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- par: Human Beings who feel
- destinataire: Sentor OBama and his wife the
from Palestine Think Tank by Mary Rizzo
There%u2019s an old story that many children around the world have been told. Perhaps it wouldn%u2019t be a bad idea to hear it again and reflect on what it might mean to us. It goes like this: Many years ago, a young man sold hats from village to village. He would walk from one end of Africa to the other, wearing all the hats piled high atop his head, hoping to sell them in every remote village he ventured to. One day, the sun was particularly fierce, and to his great joy, far in the distance, he could see a huge baobab tree. He walked there, laid down all the hats but one, and dozed off under the shade of the tree. When he awakened, he couldn%u2019t believe his eyes. All of the hats that he had laid on the ground had disappeared. He squinted to the distance, but in no direction did he see anyone walking away with a mile-high pile of hats. Suddenly, he heard noises above his head, and for the first time, discovered that the tree was full of monkeys, and not only that, each one of them was wearing one of his hats. Confused as to what to do in order to get all those hats back, he took off his hat and scratched his head. He looked up, and there they were, 100 monkeys, each with a hat in his left paw and his right one scratching his head. The boy put the hat back on, and every one of those monkeys followed suit. Thinking himself very clever, the boy threw his hat down to his feet, and was relieved to have 100 hats come raining down, thrown down by the monkeys. He quickly gathered them and went on his way.
Sixty years later, a young hat-seller was making his way across a wide plateau. The day was hot, and he rested himself down under the shade of a large baobab. He put the pile of hats next to himself and promptly dozed off. Upon awakening, he discovered that all of the hats but the one on his head were gone. Remembering something his grandfather once told him about his own experiences as a young man, he looked up and saw 100 monkeys wearing hats. Smiling to himself, he took of his hat (so did the monkeys), he scratched his head (and so did the monkeys) and then, with a bigger smile (thinking about those stupid, silly monkeys and knowing that in a moment he would outsmart them all), he threw his hat to the ground. Much to his surprise, not a single hat fell to the ground. Instead, a monkey scrambled down the tree, grabbing the hat by the boy%u2019s feet. Tweaking his cheek on the way back up he said to the boy, %u201CDid you think you were the only one with a grandfather?%u201D
This little story, besides being an entertaining one of role reversal with the surprise ending, has a very important lesson to teach us: if we are unable to renew ourselves, if we are incapable of revising our opinions according to new information and if we are unwilling to adapt to new realities, we will never win the game. As smart as we think we are, as convinced of the reasons behind our actions and beliefs, we aren%u2019t the only ones involved. We have interlocutors who are also adapting to the times. As much as we know our own story and carry on with the actions we believe will be effective, if we forget that the %u201Cother people%u201D are also evolving, we are no more ahead of the game than the grandson in the fable, who was so certain that the tricks that worked in the past were still valid. We can%u2019t be forgetful that others adapt and work out new strategies.
And this is where Gilad Atzmon%u2019s %u201CThe Jewish Experience%u201D comes to play. Upon the first reading of this paper, I was very busy disagreeing. While I can see that there are many points that make perfect sense and are reasonable to me, there are a few ideas that I am certain, given my experience, just aren%u2019t true. While I am entirely convinced that it is the outside support of Israel that permits it to thrive as it is: a racist, supremacist, militaristic state with discriminatory laws that affect minorities and a cruel occupation that shows no signs of relenting, I am far less convinced that Zionism is a closed chapter for the Israelis. Perhaps they envision Zionism as an historical, foundational moment of the past, just the way that Italians think of Il Risorgimento, but my own experience with Israelis has been that they see Zionism as a very articulated and diverse ideological form that adapts to different circumstances and responds to many needs of Israeli society, especially maintaining the state apparatus. It would take me hours to list the various discussion groups (included in them so-called progressives, peacemakers and leftists) that purport the validity and %u201Cgoodness%u201D of various Zionist schools of thought, telling me that there are as many interpretations of Zionism as there are Zionists and that it is an issue I simply do not understand, being %u201Cbiased against Zionism%u201D and an %u201Cextremist sloganeer%u201D.
