On weekdays, he brings a new generation of Jewish Israelis to life. On weekends, he goes back to his Palestinian patients at the packed Jabaliya refugee camp to try and help them get appointments and transfers to the more developed Israeli hospitals. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, 51, gynecologist and obstetrician, is the first Palestinian doctor working at the Israeli Soroka University Hospital in the city of Beersheba. He goes through security checks and a multitude of checkpoints almost every day to reach his workplace. Read more about A doctor of peace
The Israeli military’s shelling of a Gaza beach on June 9 and killing of eight Palestinian civilians focused world attention on Israel’s intensive artillery campaign against Gaza. Since then, 14 more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli missiles. The US corporate media has highlighted dubious Israeli denials of responsibility for the Gaza beach killings, while providing much less space to Palestinian and third party assertions of Israeli responsibility. Read more about US Corporate Media Misses Target in Israel’s Aerial Assault on Gaza
It is just an old house at the northern edge of Khan Younis, in the south Gaza Strip. Its asbestos ceiling, wrinkled walls, and old wooden doors ridden with holes reflect the cruel poverty of Abdelqader Ahmed, 57. His 80-year-old mother, Fadhiyya Ahmed, spent yesterday in one of her favorite pastimes - being with her family. Sons, daughters, grandsons, and sons-in-law gathered around her, celebrating the return of her son Zakariyya from Saudi Arabia. Read more about A short trip to Gaza made them orphans
In Israeli discourse, Israel is always presented as the side exercising restraint in its conflict with the Palestinians. In the past week, it was “leaked” that the Israeli Minister of Defense had directed the army to show restraint. During the past week of Israeli restraint, the army killed a Palestinian family who went on a picnic on the Beit Lahya beach in the Gaza Strip; after that, the army killed nine people in order to liquidate a Katyusha rocket. Read more about A Week of Israeli Restraint
Recently, the Hudson Institute, a prestigious, academic think-tank in the United States, with an impressive list of associates though strongly pro-Israel roots, released a surprisingly amateurish report through its project ‘Eye on the UN’. The report criticises the United Nations for granting consultative status to the internationally respected Palestinian NGO Badil. As Yacoub Kahlen writes, their flimsy critiques are strong indications of the growing desperation amongst elite supporters of Israel that the Zionist lobby is losing the moral argument, and just like the NGO Monitor, the ‘Eye on the UN’ should not be taken seriously by anyone interested in serious analysis and a human rights perspective. Read more about Hudson Institute and 'Eye on the UN' join the ranks of gutter journalists
Azza El Hassan’s documentary Kings and Extras: Digging for a Palestinian Image chronicles the director’s journey on the trail of the lost PLO film archive that went missing in Beirut in 1982. Through the narratives of individuals whose interviews El Hassan feels can assist her with locating the lost archive, the film touches on several aspects of contemporary Palestinian life. The engaging documentary was featured in this year’s Chicago Palestine Film Festival, adding yet another dimension to the chronicling of Palestinian history. Read more about Film Review: "Kings and Extras": Digging for a Palestinian Image
This year at the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, the Balata Film Collective presented their thirty-one minute documentary Nour’s Dream. Through a visual journey of Palestinian history, culture, heritage and resistance the film demonstrates the imperative need for the documentation of Palestinian lives. As the fictional main character, Nour narrates the documentary by informing the viewer of the significance of stones within past and present Palestinian society. Read more about Film Review: The Balata Film Collective: "Nour's Dream"
If you keep lying long enough and with enough conviction, people start to believe you — or at least doubt the evidence in front of their own eyes. And so it has been with the Israeli army’s account of how seven members of a Palestinian family were killed, and dozens of other Palestinians injured, during shelling close by a beach in Gaza. The army has been claiming for more than a week, based on its own evidence, that the lethal explosion was not caused by a stray shell landing on the Gaza beach but most probably by a mine placed there by Palestinian militants to prevent an Israeli naval landing. The army’s case could be dismissed outright were it not for the racist assumptions that now prevail as Western “thought” about Arabs and Muslims. Read more about The truth lies buried in Gaza sands
The screaming of 11 year old Palestinian Huda Abu Ghalia from Gaza seems not to have reached American officials. Huda’s parents and five siblings were killed before her eyes last week when Israeli artillery crashed onto the beach as they picnicked. The US was the only major power which not only refused to condemn the incident, but described it as “self defense.” Afterwards, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Israel’s army the “most moral” in the world. Palestinian Central Election Commission Salfit coordinator, Fareed Taamallah, comments. Read more about America deaf to Palestinian screams
Some weeks ago I heard Jan Wijenberg, a retired Dutch Ambassador, speak about what the International Community could do to break with its complicity to the ongoing violations of international law and human rights by the Israeli regime. Wijenberg served over a decade as an ambassador for the Dutch government in Jemen, Tanzania and Saudi Arabia. He regularly writes to Dutch ministers and politicians to remind them of the responsibility of the Dutch government and the EU to hold Israel accountable to international law. His views are expressed in this article. Read more about Former Dutch Ambassador Calls for Sanctions if Israel Refuses to Comply with International Law
