Wednesday Edition I President Zelenskyy, one Israel is enough

Source: Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/ opinions/2022/4/19/president- zelenskyy-one-israel-is-enough

By Andrew Mitrovica
Published April 19, 2022
 

One of the advantages of writing for a news organisation with the breadth and influence of Al Jazeera is that important people with important jobs might read your stuff.

Anyone familiar with who and what I write about knows that I do not tailor this column to appeal to important people with important jobs like presidents or prime ministers, kings or queens.

I like to think that, as a general rule, I write about people that other writers have forgotten. I write about people who have lived quiet, largely anonymous lives. But something – usually wrong or bad – has happened to them that requires that you and I pay attention. The privilege of writing a column for Al Jazeera can help do that.

Still, there are times when the circumstances demand that I address a column to an important person with an important job in the remote, but conceivable chance, that a president or prime minister – or someone close to them – can read and consider what I have to say.

This, I suppose, is one of those times...

Read more: President Zelenskyy, one Israel is enough

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Ukraine and Palestine: How the West embraces one resistance but demonises another

Source: Middle East Eye

https://www.middleeasteye.net/ opinion/israel-palestine-west- embraces-one-resistance- demonises-another-how

By David Hearst
Published April 18, 2022

Ukraine's defiance in the face of Putin’s aggression has been dubbed heroic, so why doesn't the Palestinian resistance get the same treatment?

For the past two months, the West has been transfixed by the sight of a lightly armed population resisting the might of an overwhelmingly powerful and aggressive neighbour. Ukrainian popular resistance to Vladimir Putin’s armed aggression has passed into the lexicon of European history. It has been dubbed heroic and given new purpose to Nato.

Another wave of popular resistance is surging in a different part of the world, but it does not get the same treatment. 

No team of CNN or BBC reporters will drool over this band of brothers or ooze empathy as they fill bottles of Molotov cocktails and learn how to shoot guns. No British prime minister will fly over clandestinely to meet its leader. No military transporters filled with crates of Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapons, Stingers, and Switchblade Drones will arrive to give the beseiged half a chance against the tanks and drones of the invader.

No undercover team of Special Air Service (SAS) will be on the ground to train them.

Social media will not give its call to arms a global audience. Instead, Facebook suspends a page devoted to its news coverage out of fear of upsetting the aggressor. Instead, their resistance will be recast by the occupier as terror, and the rest of the world will stand by and wring its hands, as it does every time.

But resistance it surely is...

Read more: Ukraine and Palestine: How the West embraces one resistance but demonises another

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Opinion | We Are Israeli Citizens, but Don’t Ask Us to Stop Being Palestinians

Source: Haaretz

https://www.haaretz.com/ opinion/.premium-we-are- israeli-citizens-but-don-t- ask-us-to-stop-being- palestinians-1.10743633

By Ayman Odeh
Published April 14, 2022

Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea live 14 million people belonging to two categories, Palestinian or Israeli. Most Palestinians and Israelis have no problem with this dichotomous arrangement. A Palestinian living in Ramallah or Gaza City knows he’s Palestinian. A Jew in Tel Aviv or Kiryat Gat knows he’s Israeli. Of these 14 million people, 1.7 million live in between these two groups.

On one hand are us, members of the Palestinian nation born in this country. We dream and pray in Arabic and see ourselves as an inseparable part of our Palestinian nation and the Arab world. On the other hand, we are Arab citizens of Israel, and most of our lives are conducted within the 1967 borders, the Green Line. We go to school here; we may work at Rambam Medical Center and go to university in Jenin. Our children listen to Israeli-Jewish singer Omer Adam and are glued to the screen during the finals of “Arab Idol.”

We didn’t choose this tension. The State of Israel imposed it on us. Since the end of the military administration that was imposed on Arab citizens, we’ve been offered conditional equality, and the condition is an impossible one: alienation from our mother tongue and the effacement of our forefathers’ heritage in exchange for second-class citizenship in a state that views us as a demographic liability.

It’s important that you, readers of Haaretz, understand the ties between members of the Palestinian nation before the walls and fences were erected in an attempt to cut us off from one another. When I look at the picture of Eyad al-Hallaq, an autistic East Jerusalem man shot dead by a Border Policeman, I see my son or my brother. When I see the body of Ghada Sabateen, an unarmed woman shot by soldiers, I can’t help but worry about my mother and her sisters. I’m puzzled by Israelis, who invest so much energy in building ties with Jews around the world, expecting me to support the abuse and oppression of my compatriots in East Jerusalem...

Read more: Opinion | We Are Israeli Citizens, but Don’t Ask Us to Stop Being Palestinians