The army says aerial spraying was meant to ‘enable security operations.’ Palestinian farmers say hundreds of acres of crops were damaged or destroyed.

"Hamas's goal was to have as many casualties, our goal was to minimize casualties and avoid fatalities," explained Netanyahu, stating that he had instructed technological experts to develop a new method of riot dispersal that would avoid loss of life.

Palestinians are expected to protest along the Gaza border fence on Friday wearing clothing made to resemble uniforms worn by prisoners in concentration camps in the Holocaust, Channel 2 News reported on Thursday.

This is inspiring. Last Sunday the Muslim Public Affairs Council gave a “voices of courage and conscience” in media award to CNN’s traveling chef Anthony Bourdain for the great show he did on food in Palestine last year for his series, “Parts Unknown.”

The Institute for Middle East Understanding posted the video above of Bourdain accepting the award and thanking the Muslim Public Affairs Council “from the bottom of my heart.”

The New York Times faced a dilemma. How to downplay this stinging defeat for Israel in world opinion? The Times has a correspondent in Buenos Aires, Daniel Politi, and here’s what he did in today’s sports pages; he did not quote Higuaín or any other player for Argentina. Instead, he spent 22 paragraphs partly peddling an alternate conspiracy theory: that Argentina canceled not for political reasons, but because the team feared “violence” from Palestinians.

The Great March of Return is a startling, powerful expression of Palestinian identity and resistance. Thousands of Palestinians have come out, bravely and unapologetically, to say: “We refuse to remain invisible. We reject any attempt to assign us to the discard pile of history. We will exercise our fundamental right to go home.” They have done this unarmed, in the face of Israel’s use of deadly armed force against targets (children, press, medics) deliberately chosen to demonstrate the Jewish state’s unapologetic determination to force them back into submissive exile by any means necessary. By doing this repeatedly over the last few weeks, these incredibly brave men, women, and children have done more than decades of essays and books to strip the aura of virtue from Zionism that’s befogged Western liberals’ eyes for 70 years.

In recent weeks, scores of unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. Hundreds have been wounded. Most are refugees or the families of refugees from what is now Israel, and they have been demonstrating for their right to return, week after week.

The killing of Razzan Najjar, the 22 year old medical volunteer shot by an Israeli sniper in Gaza on Friday, is the latest tragic reminder of the outrageous and indiscriminate brutality being meted out, under orders from the Netanyahu government.

An Israeli soldier has killed a Palestinian youth during a raid in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh.

Ezzadin Tamimi was shot dead when troops came to arrest him over alleged stone throwing, the Maan news agency said on Wednesday.

The soldier struck the 21-year-old with three bullets to the neck from a distance of around 45 metres, according to Palestinian activists.

Villagers said paramedics were prevented from treating Tamimi as he bled out from his wounds.

Associated Students, Incorporated (ASI) Board of Directors of California State University, East Bay voted unanimously in favor of a resolution in support of divestment from corporations that profit from the occupation of Palestine.

The resolution, which was authored and introduced by a coalition of diverse student organizations and individuals at CSU East Bay, spearheaded by the Muslim Student Association, calls upon the university’s trustees to review their investments and divest from any companies found to be complicit in the violation of international law. Some corporations were specifically mentioned, such as Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard, G4S, and Motorola Solutions, for being directly involved in allowing the Israeli government to maintain and enforce the occupation and construct Jewish-only settlements, walls and barriers, and checkpoints.

The Palestinian men who chant and beat drums to wake up the faithful during Ramadan in Jerusalem’s Old City say they are being unfairly targeted by Israeli police over their early-morning tradition. The public wakers, known as musaharati, walk through parts of the Old City from 2 a.m., waking up Muslims for the “suhoor” meal ahead of the daily dawn-to-dusk fast during the holy month, which ends next week. But since residents began filing complaints with police about the noise, they say they have been arrested and fined for doing what they say is a part of Palestinian heritage. “They claim that we disturb them, but that’s not true. They want to erase something called Palestinian Jerusalemite heritage,” said Mohamed Hagej, 26, who has worked as a public waker for three years. He said he believes the complaints come from Jewish settlers

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN are 3 examples of the selective amnesia from which nearly every mainstream media news source seems to suffer when it comes to the subject of Israel. It doesn’t take much digging to discover the actual truth – the context that completely changes the story.

