Fourteen-year old Faris Odeh throws a stone at an Israeli Magach 6B during the Second Intifada, 29 Oct 2000. Ten days later, on 8 November, Odeh was again throwing stones at Karni when he was shot in the neck by an Israeli soldier.

Ismail Shammout (1930-2006, Lydda, Palestine) - The Glow of the Second Intifada, 2001, oil on canvas.

this is a picture of faris odeh in october 2000, during the second intifada

he once swore to his friends that he would die a palestinian martyr. he wasnt interested in politics, but he was a daredevil, he liked taking risks, and when the second intifada started in september 2000, he got a chance to do so.

he started skipping school to participate in the action. his parents would constantly find him at netzarim or at the karni crossing.

his father would try to physically restrain him to keep him away. faris didnt care; he would still go back, paricipating in clashes and standing at the front, nearest to the israeli troops.

in october 2000, that photo was taken.

he wouldnt do it for the fame; actually, he would run away from cameras so his father doesnt catch him. his mother would constantly berate him, to which he would simply respond, "im not afraid".

faris had a cousin, shadi, who was killed on november 1st, 2000. when that happened, faris said "i swear i will avenge his death". he went to shadis funeral wreath and placed a photo of himself in it, saying that the wreath would be for him too.

he died a week later, on 8th november, just 25 days shy of his fifteenth birthday. he was with his friends and got shot in the neck while bending down to pick up a stone to throw at israeli tanks. he got killed for throwing rocks.

he was just a boy, and yet he was more of a man than any of the israeli soldiers in those tanks.

do not forget him.

source: (x)

Not so fun fact: I was born on the day of the passover massacre at the park hotel

https://carnegieendowment.org/pdf/files/2004-02-17-roy.pdf

"Hamas—an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement—was born with the first Palestinian uprising or Intifada, which began in December 1987. The birth of this organization represented the Palestinian embodiment of political Islam in the Middle East. Hamas’s evolution and influence were primarily outgrowths of the first Intifada and the ways in which Hamas participated in the uprising: through the operations of its military wing, the work of its political leadership, and its social activities.

Hamas’s goals—a nationalist position couched in religious discourse—are articulated in Hamas’s key documents: a charter, political memoranda, and communiqués. Some of these documents are undeniably racist and dogmatic. Yet, later documentation, particularly since the mid-1990s, is less doctrinaire and depicts the struggle as a form of resistance to an occupying power—as a struggle over land and its usurpation, and over how to end the occupation. Recent statements by key Hamas officials maintain that their goals are Israel’s withdrawal from lands occupied in the 1967 war, the end of Israeli occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state, and a solution to the refugee issue.

With the end of the Intifada and the initiation of the Oslo peace process, the resistance component of the Palestinian struggle—so critical to Hamas’s political thinking and action—was undermined. This had direct repercussions for Hamas’s social theory and practice, which were largely if not wholly developed and shaped during the uprising. For Hamas, social and political action are inextricably linked. With the removal of the resistance/opposition component from Palestinian political imperatives, what role, at least one that might be acceptable to most Palestinians, was left for Hamas? The resulting problem confronting Hamas (and the Islamic movement generally) was fundamentally one of survival.

In response, there was a steady shift in emphasis, both ideologically and strategically, to the social sector of the Islamic movement, which had always been a critical component of that movement, providing a range of important services and doing so effectively. This shift was a search for accommodation and consensus within the status quo; it also reflected the need for Islamists to adjust to the conditions of the country in which they lived. Strategically, Hamas, and the Islamic movement generally, attempted to carve out public space in which they could operate without too much harassment from the Israeli or Palestinian authorities, and provide much-needed services to an increasingly needy population through a well-developed institutional infrastructure. In this way the Islamists would maintain their popular base of support.

Did direct ties exist between Islamic political-military and social institutions? The debate over the answer has been heated since the founding of Hamas. Conventional wisdom holds that Hamas controls all Islamic social institutions and uses them for political indoctrination and military recruitment. These interrelationships clearly were not always as routine and assured as is commonly believed. Some institutions claimed no political links at all. In the final analysis, more important than the existence of links was the work of these institutions and the services they provided.

