Write down:
I am Arab
my I.D. number, 50,000
my children, eight
and the ninth due next summer
—Does that anger you?
Write down:
Arab.
I work with my struggling friends in a quarry
and my children are eight.
I chip a loaf of bread for them,
clothes and notebooks
from the rocks.
I will not beg for a handout at your door
nor humble myself
on your threshold
—Does that anger you?
Write down:
Arab,
a name with no friendly shortcut.
A patient man, in a country
brimming with anger.
My roots have gripped this soil
since time began,
before the opening of ages
before the cypress and the olive,
before the grasses flourishes.
My father came from a line of plowmen,
and my grandfather was a peasant
who taught me about the sun’s glory
before teaching me to read.
My home is a watchman’s shack
made of reeds and sticks
—Does my condition anger you?
There is no gentle name,
write down: Arab.
The colour of my hair, jet black—
eyes, brown—
trademarks,
a headband over a keffiyeh
and a hand whose touch grates
rough as rock.
My address is an unarmed village
with nameless streets.
All its men are in the field and quarry
—Does that anger you?
Write down:
Arab.
You have stolen my ancestors vineyards
and the land I once ploughed
with my children,
leaving my grandchildren
nothing but rocks.
Will your government take
those too, as the rumour goes?
Write down, then
at the top of Page One:
I do not hate
and do not steal
but starve me, and I will eat
my assailant’s flesh.
Beware of my hunger
and of my anger.
Identity Card, Mahmoud Darwish (1964)
Written when the poet was 22 years old.
(John Asfour translation)
One of my favorite poems that we read in my palestinian lit and cinema class
(Fonte: riyality)
Jewish Girl Plays Holocaust Card. Turns On Fake Tears - And Gets Some Cold Hard Truth
That was perfection.
As a Jewish man, his comments were spot on.
I’ve never had a dog in this fight, and it’s generally pretty hard to support either side purely on the facts, but this is exactly the kind of baseless appeal to emotions that needs to be dismissed as skillfully as done here.
Exactly. Sometimes its not all about the feels.
Actually I think it’s all about the feels, at least in this example. The speaker, in response to her emotions (whether feigned or not) appealed to the emotions of the entire audience by sharing his emotions and his family’s experience. So it is indeed all about the feels, just a different kind, and of a different person.
He wasn’t citing his feelings as justification like she was, though. He was citing both sides of his whole family dying. The only feelings he expressed in his rebuttal were about her bringing up feelings as if they proved a point in the first place. He never stated how he felt about those facts. He was pointing out that feelings aren’t facts. The audience largely booed him when he expressed his feelings about her actions (0:36). They came around and applauded him once he set out his case with facts (2:46).
This is one of my favorite Finkelstein moments and even though I disagree with the Nazi analogies he uses, he is absolutely on point and plays the “Holocaust card” exactly the way it should be played - to prevent more human suffering. The way many Israelis use it to justify their horrific policies is beyond sickening and a vicious slap in the face to those who died at the hands of the Nazis. I don’t know how many countless stories I’ve posted on my other blog (in fact, I just posted one) featuring Israelis manipulating the experience of the Holocaust to silence critics of Israel’s outrageous policies. No one fought to survive their extermination so a country could use their plight to do injustices onto others. More Jews and survivors need to speak out.
this is amazing. Everyone should watch this
(Fonte: youtube.com)
As I speak, I can hear the tut, tutting of governmental and media tongues trotting out the well worn mantra of the apologists, but “Hamas started it with their rocket attacks, Israel is only defending itself,”
Let us examine that argument. Did Hamas start “It”? When did “It” start?
How we understand history is shaped by when we start the clock. If we start the clock at a moment when rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel on a certain afternoon that, is one history. If we start the clock earlier that morning, when a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he played soccer on a Gaza field, history starts to look a little different. If we go back further we see that since “Operation Cast Lead”, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, 271 Palestinians were killed by Israeli, bombs, rockets, drones and warplanes, and during the same period not a single Israeli was killed. A good case can be made that “It” started in 1967 with the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. History tells us that the invasion and occupation of a land and the subjugation of its people almost always creates a resistance. Ask the French or the Dutch or the Poles or the Czechs, the list goes on. This crisis in Gaza is a crisis rooted in occupation.
