"Silence in the face of Evil is itself evil" said Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German dissident and lutheran Priest executed by the Nazi regime 9 April 1945. Three years after his death, the new Nazis committed a massacre at Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948. My mother's friend in school (both studying to be Teachers, school in Jerusalem) chose to go back to her village of Deir Yassin. That was the last time my mother saw her young friend Hayah Balbisi and this victim of Zionism remains etched in memory of my mother including on her death bead 75 years later. Deir Yassin was not the first, last, or the largest massacre committed by Zionist forces to serve their colonial greed. It was merely one of 33 massacres committed in 1948 to drive our people out an hundreds of massacres committed since then over the past eight decades resulting in about half a million Palestinians killed, millions made refugees. So far hundreds of indigenous villages and towns were depopulated in the malevolent attempt to transform a multi-cultural/multi-religious/mult-lingual Palestine to become the "Jewish state of Israel". The horrendous price tag in lives and livelihoods is still being paid by common people not only in Palestine but also nearby countries.
Jessie and I managed to get to Cyprus where we are attending the 5th Mediterranean Plant Conservation conference. As always I feel like a fish out of water when I leave Palestine, despite the Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Saturday had mass demonstrations were held around the world demanding an end to the genocide (& ecocide). Coincidental mass demonstrations against (the Zionist stooge) Donald Trump were held. Millions attended globally. But the destructive machine continues. So Monday there was a global strike to spotlight the ongoing genocide. But the war machine marches on. Israel is intensifying its efforts to herd people and bomb them and destroy any remaining buildings or medical or water facilities in the Gaza strip. My remaining friends are begging for help and do not know where to go anymore as evacuation orders come on areas they are in (living in the open or on top of rubble already). Mass executions, blowing up children and other horrors are now "normalized". Gaza is 50% Children and yet more than half the murdered in Gaza are children (graphic) and more reality.
And after deliberatly targeting a convoy of ambulances and one fire trckk, killing 15 first responders, the apartheid regime targeted a tent with journalists adding to the deliberate killing of healthcare system and killing of medics to reduce any attempt to save lives. More medics and Jornalists were murdered in the genocide than in all other wars in the past 100 years combined!!
- Large banner with names of Palestinians killed in Gaza unveiled in Washington DC (>50,000 victims, 70% are women and children)
- Belgium makes a U-turn and says it won't comply with the ICC and arrest accused war criminal Netanyahu. The justification for the reversal is totally bizarre. The Belgian PM argued that there "is such a thing as realpolitik and that "practical considerations prevail over ethical considerations." (MAYBE LONGING FOR THEIR GENOCIDE IN CONGO)
- I am honored to be part of Elders fr Peace". We have a call for action you can sign
- Children's drawings book project at our institute
- Dr. Walid Basha visited us and wrote a report (in Arabic) highlighting our museum and birds.
- Judge Rules Mahmoud Khalil Case to Continue in New Jersey
- Fear in the US
Stay Humane and keep hope alive
Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability Bethlehem University Occupied Palestine
facebook pages Personal Institute
French