Interestingly, many members of the Islamic political leadership did not view the nonaligned sector or the growing dominance of the social sector as a problem. A senior Hamas official explained it this way: “Everyone who is religious is Hamas and anyone who teaches Islamic values furthers Hamas’s goals.” Thus, the organic interconnection between political and social action in Hamas’s ideology meant that the expansion of the social sector served the movement’s objectives even if social institutions were nonaffiliated. Hence, the retreat from the political sphere was pragmatic and accompanied by a need to rediscover Islam and its relevance to society.

In the two- to three-year period before the second Intifida, Hamas was no longer prominently or consistently calling for political or military action against the occupation, but was instead shifting its attention to social works and the propagation of Islamic values and religious practice. According to a key Hamas official interviewed at the time, “Increasingly, Hamas represents religion and an Islamic way of life, not political violence.” Concomitant with this shift toward the sociocultural was a shift in certain terms and ideas, notably a growing acceptance of civil society as a concept—of a society where Islamic and Islamist institutions functioned as part of an integrated whole with their secular counterparts.

Defeating the occupier became a matter of cultural preservation, building a moral consensus and Islamic value system as well as political and military power. Hence, the struggle was not for power per se but for defining new social arrangements and appropriate cultural and institutional models that would meet real social needs, and do so without violence. The idea was not to create an Islamic society but one that was more Islamic, as a form of protection against all forms of aggression. In so doing, the Islamic movement was creating a discourse of empowerment despite the retreat of its long-dominant political sector.

Before Oslo, social action was historically focused on religious education through charitable societies, mosques, zakat(alms-giving) committees, health clinics, relief organizations, orphanages, schools, and various clubs. The objective was to teach Islamic values and to embody them through practice—that is, the provision of social services. Recipients were largely the poor and working classes. The Islamists gained a reputation for honesty and integrity in the way they conducted themselves, especially when compared to the PLO.

However, and perhaps most important, the shift to social services represented more than a return to Islamist and Islamic roots in the Muslim Brotherhood (the “parent” organization of Hamas, which emerged in the West Bank and Gaza in the 1970s as a social and cultural movement, abstaining from any political or military action against the occupation); it was accompanied by entry into seemingly new areas of social activity or the expansion of activity in pre-existing areas that went beyond the traditional boundaries of religious education and proselytizing that had characterized the social work of the Muslim Brotherhood. This allowed the Islamists entry to, and legitimation by, the existing order, which they apparently were seeking, or at least accepted.

Although social action has a political and revolutionary purpose in Hamas’s political ideology, Islamic social activism, as it was evolving in the Oslo context, was becoming increasingly incorporated within the mainstream (which, of course, was one way the ruling authority controlled the Islamic sector, but it worked to the advantage of both; by September 2000 approximately 10 to 40% of all social institutions in the West Bank and Gaza were Islamic, according to official and private sources). Some of the clearest examples of this dynamic were in education, health, and banking.

Arguably, these expanded or new areas of Islamic social activity represented the normalization, institutionalization, and professionalization of the Islamic sector in the public curriculum, the system of healthcare delivery, and banking and finance. At the same time, the Islamic sector was not advancing a policy of isolation but was calling for greater accommodation and cooperation with local, national, and international actors, including certain corresponding professional institutions in Israel.

In one healthcare institution in Gaza, which was considered “Hamas” since some members of its management team were political supporters of the organization, the medical director proudly described a training program inside Israel to which he sent some of his staff. In all likelihood, this decision could not have been taken without the consent of the Islamic political leadership. This position advocating greater social (and political?) integration with non-Islamic actors, both internal and external, appeared widespread among officials in the Islamic social sector and was the stated position of some members of the political leadership.

The shift to social action, to new forms of social engagement, and to the normalization and institutionalization of the Islamic and Islamist agendas during the Oslo period represented an important change within the Islamist movement. Islamists perhaps were trying to limit the arbitrary political power of the PA not through political or military confrontation, which had failed and was costly, but through mobilizing people at the sociocultural level and allowing the social part of the movement to define, pragmatically and nonviolently, the Islamic and Islamist agenda for some time to come. Although it was not smooth or quick, the transformation from militancy to accommodation was taking place.

