Zionists claim that baby Omar died from a Qassem rocket

Things my Zionist friends are posting on facebook

Mosque’s Loud Prayer Generates Mega-Decibel ‘Battle of the Bands’ || Jewish Press

After the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem has decided to play very loud music, in defiance of the volume and disturbance of the sound of the muezzin at the mosque in nearby Al-Issawiya, two additional Jewish neighborhoods, Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Choma, have announced that they, too, will take up a similar approach. French Hill also decided to go with hard rock, and not Mediterranean tunes, as had originally been planned, because, as they put it, hard rock is more likely to deliver the message.

According to Yediot Jerusalem, the French Hill neighborhood has recently approached an amplification company with an order for four huge speakers to be directed at Al-Isawiya. As soon as the village muezzin will start his exceedingly loud prayer, it will be responded to with ear shattering Rock n’ Roll, letting local Arabs understand how disturbing the loud prayers have been to their Jewish neighbors.

Har Choma and Pisgat Ze’ev residents are awaiting to see the results from the French Hill “pilot.” If the protest via rock blasts succeeds, the other two neighborhoods, situated on the border of the Jerusalem municipality, will follow suit.

Har Choma residents are coping with the sound of the muezzin from the villages of Umm Tuba and Sur Baher. Pisgat Ze’ev residents receive their 5 daily Muslim inspiration calls from Beit Hanina, Shuafat and Anata.

Jerusalem’s city hall has attempted to negotiated between Al-Issawiya village head Darwish Darwish and the residents of French Hill. Darwish promised to regulate the noise level, but the French Hill residents are saying nothing has changed, and the muezzin call continue to reach unbearable decibels.

Jewish Voices for Peace Says "Thank You Sixty Minutes"

SIGN THE PETITION!

60 Minutes, America’s best-known news program, is under attack for reporting the actual impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinians.

http://ThankYou60Minutes.org

I’m writing to you from Florida, where the Methodist Church will be voting on a historic resolution to stop investing in 3 companies that profit from Israel’s occupation. If this were about any other country that had violated international law for nearly 45 years, the vote would be a no-brainer.

But I have seen first-hand how fear of being unfairly painted with charges of anti-Jewish bias keeps good and decent people from acting to end an occupation that harms both Palestinians and Israelis.  

The truth is that these scare tactics only work if we let them. The cost of speaking the facts is nothing compared to what Palestinians have already endured—decades of unlawful home demolitions, checkpoints, land confiscation, detentions without charges, and much more.  

Please, take a moment to forward this email to your friends, family, and co-workers. Send a message to every major news outlet in American that we demand fair and honest reporting. Don’t let 60 Minutes back down. Not now.

Petition: U.S.A. Congress: Reinstate funding for UNESCO

Palestinian woman’s hunger strike enters third week against arbitrary detention by Israel

muslimwomeninhistory:

Today marks the 15th day of Hana al-Shalabi’s hunger strike against her arbitrary imprisonment by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank.

Currently held in the Hasharon prison, she was seized from her home in a violent nighttime raid in the early hours of 16 February, when, according to an Addameer profile,

50 Israeli soldiers raided her house in Burqin village, near Jenin, in the early morning. The soldiers were accompanied by an intelligence officer and a large number of dogs and first raided her brother’s home before coming to her house. The IOF [Israeli occupation forces] moved through his house with the pack of dogs, causing the children of the household to panic.

Al-Shalabi, 29, is being held without charge or trial under an “administrative detention” order, a practice dating back to British colonial rule, that goes until 16 August. Al-Shalabi previously spent two years in administrative detention from September 2009, to October 2011, when she was released as part of the Hamas-Israel prisoner exchange deal.

During the raid, Hana and her family were subjected to violence and harassment, and since her detention she has been subjected to further abuse, including solitary confinement to punish her for her hunger strike, according to Addameer.

Gazans break(dance)ing boundaries [VIDEO] || MSNBC

You will NOT regret watching this video!

Iceland recognises Palestinian state || Al Jazeera English

Jerusalem mosque burnt in 'price tag' attack || Al Jazeera English

Vandals have set fire to a disused mosque in Jerusalem, daubing inflammatory graffiti in Hebrew on the walls in an apparent anti-Palestinian “price tag” attack.

Israeli police said on Wednesday they were investigating the overnight incident which took place near the busy shopping district around Jaffa Street.

