At the start of the Nakba, Zionist forces ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns and villages. Aerial imagery from before 1948 and from google maps today allows us to see the erasure. On this #NakbaDay I'm sharing some of these before and after images below...
The location of erased Palestinian towns and villages are easy to spot on a modern google map. Odd looking formations that don't match their surroundings maintain the perimeter of the villages like the chalk outline of a murder victim.
Here is a before and after shot of al-Maghar. You can see where the village was and see how it has been covered with trees.
Here is the village of as-Sawafir. You can see all the village homes were razed.
Beit Daras is another example. You can see clearly here the formation of the village surrounded by square agricultural plots.
Here is Beit Jibrin. You can see how big and densely populated this village was before it was entirely erased from the map.
Burayr is another example. Once again, an oddly shaped outline surrounded by squarely shaped agricultural plots now obscured by trees.
Asdud, a large Palestinian town, similarly erased
Qaqun as well, once again, oddly shaped plot covered in trees.
The evidence of ethnic cleansing is literally all over the map. You just need to look. ~500 Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated at the start of the Nakba, now in its 74th year.
Most were erased from sight but the evidence of these crimes is so obvious, it can be seen from space. If there are those who still don't see it, it is only because they choose not to. /end
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Don’t tell me you support reproductive rights when maternity wards, fertility clinics and thousands of frozen embryos have been destroyed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Don’t tell me you stand for labor when the Israeli military has destroyed every industry in Gaza and unemployment is and will be through the roof for years.
Don’t tell me you support free breakfast and lunch for kids to have full bellies in school when thousands of kids in Gaza have no food, no schools and for so many, no bellies either.
What explains this bizarre US policy of claiming the Israelis support a ceasefire proposal that their officials keep saying they oppose? What is up with all these theatrics? Here is one possible explanation:
Netanyahu is a craven politician (Chickenshit might be the preferred term in DC) and he does not have the courage or political will to come out and own this deal because the terms are far worse for him than he wants to be associated with.
He also needs his Kahanist political allies to stay on board and they have threatened to bolt the coalition government if the war stops.
The whole point of trying to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, as backers of Israel's apartheid regime do, is to turn opposition to Zionism into opposition to Jews and as such frame it as discrimination to circumvent free speech protections. The entire aim is repressive.
If you listen to Israeli apartheid backers explain their thinking it is quite clear what the intentions really are. Here, I'll show you.
This is Alyza Lewin. She is President of something called the Brandies Center which is an organization that has active in using lawfare to press universities to crack down on Palestinian rights activism. This is a US based organization.
A few key things to understand about the significance of South Africa's legal claim against Israel over Genocide in Gaza....
First, why South Africa? Well, as a state party to the Genocide Convention, South Africa can do this and indeed sees it as a responsibility to do so. Legally, this status matters but politically I think there are more important things to note.
South Africa knows all too well the costs of inaction in the international system to address grave human rights abuses. How many South African lives could have been saved under apartheid if other states took action earlier?
This is actually quite misleading and dangerously so. I think it is worth explaining why because this apparently benign explanation actually shapes a tremendous amount of misunderstanding of Palestinians.
Zionism is not merely the "belief in a Jewish right to self-determination and a state in their ancestral homeland" it is more than that, both in the practical implementation and mainstream interpretation of this belief. Let's talk about both.
As far as the mainstream interpretation of this, at least since the early 1900s, self-determination in Zionism has been understood to necessitate not merely communal representation in governance but specifically majoritarianism.
The latest PCPSR poll of Palestinian public opinion is out and I am going to share some of the highlights from this poll looking at Palestinian attitudes in this historic moment...
First, a couple words on this poll. PCPSR is the gold standard as far as Palestinian public opinion polling is concerned. Nothing is perfect but it is by far the best we have got for analysis.
This looks at Palestinian respondents in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem (that's not all Palestinians of course) so understand what population the sample represents.