We are not afraid, but clearly they are! Image: Aljazeera [2011] “The resistance movement has been growing steadily in Palestine since the Second Intifada — especially in West Bank villages affected by the Separation Wall and illegal settlements” [GALLO/GETTY] There is no escape for Israel from growing Palestinian power. If nothing else, the upcoming Conference of the Alternative Palestinian Path in Madrid[Read More…]

[Rima Najjar: Packing my bags to travel to Madrid, Spain: The Alternative Palestinian Path Conference (Towards a new revolutionary commitment) October-November 2021 Although the world has stood up for Palestine repeatedly through widespread global demonstrations against Israel’s crimes (see The Electronic Intifada’s video clip of May 2021), it still takes a lot of courage for Palestinians to stand up for[Read More…]

Celebrating the path of resistance for the Palestinian people Image: Poster behind writer and activist Khaled Barakat says: “Vietnam — Palestine.” [courtesy of Khaled Barakat] In the interview below, Palestinian writer, researcher and activist Khaled Barakat, co-organizer of Masar Badil (The Alternative Palestinian Path Conference: Towards a new revolutionary commitment, Madrid, Spain, October-November 2021), says: We are confident that the decisions, actions and[Read More…]

There is an unmistakable shift in American politics regarding Palestine and Israel, a change that is inspired by the way in which many Americans, especially the youth, view the Palestinian struggle and the Israeli occupation. While this shift is yet to translate into tangibly diminishing Israel’s stronghold over the US Congress, it promises to be of great consequence in the[Read More…]

Image: Capture on the left is from a Zoom public grievance hearing at SFSU on Sept 30, 2021 over the university administration’s mishandling of Zoom’s cancellation a year ago of an open classroom webinar that included Palestinian feminist icon Leila Khaled on the guest panel. “You cannot pretend nothing has happened!” That was the rallying cry at the San Francisco State[Read More…]

The political division in Palestinian society is deep-rooted, and must not be reduced to convenient claims about the ‘Hamas-Fatah split’, elections, the Oslo accords and subsequent disagreements. The division is linked to events that preceded all of these, and not even the death or incapacitation of the octogenarian, Mahmoud Abbas, will advance Palestinian unity by an iota. Palestinian political disunity[Read More…]

The Palestinian political scene remains bleak. The status quo in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continues to be backed by the international community at the behest of the the Zionist regime, which is comfortable with having its cake and eating it too, and why shouldn’t it be? In March 2015, then Israeli economy minister Naftali Bennett even proposed[Read More…]

A large Israeli army campaign is taking social media by storm. The unstated aim of what is known as the “#Untie_Our_Hands” initiative is the desire to kill, with no accountability, more Palestinian protesters at the Gaza fence. The campaign was motivated by the killing of an Israeli sniper, Barel Hadaria Shmueli, who was reportedly shot from the Palestinian side of[Read More…]

There is an ongoing, but hidden, Israeli war on the Palestinians which is rarely highlighted or even known. It is a water war, which has been in the making for decades. On July 26 and 27, two separate but intrinsically linked events took place in the Ein al-Hilweh area in the occupied Jordan Valley, and near the town of Beita,[Read More…]

After the most recent Gaza war I was asked to make a presentation to a local service club concerning events in Israel and the Middle East. The presentation started with an introduction of the current global situation, a broad brush covering the U.S. empire, its petrodollar, and the new multipolar geopolitical world. From there, it covered the history that made[Read More…]

Today, June 15, 2021, Israeli Jewish supremacists are marching in East Jerusalem as Palestinians call for a ‘Day of Rage’ in response. “We call on all free people everywhere to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and its just cause and end the Israeli aggression on our people and holy places,” The Committee of Islamic and National Groups stated.[Read More…]

On May 25, famous American actor, Mark Ruffalo, tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza. “I have reflected and wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding, “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now[Read More…]

The latest crisis in Palestine cannot be set aside as another passing episode in Israel’s forever war against the Palestinian people. We are now witnessing shocks within Israel behind the Green Line, something that Israel had hitherto been able to contain. In the process, it pretended, along with much of the western world, that it is the “longest-lived democracy in[Read More…]

Two historical things have happened recently which have been passed off as non entity because it hurt the business interest of the powerful nations. The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution to form an International inquiry commission to investigate, ‘ “grave human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” including violation of International laws and treaties,[Read More…]