Slogans insulting the Prophet Mohammad and other graffiti reading “A good Arab is a dead Arab” and “price tag” were spray-painted on the exterior walls of the building, the AFP news agency reported.

The “Price tag” slogan is generally associated with attacks on Palestinian property, often mosques, by Jewish settlers in the illegally occupied West Bank. Attacks on mosques beyond the West Bank are less common.

Some of the building’s exterior walls were burnt and there was a strong smell of petrol, although it appeared the fire had not caught, AFP reported.

Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, condemned the attack and called for calm.

“We must show zero tolerance toward violence in any shape or form and continue to maintain co-existence in the city,” news website Ynet quoted him as saying.

The incident came just 24 hours after extremist settlers attacked an Israeli military base in the northern West Bank and sabotaged vehicles there, prompting angry denounciations from Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister and other top officials.

Israeli Official Calls For Closing the al-Aqsa Mosque - IMEMC

An official at the Israeli run Jerusalem City Council called for closing the al-Aqsa Mosque for all Muslim worshipers in an attempt to pressure Muslims into accepting the demolishing of the bridge of the historic al-Magharba Gate that leads to the mosque.

Member of the Jerusalem City Council’s Planning and Construction Committee, Sasson Gabai, stated that “all entrances leading to the al-Aqsa Mosque must be closed to Muslim worshipers until the Islamic Waqf Department agrees to the demolishing of the bridge”.

Israel claims that the bridge is unsafe, and that its wants to demolish it in order to rebuild it in a safe way, but part of the plan is to widen it so it can fit police vehicles that would be sent to the scene in case of protests in the area, Palestinian sources reported.

Gabai stated that he intends to collect signatures from all members of the Jerusalem City Council approving the closure of the mosque to all Muslim worshipers before he sends the signed document to the Interior Minister for final approval.

He demanded that the Minister “use his authority to prevent discrimination against the Jews”..

Meanwhile, The Higher Islamic Committee slammed the calls to close the al-Aqsa Mosque, and to prevent the Muslims worshipers from reaching it, and considered them as a direct violation to the Freedom of Worship.

The Committee described the calls as an attempt to pressure the Waqf Ministry into agreeing to the destruction of the historic bridge.

It also stated that the area in question is an Islamic Waqf property, and that only the Islamic Ministry of Waqf and Religious Endowment has the right to supervise the area, and make any needed restoration.

The Ministry also held the Israeli government responsible for the partial collapse that happened in the al-Magharba Hill, south west of Jerusalem, due to the ongoing Israeli excavations in the area.

U.S. Presidential Debate-season Reading Material (on Palestine) || Arabic Literature (In English)

Gingrich apparently said:

I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.

It’s interesting that he uses the first-person plural (“we’ve had”), but that’s not my focus here. Instead:

“I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people…”

Sure, the Palestinian narrative—like all nation-group narratives—had to be created and thus “invented.” For reading material on the invention of group identity that particularly impacts Palestine/Palestinians, you might read Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People. Or else, why not, The Formation of Croatian National Identity or The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity. (Note: I haven’t read any of these books.)

“…who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community.”

Well, yes, most Palestinians were and are Arabs. But, if Gingrich wants to hark back to a time “before Palestine,” then it makes more historical sense to flip back to a time before nation-states, when Palestinians were part of the Ottoman (not Arab) Empire.  Possible reading here: A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle, by award-winning Palestinian memoirist Raja Shehadeh. Novelist Randa Jarrar also suggests Anton Shammas’s Arabesques. 

“And they had a chance to go many places…”

This interesting sentence-fragment can be spoken to in different ways by many lovely books:

Mahmoud Darwish’s Journal of an Ordinary Grief, trans. (beautifully) Ibrahim Muhawi

Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah, trans. (also beautifully) Ahdaf Soueif

Suad Amiry’s Nothing To Lose But Your Life (written in English, and quite funny)

Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks (written in beautiful English)

…and it is also spoken to by Barghouti’s I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, which I am currently reading.

“and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s,” 

I haven’t included a graphic novel yet, so Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Footnotes from Gaza bear mentioning for a “variety of reasons.” As do so many other works: I’ll note just Naji al-Ali’s classic cartoon collection A Child in Palestine and  Sahar Khalifeh’s Wild Thorns, trans. Paula Haydar.

“and it’s tragic.”

Too many to mention:

Emile Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed : the Pessoptimist

Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun and other Palestinian Stories

Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun

A.B. Yehoshua “Facing the Forests”

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