Janna. A Child of Palestine.
Today I posted the failure of the Democratic Party Platform Committee to listen to the Sanders minority on the issue of Palestine and continued with the biased and bigoted proposals of AIPAC lobbyists. I present a not very good article concerning the actions at the DPPC : Times of Israel I am so thankful for Bernie Sanders and his representatives Dr. West, Dr. Zogby and Rep. Ellison for trying to change the Democratic Party bigotry.
I am really sorry I can't embed a bunch of videos. I hope the links work for you.The videos go through a double link from FB to the original video with a black background. Takes awhile to load.
But this one, from the Christian Peacemaker Teams - Palestine was posted by Jewish Voices for Peace today. I have watched this going on for years in videos posted by my friends in the West Bank. This is everyday reality, actually much worse since my friends, some kids from the West Bank, have watched their relatives murdered in cold blood, have had their underage brothers arrested in 3 AM kick-down-the door military raids, and been confined into what amounts to Bantustans on their own land. I have seen them sprayed with skunk gas, being detained and gassed and shot at on their way to school by Israel Occupation Force, insulted and had garbage thrown at them by Israeli settlers.
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What most Israelis and Americans don't want to admit is that they have dehumanized Palestinians. I have followed Palestine for a few years through the eyes of Janna who is now ten years old and her family. Her house is the first one entering her village and she has been filming the day to day life since she was about six. She is ten now and quite a media sensation.
Here is one just posted from Nabi Saleh. Its Janna's little sister at the weekly protest. I have seen her tear gassed in her own home. Janna's sister protesting
Here is a Ramadan video Janna posted. Janna's Ramadan Video
Here is a video of a young unarmed boy from janna's village who was injured after being shot by an (often deadly) tear gas canister (purchased with American tax dollars). When asked why her parents let her put herself in danger by protesting, Janna says its just as dangerous to stay in her home. the child in this picture was shot in the village, not on the road where the protest takes place. (Note: the younger kids are careful to immediately retreat to the rear when the Israelis get ready to start shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the small non-violent protests).
Child shot by Israelis in Janna's village
I have managed to embed the video by Radiance of Resistance of Janna, Rand and Ahed dancing to a Shakira song. The girls are big fans of Brasil's soccer team and the older ones at one point of time or another may have had a crush on one of the players. (Embarrassing now I would guess 
)
There are videos of the girls not shared in public which show them crying after one of their mother's is shot, and later arrested, Janna's straight A plus grade report card, my Bolivian niece trying to teach Janna to count to ten in Aimara...
There are whole threads of verbal sexual attacks by Israelis on her facebook page and elsewhere in social media in English and Hebrew that her family has had to block and otherwise deal with. This as recently as last week.
Janna and the girls protest every Friday on the road below their village. About two years ago they made it to the only water source the village had, an ancient spring stolen by Israeli settlers, now used for Israeli only picnics.
The whole purpose of this essay is that . I want folks to understand that Palestinian people are just like ourselves and have children just like our own. I am sickened and angry with the bigotry shown in the platform of the Democratic Party, its continued support for apartheid and ethnic cleansing and the now dead "Two-State Solution". Israelis and Palestinians can live together happily as anyone can see at Hand in Hand schools. They will have to live together. But, this is not an essay directed at the solutions, it is just introducing young Palestinian people as they really are.
Note: I noticed Janna has a Bernie 2016 button in one of her photographs. Her father probably sent it from North Carolina.
Comments
Thanks Alex, I shared
the children's walk to school video from Janna's page. How hideous and barbarian.
It was pure pallywood propoganda
Nothing more
When I was a kid, Republicans used to red scare people, now it's the Democrats. I am getting too damn old for this crap!
How so? Because it shows clips of racist apartheid
Israel at its finest?
From Jewish Voices for Peace at that.
And the solution lies embedded in the ideology here: Hand in Hand: Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel.
Hand in Hand Schools
From the Light House.
Pallywood?
I always expect trolls wherever I post. The "Pallywood" word is right out of the Likud Party hasbara playbook. Its as bigoted and racist as calling black children "niggerwoods" or my children "spicks, greases and wetbacks" or some "peckerwood" calling Jewish people "kikes". Unacceptable and ugly in all cases.
