Constant surveilance: Israeli drones over Gaza

VIDEO by Middle East Eye, 21 July 2020

“Everytime you hear it you feel like something really bad is about to happen.”

Palestinians in Gaza speak about the trauma and fear they feel being under constant surveillance by Israel’s drones. Middle East Eye Website: https://middleeasteye.net

 

Sign the petition: Stop Israeli killer drones.

By Leslie Bravery, Opinion, Daily Blog, 9 August 2020

Droning mercilessly on . . . and on – Israeli surveillance and terror

For Palestinian in Gaza, living with an almost non-stop air raid atmosphere, life is never peaceful or normal. The children describe the constant sound of Israeli drones as scary, and adults find their invasive and intolerably routine presence downright painful. Mothers fret for their children under the constant noise, that goes on even at night.[See above video.Ed]

For Israel, the world’s biggest exporter of these population-control military machines, the testing of spy drones in Gaza brings great profit. The military application is paramount – so much so that as drone operations now make up 80% of Israeli Air Force flights. Among Gaza’s residents, there is the constant apprehension and fear of imminent air strike. They happen without warning. A 14-year-old boy and his friend were killed in such a strike. The mother of one of the boys tells of the stress she feels now because of her other children‘s terror at the sound of approaching Israeli drones.

On 21 July, close to Hebron, two Palestinian boys (aged 11 and 14) were burned, one of them severely, after an object had fallen from an aircraft during an Israeli military training exercise. The device burst into flames when handled by one of the boys.

Coping with the scorching sun in Gaza

Omar al-Atrash, 10, is delighted to cool down under a bucketful of water. [Sanad Latefa]

By Ruwaida Amer, Gaza, The Electronic Intifada,11 August 2020

In Gaza, we call them the “blockade years.”

For the past 13 years, more than two million people in the Gaza Strip have suffered constant electricity cuts because of Israel’s suffocating siege that has drastically limited the supply of fuel and seen the only power station here fall into disrepair.

The effect is most acutely felt in the summer heat, when there is insufficient ventilation and cooling facilities to deal with temperatures that are easily in the 30s celsius/high 80s fahrenheit.

People find ways to cope. The beach, especially in the evening, is a favored destination.

The streets also come alive as the sun starts to sink. That is when vendors know they can hope for some sales, even from impoverished customers, as the oppressive heat finally gives way.

Israeli artillery shells agricultural area in central Gaza

Israeli artillery strike sites in the besieged Gaza Strip. (Photo: via Twitter)

Palestine Chronicle, 9 August 2020

Israeli occupation’s artillery bombed today an agricultural area and an outpost near the city of Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, with no reports of casualties, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Artillery tanks stationed along the Israeli perimeter fence surrounding the Gaza Strip fired several missiles into the area, causing damages but no human casualties.

The Israeli army regularly opens fire on Palestinian fishermen, shepherds, and farmers along the fence separating besieged Gaza Strip from Israel, if they approach the unilaterally declared buffer zone.

Gaza, with a population of 2 million, has been under a hermetic Israeli siege since 2006, when the Palestinian group Hamas won the democratic legislative elections in occupied Palestine. Since then, Israel has carried out numerous bombing campaigns and several major wars, that resulted in the death of thousands of people.

(Palestine Chronicle, WAFA, Social Media)

Palestinians stand in solidarity with Lebanon

Palestinians donate blood in the besieged Gaza Strip during a public blood donation campaign for the Lebanese community. [Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto via Getty Image]

Palestinians in Gaza attend a vigil to stand in solidarity with Lebanon after deadly blast in capital Beirut. There have also been solidarity rallies in the West Bank. [Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monitor]

Wounded Palestinian artist in Gaza displays solidarity with Lebanon (Photo: Fawzi Mahmoud, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Fawzi Mahmoud, Palestine Chronicle, Gaza, 8 August 2020

Solidarity with devastated Lebanon continues to pour from all over the world, especially from Palestine, following the massive explosion that rocked the city of Beirut, including an artistic display on the beach at Gaza port (above photo) by Palestinian painter and sculptor Mohammed Tutah. Tutah was badly wounded by the Israeli army, forcing medics in Gaza to amputate one of his legs.