We know her name: Razan al-Najjar. But what’s his? What’s the name of the soldier who killed her, with direct fire to the chest last Friday? We don’t know, and we probably won’t ever know.

In contrast to the Palestinians suspected of killing Israelis, the Israeli who killed Najjar is protected from exposure to the cameras and an in-depth breakdown of his family history, including his relatives’ participation in routine attacks on Palestinians as part of their military service or their political affiliation.

Demanding Israeli microphones will not be pushed into his face with probing questions: Didn’t you see she was wearing a paramedic’s white robe when you aimed at her chest?

Israeli army says the killing of Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar was ‘just an accident’

zion contradicts themselves by adding the following (Click on link)

After saying it shot medic by accident, IDF claims she was ‘no angel’
Army releases video purportedly showing Razan al-Najjar hurling smoke bomb, saying she wants to be a human shield

A Palestinian artist is turning Israeli shrapnel from clashes into memorabilia art!

A report last week from Doctors Without Borders/MSF physicians & medics who are treating the injured at the Great Return March in Gaza said, “Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone.” Doctors say they have seen no bullet injuries comparable since the seven-week Israeli bombing & artillery siege of Gaza in 2014. The reason for the severity of injuries is that Israeli snipers are using internationally banned butterfly bullets. But Israel knows its chances of being censured or prosecuted by the International Criminal Court are almost nil or will be after the fact.

Argentina‘s national football team has cancelled an upcoming friendly match with Israel, Argentine news sources reported.

Argentinian sports website Minutouno reported on Tuesday that Saturday’s game in Jerusalem had been “suspended” amid an “escalation of violence, threats and criticism” directed at captain ‘Leo’ Messi.

Argentina, a major contender to win the World Cupthis summer, has made four previous pre-World Cup visits to Israel since 1986.

The fixture between the two teams was set to be played in Jerusalem’s Teddy Stadium on June 9, which is built on land that was once a Palestinian village that was destroyed in 1948.

Israeli media reported that in light of this latest development, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak to his Argentinian counterpart Mauricio Macri by telephone.

The ambassador of Palestine in Argentina, Husni Abdel Wahed, had expressed his opposition to the friendly.

Massive death tolls from months of Israeli crackdowns in the Gaza Strip have been sparsely covered by the media, particularly in the US. But even where US media outlets have found fault with the killings, US Ambassador David Friedman is expressing anger, saying it’s “not reporting” to cover the killings critically.

Friedman says media coverage that wasn’t supportive of the deaths was “completely superficial,” and that Israeli military officials had assured him that they had to kill all of those Gazans to defend the nation of Israel.

On June 1, Israeli snipers murdered 21-year-old voluntary Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar in cold blood – threatening no one, shot in the neck and back, an exploding dum dum bullet destroying her heart, killing her instantly.

Clearly identified as a first-responder medic in the field by her white attire, she was treating wounded Gazans well inside Israel’s repressive border fence when lethally shot – a willful act of murder, nothing accidental about it.

Joint (Arab) List MK Ahmad Tibi called her killing “a heinous war crime.” Neocon extremist US UN envoy Nikki Haley disgracefully blamed Gazans for Israeli high crimes committed against them.

Since Great March of Return protests began on March 30, Israeli snipers killed two Gazan paramedics, wounding 223 others, 29 shot with live fire – individuals clearly identified as medical personnel by their attire.

A Palestinian activist has received death threats from occupation forces for exposing human rights violations in occupied Hebron.

Aref Jaber, an activist working with Hebron-based organisation Human Rights Defenders, said that occupation forces stopped him outside his home on Saturday and threatened to kill him if he continues to document their treatment of Palestinians in the city, according to Wafa. The incident took place in the area of Hebron known as H2, which is inhabited by approximately 35, 000 Palestinians and 500 illegal Israeli settlers.

Writing on the Human Rights Defenders’ Facebook page, Jaber explained that eight occupation force soldiers arrived at his home on Saturday. Two pointed their rifles directly at him, and a third repeatedly smashed Jaber’s face against a wall, “kicking [his] legs, ankles, and feet as hard as he could”.

