Tag: Nada Elia

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No, life during the coronavirus isn’t like Gaza by Nada Elia

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.

Another key difference lies in the fact that nobody blames Seattle, or the Bay Area, for bringing the virus onto itself.  In the good-guy-bad-guy binary, COVID-19 is the bad guy, and people getting sick are the innocent good guys, who do not deserve to die. Even if they have been irresponsible, even if they have traveled, and partied, and hugged, and not washed their hands.  The population of Gaza, on the other hand, is often presented as having somewhat brought the siege upon itself. Despite Israel’s violation of international law and the human rights of Palestinian refugees, Israel is still, in the eyes of many, “the good guy” defending itself from the Palestinians.  We still hear, over and over again, that the real reason Gaza is under a siege that has been accurately described as incremental genocide is “Hamas.” As if, if it weren’t for Hamas, Israel would allow the refugees to return to their stolen homes and lands.

Continue reading at https://mondoweiss.net/2020/03/no-life-during-the-coronavirus-isnt-like-gaza/

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#Normalisation Is Treason: Why artists must side with oppressed Palestinians by Nada Elia

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.

Mansour’s appearance in Jerusalem, and the screening of her feature film there, are all part of culture-washing Israel’s encroachment on the human rights of an entire people, whose women, children and men have no country whatsoever, and are made refugees in their own land, while Mansour enjoys the privileges of a cosmopolitan life.  
So long as there are boundaries placed by Israel on an oppressed people – in the form of apartheid, occupation, the denial of the right of return, and a siege bordering on genocide in Gaza – then artists must side with the oppressed, or their art will be used to bolster the oppressor.   

Continue reading at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/normalisationistreason-why-artists-must-side-oppressed-palestinians

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Change cannot happen just by switching political leaders, we need to change the system Activism by Nada Elia

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.

We need to abolish the settler-colonial mindset, which is at the root of the problem, indeed, its very cause. Just as revolutionary visionaries advocate prison abolition, rather than prison reform, we need to advocate indigenous liberation, not setter-colonial “reform.”  To elaborate on the comparison, “prison reform” assumes that the institution of incarcerating criminals is not essentially flawed, and can be improved upon.  In the settler-colonial context, “reformers” assume that the US and Israel are not fundamentally and violently racist, they can become “multiethnic democracies.” On the other hand, prison abolitionists want a world without prisons, because incarceration itself, not just the way it is currently practiced, is wrong.  They argue that incarceration is never the solution, and can only have a detrimental effect on the incarcerated and society at large. Settler-colonial abolitionists, then, would seek an abolition, rather than a “reform” of the US and Israel, whose very existence hinges on indigenous genocide, so as to respect indigenous sovereignty.

Continue reading at https://mondoweiss.net/2019/04/switching-political-leaders/

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Israel forces teachers to leave Palestine by Nora Barrows-Friedman

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 president of Arab American University, a private institution based in the West Bank city of Jenin, condemned Israel’s closure of the college. Ali Abu Zuhri argued it was an attempt to impose new facts on the ground aimed at changing the cultural and historical identity of Jerusalem… Israel’s closure of Hind al-Husseini college “is one more manifestation of Israel’s relentless assault on Palestinian education and culture, a systematic assault that is tantamount to cultural genocide,” Nada Elia, an organizing committee member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), told The Electronic Intifada.

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/israel-forces-teachers-leave-palestine

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Empty chairs: Combating Israel’s assault on Palestinian academia by Nada Elia

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.
Focusing on the right to a college education may seem like a luxury in the face of incremental genocide. However, when it is understood as part of Israel’s assault on every single aspect of Palestinian life, culture and prospects for a brighter future, it must be denounced for what it is: another cog in Israel’s planned, incremental genocide of the Palestinian people.

Continue reading at http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/empty-chairs-combatting-israel-s-assault-palestinian-academia-65505017

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Gaza’s Great Return March massacre: A turning point? by Nada Elia

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 siege of Gaza, whose population largely comprises refugees, continues to choke the region, in what has been described as an “incremental genocide”.

