I asked, "Where's the camera?"
Being painfully myopic, all was a grey black haze three feet from my face. Eerie gave way to surreal when I spoke for the first time, as the feedback through my temperamental earpiece was most disconcerting, as was the time delay from Iran.
However, the dialogue was relevant and exactly the kind we should be having in America. I commented about how uninformed and misinformed American citizens are when it comes to life under military occupation. Military occupation dehumanizes the occupied and renders many occupied hopeless; and that is why people strap on bombs; for they have no hope that things will change.
We the people in the land of the free and home of the brave, have some power for a very brief moment before we elect a president who will maintain the status quo.
Yeah, we can do that, we can elect a politician beholden to the Military Industrial Complex, or we can say, no, not this time.
We the people have it in our power to make a phone call, send a FAX or email to News Editors of newspapers and network news shows and demand they ask the candidates about Gaza, Jerusalem, the rights of refugees, The Wall, the continuing settlements, the over 500 checkpoints denying Palestinians the right to move on their land in light of this year; the 60th anniversary of Israel, Nakba and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights- upon which Israel's statehood was contingent upon upholding.
PRESS TV in Tehran, Iran, honored Land Day [2] and so did forty New Yorkers at the eighth annual protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, whose settlements threaten the indigenous Palestinians.
"We targeted Leviev's New York store on Land Day because his companies have recently built Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in at least four different locations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank," said Issa Mikel, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY. "He has also financed the Land Redemption Fund, a settler organization accused of using fraud to secure Palestinian land for settlement construction."[3]
The New Yorkers' chanted:
"On this year's Land Day, we want Lev to pay/For all he's stolen, to make his millions/From Angola's miners, to Bil'in and Jayous/We won't stop 'til everyone is free!"
"The protest featured theater depicting Israeli soldiers attempting to force peaceful Palestinian protesters off their land…The theater was accompanied by Palestinian testimonies from 1948 to present, emphasizing the continuity of Israeli efforts to displace Palestinians. The narratives tied the Nakba, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages, to Land Day, and to the present settlements built by Leviev's companies that are destroying Palestinian villages." [4]
Sharif Omar, from the West Bank village of Jayyous, where Leviev's company Leader is building a settlement on village farmland, explained, "Last September I was working in my olive grove near the wall, when I came across uprooted olive trees coming out of the bulldozed ground. These green young branches are soft and beautiful, deeply rooted in the ground and stronger than the wall and bulldozers. These trees refuse to die or to surrender, and send a message to all farmers and people who love the land: 'Do not give up, and keep struggling and one day you will touch the sun.' We have been here longer than these trees, and we will stay here longer than the stones." [5]
"It's important to see current illegal land theft by Israel, of which Leviev is a profiteer and ideological supporter, as part of a historical policy stretching back decades…That's the point we wanted to convey today." -Ethan Heitner, spokesperson for Adalah-NY.
Leviev also works closely with the repressive Dos Santos regime in Angola and he employs the private security firm K&P Mineira, which has been accused of torturing, sexually abusing and even murdering Angolans. In New York, Leviev and his former partner Shaya Boymelgreen came under fire for employing underpaid, non-union workers in hazardous conditions in their development schemes. This month, the New York City Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order at the Leviev-owned Met Life Clocktower, allegedly for building without permits. [6]
Just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left the region for the second time, Israel announced plans Monday for 1,400 new homes on land the Palestinians claim for a future state. Jerusalem's city hall announced it would build 600 new apartments in Pisgat Zeev, a Jewish "neighborhood" in the eastern sector of the city and a place I visited in 2006. Pisgat Zeev is an Orwellian Disney World of swimming pools and lush landscape less than a five minute drive from Anata, refugee camp/holy ghetto.
"Neighborhood" is the euphemism spewed by western politicians and media to replace the term settlement. Every settlement in the West Bank is illegal under international law. Israel adds insult to injury by taxing the Palestinians and refusing them permits to allow them to build on their legally owned land.
