Whenever there is injustice, there are people fighting it with every possible means. We have seen it so many times before: the oppressed rise up, the oppressor dehumanizes them calling them such names as “terrorists”, “saboteurs”, “death loving” extremists… It is only normal that the oppressor will always lie to justify his actions and its crimes.
What is different in the case of Palestine, is that the Israeli regime has built an effective media and communications networks and campaigns to distort the image of the Palestinian resistance, and that a large portion of the world has believed the Israeli line and hence adopted it.
It is our duty to remember and remind the world that the Palestinian freedom fighter is a man, a woman, like any other. He loves his family. She loves her country. They seek a better future. They are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of justice and freedom. They waited for the world to lift the blatant injustice that has befallen them since 1948. They expected the world to understand when they took up arms to lift this injustice themselves.
Now, they don’t care what anyone else calls them. They do not seek anyone’s permission, just like any resistance movement. They believe that their cause will be triumphant because it is a cause for justice and humanity. They are merely fulfilling their duty to make the day of justice in Palestine come sooner. So should we.
(Most of the photos used in this video are by Mr. Ahmad Mesleh, Palestine)
Note seen in comments : 3ala fekra, Onadeekom is written by Tawfiq Zayyad (RIP), not by Mahmoud Darwich (RIP), ALLAH yer7amhon el 2
Palestinian rap group DAM (Da Arab MC’s, or “forever” in Arabic) created this music video about the life of Palestinians in Israel. They’re from Lod, a town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, so they’re Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (often called “Israeli Arabs”). They usually rap in Arabic, but they made a Hebrew version of this song with a music video to get their message out to the majority of Israelis who don’t speak Arabic.
You find out more about them at http://www.dampalestine.com/main.html .
I’ve always wanted a subtitled version, so I broke down and adapted the lyrics from their website, to create this. I think this is one of the most powerful rap songs out there.
See http://moomtastic.com/born-here.html to see my extended comments on the video and its chorus.
By the way, a lot of people are confused about what DAM stands for, but it really is “forever” or “eternity”. See the interview at http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/15…, where you’ll find this:
TAMER NAFAR: Ill just correct you. Actually, dam is eternity in Arabic and blood in Hebrew. So its eternal blood, like we will stay here forever.
Mondoweiss writes:
On Sunday, the last day of his 81st year, Noam Chomsky gave a speech on Gaza in Watertown, Mass., at the behest of Newton Dialogues on Peace and War. They raised alot of money for the Gaza Freedom March. I heard a rumor that the original venue for the speech, Eliot Church in Newton, had dropped the speech under pressure, saying that the speech was “controversial” and had not gone through the appropriate processes for church events. I emailed Newton Dialogues. Dave Ascher responded. If you read between the lines of his response below, it is clear that the Eliot Church came under pressure because of the political nature of the Chomsky speech.
Press Release, Gaza Freedom March
December 4, 2009
The Gaza Freedom March that will take place in Gaza on 31 December is an historic initiative to break the siege that has imprisoned the 1.5 million people who live there. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and nonviolent resistance to injustice worldwide, the march will gather people from all over the world to march — hand in hand — with the people of Gaza to demand that the Israelis open the borders.
Marking the one-year anniversary of the December 2008 Israeli invasion that left more than 1,400 dead, this is a grassroots global response to the inaction on the part of world leaders and institutions. More than 1,000 international delegates from 42 countries have already signed up and more are signing on every day.
Participants include Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, leading Syrian comedian Duraid Lahham, French Senator Alima Boumediene-Thiery, autthor and Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello, former European Parliamentarians Luisa Morgantini from Italy and Eva Quistorp from Germany, President of the US Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Michael Ratner, Japanese former Ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaki, French hip-hop artists Ministere des Affaires Populaires, and 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.
We also have families of three generations, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, 70 students, an interfaith group that includes rabbis, priests and imams, a women’s delegation, a Jewish contingent, a veterans group and Palestinians born overseas who have never seen their families in Gaza.
