Norman Finkelstein
On Contact
Tag: Palestine
Attack on the Film about 1948 Killing of Palestinians
The creators of a Jordanian film showing Israeli soldiers murdering a Palestinian family during the 1948 War of Independence, also known as the Palestinian Nakba, have condemned the “violent attack on the film” by Israeli officials and media.
“All the campaigning against Farha will not deter us from our goal which is to share the film and the story it tells with audiences worldwide…in the midst of Farha’s Oscar efforts,” the film’s creators posted on its Instagram account.
“In the past 48 hours our film, Farha, has been aggressively attacked by Israeli government officials and the Israeli media there, as well as by Israeli individuals on Facebook,” they added.
The director, Darin Sallam, and the producers, Deema Azar and Ayah Jardenah wrote that they “condemn all the accusations to discredit Farha and the organized campaign against the film on IMDb.com to drastically lower its ratings [and] attempts to just down the screening of the film yesterday in Saraya Yaffa Theater, and the threats to cancel Netflix
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | | Dec 4, 2022
Why do they identify as Palestinians?
Kan 11, the public broadcaster, launched a series of reports this week by Eran Singer and Roy Ettinger titled “Palestinians Blue-and-White.” The first item set out to examine “the growing extremism in Arab society in Israel” and asked, “What went wrong?” What went wrong, that the Arabs now drink espresso? That the Balad party received 45 percent of the vote in Abu Ghosh, a town west of Jerusalem that the Jews love to love? What does this say about the spectrum of affiliation between Palestinian and Israeli? Maybe to build more roads?
The problem with reports like this isn’t only the patronizing and the old Orientalism – as if 150 years haven’t gone by since the first Jewish settlers became acquainted with the food of the Middle East – but also that they don’t try to challenge the viewer. Instead, they try to challenge the Palestinian interviewee and make him feel that in the best case he’s mistaken and in the worst, a traitor.
One of the interviewees was the head of the Abu Ghosh council, a member of the Likud Central Committee who personally loves Benjamin Netanyahu. This was presented as a benefit for his town, so there will be institutions, roads and schools. Not that he’s trying to entice Bibi voters to eat hummus precisely there, heaven forbid. He truly esteems the man,
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Hanin Majadli | Jan 19, 2023
Thanks to Putin, the world is suddenly interested in Israel’s occupation
Last week’s vote at the United Nations marked a watershed. For the first time, the UN’s principal judicial organ was asked to give an opinion on the legality of Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian territory – namely East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations’ Special Political and Decolonization Committee approved a nine-page draft resolution on Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people to request a second advisory opinion – comprised of two questions – from the International Court of Justice.
The first question queries the legal consequences arising from Israel’s ongoing violation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, given its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem.
The second question asks about the affect these policies have on the legal status of the occupation and the legal consequences that arise for all states and the UN from that status.
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Victor Kattan | Nov 17, 2022
A military policy to target children
Why Jewish worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque is controversial
According to the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs: “In banning access to the Temple Mount, the chief rabbis were following Maimonides’ view that the Shechinah (Divine Presence) is still present at the spot of the Temple.
“Entry to it is forbidden and punishable with kareth (death by heavenly decree), given that Jews are in a state of ritual uncleanliness today in the absence of a red heifer, the ashes of which are required for the purifying process.”
The majority of Orthodox Jews have respected the Rabbinate’s ban and, though there have been numerous exceptions over the centuries, for the most part, Jewish prayer has been isolated to the Western Wall.
When did the current debate over Jewish worship begin?
In 1967, Israel seized the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan, including the holy sites, and has occupied it ever since. The management of the Islamic sites was left in the hands of the
— source middleeasteye.net | Alex MacDonald | 4 Jan 2023
Unknown Truths about Israel/Palestine
Who’s afraid to reveal the Palestinian ‘secrets’ of 1948?
You’ve doubtless wondered at some point, as I have, what kind of Arab state the Palestinians envisioned in 1948 if they had won the war. What were their plans? Where did they intend to build their version of the Ayalon Highway? Did they also want to dry up the Hula swamp to make more agricultural land available? Oh, and what were their thoughts about the 628,000 Jews living in what is now Israel on the eve of the war? What did they intend to do with them?
Every week, columnist Ben-Dror Yemini tells his readers in Yedioth Ahronoth about Arab leaders in 1948 who called for the Jews to be thrown into the sea. In other words, they intended a systematic slaughter.
So, without burdening Haaretz readers with dry academic research, I think it’s worth informing them that in 15 years of searching, during which I read hundreds of propaganda documents from 1947 to 1949, I encountered only one case in which an Arab leader mentioned “sea” and “Jews” in the same sentence. That was the Egyptian Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, in a call to expel the Jews from Egypt.
The more familiar quotes (like the one attributed to the Arab League’s secretary general at the time, Azzam Pasha) aren’t backed up by reliable Arabic sources, and it’s not clear
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Shay Hazkani | 4 Dec 2022
UK apology sought for British war crimes in Palestine
The people of al-Bassa got their lesson in imperial brutality when the British soldiers came after dawn.
Machine guns mounted on Rolls Royce armoured cars opened fire on the Palestinian village before the Royal Ulster Rifles arrived with flaming torches and burned homes to the ground.
Villagers were rounded up while troops later herded men onto a bus and forced them to drive over a landmine which blew up, killing everyone on board.
A British policeman photographed the scene as women tended to the remains of their dead, before maimed body parts were buried in a pit.
It was the autumn of 1938 and UK forces were facing a rebellion in Palestine, under British control after the defeat two decades earlier of the Ottoman Empire.
— source bbc.com | Tom Bateman | 7 Oct 2022
Israeli-Arab towns are enshrining Palestinian history
Twenty years ago, when MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) was a member of the Haifa city council, he lobbied vigorously to have the name of Hatzionut (Zionism) Avenue changed to Street of the Mountain (Al-Jabal), which had been its name prior to Israel’s establishment in 1948. He also talked about his dream: that anybody who came to Haifa in the future, and who ask where a particular place was situated, could very well receive a response along the lines of: “It’s on Gamal Abdel Nasser Street, between Edward Said and Land Day streets.”
In large measure, Odeh’s dream has come true: The public space of Arab society in Israel, and especially in locales with Arab majorities, is today rife with streets, squares, institutions and monuments whose names commemorate personalities, events, concepts and places that reference Palestinian history, and specifically those that have an association with Israel’s Arab community.
Pass through an Arab town or city today and you’ll find yourself on streets that truly are named for Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser; Land Day (an annual commemoration of the killings of six Arab citizens in 1976 during protests against the state’s appropriation of Arab-owned land), or the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said; and public