We now use the web as our instant keys to information. Below are some good doors to open.
THE ORIGINAL NAKBA
On the "land without a people" - Palestine before and after 1948, an extensive and detailed visual and oral history of villages destroyed or renamed by Israel:
www.palestineremembered.com
The Israeli NGO Zochrot uses innovative methods to increase Israeli citizen awareness of the Palestinian history supplanted and concealed by Israel. They conduct tours of mixed Arab and Jewish visitors to the sites of destroyed Arab villages, where they post comemerative markers. Zochrot also advocates full right of return for Palestinian refugees and hosted a 2008 conference on the feasibility of implementing this internationally validated right. They found it feasible.
www.zochrot.org
This organization provides tours to occupied Palestine for American Jews to learn the truth about Israel's foundation and ongoing oppression. In another program they call "Birthright Re-plugged" they take Palestinian children to the destroyed or renamed places where their parents and grandparents were born to assist the children to establish or strengthen their Palestinian identity.
www.birthrightunplugged.org
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. This site provides links to several excellent papers. Pappe supports the one-state solution.
www.ilanpappe.com
THE ONGOING NAKBA: "FACTS ON THE GROUND" TODAY
This is the site of Ali Abunimah, an American Palestinian and author of One Country, which describes a one-state solution. This site has many current and insightful writings of varied content.
www.electronicintifada.com
This is an excellent site for current news and insightful interpretations of the ongoing Middle East situation.
http://mondoweiss.net/
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is an Israeli NGO that actively blocks - and if unsuccessful - rebuilds Palestinian homes destroyed by IDF bulldozers. It is headed by Minnesota-born Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee in 2006. Halper has contributed to several documentary films and provides a comprehensive analysis of Israel's duplicitous pretenses at peace-seeking while continuing to gobble up Palestinian land.
www.icahd.org
These Israeli and Palestinian NGOs continuously monitor and report Israeli human rights violations and Palestinian casualties.
www.btselem.org
www.pchr.org
Using data from B'Tselem and other reliable sources, this website provides a running list of child casualties on both sides from the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000 to the present. With Israeli child deaths in the left column and Palestinian child deaths in the right column, each is listed by age, date and cause of death, organized by monthly intervals. Through the end of 2014, 131 Israeli children and 1,656 Palestinian children had been killed. The most common cause of Palestinian child deaths was a bullet to the head, reflecting deliberate targeting by Israeli snipers.
www.rememberthesechildren.org
Startling US media bias is documented in studies of major newspapers by journalist Alison Weir. This site has many other excellent articles describing key issues in this conflict, including U.S. financial support of Israel and how these funds are misused.
www.ifamericansknew.org
WHAT AMERICANS CAN DO
This web site provides many helpful ideas, recognizing that effective non-violent action is needed to equalize power - such as boycotts, divestment and sanctions - not simply more talk or pretenses at peace-making that Israel ignores and uses to delay compliance with international law and basic standards of human rights.
www.endtheoccupation.org
Americans can participate in Christian Peacemaker Teams that intervene in disputes between settlers and Palestinians in the occupied territories. Among other things, they escort Palestinian children to school as protection against attacks by settlers and bear witness to such events.
www.cpt.org
Peace cannot bypass justice and the disempowered Palestinians cannot be expected to negotiate peace with Israel while asserting and preserving their rights under international law from a position of helplessness. The international community must provide a power balance, but the U.S. has vetoed 43 UN Security Council resolutions that would have sanctioned Israel to bring it into conformity with international law. That leaves it to the world's provite citizens. The most promising strategy is BDS, which was applied successfully to South Africa: consumer boycotts and divestment from companies that profit from the occupation and those that contribute to Israeli human rights violations, an academic and cultural boycott to deny Israel its efforts to "normalize" its image and and obscure the realities of its colonial occupation, trade sanctions and possible sanctions by international courts. See these citizen action websites for BDS ideas and guidelines.
www.bdsmovement.net
www.pacbi.org
www.whoprofits.org
Israel is desperately trying to manipulate Palestinians and the world community into accepting a tiny, helpless, fractionalized bantustan as a "Palestinian state" to prevent its alternatives - either to vacate the West Bank and return to the pre-1967 border or create a single integrated state which, with the right of return of refugees, would obliterate the Jewish majority and end the dream of Zionism. Jews for Palestinian Right of Return, established by an assemblage of distinguished Jewish historians, other scholars and writers, wants to achieve the latter, which would bring freedom, justice and equality at last to their shared land.