With the Second Intifada, the Palestinian political environment underwent dramatic changes. First was the restoration of the resistance component and militancy to the Palestinian struggle, embraced by all factions, not just the Islamist opposition. Second was the attempt by the nationalist forces to accommodate the demands of the Islamists for the sake of maintaining national unity and an internal political consensus. Third was the effort by the Islamists to normalize their relationship with the PA, without conceding to its political conditions. 

The renewed dominance of the Islamic political and military sectors has not eclipsed the importance or the role of the social. Given the dire economic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza—with unemployment and poverty rates approaching 60% and 70%, respectively—and the eroded capacity of the PA to deliver basic social services, Islamic social organizations have become an increasingly important part of the Palestinian social welfare system.

As during the Oslo period, they are providing services the PA is unable to provide and doing so with the tacit support of the authorities. Indeed, the periodic closing of Islamic charities and other social institutions for political reasons is often temporary because without their services a vacuum would result, which the PA is clearly incapable of filling. As such, there appears to be no organized PA campaign against them. This has further strengthened the institutionalization and normalization of Islamic organizations within the Palestinian status quo.

Some analysts maintain that while Hamas leaders are being targeted, Israel is simultaneously pursuing its old strategy of promoting Hamas over the secular nationalist factions as a way of ensuring the ultimate demise of the PA, and as an effort to extinguish Palestinian nationalism once and for all. In so doing, the argument continues, Israel creates a justification for maintaining the occupation since it will deal with Palestinians only as militant radicals and not on the basis of national rights or as a legitimate part of a political process. But then what?"

Spotlight On: Persona Non Grata (2003)

"I think right now the problem is rather emotional, rather than territorial. Rather psychological than logical. Two angry people that cannot hear each other any more. The Middle East is full of tongues and short of ears." 

-Shimon Peres, Prime Minister of Israel, Persona Non Grata (2003)

In 2003, Oliver Stone directed an HBO documentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Second Intifada. The film follows Stone's interviews with Israeli prime ministers past and present Benjamin Netanyahu, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak. Also interviewed are Hasan Yosef of Hamas, the (masked and anonymous) leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and random citizens of both sides. There's also a Michael Moore-esque subplot about the quest to secure an interview with Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, which results in only a brief superficial meeting.

Stone's film crew arrived in Jerusalem on March 23, 2003 but spent a significant chunk of time filming in Ramallah, West Bank until Israel launched surprise attacks against the city. We watch onscreen as the shocked crew views live news coverage and a political liaison reports to Stone that Israel does not care about the safety of the crew or famous American director and will not grant safe passage. Cameras document the production unit finally fleeing through the Qalandia checkpoint, thanks to a last-minute intervention and escort from the Canadian embassy. (The U.S. "didn't do shit" for them, Stone summed up later.)

Typical of the severe cinéma vérité style of Stone's early documentaries, Persona Non Grata plunges viewers into the conflict immediately with little history or context. At this time, Stone did not make his nonfiction for beginners. There is little text onscreen, mainly just identifying the interviewees by name. Subjects are allowed to speak at length without interruption and the conversations are rarely edited into soundbites. The constellation of crew and cameras which surround Stone and his subjects are always visible. The film doesn't take obvious sides, though at points it's clear that Stone - a former soldier of the empire who fought against a guerrilla insurgency - is more comfortable with the guerilla Palestinian fighters than the pious Israeli politicians in suits.

Oliver Stone's own Jewishness is never mentioned in the documentary, though it's interesting and somewhat fraught. According to his memoir Chasing the Light, Oliver's paternal family was full of learned rabbis (originally from Poland) who disliked leaving their enclave in New York's Upper West Side. Oliver's grandfather, Joshua Silverstein, was the wealthy owner of New York's Star Skirt Company until he sold it and invested the proceeds in the stock market shortly before the October 1929 crash. The family fortune was destroyed. Still reeling from that disaster, Oliver's father, Abraham Silverstein, was then so deeply scarred by the rampant antisemitism of the 1930's that he changed his name to the more "American" Louis Stone. According to Oliver, his father was repulsed whenever he encountered the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, believing they made themselves open targets, and he frequently told his son to hide his Jewishness identity because "the pogroms will come back" and "they" were waiting to take little Jewish children like him. 

