Friday December 1, 2023 ~ the genocide underway in Palestine is unbearable, torturous, a hellscape. We are incandescent with rage and pain. STAND UP TO GENOCIDE ~ TOGETHER FOR PALESTINE ! For the sake of humanity, we need CEASEFIRE NOW. Enduring peace is only achievable by a political agreement which ends OCCUPATION and APARTHEID. Break the endless cycles of violence. Violence to which Europe has been shamefully complicit in so many ways and for so long. DAI offers an evolving feed, or call it a social media frenzy- filter. Dear members of the extended DAI community are sharing links with us ~ and your suggestions are most welcome as well, send them to: WORLD@dutchartinstitute.eu
The street is empty
as a monk’s memory,
and faces explode in the flames
like acorns—
and the dead crowd the horizon
and doorways.
No vein can bleed
more than it already has,
no scream will rise
higher than it’s already risen.
We will not leave!
From: Exodus by Taha Muhammad Ali ~read the entire poem here.
The tonic to go with the Djinn of the social media feed
"If only our timelines could be replaced by timedials, in a metaphorical coding sense, could social media platforms generate more recursive, less-linear experiences? If this is asking (or expecting too) much from the US centric corporate owned platforms, then could a tonic, the tonic to go with the Djinn of the social media feed, be the parallel readings of Palestinian historians, writer and poets who invite us to longer term conjectures and durations?" From "Timeline Palestine" a text by Harun Morrison (DAI, 2020) published on the 30th of October 2023 by Nero
It’s really no surprise that resistance and literature go hand in hand:
5 Palestinian Poems that’ll Reshape Your Understanding of Belonging:
Fadwa Tuqan, Mahmoud Darwish, Ibrahim Tuqan, Noor Hindi and Hanan Mikha’il Ashrawi.
WOMEN POWER
NOT IN OUR NAME
"SILENCE IS COMPLICITY. We call on all European institutions and governments to break from their inaction and make every effort to prevent the continued massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and their arrest and intimidation in the West Bank". (Institute of Radical Imagination/ Foundation for Art Initiatives ). SIGN THE PETITION HERE.
Demand Venice Biennale to Include Palestinian Artists Collateral Event in Biennale Arte 24
Palestinian Students’ Urgent Call to Students Around the Globe: Stop the Genocide and End Complicity with Israeli Apartheid
Statement issued by the Birzeit University Union of Professors and Employees in response to the ongoing genocide of Gaza perpetrated by the state of Israel. (Birzeit is a public university based in the West Bank, in Palestine).
Open Letter from the Art Community to Cultural Organizations & and a RESPONSE to Open Letter from the Art Community to Cultural Organizations
SIGN THE PETITION BY DIEM25: We demand the resignation of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen who violated the European Union‘s legal framework and disregarded basic moral decency. While condemning attacks on civilians in Israel, she has supported the sealing off of civilians in Gaza from water, food and electricity and the bombing of the people of Gaza under the guise of “defence”. This unilateral action disregards international law and the democratic mandate of EU member states
PETITION BY Dutch Scholars for Palestine ~ network of academic and cultural workers committed to solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.
MEANWHILE IN GERMANY
November 13, 2023: Documenta Resignation Letter ~ Ranjit Hoskote
Germany is a good place to be Jewish. Unless, like me, you’re a Jew who criticises Israel ~ Deborah Feldman in the Guardian of 13 November, 2023.
A STATEMENT from BERLIN CULTURE WORKERS for PALESTINE:"This statement is more than a diagnosis or complaint: we are sounding the alarm".
Freedom for the One Who Thinks Differently ~ An open letter from a group of Jewish artists, writers, and scholars in Germany.
It is time to set the record straight
Anti-Palestinianism ~ Islamophobia ~ Anti-Arabism
In a new mini-documentary from The Electronic Intifada, Nora Barrows-Friedman explains the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism is a tool to identify, confront and raise awareness about antisemitism as it manifests in countries around the world today. It includes a preamble, definition, and a set of 15 guidelines that provide detailed guidance for those seeking to recognize antisemitism in order to craft responses. It was developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies to meet what has become a growing challenge: providing clear guidance to identify and fight antisemitism while protecting free expression.
RESOURCES: context, history, research, reflection, activism, support.
Noura Erakat's incredibly powerful statement "Western Leaders & Media Are Justifying Israel’s “Genocidal Campaign” Against Palestinians" begins with a commendation to Democracy Now! Democracy Now!:
"an oasis in a sea of warmongering across mainstream media".
Democracy Now ! Democracy Now ! continues to offer a platform to those brave voices that are speaking truth to power, while not giving in to chilling, neo-fascist discourses, be they anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic or anti-Semitic (or a mixture of all three). Brave voices such as that of:
Israel's award-winning journalist Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank breaks down as she tries to put into words the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel's plan for even greater slaughter, and the world's indifference. She then decries the marginalization and suppression of the Israeli left, as “extreme fascists” in the Netanyahu government have whipped the Israeli public into one that is “drunk with the will to take: revenge.”
