Colombian pop star Shakira has given birth in Barcelona to her second child, a boy, she said on Friday. A statement posted on Shakira’s website said her son, Sasha, was born on Thursday night. “The hospital confirmed that both mother and child are in excellent health,” the statement said. The singer and her boyfriend, Spanish … Continued
The mayor of the West Bank town of Bethlehem is hoping Pope Francis will help her prevent Israel from extending its security barrier near her city.
Vera Baboun says she plans to ask Pope Francis to intervene in a dispute over Israel’s plans to build the fence through the Cremisan Valley, at the site of a convent school, according to Catholic World News.
She is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis in Rome next month, along with leaders from other West Bank towns, when she plans to intervene on her behalf to get Israel to change its plans.
The mayor says the wall would block economic development, rendering Bethlehem unsustainable, the news service reported.
The Israeli High Court of Justice is reviewing the disputed portion of the security fence, which would be built near the town of Beit Jala. The Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court in 2012 approved land appropriation for the barrier along a route that would annex about 75 percent of the convent’s property, where the school is located.
Palestinians argue that the wall, in any of the locations Israel has proposed, would either separate the school from the town where the students live, or block off access to the only green area near Bethlehem, the Catholic News reported.
This would not be the first time the pope has been asked to weigh in on the valley. In 2012, lawyers representing the convent asked Pope Benedict XVI to keep Cremisan on the agenda when he met with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Source: www.haaretz.com
Israeli security forces are a constant presence on the streets of East Jerusalem. In the old city, soldiers in khaki patrol every street. Neighbourhoods like Silwan are fortified with wire-covered watchtowers and armoured cars, manned by equally armoured officers. On roads leading from the West Bank, police stop to check to IDs of passers-by on a regular basis, searching for “infiltrators” that may have crossed over the wall illegally.
Foreign visitors often feel intimidated by such a heavily armed presence in Jerusalem’s historic streets, though most are unlikely to face serious harassment or questioning. For the Palestinians that live here, however, it’s a different story.
According to the prisoners’ rights association Addameer, about 700 Palestinian Jerusalemites, the majority of whom were children, were arrested in Jerusalem in the month of July 2014 alone, and from that month interrogation and detention of Palestinians continued to soar. In neighbourhoods like At-Tur, Issawiya and the old city, all in East Jerusalem, Palestinian residents complain of harassment and pressure from predominantly Jewish and Druze police officers – behaviour which they believe is based on racial profiling.
Thaer, who lives in Silwan and works in West Jerusalem, says that he and his friends are regularly harassed by the armed border police that patrol every street of the city. At 20, dressed in a tracksuit and with close-cropped hair, he smokes constantly, speaking confidently in English. Police officers, he says, routinely search him, confiscate his belongings, or question him aggressively, implying he shouldn’t be in areas of the city other than where his work or home is located.
“Every day I go out, they stop me, they go in my car. They ask me, ‘have you got drugs’, or, ‘do you have knife?’” he told Middle East Eye. “They go through the car looking for something, looking through the whole car. It takes twenty minutes every day. He looks at you like you’re a small thing, and he’s big.”
“That makes a problem,” Thaer continues. “I didn’t want to make a problem with you but now I want to make a problem with you. Why? Because you scream at me. You get somebody in the street, look in his bag, take his ID. Why are you doing that? We’re Arab people, human. Just feel it a little bit.”
Often, young men like Thaer are reluctant to report the intimidating treatment they experience: most feel there’s just no point. But in the past, some incidents of police misconduct have been highlighted in the law or media. Last September, three Border Police officers were ordered to compensate a Jerusalem man after they beat him in the street in front of his son. Videos uploaded to Youtube of border police officers humiliating Palestinians – making them slap themselves, or sing absurd and offensive songs – have also drawn attention to some of the abuses that take place in the Holy City.
Source: www.middleeasteye.net
A positive caricature of the prophet Mohammed in a West Bank Palestinian newspaper on Sunday sparked a wave of protests on the social networks and prompted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to set up a committee to investigate.
