Itamar #BenGvir is trying to start another #intifada. He took a page from #ArielSharon's playbook, making a provocative appearance at the #HaramAshSharif / #TempleMount to deny Palestinian statehood, assert permanent Israeli sovereignty, and call for Gaza's destruction.
Another excellent article from Nesrine Malik who writes:
".protest becomes necessary precisely because authorities have not been responsive. And it is defined by asymmetry of power and access to political tools. Politicians have executive power, and protesters have one thing: their voices"
Today in Labor History March 5, 1965: A Leftist uprising against British colonialism erupted in Bahrain, known as the March Intifada. The uprising began after the Bahrain Petroleum Company laid off hundreds of workers at on March 5, 1965. Students at Manama High School, the only high school in Bahrain, went out into the streets to protest the lay-offs. Several people died in the clashes between protesters and police. The authorities quickly suppressed the uprising. However, as news of the crackdown spread, protests erupted throughout the country, creating a nationwide uprising which lasted for a month.
#reference#intifada The Palestinian Intifada -- December 9, 1987-December 8, 1988: A Record of Israeli Repression. 1989.
" ... how can a people whose statehood was claimed by reason of history's worst human calamity, the #Holocaust, engage in policies and practices which are reminiscent of what they suffered at the hands of others?" (p.ix)
Note on the word intifada (انتفاضة): “a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement” in contemporary Arabic.
Today in Labor History December 9, 1987: The First Intifada began in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It was series of protests, civil disobedience and riots carried out by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and within the state of Israel against Israeli repression including beatings, shootings, killings, house demolitions, uprooting of trees, deportations, extended imprisonments, and detentions without trial. It lasted over 5 years, until September 1993, ultimately being suppressed by Israeli military force. Up to 200 Israelis and nearly 2,000 Palestinians died. Both the Oslo and Madrid conferences and Peace Accords stemmed from the First Intifada, as well as the PLO’s recognition of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Another result of these accords was the creation of the the collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA), which currently controls the West Bank, and which had controlled the Gaza Strip, until being ousted by Hamas in the 2006 elections. The PA, which is heavily funded by the U.S. and the E.U.
"Another post from the group, headlined with one of its common chants, “Globalize the #Intifada,” had a map of #Israeli and US companies and transit hubs. The locations listed included The New York Times, Penn Station, Grand Central Station, the BlackRock investment firm, and the Israeli tech company Check Point.
“Each of the locations on this map reflects the location of an office of an enemy of both the #Palestinian people and colonized people all over the world. Today and beyond, these locations will be sites for popular mobilization in defense of our people,” the group wrote."
"David Greenfield, CEO of the Met Council and a prominent #Jewish leader, said the protesters, granted access to an event they knew was not #Israel-related, took advantage of the organizers’ welcome “to spread #antisemitic propaganda and stoke fear for those of us who were there to celebrate #Shabbat.”
“This was clearly not about Israel because this was not an Israel event,” Greenfield explained, noting that the organization is the nation’s largest Jewish anti-poverty charity fighting poverty in and beyond the Jewish communities, including providing more than 1.2 million pounds in free Halal food to over 20 Halal food pantries last year. “This was a clear attempt by Pro-#Palestinians to scare and intimidate us on Shabbat because we’re Jewish. This is old fashion antisemitism and is exactly what they mean when they chant ‘globalize the #intifada’”
Schools were shut and non-essential construction was banned around #Delhi as the #AirQuality index in the city almost hit 500 – the highest the measurement will go and 100 times the limit deemed to be healthy by the #WorldHealthOrganization.
#Israel started bringing in migrant workers in earnest after the first #Intifada, the 1987-93 #PalestinianRevolt, after employers began to lose trust in Palestinian workers.
Most came from #Thailand, and they remain the largest group of foreign agricultural laborers in Israel today.
"The city has become a wasteland of rubble and debris. Beautiful buildings fall like columns of smoke. I often think about the time I was shot as a kid, during the first #intifada, and how my mother told me I actually died for a few minutes before being brought back to life. Maybe I can do the same this time, I think."
~Atef Abu Saif #GiftArticle#GiftLink https://wapo.st/45WhuCi
Random talkback on Israeli news sites in response to current events.
This one in response to Foreign Minister Eli Cohen attack in UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after his remark, in a speech to the UN Security Council, saying Hamas' attack did not happen in a vacuum.
“If our public face, advocacy and status rests on one sentence replete with historical truths and one sentence said by a redeemed female captive whose unhealthy husband and hundreds more are still held in Gaza - then we are the opposite of a wonderful nation. This is a weak, miserable, pathetic nation, managed by a gang of fascist garbage, that is more excited about volunteers feeding soldiers hamburgers than about human blood flowing like water with no hope.”
Zertal, Idith. "Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood" (2005)
A book talk with the author in which she reflects on some of the issues around the use of the #Holocaust in political discourse in Israel, and the insistence of some on seeing the victimizers as victims.
"When you spent all those years promoting #BDS against #Israel, lying about 'apartheid', and calling for #intifada and a #FreePalestine, only to find that you were on the side of the Nazis.
"Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran soldiers who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second #Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. [...] Our work aims to bring an end to the occupation.
Mustafa Baraghouti: With the First #Intifada, the occupying Israelis started to lose. #Israel doesn't accept any kind of loss, economic, human, or moral.
Ahmad Tibi: “Once an Israeli feels that someone other than him is cast in the role of victim, he loses his mind.”
Today in Labor History September 28, 2000: An uprising, known as the Second Intifada, began after the Camp David summit failed and Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Lebanon, visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers during this Intifada. Just over 1,000 Israelis died. A tribunal held Sharon personally responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre, in Beirut, during the Lebanon War, in which 3,500 Palestinian civilian refugees were slaughtered by Phalangist forces, as Israeli soldiers looked on.
Amjad #Iraqi explains why Palestinians identify with Khader #Adnan, a prisoner who died on hunger strike, for his struggle against #israel#prisons.
"Those trying to undermine public anger over the hunger striker's death don't want to talk about the violent carceral regime that he struggled against."