Palestinians have thanked the Argentinian football team and star forward Lionel Messi for cancelling their friendly match with Israel scheduled for Saturday, according to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

Football fans and Palestinian human rights supporters had urged the Argentinian team to cancel the match, set to take place in an Israeli stadium built on the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Al-Maliha in response to Israel’s violent response to peaceful protesters on the Gaza border that left over 120 dead.

Initially set to be held in Haifa, the Israeli government moved the match to the Jerusalem village, offering the organisers $760,000 in compensation. Israel was reportedly already paying Argentina $3 million to play the match as part of its celebrations to mark 70 years of its independence, when it forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.

Twenty-one-year old Izz Al-Din Tamimi was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh today.

Anti-settlement activist from Nabi Saleh, Bilal Tamimi, said that Israeli occupation forces prevented Palestinian medical teams from reaching the youth to help him before he was taken away by the soldiers, according to WAFA.

The UK Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court ruling which found the UK government acted improperly by curtailing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel’s violations of international law.

The UK Court of Appeal issued its verdict today after the British Government appealed, on 17 May, a previous High Court ruling which declared it had acted improperly by seeking to use pension law to pursue its own foreign and defence policy. The ruling, given in June 2017, found that the government acted unlawfully in curtailing divestment campaigns against Israeli and international firms implicated in Israel’s violations of international law.

On Monday, the ACLU sent a letter to Congress opposing the bill.

According to the ACLU, “the bill is part of a disturbing surge of government-led attempts to suppress the speech of people on only one side of the Israel-Palestine debate.”

“The trend manifests on college campuses, in state contracts, and even in bills to change federal criminal law, but the impact is the same: Those who seek to protest, boycott, or otherwise criticise the Israeli government are being silenced.”

The ACLU added that “these efforts to censor criticism of the Israeli government and advocacy for Palestinian rights do a disservice to the real problem of anti-Semitism in the United States.”

“Freedom”, one of the vessels of a flotilla traveling from Sweden to Palestine to break an 11-year blockade by Israel on Gaza, arrived in the British port of Brighton yesterday.

The boat was welcomed by a group of activists who blew horns as the boat approached Brighton Marina before making its way to a harbour in Shoreham, where it will remain anchored for the next three days.

Zaher Birawi, chairman of the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza, said all of the boats of the flotilla left the Dutch capital of Amsterdam a few days ago and are visiting various ports across Europe.

“‘Freedom’ came to Brighton. We are here to salute it,” said Birawi.

Israeli soldiers abducted, on Tuesday at dawn, a member of the City Council in Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, after storming her home and ransacking it.

The City Council member, Suzan Abdul-Karim al-‘Oweiwi, 39, has a Master’s Degree in Institution Building and Development from the Al-Quds University, and is a social activist and volunteer in advocating the right of Palestinian detainees, held by Israel, in addition to the cause of the refugees and the Right or Return.

After her election to the Municipality in Hebron, last year, she started advancing, and improving services provided to the Palestinians.

Israeli occupation forces expelled, on Tuesday morning, five Palestinian families from their homes in Khirbet Hamsa al-Fawqa, in the northern Jordan Valley.

Activist A’ref Draghmah said that soldiers expelled the families, including women and children, to the outdoors, under the pretext of conducting military exercises.

Israeli forces have expelled the aforementioned families three times in the last two months, under the same pretext.

June 5, 2018 marks the 51st anniversary of the Israeli Occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

But, unlike the massive popular mobilization that preceded the anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophic destruction of Palestine in 1948 – on May 15, the anniversary of the Occupation is hardly generating equal mobilization.

The unsurprising death of the ‘peace process’ and the inevitable demise of the ‘two-state solution’ has shifted the focus from ending the Occupation per se, to the larger and more encompassing problem of Israel’s colonialism throughout Palestine.

While the investigation into the killing of 21-year-old Palestinian nurse Razan Najjar by Israeli troops last week continues, the military has already offered a brief preliminary statement Tuesday, saying that no shots were “deliberately or directly aimed towards her.”

Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan is calling on the Israeli military to start treating the Palestinian fliers of fire kites as terrorists, saying they should be assassinated by Israeli snipers.

As tensions ratcheted up on the Gaza border recently, Gazans have begun flying kites that have flammable materials attached, trying to set fire to farms in the southern part of Israel, where a dry winter has left a lot of places vulnerable.

