We picked up this frightening report from Ya Aini (Arabic), a local news website covering Palestine/Israel. Last Tuesday evening, November 17, Ahmed Ghazzawi, a medical student at Hebrew University from Acre, was trying to get back to his student dorms when the light rail he was riding on was attacked in West Jerusalem by a mob of “hundreds” of religious Jewish settlers (Kahanists) chanting “Kill them, they’re Arabs”. The Kahanists had assembled for a rally near a rail stop. Ghazzawi was accompanying 5 female students (3 wearing hijabs) when the attack took place.
In Ya Aini ‘s report “We escaped certain death in Jerusalem“, Ghazzawi issued an alarming warning. The following quotes of Ghazzawi’s from the article have been translated from Arabic:
“I swear it’s not from fear, but I want to tell the story through your website as a message to all the Arab students at the Hebrew University to take care, because the situation is really serious….We finished our studies yesterday at a late hour, and we went out [Hebrew University is on the east side of Jerusalem though not in occupied territory], I and 5 female students from the university, waiting for the arrival of the Egged bus to take us to the student dormitories. After about an hour it still hadn’t come, so we had to travel on the light rail.”
“On the way, as we were approaching the Central Station [in West Jerusalem], we passed close to a demonstration by groups of religious settlers, it was really big, there were hundreds of them. Then they started to point with their fingers towards our train and attacked it, and started to kick the train and throw stones and tried to open the doors to get to us, and some of them yelled, “Kill them, they’re Muslim Arabs”. We were the only Arabs there.”
“But they did not succeed in getting into the train and they kept throwing many objects towards us, and our car [rail car] was surrounded by settlers, and the Arab girls started to cry from fear at this terrifying situation. Then suddenly some Jewish religious settlers who were inside the train started to help those who were outside to open the doors, but they could not do it either. At that point the train was able to start moving again and we got to the student dormitories safely.”
“It was a feeling that I cannot describe no matter how much I try to explain to you, the bitter end would have been at hand if not for God and His Mercy..When I looked at the girls whom I swore to God I would sacrifice my life to protect them, maybe this is a feeling that Mahmoud Abbas or Ayman Audeh or … will not have. This is the situation we residents of Jerusalem live every day. Even worse than that, many have been killed in this way. This experience will stay with me for the rest of my life. So please beware, my dear friends.
Ali Abunimah reported a “Hate Rally” of Kahanist Jews that took place earlier in the same day on November 17, outside the court proceedings of a border police officer who was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the killing of Nadim Nuwara on Nakba Day.
In this video, originally posted in the Facebook group, Israelis can be seen listening to a speech in support of the “magavnik” and shouting sectarian and racist slogans including “medinat yehudim” – meaning a “state for the Jews only.”
The speaker asks that “all the Arabs of Israel die to atone for him [the magavnik].” Many in the crowd answer “Amen.”
There’s no certainty the mob that attacked Ghazzawi and fellow students was an extension of this “hate rally” earlier in the day. But this is the climate in Jerusalem right now, and Ghazzawi’s warning echos “please beware, my dear friends”.
(Hat tip Ofer Neiman)
” Last Tuesday evening, November 17, Ahmed Ghazzawi, a medical student at Hebrew University from Acre, was trying to get back to his student dorms when the light rail he was riding on was attacked in West Jerusalem by a mob of “hundreds” of religious Jewish settlers (Kahanists) chanting “Kill them, they’re Arabs”. ”
And these are the same jerks who scream antisemitism when the subject of boycotting Israel,s universities is raised.Clearly the intention here is to prevent Palestinians from getting an education.
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/jerusalem-babylon/.premium-1.600000
“Yeshayahu Leibowitz understood this already 60 years ago, when he wrote in his seminal essay “After Kibiyeh” (collected in “Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State,” edited by Eliezer Goldman, Harvard University Press 1995) of “the fear of losing religous-moral supremacy, which is easy to hold on to when there is no risk to it and difficult under other circumstances.”
Less than six years after the creation of a sovereign state with a powerful army, Leibowitz wrote that the “real religious and moral meaning of our political rebirth and the return to our hands of the use of force” would be a severe test for Jews who were too accustomed to being victims. “Can we prove capable not only of suffering for these values we exalted, but also acting upon them?” he asked. “It’s easy to suffer, physically and materially for values, even to sacrifice our lives: that necessitates only physical courage which exists in surprising quantities among all human gatherings. It’s difficult to suffer for values, when this suffering means also giving up things which are also seen as values.”
In the decades after 1967, Leibowitz would be excoriated by the right wing for his fierce criticism of the occupation which he, perhaps inexcusably, described as “Judeo-Nazi.” But he was speaking as a fervent Zionist who was one of the first to see how the success of Zionism meant we had to realize we were no longer victims and that victory came with a moral price. It was “the great test we are faced with by national liberation, political independence and sovereign power — as a nation, a society and a culture which for generations had the privilege of mental and spiritual enjoyment in exile, foreign-rule and self-impotence.” ”
Israel continues to fail the test.
They didn’t have enough shared history to make their state work.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/23/archbishop-of-westminster-gaza-war-cardinal-vincent-nichols-palestine
“The archbishop of Westminster said he was deeply shocked by his first visit to Gaza on Sunday, and that he had seen “a deeply depressing situation in a devastated region where people are trapped”.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Roman Catholic church in England and Wales, toured neighbourhoods of Gaza that were virtually flattened during the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas in the summer. He visited a hospital and an industrial zone that were badly damaged by air strikes and shelling, and an orphanage caring for dozens of traumatised children, some of whom had been given up by parents unable to care for them.
“I was deeply shocked at the effects of war and endemic poverty,” he told the Guardian. “Pope Francis has said there must be an end to war, and when you see the effect in a place like Gaza it reinforces that.”
There was little sign of rubble being cleared, let alone reconstruction, he said. “It’s astonishing the number of people with the appearance of nothing to do – people just sitting on the streets. There is only the barest sense of order. This is not an economy that is going to be able to support its population.”
“There was little sign of rubble being cleared, let alone reconstruction, he said. “It’s astonishing the number of people with the appearance of nothing to do – people just sitting on the streets. There is only the barest sense of order. This is not an economy that is going to be able to support its population.”
Music to the zionist ear.
I am so thankful to God this young man and his young companions escaped without physical harm. The psychological harm I’m afraid will be with them for a long time. The settlers are nothing but Klan, they just wear a different costume.