On Tuesday, even before the panel completed its work, Al Hayat al-Jedidah, the paper that published the caricature, apologized and said those responsible for its publication would be suspended. The paper, which receives support from the PA, didn’t name them.
The drawing was removed from the newspaper’s website and the cartoonist, Mohammed Saba’neh, posted a statement and apology on his Facebook page.
He said he never intended to hurt religious readers’ feelings. He said he wasn’t trying to depict the prophet himself, something many Muslims consider sacrilegious, but rather to show the light and love that Mohammed brings to the world.
Saba’neh has recently published drawings depicting Islam in a positive manner. One shows a figure from Islamic State pouring dirty water on a sun, which was to represent Islam.
But that did not spare him the current protests. Nor did the fact that he was arrested and jailed in Israel in 2013. He was arrested after he issued a series of drawings on the condition of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, although the Israeli military said he was detained for contact with figures hostile to Israel in Jordan.
Last month more than 20,000 Palestinians turned out for demonstrations in Hebron and Ramallah against the depiction of Mohammed on the cover of the French weekly Charlie Hebdo.
Palestinian security forces didn’t prevent the protest, which was organized by the religious Al-Tahrir party.
The protesters, whose numbers exceeded the total numbers that demonstrate against the Israeli army and the occupation every week in the West Bank, also criticized Abbas, who participated in the Paris solidarity march after Charlie Hebdo’s staffers were massacred.
The Palestinian Authority’s quick response to Saba’neh’s caricature appears to indicate that officials are concerned about the power of conservative Islamic forces in Palestinian society.
Source: www.haaretz.com
Source: www.middleeasteye.net
Egypt’s most popular satirist, Bassem Youssef, has joined the Harvard Institute of Politics at the John F Kennedy School of Government as a resident fellow for the spring semester, eight months after winding up his TV show because he felt it was no longer safe to satirise Egyptian politics.
“The present climate in Egypt is not suitable for a political satire programme,” the former surgeon told reporters in a press conference at the time. “I’m tired of struggling and worrying about my safety and that of my family.”
Youssef was often described as the Jon Stewart of Egypt. His political satire was the first of its kind in Egypt and started during the 2011 uprising that forced longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down. His programme developed a following at a time when Egyptians were aspiring to hold their politicians accountable. But in April 2014, his show was taken off the air as the opportunities for criticism of authorities shrank.
Youssef tweeted he was proud to join Harvard for a semester.
Source: www.theguardian.com
Jordan executed two al Qaeda prisoners before dawn Wednesday, following through on a promised response to the ISIS killing of pilot Moath al-Kasasbeh.
Source: www.cnn.com
As far as band promotions go, taking a selfie while “being chased by the Israeli Defence Force” has got to be right up there with the most daring – and controversial.
The image, posted to Twitter by the Palestinian hip hop trio DAM, has exploded across social media, with the official version receiving more than 15,000 retweets in less than 24 hours.
Source: www.independent.co.uk
Israel’s practices of occupation and colonization show no sign of relenting as the ethnocratic state enters its sixty-seventh year.
While the Israel lobby feverishly attempts to silence dissent on campuses in the United States, Palestinians and international solidarity networks continue to forge creative ways to expose the daily mechanisms of oppression. Such groups are making it increasingly difficult for Israel’s backers to justify the state’s apartheid policies.
Israel-aligned organizations have been unable to provide any evidence to support their spurious accusations against Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters, including claims of anti-Semitism and lack of “civility” — typical attempts to discredit activism and criticism of Israeli policies.
It is clear that SJP is a progressive coalition made up of diverse identities, including strong anti-Zionist Jewish voices. The emergence of initiatives and organizations such as Open Hillel and Jewish Voice for Peace challenge attempts to conflate Judaism with Zionism.
Anti-Palestinian organizations, such as the Israel-based The David Project, have acknowledged that accusations of anti-Semitism have not proven to be an effective strategy in silencing and discrediting Israel’s critics.