In that environment, young Oliver was never given an education in Judaisum and, in the early 1990s, he became the devout Buddhist he remains today. That was also the decade when Stone met and became business partners with Arnon Milchan, the former Israeli spy turned film producer. Milchan brought Stone on his first trip to Israel and Stone would visit the country a few more times, most recently last summer to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Jerusalem Film Festival. Milchan's ardent Zionism did not rub off on Stone, who's gotten in hot water over the years for openly criticizing Israel's foreign policy, specifically AIPAC. 

So what is Persona Non Grata? I think it's a weary reflection of its director's ongoing struggle with conflict and violence. As a two time Purple Heart recipient and Army combat veteran, Oliver Stone has devoted most of his career to grappling with himself as both a victim and perpetrator of violence. Nearly being killed - and becoming a killer - in the service of what he later discovered was a racist, colonial war in Vietnam remains his primal wound. (It's also likely why he's so nonplussed about being in a war zone surrounded by tanks and snipers.)

The film's title (Latin for "unwelcome person") is a deliberate choice. Is it referencing Stone himself and his attempts to interview Arafat, or to Arafat, or to the Palestinians, or to the Israeli leadership? Maybe all of them. Of course there's no real ending to the documentary, because how could there be. Old soldier Oliver Stone wanted to observe this never-ending conflict and so he came, he saw, and he sighed in resignation. 

Watch Persona Non Grata (2003) here.

your post that mentioned Arafat - https://deadpresidents.tumblr.com/post/66966366721/have-you-been-watching-the-pbs-kennedy-documentary - i think plenty of shady people would want him dead but NOT Israel. Arafat would have been more useful to the Israelis alive. Plus, polonium is not the Mossad's technique or style. No, some other country or figures wanted Arafat dead. They likely started by contacting his enemies in the Palestinian Territories and it went from there.

We'll never know for sure who killed Arafat if he was indeed assassinated, but I disagree that he was more useful to the Israelis alive. Maybe in 1993, but not in 2004 when the Second Intifada had been raging for several years and the Israeli Prime Minister was Ariel Sharon. Sharon had absolutely been looking at ways to eliminate Arafat during the Second Intifada and around the time Israel killed Sheikh Yassin, President Bush had to actively reach out to Sharon and urge him not to order a targeted assassination of Arafat. While Sharon didn't explicitly agree to refrain from eliminating Arafat, he seemed to indicate to the Americans that he wouldn't kill him. But shortly before Arafat's death, Sharon reportedly told President Bush that all options were on the table once again.

By the time that Arafat died, he had been a prisoner in his compound in Ramallah as it was completely surrounded by Israeli forces. Israel was no longer interested in trying to work with the Palestinian Authority as long as Arafat was in charge because he had reneged on many of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. And once Arafat died, there was much more positive communication and hope for progress in talks between Israel and the Palestinians -- at least for a while -- so that would seem to suggest that Arafat's death was very useful to Israel. That's supported by the fact that Sharon met with Arafat's replacement, Mahmoud Abbas, at the Sharm El Sheikh summit shortly after Arafat died and that laid the groundwork for ending the Intifada.

Even if polonium wasn't a regular tactic of Mossad, that doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't use that very fact to mask a potential assassination. Again, we'll likely never know for sure, but if Israel did kill Arafat after President Bush directly urged Sharon against a targeted assassination of the Palestinian leader, it would make sense if they tried to disguise a link between the death and Israel.

you didn't actually answer my question , Temple Mount is the most ancient and holiest site for Jewish people -- the Dome of the Rock & Al-Aqsa Mosque were built hundreds of years later on behalf of the Umayyad dynasty's conquest. you mentioned in your response a massacre that happened centuries later, which does not relate to the fact that Jews cannot pray at this site (their utmost holiest site before even the existence of Christians or Muslims). how is "temple denial" something that I made up when you can research it right now and see what it is and that it exists? I ask because this seems to be actually a blind spot for many non-Jewish people simply because it doesn't affect them. I'm not intending to be argumentative and I am sorry if my English is bad in getting across

I'm sorry for being argumentative but a lot of the time, whenever Palestinians are asked about temple mount, there's an implication that Palestinians are colonizers and don't deserve to be on the land. Israelis, if they could, would completely ban Muslims from AlAqsa despite it being the third holiest site in Islam.

