Tag: maan news agency

Maan News Agency, May 25, 2011

On May 17, two days after the Nakba day protests, the Economist ran an article titled, “Here comes your nonviolent resistance.” The writer pointed out that the demonstrations that took place on May 15 were in the spirit of the First Intifada which was, by and large, nonviolent.

My colleague Joseph Dana voiced the same sentiment, and much more gracefully at that in an article he wrote for Alternet:

“Many in the international press are claiming the Nakba day protests show that the Arab spring has arrived in Palestine…It was Palestinians who organized mass unarmed resistance against Israeli occupation in the late 1980s…It is in villages like Bil’in, Budrus and Nabi Saleh that Palestinians have continued this spirit of unarmed resistance every week for the past eight years despite continued Israeli attacks. The Arab spring has not arrived in Palestine; it has always been here.”

I endorse these articles. They offer important, nuanced takes on the Nakba Day protests, the First Intifada, and Palestinian resistance to the occupation.

But they’re both wrong.

Continue reading “The forgotten intifada”

Maan News Agency, April 29, 2011

Earlier in April, the Israeli Ministry of Education decided to add a question about the Holocaust to the matriculation exam of Arab students.

Because the state has banned any study of the Nakba– going so far as to strike the word from the textbooks– the move has drawn sharp criticism in Israel’s Palestinian community.

The Abraham Fund — a joint Jewish-Arab organization that advocates for equality within in Israel — remarked that, “It is important that Arab students learn about the Holocaust and understand the history and pain of the Jewish people… At the same time, it is important that Jewish students learn about the history of the Palestinian minority in Israel, especially those aspects tied to the state of Israel and her existence.”

Sawsan Zaher is a Palestinian who was born and raised in Israel. An attorney at Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Zaher recalls that she did not learn about the Nakba until she studied it on her own, in her early twenties.

“I finished high school without being able to study Palestinian history–about what was here before 1948, about the nakba.”

Continue reading “Palestinian identity under attack in Israel”

Maan News Agency, April 13, 2011

Last week, Israeli immigration police arrested and deported a three-year-old boy, born and raised in Israel.

The toddler was detained and expelled to the Philippines along with his mother, M, who is pregnant. The children’s father is a migrant worker from Thailand who was deported several months ago. Distance and poverty makes it unlikely that the family, torn apart by the state of Israel, will be reunited.

This is just one heartrending story that has surfaced as Israeli government steps up its current efforts to ensure a “Jewish and democratic” state—by deporting non-Jewish, Israeli-born children of migrant workers, along with their parents.

Continue reading “Israel’s uneven justice”

Maan News Agency, August 20, 2010

Alarms sounded through Israel’s leftist camps recently when Jewish-Israeli activist Yonatan Shapira was summoned for an interview with General Security Services, also known by the Hebrew acronym Shabak.

The interrogation came in the wake of the May detention and arrest of Ameer Makhoul, Palestinian-Israeli director of Ittijah—a platform for local Arab NGOs and an organization dedicated to empowering Palestinian-Israelis. During his detainment, Makhoul was allegedly subjected to illegal interrogation methods by Shabak including sleep deprivation and being bound to a chair in an extremely painful position. According to Adalah, a human rights organization that aims to promote and protect Palestinian citizens of Israel, Makhoul also suffered psychological torture.

Along with Dr. Omar Said, a respected political activist who runs a natural medicine company, Makhoul was accused with spying for Hezbollah. The two were indicted for espionage, amongst other crimes—charges both deny. The Palestinian-Israeli community decried the arrests as political persecution.

Continue reading “Behind a Shabak squeeze”

Maan News Agency, June 8, 2010
(Click here for Arabic)
The Huffington Post, June 9, 2010

Alex Harrison, a British activist who participated in the Freedom Flotilla, was on the neighboring Challenger 1 when the Israeli army overtook the Mavi Marmara, leaving nine activists dead and dozens injured.

The Israeli army has released edited video footage showing soldiers being beaten by passengers on the Mavi Marmara. The army’s footage depicts soldiers dropping down from helicopters into a crowd armed with sticks and chairs. Many Israelis have likened this scene to a “lynch.” The Jewish Israeli public also firmly believes that its soldiers were lured into a “trap.”

But the army’s footage does not include the crucial moments prior to the soldiers’ boarding that would allow viewers to determine if the activists were behaving in self-defense as Israel overtook its ship in international waters.

Continue reading “Challenger I passengers: Commandos shot first”