After every ceasefire, Rana Shubair tries to imagine leading a normal life. In Gaza, the bar is set low and means not living under raining bombs. “Mama, who broke our house?” the neighbor’s three-year-old asked. His mother ignored his question. The following day the toddler announced, pleased that he had figured it out, “The Israelis broke our house.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s progressive allies, in Congress and outside, rushed to her defense. Had this exchange happened just a few years ago she would have been left to twist slowly in the wind, alone. Instead, more than 50 progressive U.S. groups said clearly that “the repeated targeting of Rep. Omar is rooted in sexism, racism and anti-Muslim bigotry.”
The United States has played a vital role in the decades-long catastrophe that has engulfed Palestine. U.S. leaders must now confront their country’s and, in many cases, their own personal complicity in this catastrophe.
The Palestinians have risen. It is time to rally behind them.
There is a long history of the U.S. opposing ceasefires when Israel wants to continue bombing.
As a married Jewish couple living in South Bend, Indiana, we try to ground our lives in the best values of our tradition. That’s why we chose, on this year’s Nakba Day, which fell not just on Shabbat but also several days into Israel’s latest war on the people of Gaza, to pray for Palestine outside the gates of our local Jewish Federation. We recited a prayer for peace and added a new line: “May Palestinian-led struggle, including BDS, swiftly and peacefully replace Israeli apartheid with full equality and make the Right of Return a reality.”
The media routinely state that Hamas wants to eradicate Israel. Some of the mystery about Hamas’s goals is surely because the organization is treated as a pariah. U.S. diplomats are prohibited from talking to it openly, the U.S. government calls it a terrorist organization, and the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. media outlets rarely if ever try to interview its leaders or listen to its supporters.
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.
The news invariably invokes “Hamas” and “rockets” to explain the Israeli siege and massacres. No: Although Israel heightened its blockade after the rise of Hamas, the siege began in 1948 and has continued unabated since. Many of the people Israel ethnically cleansed in 1948 ended up in Gaza, facing starvation, cold, and disease in the suddenly overpopulated land.
Photos from the last day in Gaza, where 28 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.