The problem with the majority of Israelis, and I know quite a few of them, is that they don't have a clue of how obnoxiously racist they are. Or have any idea of how ugly their treatment of Palestinians is. The fact you come up with the equivelnt of "nigger" in your title proves the point.
From the Light House.
What's disgusting is that Jews standing up for themselves
get insulted and degraded.
Why is it that the Jewish people are the only minority that isn't allowed to have one safe space in the entire world?
When I was a kid, Republicans used to red scare people, now it's the Democrats. I am getting too damn old for this crap!
This isn't "Jews standing up for themselves".
This isn't "Jews standing up for themselves". It's Israelis, who, being Jews, should know and behave better, practicing apartheid and genocide on the rightful aboriginal inhabitants of the section of the Levant known to us moderns as "Palestine" and "Israel". Whether you (or the Netanyahu Administration) like it or not, the Palestinian People have rights, too. Rights that Israel is hell-bound determined to deny them.
Our essayist recovered the information and videos from Jewish Voices for Peace, a group who wants an end put to this stain on the reputation of Jews and Judaism. And the treatment of the Palestinian People by the Netanyahu regime (and most other Likud administrations) is just that, a stain on the reputation of Jews and Judaism that they do not need and that no other Jews deserve.
Bullshit. What kind of cheese do you suppose goes with that whine? Most of us humans are "minorities" in some form or another; and yet we get along pretty well without demanding any "safe space" for us and us alone. It is in sharing the available spaces with each other in peace that we obtain what safety we can get. That's how civilization works when it works at all. (Google "The Social Contract" for more details.)
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Three one-liners
My essay, as usual whenever I post about the children of Palestine on American progressive forums, was hijacked within minutes with one-liner hasbara propaganda talking points. First, say the videos, photographs or posts are phony "Pallywood", which is like saying pro social justice videos by our Black brothers and sisters is "Niggerwood". Then go on to 'Jews need a safe place and everyone who says differently is a bigot (anti-Semite) in favor of a neo-holocaust' against our Jewish brothers and sisters."
The essay then gets successfully sidetracked and essentially bombed out. Nobody sees the videos I posted of the tiny little girl learning a chant in English in front of an armored car, nobody sees Janna's celebratory Ramadan video, which she herself posted even though in her family they also celebrate Christmas and she herself was born in USA but can no longer be together physically with her father for any holiday. And its a beautiful video. Or the video filmed on Janna's cell phone of her cousin being hit by a tear gas canister in his own village. This is something which happens frequently in her life, including seeing her uncle shot dead in a non-violent protest. I have seen the video of her uncle, he was standing there behind a fence in a teeshirt separated by 100 meters from an entrenched group of heavily armed soldiers. And last, which I was able to embed because it hasn't been banned from You-Tube, Janna's little music video with her cousins. Please watch the videos, it took me a long time for me to select and get the proper link to.
I wanted the thread to be about the children of Palestine, and what they experience. Not just the day to day oppression, but the beautiful and fun things and the sad and horrible things. We go a long way towards solving the problem if we feel what a child feels against oppression and bigotry. If we" become" those children. Janna is a child who only a monster could not relate to, especially if one understands what she says every day since she was the size of her sister (note: Its easier and more accurate to translate Arabic to Spanish and then English, than direct to English).
Radical right-wing Zionism does not recognize Palestinians as human (or people, even Jews, of African origin). The reaction is a dehumanized people, herded out of their own country or militarily occupied into Bantustans whose only contacts with Israels are droolingly racist settlers and heavily militarized soldiers who look like they came from an alien race from star wars. Their homes are invaded by the same, often wearing night vision goggles as they drag children off to prison. Is it any surprise, then, that Palestinian children see Israelis as monsters?
And there-in lies the core of the endless problem. And the key to a solution, a kernal of which is seen in Hand in Hand schools picture I posted in a commentary and something the USA would be wise to emulate in their own school systems. That is little children who speak Hebrew going to school with little children who speak Arabic and learning that they love each other. Forming deep friendships. That is the first step and its doable.
