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China Miéville: It’s become a cliche to talk about Palestine as a dystopia, but when you see Hebron you know where the cliche is coming from

This film by Murat Gökmen was made for the Palestine Festival of Literature. From the film’s YouTube page:

The 2013 Palestine Festival of Literature took place across historical Palestine, with events in Jerusalem, Gaza, Nablus, Ramallah and Haifa. In this video, one group of the festival’s international participants are shown around al Khalil / Hebron, where Israel’s apartheid system is at its most explicit.

Because of the siege of Gaza two festivals were essentially run simultaneously.

The international participants spent their days taking political and historical tours, meeting artists and activists, and working with students.

Thank you to Issa Amro from Youth Against Settlements and Walid Abu Alhalaweh from the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee for spending the day with us.

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Powerful stuff. It is just awful what the Zionists have done to those people.

Just chilling. This is Israeli fascism at its most naked and undisguised. A whole city in lockdown to protect a ragtag rabble of the most obnoxiously cruel, despicable people who use the IDF to enforce their merciless inhumane arrogance. Interesting that China Mieville makes these comments as anyone who has read The City and The City will immediately recognise where he could have been easily writing about – a city where an entire culture has been built around refusing to even see the other, deny their existence and blind themselves to reality. Hebron encapsulates everything utterly corrupt and spectacularly cruel about the Kafkaesque nightmare that Israel knowingly and calculatedly inflicts on Palestine.

Horrible, horrible, horrible.

There will be comeuppance for Israel and the IOF………hopefully soon, in full view of the entire world, most especially– the US of A.

Many thanks for this very important clip. The Palestinian people are so very resilient and steadfast– remarkable in every way.

The absurdity of a city of over 200,000 Palestinians dominated by squatter settlement of about 700 Jews guarded by 4000 IDF soldiers.

From al-Akhbar last October:

“Israeli minister calls for doubling number of settler homes in Hebron

Published Thursday, October 24, 2013
Israel’s housing minister on Thursday called for doubling the number of illegal Jewish settler homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, even as peace talks continue with the Palestinians.

Uri Ariel, who leads the far-right Jewish Home party and lives in a West Bank settlement himself, told army radio he supported “concrete plans for the construction of 100 (new) homes in Hebron.”

“The land for this exists, and we’re preparing the (building) project. We hope that during the coming year we can begin to build,” Ariel said.

The city of Hebron, home to nearly 200,000 Palestinians, also comprises some 80 settler homes in the center of town housing about 700 Jews who live under Israeli army protection….”

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/17402

These poor Palestinian people have been brutally treated, dehumanized, and have suffered too much. I fear for the next generation, the little kids, who have never known to live in freedom, have rights, and without guns being pointed at them.
How would we, as Americans, have reacted, if we were living this life of squalor, fear, and under occupation? The brutality of these terrorists called settlers, and the pure evil that they show towards those who are in a very vulnerable position, is deplorable, and unacceptable. The IDF who have been equally violent, and selective in their protection of civilians, are no better than these front line terrorists from eastern Europe. If only I could confront my senators and representatives with these films and videos, and ask them how they sleep at night, and why they continue to arm the violent occupation. Israel is a disgusting rogue nation.