Free Palestine!

Extremely disappointing and I wish it was surprising but sadly not.

Farming and Food Struggles in Palestine

Food sovereignty is an urgent issue in communities around the world, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic led to further disruptions in the already fragile global food-supply chains. In Palestine, where traditional farming has been a way of life for millennia (and perhaps where farming began, according to historians), connections with land and food sovereignty are intrinsic to cultural identity.

Palestinian people’s access to land and food has been seriously strained since long before the pandemic due to Israel’s policies and practices directed toward Palestine, and the pandemic’s recent impacts on global food systems have heightened existing food insecurity issues in the region. Small farmers around the world have faced struggles for years, but as a Washington Post article put it in 2017, “Palestinian farmers really have it rough.”

“In a century of Palestinian struggle against colonialism, land, in all of its forms and meanings, has constituted the ethos of our struggle and culture,” said Soheir Asaad in a recent webinar held in honor of Palestinian Land Day commemorated on March 30 every year. Asaad works as an advocacy team member for the Rawa Fund that supports local community-led solutions to the issues Palestinians face. She was the moderator of a free online webinar on April 5 entitled “Blossoming in Palestine: Community Organizing Around Land.”

“The Zionist dispossession of our land, theft of natural resources, and ethnic cleansing have been part and parcel of a systematic, holistic targeting of the very existence of a Palestinian society,” she said during the webinar.

quote:

Supporting Local Economies

Lina Ismail, a researcher and environmental activist who works as the community programs officer in the community-based Dalia Association, spoke in the webinar about ways for people in Palestine to better support the local economy and help move away from extractive capitalist structures, including following ethical consumers guides.

“To add to what… Juma’a mentioned, when we look at the lifestyle in Palestine, it is shifting toward more consumerism and more individualistic way of life,” she said, noting that colonization and the increasingly globalized world are major factors at play in this shift. “We are shifting our lifestyle patterns. This is coupled with of course the international, conditional aid system,” she said, noting that the influx of aid at certain times all at once has created a dependency on aid projects in Palestine, and “a sense that we are not able to do anything on our own.”

“With regard to agricultural projects, many new agricultural projects came with this kind of mindset,” she said. “Big agriculture, big spaces planted with monoculture imported seeds and chemicals, destroyed our traditional way of farming and disrupted our relationship to the land. In a sense, it commodified the land. It became commercial.”

She noted that discussions of economic empowerment in Palestine have often come from a “very specific lens” that does not consider the colonial context Palestinians live in, nor “the emancipatory vision we aspire to.”

She explained what Dalia Association means by “food sovereignty”: “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced in ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own agricultural and food systems. It’s also about our right to reclaim our own way of agriculture… When talking about the liberation of Palestine we talk about the basic sources of existence, and one of them is the production of food. When we are deprived of that, we cannot be thinking of emancipation or liberation.”.....

I disagree that his comment was antisemitic. There is no doubt it would have been more precise to say our policy is determined by the pro-Israeli lobby but they mean exactly the same thing. Religion and ethnicity are irrelevant to whether the Israeli governments is acting in a genocidal manner towards the people it has enslaved in open air prison camps that are subject to intermittent strafing and bombing.

I don't think governments around the world are being controlled by the "Zionist lobby." Where would the "Zionist lobby" get so much power from to be able to control foreign governments like Canada's, the UK's, the U.S.'s., etc,...

I think the "Zionist lobby" is a bogeyman used to get around dealing with why Canada supports Israel. I think the policies by Canadian political parties concerning Israel are not being mostly controlled by "the Zionist lobby.” My opinion seems to be in the minority here on babble so there's probably little sense in discussing the "Zionist lobby" here other than blaming it for Canada's policies regarding Israel and the Palestinians. I think people here on Babble generally want to avoid contemplating why Canadian political parties support Israel. I think Canada's policies toward Israel will remain incomprehensible to people who avoid trying to figure out why Canadian political parties take their positions vis a vis Israel and Palestinians. It seems to me that its taboo around here to ask why Canada supports Israel.

I think Canadian political parties take their policy positions concerning Israel according to what they think is in the best interest of Canadians and not in the best interests of the "Zionist lobby."

I think Canada and the other countries voted against it because they felt the report was biased against Israel. If you want you can look up news stories that include the perspectives of the countries that did not support the report. Usually looking at more than one side of an issue brings about better understanding of an issue and that includes the issue of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.