Israel’\s government has estimated the fires have caused $2.5 million in damage. An Israeli general says he’s recruited civilian drone operators in southern Israel as “reservists” and told them to fly their drones into the kites to try to down them.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world's major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.

It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution.

More than 50 years ago, the state of Israel shocked the world when it seized the remaining Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, in a matter of six days.

In a war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, known as the 1967 War, or the June War, Israel delivered what came to be known as the "Naksa", meaning setback or defeat, to the armies of the neighbouring Arab countries, and to the Palestinians who lost all what remained of their homeland.

A Palestinian-Dutch citizen is suing two senior Israeli military commanders for the bombing of his family’s home during Israel’s 2014 attack on the Gaza Strip.

On 20 July of that year, without warning, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the house in the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing six members of Ismail Ziada’s family and a seventh person who was visiting them.

Ziada, who lives in the Netherlands where he is married to a Dutch citizen, could not attend the funerals of his family members due to Israel’s blockade on Gaza.

He lost his mother, 70-year-old Muftia Ziada, three brothers, a sister-in-law and a 12-year-old nephew.

Ziada holds Benny Gantz and Amir Eshel, respectively the Israeli chief of staff and the chief of the air force at the time of the attack, responsible for the decision to drop the bomb.

A Palestinian from the occupied West Bank is suing the Dutch company that supplied the dogs Israeli soldiers used to attack him when he was a child.

For more than 20 years, Four Winds K9, a company based near the city of Nijmegen, has annually provided the Israeli army with dozens of dogs trained to attack civilians.

The military dogs “are intentionally used by Israeli occupying forces to terrorize and bite Palestinian civilians, especially during protests and night house raids,” according to Shawan Jabarin, director of the human rights group Al-Haq.

This cruel tactic is reminiscent of how police in the United States and apartheid South Africa set attack dogs on Black citizens demanding their rights.

Many of the people who defend Israel are consciously racist (clearly), but others dehumanize Arabs and Muslims by reproducing unexamined assumptions about Israel’s moral or civilizational superiority. Anyway, I’m less concerned with intent than with consequences. Anti-Arab racism is normalized to the point of common sense, largely because defending Israel requires dehumanization of Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians (and often Muslims more generally).

Because we spend so much time debating when (or if) criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, we rarely get around to assessing how pro-Israel narratives exhibit anti-Arab racism. It seems important to rectify this problem.

The heels of my shoes hit the dirty alleyways of the camp and I am instantly confronted with the harsh smell of filth. There is the awareness that the stench of death once filled these parts. This is Shatila refugee camp. To most of the outside world, a reminder of a massacre that once happened. A gravesite, a ghetto, a hub for outlaws and criminals. To the inhabitants of this camp, perhaps it is a life sentence. Perhaps it is the dying hope of a return to a home that once was. The old will die and the young will forget. Wasn’t this the plan for those who were exiled from their homes in Palestine? The old are dying, along with their frustration and memories of Palestine. The young, how do you expect the young to forget? Isn’t every minute of every day in a refugee camp enough of a constant reminder?

Two Israeli soldiers who shot and killed Palestinian teen Samir Awad will walk free after indictments against them were dropped.

The pair shot Samir Awad, a 16-year-old Palestinian, in the back on 15 January 2013. Samir and his friends had been playing near the Separation Barrier outside Budrus, north west of occupied Ramallah, when he became trapped in the fence. The two soldiers from Israel’s 71st Armoured Corps Battalion then appeared from their nearby hiding place and shot the teen as he tried to flee.

A subsequent inquiry undertaken by Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem said that the soldiers in question had not been in any danger at the time of the incident. Since open-fire regulations permit soldiers to use live ammunition only in cases of real and immediate mortal danger, Samir was shot unlawfully.

The Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday called for Arab Member of the Knesset Haneen Zoabi to be dismissed from her post.

In a post on Twitter, Lieberman described Zoabi as a “terrorist” who “promotes terror” against Israeli occupation forces.

Lieberman wrote: “The terrorist Haneen Zoabi is in the Knesset and promotes terror against IDF [Israeli] soldiers and citizens of Israel.”

He urged his followers to write to his fellow MKs to urge them to support expelling Zoabi from her post.

