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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ahdaf Soueif
An aspect of the occupation that is quite difficult for non-locals to get their heads around is that the majority of the barriers – the wall and the checkpoints in their varied manifestations – are not in fact borders; they do not separate ‘Palestine’ from ‘Israel’; mostly they cut through occupied Palestinian land, separating communities from each other, from their land, from their markets, their universities, their schools.
Palestinians are normal people – friendly, intelligent, rational people.
Not only that, their warmth and openness, given their situation, was very striking.
and those who came to the literary events expressed pleasure at being able to spend an evening enjoying the passing illusion that they had a normal cultural life.
Two populations in the same place under two different legal systems determined by their ethnicity. Clearly this fulfils the very definition of apartheid.
When it is complete it will cut the land off from its owners, and here is the catch: there is an Israeli law which says that if land lies untended for seven years it can be confiscated by the Israeli government. Everyone knows in advance their land will be taken because, when the wall is finished, no one will be able to get through it.
Muslims are the most depressed and vulnerable community in India, worse off than even low-caste Hindus in the realms of education, health and employment, frequently exposed to bigoted and trigger-happy policemen.
how much Israel’s claim to represent the victims of the Holocaust serves to hide the cruelties it inflicts on its captives in the West Bank and Gaza.
We were born during war and we die during war. What we live are moments stolen from the devouring mouth of death. These are the moments that can be written about.
The historical suffering of Jewish people is real, but it is no less real than, and does not in any way justify, the present oppression of Palestinians by Israeli Jews.
The case that is being made, and that must continue to be made to all people of conscience, is that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is criminal.
The pursuit of known unknowns, during which you stumble across unknown unknowns, is the very essence of research.)
Worse were the bodies. Once Rafiq stumbled across a dead boy still clutching his school bag. Another time his crew dug out a mother whose head had been crushed while she was shielding her baby, her long hair tangled in the dust.