Being painfully myopic, all was a grey black haze three feet from my face. Eerie gave way to surreal when I spoke for the first time, as the feedback through my temperamental earpiece was most disconcerting, as was the time delay from Iran.
However, the dialogue was relevant and exactly the kind we should be having in America. I commented about how uninformed and misinformed American citizens are when it comes to life under military occupation. Military occupation dehumanizes the occupied and renders many occupied hopeless; and that is why people strap on bombs; for they have no hope that things will change.
We the people in the land of the free and home of the brave, have some power for a very brief moment before we elect a president who will maintain the status quo.
We the people have it in our power to make a phone call, send a FAX or email to News Editors of newspapers and network news shows and demand they ask the candidates about Gaza, Jerusalem, the rights of refugees, The Wall, the continuing settlements, the over 500 checkpoints denying Palestinians the right to move on their land in light of this year; the 60th anniversary of Israel, Nakba and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights- upon which Israel's statehood was contingent upon upholding.
PRESS TV in Tehran, Iran, honored Land Day [2] and so did forty New Yorkers at the eighth annual protest at the Madison Avenue jewelry store of Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, whose settlements threaten the indigenous Palestinians.
"We targeted Leviev's New York store on Land Day because his companies have recently built Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in at least four different locations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank," said Issa Mikel, a spokesperson for Adalah-NY. "He has also financed the Land Redemption Fund, a settler organization accused of using fraud to secure Palestinian land for settlement construction."[3]
The New Yorkers' chanted:
"On this year's Land Day, we want Lev to pay/For all he's stolen, to make his millions/From Angola's miners, to Bil'in and Jayous/We won't stop 'til everyone is free!"
"The protest featured theater depicting Israeli soldiers attempting to force peaceful Palestinian protesters off their land…The theater was accompanied by Palestinian testimonies from 1948 to present, emphasizing the continuity of Israeli efforts to displace Palestinians. The narratives tied the Nakba, or Catastrophe, in 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages, to Land Day, and to the present settlements built by Leviev's companies that are destroying Palestinian villages." [4]
Sharif Omar, from the West Bank village of Jayyous, where Leviev's company Leader is building a settlement on village farmland, explained, "Last September I was working in my olive grove near the wall, when I came across uprooted olive trees coming out of the bulldozed ground. These green young branches are soft and beautiful, deeply rooted in the ground and stronger than the wall and bulldozers. These trees refuse to die or to surrender, and send a message to all farmers and people who love the land: 'Do not give up, and keep struggling and one day you will touch the sun.' We have been here longer than these trees, and we will stay here longer than the stones." [5]
"It's important to see current illegal land theft by Israel, of which Leviev is a profiteer and ideological supporter, as part of a historical policy stretching back decades…That's the point we wanted to convey today." -Ethan Heitner, spokesperson for Adalah-NY.
Leviev also works closely with the repressive Dos Santos regime in Angola and he employs the private security firm K&P Mineira, which has been accused of torturing, sexually abusing and even murdering Angolans. In New York, Leviev and his former partner Shaya Boymelgreen came under fire for employing underpaid, non-union workers in hazardous conditions in their development schemes. This month, the New York City Department of Buildings issued a stop-work order at the Leviev-owned Met Life Clocktower, allegedly for building without permits. [6]
Just hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left the region for the second time, Israel announced plans Monday for 1,400 new homes on land the Palestinians claim for a future state. Jerusalem's city hall announced it would build 600 new apartments in Pisgat Zeev, a Jewish "neighborhood" in the eastern sector of the city and a place I visited in 2006. Pisgat Zeev is an Orwellian Disney World of swimming pools and lush landscape less than a five minute drive from Anata, refugee camp/holy ghetto.
"Neighborhood" is the euphemism spewed by western politicians and media to replace the term settlement. Every settlement in the West Bank is illegal under international law. Israel adds insult to injury by taxing the Palestinians and refusing them permits to allow them to build on their legally owned land.
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