The ‘Palestinian Revolt of 2021’ will go down in history as one of the most influential events that irreversibly shaped collective thinking in and around Palestine. Only two other events can be compared with what has just transpired in Palestine: the revolt of 1936 and the First Intifada of 1987. The general strike and rebellion of 1936-39 were momentous because[Read More…]

Written  by Anandi Pandey and Sandeep Pandey Without consulting anybody from the Arab population, which outnumbered the Jews by about ten times, the British made public their intent to create a national home for Jewish people in Palestine on 2 November, 1917 through the Balfour declaration. Then on 29 November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recommending[Read More…]

Too often, simple histories are being manipulated so that the truth is expelled from the dominant narrative. There are many cases, where the voices of the weak are silenced and falsehood is established. Truth is being ignored and frequently even criminalized. Speakers of truth are being discriminated and persecuted. Such is the situation of the Palestinians, and indeed the Arabs[Read More…]

Pain mixed with hope; defiance in the face of unimaginable odds; celebrities show solidarity with Palestine; large protests held in solidarity with Palestinians around the world; Palestinians strike across all of occupied Palestine from the river to the sea; intifada everywhere; a sea change in public perceptions of Palestine and Israel, so much so that NPR this morning called Hamas[Read More…]

1) Palestine was colonized and replaced by a colonial settler state called “Israel”. The ideas was simply to take a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious country and transform it to a “Jewish state.” The core of this project (Zionism) is ethnic cleansing which started under British Rule (to fulfil the illegal Balfour declaration) and continued and accelerated under more direct Zionism control[Read More…]

Written by Romana Rubeo and Ramzy Baroud  On April 1, a mural appeared in the Southern Italian city of Naples, depicting Palestinian workers lining at an Israeli military checkpoint near the occupied city of Bethlehem, in the West Bank. It is called ‘Welcome to Bethlehem’. The mural, which quickly became popular in the town and on social media, was the[Read More…]

Where is Peace, and Where Are the Forces of Justice and Peace? While the overwhelming concern just now should of course be for steps which can check violence immediately, troubling questions remain as to what exactly have the efforts of over seven decades  achieved for bringing justice  to the people of Palestine and peace to the wider troubled region. While[Read More…]

Professor Heike Schotten — Still captured from We Will Not Be Silenced webinar at the University of Massachusetts Boston After Heike Schotten, Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMB), co-organized and moderated a webinar at the University of Massachusetts Boston entitled We Will not Be Silenced: The Repression of Academic Freedom and Resistance, from Leila Khaled to UMass Boston, UMB’s[Read More…]

At a recent virtual J Street Conference, US Senators, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren broke yet another political taboo when they expressed willingness to leverage US military aid as a way to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian human rights. Sanders believes that the US “must be willing to bring real pressure to bear, including restricting US aid, in response to[Read More…]

Left inset, JVP’s Executive Director Stefanie Fox/ Right: Professor Rabab Abdelhadi of AMED Studies, SFSU Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has come a long way since its liberal Zionist days, finally declaring its anti-Zionist position, and has since been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause. But apparently there are still limits. These limits surfaced in a recent meeting between JVP’s[Read More…]

COVID-19 cases in Palestine, especially in Gaza, have reached record highs, largely due to the arrival of a greatly contagious coronavirus variant which was first identified in Britain. Gaza has always been vulnerable to the deadly pandemic. Under a hermetic Israeli blockade since 2006, the densely populated Gaza Strip lacks basic services like clean water, electricity, or minimally-equipped hospitals. Therefore,[Read More…]

Australia’s Labor Party’s recognition of Palestine as a State on March 30 is a welcomed position, though it comes with many caveats. Pro-Palestinian activists are justified to question the sincerity of the ALP’s stance and whether Australia’s Labor is genuinely prepared to fully adopt this position should they form a government following the 2022 elections. The language of the amendment[Read More…]

A Palestinian man, Atef Yousef Hanaysha, was killed by Israeli occupation forces on March 19 during a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlement expansion in Beit Dajan, near Nablus, in the northern West Bank. Although tragic, the above news reads like a routine item from occupied Palestine, where shooting and killing unarmed protesters is part of the daily reality. However,[Read More…]

To dismantle a system of oppression, intensely radical politics are required. That is why any resolution to the Palestinian Nakba in the form of a unitary state cannot possibly retain the fiction that Jews world-wide are a monolith “people” who need to be in-gathered in one place, that place being a geographic territory colonized and violently seized by atheist East[Read More…]

