Christmas in Bil'in (All Photos: Hamde Abu Rahme)
To mark the International Week of Solidarity with the Palestinian people and the Christmas holiday the people of Bil'in remember their martyrs, prisoners and wounded and vow to continue their struggle against the occupation with the aim of establishing an independent state with Jerusalem as capital.
At today's demonstration, a number of Bil'in's citizens as well as a local journalist were wounded, in addition to the dozens of people who suffered choking from inhaling poison gas.
These events come during a week of international solidarity with the Palestinian people as well as the occasion of Christmas. The demonstration, organized by the Popular Committee Against the Wall and settlement of Bil'in, began after Friday prayers from the centre of the village and marched towards the Apartheid Wall where the soldiers were already waiting. Dozens of international activists and Israelis marched alongside the people of Bil'in with a number of protestors dressed in Santa Claus outfits shaking bells and distributing sweets as they marched. Participants chanted slogans calling for national unity and the ending of the occupation, as well as the destruction of the wall. They raised Palestinian flags and banners of the various factions and slogans calling for the liberation and national unity.
On reaching the wall, the protestors were met with a shower of tear gas, sound bombs and rubber bullets. I was hit several times by tear gas canisters fired at his legs and back, while Tariq al-Khatib KISS was overcome by gas thrown in his face. The soldiers advanced towards the village, creating a bottleneck which trapped dozens of participants who were bombarded with the poison gas. The protestors were forced to retreat to just outside the village where they continued confrontation with the Israeli soldiers for hours.
Fittingly, that’s the skinniest Santa I ever saw. Have some saki.
Merry Crimbles Palestine!
Jesus, Mohammad and Moses love you!
The Jewish mayor of Nazareth Illit has banned the display of a Christmas tree in the settlement.
link to theatlanticwire.com
If some mayor banned a menorah, you’d hear Abe Foxman as far as the moon, screaming antisemitism.
Prophet Jeremiah (10:2-4) speaking six centuries before Jesus: “Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen…. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the axe. They deck it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.”
Now, a decorated, even a burning bush–that’s another story!
merry christmas bil’in!
i believe
Bil’in is one rocking village. More balls than the Wimbledon final.
When the history of the decline and fall of Zionism is written, Bil’in will have a chapter.
RE: “Christmas in Bil’in”
A VERY SPECIAL YULETIDE TREAT (Streaming available until 12/28/2010):
Long Day’s Journey into Night, 1962, NR, 174 minutes
This 1962 production of Eugene O’Neill’s play stars the magnificent Katharine Hepburn (whose work earned her an Academy Award nomination) as Mary Tyrone, the drug-addicted matriarch of a troubled clan. She finds no comfort in her husband, a miserly ex-actor whose bitterness has eroded everyone’s goodwill. Their oldest son, Jamie (Jason Robards), is an alcoholic, and their youngest, Edmund (Dean Stockwell), has returned to await a doctor’s prognosis.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, Dean Stockwell, Jeanne Barr
Director: Sidney Lumet
Genres: Classics, Classic Dramas, Tearjerkers, Dramas Based on Classic Literature, Dramas Based on the Book, Lionsgate Home Entertainment, Paramount Home Entertainment
This movie is: Emotional, Dark
Format: DVD and streaming (Streaming available until 12/28/2010)
NETFLIX listing – link to movies.netflix.com
P.S. The fog(s) of war?
P.P.S. RE: Long Day’s Journey into Night, 1962
ADDITIONAL NOTE: Original Music by André Previn!!!