Adan Alhjooj tells the story of Sa’wa, a Naqab (Negev Desert) Bedouin village in southern Israel. Last week, Adan, along with people of all ages from her Naqab Bedouin community, protested against a resurgent Jewish National Fund (JNF) forestation campaign on Sa’wa’s land.
Videos and photos of Israeli police violently suppressing Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab have been flooding social media, as the campaign to #savethenaqab gained momentum amidst growing Israeli efforts to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands.
Recent videos show routine racism and violence directed against Palestinians with Israeli government support. Jewish settlers threaten to unleash dogs on Palestinians. Others spew hatred as soldiers protect them: “This is my land, King David walked around here two thousand years ago, herding his sheep. When you were where — in Saudi Arabia? Where Muhammad roamed…. Muhammad killed people. Raped. You’re a rapist people.”
In Ben Grayzel’s documentary about going to Israel on Birthright indoctrination program in 2019, Wael, a Palestinian student, tells him about the absurdity of Birthright. He says it’s crazy that an American Jew who has never come close to the Middle East has such a birthright. most of my cousins are Palestinian and maybe 90 percent cannot enter Palestine,” he says. “That doesn’t make sense.”
As part of COVID-19 series in Palestine, Yumna Patel traveled to the Jordan Valley to see what life is like for Palestinians there as they fight two battles: one against the coronavirus, and one against annexation. “In this area, the occupation is even worse for us than the coronavirus pandemic. The occupation has taken advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to take over more land in the Jordan Valley,” Motaz Bisharat, a Palestinian activist based in the northern Jordan Valley tells Mondoweiss.
What would you do if you were living in a refugee camp during a global pandemic? For the first time in months, Palestinian refugee camps are seeing a spike in COVID-19 cases raising concerns over the potentially devastating effects the virus can have on disadvantaged communities like the Dheisheh refugee camp.
Izzeldin Bukhari is a chef based in Jerusalem’s Old City who works to promote traditional Palestinian food, but the Israeli occupation makes obtaining locally-grown produce very difficult. “[Israeli is] trying to teach us to give up on being Palestinian. And we are saying ‘I can’t’. Simply, we can’t. It’s in our blood, it’s in our ancestors, it’s the history, the heritage. It comes with every muskhan dish I eat, with every hiwerina I eat, with every waraka dawali. And this is how we continue to be Palestinian.”
An ADC webinar with Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt, Noura Erakat, and Ahmad Abuznaid discusses the history of police violence, the connections to U.S. foreign policy, and the need to understand such struggles within a wider global context.
Bruce Robbins on why he made a documentary about Shlomo Sand: “If everyone knew what Sand has discovered about the construction of the Jewish story of exile and return, beautiful but false, they would be a little shaken… I hope that American Jews who tend to be liberal will transfer their democratic values to Israel. Let’s be democratic across the board.”
Michael Bueckert has been tracking Israel’s anti-BDS app for two years. Mondoweiss spoke to him about the app, its use during the recent attacks on Gaza, and where it is having an impact.