…This is what Palestinians mean when they say the Nakba is ongoing. The wrongs against us were not perpetrated just once, in 1948; they continue to this day, with more displacement, more land theft and more mass killings.

Continue reading at http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/was-nakba-day-massacre-turning-point-palestinian-struggle-1483873269

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Yes, Palestinians under siege are ‘dehumanised’ – by Israel by Nada Elia

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 long-standing dominant narrative about Palestinians is that we are an expendable people, one whose rights can be trampled with impunity, whose lives don’t matter, because we are lesser beasts on two legs, essentially prone to violence, motivated above all by hatred.
… What does he include under the term ‘humanity’?” the reporter persists. “The ability to see the other, his pain. It will be very difficult to restore the Gazans’ humanity, because they are occupied with their survival, they are concentrated on themselves. They don’t see the other. They themselves have lost control over their sense of feeling, their whole behavior has become a form of acting out.”
I do not want to minimise the severity of daily life in Gaza. I am someone who has insisted the siege be recognised as genocidal. Nevertheless, I am appalled at the callousness of the interviewer as she asks for an elaboration of how people in Gaza have lost their “internal morality,” their very “humanity”.

Continue reading at http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/israels-apologists-and-dehumanising-palestinians-167270044

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‘Disappearing’ scholarships are just the latest violation of the Palestinian right to education by Nada Elia

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.

As spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel, as the occupying power, is legally obligated to secure the human rights of the Palestinians—human rights it has systematically violated for decades.  Its violation of the Right to Education not only shatters the immediate hopes of individuals, it threatens the overall well-being of an entire society, as the brightest minds are deprived of opportunities to acquire badly-needed cultural, professional, and technical knowledge they would put to use to improve their society.  As I was researching this story, I also heard about dozens of scholarships to medical school in Cuba also “disappearing.” With the health and overall humanitarian situation in Gaza bordering on genocide, an influx of recent medical graduates would be life-saving.  Indeed, as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights makes clear, education is both a human right in itself, and a sine qua no condition for achieving other human rights.

Continue reading at http://mondoweiss.net/2017/10/disappearing-scholarships-palestinian/

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Malak Mattar dreamed of studying art abroad, now she is stuck in Gaza by Nada Elia

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.

Mattar’s dream in life, which sustained her during the darkest hours (literally working by candlelight, as electricity is only available for a couple of hours a day) was to leave Gaza and attend art school in the U.S… “My hope and my dream is to travel abroad freely, with no restrictions.” Under the current circumstances, with the genocidal siege holding the entire strip in a chokehold, her only hope was a scholarship. 

The young painter studied long and hard and aced her “Tawjihi” exams, the nationwide, end of high school test.  She placed first overall in the Gaza Strip, and second in the entire occupied territories.  The Palestinian Ministry of Education awards scholarships for college to study abroad to the top ten students from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mattar’s dreams were about to come true. 

Continue reading at http://mondoweiss.net/2017/10/mattar-dreamed-studying/

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The Rohingya: Southeast Asia’s Palestinians by Nada Elia

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.

This is despite the fact that the UN’s own definition of genocide would incriminate Israel. Additionally, Israel has maintained its Jewish supremacy against the “demographic threat” posed by the Palestinian people through a violent military occupation, punctuated by episodes of all-out wars against the Gaza Strip. It describes these episodes as “mowing the lawn”, a sanitised expression that erases the indiscriminate violence against the two million mostly-civilian refugees trapped in one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Myanmar stripped the Rohingya of their citizenship in 1982, and has since engaged in episodic attacks against this community, repeatedly forcing them to flee into neighboring countries, with harrowing stories of murder, rape and torched villages. Myanmar’s official position is that the Rohingya are originally from Bangladesh, and it refers to them as “Bengalis,” just as Israel would have the Palestinians be “southern Syrians,” (as Golda Meir put it) or “Jordanian,” and refers to them as “Arab,” rather than Palestinian.

Continue reading at https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2017/9/12/the-rohingya-southeast-asias-palestinians