Yet, Gilad did some research on the matter to try to convince me. He showed me that the Hebrew versions of Ynet and Haaretz, when compared to the English versions, contained ten times less references to Zionism. It apparently is a subject that is of greater interest to people who do not read Hebrew well or at all than it is to Israelis. That this is a fascinating subject of investigation is undeniable. It certainly did start to shake some of my convictions a bit.
Then I got to thinking, %u201Cso what%u2026 if Israelis don%u2019t care about Zionism or call it Zionism, what does that change? It is necessary to get Israel to stop exerting its aggressive actions against those it considers to be its current and future enemies.%u201D But, (and here, I had to seriously examine some convictions that have been the backbone of my activism for the past several decades), if there is a possibility that the claim Gilad makes about Israelis not caring about Zionism is true, have we been singing to the choir all along? It reminds me of when people come to Italy and say how wonderful it is here. Yes, it can be, but only those who live in Italy know that this country is far more complicated than a tourist can ever remotely imagine. I might nod my head when they say that the food and weather are unbeatable, but don%u2019t let them start going on about %u201CLa Dolce Vita%u201D, I%u2019d have a thing or two to say to them, and agreeing with me would be the vast majority of the overworked and underpaid Italians.
If it is indeed true that not only have we got to make a paradigm shift in order to understand what reality is, rather than accepting without further analysis what we are used to it being out of habit or indoctrination, we have to then adjust our strategies to be able to even make any difference at all and actually change the reality that we have decided we will not accept.
When a crisis of our way of thinking comes in, even if we are not convinced of the full reasonableness of a different approach, it may be a good idea to examine a viable alternative fully and test it. I believe in the reliability of the source, someone who was raised in Israel, yet, with the advantage of space and distance that allow comparison and uninvolved observation to add elements to the reasoning, so, I will suspend for a moment my conviction that it%u2019s %u201Cthe Zionist Experience%u201D that moves the events in Israel and examine the hypothesis that it is instead %u201Cthe Jewish Experience%u201D. With this observation as a basis, I will try to analyse what can be done to bring about change.
I actually had a bit of a shock to find some support of Gilad%u2019s thesis from a very unlikely source. For some research I was dong, I was looking for some information on the Gadna Summer Camps. These are very strange, and I imagine, typically Israeli, boot camps for teens. A young man from Texas wrote on his blog that he had been there and his observations, under the influence of reflection on Gilad%u2019s piece, were evidence that Gilad is really onto something true. The %u201CLone Star of David%u201D writes:
%u201CThe truth is that Jews have not, to any great extent, defended themselves in eight gazillion years. In the Diaspora we withered into skinny defenseless yeshiva nerds. In our return to Eretz Yisrael and in the foundation of Medinat Yisrael we fulfilled A.D. Gordon%u2019s well-put dream of a people of strong, intellectual laborers. It was in this newfound physical strength that we founded militant movements in the Land. These were not just militias striking out against their perceived enemies like the Islamic militants we see on the news now. These were, for the most part, defense forces involved solely in the defense of its people, the Jewish people. Haganah, the largest of these became the Israeli Army when the state was founded in 1948 and that mission of defense has remained its goal. This is no ordinary national military. This is not just an army of Jews. This is THE Jewish Army.%u201D
OK, fair enough. David realises (or fantasises) that Israel was there for the creation of the %u201CNew Jew%u201D, or as Gilad wrote, %u201C%u2026for the Diaspora Jew, Israel is nothing less than a lucid model of glory. Israel is both the meaning and the meaning in its making. For the Diaspora Jew, Israel is the symbolic transformation aming at liberation and even redemption of the Jewish misery. Israel is everything the Diaspora Jew is not. It is full of Chutzpah, it is forceful, it stands for what it believes in.%u201D
But David actually affirms Gilad%u2019s claim when he writes:
