Earlier today, we posted an inspiring photo of a protester climbing on top of an Israeli military vehicle as she protested outside Ofer prison in solidarity with the ongoing prisoner hunger strike. The photo has gone viral under the hashtag #Flagwoman and the protester has been identified as Rana Hamadeh.
Above is video of the protest and the aftermath when Israeli military tried to arrest her. Activists protected her from the military and were pepper sprayed at point blank range.
Abir Kopty tweeted:
The pepper spray was really harsh, most of us got it more than once as we tried to protect @zaytouni_rana from arrest. #Ofer #palhunger
— Abir Kopty(@AbirKopty) May 1, 2012
I was pepper sprayed once & went totally blind to Rana to help her out when every1 who was holding her got sprayed & I got sprayed again!
— Abir Kopty(@AbirKopty) May 1, 2012
Linah Alsaafin added:
What’s a little (ok a lot) of pepper spray compared to the thousands of Palestinian prisoners refusing food for 15 days now? #PalHunger
— لينة (@LinahAlsaafin) May 1, 2012
What insipring heroes the nation of Palestine to face down the cockroaches of the I”D”F.
that boot in the video ….
truly inspiring. remember the outrage in the us when a cop peppersprayed college activists at close range?
what is the differenc.e beautiful bold palestinians hugging one another on the ground, and they spray them in the face.
i hope the world sees this and americans honor our tradition of civil disobedience
I was confused as well. I had believed that an IDF boot’s normal position was On the neck of a Palestinian–not on the hands.
Time and again, Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank are arrested, attacked or punished for raising the Palestinian flag, or using Palestinian symbols.
Since Israel and its sponsor, the U.S., continue to peddle the two-state paradigm, one would think that at the very least, Israel would allow/tolerate/condone the use of Palestinian symbols as legitimate.
But that is not the thrust of my argument here. The thrust of my argument here is that Israel’s suppression and persecution of Palestinian symbols/flags, should give the world an idea how Israeli authorities view the non-Jewish minority living in Israel when that minority refers to itself as “Palestinian citizens of Israel” or “Palestinians of Israel”.
And that is the reason behind Israel’s insistence on using the term, “Israeli Arabs”.
Wholesale erasure of anything Palestinian is the goal of this Jewish state, whether on this side of the Green Line or on that side of the Green Line.
As an aside, some fifteen years ago, at the height of the Oslo Accords, Israel built a four-lane highway — known as highway 5 or Trans-Samaria Road (Kvish Khotze Shomron) — from one of Tel-Aviv’s main junctions, known as the Glilot junction, to the Israeli colony/settlement of Ariel. The highway effectively connects the center of Israel to Ariel in the occupied West Bank.
And professor Finkelstein still thinks the two-state solution is possible?