Israeli warplanes strike: Gaza under attack – again!

Days of Palestine, 7 August 2020

Israeli fighter jets fired several rockets at different areas north of the besieged Gaza Strip at midnight on Thursday.

Israeli occupation forces claimed that this attack came in response to the incendiary balloons fired from Gaza Strip.

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The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is calling for 3 days of resistance against the planned Israeli theft of Palestinian land from 7 – 9August.

Israel calls it “annexation” but it has no validity! It is land theft!

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa – Auckland Tamaki Makaurau will be meeting with Jacinda, (in effigy) at Western Park Ponsonby, (Ponsonby Road – between Hepburn St and Hopetoun St) at 1pm tomorrow, Saturday 8 August, to put a list of questions to Jacinda that she has avoided in the past. We suspect that Judith Collins and Winston Peters will make an appearance as well. . .

Come join in and you can ask Jacinda some questions of your own.

Nga mihi,

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa – Auckland Tamaki Makaurau

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/594621618127552

Pappe, Baroud & Nagia on Israel’s annexation plans

Prof. Ilan Pappe, Dr. Ramzy Baroud and Dr. Anwah Nagia talk annexation, and one state in this must-watch webinar [Photo: Infographic]

WEBINAR: Palestine Chronicle, 28 July, 2020

Israeli historian, Professor Ilan Pappe, Palestinian author and journalist, Dr. Ramzy Baroud, and South African intellectual, Dr. Anwah Nagia, discuss annexation, apartheid and one state in this must-watch webinar, hosted by the Al-Ikhlass Academia Library in Cape Town recently.

Israeli airstrikes target southern Gaza Strip

Israeli airstrike on Gaza. (Photo: via Twitter)

Palestine Chronicle, 3 August, 2020

Israeli warplanes last night carried out at least two airstrikes targeting two locations in the southern Gaza Strip, causing damages to the sites bombed but no casualties, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

An Israeli reconnaissance aircraft bombed with two missiles a target west of Khan Younis city, causing fire to erupt. A few minutes later, F16 fighter jets bombed the same site with two missiles, causing damages to the site.

A few hours later, Israeli warplanes bombed a location west of Rafah city, south of the Gaza strip, causing significant damages to the site and fire to erupt.

Israeli occupation forces claimed that the attacks came after a projectile was fired from Gaza but was intercepted by the so-called Israeli Iron Dome system.

Gaza, with a population of 2 million, has been under a hermetic Israeli siege since 2006, when the Palestinian group Hamas won the democratic legislative elections in occupied Palestine. Since then, Israel has carried out numerous bombing campaigns and several major wars, that resulted in the death of thousands of people.

Israel arrests BDS coordinator in night raid

 

By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, 31 July 2020

Israeli occupation forces detained the general coordinator of the BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement in a night raid early Thursday (see video above).

At around 3:30 am dozens of Israeli soldiers, accompanied by at least one dog, stormed the home of Mahmoud Nawajaa near Ramallah, “handcuffing, blindfolding and taking him away from his wife and three young children,” the BDS National Committee (BNC) said.

This video released by the BNC shows Nawajaa, 34, as he is led away blindfolded by armed soldiers:

The arrest did not pass without protest, notably from Nawajaa’s two older children, 9 and 7, who shouted at the soldiers, the BNC added. The older son said, “Leave dad alone. Get out. Your dog doesn’t scare me.”

The BNC noted that under the UN’s Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, the “Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid,” is one of the inhumane acts committed to maintain an apartheid system.

Nawajaa (pictured above) has frequently condemned Israeli apartheid as part of his work with the BNC.

Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, called for international pressure on Israel to immediately release Nawajaa.

“Mahmoud is a leading Palestinian human rights defender who is highly regarded in Palestine and around the world for his tireless and passionate advocacy of Palestinian rights,” Barghouti said.

“Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid is desperately trying to terrorize Palestinian BDS activists and their families, after having failed to slow down the growth of the movement,” Barghouti added.

“We call on all BDS activists everywhere to further strengthen BDS campaigning to hold Israel accountable.”

Barghouti has himself long been a target of harassment and restrictions by the Israeli government and its British and American allies.

“As Israel becomes a role model for the racist, authoritarian far right, BDS is becoming a key component of the global progressive wave that fights for Indigenous, racial, economic, social, gender and climate justice,” Barghouti asserted.

He reaffirmed the recent Palestinian civil society call for sanctions on Israel “to end Israel’s war crimes, crimes against humanity and entire regime of oppression of the Indigenous Palestinians.”

“Only that can help us achieve freedom, justice and equality.”

 

Tel Aviv fears the worst in ICC investigation of war crimes

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. (Photo: File)

By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, 30 July 2020

List of Israeli Targets Leaked: Tel Aviv Fears the Worst in ICC Investigation of War Crimes

When International Court of Justice (ICC) Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, confirmed last December that the Court has ample evidence to pursue a war crimes investigation in occupied Palestine, the Israeli government responded with the usual rhetoric, accusing the international community of bias and insisting on Israel’s ‘right to defend itself.’

Beneath the platitudes and typical Israeli discourse, the Israeli government knew too well that an ICC investigation into war crimes in Palestine could be quite costly. An investigation, in itself, represents an indictment of sorts. If Israeli individuals were to be indicted for war crimes, that is a different story, as it becomes a legal obligation of ICC members to apprehend the criminals and hand them over to the Court.

Two years later, supplies still not delivered and Freedom Flotilla boats neglected

Al Awda being hauled after sinking

Freedom Flotilla Coalition statement, 30 July 2020

On July 29 and August 3, 2018, two Freedom Flotilla boats heading peacefully towards Gaza to challenge the illegal Israeli blockade were attacked and hijacked by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) navy in international waters.

Participants on board Al Awda (The Return) and Freedom were assaulted and robbed of personal property while in IOF custody. 114 boxes of medical supplies donated by Freedom Flotilla supporters world-wide and seized by the IOF are still unaccounted for and undelivered, despite our repeated attempts to press for accountability in Israeli courts. The boats themselves – gifts for one of our Palestinian partners in Gaza, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees  – remain in the occupier’s possession, the subject of lengthy court proceedings. Our legal representatives in Israel were notified that during the night of February 22 this year, Al Awda  somehow sustained heavy damage and sunk to the height of the mast requiring it to be raised from the water with a crane. We are not sure how long it took the IOF to bring the boat to a drydock, but having let the boat sink in the first place is evidence of neglect by the custodian of an asset in dispute.

Al Awda after sinking

The IOF have been illegally seizing international solidarity boats for more than a decade, with few of them ever being delivered to their rightful owners. The IOF also hijack, damage, and steal Palestinian fishing boats from Gaza while attacking, injuring, and killing Palestinian fishers. Following a legal case led by NGOs Gisha and Adalah and Gaza-based Al Mezan Human Rights Center, the Israeli military was forced to begin returning boats seized from Palestinian fishers in Gaza, though these are often damaged beyond repair. There is as yet no accountability for the IOF navy’s harassment and attacks on Palestinian fishers from Gaza.

As we plan future Freedom Flotilla sailings in solidarity with Palestinians who are now facing a fourteenth year of the suffocating blockade, we continue the struggle for freedom of movement for all Palestinians, with particular focus on children and youth in Gaza. There are many ways you can help us in our work towards that goal.

[Ed: Support continued Kiwi participation in the next Freedom Flotilla to break Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza: Make a direct payment to our bank account: Kia Ora Gaza Trust, 03-0211-0447718-000, Westpac Bank, Onehunga branch. Afterwards, email office@kiaoragaza.net with your deposit details so we can send you an e-receipt.]

‘Dances with Death’ – recounting a lifetime of reporting in the Middle East

 

Author Tuma Hazou talks about his book Dances with Death during a recent well-attended book launch at the Women’s Book Shop in Ponsonby, Auckland.