It’s time for a fresh start for Palestine, as Prince Hassan says, but a truly fresh start, not a variant mutation of the toxic past It’s déjà vu time for Palestine; we have lived through the same fiasco before only to get bogged down in the Oslo poisoned swamp. Déjà vu washed over me as I read a letter by[Read More…]

For Palestinians, exile is not simply the physical act of being removed from their homes and their inability to return. It is not a casual topic pertaining to politics and international law, either. Nor is it an ethereal notion, a sentiment, a poetic verse. It is all of this, combined. The death in Amman of Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti, an[Read More…]

Soapbox (described on Facebook as Russia state-controlled media) is circulating a video of veteran Israeli journalist Gideon Levy lecturing against the Zionist occupation of the West Bank. In the first few frames Levy says: “Palestine must be demilitarized.” Sorry, why should Palestine be demilitarized? Don’t they [Palestinians] have their right to self-defense? Levy is here defending Palestinians’ right to armed[Read More…]

Written by  Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo As the US ruling elites have fully succumbed to Israel’s political discourse on Palestine, the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may feel that it, alone, is capable of determining the future of the Palestinian people. This conclusion is, perhaps, gleaned from Israel’s behavior in recent years and months. The expansion[Read More…]

2020 will go down in history as the year that terminated the American-sponsored ‘peace process’. While 2021 will not reverse the monumental change in the US attitude and objectives in Palestine, Israel and the Middle East, the new year presents Palestinians with the opportunity to think outside the American box. The previous year began with an unmistakable American push to[Read More…]

Politically, there is a clear difference between Biden and Trump, but for the Palestinians, they both favor Israel over us — Palestinian taxi driver Ahmed Zayed, former member of Fatah, The Christian Science Monitor, December 2 Two days after that article was published in the Christian Science Monitor, Israeli Occupation Forces killed a teenage Palestinian boy named Ali Ayman Saleh[Read More…]

         Without a doubt, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one of the most irresolvable conflicts of our time. It has been the subject of the world’s top conflict resolution convoys, committees and UN-backed peace talks. As yet, it seems to only get worse with time. And the reason why this is the case is because this conflict is not only a dispute over territorial land. It is first and foremost a conflict of ideologies and narratives. As any conflict of ideologies, power dynamics intervene to champion only the most dominant narrative. Therefore, the recent rise of the Palestinian literary narrative could[Read More…]

I am revising a previous article, Palestine’s Achilles Heel: The Begging Bowl, to expose that the normalisation of the recent UAE and Moroccan ties with the Jewish ‘state’ of Israel brokered by Trump is a piddly PR show. Spoiler alert! The Arab normalisation occurred 72 years ago and has never let up. This explains why Trump was not awarded the[Read More…]

No one seemed as excited about the election of Joe Biden being the next President of the United States as Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas. When all hope seemed lost, where Abbas found himself desperate for political validation and funds, Biden arrived like a conquering knight on a white horse and swept the Palestinian leader away to safety. Abbas was[Read More…]

An Archetypical Anglo-American Colonial Crime Against Humanity! In order to militarily penetrate the oil rich Middle East, a courageous and noble socialist Zionism and despised Holocaust survivors, denied refugee status, were used by an Anglo-American colonial business elite that was anti-Semitic in outlook, coldly indifferent and even complicit, during the Holocaust its investments in rearming Germany made possible. An Archetypical[Read More…]

In recent months, Israel made diplomatic deals with two Middle East countries such as the UAE and Bahrain. These formal diplomatic ties, brokered by the USA which earlier revealed a Middle East peace plan, have immediately caused heavy criticisms among many Muslim countries in the Arab region and beyond. Of course, mounting criticisms are not surprising at all since Muslims[Read More…]

In a few words, a close associate of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, summed up the logic behind the ongoing frenzy to expand illegal Jewish settlements in Israel. “These days are an irreplaceable opportunity to establish our hold on the Land of Israel, and I’m sure that our friend, President (Donald) Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu will be able to[Read More…]

The United Nations has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for Palestinian self-determination and end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory since 1967. The resolution was approved on Thursday by the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee — the committee that deals with human rights and humanitarian affairs. It was passed 163 to 5, with 10 abstentions. Those who voted against were:[Read More…]

Belgium is furious. On November 6, the Belgian government condemned Israel’s destruction of Belgian-funded homes in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Understandably, Brussels wants the Israeli government to pay compensation for the unwarranted destruction. The Israeli response was swift: a resounding ‘no’. The diplomatic row is likely to fizzle out soon; neither will Israel cease its illegal demolitions of Palestinian[Read More…]

