Activism
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| Title | | Description | Date |
| Why Palestinians are uniting around watermelon emoji | | Miriam Berger - The Washington Post - Millions of mostly pro-
Palestinian social media posts were incorrectly taken down by
Facebook and Twitter amid the latest crisis, raising the ire of
Palestinians who have long felt that their speech online was
overpenalized. At a high rate, Palestinian-related hashtags and
accounts were also blocked or had content removed. Instagram,
Facebook and other social media platforms reject accusations that
they have intentionally over-moderated, censored or deprioritized
Palestinian or pro-Palestinian content. But many digital rights
activists reject these explanations and say it is a long-standing
trend that’s more recently escalated as Palestinians take to social
media to organize. This has led to the resurgence of the watermelon
motif. Already before Oslo, when Raising the red, green, white and
black Palestinian flag was completely banned, the watermelon —
locally grown and similarly colored — served in Palestinian
iconography as a subversive stand-in. Palestinian artists used the
watermelon as a metaphor for the Palestinian flag and to circumvent
the ban. Now, the tradition persists online: Palestinians,
distrustful of social media platforms and fearful of Israeli digital
surveillance online, are using the watermelon emoji and iconography
to avoid the catch nets of what they say are unfavorable algorithms
and content moderation methods.[ak]
In recent weeks, the watermelon has resurged on social media, as
part of what some Palestinians say are efforts to preempt or
circumvent online censorship and content moderation, in the face of
heightened enforcement sparked by the Israel-Hamas conflict in May
and the attendant wave of grass-roots Palestinian activism.
The users posting emoji, images and artwork — Palestinians in
Israel, the occupied territories and the diaspora, along with their
supporters — reflect
| 15/7/2021 |
| ... |
| Ex-Israeli soldiers call for halt to settler violence against Palestinians | | Muhammed Semiz - According to a report on Israeli Army Radio, the former soldiers, who have just completed their military service, sent a letter to Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Internal Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev about their experiences in the occupied West Bank.
Calling for action "against the phenomenon of settler violence,” the former soldiers said the responsibility for countering the violence of Jewish settlers rests with Gantz and Bar-Lev.
The violence perpetrated by the Jewish settlers against Palestinians has increased with the implicit support of the Israeli state for years, the letter said, adding: "We are the ones serving there and we have personally seen how that violence happened on the field."
The phenomenon of settler violence manifested and intensified last year as "damaging private property, stone throwing, physical violence against Palestinians and attacks on activists and [Israeli] security forces,” it added.
"We were sent to defend them [Jewish settlers], but we had no means to withstand them," it said. [bz] | 15/7/2021 |
| ... |
| Video: ‘Beita is undefeatable’ | | Mondoweiss - In early May, a group of Israeli settlers arrived with
caravans and set up an illegal outpost on the top of Jabal Sabih on
the outskirts of Beita. Since then, every single day for more than
two months, protests in the village have been nonstop, and the
Israeli response has been severe.
Since protests began on Jabal Sabih, Israeli forces have killed five
Palestinians: four residents of Beita, and one young man from the
nearby village of Yatma. The latest victims of the Beita protests
were two teenagers: 16-year-old Mohammed Hamayel, and 17-year-old
Ahmed Bani Shamsa. The two were reportedly school friends, and were
some of the hundreds of Beita’s youth who participated in the
protests regularly. Hundreds more Palestinians from Beita and the
surrounding villages have been injured by Israeli forces during the
protests, a significant amount with live ammunition. Some locals
estimate that there have been over 1,000 injuries with live
ammunition since protests began. And it goes on, the inhabitantsd
showing no sign of being intimidated. As the call to prayer rings
through the town at sunset, the streets of Beita are practically
empty. Most of the town’s residents can be found making their way to
Jabal Sabih. Scattered across the mountain, the residents of Beita
split into groups, or teams, each one designated with a different
task aimed at irritating and disturbing the settlers on the
mountaintop. [ak] | 15/7/2021 |
| ... |
| The Palestinian phoenix, unexpectedly rising from the ashes. | | Omar Barghouti - BDS Movement - In the summer of 1987, I visited
occupied Ramallah on a visitor’s permit requested by my grandmother
and issued by the Israeli military authorities. I was shocked how
complacent so many Palestinians seemed to have become about Israel’s
occupation and apartheid. A few months after I left Palestine for
the US that year, the Intifada broke out, shattering all complacency
and asserting the Palestinian quest for liberation on the world’s
agenda again. Palestinians have frequently proven to be like a
phoenix, unexpectedly rising from the ashes. (...) In the past few
months, Palestinians across historic Palestine and in exile have
reaffirmed our unity as a people in our quest for self
determination. And there was a truly unprecedented outpouring of
global solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation
during the most recent Israeli terror unleashed on us. Trade unions
and social justice movements, representing tens of millions, and
many thousands of artists, academics, students, feminists, climate
justice organizers, LGBTQI+ activists, not to mention an
extraordinary number of music, film and sports celebrities, have
declared support for Palestinian rights, with many endorsing BDS.