%u201CWhen you ask the average %u201Csecular%u201D Israeli whether they consider themselves more Israeli or more Jewish, they say Israeli. An American Jew is saddened by this because to us it means that Israel is no longer a Jewish state and that its inhabitants have been come simply Israeli rather than Jewish like France%u2019s inhabitants are simply French. What is really going on is a breakdown in vocabulary. Our respective vocabularies (American Jewish and Israeli) are different and neither of us knows how to say what we mean. What the Israeli means when he says he is Israeli and not Jewish is that he is a member of the Jewish Nation rather than the Jewish Religion. What the American Jew means by his outrage is that he cannot relate to Judaism as a peoplehood because he has become an American whose religion is Jewish, rather than a Jew who follows his people%u2019s religion.%u201D
So, trying to cut through the confusion of peoplehood, religion, becoming (and taking into account the suggestion that neither the American Jews nor the Israelis know how to say what they mean), this young man is living a love relationship full of meaning that has been strengthened from the moment he became part of the Jewish army in a militaristic experience aimed at indoctrinating boys and girls fresh out of puberty to the glorious experiences awaiting them should they make Aliyah%u2026 And it brought about an epiphany for him: Israelis SAY Israeli but mean Jewish. They%u2019ve stopped building the nation, now they are just getting on with living and the Diaspora Jews still hold the candle of Jewish peoplehood united across land and sea, and will protect and defend the emerging Zionist project, a never-ending success story of redemption and salvation that rescues Jews from doomed eternity as nerds.
Well, if this is the case, that it%u2019s really basically an issue of Diaspora Jew self-visualisation as potential supermen, even if I may need to suspend my belief for a time, perhaps it will be worth it if it means finding a way to be effective. It might not matter to be wrong or right, when the issue is stopping the intolerable violations of human rights to anyone Israelis and Zionists decide should be subject to that, what matters is getting the job done: stopping it. If a new approach is required, perhaps I have to remember the hat-seller and his conviction that the same old thing would work. We can%u2019t be so sure of everything. We aren%u2019t the only ones in the game.
Now, how to apply the new paradigm and address some of the points raised by %u201CThe Jewish Experience%u201D%u2026 I believe the core lies in recognising that most of the International Community has been fooled into believing that the Jewish narrative is actually something particularly important. It is a fact that Jews started their experience in a small area of the world, but then they underwent something that is extremely banal: ordinary migration and dispersion. If genetic mapping done was applied to everyone, we would realise that humanity is a gigantic mix of peoples and cultures. It is the very nature of humans to migrate, seek new territory, adapt, settle, explore, relocate, get caught up in natural disasters and war and refugee experiences. They are carted away as slaves, moved en masse by geopolitical events and assimilated into the places they inhabit. It is not limited to Jews and it never has been. To accept that the Exilic paradigm is the core of the Jewish narrative, making it unique, perhaps we have been hoodwinked into accepting many other tenets that have no basis in any particularity, but are experiences common to all peoples. They are not particularly tragic or heroic, at least, they can be considered AS tragic and AS heroic as hundreds of other collective experiences. Liberating ourselves from the idea of a special entitlement to collective satisfaction due to ancient experiences might let us see things a bit more clearly. We can also see that the obsession of the International Community on the well-being and happiness of this group, which is given a much greater leeway in the means used to achieve their national aspirations, is misplaced. Individual realisation of potential, the achievement of %u201Cpersonal happiness%u201D has become directed into a collective aspiration that inserts some other kinds of collective thought. Focus on Jews as subjects that must consider this aspiration as a personal one, one that is able to embrace even those who really are actually happy and realised precisely where they are, convincing them that there is some great collective story that they are there to build, is actually a dangerous thing when the result is militarising young idealists who simply were born as Jews.