“If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us, God help you and God help the whole world.” These were the words of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, during a virtual meeting with European legislators on November 3. While some may agree with Shtayyeh’s assessment, such utterances by a top Palestinian official are[Read More…]

The discussion on institutional Israeli racism against its own Palestinian Arab population has all but ceased following the final approval of the discriminatory Nation-State Law in July 2018. Indeed, the latest addition to Israel’s Basic Law is a mere start of a new government-espoused agenda that is designed to further marginalize over a fifth of Israel’s population. On Wednesday, October[Read More…]

Co-Written by Romana Rubeo & Ramzy Baroud A Zionist-led war on a Palestinian cultural festival in Rome has exposed the fragility of the Italian political system when it comes to the conversation on Palestine and Israel. The sad truth is that, although Italy is not often associated with a ‘powerful’ pro-Israel lobby as is the case in Washington, the pro-Israel[Read More…]

Palestine under siege for 72 years. A UK-prompted UN decision in 1947 allowed David Ben-Gurion, then the head of the Jewish Agency, to proclaim on May 14, 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, a UN proposal, recommended a partition of “Mandatory Palestine” at the end of the British Mandate. “Mandatory Palestine” (picture to the left[Read More…]

Let me share a true story about the abuse of innocence. Mohammad Al Halabi, World Vision-Australia’s respected Gaza/WB coordinator, has been been illegally held without charge and tortured by Israel since 2016 and is forced to futilely attend court  – now 151 times! He is due in court again on 18-11-2020. Mohammad is a man of peace and love. On[Read More…]

It is abundantly clear that Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has underestimated the seriousness of the challenges facing Palestine and the Palestinians. The rushed agreement between his party, Fatah and Hamas in Istanbul on September 24, and the Palestinian leader’s speech at the 75th session of the UN General Assembly the following day, indicate that the Palestinian leadership insists on[Read More…]

by Wafaa Aludaini and Ramzy Baroud The inevitable has finally happened, and the coronavirus pandemic is now ravaging the besieged Gaza Strip. On August 24, a total lockdown was imposed by the Gaza authorities following the discovery of several COVID-19 cases outside designated quarantine areas. Since then, over 1,000 cases have been identified and ten people have died. Experts estimate[Read More…]

Palestinians are not going anywhere. This is the gist of seven decades of Palestinian struggle against Zionist colonialism. The proof? The story of Ahmed Amarneh. Amarneh, a 30-year-old civil engineer from the northern West Bank village of Farasin, lives with his family in a cave. For many years, the Amarneh family has attempted to build a proper home, but their[Read More…]

As illegal Jewish settlers increase their attacks on Palestinian civilians in the occupied city of Al Khalil (Hebron), the people of the Palestinian city continue to mount a campaign of popular resistance. One of the channels of resistance is Human Rights Defenders, “a grass-roots, non-partisan Palestinian organization, working to support nonviolent popular resistance through popular direct action and documentation of[Read More…]

The one-state cannot be achieved without changing Israel’s legal and administrative structures, difficult tasks whose possibilities are remote. Deposing the characteristics of the Zionist mission that defines Israel is more plausible. Deposition precedes imposition; destroying the framework that supports Israel allows a new foundation for constructing a new state ─ a one-state, the natural state. Now that the two state[Read More…]

In a recent TV discussion, a respected pro-Palestine journalist declared that if any positive change or transformation ever occurs in the tragic Palestinian saga, it would not happen now, but that it would take a whole new generation to bring about such a paradigm shift. As innocuous as the declaration may have seemed, it troubled me greatly. I have heard[Read More…]

In all the years that I have been involved in the desperate story of my country and my people I have never felt more despair than at this moment. My despair does not stem from the loss of faith in my people’s ability to fight, resist and sacrifice. No, not at all. We Palestinians have been resisting and fighting our[Read More…]

Jewish supremacy is a characteristic of the Zionist Jewish state of Israel. Some Israeli human rights activists deny this fact. Some know it but avoid discussing it for fear of being attacked as anti-Jewish. It is safer for critics of Israel to address the other characteristics of the Zionist state — its settler-colonial origins, its apartheid as enshrined in law, or the[Read More…]

Co-Written by Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold Joe Biden wants you to believe that he is opposed to Israel’s likely annexation of parts of the West Bank that Netanyahu plans to carry out in July. “I do not support annexation,” he said during a call with American Jewish donors on June 16. But only a month ago, Biden senior foreign[Read More…]

