Tag: Indigenous

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Situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967* by Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

In a settler-colonial context and an apartheid regime, any display of collective identity and (re)claimed sovereignty from the subjugated people represents a threat to the regime itself. On 13 May 2022, Palestinian pallbearers were attacked by Israeli forces while also carrying their national flag during the funeral of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who had been killed two days earlier (see para. 58). In fact, Palestinian “symbols”, like the Palestinian flag, are systematically attacked and torn down, in public places, during public events, protests and even funerals, with the display of Palestinian national identity being de facto banned. In the occupied Palestinian territory, preventing the Palestinian people from expressing their collective identity in their own land has taken many forms.

This is part of a broader and deeper endeavour to “deconstruct and replace” Palestine from the collective imagination through a combination of cultural appropriation and the erasure of key cultural entities. [106] The Moroccan Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, destroyed at the beginning of the occupation to make space for the Wailing Wall esplanade, is one of the first recorded cases of Palestinian venues destroyed or seized and converted to Israeli cultural sites soon after June 1967.
Similarly, attempts to erase the Palestinian character of what is left of Palestinian ancestral land include: the elimination of Palestinian history in East Jerusalem schools, [107] the revocation of licences to Palestinian schools not adhering to Israeli curriculum policies [108] and the conversion or closure of sites representing Palestinian cultural, political and religious identity. [109]

Attacks on cultural objects of significance to eliminate all traces and expressions of Palestinian existence, and the incorporation of a revisionist view of history to assert (false) claims of sovereignty in the occupied Palestinian territory, demonstrate the occupier’s intention to permanently strip the land of its indigenous identity.

Continue reading at https://www.un.org/unispal/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/A.77.356_210922.pdf

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For ‘love’: charity-washing colonialism, fascism and genocide by Azeezah Kanji

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Such absurdities expose the contradictions of the “non-profit industrial complex”: which, like the military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes, serves to enforce deeply-rooted structures of domination. The difference is that the non-profit version operates under the mantle of benevolence and love – “love” being the literal translation of the Latin term caritas, from which the word “charity” is derived.

… Political philosopher Hannah Arendt famously analysed the “banality of evil”. Here, we have the “benevolence” of evil. Violence is rationalised not simply as mundane, but morally imperative.

Against this colonial caritas, communities and movements are demonstrating their own forms of decolonial love: building up interfaith and intercommunal solidarity against the politics of genocidal nationalism and fascism, from Myanmar to India to Israel to the US.

Continue reading at https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/12/for-love-charity-washing-colonialism-fascism-and-genocide

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Solidarity between Palestinians and Indigenous Activists has Deep Roots by Marion Kawas

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The BDS National Committee (BNC) released a powerful statement at the same time as diaspora Palestinians in Vancouver sent greetings to the daily #WetsuwetenStrong protest in that city. Both emphasized the brave and tireless resistance of the indigenous defenders, with the BNC noting that Palestinians owe them “a great debt for teaching us how to resist settler colonialism generation after generation through your powerful resistance, grace and indomitable spirit”. 

But these strong expressions of Palestinian support are not new and have a long and rich history.

… In 2012, there was a strong statement of support from Palestinians with the IdleNoMore movement and indigenous rights. Multiple organizations and individuals signed on to show the depth of support and understanding between the two struggles. They said in part:

“We recognize the deep connections and similarities between the experiences of our peoples – settler colonialism, destruction and exploitation of our land and resources, denial of our identity and rights, genocide and attempted genocide.”

Continue reading at https://www.palestinechronicle.com/solidarity-between-palestinians-and-indigenous-activists-has-deep-roots/

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Pro-Palestinian art appears on Old Pecos Trail wall on The Santa Fe New Mexican

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

A Navajo artist who claimed he produced the pro-Palestinian graffiti that appeared Sunday on an east-side wall said his intention was to create a comparison between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the plight of Native Americans during periods of colonialism and conquest.
The artist, who identified himself only as “Remy,” said in an interview Monday that the images of armed Israeli soldiers and tanks confronting Palestinian women and children show “the similarities when you look at the indigenous struggle of this continent and the indigenous struggle there… “It’s anti-oppression, it’s anti-genocide,” said Remy, of Black Mesa, Ariz., who has had his artwork exhibited in several Southwestern venues in recent years.

Continue reading at https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/pro-palestinian-art-appears-on-old-pecos-trail-wall/article_b28226ba-30a5-11ea-a755-9375ab21b64f.html

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Black-Palestinian Solidarity conference: Contesting settler nationalisms by Gary Foley and Suzannah Henty

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Hage’s second key point was directed against speaking about genocide as if it were a fait accompli after which attempts at reconciliation are to be made. In fact, both Aboriginal and Palestinian peoples have survived extermination attempts and refused settler-controlled reconciliation. 

Continue reading at https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/conference-report/black-palestinian-solidarity-conference

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Why indigenous Canadians should stand with Palestinians by Ahmad Moussa

PLEASE TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW AND SEND YOUR LETTER TO THE UN OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE AND THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PROSECUTOR.

