July 2006

http://alawda.newjerseysolidarity.org

Read the past issues of Al-Awda - Voices of Resistance and Liberation newspaper!

May 2005
June/July 2005
September 2005
February 2006

On June 27, 2006, a new phase of the war against Palestine, and specifically against the people of Gaza, began, when Zionist forces invaded, striking from ground and air, destroying homes, ravaging infrastructure, demolishing bridges, and killing Gaza Palestinians. This invasion followed weeks of assaults upon Gaza that saw a family massacred as they visited the beach, homes and lives shattered by missiles, and repeated assassinations of Palestinian political leaders and resistance activists. Scores of Palestinians have been killed and many more injured, and 64 Palestinian legislators, democratically-elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, city mayors, and cabinet members, seized and held prisoner, joining over 9,400 of their fellow Palestinians as political prisoners held in Zionist jails...

Balata Refugee Camp is one of the most hard-hit communities in Palestine's West Bank. The over 30,000 residents, refugees of the 1948 Nakba, live in a heavily militarized zone where tear gas, gunshots, and military searches are a part of everyday life. Full scale invasions by zionist militant forces disrupt daily life regularly in Balata. In 2006 alone, Balata has endured incursions in February and May. But the people of Balata continue to struggle against occupation and oppression. They have built community organizations and centers which allow them to celebrate and defend against the extinction of their culture...

Here's a bit of Palestinian history. It begins in Clermont, a city in France. The year is 1095, and nobles and clerics are gathered to hear the words of Pope Urban II. He tells them a lurid tale. Christians in Muslim-ruled Palestine are being forcibly circumcised and their blood spilled on the tomb of Christ. He urges the Christians of Europe, "rich and poor," to take up arms and free the "Holy Land" from a "base race that worships demons," as he calls Muslims. Like Bush's tales of Iraqi WMDs and Qaeda connections, the Pope's story was a complete invention. Christians and other religious minorities in the Muslim Middle East enjoyed much more freedom than did non-Christians in feudal Europe...

It was well before sunrise, early in the morning of April 9, 1948. Dawud Assad, like most everyone in the peaceful village of Deir Yassin, was asleep. Deir Yassin was at the time surrounded on all sides but the west by Zionist occupiers, but a sort of gentleman's agreement existed between them and the native Palestinians of Deir Yassin; neither side wanted to engage in armed struggle. The Zionist occupiers had left westerly passage through which the Palestinians of Deir Yassin could enter and leave their village unharmed...

Thirty-two Palestinian organizers and activists from across the U.S gathered in suburban Detroit, Michigan on the weekend of June 23rd-25th 2006, marking the first politically diverse national meeting of Palestinians in the U.S. since 1988. This grouping is NOT a new organization, and in no way intends to become one. It is a loose network of activists and preexisting groups and in no way seeks to take the place of already existing groups...

The "Made in Palestine" exhibition of contemporary Palestinian art celebrated its opening in New York City on March 16, 2006, to a packed gallery through which nearly 2,000 people entered during the evening. The exhibition, which features works by Palestinian artists in Palestine and in exile, including Rana Bishara, Mustafa al-Hallaj, Suleiman Mansour and Vera Tamari, premiered in Houston in 2003, at the Station Museum, the home of curator James Harithas. Harithas, who assembled the exhibition with the assistance of consultant and "Made in Palestine" artist Samia Halaby, was on hand with several of the exhibition's artists for the gala opening celebration. The exhibition ran in New York from March 16 to May 27, 2006...

Ismail Shammout died on July 4, 2006. How painful that Palestine was not there around his bed; but all he worked for lives. Born in Al Lydd in 1931, Ismail Shammout had the good fortune as a youth to study with Dahoud Zalatimo. Amazingly, at the age sixteen he persuaded his reluctant father that he could earn a living making art. His father, even more amazingly, provided him with materials and a space to work...

What is fueling the campaign now sweeping the U.S. to ?Stop Genocide in Darfur?? Campus organizations have suddenly begun organizing petitions, meetings and calls for divestment. A demonstration was held April 30 on the Mall in Washington, D.C., to ?Save Darfur"...

At the annual convention of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario, held 24-27 May 2006 in Ottawa, the union passed a resolution of historic importance. Resolution 50?adopted unanimously by the 900 delegates at the largest convention in the union?s history?expressed support for the global campaign against Israeli apartheid. The union stated that it would educate its members on the apartheid nature of the Israeli state and Canadian political and economic support for these practices...

This year the 9th of July is a bitter day for Palestinians. The Occupation Army besieges Gaza, massacres its people and attacks its infrastructure. The ghettos of the West Bank take shape as the Apartheid Wall edges closer to completion and the Palestinian exodus from Jerusalem has begun. Over 9000 Palestinians sit in Israeli prison cells whilst Palestinians who remain on their 1948 lands do so under the subjugation of the most vicious and discriminatory Apartheid system...

The intensifying U.S.-backed Israeli assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank is aimed at dismantling the recently elected Palestinian National Authority (PNA) government and forcing the Palestinians to accept an Israeli-dictated "peace settlement." The Israeli government is utilizing the capture of one of their occupation troops as the pretext to carry out a multi-faceted attack on both Palestinian governmental institutions and the population as a whole...

The Israeli arms industry is older than the state itself. One can trace its beginnings to the small underground workshops that, before and during the 1948 war, manufactured and repaired various types of light arms, ammunition, light aircraft armoured cars and many types of military hardware used in the initial conquest of Palestine and the eviction of more than a million of its Arab population...