A New Generation of Palestinians Are Rising Under Netanyahu's Nose and Saying 'Enough Is Enough'

 By David Hearst

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/05/11/new-generation-palestinians-are-rising-under-netanyahus-nose-and-saying-enough

Ten years ago, I walked down a tiled pathway in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and was led into a room where an old woman was sitting amid a pile of boxes and packed suitcases.

The first thing I noticed about Rifqa al-Kurd was the burning intensity of her eyes. She told me that she lived out of boxes because she was expecting the police to throw her out of house and for the settlers to move in at any moment. When that happened, she explained, she did not want her clothes thrown into the street. Hence the packed bags.

She had been through this before, when she was evicted from her home in Haifa in 1948. What kept her there, sitting among her boxes? She gave a one word reply: "Sumud", which roughly translates as steadfastness.

Palestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/opinion/israel-palestinian-refugees-right-of-return.html?searchResultPosition=4

By: Peter Beinart

Why has the impending eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem drawn Israelis and Palestinians into a conflict that appears to be spiraling toward yet another war? Because of a word that in the American Jewish community remains largely taboo: the Nakba.

The Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, need not refer only to the more than 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled in terror during Israel’s founding. It can also evoke the many expulsions that have occurred since: the about 300,000 Palestinians whom Israel displaced when it conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967; the roughly 250,000 Palestinians who could not return to the West Bank and Gaza after Israel revoked their residency rights between 1967 and 1994; the hundreds of Palestinians whose homes Israel demolished in 2020 alone. The East Jerusalem evictions are so combustible because they continue a pattern of expulsion that is as old as Israel itself.

Democracy Of The Rich

Whenever speaking of politics or government in the United States, the word democracy is heard several times. Sometimes it is combined with some adjectives, such as “the largest” or “the greatest”. There is no doubt that no country in the world has such a vast and untarnished democracy as the United States. However, no one asks who the beneficiary of this democracy is. The term is Greek, and it means the vote or the rule of the people. The question is who these people are.

Preparing taxes, I came across with elimination of some deductions, that was passed by congress on December 22, 2017, under Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The interesting common place among all the enacted status is their titles, which is usually the opposite of what the act is for. For example, this one is not to cut taxes, but to cut deductions, several of them at once, which would increase one’s taxes.