AlAqsa is probably the most important national symbol of Palestinians, often thought to be the last straw for Palestinian heritage. So much of our culture has been robbed from us, and (primarily muslims) believe that the demolition of AlAqsa, which is, as Mohammed ElKurd puts it, is one of the last places in all of Palestine where being Palestinian is not criminalized would be a fundamental loss we would never recover from, equivalent to losing our Balad.

I bring up the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre because there are no restrictions for extremist settlers legally — they operate as an arm of the state and in some cases are encouraged to committ these acts. The "Apartheid Law" basically enshrined that settlements are a national value for Israel. This means that there is no safe haven for Palestinians legally. They're in constant danger of getting kicked out of their home or getting arrested for existing. I cannot emphasize enough how Palestinian freedom is so restricted with the explicit intent of pushing them out of the land.

Temple denial as a concept (after looking it up) seeks to paint Palestinians in a fundamentally bigoted and violent light. Palestinians are not allowing Jews in AlAqsa not because they hate Jews, but because that opens the way for settlers to become violent around AlAqsa, which a lot of the time is already happening. I suggest reading "Why Do Palestinians Burn Jewish Holy Sites? The Fraught History of Joseph's Tomb" (sorry the link is not linking, but you can look it up on the palestine institute webpage). It discusses the use of history as a colonial tool. Here's an excerpt:

It is one of many shrines across historic Palestine – now split into Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza – that has been re-invented as exclusively Jewish, despite a long history of shared worship among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Samaritans that goes back centuries. And the reason it has been attacked has almost nothing to do with religion, and much to do with how the Israeli military and settlement movements have used religion as a way to expand their control over Palestinian land and holy places.

And a second excerpt describing the political use of religion:

But the claims of biblical archaeologists had a strong role in how the Zionist movement would come to understand and conceive of the landscape.6 As European Jews migrated to Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century, they drew upon biblical archeology's claims. They adopted archeologists' claims that Palestinian holy sites were directly linked to ancient biblical figures. In many cases, they focused on occupying those sites in order to legitimize the colonial endeavor by giving it a sense of deeper history. In many cases, this would mean evicting the Palestinians who actually frequented these holy sites.

And what Palestinians are afraid of:

In 1975, the Israeli military banned Palestinians – that is, the Samaritans, Muslims, and Christians living around the site – from visiting, a ban that has remained in place until this day. [...] Unsurprisingly, the ban has ignited intense anger over the years. This is true particularly given that frequent visits by Jewish settlers to the shrine are accompanied by hundreds of Israeli soldiers, who enter the area and run atop the rooftops of local Palestinians to “secure” the tomb. As a result, Joseph's Tomb has increasingly become associated with the Israeli military and settlement movement in the eyes of Palestinians. Its presence has become an excuse for frequent military incursions that provoke clashes and lead to arrests and many injuries in the neighborhood. Some fear that Israelis will attempt to take over the shrine to build an Israeli settlement around it. This fear is not unfounded, given the fact that Israeli settlers have done exactly that all across the West Bank in places they believe are connected in some way to Jewish biblical history. The notoriously violent Jewish settlements in Hebron, for example, were built there due to the location of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in that southern West Bank town. Following the initial years of settlement, settlers even managed to convince Israeli authorities to physically divide the shrine – which is holy to local Palestinians – and turn the whole area into a heavily-militarized complex. Other shrines have become excuses for the Israeli military to build army bases inside Palestinian towns, like Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem – which is surrounded by twenty-foot high concrete walls on three sides to block Palestinian access. The village of Nabi Samwel near Jerusalem, meanwhile, was demolished in its entirety to provide Jewish settlers access to the tomb at its heart.