JKR wrote:

I think Canada and the other countries voted against it because they felt the report was biased against Israel. If you want you can look up news stories that include the perspectives of the countries that did not support the report. Usually looking at more than one side of an issue brings about better understanding of an issue and that includes the issue of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict.

You don't seem to like it very much when NDPP insists that you should look at the Russian side of the Ukraine war. Intellectual dishonesty is becoming your trademark.

Others of us here have spent years reading the reasons why Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is not criminal, and we find that they to not legitimize the apartheid state.

JKR wrote:

I don't think a solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict will be possible without acknowledging the legitimatacy of both Israel and Palestinians.

I don't think a solution to the Russian- Ukrainian conflict will be possible without acknowledging the legitimatacy of both Russia and Ukrainians. See how easy this nonsense is?

I don't think a solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict will be possible without acknowledging the legitimatacy of both Israel and Palestinians.

..there are power imbalances in the world. this power imbalance includes the middle east. you argue for a more balanced approach..in the middle of a genocide. a genocide that's we've been watching for, what is it, 50 years? your position doesn't make sense to me. that you haven't understood what is going on. after many many years on this board.     

Michael Moriarity wrote:

I don't think a solution to the Russian- Ukrainian conflict will be possible without acknowledging the legitimatacy of both Russia and Ukrainians. See how easy this nonsense is?

I think by invading Ukraine and trying to annex it and turn it into a vassal state of Russia, Russia did not respect the legitimacy of Ukraine as a sovereign state. I think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is clearly illegal as it clearly breaks international law.

Double post

..the reality is not a matter of looking for balance. it is a matter of power and israel will not give up one iota of power. it has said as much over and over again. not without a fight. this goes well beyond international law or the un. this is the use of raw power..backed by the us.  

Gaza: Israel’s ‘Open-Air Prison’ at 15

Israel’s sweeping restrictions on leaving Gaza deprive its more than two million residents of opportunities to better their lives, Human Rights Watch said today on the fifteenth anniversary of the 2007 closure. The closure has devastated the economy in Gaza, contributed to fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and forms part of Israeli authorities’ crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.

Israel’s closure policy blocks most Gaza residents from going to the West Bank, preventing professionals, artists, athletes, students, and others from pursuing opportunities within Palestine and from traveling abroad via Israel, restricting their rights to work and an education. Restrictive Egyptian policies at its Rafah crossing with Gaza, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights.

“Israel, with Egypt’s help, has turned Gaza into an open-air prison,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “As many people around the world are once again traveling two years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gaza’s more than two million Palestinians remain under what amounts to a 15-year-old lockdown.”

Israel should end its generalized ban on travel for Gaza residents and permit free movement of people to and from Gaza, subject to, at most, individual screening and physical searches for security purposes.

quote:

Israel’s policy, though, presumptively denies free movement to people in Gaza, with narrow exceptions, irrespective of any individualized assessment of the security risk a person may pose. These restrictions on the right to freedom of movement do not meet the requirement of being strictly necessary and proportionate to achieve a lawful objective. Israel has had years and many opportunities to develop more narrowly tailored responses to security threats that minimize restrictions on rights....

..i also have arrived at one state as a solution. not that that has any value against the reality.  

epaulo13 wrote:

..i also have arrived at one state as a solution. not that that has any value against the reality.

And so has Gideon Levy, who knows more about the situation than all of us on babble combined.

epaulo13 wrote:

..i also have arrived at one state as a solution. not that that has any value against the reality.  

I agree the reality is that peace talks are now very much off the agenda and are going nowhere. Arab countries have also given up on them and are now officially and openly working with and cooperating with Israel and Arab countries are also sending much less money to the Palestinian Authority. As it is, the current one-state status quo solution seems like it will likely continue on for the foreseeable future.

JKR wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..i also have arrived at one state as a solution. not that that has any value against the reality.  

I agree the reality is that peace talks are now very much off the agenda and are going nowhere. Arab countries have also given up on them and are now officially and openly working with and cooperating with Israel and Arab countries are also sending much less money to the Palestinian Authority. As it is, the current one-state status quo solution seems like it will likely continue on for the foreseeable future.

The current status quo is two tiers of Israeli citizenship and no citizenship for the people in interment in occupied Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is not a one state solution it is apartheid. Were you being sarcastic?

