Witness
NDN COLLECTIVE: THE RIGHT OF RETURN IS LANDBACK By removing people from their land, you remove them from their natural development, their medicines, their relationships, and their culture. The state of israel tries to separate the Palestinian people from their land and from each other through systemic violence and infrastructure of Occupation–by separating Palestinian communities through checkpoints and 26-foot walls, heavily surveying Palestinian areas, economic suffocation, targeting Palestinian infrastructure, the mass imprisonment and torture of Palestinian people, the injustice of Apartheid law and military courts, the targeting of Palestinian children, and greenlighting the Oslo Accords that divided the land into multiple zones. And yet, under the boot of intense and routine zionist repression, there remains the fervent promise and the unified demand by Palestinians in Palestine and all over the world to resist and defend, until the land is liberated and the People can return.
November 3, 2023
Essence: U.S. Media Is Failing The Public On The Crisis In Gaza Although the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been violently unfolding for the past 75 years, most Americans don’t have the clearest sense of the unique role the US and our taxpayer dollars have in sustaining this brutal occupation, year after year, month after month, day after day.
November 7, 2023
Brown Daily Herald: An Open Letter from Jewish Students As we grapple with millennia of Jewish struggle and survival, we will not abandon our Palestinian cousins and peers, or let them stand alone. This genocide cannot continue.
November 9, 2023
Jewish Voice for Peace: On Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and Dangerous Conflations Warmongers try to make it hard, but it’s actually really clear and simple: Fighting for Palestinian freedom and against antisemitism are intertwined.
Huffington Post: ‘The Phone Doesn’t Stop’: Overwhelming Demands For A Cease-Fire Catch Democrats Off Guard “There is a real feeling of being complicit,” one said. “We” — that is, Congress — “are being instrumental in the ability of Israel to wipe Palestine off the face of the earth.”
November 14, 2023
Reuters: Displaced as a girl and again in old age, Palestinian grandmother relives the Nakba When she was a girl, she and her family were forced from their village, inside what is now Israel, to Gaza, during the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948, when Israel was created, an event Palestinians call the "Nakba," or catastrophe.
November 30, 2023
Mongabay: Palestinian olive farmers hold tight to their roots amid a surge in settler attacks The Arabic word sumud, “steadfastness” or “perseverance,” is often used by Palestinians to refer to their commitment to stay rooted to the land and defy all Israeli attempts to drive them out.
+972mag: Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry out its deadliest war on Gaza According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”
December 1, 2023
Jewish Currents: The abolitionist logic of ‘everyone for everyone’ Safety is not something that can be achieved in perpetuity through the fortification of borders.
December 15, 2023
Frontline India: Arundhati Roy Are we going to simply stand by and watch while homes, hospitals, refugee camps, schools, universities, archives are bombed, a million people displaced, and dead children pulled out from under the rubble? The borders of Gaza are sealed. People have nowhere to go. They have no shelter, no food, no water. The United Nations says more than half the population is starving. And still they are being bombed relentlessly. Are we going to once again watch a whole people being dehumanised to the point where their annihilation does not matter?
December 19, 2023
Undark Magazine: In Gaza, Palestinian Maternal Health Is Hard-Hit “We also know that in Gaza, there is no such thing as post-traumatic stress disorder,” noted Dr. Alice Rothchild, a retired obstetrician-gynecologist and peace activist and former professor at Harvard Medical School. “We’re talking about chronic stress disorder because it’s never ‘post’.”
December 20, 2023
The Border Chronicle: The New Gospel of Violence: Surveillance Meets Border Violence in Palestine ...Israel is also a leading player in exporting “battle-tested” technologies to the West, projects that are then rolled out for various purposes, including border enforcement.
Teen Vogue: What a Palestinian-American Wants You To Know About Dehumanization Poems will not save us. Poems will not save Gaza. I say that as a poet. They will not stop what needs stopping, or single-handedly bring about action, policy change, Palestinian self-determination, rights, and dignity. It is also true that poetry—and art and music and film—are offshoots of bearing witness: they fortify us, sustain us, especially in times of erasure. They help us rehearse empathy, and build the necessary muscle memory to call upon it regularly.
December 21, 2023
LitHub: These are the poets and writers who have been killed in Gaza Since October 7, Israel has killed at least thirteen Palestinian poets and writers in Gaza. If we think of ourselves as a global literary community, then these people were our fellow travelers, our peers.
AP News: The UN says more than 1 in 4 people in Gaza are starving “It doesn’t get any worse,’’ said Arif Husain, chief economist for the U.N.’s World Food Program. “I have never seen something at the scale that is happening in Gaza. And at this speed.”
Forensic Architecture: Shifa Hospital The World Health Organization has recorded over 240 attacks on medical facilities in Gaza during Israel's military offensive. Each attack is a potential war crime because medical units are granted protected status under international humanitarian law.
PBS: Israel’s military campaign in Gaza is among the most destructive in history, experts say The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.
December 22, 2023
UNICEF: Statement by UNICEF on the risk of famine in the Gaza Strip More than 80 per cent of young children are experiencing severe food poverty, and more than two-thirds of hospitals are no longer functioning because of the lack of fuel, water, and vital medical supplies or because they sustained catastrophic damage in attacks.
December 23, 2023
Committee to Protect Journalists: Israel-Gaza war takes record toll on journalists CPJ is particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.
December 24, 2023
Mondoweiss: Bethlehem cancels Christmas celebrations as Israel continues to bomb Gaza Munther Isaac, the pastor of the Lutheran church, said: “This is the reality of Christmas for Palestinian children. If Jesus was born today, he’d be born under the rubble of Gaza.”
PERMANENT CEASEFIRE NOW.
USians - Call your Congresspeople: 5Calls.org
See who in US Congress supports ceasefire: workingfamilies.org Ceasefire Tracker
Carrie This 🕊️