“In this book I recount my many ‘brushes with death’ reporting on hostilities in the turbulent Middle East. The on-going conflicts and upheavals in the region have their roots in the infamous 1917 British Balfour Declaration committing Britain to set up in Palestine a national state for the Jews, ignoring the Muslim and Christian majority population.

The book ends with an overview of the prevailing dire consequences of the 1967 June War. 

Addendums to the book add further substance to the personal traumatic narrative and related historical facts”

Books can be ordered directly from the author at gandthazou@gmail.com=

RNZ: ‘Dances with Death’ – recounting a lifetime of reporting in the Middle East

By Kadambari Raghukumar, From RNZ Voices, 9:00 am on 20 July 2020 Listen duration 11′ :13″

The idea for Tuma Hazou’s book Dances with Death, was born on a Christmas dinner a few years ago while poring over old photographs with his sons. Among them was a picture of him with 16mm Bolex, injured and with a blood-stained forehead.

His brother insisted on taking the image when he came home after narrowly dodging death while filming during an air-strike in 1967 Jordan-Israel war. 

With a bit of persuasion from his wife and children, Tuma began recounting and documenting all the incidents in his long journalism career where he had similar near-misses during the war and hostilities in Jordan, Palestine and Israel. There were several.

Tuma was born into a Syriac Christian Arab family in Jerusalem in 1938. His family, along with thousands of others, became refugees after the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

Tuma became one the youngest journalists with BBC Arabic at the age of 22 and spent most of his career covering the Israel-Palestine conflict.

His first book “Dances with Death” was launched this month in Auckland, and is a vivid and detailed description of what he witnessed and experienced, not only as a journalist but also as a Palestinian.

Today, 85-year-old Tuma lives in Auckland with his Kiwi wife Virginia, who he met in Jordan in 1968. Virginia at the time was working for King Hussein as a nanny for his twin daughters. 

“He was a handsome man. Whenever we toured the country in Jordan, people would look at him and ask if he was the Tuma Hazou – they all had radios and had heard him,” Virginia said.

It will be 50 years next March since the pair met and they have shared a lifetime across two different continents and very different worlds.

Tuma is relieved to have finally finished and launched the book after a long lockdown.

“I hope it serves a purpose – I hope it will shed some light.” 

The author with his 16mm Bolex, straight after returning from filming the air-strikes by Israel on Jordan, 1967. [Photo: Tuma Hazou]

Israeli soldiers destroy Palestinian coronavirus testing booth near Jenin

The PA announced it was prolonging a lockdown in the occupied West Bank following a spike in coronavirus infections. [Photo: via Social Media]

Palestine Chronicle, 21 July, 2020

Israeli soldiers destroyed a coronavirus testing booth set up by Palestinian security at the entrance to the northern West Bank city of Jenin in order to contain the spread of the disease, and injured a Palestinian man during clashes at the city’s refugee camp, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Local sources told WAFA that Israeli soldiers raided the city and its refugee camp early this morning to arrest activists when clashes broke out with residents. The soldiers opened fire at the Palestinians injuring one in the leg before leaving the area after detaining two people and destroying the anti-corona checkpoint.

In another incident, Israeli soldiers shot and injured a 17-year-old Palestinian in Jalazoun refugee camp, near Ramallah, during an army raid-an-arrest campaign in the camp today.

The youth was taken to Ramallah hospital with an injury to the leg. He was reported in stable condition.

Israeli forces on a regular basis storm Palestinian cities and villages in the occupied West Bank to arrest Palestinian popular activists. 

In March, the Geneva-based Euro-Med Monitor urged the international community to protect Palestinians and force Israeli soldiers to stop incursions of cities and towns that threaten preventive measures taken by the Palestinian Authority to control the outbreak of coronavirus.

It also called for investigating the suspicious behavior of a number of soldiers and Jewish settlers, which appeared to be an attempt to spread the infection and hold those responsible to account.

