Ali G in Gaza

14 March, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

ali_g_and_imanAlison Glenesk is an engaging American woman and student from California who recently was in Gaza with a CodePink delegation. This is a selection from her interesting blog diaries telling of her experiences. Visit her blog, Ali G in Egypt, for more (thanks Chris). Also check out recent US diplomatic protests about israel’s refusal to let in chickpeas and other foodstuffs in its criminal blockade.

I just got back from Gaza. I was part of a delegation of women of about 60 under the supervision of the United National Relief and Works Agency. Mom and Dad, I’m sorry you had to find out this way. I didn’t tell you before because I thought you’d worry…. I felt safe there the whole time, and I went with the full support of the director of the California Education Abroad Program, the Director of the Arabic Language Institute, and all my teachers. [...]

It is all a lot to digest right now, for me it was one of the biggest experiences of my life, emotional, intense, amazing. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Activism, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, USA. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

Viva Palestina: UK Aid Convoys To Gaza

15 February, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com

Cross-posted from HarpyMarx with thanks.  Note the appended recent development that nine members of the convoy have been arrested under “anti-terror” legislation — six have now been released but without passports. See also the Viva Palestina site for more news and updates on this fine initiative.

VivaPalestina

HM: I saw a mini bus turning the corner at Hyde Park decked with Palestine flags and stickers, it dawned on me that I was not far away from the convoys going to Gaza. It was a pretty amazing site at the North Carriage Drive, Hyde Park seeing all these vehicles lining the road ready to move off to Gaza. Ambulances, fire trucks, mini buses, caravans and cars, it was a wonderful sight. And of course the people volunteering to go to Gaza. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Activism, Gaza, Palestine, UK. Tags: . 1 Comment »

Out-last, out-legitimize: Eqbal Ahmad on Strategy for Palestine

13 February, 2009 — peoplesgeography.com


An interesting snippet from artist and author Ricardo Levins Morales on a propositional strategy for Palestine as posited by Eqbal Ahmad. Ahmad might well have anticipated the Free Gaza campaign. Incidentally, Ahmad taught at Hampshire College, where we’ve recently seen divestment success, joining the faculty in 1982. Since his death in 1999, a memorial lecture series has been established there in his honour and speakers have included  the late, great Edward Said, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy.

Ricardo Levins Morales is a long-time labor and cultural organizer and is an artist with the Northland Poster Collective. You can read the paper in full (53pp., .pdf) here at his site and be sure to check out his wonderful poster illustrations.

Excerpted from Lihish’tah’weel: The Dystopia principle and the strategic basis for a just peace in Palestine

In 1968 Pakistani revolutionary scholar Eqbal Ahmad was asked to give the principal address at a conference of Arab activists, including some of the leaders of the recently formed coalition, the Palestine Liberation Organization.² The delegates were stunned when Ahmad, a veteran leader of the Algerian revolution, outlined an unexpected analysis of the Palestinian situation. He suggested that the principle task of a liberation movement–whether armed or not–was to “out-legitimize” its opponent. This meant to dramatize the central contradiction in the colonizing society until it can no longer sustain the strain. This is how Gandhi understood the achievement of Indian independence. The Indian movement undermined the self-image of the English people. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Activism, Colonialism, Israel, Palestine, Strategy. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Dissent Ain't Dead: UK campus occupations in support of Gaza

23 January, 2009 — peoplesgeography

Acting in solidarity with Gaza, a student movement across eight UK universities is pressuring for real demands, including divestment from a British company that supplies military goods to Israel that were used in the war crimes in Gaza. London School of Economics (LSE) director Howard Davies has issued a joint statement with the demonstrators agreeing to meet some of their demands, though has “refused to issue an official university statement condemning the Israeli bombardment of Gaza or to publish regular financial statements spelling out LSE’s investment in companies involved in supplying arms to Palestine and Israel.”

All eight have blogs set up to document their campaigns: well done to them.

  • Birmingham Occupation
  • Essex Occupation
  • King’s College London Occupation
  • LSE Occupation
  • Manchester Metropolitan Occupation
  • Oxford Occupation
  • SOAS Occupation
  • Sussex Occupation
  • Warwick Sit In
    • Posted in Academe, Activism, Boycotts, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, UK. Tags: . 2 Comments »

    Washington DC Marches for Gaza

    12 January, 2009 — Ressentiment

    Gaza Demonstration at the White House January 10, 2009.

    Ralph Nader spoke and there were many other talented speakers.