This time, it is truly different. We’ve been planting seeds of
meaningful and effective solidarity for years. We’ve been
mainstreaming our analysis of Israel’s regime of oppression and the
indispensable role that states, corporations and institutions play
in maintaining it. And now, we are seeing our seedlings yield their
first fruits. [ak]
| 15/7/2021 |
| ... |
| Army injures dozens of Palestinians, including journalists,in Kufur Qaddoum | | IMEMC - This Friday, villagers in Kufur Qaddoum marked the tenth
anniversary of their weekly protests against the illegal Annexation
Wall and settlements - specifically, against settlers having taken
over the access road to their village, denying its use to villagers
and forcing them to use a much longer and roundabout road. To mark
the anniversary, the weekly protest was attended by political,
social political and social and religious figures, such as
Archimandrite Abdullah Yulio, parish priest of the Melkite Greek
Catholic church, and the head of the Wall and Colonization
Resistance Commission, Walid Assaf. Israeli soldiers soldiers tried
to ambush the protesters in several locations, hiding behind trees
or in buildings, and attacked the protesters with a barrage of gas
bombs and rubber-coated steel bullets. Dozens of Palestinians
suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation, and many sustained cuts
and bruises. However, the soldiers failed in several attempts to
haul protesters off to detention in Israel. [ak] | 3/7/2021 |
|
| New government in crisis as Meretz refuses to the banning of Palestinian family reunifications | | Michael Hauser Tov - Haaretz - Left-wing Meretz, which says it was
not consulted on a compromise with the Evyatar settlers, will not
support extending the temporary legislation that prevents
Palestinians married to Israelis from gaining citizenship. The
"temporary amendment" has been passed year after year since 2003,
with hardly any public debate. But now Meretz, together with Majmud
Abbas` Ra`am Party, are in government and in a position to oppose
its passage. A senior Meretz official said that the right-wing
component of the government coalition feels they can do whatever
they want, and that everyone else will have to accept it. “[Yamina`s
Ayelet] Shaked even allows herself to make threats. It doesn’t work
that way. The two sides knew what type of marriage they were getting
into,” and both sides will have to put up with things they don’t
want, the official said. “This is a racist law and I reject it, even
at the price of giving up the job of minister,” said Meretz`s Esawi
Freige, who was just two weeks ago installed as Rgional Cooperation
Minister. Similarly, Meretz Knesset member Mossi Raz said that Raz
said earlier in the week that "This a discriminatory law that
imposes restrictions on the Arab citizen and sees him as a security
and demographic threat.” Meterz is also displeased with the
compromise reache with the settlers of the manifestly illegal West
bank settlement outpost Evyatar, which stipulates that though they
have to leave now they may come back later and have a legal status
as "an approved settlment". "We are in the government` but nobody
consulted us about this compromise. It looks bad." [ak] | 1/7/2021 |
|
| Inside Beita’s Protests: ‘The settlers didn’t understand who they were dealing with’ | | Oren Ziv - +972 Magazine -
Over the past few weeks, the town of Beita, home to about 18,000
residents, has become one of the most prominent faces of the
Palestinian struggle. In May, settlers established the outpost of
Eviatar on land that belongs to Beita, as well as three other
Palestinian villages. The demonstrations in Beita this past month
have looked and felt like a battlefield: over a thousand residents
and workers from other villages protest every week, with Israeli
soldiers and Border Police attacking them with tear gas (sometimes
fired from a drone), stun grenades, rubber-coated metal bullets, and
live “toto” bullets. The army has killed four residents of the town,
including 16-year-old Muhammad Hamayel and 15-year-old Ahmad Bani
Shams, and has wounded more than 50 people by live ammunition.
The demonstrations in Beita are quite distinct from those that
characterized the Palestinian popular struggle during the late
2000s, which have largely waned in recent years. Unlike in other
villages such as Bil’in, the Beita protests are
not joint Palestinian-Israeli demonstrations, but clearly
Palestinian ones; although individual Israeli activists attend, they
do not march alongside Palestinian residents. And compared to most
West Bank protests in recent years, Beita’s demonstrations are much
larger, more frequent, and more intense. I joined Beita’s
demonstrations over a number of weeks, compiling a
chronicle of the town’s resistance and the attempts to suppress it.
[ak] | 1/7/2021 |
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