One key tactic used by pro-Zionists to contribute to the ongoing memoricide against Palestinians is perpetuating a claim that they have indigenous rights to the historic land of Palestine. The aliyah, or right of Jews to immigrate to this land, is what distinguishes the settler-colonialism in Palestine from the broader global indigenous context. 

Zionists have made such claims through religious justifications similar to those embraced by the Puritans in North America: that Palestine, known as the “promised land”, was ordained to any person who identifies as Jewish. Zionists have exploited genuine Jewish suffering to advance an incremental genocide against the Palestinians, with memoricide continuing at a steady pace.

Continue reading at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-indigenous-canadians-should-stand-palestinians

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The Fear of Palestinian Existence by Denijal Jegić

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Fear has consistently shaped Zionism’s approach towards the indigenous Palestinians. As Palestinians have been blamed for merely standing in the way of the colonizer, their removal which has entailed multidimensional policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide, has been rhetorically rationalized through Orientalist transformations of Palestinians from the original owners of the land into “Islamist” terrorists. While Palestinians face a multitude of structural and physical violence, reoccurring culminations of Israeli aggressions resulting in the mass production of Palestinian death have repeatedly highlighted the always-already dehumanized position of Palestinians in the Western political and public sphere.

Continue reading at http://www.palestinechronicle.com/fear-palestinian-existence/

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Vanishing Palestine by Lila Sharif

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Palestine’s landscape becomes the exclusive property of Israeli state bureaucracy and Jewish settlement. Through legal measures, genocide is embedded in the very architecture of Israeli settler- colonial occupation in ways that make impossible Palestinian claims to land. The “off limits” status of Palestinian lands also manifests within architectures of surveillance and confinement, as biopolitical forms of genocide.
… as a settler- colonial power, Israel’s implmentation of direct and indirect structures of genocide ranges from outlaw-ing the word nakbah in historical textbooks and colloquial discourse, to providing a Palestinian homeowner one week to demolish their own home or be imprisoned and fined, to eliminating any trace of Palestinian life in areas like Jabal Abu- Ghneim. For Shehadeh, Israeli “law” meant that members of his family legally did not exist
… The eco- occupation of Palestine thus extends beyond spectacular massacres to mundane forms of genocide vis- à- vis the regulation and monitoring of Palestinian land and biopolitics. As a result of these measures, “life is lived on threads” in such a way that is obscured by the regimes of legality where the management of bodies masquerade as due processes that render Palestinian lifeways and landways “off limits.

Continue reading at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304573221_Vanishing_Palestine

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PFLP salutes Native and Indigenous struggle at Standing Rock #NoDAPL by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine extends its strongest support and solidarity to the indigenous resistance at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the settler colonial project of genocide and plunder in North America.

“It is no surprise that the United States and Canada, built on the genocide of indigenous peoples and the plunder of their land and resources, are today the strongest settler colonial partners of the Zionist state engaged in its own settler colonial project of destruction in Palestine,” said Palestinian leftist writer Khaled Barakat in an interview with the PFLP media office.

… “The hundreds of indigenous nations – including Palestinian participants – coming together in Standing Rock exemplify an unceasing history of hundreds of years of resistance in the face of a genocidal project,” said Barakat. “Today’s U.S. empire that bombs and threatens the lives of people around the world, especially in the Arab world, Asia, Africa and Latin America, was built on settler colonialism, the genocide of indigenous people, and the enslavement and genocide aganst Black people. Throughout its history, it has been confronted by fierce resistance.”

Continue reading at http://pflp.ps/english/2016/10/29/pflp-salutes-native-and-indigenous-struggle-at-standing-rock-nodapl/

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Israel’s assaults on Palestinian education amount to genocide by Nada Elia & Rima Najjar

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Its effects can be seen in the recent cuts (the schools have seen the proportion of their operating costs covered by the state fall from 70 percent to 29 percent), the violation of the freedom of movement of schoolchildren and teachers in the occupied West Bank and harassment by Israeli settlers and soldiers, the targeting and arrest ofpolitically active students, the raiding of Palestinian universities at will and the firing of tear gas into campuses, the bombing of schools in Gaza, the denial of exit visas and travel permits to Palestinians wishing to study abroad or even elsewhere in Palestine and of entry visas to Palestinians with American and other citizenship who wish to teach in their homeland… Educational apartheid in Israel must be understood for what it is: an attempt at cultural genocide. Under the United Nations’ 1948 definition of genocide, this crime may include imposing conditions of life on a racial or ethnic group with the intent of wholly or partly destroying that group…

Only half of Palestinian children in Jerusalem were enrolled in the public school system, a study conducted in 2010-2011 found. Meanwhile, costly private schools are largely unsupervised and often fail to provide basic learning conditions. Palestinian children have limited opportunities of going on to study in Israeli universities or to obtain jobs with decent pay.The Israeli government recognizes only one politicized curriculum — its own Zionist one. This curriculum uses Zionist terminology to describe geographic areas in Palestine, like Judea and Samaria for the West Bank and Temple Mount for Haram al-Sharif, the compound that houses al-Aqsa mosque.

 

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-assaults-palestinian-education-amount-genocide/14867