(Palestine Chronicle, WAFA, Social Media)

 

Gaza on World Refugee Day

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Photo gallery: The Shati (Beach) Refugee Camp, in the besieged Gaza Strip. (Photos: Fawzi Mahmoud, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Fawzi Mahmoud, Gaza, Palestine Chronicle, 20 June, 2020

For the last twenty years, the United Nations General Assembly has dedicated June 20 to mark World Refugee Day, as an opportunity to honor refugees, raise awareness, and mobilize support for their plight. 

This year, the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is asking “people from all walks of life” to use #WithRefugees as a way to exhibit solidarity and honor “the courage and determination” of those who have been forced out of their homes as a result of war and conflict. 

The Palestine Chronicle takes this opportunity to honor Palestinian refugees, whose ordeal began 72 years ago when Israel was violently established on the ruins of historic Palestine. Their Right of Return is the most central aspect of the Palestinian struggle today. 

The photos above are of the Shati (Beach) Refugee Camp, in the besieged Gaza Strip. The camp was established as a temporary shelter for Palestinian refugees who were forced out of the Palestinian cities of al-Lydd and Jaffa, which were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias in 1948.

Three generations later, the refugees and their descendants are still living in these temporary accommodations, a life of hardship that is compounded by successive Israeli wars and a protracted siege.

[Refugees make up over 70 percent of Gaza’s population of $2million. Ed]

‘Optimism of the will’: Palestinian freedom is possible now

Israelis gather to stage a demonstration to protest against Israel’s annexation plan for the illegal settlements in West Bank and Jordan Valley, in Tel Aviv, Israel on June 6, 2020 [Nir Keidar / Anadolu Agency]

By Ramzy Baroud, Opinion, Middle East Monitor, 13 July 2020

In a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist declared that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in the tragic Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would take a whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift.

As innocuous as the declaration may have seemed, it troubled me greatly.

I have heard this line over and over again, often reiterated by well-intentioned intellectuals, whose experiences in researching and writing on the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict’ may have driven some of them to pessimism, if not despair.

The ‘hopelessness discourse’ is, perhaps, understandable if one is to examine the off-putting, tangible reality on the ground: the ever-entrenched Israeli occupation, the planned annexation of occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, the shameful Arab normalization with Israel, the deafening silence of the international community and the futility of the quisling Palestinian leadership.

Subscribing to this logic is not only self-defeating, but ahistorical as well. Throughout history, every great achievement that brought about freedom and a measure of justice to any nation was realized despite seemingly insurmountable odds.

Indeed, who would have thought that the Algerian people were capable of defeating French colonialism when their tools of liberation were so rudimentary as compared with the awesome powers of the French military and its allies?

Israel: ‘Our relations with Arab states do not depend on peace with Palestine’

The same notion applies to many other modern historic experiences, from Vietnam to South Africa and from India to Cuba.

Palestine is not the exception.

However, the ‘hopelessness discourse’ is not as innocent as it may seem. It is propelled by the persisting failure to appreciate the centrality of the Palestinian people – or any other people, for that matter – in their own history. Additionally, it assumes that the Palestinian people are, frankly, ineffectual.

Interestingly, when many nations were still grappling with the concept of national identity, the Palestinian people had already developed a refined sense of modern collective identity and national consciousness. General mass strikes and civil disobedience challenging British imperialism and Zionist settlements in Palestine began nearly a century ago, culminating in the six-month-long general strike of 1936.

Since then, popular resistance, which is linked to a defined sense of national identity, has been a staple in Palestinian history. It was a prominent feature of the First Intifada, the popular uprising of 1987.

The fact that the Palestinian homeland was lost, despite the heightened consciousness of the Palestinian masses at the time, is hardly indicative of the Palestinian people’s ability to affect political outcomes.

Time and again, Palestinians have rebelled and, with each rebellion, they forced all parties, including Israel and the United States, to reconsider and overhaul their strategies altogether.

