At least 38,000 Palestinians have fled their homes and sought shelter in schools run by the United Nations as hundreds of houses were completely destroyed in airstrikes since last Monday. Tareq Hajjaj reports from Gaza where Palestinians describe a night of fear, running from their homes barefoot and gripping children in the midst of Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire.
Mohammed Moussa survived the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014, but now he is watching from afar. “I feel broken while I watch my memories burn along with the soul of Gaza,” Moussa writes. “They kill us twice, inside Gaza, and they kill us outside Gaza – when we die worrying about our families there.”
On May 14 hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers protested in front of Senator Chuck Schumer’s house (D-NY) demanding an end to ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The Senate Majority Leader is a longtime supporter of Israel.
Chuck Schumer once called for Gaza to be “strangled.” Now the NY senator is silent as progressive Democrats decry Israeli onslaught and Schumer’s potential adversary in 2022, AOC, brands Israel an “apartheid state.” The other leading pro-Israel Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, has called for accountability for Israeli attacks on civilian targets and media outlets in Gaza. Even Paris Hilton is calling Israeli attack a “genocide.”
As Palestinians throughout the world commemorate 73 years of resistance to an ongoing Nakba, we invite you to stand in solidarity by joining the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Germany rarely condemns Israeli human rights violations, but support from leaders and the national media has been unprecedented over the past week.
The Gaza death toll reaches 181 (and counting), including 52 children and 1,225 injuries. Israel shells residential neighborhood close to al-Shifa hospital overnight; two doctors among the dead; first responders still pulling people out of the rubble. US President Joe Biden reaffirms “strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself” in phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Palestinians disconnected from each other have struggled immensely to maintain a national project with clear objectives. Now, struggling together across the entire geography of historic Palestine, the disintegrated parts of our body are coming back together.
It is not a coincidence that Israel decided to remind us of its original sin, namely, the Nakba, by celebrating its “independence” in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. By committing the Wehda Street massacre, it has taken the so-called “conflict” to its origin.
The killing and destruction will end only when the root of the problem is addressed: a colonialist regime that continually dispossesses the Palestinians.