I'm not denying the temple mount is there. I'm just saying that history has been manipulated to erase centuries worth of cultural heritage through scholarship and Palestinians are protective of their most important symbol of resistance and life. Even you saying "Islam and Christianity came after Judiasm" is a dogwhistle for me, because a lot of the time extremists say that to completely erase AlAqsa as an important site to Muslims and intending to deny the site as a shared worshipping site that is quite important to Muslims. Just because Islam came after Judiasm, does that mean it's not legitimate as a religion itself? Islamically, Islam is a continuation of Judiasm, so we don't deny judiasm is important to AlQuds. We just are so concerned with losing our national symbol that we're so protective over it.

Now I bring up the massacre at ibrahimi mosque because, like mentioned in the excerpt above, Palestinians are afraid something like that will happen again. There's no protections for Palestinians, and most of the time they're denied from praying in AlAqsa themselves by Israeli authorities. Israeli settlers themselves come in and disrespect AlAqsa, and as I mentioned, extremists plan on demolishing AlAqsa to build a Third Temple. The Massacre at the Mosque paved way to the "Jews Only" streets I mentioned, including the militarization and basically a complete upheaval of normal life for Palestinians. I suggest looking into how terrible the situation in AlKhalil is, and that arised directly from the massacre.

You cannot separate this issue from the colonial implications of the last safe haven in all of Palestine being open to Israelis. Now when Palestine is free, I doubt there would be restrictions. But right now, there are and to pretend Israelis don't pose a threat to Palestinians fundamentally, would be erasure of the colonization of Palestine.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but even if AlAqsa was built hundreds of years after, it doesn't change the fact that RIGHT NOW Israelis have privilege that Palestinians do not. As soon as that privilege is no longer there, then we can talk about allowing Jews there. But until then, Palestinians are constantly in danger of settler violence and to take away a space (which, Ibrahimi Mosque was one of those sites before Palestinians were massacred) is frankly, an insult and a denial that Palestinians themselves are colonized.

I suggest looking at the links I provided earlier for more in depth analysis. I'm going to reiterate: the only reason it's illegal is because Palestine is colonized and this is our last safe haven that we even aren't completely allowed from entering ourselves.

Most Palestinians are quite heated about this topic. It genuinely is considered one of our last national symbols (so not just religious but also political and cultural), which means that having that taken away (which extremist settlers plan on demolishing it completely, and if they're allowed in, then there are no restrictions on their behavior) would be tantamount to losing our balad, or nation. I've heard Israelis call AlAqsa terrible names over the years and some fully intend on demolishing the site. Even within Israeli politics, it is a genuine goal for some people, including Ben Gvir, so most believe that opening the door for settlers (who are the ones who want the destruction of AlAqsa) would be equivalent to giving it up. You can't ignore that when talking about AlAqsa and the laws surrounding it. The primary reason for this protectiveness is political and cultural.

.

A Palestinian boy chucks a rock at an Israeli Magach 6B Gal during the Second Intifada, 2000-2005

We're all hopping for some miracle something to give militants across the WB and from gaza to have the upper hand and finish this even though it's impossible or feels impossible but we know if israel subjugates gaza again everything will be so much worse. With every uprising came the checkpoints the apartheid wall. After the 2021 protests garnered more international support, the occupation got worse. Before this even started palestinians were being shot and killed on almost a daily basis. What's it gonna be after that? I can't imagine anything worse and I don't want to

People are stupid on Israel/Palestine

The worst thing about the current Israeli-Hamas conflict is that if you have actually spent an unreasonable time studying it like I have the current discourse around, it makes you want to jump off a bridge. Because there are a bunch of idiots that don't understand what has led to this conflict and why the things in Israel and Palestine are the way they are. And so their "solutions" it a complex 75 year old ethnic conflict are, not surprisingly, pretty stupid.

