On March 30, thousands of Palestinians attended the yearly commemoration of Land Day in Gaza. Tareq Hajjaj walked through the crowd and asked attendees – “What does Land Day mean to you?” Answers varied, but most included the statement: “the land means our existence.”
Moving without borders and traveling without restrictions is part of the nomads’ identity and way of life. During the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, the semi-arid region of the an-Naqab was inhabited mostly by semi-nomadic Bedouin tribes, but this life was destroyed by Israeli colonialism. Still, a strong Bedouin identity lives on in Gaza and across the region.
The first time I was called a “self-hating Jew” was almost 15 years ago by someone I considered a close friend. It stung and I felt confused. Why does supporting Palestinian rights make me self-hating? And what does that have to do with my Judaism? Israel/Palestine seemed like a clear-cut situation to me. How could taking a country away from the people who had been there for centuries be right? 15 years later I have never felt stronger in my stance as a self-loving anti-Zionist Jew.
Who bears responsibility for the Al Tantura massacre, and how should they be held accountable?
“We don’t need their acknowledgment,” says Salah Abu Salah, a survivor of the Al-Tantura massacre. “The land will testify one day and tell what happened.”
In November 2021, Salman Abu Sitta returned to the Gaza Strip after five decades of forced absence. What he found surprised and inspired him.
A new documentary featuring at Sundance this weekend demolishes the official denial of the Tantura massacre, when more than 200 Palestinians in a seaside community were gunned down by a Zionist militia days after the establishment of Israel in 1948. Members of the militia were successful in 2000 in quashing a crusading academic’s documentation of the atrocities.
Recently unearthed statements from Israel’s founders endorsing ethnic cleansing and violence during the Nakba will only be shocking if you are not familiar with the long history of Zionist leaders and thinkers showing genocidal intent towards Palestinians.
This week, Yitzhak Rabin will be remembered in Israel as a peacemaker on the anniversary of his assassination. One fact that will be ignored however is that Rabin was one of the key perpetrators of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policy.
Within Israel, Apartheid is so deeply entrenched that dismantling it appears as viable as dismantling Zionism itself. But this is what needs to happen. In fact, abolishing Apartheid means abolishing Zionism and burying the idea of Jewish supremacy, which for all the sugar coating, stands at the core of Zionism itself.