The health condition of a Palestinian detainee held in Israeli jails, Hassan Al Tamimi, aged 16, has seriously deteriorated on Sunday, due to medical negligence.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said, in a statement, that the health condition of Al Tamimi is extremely bad, adding that Israeli occupation authorities are rejecting to hospitalize him, under the pretext of financial aspects.

PPS added that this move aims at blackmailing the family of the child and puts him at risk of losing life.

Why isn’t the international community punishing the apartheid state of Israel, as it did with South Africa?

The 21-year-old paramedic was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers while trying to aid wounded protesters near the Gaza-Israel separation fence. Many Israelis either refuse to believe she was actually killed or claim that her killing was somehow justified.

Sixty-two percent of Israelis are happy with the performance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during last week’s tensions with Gaza, and 59% are satisfied with the functioning of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, according to a Migdam poll taken for Channel 2.

Twenty-eight percent were unsatisfied with the performance of Netanyahu and Liberman, and the rest of the respondents had no opinion.

The poll found that 41% are in favor of further steps to ease the plight of Gazans; 28% back capturing the Gaza Strip and toppling Hamas; 18% prefer the status quo; and 11% had no opinion.

Barcelona becomes largest city to heed the Palestinian civil society call for an end to arms trade and military and security cooperation with Israel’s regime of apartheid, settler colonialism and occupation.

Israeli authorities have resumed excavation work at the historic Bab Al-Rahma cemetery, just outside the eastern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israel's Nature And Parks Authority (INPA) reportedly began digging up graves about three weeks ago in order to establish "a national park on parts of the cemetery's land," Wafa said.

The centuriesold cemetery has great religious significance and is the site of the graves of Ubada ibn as-Samit and Shadad ibn Aus, companions of the Prophet Muhammad.

On 1 June 2018, Razan al-Najjar—a 21 year-old paramedic—was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in Gaza while providing medical treatment to wounded protestors. She became the 119th Palestinian killed in Gaza since mass demonstrations against Israel’s siege began on 30 March. During the same period, Israeli forces shot more than 3,600 protestors with live ammunition, a figure which Israel’s preeminent human rights organisation B’Tselem has characterised as a ‘mindboggling number of casualties’. The onslaught has left Gaza’s strained healthcare system on the verge of collapse.

The Israel Air Force attacked 15 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight Sunday following mortar fire against southern Israeli communities on Saturday evening, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced.

The military said the strikes were a response to the earlier rocket fire as well as “terror incidents led and made possible by the Hamas terror organization over the course of the weekend” which included the throwing of grenades, improvised explosive devices, attempts to infiltrate into Israel by damaging the security fence and the burning of Israeli fields by incendiary kites.

Since the beginning of the Great March of Return on March 30, Israel has killed over 100 Palestinians and injured over 12,000. Only one Israeli, a soldier, has been injured in the context of the march.

Most mainstream western media coverage of Gaza’s march has systematically decontextualized the mass civilian protest, brushed off Israel’s weekly massacres as “clashes,” reified the boundary fence between Gaza and Israel a “border,” presented Palestinian protesters as “Hamas pawns” passively “dying for photo ops” and deployed other strategic falsehoods to dehumanize Palestinians fighting for their freedom. The net effect is the demonization of the march and the absolution of Israel of its murderous assault.

Israeli army says man tried to run them over, while witnesses reportedly say he didn't hear commands to stop his vehicle

The Jewish Agency (/Israeli government) had agreed that Jaffa would be part of the Palestinian state — or, rather, it agreed when within earshot of the United Nations, until after UNGA Resolution 181, the UN Partition plan that effectively created the Israeli state, was shoved through the UN by the United States.

Partition’s architects acknowledged that keeping Jaffa non-contiguous with the rest of Palestine created problems for the Palestinians; but alternatives that kept Jaffa contiguous created a parallel problem for the Zionists. Resolution 181 made Jaffa a Palestinian island, accessible to the rest of Palestine either by sea or through Israel.

Four more filmmakers have joined a growing number of artists boycotting the Tel Aviv LGBT International Film Festival (TLVFest), in response to a Palestinian call.

Five artists had already cancelled their participation prior to the start of the festival, which runs between May 31 and June 9. With the latest cancellations, from two French directors and two from the Spanish state, a total of nine artists and filmmakers have boycotted the festival this year.

