Opinion Editorials, August 2015

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Jewish colonial settler attacked a village near Nablus throwing Molotov cocktails and burning houses. Ali Dawabsheh age 1.5 years baby was burned to death and three family members sustained severe burns. Jewish terrorism is not new and it accompanied Zionism from its foundations and accelerated under British rule (1919-1947) and got into a crescendo in 1948 and 1949 (dozens of massacres including Deir Yassin and Tantura) and then the attacks on civilians by the largest terror organization in the world (the Israeli army) including bombing refugee camps and villages in the 1950s until today. See book on "Jewish Terrorism in Israel" as example.

This is the expected outcome of Zionism left unchecked and with impunity from the International community and/or aided by the fake search for a two state "solutions" (the Oslo Process). After 67 years of propaganda, horrors of colonial occupation, and 7 million refugees, we Palestinians still have no justice and no peace. Israel continues in its colonial and apartheid policies because many are silent and silence is complicity. Israel just passed a law allowing force feeding of political prisoners on hunger strike.

Israeli forces continue to demolish homes and assassinate Palestinian natives. Israel lobby is still pushing for war on Iran as they did with the catastrophic war on Iraq. US taxpayers are footing the bill for Israeli militarism while their congressional representatives get free trips to Israel and get bribes to vote against US interests and for perceived Israeli interests (war mongering). Writing to politicians and media certainly helps. Also engaging in other forms of resistance including BDS.
 
Meanwhile good people continue to do good work. We attended a great musical performance and poetry reading in Bethlehem (for a small segment of the kind of music see https://vimeo.com/80908196 and for background see http://www.alkamandjati.com/en/home/ ).

Visiting and departing delegations (9 delegations representing many countries this week) and many volunteers also kept busy in our museum and botanical garden (see http://www.palestinenature.org/achievements-first-year/ ) as infrastructure is being prepared here but without disturbing our little oasis which now has a variety of local animals and plants. Today we had a delegation of 40 young Palestinian expats from 14 countries many of them for the first time back to their homeland.

The trip is called “Know Thy Heritage” (see this great website http://kthps.org/) . We also just concluded a five day conference of the International Conference of Critical Geography where hundreds of researchers attended and presented papers and issued a very powerful political statement (see  http://iccg2015.org/conference-statement/ ). We submitted a research paper on butterflies and we are working on three more research papers in August. A heat wave is here (global warming/climate change). Animals are thirsty so they come to our pool in the museum botanical garden. Life goes on.

Excellent analysis from South African ex-minister and anti-apartheid activist Ronnie Kasarils: Whither Palestine? (Part One)
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-07-27-whither-palestine-part-one/#.VbeHxfmqpBc

United Church of Christ passes a resolution on divestment from the occupation
http://www.uccpin.org/
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/06/companies-profiting-occupation

‘This is our Israel, this is for the Jews. No Palestinian should come to Israel': A Palestinian-American’s story of being detained at Ben Gurion airport by George Khoury
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/07/palestinian-americans-detained

Federation of American Scientists on US Aid to Israel http://fas.org:8080/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf

Good Book available in PDF: Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine http://www.pdfarchive.info/pdf/P/Pa/Pappe_Ilan_-_The_Ethnic_Cleansing_of_Palestine.pdf

Come visit us in Palestine, the land of "existence is resistance"

Mazin Qumsiyeh
Professor and Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org

Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah & ccun.org.

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