Facade of equality
As a result, SJP activists are facing new challenges. Under the guise of “faithwashing,” multiculturalism and “intellectual pluralism,” there has been a resurgence of “person-to-person” projects — dialogue groups that attempt to bring together not only Palestinians and Israelis, but now Palestine solidarity activists and pro-Israel advocates.
Palestinian activists have shown that these projects function as normalization initiatives: activities that aim to create a facade of equality in order to obscure the disparities between Palestinians and Israelis. The attempt is to emphasize co-existence over resistance to Israeli oppression against the Palestinian people.
I have created an infographic, posted below this article, to explain the importance of resisting normalization. This resistance focuses on power structures. It targets racist institutions.
In their efforts to “find common ground,” normalization initiatives whitewash the reality of ongoing occupation, colonization and the system of apartheid to which Palestinians are subjected.
These projects do not acknowledge the military incarceration and violence directed at Palestinian youth. They fail to recognize violence brought on by Israeli settlers and the appropriation of not only land, but of indigenous culture.
Benefiting Israel
Dialogue groups, cultural education and events focused on reconciliation are not the issue — in fact, these methods will be imperative for rapprochement between our peoples.
The problem lies when these events precede reparations of Israel’s violations and the disestablishment of the oppression and racism Palestinians face today. The notion that Palestinians and Israelis can coexist or pave a way to peace through such actions only benefits Israel as it further legitimizes the state’s decades-long violations of international law and nurtures complacency towards the occupation amongst segments of the Palestinian community.
Despite our intentions, when we participate in normalizing activities without keeping in mind their political implications, we undermine efforts challenging the oppressive and discriminatory policies of the colonial state.
These initiatives, directly or indirectly, wrongfully alleviate the conscience of Jewish Israelis while forcing Palestinians into accepting their fate as a colonized people.
Zionist normalization not only perpetuates the notion that Palestinians and Israelis are equals with differences over land and religion, but it is additionally harmful to the psychology of both the oppressor and the oppressed. Normalization lessens the disparity of the relationship in the mind of the colonizer and colonized, which in reality increases the power imbalance between the two.
Criminalizing solidarity
Zionist groups commonly use Islamophobic and racist rhetoric to criminalize and ostracize Palestinian solidarity organizations. They have also attempted to sow divisions.
Zionist lobby groups have embraced the few Muslims — such as University of California at San Diego student Aisha Subhan — willing to support Israel. Subhan has written of how she felt at “home” in Tel Aviv, while on a trip financed by The David Project, an anti-Palestinian group. While Subhan is presented as someone reasonable and moderate, Zionist organizations have sought to discredit those who support equality between Palestinians and Israeli Jews by labeling them as “radicals.”
Recently, we’ve observed the evolution of this tactic manifested in the form of the Muslim Leadership Initiative’s Israel junket, sponsored by an institute that works closely with the Israeli military and receives its funding from a collection of organizations who support anti-Muslim hate groups in the United States.
Islamophobic and Zionist organizations such as the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute are attempting to educate those Muslims, perhaps considered likely to be State Department officials of the future or to occupy other prominent positions, to be sympathetic to Israel and its policies.
Perhaps this introduction to Zionism can serve as an appetizer to the main course of propaganda they will be served at their future White House iftar.
Resisting normalization
Organizing within the Washington, DC, “Beltway” has unfortunately offered me too many opportunities to resist normalization.
For the past two years, I’ve been working with Muslim Student Association (MSA) and Arab Student Association (ASA) to establish that any event with a Zionist organization is political regardless of its “apolitical” claims or purported causes.
For instance, during my undergraduate studies at George Mason University in Northern Virginia, Hillel and the Israel Student Association co-sponsored an initiative entitled “Slim Peace.” The project claimed that its aims were to facilitate “nutritionally-based dialogues” between Muslim and Jewish women. Its emphasis on diet indicates that Slim Peace is a kind of Zionist Weight Watchers.