Palestinians ‘Are Bound to Win’: Why Israelis Are Prophesying the End of Their State

While it is true that Zionism is a modern political ideology that has exploited religion to achieve specific colonial objectives in Palestine, prophecies continue to be a critical component of Israel’s perception of itself, and of the state’s relationship to other groups, especially Christian messianic groups in the United States and worldwide.

The subject of religious prophecies and their centrality to Israel’s political thought was once more highlighted following remarks by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in a recent interview with the Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Barak, perceived to be a ‘progressive’ politician, who was once the leader of Israel’s Labor Party, expressed fears that Israel will “disintegrate” before the 80th anniversary of its 1948 establishment.

“Throughout the Jewish history, the Jews did not rule for more than eighty years, except in the two kingdoms of David and the Hasmonean dynasty and, in both periods, their disintegration began in the eighth decade,” Barak said.

Based on pseudo-historical analysis, Barak’s prophecy seemed to conflate historical facts with typical messianic Israeli thinking, reminiscent of statements made by Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017.

Like Barak, Netanyahu’s comments were expressed in the form of fear over the future of Israel, and the looming ‘existential threat’, the cornerstone of Israeli hasbara throughout the years. At a Bible study session in his house in Jerusalem, Netanyahu had then warned that the Hasmonean kingdom – also known as the Maccabees – had merely survived for 80 years before it was conquered by the Romans in 63 B.C.E.

quote:

In an interview with Haaretz in 2019, one of Israel’s most respected mainstream historians, Benny Morris, had much to say about the future of his country. Unlike Barak and Netanyahu, Morris was not sending warning signals but stating what, to him, seemed an unavoidable outcome of the country’s political and demographic evolution.

“I don’t see how we get out of it,” Morris said, adding: “Already, today there are more Arabs than Jews between the (Mediterranean) Sea and the Jordan (River). The whole territory is unavoidably becoming one state with an Arab majority. Israel still calls itself a Jewish state, but a situation in which we rule an occupied people that has no rights cannot persist in the 21st century.”

Morris’ predictions, while remaining committed to the racial fantasy of a Jewish majority, were far more articulate and also realistic if compared to those of Barak, Netanyahu and others. The man who once regretted that Israel’s founder, David Ben Gurion, did not expel all of Palestine’s native population in 1947-48, spoke with resignation that, in a matter of a generation, Israel will cease to exist in its current form.

quote:

Of course, co-existence in a single democratic state will always be a possibility. Alas, for Israel’s Zionist ideologues, such a state will hardly meet the minimum expectations of the country’s founders, since it would no longer exist in the form of a Jewish, Zionist state. For co-existence to take place, the Zionist ideology would have to be scrapped altogether.

Barak, Netanyahu and Morris are all right: Israel will not exist as a ‘Jewish state’ for much longer. Speaking strictly in terms of demographics, Israel is no longer a Jewish-majority state. History has taught us that Muslims, Christians and Jews can peacefully coexist and collectively thrive, as they have done throughout the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula for millennia. Indeed, this is a prediction, even a prophecy, that is worth striving for.

..you're stuck in your position. 

..palestinians have no one to negotiate with. did you listen? 

And so has Gideon Levy, who knows more about the situation than all of us on babble combined.

..did you listen was my question?

 

JKR do you believe that Israel has a right to have two tiers of citizenship based on ethnicity or religion? I think a state called Israel has every right to exist but I don't think any state should discriminate on either basis. The current state of Israel needs to have many of its laws changed to have a just society but that will never happen under the current framework because that framework is a form of apartheid.

I prefer living in Canada where there is relatively a much higher level of equality between citizens regarding ethnicity and religion. Like other countries in the world, I think Israel also has the right to have more than one tier of citizenship. I think other countries in the region like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Saudi Arabia already have more than one tier of citizenship. I wish we lived in a more progressive world but we live in the international world we have.

epaulo13 wrote:

..that's not all levy said. he said that israel has no intention of negotiating anything other than the status quo. this is what chomsky believes. this is what i believe. this is what many folks believe. this is why it's a called an apartheid state. this is why it's a genocide. 

..this is the heart of my argument. this is why i said it's not about balance but about power. nothing you have said in this thread counters that. 

I think Israel is willing to negotiate but I agree that Israel’s negotiating positions aren’t to the liking of most Palestinians. I think Israel’s positions during the Oslo Accords, the Taba Agreement, and the 2000 Camp David Summit showed Israel was willing to negotiate an agreement. I think Israel is willing to see a Palestinian state on the Gaza Strip and on parts of the West Bank.