If the Jews are not being discriminated in the countries they live in, encouraging them to feel that their condition is %u201Cexilic%u201D is rather odd in the modern world where most of the people or their parents come from someplace else anyway. And, with this consideration, we enter into very dangerous territory indeed: that of destructive entitlement. Since Jews are considered to be special, the situation of Israel being an anomaly, or as they choose to represent themselves, %u201Cthe only democracy in the Middle East%u201D %u201Ca tiny State surrounded by a billion hostile neighbours%u201D, then they will not only feel entitled, but they will BE entitled to act in any way they choose in order to maintain their special status. Wouldn%u2019t it be boring to have more than one democracy in the Middle East? And if the neighbors stopped being such a threat, wouldn%u2019t Israel not be in need of worldwide support and love (not to mention armaments)? History marches on, people and nations progress, but Israel is determined to remain the same. Plus ça change, plus c%u2019est la même chose%u2026
Why does the world embrace the Jewish narrative so tightly then? Is there something intrinsically true and important about it that it stands out amongst hundreds of other group narratives that are equally dramatic if not more so? What I believe stands behind it is something more than laziness, although accepting what the standard %u201CChristian-Judeo narrative%u201D of Jewish particularity seems to be is probably not intentional, just basic education known as %u201Ccommon sense%u201D and %u201Chistory%u201D. It does have an interesting characteristic of being whatever serves at the moment: want a nationality? Got it! If you need it to be cultural or traditional%u2026 it%u2019s a done deal! Religion? Why certainly! Jewishness is like the three card shuffle, you can pick a card, any card%u2026 if you are paying attention REALLY closely, you might walk away with a profit, but the hands are very skilled and the house wins. Only the gambler doesn%u2019t realise that the house is not willing to take more than a loss out of 100, the house ALWAYS wins%u2026 that%u2019s the rule.
If Jews started to question the Jewish paradigm and stopped using their Jewishness as an instrument, it might lose whatever power it possesses. They might become ordinary and boring human beings whose ancestors had stories of migration, tragedy and success just like so many other human beings. They might look at the world in a different light, and the world might change as a result. As far as I know, every single human is the end product of one uninterrupted chain of humanity, going back hundreds of thousands of generations. There MUST have been some dramatic moments in the history of every one of us, if we are not actually all related in some way. Caring about people as people, looking at the world as it is today, focusing on the suffering happening today is a far greater task than carrying out some collective narrative that makes us feel great.
But why do the Americans care so much? I believe there are some reasons that they do, and these reasons are probably imposed from above in a very subtle and unnoticeable way, so that Americans feel they are being magnanimous when they support the tiny little State in the Middle East that is so full of victims of man%u2019s evil to man. Were they, in the most religious nation on the face of the Earth, to question the biblical narrative, it would make them see that maybe some things taken for granted are nothing but lies or at best, big question marks that will never have an answer. Once they question some of that, the power system that imposes presidential candidates or anyone in public office, to have %u201Ca personal minister%u201D as well as a public religious persona, would start to shake at its very foundations. If even your money has God%u2019s name on it, you had better leave the Bible alone. The self-determination of Jews or Israelis is only secondary to what really matters: keeping the masses out of any kind of challenge to authority and power. So, the Jews were able to market their personal narrative as the greatest story ever told, good for them. That the interests of the Americans, the Canadians, the Europeans and all the other successful Western nations are secondary to sustaining this story is a matter that is fair and reasonable to question. They may be doing it for Israel, but I believe they are doing it to save their own Imperialist skins. If we are willing to believe that a Jew in Austin, Paris or London feels a need to make Aliyah so that he can live his life to its full potential as a Jew is something that is frankly laughable. He or she may feel the attraction of the calling, but it is Israel that needs them, not the other way around. The Americans, French and British governments nod their heads in approval and encourage the emigration of these young professionals. After all, the West is busy outsourcing, people are ultimately expendible, what matters is keeping the Imperial machine well-oiled, and maintaing the myth of the Wandering Jew helps to do just that.