    One local news channels here in Washington estimated there were 10,000 demonstrators at the march for Gaza. It was impossible for me to tell since I was in the middle of it all. I was surrounded by so many people packed so closely that I could not perceive the edge of it. My son and I worked our way patiently to the speaker’s podium so that we could record some good pictures. It took us at least an hour to reach the podium. We shouted down-in-front to the camera crew. They parked themselves right in the middle in front of the speaker’s podium, so we only got a few brief glimpses of the speakers when the media moved. I don’t know whose media they were. Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Activism, Gaza, USA. Tags: , . 3 Comments »

    Action for Gaza

    28 December, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com


    Rally – Lobby – Boycott – Donate

    Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Activism, Gaza, Genocide. 30 Comments »

    Ni’lin نعلين‎: A West Bank Town’s Fight to Survive – Neve Gordon

    20 July, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
    • Lone crazed bulldozer driver in Jerusalem: 3,500 news search hits
    • Popular resistance of both Israeli Jews and Palestinians to protect West Bank border town of Ni’lin: 75 search results.

    In this guest article about the struggle to protect Ni’lin, Neve Gordon serves an important reminder of the contrast in media coverage between a recent lone crazed act and the systemic violence and the daily dispossession and murder wrought by the Israeli military occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    What is especially important and newsworthy here in the West Bank border town of Ni’lin is that “scores of Jewish Israeli and international activists are standing beside the Palestinians residents as they try to stop military bulldozers from destroying Ni’lin’s land.” This solidarity in resistance defies stereotypes and would challenge media outlets to break out of their narrative mould, Gordon argues.

    Neve Gordon is the author most recently of Israel’s Occupation (2008) and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan. Article submitted by the author, and also appears in The Nation. (Click here for a more extended bio.). See also appended video clips.

    A West Bank Town’s Struggle to Survive

    ‘Jerusalem bulldozer ‘terrorist’ kills 3 in rampage, read the headline of a CNN article describing the recent attack of a Palestinian construction worker that left three Israelis dead and scores wounded. A Google news search indicates that the brutal assault was mentioned in 3,525 news articles. USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, BBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera as well as all the other major media outlets covered the incident. Lesser-known media sources, such as the Khaleej Times in the United Arab Emirates, the Edmonton Sun in Canada and B92 in Serbia, also featured the event. Indeed, one could safely assume that almost all news outlets around the globe provided some type of coverage of the attack. Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Activism, Israel, Media, News, Palestine, Video, West Bank. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

    Bil’in Habibti – Bil’in My Love

    2 July, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com

    Winner of a Special Award at Rotterdam’s Movies That Matter and of Best Documentary at the 2006 Jerusalem Film Festival, this all too short teaser is of a excellent film directed by Shai Carmeli-Pollak, Bil’in Habibti (Bil’in My Love).

    Bil’in Habibti – Bil’in My Love (1:47)
    Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Activism, Apartheid, Israel, Israel Watch, Palestine, Video, West Bank. Tags: . Leave a Comment »

    Meeting Palestinians In Gaza

    15 May, 2008 — peoplesgeography

    Abdul Salam al-Hissi’s boat leaves Gaza City harbour and heads out into the open sea.

    Appended below are five links to poignant short videos from the excellent Guardian series A Week in Gaza, detailing the impact of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Ghetto on ordinary people. On this 60th anniversary of the Nakba, these heart-rending portraits of Gazans is particularly timely and offers a window into life in Gaza.

    As Ali Abunimah, currently in Sydney, has said, Nakba Denial not only exists, but unlike Holocaust Denial still has some mainstream intellectual acceptance. The ongoing plight of the indigenous Palestinians after 60 years deserves our attention and support now more than ever. For our part in Australia, there is a strong campaign to have the Australian Parliament acknowledge the Nakba — please consider lending your support if you are in Australia.

    1. The blockade and the smugglers (4.55)
    Israel’s fuel blockade has ground Gaza’s infrastructure to a halt. In response, smuggling gangs bring fuel in from Egypt through underground tunnels. Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Activism, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Israel Watch, Palestine, Peace and Justice, Peace education, People, Video. Tags: , , , . 1 Comment »

    You Can’t Raise A Baby With Apartheid Arms

    4 May, 2008 — peoplesgeography.com
    Graphic: Carlos Latuff.
    The title is a play on the anti-proliferation catchcry: You can’t hug a baby in nuclear arms.

    That, of course, is the idea, the result of a deliberate strategy and as a direct consequence of Israel’s prevailing self-definition and worldview. As surely as our cosmology informs our sociology, the abhorrent siege of the Gaza Ghetto continues, the result of the internal logic of Israel’s continued existence as an apartheid expansionist state, producing policies of continued ‘low-intensity’ ethnic cleansing, divide and rule and genocide as Ilan Pappe and others have described. Zaid Khan’s words are worth quoting again:

    Nearly 70 years ago, in a small eastern European city, an oppressed and occupied people were under siege, living under atrocious and brutal conditions, lacking food, medicine, electricity, water, and slowly being strangled in the hope they would just disappear.

    Warsaw Ghetto 1941 – Gaza 2008. Israel, you are a disgrace.

    Read the rest of this entry »

    Posted in Activism, Empire, War and Terror, Gaza, Genocide, Hegemon-watch, Holocaust, Israel, Israel Watch, Middle East, Palestine, Palestine Peace, Peace and Justice, US Foreign Policy, USA. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »
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