In January, 2016, an Israeli military court sentenced 5 youths from the West Bank village of Hares — Mohammed Kleib, Mohammed Suleiman, Amer Souf, Tamer Souf, and Ali Shamlawi, known internationally as the Hares Boys — to a grueling 15 years in prison for manslaughter for a crime that did not even take place. A free 39-page e-book, The Hares Boys, From Palestine to Israeli Prison, tells their story and the history of Israel’s imprisonment of Palestinian children.
California Reps Ted Lieu and Maxine Waters, and LA City Council member Mike Bonin came to LAX to support the immigrant protectors in their demand DHS release detainees from the “Muslim ban” countries. At LAX: ‘No hate, no fear, Muslims are welcome here’
Ma‘an reports: “Israeli forces shot and killed a 19-year-old Palestinian Muhammad Mahmoud Abu Khalifa and injured several others early Sunday morning in Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, after clashes erupted following an Israeli army raid into the camp. State-run Palestinian news agency Wafa said that Abu Khalifa was left on the ground for hours before paramedics were able to evacuate his body.”
Even as a federal judge granted a stay on portions of Trump’s executive order banning refugees from 7 Muslim-majority countries on Saturday night, outrage built globally.
Two years of Saudi-led coalition bombing of Yemen has culminated in a situation in which 18.8 million people are now in need of some form of humanitarian aid. Britain and the U.S. are implicated in Saudi war crimes, but the western press has largely ignored the atrocities.
Donald Trump’s desire to wash his hands of the Middle East resonated with an American public and helped him win the election, says Philip Gordon, a former Middle East adviser to President Obama. British PM Theresa May echoed that point this week; but the US press is diminishing the story.
The House of Representatives denies Palestinian humanity: Reps Alcee Hastings and Rob Woodall have introduced a bipartisan resolution against Palestinian terror attacks that refuses to mention how many of the alleged attackers were executed on the spot. Only the Israeli victims count.
“As long as Israel is under threat, as long as Israel is not secure,” there will not be a divorce between American and Israeli Jews, says Abe Foxman. “If there is peace– that’s when you are going to deal with the issue of divorce.” So is that why Israel is always at war?
Normalizing oppression has always been one of the tools used by the colonizer against the resistance of the oppressed and colonized. Britain, France, America, and Apartheid South Africa are just a few of the colonizers who privileged one sector of the colonized population to make them willing propagandists for the colonizer’s ‘mission civilisatrice.’ Apartheid Israel does exactly the same. Haider Eid outlines the symptoms of normalization to be on the lookout for.
The Stop the Wall movement in Palestine began a dozen years ago and has transformed the international struggle: bringing people together based on human rights to end the occupation, end racial discrimination towards Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, and to support the right of return for refugees.