So, perhaps Gilad is right. Maybe we had better fight the ideology and practical application of Zionism by looking at what lies at the core of this supremacist mindset. It%u2019s not only Israelis or Zionists who are busy playing the game of destructive entitlement. Exclusion from debate of people who criticise the analysis of the Jewish condition of %u201Cseparateness%u201D and its very evident destructiveness in Israel, when it is obviously a very crucial issue is something done primarily by Jews who selectively do not identify themselves with Israel, but will single themselves out ethnically even when it is totally inappropriate. When they do it, they do it as Jews, as if this gives their arguments special weight. Doing so, consciously or unconsciously, reinforces the wedge between Jews and %u201Ceverybody else%u201D and is a gatekeeping mechanism that is equally as damaging as Israeli hasbara. Yes, it is right to fight Zionists, but maybe that is not enough, because many who act as Zionists are not willing to identify themselves as such. As activists, we are required to get to the core of where the destructive power lies, and to expose it so that we are able to see clearly what means are at our disposal to bring about a world that is more just, that is able to work towards full human equality, no one excluded%u2026 even equality for Zionists to be themselves, as long as they are able to abandon their destructive entitlement and accept to be a person like anyone else, not better than anyone else. The other option is to throw down our hat and expect our adversaries to do the same.
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from Palestine Think Tank by Mary Rizzo
The gates of Auschwitz offered a duplicitious motto, %u201CArbeit macht frei%u201D (Work makes you free), and so does Israel%u2019s gateway to Bethlehem. %u201CPeace be with you%u201D is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic on a colourful large notice covering part of the grey concrete. The people of Bethlehem have scrawled their own, more realistic assessments of the wall across much of its length. Foreign visitors can leave, while Bethlehem%u2019s Palestinians are now sealed into their ghetto. As long as these Palestinian cities are not turned into death camps, the West appears ready to turn a blind eye. Mere concentration camps, it seems, are acceptable.
Jonathan Cook
from Palestine Think Tank by Mary Rizzo
The religious quality of Marxism also explains a characteristic attitude of the orthodox Marxist toward opponents. To him, as to any believer in a faith, the opponent is not merely in error but in sin. Dissent is unapproved of not only intellectually but also morally.
Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942
from Palestine Think Tank by Mary Rizzo
Profound insights arise only in debate, with a possibility of counterargument, only when there is a possibility of expressing not only correct ideas but also dubious ideas.
Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, 1968
from Palestine Think Tank by Haitham Sabbah
Above: A map showing the area of Silwan threatened with demolition and settlement expansion, including an indicator of the area in which settlements already exist. As highlighted on the map, Silwan as well as the adjacent villages of Tur and Ras Al Amud will be on the western side of the Wall, as Jerusalem is being isolated from the rest of the West Bank, in the Occupation%u2019s continued plans to control the city. With most of Jerusalem outside the Walled-in areas, it is expected that the Apartheid Wall and therefore the isolation and ghettoization of Jerusalem, will act as a springboard for increasing land confiscation, settlement expansion and expulsion in the area.
%u201CWho controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.%u201D (George Orwell, 1984)
Historically, Jerusalem began as a small village where the Palestinian village of Silwan sits today. Currently, Silwan has a population of over 45,000 Palestinians. Underneath their homes and ragged streets lie the remnants of 5000 years of glorious nations who lived there.
Silwan is located in East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in 1967. Since then, behind the Zionist claim of reconnecting with the ancient heritage of the Jews, the truth is, archeology has become a weapon of dispossession of Palestinians. Archaeological excavations are being carried out as part of a concerted campaign to expel them from their ancestral home and history.
In an unprecedented act, the state of Israel has handed over the responsibility of the archaeological site to ELAD - an Israeli religious settlers%u2019 gang whose proclaimed purpose is the takeover of Silwan. The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) financed by ELAD%u2019s $10 million yearly budget is excavating under the houses of Silwan%u2019s residents, without informing them about it and ignoring their property rights. In fact, ELAD has used a variety of means to evict East Jerusalem Palestinians from their homes and replace them with Jewish settlers.