As I demonstrated in an article I wrote for Mondoweiss, the project’s advertisement was an archetype of a normalization project.
Thankfully, members of Students Against Israeli Apartheid were able to persuade the ASA and the MSA to refuse the invitation to endorse Slim Peace on our campus.
By challenging normalization, we can understand that an oppressed and colonized people do not enjoy equality with their oppressors and colonizers. Any suggestion that they do is deceptive.
If we are to achieve decolonization, it is essential that we start with our minds.
Tareq Radi is a Palestinian-American organizer based in Washington, DC. A graduate of George Mason University (GMU),he was a founding member of GMU’s Students Against Israeli Apartheid. He hosts the segment on academic freedom for the audio journal Status Hour, where he exposes violations of academic freedom and repression on university campuses.
Source: electronicintifada.net
I was so much hoping to get a Q&A lined up with Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano on the subject of Sharia Law in Texas. He’s got a bill that would prohibit family court rulings based on foreign legal codes if that violated our own constitutional protections.
These kinds of bills and state constitutional amendments have popped in several states and have been adopted in a bunch. They’re widely accepted as trying to keep the Islamic legal code at bay.
A story in the Houston Chronicle mentioned Leach’s bill in its coverage of the anti-Muslim furor at the Capitol last week. Excerpt, referencing Mustafaa Carroll, the executive director of the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations commenting on Leach’s bill:
“We feel it’s a red herring and it’s just meant to mar the community,” Carroll said of House Bill 562 by Rep. Jeff Leach, R- Plano.
Leach, however, welcomed the group to the Capitol on Thursday when tweeted, “All Texans are welcome at YOUR Capitol – and all Texans are always welcome in my office. Come one. Come all!”
I did my reading on the anti-Sharia movement, including a profile of its intellectual progenitor, a Hasidic Jew from New York. Fabulously interesting how Jews and evangelical Christians buddy up on these things. The latest state to ban intrusion of foreign legal codes was Alabama, in November. Some critics there thought it was pointless and political grandstanding to get Christian votes.
One take on the anti-Sharia movement, from the Wall Street Journal:
The movement is motivated largely by a handful of organizations that claim Islamic Sharia law and, to a lesser degree, laws of other nations, are creeping into courtrooms and American life, especially in divorces and child-custody disputes. Sharia, loosely defined as a set of moral and religious principles in Islam, is woven into the legal systems of many Muslim nations. It covers issues ranging from what to eat and drink to structuring a loan to setting up an inheritance and divorce, among other things.
I so much was interested in Leach’s assessment, because of the demographics of his district, in Collin County. The Religion Census estimated the county’s Muslim population at more than 23,000 in 2010 — one of the top 20 concentrations in the U.S.
Alas, Leach’s office says things are too busy this week for him to pull away for the Q&A I was trying to line up. Darn. I wanted to hear what his constituents say about his bill — Muslims and Christians both. And I wanted his take on some of the wild stuff I saw on the Internet, like the depiction of a “Lone Star Mecca” taking shape right under our noses.
“ “A major conference on the empowerment of women, which kicked off in Cairo on Monday and discusses progress in the application of UN recommendations on gender equality, has highlighted “tangible” improvement in the status of Arab women, despite the persistence of certain setbacks. The Beijing +20 conference, which includes The United Nations Economic and … Continued
In Morocco, Muslims and Jews have lived side-by-side for centuries. Stereotypes and interpretations of pseudo-historical religious texts that undermine Muslim-Jewish relations elsewhere in the world have not severely affected Moroccan society. Muslims and Jews have coexisted peacefully in Morocco even during critical moments in history. As a whole, Morocco has been always a place where Jews can live comfortably.
During my childhood, all of the neighborhood teens had a passion for football, but they were annoyed when their football cleats became torn, since they had to wait for months to get another pair. Their refuge was the qualified cobbler in the neighborhood, who was dubbed the “Jew.”
Source: www.moroccoworldnews.com
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