Our feature presentation this morning is a speech delivered by Nadia Ben Yossef, a human rights lawyer and international advocate working to promote the rights of Palestinian and other Arab citizens of Israel, and Palestinians living under occupation. One out of every five Israeli citizens, living in Israel, is Palestinian. They live in a proclaimed Jewish state, where they are a segregated minorityâ¦by law. They do not have the same rights as Jews to education, property, land and home ownership, travel ability, or state benefits to name just a few. Think of the Jim Crow South in United States history, where Blacks were so blatantly segregated and discriminated against by law as well as practice. The parallels to the modern state of Israel as concerns the treatment of Palestinian citizens are chilling. Our Congressional representatives, at least most of them, would stand shoulder to shoulder in rejecting the re-introduction of Jim Crow laws in the United states, but they also stand shoulder to shoulder in supporting such a system of laws in Israel with billions of dollars of US financial support to what is a classic apartheid society. Unfortunately, the narrative is that we must support Israel because it is the "only democracy in the Middle East" (which it is not). We have to change that narrative to reflect the reality of the situation, and that is that we support with our tax dollars in Israel a state which is de jure deeply discriminatory to a major segment of its citizen population. The bottom line, we support there what we refuse to support here, and that we must change.
Nadia Ben Yossef works for an organization based in Israel that offers its non-Jewish population legal representation to defend their rights in this apartheid society. She serves as the international coordinator of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, as the organizations first US representative. She is currently developing Adalahâs US advocacy strategy to influence American policy and practice towards a human rights based approach in I/P. Nadia is a member of he New York Bar having earned her law degree from BC law school. She holds a BA degree from Princeton where she majored in Sociology.
We recorded Nadia Ben Yossef at a conference sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action at Harvard University.
But before that:
We have been following the plight of Prof. Steven Salaita, who was offered a tenured position at Illinois University at Urbana Champaign, moved his family from west Virginia, but before he even began his tenure, was fired for making statements critical of Israel on Twitter. It seems major donors to the university put pressure on the Universityâs president Phyllis Wise, and she acquiesced by firing Salaita. The backlash has been enormous. Academics and their associations levied charges of the violation of Academic Freedom and free speech across the country. Speakers scheduled for conferences at the university pulled out. Some professors at the university resigned in protest, filling tenured positions at the university has been difficult because many refuse to teach there. Ultimately President Wise was forced to resign, and Salita filed a lawsuit seeking his job back. That lawsuit has now been settled. We quote from an article by Ali Abu Nimah in the Electronic Intifada.
Also, after the main feature:
The disturbing reports of interactions between the Israeli military and young people in the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem continue. These clashes repeat week after week as the military continually enter the camp. Several youth have been arrested, some shot during these frequent incursions. This week there is a video of the arrest of a six year old boy, arrested while fleeing from the tear gas that was sprayed into his playground. We quote a report from the Maâan news service.
Finally, there is one more story to report this week and it has to do with the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza which Egypt has closed, cutting off a flow of goods which Gaza has depended on in the wake of Israelâs continuing siege. The tunnels have been a life line for Israel, but Egpyt, who has a peace treaty with Israel, has decided not only to close the tunnels, but to destroy them. We quote from a report from Mondoweiss news service headlined âEgyptâs destruction of Gaza tunnels leading to economic and environmental disaster.â
This Week In Palestine (a weekly part of Truth and Justice Radio) is an award-winning three-quarter-hour segment of news from Palestine and discussion of issues relevant to the Palestinians' struggle for freedom from Israel's brutal military occupation and colonization of their homeland. It speaks from the point of view of Palestinians and those who care about them. It's a regular part of Truth and Justice Radio, aired Sundays 6-10am ET on WZBC 90.3FM, Newton, MA, streaming and archived for two weeks at wzbc.org; TJR's website, truthandjusticeradio.org, has a link to This Week In Palestine archives back thru 1-6-2008; earlier editions are obtainable from radio4all.net or by navigating through our playlists. (At this important time, TJR has been airing a lot of Palestine coverage IN ADDITION to that provided by This Week In Palestine.) We hope you'll write to us at tjr@bluebottle.com if you rebroadcast our work, or have questions or comments.
This Week In Palestine 11-22-2015
Adalah human rights lawyer Nadia Ben Yossef speaks about Israel's Jim Crow laws
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