All hail the peacemakers 22

Amid the current deluge of apocalyptic news, Zoom’s cancellation last month of a webinar hosted by San Francisco State University, featuring Leila Khaled and other Palestinian and Palestinian rights supporters, went largely unnoticed. The move, however, has worrying implications for those of us struggling for an equal and livable world.

The decision to pull the plug on the event, which was organized by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies program (AMED) and the Department of Women and Gender Studies (WGS), came after The Lawfare Project, a right-wing Zionist legal aid group, threatened to take Zoom to court for giving a platform to Khaled. Khaled is a longtime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who became a symbol of Palestinian resistance for hijacking planes in 1969 and 1970.

https://www.972mag.com/silicon-valley-zoom-leila-khaled/?fbclid=IwAR0TKf...

In mid-March, after COVID-19 landed in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a prime-time televised press conference in which he declared “war” on the pandemic.

Those were the early days of the coronavirus, when much of the world was watching the harrowing scenes coming out of countries such as Italy, Spain, and France. Netanyahu, vowing to defeat the “invisible enemy,” deployed the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, to surveil millions of Israeli citizens, while the country’s security apparatuses jumped into high gear to try and beat the virus into submission. Very little was done by way of propping up civilian infrastructure or building the citizenry’s trust.

https://www.972mag.com/covid-security-pandemic-idf/?fbclid=IwAR0m8tzTJZy...

Grassroots Activism in '48 Palestine: A webinar hosted by Miko Peled

https://youtu.be/t4lgozvDojU

Israel destroys water supply line in Masafer Yatta, South Hebron Hills, 28 Oct. 2020

https://youtu.be/y1xVyTvAlu8

Palestinian prisoner Maher al-Akhras has been on hunger strike for 100 days to protest his administrative detention. After four petitions were rejected by Israel’s High Court of Justice, it seems the authorities simply do not care if al-Akhras dies. The state claims that the only way for him to be released is if he agrees to put an immediate end to his hunger strike and serves the rest of his detention until it ends on Nov. 26.

Al-Akhras, 49, a father of six from the village of Silat al-Dahr in the occupied West Bank, was arrested on July 28. On Aug. 7, he was placed under administrative detention for four months after Israeli authorities claimed he was a “prominent operative in Islamic Jihad,” a claim al-Akhras has repeatedly rejected outright.

https://www.972mag.com/al-akhras-hunger-strike-hundred-days/

In the largest West Bank demolition operation in a decade, Israeli military authorities on Tuesday razed around 70 structures in the Jordan Valley’s Humsa al-Fuqa community in the occupied West Bank. Locals reported that six bulldozers, accompanied by around 100 Israeli soldiers, carried out the demolitions, leaving 11 Palestinian families homeless.

Among the demolished structures were those seemingly funded by the European Union and other European governmental and non-governmental institutions.

https://www.972mag.com/demolition-west-bank-jordan-valley/?fbclid=IwAR1Y...

Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank have razed a Palestinian village, leaving 73 people – including 41 children – homeless, in the largest forced displacement incident for years, according to the United Nations.

Excavators escorted by military vehicles were filmed approaching Khirbet Humsa and proceeding to flatten or smash up tents, shacks, animal shelters, toilets and solar panels.

“These are some of the most vulnerable communities in the West Bank,” said Yvonne Helle, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territory.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/05/israeli-forces-leave-41-ch...

CMOT Dibbler.  Just to let you know I appreciate your posts, and read many of them.  Thanks for introducing me to Mondoweiss.  I have bookmarked it.  The article on McCollum's election in Minnesota, increasing the numbers of pro-Palestinians in the House of Representatives was a bit of good news from this election.  I wish there were Canadian politicians with McCollum's courage.

With all eyes on US election, Israel demolished an entire Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley

https://youtu.be/0YI48mFIj8g

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat dies from COVID-19

https://youtu.be/tHZQSnhH_K8

Israeli settlers attack farmers, damage chicken coops and kill over 300 chickens, Qusrah

https://youtu.be/L9ipeTjm98U

Save the Ras a-Tin Elementary School!

https://youtu.be/5NnjBvR5gBM

Last week witnessed the election of a new American president. Elections in the U.S. can have massive impacts across the world. So, what do the results mean for us Palestinians?

Donald Trump’s administration was undoubtedly the most far-reaching in its complete adoption of an agenda favoring Israel’s right-wing settlers occupying Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Is Joe Biden going to be any different?

