Ramallah Underground
May 1, 2008
Ramallah Underground are a collective based in Ramallah Palestine . They have collaborated with artists from across the globe including Lebanon, UK, Switzerland, USA, France and much more. Their lyrics are an expression of anguish and defiance - the voice of the colonised against the coloniser. The website not only contains many excellent tracks (some of which are sampled below) but also an impressive visual art gallery.
Another Occupied Town
Tales from the Frontline
Taht Il Ankad
I also recommended Reporting Live - all tracks available for download on the site.
Thus Spoke Fanon
April 20, 2008
A documentary based on Frantz Fanon’s Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks).
Free, Free, Virtual Palestine!
March 19, 2008
There is no Palestinian State - Israel prevents it. There are however internationally recognised Palestinian Territories - illegally occupied and settled by the Zionists. Should a settler be allowed to say they are living on Israeli territory in facebook? Clearly not - these lands are not ‘disputed’ they are Palestinian Territories as judged, for example, in 2004 by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The ICJ, in its advisory opinion, ruled that “[a]ll these territories (including East Jerusalem) remain occupied territories” (paragraph 7
and it concluded that “the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law” (paragraph 120).
To allow fundamentalist colonial settlers, who are forcibly trying to evict the natives in cities like Hebron, to say they are now living on Israeli Territory legitimises their efforts to conquer new lands and to ethnically cleanse the locals.
Facebook however doesn’t agree which is no surprise considering the application is run by neocon sympathisers receiving sponsorship money from the Pentagons ‘War of Terror’. With that in mind the only surprise is that Palestine was on it in the first place!
Complaints by Jewish settlers angry at Facebook for listing them as residents of “Palestine” prompted the popular social networking Web site to allow users to switch themselves back to Israel.
Facebook users living in Maale Adumim, Ariel and other large Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank protested when the site automatically listed their hometowns as being in “Palestine.” A group of settlers accused the California-based company of having a political agenda.
“I was surprised and disappointed to find that my hometown of Ariel is listed in Facebook as being part of a country called ‘Palestine,”‘ wrote Ari Zimmerman in a posting on Facebook. “I am a citizen of Israel, as are all of the other residents of Ariel. We do not live in ‘Palestine’, nor does anyone else.”
Zionism & Two-state Dreamers
March 12, 2008
Jonathan Cook asks - If a one state solution is impossible, why is Olmert so afraid of it?
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinans.
The philosopher Michael Neumann has dedicated two articles, in 2007 and earlier this week, for CounterPunch discrediting the one-state idea as impractical and therefore as worthless of consideration. In response, Kathy Christison has mounted a robust defense, neatly exposing the twists and turns of Neumann’s logic. I will not trouble to cover the same ground.
I want instead to address Neumann’s central argument: that it is at least possible to imagine a consensus emerging behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept a single state. That argument, the rallying cry of most two-staters, paints the one-state crowd as inveterate dreamers and time-wasters.
The Experiment in Gaza
February 4, 2008
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the occupied territories by Israel, yet they have all been buried in the inner pages of British press. A Palestinian bomber kills one today, and its front page news. Here is Neve Gordon on the experiment in famine being carried out by Israel which may explain why such attacks are a mere inevitability.
The experiment in famine began on January 18, 2008. Israel hermetically closed all of Gaza’s borders, preventing food, medicine and fuel from entering the Strip. Power cuts, which had been frequent for many months, were extended to 12 hours per day. Because of the electricity shortage, at least 40 percent of Gazans have not had access to running water (which is channeled through electric pumps) for days and the sewage system has broken down. The raw sewage that has not spilled onto the streets is being poured into the sea at a daily rate of 30 million liters. Hospitals have been forced to rely on emergency generators, leading them to cut back, yet again, on the already limited services offered to the Palestinian population. The World Food Programme has reported critical shortages of food and declared that it is unable to provide 10,000 of the poorest Gazans with three out of the five foodstuffs they normally receive.
After five days of extreme suffering, a group of Hamas militants took the lead and blew-up parts of the steel wall along the Egyptian border. Within hours, more than 100,000 Gazans crossed the border into Egypt. They were hungry, thirsty, and sick of being locked up in a filthy cage. Once in Egypt, they bought everything they could get their hands on and waited patiently for the international community to intervene on their behalf. Yet the world leaders failed them again, and on January 28, after a five-day respite, the iron wall was re-erected and the Palestinians were pushed back into the world’s largest prison—the Gaza Strip.
Kafkaesque Jerusalem
February 4, 2008
Ilan Pappe recently wrote an article stating that Israeli policy is implementing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza. It was always thought that Palestinian residents of Jerusalem were better off, but this article by Lubna Masarwa demonstrates that Palestinians are subject to a Kafkaesque regime: arbitrary searches and blockades, confiscation of identity papers (thus losing residency rights), blockade of entire sections of the city, intrusive video surveillance, etc. The relentless drive to Judaize entire neighborhoods in Jerusalem requires the constant screwing of the Palestinians — no matter how long they have lived there. Israelis refer to this as “ethnic thinning”, the oh-so-genteel form of ethnic cleansing. Masarwa writes:
I will present a partial picture of the life of East Jerusalem residents. I will attempt to touch on the heavy price paid by Palestinian society in al-Quds due to Israeli defined “security considerations,” a designation trotted out by Israeli authorities on almost every possible occasion with intent to win battles in the demographic war over it sees itself engaged in against the Palestinians of East Jerusalem. In fact, a central and publicized objective of Israel concerning everything related to East Jerusalem is the creation of a demographic and geographic reality that will bring about an increase in the number of Jews living in the city and the largest possible decrease in the number of Palestinians living there. In order to reach this objective, the state enlists all of its institutions. For instance, the National Insurance Institute (NII), intended to serve the welfare of residents, also acts as a supplementary political appendage, serving the Zionist vision of Israel and harming residents through the non-provision of social services that it is obligated to provide. Almost every day, we receive complaints from tens of East Jerusalem residents whose national security allowances have been terminated. From conversations I conduct with the NII clerks, it appears that residents of East Jerusalem, in order to receive their national insurance benefits as mandated by law, must meet near impossible conditions. They must provide receipts proving payment of city taxes and electricity for up to the past seven years, photographs of their house, and proof they have no property in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The waiting periods for these residents can last years, and, in the meantime, they remain without the ability to receive medical attention or their legally mandated benefits-in numerous instances, the sole family income.