The international delegates will enter Gaza via Egypt during the last week of December. In the morning 31 December, they will join Palestinians in a nonviolent march from northern Gaza to the Erez/Israeli border. On the Israeli side of the Erez border will be a gathering of Palestinians and Jews who are also calling on the Israeli government to open the border.
Inside Gaza, excitement is growing. Representatives of all aspects of civil society, including students, professors, refugee groups, unions, women’s organizations, nongovernmental organizations, have been busy organizing and estimate that at least 50,000 Palestinians will participate. People from the different sectors will march in their uniforms — fishermen, doctors, students, farmers, etc. Local Palestinian rappers, hip-hop bands and dabke dancers will perform on mobile stages.
Around 100 demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and wearing fluorescent jackets reading, “We are going to Jerusalem,” broke through near the Qalandiya military checkpoint, onlookers said. A truck was used to pull down the concrete slabs making up the wall, an organizer said.
Early reports said the demonstration was planned by the “popular committees” local groups organized to oppose the construction of the wall.
Last Friday, protesters in the village of Ni’lin also managed to tear down a section of the wall. Residents of the village, like those in many towns along the route of the wall, participate in weekly demonstrations against the barrier and the associated annexation of their land.
Intended to be 709 kilometers in length, Israel had completed 413 kilometers of the wall by June 2009, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The barrier, in reality a network of walls, fences, watchtowers and checkpoints, snakes through the interior of the West Bank, looping around Israeli settlements and fragmenting Palestinian communities.
The International Court of Justice ruled that the wall is illegal under international law in 2004. Israel maintains the barrier is for its security.
By Mary Rizzo • Nov 9th, 2009 at 16:11 •
A group of Palestinians from the popular committees and Fatah movement tore down a part of the Apartheid Wall separating occupied East Jerusaelm from the rest of the West Bank.
On Monday 9 November a hundred Palestinians waving Palestinain flags and wearing florecent jackets saying “WE ARE GOING TO JERUSALEM” took down a piece of the concrete wall near the Kalandia airport.
The following leaflet was distributed by a group of Palestinians who tore down the Wall near Jerusalem:
On 9 November 1989 the world witnessed the moment of the demolition of the Berlin Wall.
Similarly, at this moment, twenty years later, a group of Palestinians have demolished part of the Apartheid Wall around Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, that bleeds every day… Jerusalem whose children are homeless under the rain. These young boys and girls who were promised by the martyr president Yaser Arafat that they would raise the Palestinian flag on the churches and mosques of Jerusalem. Mosques and churches who’s sanctity is defiled while we passively wait for salvation unaware that the responsibility lies with each and every one of us.
Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:34:55 GMT
Israel’s ambassador to Ankara has been pelted with eggs during a visit to a Turkish university in the coastal city of Trabzon.
Angry Turkish students threw eggs at Gabi Levy as he arrived at Karadeniz Teknik university on Wednesday.
The students protesting against Tel Aviv’s policies regarding the Palestinians, including the issues of illegal settlement activity in the West bank and the war on the Gaza Strip.
Police detained a group of 20 students and the Israeli ambassador left without getting out of his vehicle, Anatolia reported.
The embarrassing incident came only one day after Gabi Levy, who is on a tour of the region, faced harsh criticism in the nearby city of Rize, where local officials condemned Israel’s “policies of expansion and occupation” and said that the so-called “self-defense” should not involve “killing children.”
Ankara-Tel Aviv re relations deteriorated after Israel’s deadly military offensive in Gaza that killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, at the turn of the year.
The two side’s bilateral relations further deteriorated last month, after Ankara excluded Israel from an international air force exercise in protest at “the humanitarian tragedy” in Gaza and called for an immediate lifting of Gaza siege, which has put the region’s 1.5 million population in desperate need of basic necessities.
HE/MMN
band annie's Weblog 