Silwan is one of the Jerusalem neighborhoods most threatened with Judaization as a result of continuous settler attacks and occupation of its houses. Just last year in Silwan, in March 2004, settlers occupied two buildings that together are comprised of 12 flats. These can be added to the houses and lands in Silwan already taken over by settlers during previous years, a large part of which are located in Wadi Hilwa, which overlooks Bustan and is adjacent to the Old City. The settlements in Silwan - caravans and occupied houses - are located in the middle of the neighborhood, and are as well located very near to one another, making clear their function of ultimately turning the entire neighborhood into a settlement.
In April 2005, the Occupation Forces and its municipality in Jerusalem declared its plan to demolish some 122 houses in both the areas of Bustan and Wadi Hilwa. Demolishing these houses is part of the Occupation%u2019s plan to %u201Cevacuate%u201D and expropriate all lands surrounding the Old City, in the closest hills and mountains surrounding the Old City that include Tur, Silwan and Abu Tur, along with other areas. The planned settlements are to also include car parks, recreational and commercial areas. Source: stopthewall.org
Today, all the green areas in the densely populated neighborhood of Silwan have been transformed into archaeological sites, which have then been fenced and posted with armed guards. Some of these %u2018archaeological sites%u2019 have been transformed to homes for the Jewish settlers.
ELAD has made it clear that they want the land without the people and their history. In fact, Elda is now trying to hide the history as reported here:
Dozens of skeletons from the early Islamic period were discovered during excavations near the Temple Mount, on a site slated for construction by a right-wing Jewish organization. Contrary to regulations, the skeletons were removed, and were not reported to the Ministry of Religious Services. The Israel Antiquities Authority termed the incident %u2018a serious mishap%u2019.%u201D
The IAA%u2019s Dr. Doron Ben Ami is directing the excavations at the Givati parking lot in Jerusalem%u2019s Silwan neighborhood, across from the entrance to the Dung Gate. ELAD, an association devoted to Judaizing East Jerusalem, is funding the dig at the site, where it plans to build an events hall with underground parking. The IAA is excavating there even though ELAD never filed building plans with the planning authorities.
In recent weeks, workers excavating at a depth of two to three meters reached a layer from the 8th or 9th century A.D., some 200 years after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem. They discovered several dozen skeletons, skulls and bone fragments, thought to date from the early Islamic period. An IAA source said there were %u2018dozens of crates%u2019 containing bone fragments that were removed, which suggests at least 100 skeletons were found.
IAA regulations require that any graves discovered be reported immediately to the Religious Services Ministry and to Atra Kadisha, an ultra-Orthodox organization dedicated to preserving ancient Jewish gravesites. For some reason this discovery was not reported, and the skeletal remains were carted away before ministry officials arrived to inspect the site. The ministry learned of the discovery only two weeks later, following inquiries by Haaretz.
Nor have the Muslim religious authorities been notified, even though the skeletons are thought to belong to a Muslim community.
An archaeologist who worked at the IAA expressed surprise at the manhandling of skeletons discovered less than a hundred meters from Al Aqsa mosque. %u201CThe moment a digger comes across bones, he must stop immediately and inform his supervisors,%u201D he said, adding that IAA director Shuka Dorfman has threatened to fire anyone who fails to report the discovery of bones.
The IAA refused to explain the %u2018serious mishap%u2019, but said Dorfman %u2018accepts responsibility%u2019 for it.
Another archaeologist familiar with excavations in Jerusalem lamented the lost opportunity to learn more about the city%u2019s past: %u201CThis was not a regular cemetery, since then they would also have found many tombstones. It may have been a private burial site, perhaps a mass grave following an epidemic or war, but in any case it is a very important discovery that could shed light on life in Jerusalem in that period. It%u2019s a scandal they destroyed it.%u201D Source: Haaretz.
It is not surprising that none of the Zionist archaeologists findings will be highlighted for the public if any proof of the Muslim rule comes to light. They are looking only for Jewish ruins as if Muslims (and others) were never there.
Although ELAD denies their intention of driving out Silwan%u2019s Palestinians, they still do not deny that they have a Zionist dream to reveal only a Jewish ancient city beneath the ground and create a Jewish neighborhood above the ground.