The U.S. Palestinian Community Network organizes the Palestinian diaspora and supports the Palestinian solidarity movement within the U.S. They coordinate unified national actions, community events and speaking tours of Palestinians bringing accurate information to the U.S. public. They advocate for the Palestinian right of return to their original homes and their right of self-determination under the UN Charter.
This site of the One Democratic State Group provides the basic arguments and key supporters of the single, democratic state model for Israel/Palestine, explaining how this model alone can satisfy the democratic criteria of freedom, justice and equality as well as its feasibility.
www.odsg.org
This is the site of Dahlia Wasfi, MD, daughter of a Jewish mother and Iraqi father, who suspended her medical career to work full time for justice in the Middle East. She draws the connecting lines between Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the Iraq War which few Americans recognize or understand. Awakening U.S. citizens to the warmongering influence of Israel and its lobby on our government is a crucial key to weakening that influence.
www.liberatethis.com
The Rachel Corrie Foundation, established by the parents of the International Solidarity Movement volunteer from Olympia, Washington who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer while attempting to protect the home of a Gaza physician from demolition, continues and expands the work and commitment of their murdered daughter. They deserve support.
www.rachelcorriefoundation.org
This is the site of professor and prolific author James Petras, including extensive writings on Israel and the pernicious influence of its US lobby. Good information about lobby power for advocates opposing its destructive influence on US foreign policy.
www.petras.lahaine.org
These two sites focus on the Palestinian’s right to return, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, applied to Palestinians by UN resolution 194, and pledged by Israel as a condition of its admission to the UN, a pledge that remains unfulfilled. It is important to focus on international law and universal human rights to bypass the false juxtaposition of “two peoples with competing claims.” This is a matter of criminal violations. Civil mediation is not the appropriate model.
www.badil.org
www.al-awda.org
There are several Jewish organizations that reject Zionism and champion human rights. Perhaps the most clear and uncompromising is the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. It is important to recognize and support Jewish opponents of Zionism and Israeli policies to counter the manipulative accusations off “anti-semitism.”
www.ijsn.net
In addition to advocates of human rights and international law, many orthodox rabbis adamantly oppose Zionism on theological grounds, consider it a violent, completely secular power grab justified by misinterpreted biblical text, and consider Zionism morally and theologically inconsistent with Judaism. They assert that the originators of Zionism were secular Jews who are in fact violating God's instructions.
www.netureikarta.org
The Americans for Middle East Understanding site is an online journal with good, original featured articles that provide good information and insights for Palestinian human rights advocates.
www.ameu.org
Boatlifts are now challenging the Israeli blockade of Gaza, sailing from Cypress into the port of Gaza City. Many distinguished passengers have participated to date, bearing needed supplies but more importantly, forcing Israel to relax its illegal blockade or commit high visibility violations of international maritime and humanitarian law. One boatlift included Cynthia McKinney, former Congresswoman from Georgia and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate who was kidnapped by the Israeli Navy on the high seas, transported to Israel and imprisoned for a week with no U.S. media outcry or condemnation by our government. In May 2010 another U.S. citizen was killed by IDF commandos attacking the Mavi Marmara lead ship of a Gaza-bound flotilla on the high seas, again with no response from the U.S. government. For evidence of the power of the Israel lobby, we need look no further. The Free Gaza movement needs financial support to continue and expand this program, increasing the international community's pressure on Israel.
www.freegaza.org
|