Armenians have lived in Jerusalem for 1,600 years and Armenian Palestinians are the oldest group in the Armenian diaspora. From their indigenous land in Artsakh to the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem, Armenians have been facing ethnic cleansing and persecution on multiple fronts. With the escalating genocidal violence in Gaza and the West Bank, armed settler encroachment into Armenian holdings in Jerusalem has fallen under the radar of some pro-Palestine activism and it is critical we do not allow this to happen.

Some context:

( In 1948, Armenians in Jerusalem numbered about 16,000. Today, that number has shrunk; estimates range from 700-1000, with a smaller community in Bethlehem. )

“We are not the objectives of the Israelis, but we occupy a huge chunk of Jerusalem. The fact that we’re here is an obstacle for them, but we’ve been here for 1,600 years and we’re not going anywhere.” "These are only the most visible of the challenges facing the community....Israeli discrimination, economic decline, and political insecurity have taken a toll on Armenians, encouraging emigration. A century after the community was nearly annihilated, Armenian Palestinians today say they feel deeply at home in the Holy Land, but fear how much longer they will be able to hold on."

“Don’t ask me about the massacres that happened 100 years ago [1915],” Annie Guluzian said when asked about her experiences as an Armenian Palestinian. “I won’t open [up about] those topics. Because if I do, I will start talking about my brother who was martyred by the Israelis in the [second] Intifada.” The toll of the Israeli occupation in Palestine is what defines her life today, Guluzian added. Source

Since October 26th, 2023, when the leader of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced it would cancel a once-secret 2021 land lease deal with a real estate company that has alleged links to settler interests, the company, Xana Gardens, has sent in armed settlers and bulldozers to steal the land (including Armenian Chruch property and several Armenian families). Armenians have been resisting the occupational forces day in and day out.

From November 5th:

Link to tweet and video

November 5th:

Link to tweet and video

November 22nd:

Link to tweet and thread

November 25th:

Link to tweet and thread

In response, Armenians have created an account on Twitter called SaveTheArq which has been documenting and updating on social media the recent land demolitions by Israeli settlers in the Armenian quarter, they have also launched a fundraiser for legal actions to protect the Armenian quarter and I highly recommend donating, if you can't, please share it around:

How the Watermelon Became a Symbol of Palestinian Solidarity

The use of the watermelon as a Palestinian symbol is not new. It first emerged after the Six-day War in 1967, when Israel seized control of the West Bank and Gaza, and annexed East Jerusalem. At the time, the Israeli government made public displays of the Palestinian flag a criminal offense in Gaza and the West Bank. 

To circumvent the ban, Palestinians began using the watermelon because, when cut open, the fruit bears the national colors of the Palestinian flag—red, black, white, and green.  

The Israeli government didn't just crack down on the flag. Artist Sliman Mansour told The National in 2021 that Israeli officials in 1980 shut down an exhibition at 79 Gallery in Ramallah featuring his work and others, including Nabil Anani and Issam Badrl. “They told us that painting the Palestinian flag was forbidden, but also the colors were forbidden. So Issam said, ‘What if I were to make a flower of red, green, black and white?’, to which the officer replied angrily, ‘It will be confiscated. Even if you paint a watermelon, it will be confiscated,’” Mansour told the outlet.

Israel lifted the ban on the Palestinian flag in 1993, as part of the Oslo Accords, which entailed mutual recognition by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization and were the first formal agreements to try to resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The flag was accepted as representing the Palestinian Authority, which would administer Gaza and the West Bank.

In the wake of the accords, the New York Times nodded to the role of watermelon as a stand-in symbol during the flag ban. “In the Gaza Strip, where young men were once arrested for carrying sliced watermelons—thus displaying the red, black and green Palestinian colors—soldiers stand by, blasé, as processions march by waving the once-banned flag,” wrote Times journalist John Kifner.

In 2007, just after the Second Intifada, artist Khaled Hourani created The Story of the Watermelon for a book entitled Subjective Atlas of Palestine. In 2013, he isolated one print and named it The Colours of the Palestinian Flag, which has since been seen by people across the globe.

The use of the watermelon as a symbol resurged in 2021, following an Israeli court ruling that Palestinian families based in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem would be evicted from their homes to make way for settlers.