That is what was raised by most Palestinians over the past few days, and just as often the response was to shrug off the question.

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/11/a-palestinian-perspective-on-the-u-s-elec...

Donald Trump’s defeat in the U.S. presidential election last week brought a collective sigh of relief for progressives and vulnerable communities, both in the United States and across the globe, including Palestinians and those fighting for Palestinian rights. The reason is obvious: Trump’s policy on Palestine/Israel was driven by his affinity for authoritarianism and a desire to pander to his far-right evangelical base. Accordingly, it was handed over to incompetent ideologues like Jared Kushner and David Friedman, who fumbled their way into a failed effort to liquidate the Palestinian struggle for freedom once and for all.

That failure, however, did not spare Palestinians entirely, as they suffered devastating and unprecedented harms over the past four years, including the shuttering of the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington, the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the endorsement of annexation plans, and the ending of U.S. funding to UNRWA and Palestinian hospitals. But beyond the undeniable harm reduction we will see in this change of U.S. administrations, what are the prospects for Palestinian freedom in the Biden era?

https://www.972mag.com/biden-palestine-us-policy/?fbclid=IwAR1cbI9RaTCjB...

The 2020 U.S. presidential election brought into sharp relief the contrast between the American and Israeli Jewish communities, the two main centers of the Jewish world. According to post-election surveys, American Jewish support for the Democrats remains extremely high, at 77 percent (up from 70 percent in 2016). President Donald Trump was estimated to have received a mere 21 percent of the Jewish vote. In Israel, however, surveys have shown that Israeli Jews prefer Trump to Biden by 70 percent to 13 percent.

https://www.972mag.com/israel-us-jewish-divide/?fbclid=IwAR2cLYM2JWkva4R...

Palestine, Propaganda and the President - Ali Abunimah

https://youtu.be/-1a-t37wFd8

MEI Webinar Series Pt 2: The Future of Palestinian Politics under a Biden Administration

https://youtu.be/N2648FhGZzg

Israeli military trains in Jordan Valley throughout November, 2020

https://youtu.be/T6KE5hVYnOM

Farmers under attack in Palestine + post-election analysis with Michael Arria

https://youtu.be/DsawcxHDnts

As Hallel Rabin stood before the IDF conscientious objectors committee two weeks ago, the military body that decides whether or not she would be sent back to prison for refusing to serve in the army, she was asked the strangest of questions: “Would you agree to wear the army uniform if it were pink?”

“I don’t have an issue with the color,” she responded, “I have an issue with wearing an army uniform — regardless of the army.” A conscientious objector, Rabin was still in military prison for refusing to serve due to the army’s occupation policies. On November 20, Rabin’s fourth stint in military prison came to an end; a day later the army officially gave her the discharge she had wanted. She served a total of 56 days behind bars.

https://www.972mag.com/hallel-rabin-idf-refusal-conscientious-objector/?...

On November 28, 1973, nearly two thousand auto workers walked off the job at Chrysler’s Dodge Main assembly plant near Detroit, bringing production to a halt. The one-day strike was unusual in three respects.

First, it was a wildcat action, unsanctioned by the leadership of the workers’ union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). Second, the strike was entirely organized by recently arrived immigrants from Arab countries, who until then had been considered by corporate executives as some of the most “docile” workers in the auto industry. Third, the strike was an explicit protest against the UAW’s complicity in the colonization and occupation of Palestine, as well as an implicit assertion of dignity in the face of everyday racism and exploitation.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/08/palestine-strike-wildcat-uaw?fbclid=I...

Wave of demolitions in West Bank: Fasayil a-Tahta, The Jordan Valley, 25 November 2020

https://youtu.be/xzX0BKYu7RE

On Aug. 31, 1973, Joe Biden, then a young Democratic senator not even a year in office, met with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Although Biden has publicly reminisced numerous times about their encounter , he has rarely, if ever, mentioned that he had told Meir — according to an official Israeli record of the meeting recently published by journalist Nadav Eyal — that “he sees the platform of [Israel’s] Labor Party as creeping towards annexation of the [Palestinian] territories.” At the time, there were only about 1,500 Jewish Israeli settlers across the Green Line.

https://www.972mag.com/biden-israel-annexation-trump/?fbclid=IwAR34ZrW09...

NGP Talks with Athena Salman

https://youtu.be/kndyMLaki-s