History is pulsing through Jerusalem, reeling off the names of history%u2019s giants, nations and religions associated with the city - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. So what gives the right for Zionists to claim it as Jewish only land for any reason other than their racist ideology?
Amihai Mazar, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the site has already revealed important details of Jerusalem%u2019s history. He mentioned the discovery of massive Canaanite fortifications 3,700 years old and of thousands of fish bones indicating the diet favored in this landlocked city on the desert%u2019s edge.
In spite of that, ELAD runs a visitors %u2018 center which offers a highly one-sided, Zionist version of the history of Silwan. At the entrance, visitors to the site receive a propaganda pamphlet embodying a distorted historical narrative in a relentless process of turning Silwan into an area that seems to have a history that is Jewish alone, and will return to that state. At the same time, they are dispossessing many of the Palestinian residents to do just that .
A grass-roots protest in the neighborhood, including an appeal to the Israel Supreme Court, has met with violent suppression by the police, including the harassment and repeated arrests of the signatories to the appeal. On March 17, 2008, the Court issued a restraining order against ELAD and temporarily halted further extension of the digging.
In Silwan, sadly, archaeology -and the Israel Antiquities Authority - are being openly exploited for purely Zionist purposes that include the removal of innocent civilians from their homes.
In recent weeks, university professors and lecturers from all over the world have been signing a petition aiming at stopping using archaeology against the residents of Silwan. The petition calls to stop ELAD from exploiting archaeology for their Zionist dreams. It is still possible to sign the petition. You can find it here:
http://www.alt-arch.org/signpetition.html
On Wednesday, the 18th of June, 2008 at 11 a.m., there will be a hearing in the Supreme Court in Jerusalem regarding the archaeological excavations under the houses of the Silwan. If you can make it, your presence is important!
References:
- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/988803.html
- http://counterpunch.org/bronner04112008.html
- http://imeu.net/news/article008427.shtml
- http://stopthewall.org/photos/947.shtml
- http://www.alt-arch.org/index.html
[Via: Sabbah's Blog]
from Palestine Think Tank by Mary Rizzo
Palestine solidarity must build solidarity with Palestinian resistance. Not a dunum of Palestinian land will be freed without a cost to those who now occupy it; no rights worth mentioning will be won without liberating land. In the famous phrase of Malcolm X %u201Cby any means necessary,%u201D the operative word is %u201Cnecessary.%u201D A solidarity movement that demands of the Palestinian people that they choose tactics of resistance that result in devastating costs for the Palestinian community, without significant cost to Israeli occupiers, can%u2019t be considered solidarity.
Lana Habash and Noah Cohen
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This page is accessible to anyone who knows its address, so all that's left to do is to let your friends know about it.
Additionally, all your friends in Gmail Chat and Google Talk that use Google Reader will then be able to see your shared items. Learn more about friends.
Find out more about sharingSort by oldest only shows items from the last 30 days. Learn more DismissYou are not subscribed to this recommended feed yet.If you'd like to automatically receive updates to this feed, you can subscribe now.
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NavigationActing on itemsj/k:next/previous items:star itemspace:next item or page<Shift> s:share item<Shift> space:previous item or pagev:view originaln/p:item scan down/up (list only)t:tag item<Shift> n/p:next/previous subscriptionm:mark item as read/unread<Shift> x:expand foldero/enter:expand/collapse item (list only)<Shift> o:open subscription or folder<Shift> a:mark all as reade:email item<Shift> d:share item with noteJumpingApplicationg then h:go homer:refreshg then a:go to all itemsu:toggle full screen modeg then s:go to starred items1:switch to expanded viewg then <Shift> s:go to shared items2:switch to list viewg then u:open subscription selector/:move cursor to search boxg then t:open tag selectora:add a subscriptiong then <Shift> t:go to trends page=:increase magnificationg then d:go to discovery page-:decrease magnificationOpen in a new windowEn signant, vous acceptez les conditions de service de Care2
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