Despite the cancelations, TLVFest has refused to remove the filmmakers’ films from the festival’s schedule. In a statement to an Israeli daily, the festival director Yair Hochner said, “Whoever canceled, canceled. As far as we are concerned the festival will continue normally.”

On Saturday, member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, stated that the U.S. Veto against a resolution demanding international protection to the Palestinian people, is an absolute proof of moral corruption of the U.S. administration, providing impunity to the ongoing Israeli crimes against the unarmed Palestinian population.

“The United States, represented by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, have proven their corrupt and blindfolded support to Israel, so that they can ensure Israel’s crimes and violations against an unarmed civilian population remain unpunished, and continue with impunity.

The United States vetoed on Friday a Kuwaiti-drafted UN Security Council resolution that condemned Israel’s use of force against Palestinian civilians, underlining Washington’s differences with friends and foes alike over the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Later, a second, US-drafted resolution that blamed Hamas for the violence and upheld Israel’s right to defend itself failed to attract any other country’s support when it was put to vote in the 15-member council.

Blasting the council majority, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the two votes showed it was willing to blame Israel and unwilling to blame Hamas, the group that dominates Gaza.

“The terrorist group Hamas bears primary responsibility for the awful living conditions in Gaza,” Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, said ahead of the vote.

“It is now completely clear that the UN is hopelessly biased against Israel,” she said in a statement.

Following the tightening of Israel’s security measures and military barriers between the West Bank and Jerusalem and banning of all male worshippers under the age of forty, dozens of Palestinian youths scaled the separation wall with wooden ladders to reach Al Aqsa Mosque.

Very often, the young people who scale the wall or pass through openings, are often subjected to assaults by Israeli soldiers. Many fall in the process and suffer fractures and bruises. Undeterred, they take all the risks of injury and attacks in order to worship in Islam’s third holiest mosque. On Friday, the Qalandiya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, like other checkpoints, witnessed a major crisis as thousands of male worshippers tried to reach Jerusalem.

Palestinian football player Muhammad Khalil Obeid is urging the Argentinian national football team to cancel their “friendly match” in Israel scheduled for 9 June.

In the video above, Obeid appeals directly to team captain Lionel Messi, “because he is very popular in Palestine, particularly in the Gaza Strip.”

Israeli snipers shot Obeid in both of his knees during rallies near the Gaza-Israel boundary on 30 March, ending a promising football career.

The video above also includes graphic footage – filmed by Obeid himself – of the moment he was shot by Israeli snipers.

Around 80 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip during the month of May.

More than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and armed civilians so far this year. Six Israelis were killed by Palestinians during the same period.

Oday Akram Muhammad Abu Khalil, 15, died on 23 May, eight days after being shot in the stomach during protests marking the annual Nakba Day commemoration.

She was about 100 meters away from the boundary fence with Israel at the moment she was shot and was wearing clothing clearly identifying her as a medic, the human rights group Al Mezan stated, citing eyewitnesses.

Al-Najjar had become known for her bravery and insistence on carrying out her medical rescue work despite the obvious danger.

The United States has vetoed a Kuwaiti proposal to the United Nation Security Council (UNSC), which sought to offer “international protection” to Palestinian civilians in the wake of more than 120 of deaths in the Gaza strip.

In a speech to the council, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley criticized the proposal, describing it as a “grossly one-sided view”. Haley accused Hamas of inciting violent acts at the border between Gaza and Israel, purposefully infiltrating the ‘Great March of Return’ mass protests with its “terrorist fighters” and deliberately using civilians as human shields.

“The terrorist group Hamas bears primary responsibility for the awful living conditions in Gaza,” she said, before the UNSC vote.

Israeli snipers shot and killed Palestinian nurse Razan Najjar during the 'Great March of Return' protests in Gaza on Friday. Razan was on duty when she was shot in the upper parts of her body: while saving lives, the Israeli occupation took her life.

The European Union on Thursday urged Israel to reconsider its decision to demolish a Palestinian Bedouin village in the occupied West Bank, saying it undermines "prospects for a lasting peace".

A statement from the EU denounced the intended destruction of the Khan Al-Ahmar village which comes at the same time as the construction of more Israeli settlements on occupied land.

"Building new settlements for Israelis while demolishing Palestinian homes in the same area will only further entrench a one-state reality of unequal rights, perpetual occupation and conflict," the statement said.

