21 years ago today, Israeli snipers murdered 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah in the lap of his father, who was trying to shield him from bullets.
His death, captured on film, broke the hearts of people around the world, galvanizing us to fight for justice for Palestinians.
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The footage of the murder has been seared into the minds of Palestinians and those moved to stand in solidarity with them.
Many of our Jewish members recall witnessing this tragedy as a moment that opened their eyes to the brutality of Israeli occupation.
Much like today’s Israeli soldiers who murder Palestinian children with impunity, the snipers who killed Muhammad were never held accountable.
The struggle to prevent these child murders, bring the murderers to justice, and honor the deceased is ongoing.
In fact, after initially admitting responsibility for the murder, the Israeli government and press launched campaigns to absolve the military. They tried to discredit the footage, or claim Palestinians were responsible, or doubt whether responsibility could be determined at all.
The notion that Palestinians are unreliable documenters and narrators of their people’s own experiences has been an infuriating legacy of Muhammad’s murder. Israeli and US news outlets continue to frame Israeli violence as “other” than what it seems. 972mag.com/pallywood-trop…
We must resist attempts to defame the oppressed, delegitimize their struggles, and avert the world’s gaze from the oppressor’s violence. We did not avert our gaze in 2000, and we won’t avert it now. We listen to and amplify Palestinians’ experiences, letting them move us to act.
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Solidarity with these brave and steadfast Palestinian hunger strikers!
To protest their collective punishment after last week’s escapes, 1,380 prisoners (1/4 of the entire Palestinian prisoner population!) have chosen a time-honored form of struggle: the hunger strike.
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This past week, in an attempt to deflect the blows to its illusion of invincibility and stop the momentum of Palestinian resistance, the Israeli prison service has intentionally made the lives of Palestinian prisoners miserable.
Israeli prisons have raided Palestinians' cells, physically abused them, denied them basic necessities, closed canteens and laundry rooms, moved prisoners to solitary confinement, cancelled all family visits and phone calls, and more.
Al Aqsa has long been a space of Palestinian respite and a focal point of Israeli violence and surveillance. The increased presence of Jewish settlers praying on Al Aqsa violates the long held stewardship of one of the holiest sites in Islam and symbols of Palestinian resistance.
Since the 1960's, the status quo has been that the compound was a site for Palestinians and Muslims, with others allowed on the site during visiting hours but not to pray. However, since 2000 these policies have been violated and the site has become increasingly policed.
Palestinian movement to Jerusalem is severely limited and the compound itself is now heavily surveilled through IDF checkpoints. It has become a flash point of violence and Israeli military raids, including this past May when Israeli forces threw tear gas in the sanctuary.
Beginning in the 1950s, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) planted 80 million pine trees for 3 main reasons:
1) to impose their European notion of beautiful, thriving nature onto the Palestinian landscape, and to literally put down “Jewish” roots as they uprooted Palestinians;
2) to provide a “green cover” over ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages, obscuring Zionists’ forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians during the Nakba and preventing those Palestinians from ever returning to their homes;
From the #StopLine3 frontlines to Palestine, we stand with Indigenous people resisting the settler-colonial destruction of their lands!
“The capitalist extraction and colonial expansion here are the exact same project that is happening in Palestine," says member Rosi Greenberg.
The Line 3 crude oil pipeline violates the treaty rights of Anishinaabe peoples and risks environmentally-devastating spills in areas where they harvest wild rice, hunt, fish, and gather medicinal plants. It has already drained rivers and caused mass die-offs of wildlife.
Line 3 construction also poses a specific threat to Indigenous women and two-spirit people, since settler pipeline employees regularly commit acts of sexual violence and have been caught organizing sex-trafficking operations.
Nizar Banat, a Palestinian journalist and activist, was killed last week while in the Palestinian Authority’s custody. PA forces then violently repressed popular protests. Here’s what Palestinians have said about the PA and its role in upholding Israeli occupation and apartheid:
.@BDSmovement offers guidelines for supporting Palestinian civil society’s struggle against PA repression