For older people, even traumatized teenagers, what is needed is some sort of truth and conciliation process with a backdrop of justice being done. It will never be accomplished using the military/terror paradigm. It will be done when extremism as an ideology is defeated through a sort of hand in hand process.
I have stated that the "Two State Solution" is a inviable and a farce. In my opinion (I obviously don't speak for anyone else) , it is time to look at a one confederated state (as we are in Bolvia, a plurinational state) , with justice and equality and peace as the bedrock foundation. On some level, then, both the Jewish homeland and the Palestinian homeland can exist side by side with an ever growing inter-cultural area, all working towards justice, equality and peace.
Please do watch all the videos linked, not just the first one. None are long and they have one purpose, to start the process of humanizing oppressed children.
From the Light House.
"The rightful aboriginal inhabitants"
What is YOUR theory of where the Hebrew Semitic People come from?
"Please clap." -- Jeb Bush
Blood Brothers.
According to a study published in the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes."
Translated that means Palestinians and Jewish people are blood brothers.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/12/6769
Another team, lead by Almut Nebel at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, took a closer look in 2001. They found that Jewish lineages essentially bracket Muslim Kurds, but they were also very closely related to Palestinians. In fact, what their analysis suggested was that Palestinians were identical to Jews, but with a small mix of Arab genes
The Y Chromosome Pool of Jews as Part of the Genetic Landscape of the Middle East
From the Light House.
From all over the effing place.
I consider "indigenous" people (for this area) as those who were there on or before August 1, 1914 (beginning of World War I). I do not consider anyone deposited there under the auspices of English speaking nations (Britain, USA) as indigenous.
Does that clarify?
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Wow what an anti-semitic statement
To suggest that all jews support murder and oppression of Palestinians just because of a few violent extremists, when their Torah explicitly condemns murder, is disgusting.
Unfortunately, the "violent extremists" are now running Israel.
You're right: the Torah explicitly condemns virtually everything the Netanyahu Administration is doing to attempt to render the entire Levant free of Palestinians. That's why I said:
I certainly hope you didn't think I was suggesting that all Jews support this murderous apartheid that Netanyahu and Company are doing. On the contrary, I wanted to point out that the vast majority of Jews, both within Israel and without, oppose any such thing -- as well they should, as the Torah does demand just that.
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
The violent extremists are mainstream Jewish Israelis.
It's that simple and that obvious.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
Extremist Hijacking and Dancing in Jaffa
There are plenty of Palestinian extremists as well. How is it that the extremists have been allowed to hijack the process? In my opinion (and I only speak for myself), peacemakers who realize that Jews and Palestenians are brothers and sisters should be the ones negotiating with each other, outside of the whole American imperialistic, militaristic hegemony. The hope lies here:
Dancing in Jaffa. Dancing in Jaffa
From the Light House.
I wasn't replying to you
but to the post you were also replying to. I agree completely with what you are saying. I was trying to play on the standard response to people who condemn all of Islam because of the actions of some terrorists. Similarly the claim that this is 'jews standing up for themselves' could be seen as claiming that (all) jews support the policies of a terrorist regime in Israel. That is probably not what the commenter intended Instead he was using jews as 'human shields' for Bibi the butcher, so that criticism of the latter becomes prejudice against the former. This strategy has been adopted beautifully by the Hillaroid posse, who claim misogyny whenever the Presumptive One is questioned.
Sandino
I think I knew that. The formating of replies confuses me. Especially when three or four short posts preempt a long post while in the process of writing, and trying to deal with it all on a tiny screen.
From the Light House.
multo grazie!
Thank you, Sandino!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Hawaiians have been “pushed into the sea” by the United States
even though the islands G~d gave them are their only homeland.
Tahiti is still ruled by France.
Aotearoa / New Zealand.
Even the related indigenous Malayo-Polynesian people of what is today Taiwan.
If there’s a group that’s not allowed to have a safe space and whom everyone has deemed not worthy of self-determination and decolonization, it would be the Polynesians.
I’d like to see the U.S. return Hawaiians’ sovereign country to them in line with Public Law 103-150, but I’m not holding my breath.
Edited to add: I think the “safe space” trope — particularly at institutions like universities — is a slippery slope toward abolishing free speech and favors whoever has the loudest and/or best-financed well-connected lobby. On balance, it is therefore deleterious to freedom and democratic values.