"
I want to see how many of us are on tumblr so we can hopefully create a network with the people that blog/reblog posts concerning Palestine.
If being pro-human rights makes me pro-palestinian then I’ll take it
I am a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, the Nazis’ mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The tragic experience of my family and community under Hitler makes me alert to the suffering of other peoples denied their human rights today — including the Palestinians.
True, Hitler’s Holocaust was unique. The Palestinians are victims of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Hitler started with that, but went on to extermination. In my family’s city in Poland, Piotrkow, 99 per cent of the Jews perished.
Yet for me, the Israeli government’s actions toward the Palestinians awaken horrific memories of my family’s experiences under Hitlerism: the inhuman walls, the checkpoints, the daily humiliations, killings, diseases, the systematic deprivation. There’s no escaping the fact that Israel has occupied the entire country of Palestine, and taken most of the land, while the Palestinians have been expelled, walled off, and deprived of human rights and human dignity.
"![thepeoplesrecord:
Palestinians design solar car to not buy petrol from IsraelAugust 23, 2012
Necessity is the mother of invention, and for Palestinians living on the West Bank trying to break their dependence on Israel for energy has resulted in a new solar powered vehicle.
The four-seater is covered in solar panels to convert the suns rays into energy to power a small electric motor which pushes the vehicle along at 20 Kph for about 10 hours. And if the sun doesn’t shine it can be plugged into the wall, and the battery recharged from the mains.
It looks a bit like an over-sized golf cart and took the Royal Industrial Trading Company around two months and $5000 to develop.
“This car was the first step, and now we are working on two other cars. If the work is successful, then we will do a lot of cars and sell them”, says Nabel Az-Zagheer, chairman of the Royal Industrial Trading Company.
Based in the town of Al-Khalil, the company specialises in sanitation and water supply products, and adapted them to create the new vehicle.
A greater use of solar energy could help the people of the West Bank escape escalating energy prices.
Israel has control over the fuel supply to the Palestinian population, and according to the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian Authority is obliged not to sell its gasoline for less than 15 percent of Israel’s market price, reports the The Electronic Intifada.
“Such supply monopolies are a form of power. They provide easy ways to exert political pressure on the Palestinian Authority and ordinary Palestinians and to enforce their compliance with Israel’s interests”, Charles Shamas, a founder of the Mattin Group, a Ramallah-based research and advocacy organization told the Middle East Media Center.
The Palestinians are also heavily dependent on electric power provided by Israel. A power station in Gaza provides some 40% percent of the Strip’s electricity; the rest has to be purchased from Israel. Some small amounts are also sold by Egypt and Jordan.
“We want to lower as much as possible our dependence on Israel, because we won’t be able to reach a reasonable level of national security if Israel can, at any point, disconnect our electricity, and even harm the power plant in Gaza, as it did in 2006 as punishment for the abduction of Gilad Shalit,” Hanna Siniora, chairperson of the Palestinian-American Chamber of Commerce, has told Al-Monitor.com
Constantly rising fuel prices affect the cost of basic foodstuffs such as maize, vegetable oil and bread.
Palestinian efforts to reduce its dependency on Israeli energy have met strong opposition from Tel Aviv.
In March RT reported on Israel’s plans to bulldoze eight solar panels in the West Bank. They were donated by a number of international charities in 2009, yet have were deemed “illegal” by Israeli authorities due to the lack of an appropriate building permit.
The 62% of the West Bank controlled by Israel is not connected to the national energy grid. On the other hand, the Jewish settlements in the area are connected to national energy and water grids, reports the Guardian.
“We saw a systematic targeting of the water infrastructure in Hebron, Bethlehem and the Jordan valley. Now, in the last couple of months, they are targeting electricity. Two villages in the area have had their electrical poles torn down. There is a systematic effort by the civil administration targeting all Palestinian infrastructure in Hebron. They are hoping that by making it miserable enough, they [the Palestinians] will pick up and leave,” an anonymous UN expert told the Guardian.
Source
So. Awesome.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m986g8B9T01r6m2leo1_500.jpg)
