For the third consecutive Friday, Deema Abu Sharekh preferred to spend her school weekend participating…
Israeli leaders have been making downright genocidal claims against Palestinians, and the rhetoric finally seems to be backfiring. Israel’s line on “defending itself from terrorists” is being rejected by the world. And the process is accelerating Israel’s delegitimization as a supposed liberal democracy.
Haidar Eid writes from Gaza: “We have reached the conclusion that our fight on the ground through a series of marches culminating on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, can pose a serious challenge to Israel’s system of occupation, colonization and apartheid if it is accompanied by a global campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.”
A photo of 9-year-old Mohammed Ayyash wearing a mask with an onion stalk slipped inside to protect against Israeli teargas has become one of the iconic images of Gaza’s Great March of Return. Asmaa Tayeh talks with Mohammed and his family about the protests and the child’s hope for the future. “I want to have my own playground so I can play football and basketball the whole day,” Mohammed tells Tayeh. “And I want it to be named after my new nickname, Abu Basala (the kid with an onion).”
The Great March of Return began on Land Day and ends on Nakba Day. In the process it is demonstrating that each period of Palestinian dispossession is connected — it is an ongoing saga where the Nakba never ended. The protest is also showing that when Palestinians seek to make the world remember them, they are killed with impunity. Still, Jonathan Ofir says the Israeli response has exposed Israel “as the monster that it was destined to be.”
Monday Marwan Odah Qdeih, 45, from Khuza‘a in the southern Gaza Strip, died after succumbing to injuries he sustained after Israeli soldiers shot him in Friday’s Great March of Return. Qdeih became the 30th person killed in the border protests, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
A video clip in which an Israeli sniper filmed himself shooting an unarmed Palestinian across the Gaza fence and then celebrating drew international outrage last night. The two Palestinian targets in the video appear simply to be walking around near the fence.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman justified the killing 30-year-old Yaser Murtaja by Israeli snipers even though he wore a flak jacket clearly marked PRESS. Lieberman said: “I don’t know who is and who isn’t a photographer . . . We won’t take any chances.”
On the second Friday of the Gaza protests yesterday, Israeli snipers shot nearly 500 Palestinians at the Gaza border, killing nine (per AP), and bringing the death total in two Fridays to 31. The international headlines feature the shootings of six Palestinian journalists, including one who was killed, 30-year-old Yasser Murtaja, even though he wore a flak jacket clearly marked PRESS.
Ahmad Kabariti reports from the second week of protests in Gaza’s Great March of Return. Israeli troops killed 10 more Palestinians but the people Kabariti spoke to were united in their goal to return to the lands their familes were displaced from during the Nakba. “I do not care about pain,” Mohammed Abu Eida tells Kabariti. “I sit here to tell them that I will go back to Jaffa with my family.”