The watermelon symbol today:

In January, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave police the power to confiscate Palestinian flags. This was later followed by a June vote on a bill to ban people from displaying the flag at state-funded institutions, including universities. (The bill passed preliminary approval but the government later collapsed.)

In June, Zazim, an Arab-Israeli community organization, launched a campaign to protest against the ensuing arrests and confiscation of flags. Images of watermelons were plastered on to 16 taxis operating in Tel Aviv, with the accompanying text reading, “This is not a Palestinian flag.”

“Our message to the government is clear: we will always find a way to circumvent any absurd ban and we will not stop fighting for freedom of expression and democracy,” said Zazim director Raluca Ganea. 

Amal Saad, a Palestinian from Haifa who worked on the Zazim campaign, told Al-Jazeera they had a clear message: “If you want to stop us, we’ll find another way to express ourselves.”

Words courtesy of BY ARMANI SYED / TIME

A black-and-white photograph of grafitti on the walls of Jenin Palestinian Refugee Camp which was destroyed during the Battle of Jenin 2002, in the Second Intifada.

(Source: The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive)

You're not as informed as you think, and age does play a factor.

This is going to ruffle some feathers, but it needs to be said. You're not as informed on the I/P Conflict and the history of the region as you think, and age plays a major factor. Hell, you're not as informed on a lot of topics as you think. I want you to think about what you were doing 5 years ago. Were you still running around on the playground? Were you making dioramas for a science class? Were you in high school worried about being a first year? Were you just starting to pick out colleges or deciding to even go? Did you ever call a teacher by their first name? Now, there is a line that we hear thrown about that people don't fully mature till they're 25. While this is bupkis and misrepresents the research, it is true that the brain does not stop developing till sometime in the mid to late 20s. In fact, the brains of undergraduates age 18-22 and their respective thought patterns more closely resemble high schoolers than they do mid 20s and above. So what does this mean in the course of the I/P conflict? For one thing, this is your first incident. Your first I/P war. Those of us in our 30s and above have seen a good number of them at this point. I even remember when the use of child suicide bombers became a standard method for Hamas and other terrorist groups during the Second Intifada. As such, many of us are used to the manipulation that we see in this particular region. We're used to seeing antisemitism be dismissed and well intentioned people be manipulated. Many of us are just tired because you're going through the same shit we did at your age and we look back and go "oh, we were severely misinformed". Because this is your first, you're super passionate about it, but that passion can be manipulated. Second, you're not as smart or well informed as you think you are. This has to do with the age and maturation thing mentioned above. While 25 is an arbitrary number, there are some milestones that happen by then. By 25 you have had enough life experience to really start piecing together your education, your life experiences, your world experiences, and your respective beliefs into a coherent way of approaching topics. Hopefully by that age you're less likely to have the emotional outburst in response to a subject (think about the stereotypical slamming the door teenager behavior, many of us did that and we cringe thinking about it) and more likely to approach something in a levelheaded and informed manner. Unfortunately there is some research that shows evidence that Gen Z and Millenials are susceptible to propaganda and misinformation, with the former exhibiting behavior akin to Boomers. So keep that in mind that none of us are safe for misinformation, but some generations are worse than others. Now, who am I to say this to you? Some of you are quite mad right at the moment. Some of you have strived to be seen as well informed young adults or to be taken seriously, and in some cases you are. However...

I'm in my 30s and I have been teaching at the college level for a decade and some change now. By no means am I an expert, but I have enough experience to say something. The ages I teach are 18+, meaning I've had students that are typical fresh high school grads and students that are in their 50s. Myself and my colleagues have heard repeatedly from students the "I'm an adult, I know what I'm doing" line to only watch that 18-22 y.o. student fail miserably or come crying to us later. I have personally watched students go through the stages of grief as they realized in my classes that their pet science activism is not what they thought, but they've wrapped so much of their identity around it. You're still learning, and thinking you know more just because you read something online is an issue. You're also still growing and developing as a person. Recognize that you can be manipulated. Recognize that you can be wrong. Recognize your own inherent biases. Then do better.