“Who excavates Muslim Palestinian graves and mosques in [Palestine’s] depopulated towns and why?”, asks Haifa-based Palestinian advocate Jehad Abu-Rayya. “Recently,” he goes on, “these desecrations have been on the increase — In the village of Beit Jibreen, in the village of Al-Lajjun, in the village of Amwas, in the village of Al-Ghabisiya, village of Hittin — and these are only a few of such[Read More…]

Co-Written by Ramzy Baroud & Romana Rubeo Wafaa Aludaini is a witness to many of Gaza’s recent tragedies and also never-ending resistance. She experienced the violent Israeli occupation, the subsequent blockade on the impoverished Strip, and several wars that resulted in the death and wounding of tens of thousands of Palestinians. But none of Israel’s wars impacted Aludaini’s life as[Read More…]

Some Palestinian friends in wonderful, peaceful  but presently Covid-19 lockdown Melbourne, were considering celebrating International  Falafel Day (12 June). The falafel is a delicious  Palestinian and Middle Eastern delicacy that is  a spicy, deep fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas and/or  fava beans. Apartheid Israel having stolen the whole country of Palestine  has also appropriated the falafel  as[Read More…]

A Jewish family looks out over Haram al-Sharif compound, March 2013. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90) Netanyahu’s impending annexation of the Judaized parts of the West Bank (he says July 1st) is a transformative event for Palestinian politics, and the Palestinian people, who have long been reined in by impositions that accept Zionist myths and outright falsehoods and pay only lip-service[Read More…]

As part of an effort to be balanced in the final stages of a Phd on counter-terrorism,I recently spent six weeks in Palestine ‘to see things for myself’. I can’t think of another ‘place nor issue’ in world affairs that is more emotive, misrepresented, ‘linked to terrorism’, and further sits at the heart of grievance in the Muslim world. I[Read More…]

Once more, the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 is taking center stage. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas insisted during his speech before the recently-concluded Arab League Summit in Jordan, that the Initiative is the only solution on the table; asserting that it will not be changed or even tweaked. But why is this Initiative, which was put forward by Saudi Arabia 15 years[Read More…]

The doctor studied the test results, raised her head and smiled. “Pregnant,” she said. “Congratulations, you are pregnant!” All I could muster in response was: “Why?” Joy, excitement and fear knotted inside me. My husband and I would soon have a baby, filling our life with love and noise. But a storm of questions raged in my head. I immediately[Read More…]

  Empirical historical evidence combined with little common-sense are enough to tell us the type of future options that Israel has in store for the Palestinian people: perpetual Apartheid or ethnic cleansing, or a mix of both. The passing of the ‘Regularization Bill‘ on February 6 is all we need to imagine the Israeli-envisaged future. The new law allows the[Read More…]

Poor Palestine – the major Palestinian players, Fatah and Hamas have degraded and set back the liberation movement by crawling with begging bowls to self-interested, absolutely not Palestine-interested, Arab states, and furthermore both are fickle beggars switching loyalties to conform to the US volatile currents in the Middle East. Arab regimes quarter-hearted support for Palestine goes back to the Nakba,[Read More…]

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has designated the week, November 25 to December 3, as the ‘biggest-ever campaign’ aimed at boycotting Israeli products and those of companies that contribute to the Israeli military occupation of Palestine. In a recently issued press release, the civil society-led group highlighted “99 actions that will take place across the world to highlight what they described[Read More…]

  Fear and trepidation are slowly building up, as US President-elect, Donald Trump, is fortifying his transitional team with people capable of bringing about a nightmare scenario, not only for Americans but for the rest of the world, as well. For Palestinians, however, the signs are even more ominous. From former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, to Republican leader Newt[Read More…]

  Division within Palestinian society has reached unprecedented levels, becoming a major hurdle on the path of any unified strategy to end Israel’s violent occupation or to rally Palestinians behind a single objective. Newly-appointed Israeli ultra-nationalist, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, understands this too well. His tactic since his ascension to office last May is centered on investing more in these divisions as[Read More…]

Taybeh is the last all-Christian and self-sufficient community in the occupied state of Palestine. “Taybeh” means delicious when referring to food or drink. “Taybeh” means “kind” and “good” when referring to people or places. Following the signing of the Oslo Peace Agreement [1993] and inspired by their late father, Canaan David Khoury, David and Nadim returned to their home village[Read More…]