http://www.un.org/ga/
Yesterday we had dinner with a family from the old city of Jerusalem who visited us here in Beit Sahour. They can visit us (for now), but we can’t visit them. They explained how the Israeli authorities have been increasing the pressures to empty Jerusalem of its non-Jewish residents through a myriad of regulations, laws, harassment, attempts to buy them out and far more. For example regulations make it impossible for native Palestinian to build or improve anything in their homes but Israel issues thousands of building permits for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem (annexed illegally by Israel contrary to International law). There are even neighborhoods in the old city that cannot get visitors from other parts of the city (their own relatives even) and are essentially living in prison like conditions. The Palestinians and all International and Israeli human rights groups are now frantically trying to prevent the demolition of homes that house over 1500 Palestinians in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The Israeli authorities laid their hands on buildings in the old city and confiscated lands near the old city and built colonial settlement outposts throughout Arab East Jerusalem. These scattered colonial settlements are now being “connected” via underground tunnels under Arab owned houses or directly above ground by demolishing these houses. The rest of the occupied West Bank is also similarly effected. For an example of how Israel’s “master plans of development” are really master plans of ethnic cleansing, read this report
http://www.poica.org/editor/
(warning: this will make you angry)
But it is not just humans that are the victims of Zionist masterplans. Nature is also. With a huge network of military bases, industrial zones, new infrastructure (for Jewish settlers so as not to use or improve Palestinian roads), massive apartheid walls, and disregard for environmental protection, the West Bank has become an environmental disaster area. The loss of village lands (to land confiscation, walls,, etc) around Bethlehem area for example made many villagers come live in Bethlehem which makes it a very crowded area and there are few open areas (some of which receive sewage and trash from Jewish settlements). The extent of the environmental damage is more noticeable to me as a biologist.
I know this since I studied animals here for three decades and places that I used to be able to catch and study many animals representing many species now yield nothing or at best one or two lonely animals of one ubiquitous species. The toads in the valley near my house are all gone (an early spring sound and image that remains only in my memory). The Israeli water authority steals West Bank water and gives it subsidized to settlers while selling it to us the natives. Even they just reported increased pollutants that make the water from several springs not fit for human consumption (I would not be surprised if they now decide to segregate waters: safe for settlers, polluted for native Palestinians).
The racist destruction is going on here relentlessly and methodically of anything that is not Jewish. It is hard to describe the extent of the damage to someone from outside via email. You really have to visit and witness and see for yourself. The results of the recent Israeli elections merely consolidate and accelerate the inevitable. Those who enable this rogue state to continue doing what it is doing are like those who enable drug/alcohol addicts by supplying them with what they need to continue their self-destructive habits. The Zionist movement is frantically trying to attack the Durban II conference (to be held in Geneva) and ask the Obama administration to apply more pressure to stop this conference from issuing an even milder version of the document of the meeting released in Durban seven years ago about Israeli racism (the US here is the enabler). I found it amazing that according to Haaretz “Senior State Department officials contacted Israeli diplomats and asked them to take swift action to block the Durban initiative.” (http://haaretz.com/hasen/
(see http://www.qumsiyeh.org/
History will not be kind to this movement. History will also not be kind to those who were silent and did not act.
Action reminder: Join the Global BDS Action Day, March 30th! (launched at the WSF 2009 in Belém) http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=
Action: Sign petition to call upon the UN General Assembly to create a special international tribunal to try Israel, its political and military leaders, for such crimes in violation of international law, human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Palestinian Occupied Territory of which they may be charged.
http://www.petitiononline.com/
To the President of the State of Israel and the Director of the Yad Vashem Memorial
Remove Our Grandmother' s Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem
By MICHAEL NEUMANN and OSHA NEUMANN
http://www.uruknet. de/?s1=1& p=52005&s2= 22
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager/fallah at home
Gandhi by Ali Sina
There is no particular reason for this page to be here except that when I look at the picture of Gandhi I am filled with joy and a feeling of serenity surrounds me.
Sometimes when my heart aches because of the injustice that I witness in the world, when I lose my faith in humanity, feel lonely, battered and betrayed by my fellow humans for what they do to their fellow humans I look at Gandhi's face and I regain my faith. I know good exists. And I know that eventually good will prevail.
One day sun will shine, love will reign and there won't be any more injustice.
One day no one will shed tears for the loss of a loved one whose life was cut short because someone thought that his or her religion was not right.
One day no one will be humiliated or discriminated for having the wrong color of skin, wrong caste or wrong gender.
One day no woman will be beaten, stoned, raped or killed to save someone's honor.
One day no one will be cruel to others, cheat them, hurt them or oppress them.
One day we will all feel the pain of each other as if we were members of one body.
Even though this may never happen, I want to believe that it will.
Even though it appears that injustice is the foundation of this universe, I want to believe that justice is.
Even though this may be a lie, I want to believe in this sweet little lie.
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