The Vera List Center at the New School in New York generously shares a great list of resources by artists and activists, weaving essays, films, poetry, programs, and sounds that draw on its 30-year archive of critical conversations on Palestinian resistance—essays on BDS, co-resistance, allyship, and decolonization by among others Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Yazan Khalili, Joshua Simon, Ann Stoler, Eyal Weizman, Kareem Estefan, Emily Jacir, Khalil Rabah, Rasha Salti and Ella Shohat.
FILMS and DOCUMENTARIES to WATCH
A WEALTH OF PALESTINIAN FILMS (made available for free): Palestine Films: international institution for serving the Palestinian films and films about Palestine.
Al Jazeera: Ten films to watch about the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict
Released just shortly before 7 October, 2023: Israelism ~ Official trailer When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns (see the film's website as well).
And here are just a few more places where to find information, context and reflection. Dear members of the extended DAI community are sharing links with us (and your suggestions are most welcome as well, send them to: WORLD@dutchartinstitute.eu)
Extensive hour-to-hour covering: Aljazeera English
Aljazeera shares: What’s the Israel-Palestine conflict about? It’s killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. And its future lies in its past. A simple guide.
The Electronic Intifada is regularly hosting a LIVE STREAM with news and well-informed, sharp and in-depth analyses from the perspective of the resistance.
What Does “From the River to the Sea” Really Mean?
Dutch Court Rules ‘From the River to the Sea’ Protected Speech and Not Antisemitic.
The Institute for Palestine Studies ~ the most reliable source of information and analysis on the Question of Palestine.
Read The Ten Myths About Israel and watch a brief, yet highly insightful conversation between its author, the brilliant, exiled Israeli historian, political scientist and brave human being Ilan Pappe, and journalist Max Blumenthal about how the mere presence of the Palestinians threatens the dominant Israeli narrative. About how settler colonialism and Zionism are completely entangled and how the international racist and anti-semitic extreme right came to embrace the State of Israel. Link: Youtube: 30th of March 2017
B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Novara Media is an independent media organisation ~ driven to build a new media for a different politics.
DDN ~ DoubleDownNews: "WE SERVE PEOPLE NOT POWER ~ In an ever increasingly divided world, our job isn’t to drive people further apart with fear and fiction but bring them together with empathy and evidence."
Mondoweiss is an independent website devoted to informing readers about developments in Israel/Palestine and related US foreign policy. It provides news and analysis unavailable through the mainstream media regarding the struggle for Palestinian human rights.
Boston Review ~ independent political and literary forum
The Balfour Project: acknowledging Britain’s historic and continuing responsibilities, works through education and advocacy to advance equal rights for all in Palestine/Israel, regardless of race or creed.
The Vital Role of Afro-Palestinians in the African Diaspora
Amnesty International Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians
Amnesty International has created a free 90-minute course called “Deconstructing Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians”. To learn more about the crime of apartheid in international law, what apartheid looks like in Israel/OPT, and how it affects Palestinians’ lives, sign up their course on Amnesty International’s human rights education academy.
BAK (Utrecht) offers:"75 years of dispossession ~ 56 years of occupation ~ 16 years of blockade", assembled under the title To Read the War on BAK’s digital forum.
DAI's statement page (including many resources) of May, 2021.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Gaza's gas, China's New Silk Road, shaping the world to come
These two, above mentioned, passionately delivered online-seminars by independent journalist and researcher Richard Medhurst are substained by a wealth of online articles in business-journals and on policy platforms worldwide, reporting on older to very recent (until the beginning of October)deliberations and contracts or contracts-in-the-making between various heads of states, companies and Israel as well as the Palestinian Authority (who is not in charge of Gaza).
Search for Gaza Marine (natural gas field off the coast of the Gaza Strip) and the Ben Gurion Canal Project
DO WHAT YOU CAN
Palestine Red Crescent Society
MAP ~ Medical Aid for Palestine
(note that all profits from sales on e-flux Shop will now be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians to support emergency relief in Gaza).
Doctors without Borders in Palestine
Buy Palestinian products (in the Netherlands):
19 NOVEMBER 2023 ~ national demonstration at 14:00
Sunday 29/10/2023: National Demonstration in The Hague beginning at 14:00 at the Malieveld ~ The demonstration is organised by a broad coalition of organizations for a free Palestine ~ About the demonstration (in Dutch).
CALL FOR DEMONSTRATION IN AMSTERDAM SUNDAY 15/10/2023. BEGINNING AT THE DAM at 14:00
READ THE CALL AS PUBLISHED BY DIEM25 (one of many participating organisations)
