Haneen Maikey, the director of alQaws, speaks to the Palestinian LGBTQ community who held a historic protest in Haifa on July 29, 2020. “Your persecution only fuels us to create larger, louder spaces for queer life in Palestine.”
In Gaza, Rana Shubair looks back with nostalgia on the Great March of Return: Approaching the fence the first day, that spine tingling moment brought back memories of my one and only visit to Jerusalem in the year 2000. Seeing hundreds of people all standing there gave me a physical feeling of being locked up in a big cage.
The morning after President Donald Trump committed to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank during the release of his much-awaited Middle East peace plan, Palestinians protested the deal that would annex the Jordan Valley, the breadbasket of the West Bank, by motoring trackers through an Israeli checkpoint.
At daybreak Kefah Adra set out to fill a plastic container of water from a nearby spring, a morning errand she has not done in 15 years. Like many Palestinian towns in this southern region of the West Bank, a-Tuwani is hemmed in by Israeli settlements, which a decade and a half ago cut off access to her water source.
Earlier this month Yehya Karaja, a homeless Palestinian living in Gaza City who set himself on fire in September near a crowded public park in an apparent protest over dire living conditions, died from his wounds. He was 26.
Students at Duke University in North Carolina repeatedly interrupted an event last Wednesday featuring Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister who was subject to an arrest warrant issued by the UK and criminal complaints in two more European countries for her alleged role in war crimes committed during the 2008-09 Cast Lead invasion of Gaza.
New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art’s legendary Biennial exhibit is taking place, but the Whitney has a problem. Warren B. Kanders, the vice chairmen of the board of trustees, has amassed a $700 million fortune selling law enforcement gear and tear gas that has been used against unarmed civilians in Ferguson, Baltimore, Standing Rock, Puerto Rico, the U.S.-Mexico border, and in Israel/Palestine. Calls for the war profiteer’s resignation are growing louder by the day.
Manchester Palestine Action took action Sunday in the Puma department of British retailer Sports Direct to call for a global boycott of Puma for sponsoring the Israeli Football Association, which includes teams in Israel’s illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
On December 22, 2018, the 39th week of the Great March of Return, anti-Zionist Israeli activists joined Palestinian protestors at Khuza’a Return protest camp from the east side of the fence. Soldiers shot live rounds to prevent the activists from reaching the fence. Despite the military’s aggression, a phone conversation was held with Sabrine al-Najjar, the mother of Razan al-Najjar. She recognized the BDS movement as a positive factor in ending the occupation and contributing to the Palestinian cause of freedom and equality.
A group of 50 Anti-Zionist Israelis joined the Great March of Return from the Eastern side of the fence that besieges the Gaza Strip.