For the past three days as it escalated its assault on Jenin, the zionist forces enforced the largest scale of road closures and checkpoints in the West Bank since the second Intifada 🧵
Reports from Palestinians across the West Bank indicate that in some instances soldiers are checking a car every 30 mins then closing the checkpoint. Others reported soldiers chatting, laughing, and taking selfies while thousands of vehicles remained stuck for hours.
The closures are enforced to prevent Palestinians from moving through cities effectively creating a siege surrounding every city from the North to the South. Just in Bethlehem, zionist forces sealed the entrances/exits with 89 gates, barriers, and concrete blocks
Palestinians are reporting the state of checkpoints through social media platforms to inform those traveling to avoid the closures/traffic. Transportation drivers across the West Bank found creative ways to alert each other of roadblocks/ closed checkpoints via telegram
Some Palestinians who were stuck for four hours at a checkpoint were seen playing card games and handing out food and water to other trapped vehicles. The spirit of Palestinians will never be crushed!
Yesterday evening, we drove to some of the checkpoints surrounding Bethlehem. Like Bethlehem, Salfit, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah, Hebron, and more endure an attempt to suffocate Palestinians into submission to the zionist settler colonial project.
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Reports from Northern Gaza this morning: 1) Israeli forces' drones continue to target the main gate of Kamal Adwan Hospital, opening fire on it after repeated attacks on the hospital and the surrounding area.
2) Israeli forces struck Abu Tammam school in Beit Lahiya, resulting in casualties. Displaced families taking shelter in Beit Lahiya schools endured a long night of bombardment by drones and shells. Explosions detonated near these schools, sending shrapnel into them.
3) Dozens of bodies are reportedly trapped under collapsed buildings and on the streets in Beit Lahiya due to occupation forces' mass killings, and the complete disruption of civil defense and emergency services.
While we generally don't waste our time commenting on the mealy-mouthed garbage that +972/Local Call Magazine usually produces, some pieces cross the line and must be addressed. After a year of parroting zionist propaganda, Haggai Matar has found a new way to recenter Israelis.🧵
Before we get into the piece itself and the many, MANY sickening elements it presents (and misrepresents), do the following:
Close your eyes and imagine reading a piece about Nazi fears and rights during the Holocaust.
Hold onto that feeling, because it's not going anywhere.
Matar's title speaks for itself. After almost 14 months of a new phase of genocide in Gaza, bombing Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, 76+ years of systematic erasure of Palestinians, and aggressive settler violence across Palestine, Matar must draw the focus back to the settler.
On the 400th day of Israel's Gaza genocide, Saturday Nov 9, the Government Media Office released a summary of some of the most relevant statistics from the Gaza Strip. 🧵
- 400 days of genocide.
- 3,798 massacres committed by Israel.
- 53,552 known martyrs and missing persons.
- 10,000 known missing individuals.
- 43,552 martyrs who reached hospitals (Ministry of Health).
- 17,385 known child martyrs. 1/15
- 209 known infant children born and martyred during the last 400 days.
- 825 known children under the age of one martyred.
- 1,367 Palestinian families completely wiped out by the genocide, removed from the civil registry.
- 38 known to be martyred due to famine. 2/15
Yesterday, I sat on a bench in W. Jerusalem, looked up, and realized the "shade" tree was an olive tree. The contrast between Israeli (left) and Palestinian (right) olive trees highlights the differing relationships settlers and native Palestinians have with the land 🧵
Olive tree pruning is a fundamental practice for maintaining the health and productivity of these trees. For centuries, Palestinians have pruned olive trees to enhance yield, ensure longevity, and foster a deep connection to the land that sustains them. 2/
However, in the context of settler colonialism, this practice assumes new layers of significance. Because the settler economy is centered in the metropole, rather than on the land, Israelis prune olive trees with different intentions 3/
The man opening the trunk of the car is connected to the hilltop settlement meters away and directed the arrest of the family from beginning to the end. The zionist left will frame this as “the cops working with the settlers”, which intentionally obfuscates the situation. 🧵
This analysis creates a false dichotomy that there are "Israelis" and there are "settlers," when in reality, Israelis in general are settlers. Police officers are settlers not just as a matter of class identity—they function to animate the system of settler-colonialism.
When the zionist left frames "Israelis" and "settlers" as being distinct, they do this to create a paradigm in which "Israelis are good" and "settlers are bad". This, of course, is designed to perpetuate the myth of an enlightened zionist left and a redeemable Israel.
The "equal rights for all" is the NGO version of "All lives matter."
Within the context of settler-colonialism, the rights of the settler, by design, can only be realized at the expense of the indigenous population.
Statements of this form today advance colonial thought.
🧵
This critical piece highlights how French colonizers used the "equal rights" framework in an attempt to secure voting rights for the settler community to maintain the colonization of the Kanak people. 2/
Zionist apologia follows this same logic, inciting bigotry against Palestinians and allies when they say completely normal things like settlers should not, in fact, have "rights" over Palestinian land, resources, and social economy. 3/