Our Wednesday News Analysis | Dispelling the myths about Palestinian refugees — in Jenin and beyond

A mural in the Jenin refugee camp, West Bank, October 10, 2006. (Anne Paq/Activestills)

The Israeli army’s latest invasion and bombardment of Jenin refugee camp was accompanied by typical hasbara — Israeli propaganda — seeking to justify the illegal occupation as a necessary response to terrorism. It has also sparked another round of bad-faith arguments about the Jenin camp’s very existence, with a spike in social media rhetoric asking why there are refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.

While Palestinian refugees have long been the target of such misinformation campaigns, these hasbara efforts have escalated in recent years with the rise of the extremist right in Israel and an anti-Palestinian drive from Republicans in the United States.

The undermining of Palestinians’ refugee status and rights goes hand-in-hand with the denial of the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the uprooting and expulsion of around three-quarters of the Palestinian population in 1948, at the hands of Zionist militias and the new Israeli state. Denying the Nakba makes it possible to depict Israel’s establishment as liberatory and benign, while propagating myths about Palestinian refugees enables Israeli settler colonialism to continue today...

Read more: Dispelling the myths about Palestinian refugees — in Jenin and beyond

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MY CLOWN IS IN AN ISRAELI PRISON, AGAIN!

Source: Sam Bahour
https://sbahour.medium.com/my-clown-is-in-an-israeli-prison-again-2219690a866e

By Sam Bahour
Published July 9, 2023

Are Israeli mothers and fathers resting better knowing Palestinian children will not be smiling?

Mohammad Abu Sakha (Antar) Credit: Palestinian Circus School

In the lead-up to the most recent Israeli military onslaught on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the north of the West Bank, Israeli intelligence was at its all-time best. Aware that Israel had decided to undertake wanton destruction of the Jenin Refugee Camp, yet again, Israeli security teams were on the lookout for the most dangerous Palestinians.

It was a Friday, June 9, 2023. As has become the norm these days, dozens of Israeli soldiers were staked out on the main road in the Palestinian village of Huwwara, stopping and searching Palestinian cars on a whim. This road, Route 60, is the main artery for anyone traveling from Ramallah in the central West Bank to the north of the West Bank, to the cities of Nablus and Jenin, among others. Earlier this year, Huwwara, you may recall, was the location of the pogroms carried out by hundreds of Israeli settlers (protected by Israeli soldiers) that wreaked havoc and death on the Palestinian community there.

It is through the Huwwara checkpoint that thousands of Palestinians must pass every day, especially during the weekend when many who work and stay in Ramallah during the week, return to visit their families up north for the weekend...

Read more: My clown is in an Israeli prison, again!

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A ZIONIST YOUTH MOVEMENT THAT WANTS TO SHAPE ISRAELI ARAB MINDS? SOUNDS LEGIT

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-07-08/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/a-zionist-youth-movement-that-wants-to-shape-israeli-arab-minds-sounds-legit/00000189-30eb-df82-a78f-75fba45f0000

By Hilo Glazer and Nadin Abou Laban
Published July 8, 2023

The people behind Atidna, an Arab-Zionist youth movement, are from the deep right and espouse a far-reaching vision: to foment a sea change in Israel’s Arab society and create a right-wing Arab stream

An Atidna visit to a death camp in Poland. The trips have brought praise from Jews, threats from some Arabs.Credit: Courtesy of Atidna

It looked like a wonderful initiative: A group of Arab and Jewish leaders band together in order to establish a new organization intended to serve the country’s Arab population with the aim of integrating members of its youth into Israeli society as equal partners. They found a youth movement, distribute scholarships to college-age students, organize outings and tours for teens, run workshops and courses in various subjects, work to get talented young people hired by high-tech firms, and groom a core of young leaders. They’re called Atidna (Arabic for “our future”), and according to their website – in Arabic – the movement’s founders are a “coalition of educators and leaders from among Israel’s Arab citizens, together with Jewish partners.”

Who are those Jewish partners? The answer to that question also appears on the website – but only in the Hebrew and English versions. There, the description is couched in slightly different terms: “Atidna is a coalition of educators and social entrepreneurs, Arab citizens of Israel together with Jews from the State-Zionist camp in Israel.” A coalition between Arab society and the “State-Zionist camp”? That’s a bit of a jaw-dropping formulation. It’s not hard to guess why it was omitted from the Arabic text...

Read more: A Zionist Youth Movement That Wants to Shape Israeli Arab Minds? Sounds Legit