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Badia Dwaik

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The world is justly alarmed by the treatment of Ukrainian civilians under Russian occupation. It should also pay heed to the Palestinian experience of Israeli military occupation in Hebron, where schoolchildren are detained at checkpoints and stun grenades hurled at journalists. The Campaign to Defund Racism, a broad coalition of Palestinian organizations and international allies, has called for our international supporters to challenge the laws that allow charities to underwrite our dispossession and erasure.

Anti-occupation activist Badia Dwaik wrestles with conflicted feelings on seeing journalist’s photos of his son stopped by Israeli soldiers in Hebron. “I don’t want my child to be a cheap and easy target,” he writes. And what if Mahmoud had let the cigarette fall from his lips and the soldiers dared him to pick it up. They could have used such a pretext to shoot him.

Malika Qafisha, 38, a mother of six, lives near the Ibrahami mosque in Hebron, which is holy for Jews and Muslims. Jewish settlers have occupied many Palestinian homes, and Qafisha and her family face daily harassment, in which settlers are backed by Israeli armed forces who shoot at Palestinian homes.

Badee Dwaik writes, “The Hebron-based group Human Rights Defenders and the Palestinian residents of Shuhada Street organized yesterday a demonstration led by kindergarteners who protested Israel’s jailing of 350 Palestinian children.  Children held in Israeli jails are as young as 12 years old. The kindergarteners rallied for three child prisoners in particular, a young girl named Razan Abu Sal, 13 who was sentenced to 13 and a half months and a fine of $870 (3000 NIS), Shadi Farrah, 12 who has already served two years of his three year sentence, and the infamous Ahed Tamimi who was detained on charges of incitement and slapping an Israeli soldiers.”

Some Israeli movements support Palestinians, but do not recognize a two-state solution based on UN resolutions, including the Right of Return. This means they support an idea of an unjust two-state solution, where a large part of Palestine is being used for the establishment of the Occupying State, and the State of Palestine is being turned into a large prison for the Palestinians, Badee Dwaik of Human Rights Defenders writes.