The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports on water & sanitation crisis in Gaza, increase in Israeli settler violence. “97 per cent of ground water extracted in Gaza is unfit for human consumption, generating the risk of a waterborne disease outbreak.”
“The settlers came in the middle of the night, no one knew. By morning they had paved a road up to the mountain, set up their tents, and had soldiers protecting them,” Zafer Attayah, a resident of Kfar Ni’ma told Mondoweiss. Ever since the settlers showed up two months ago, the Palestinians from Risan’s three surrounding villages have been staging weekly Friday protests on the mountain in attempts to stop the confiscation. “We have to maintain our presence in the area,” Attayah said. “They think they can just come and take the land, but we will not make it easy for them.”
Israeli hasbarists are exploiting the death of settler Ari Fuld for propaganda value as they admonish people for being insensitive, or even complicit, if they do not mourn. At the same time, it is forbidden to note that Palestinians are systematically being dehumanized to death by the very ideology that Ari Fuld was championing and is being openly remembered for.
Malika Qafisha, 38, a mother of six, lives near the Ibrahami mosque in Hebron, which is holy for Jews and Muslims. Jewish settlers have occupied many Palestinian homes, and Qafisha and her family face daily harassment, in which settlers are backed by Israeli armed forces who shoot at Palestinian homes.
Wednesday morning, Ariel Gold was broadcasting a live feed through her Facebook, in the midst of an assault on her by settlers in Al-Khalil (Hebron). It’s another glimpse into the reality wherein the settlers essentially run the game, and the soldiers are only there to protect them, and no one else – certainly not anyone who is not “standing with the Jews”, as it were, even if they are Jewish.
Haaretz reports that Goldman Sachs has a “clear pattern” of giving to Israeli settler and rightwing groups through their Charitable Gift Fund. Of course, Hebron settlers aren’t the only ones experiencing Goldman largesse. Bernie Sanders has made an issue of the $675,000 Clinton received in speaking fees from the investment house just in 2013.
My Neighbourhood is a 25-minute documentary about the evictions of Palestinian families from their homes…