The Israeli government on Thursday unveiled what it billed as a groundbreaking program to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in long-neglected Palestinian neighborhoods of east Jerusalem.

The "Leading Change" program aims to reduce the huge social gaps between the Palestinian neighborhoods and the overwhelmingly Jewish western part of the city. Palestinian neighborhoods suffer from poor infrastructure, neglect and subpar public services, and nearly 80 percent of the city's Palestinian families live in poverty.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Please share widely
Gaza Palestinians plan for mass protests to end the blockade and occupation; call for supporters around the world to mobilize in solidarity
Contact:
U.S.: Pam Bailey | founder/director, We Are Not Numbers | +1 301-518-0199 | pam@wearenotnumbers.org
Gaza: Ahmed Alnaouq |+972 567676219 | ahmed@wearenotnumbers.org

Protests marking two historic dates are planned along Israel’s massive “security fence” in Gaza June 5 and 8. June 5 is the 51st commemoration of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and on June 7 of the same year, Israel seized control over Jerusalem's Old City. The committee of Palestinians coordinating the ongoing, mass protests in the Gaza Strip are calling on human rights advocates around the world to mobilize June 5 and 8 in solidarity.

The maker of rifles used during Israel’s recent massacres in Gaza will soon exhibit its products at an arms fair sponsored by the French government.

Amnesty International’s investigations have identified the Tavor as likely to have been one of the main guns fired by Israeli snipers attacking Palestinian demonstrators over the past two months.

As the manufacturer of that rifle, Israel Weapon Industries ought to be blacklisted by every country which professes concern for human rights.

France is one such country. Emmanuel Macron, its president, officially condemned the killing of more than 100 Palestinian demonstrators since 30 March.

His condemnation was hollow. It came as preparations were underway for the Eurosatory weapons fair in Paris.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to meet with a delegation of Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives that visited Israel two months ago, in protest of the Trump administration’s policies toward Israel. Abbas’ refusal to meet the delegation caught its members by surprise, because many of them are constant critics of the Trump administration, and they were hoping to hear the Palestinian point of view about Trump’s policies while visiting the region.

The delegation, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, visited Israel and Jordan in late March. It comprised 11 representatives, including two members of the House Intelligence Committee. They held lengthy meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and King Abdullah II in Amman, Jordan. In addition, they met with representatives of civil rights groups in Israel that are fighting against the government’s plan to deport African asylum seekers.

On Friday, a Kuwait-drafted Security Council resolution to be voted on calls for protecting Gazans from Israeli high crimes, citing “excessive use of force” against (peaceful) demonstrators by IDF soldiers.

Washington intends vetoing it. Neocon extremist US UN envoy Nikki Haley falsely called it “grossly one-sided…only serv(ing) to undermine ongoing efforts toward peace” – bald-faced lies!

The US and Israel deplore peace and stability, waging endless undeclared wars of aggression, civilians in affected theaters harmed most – Gazans viciously abused for 11 years under suffocating blockade conditions.

According to PA UN envoy Riyad Mansour, Washington intends vetoing the Kuwaiti draft resolution unless it’s unacceptably amended.

Instead of even minimal Israeli accountability for horrendous high crimes, the Trump regime wants pro-Western UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to submit undefined “recommendations” on Gaza within 60 days.

The opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem on 14 May has rubbed salt into gaping wounds.

As "presidential adviser" Ivanka Trump stood gleefully next to a triumphant Benjamin Netanyahu at the heart of the illegally annexed city, Israel was engaging in yet another massacre less than 100km to the southwest. Dozens of people were killed in Gaza and thousands injured in the six weeks of the Great Return March, between Land Day and Nakba Day, and many of the injured still languish in Gaza’s ill-equipped hospitals.

The siege of Gaza, whose population largely comprises refugees, continues to choke the region, in what has been described as an “incremental genocide”.

Ongoing Nakba
This is what Palestinians mean when they say the Nakba is ongoing. The wrongs against us were not perpetrated just once, in 1948; they continue to this day, with more displacement, more land theft and more mass killings.

First, the civil society support base for Palestine is growing exponentially, not only in the number of people who are concerned with – or interested in – learning about Palestine, but also in the nature of that engagement as well. The detachment or sense of despair of the past, has all but completely vanished, being replaced with a proactive approach – as in people wanted to be agents of change at local and national levels.