide made against Israel, though I wonder how much she has challenged herself and engaged with the fact that there has been much written pointing to the ways Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has aptly been called genocide. However, regardless of one’s position on the use of genocide to describe Israel, this is a charge about Israel’s behavior as a nation-state, and not about Jews.

Finally, the author lumps together all of the left, seemingly revealing an underlying animosity, and what she writes about its views on Jews reveals yet again her consistent conflation of Jews with criticisms of Zionism or Israel. She writes (without any evidence): “It is indicative of a fundamental flaw on the left — its eagerness to find fault with Jews while being unwilling to acknowledge anti-Semitism.” This assertion contradicts the articulated deep commitment among so many social justice groups to oppose all forms of oppression, including anti-Semitism. But — and this is what really seems to irk the author — this cThis kind of misrepresentation and mischaracterization is not a way toward building meaningful relationships or to be genuine partners in the struggle for justice. Finding fault with Zionism is not the same as finding fault with Jews. It’s an insulting and harmful framing. In fact, challenging anti-Semitism and challenging Zionism are both necessary in intersectional struggles to achieve justice.

Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, is co-director of PARCEO, a participatory research center. She is a coordinating team member of Facing the Nakba and a co-convener of Jews Against Anti-Muslim Racism, and was a co-founder of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Most recently, she is a co-editor of “Moving Forward,” a special issue on the Nakba and the Jewish National Fund, published by Jews Say No!.ommitment also includes opposing Zionism. Further, nobody is suggesting there isn’t anti-Semitism among anyone on the left — that would be a foolish claim — but this is significantly different from making a sweeping generalization that those on “THE LEFT” have an “eagerness to find fault with Jews.”