Of course Israel exports arms and policing practices…

– it has spent decades ‘battle-testing’ them on Palestinians

Israeli Forces [File]

By Riya Al’sanah and Rafeef Ziadah, NovaraMedia, 7 July 2020

Since the Black Lives Matter uprising in the US, conversations on structural racism and police brutality have taken centre stage internationally. 

Perhaps most inspiring has been the profound discussions taking place on defunding the police as part of broader abolitionist politics. Those involved in anti-racist movements have for some time, of course, been pointing to the longer colonial histories of police brutality, making connections across movements, and examining the international circulation of coercive policing tactics and technologies. 

Inevitably, Israel has come into this conversation. Not because all repressive policing practices emanate from Israel. Certainly, US and UK policing practices were racist long before the creation of the state of Israel. 

But it is also a fact that Israel has made itself central to the international arms and so-called homeland security industry. To deny this would be to exceptionalise Israel. Israel has exported its military equipment, doctrines and tactics to repressive regimes the world over and has learned from others as well. That is the very nature of the arms and surveillance industry: it is international in scale. 

Israel, precisely because of its decades-long colonisation and military occupation, controlling every aspect of Palestinian life, has marketed its equipment as ‘battle-tested’ and ‘field-proven’. Naming this reality is not a conspiracy theory. 

RT: Crosstalking with Gideon Levy and Ramzy Baroud

CrossTalk host, Peter Lavelle discusses Israel’s annexation plan with Ramzy Baroud and Gideon Levy.

VIDEO: Palestine Chronicle, 6 July, 2020

Unilateral annexation of occupied territory is illegal under international law. But this is exactly what Israel intends to do when it comes to the West Bank.

In this edition of RT CrossTalk, Peter Lavelle discusses why Israel is doing this, the international reaction, and the fate of the Palestinians with Palestinian journalist and author Ramzy Baroud and Israeli Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy.

Video: What are Israel’s annexation plans?

Mohamed Hassan explains Israel’s plans to annex large parts of the West Bank. (Middle East Eye, 4 July 2020)

MP Duncan Webb supports protests against Israel’s planned land grab

Video message from Duncan Webb – MP for Christchurch Central, New Zealand, 2 July 2020.

I can’t make any of the protests this weekend, but would have liked to be there. I made this short video in support of the protests and opposing the annexation of Palestinian territory. I encourage other MP’s from all parties to send similar messages of support. The position of the New Zealand government has been consistently supportive of Palestine and regardless of which parties have been in government.

I encourage you to tag your local MP and ask whether they also oppose the Israeli settlements and the proposed annexation.

Duncan Webb MP.

Ed: See our earlier post for details of New Zealand rallies on this Saturday 4 July against Israel’s occupation and annexation plans: https://kiaoragaza.wordpress.com/2020/06/30/nz-wide-protests-against-israels-annexation-plans-this-saturday-4-july/

Dom-Post letter: Step up NZ stand on annexation

Israeli soldiers at a recent protest against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. [File: Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]

Letter to the Editor, The Dominion Post, published 1 July 2020

Step up the NZ stand on annexation

The Israeli ambassador to NZ, Dr Itzhak Gerberg, refused to meet with J-LINK, a group of progressive Jewish people, who wished to discuss concerns for Israel’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank.

He also used a tweet to respond to the minister of foreign affairs’ announcement that criticised Israel’s plan to extend its sovereignty on occupied Palestinian territory starting today.

Unilateral annexation is illegal under international law and contravenes all relevant UN Security Council resolutions pertaining to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The inability of the Israeli Government to engage in any form of dialogue, including with Jewish voices in the diaspora, reflects a general contempt by the Netanyahu-led government for democracy, human rights and justice.

While I applaud the New Zealand Government in making a statement on this issue, I encourage the minister to join progressive Jewish voices from around the world by sending a stronger message to Israel.

To find peace through justice Israel must cease its ongoing colonial project of land annexation and oppressive military rule of the Palestinian people.

Sue Berman, member of Dayenu (New Zealand Jews against Occupation) and signature to J-LINK Aotearoa