Agree 100%. Hawai'i was an independent kingdom and
had treaties with such countries as Great Britain and Russia. Hawai'i was invaded by the USA and made into a colony. When colonization had progressed to where the power elites wanted, it was safe to make it a state.
Hawai'i went from being food secure to having to import 85+% of its food. The native people have been marginalized and rendered unimportant in their own land.
"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"
the "safe space" WHINE.
Not to mention a rather handy cover-up for all manner of crimes committed by the "whoever" who has the best financed and well-connected lobby.
Great point!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
Thanks. Here is my note to Janna's mom in blue.
My favorite is the girls dancing (the embedded video). It may be the most concentrated 3 minutes of the girls' experience that we have. I have to tell you that I feel so awful tonight after West, Ellison and Zogby failed to change the dumbass Democrat Party bigoted vampire blood sucking platform. That was the last straw. Time to organize for Green.
I shared this with Janna's mother a minute ago.
From the Light House.
lotlizard @ 06/11/2016 - 5:26am
I could not agree with you more
wrt to the Hawai'ian people and
how mistreated they have been
and continue to be by US
European capitalists in the
paradise G-d allows them to live
in with such love and respect
for the land.
Also agree with your take on
"safe spaces" - I could really rant
about this one. But you have
quite succinctly gotten to the
heart of it: Whoever is loudest
about not getting their feelings
hurt will control the narrative.
(This is when it's politically
incorrect to bring up The Country
That Cannot Be Named.)
NOTE: I'm using old-timey ways
of addressing comments, because
the Reply function is not working
for me.
Only connect. - E.M. Forster
Sisterhood --- Hand in Hand
In case you don't get it... the picture is from Hand in Hand schools in Palestine/Israel and show a "mysterious" event coming up shared by Arabic-speaking and Hebrew-speaking, now bilingual, children at the schools.
Hand in Hand Schools
From the Light House.
Haddad Alwi
I have been unable to find a direct link to the Ramadhan video Janna posted, but I did find the original artist, Haddad Alwi, an Indonesia girl and children's choir from Indonesia. The choir being shown may be from somewhere else... whatever, not important.
I would like to recommend the Sununu Choir made up of Palestinian refugees in five middle eastern countries. Formed and directed by a Sunday School teacher at an orthodox Church in Gaza. For those of you who might think all these children are terrorists here are the titles of the songs: “My Grandmother’s Dress”, “Sparrow” and "“Wayn a Ramallah.”
Here is an article - Palestinian children unite in song
From the Light House.
Thank you Alex, for all of the work you have done.
Every group of people around the world has kids, that are just like our kids, and deserve so much better than being bombed or shot because someone hates their parents...whether they are in Palestine, Libya, Yemen, or Honduras.
"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X
Someone's children
All of them.
I watched a documentary years ago (title escapes me), where part of it included the interview of a Palestinian mother whose teen son was acting in ways that terrified and saddened her in regards to a possible terrorist group. I put myself in her shoes as best I could and my heart ached. What would I do?
The film ended with the photographer being shot one night by Israeli forces while he waved a white cloth. He was trying to signal to the forces that they were firing on a house with occupants. Naïve and dead. The one or ones who killed him - also someone's children, though grown. Again, what would I do if I were the mother?
It all makes me so sad. Palestinian children are strong beyond measure. The Hand in Hand endeavor gives me hope, and I'm actually shocked it's being "allowed" by Hillary's buddy Bibi. I mean, what happens when they're grown, and they refuse to kill or even hate each other?
Thanks for this essay.
It's a shame the comments were hijacked by "defenders of Israel". Do they not know that Abraham, father of Judaism, was born in Iraq (then known as Mespotamia)? The only claim he had to Palestine (he never lived there) was that god "gave it to him". What a nice gift from an imaginary being!
Disappeared
Now the whole essay has disappeared from discussion on the forum.... how do I fix this?
From the Light House.
I still see it Alex. HEY JtC LOOK PLEASE
I see it. Hopefully admin will come along. That's really weird you can't see it.
Maybe close out your browser and open a new one? What browser do you use? Clearing cookies shouldn't help i don't think, but you could try it.