2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/israel-rations-palestinians-trickle-water-20091027 ; Rory McCarthy, “Non-Violent Protests Against West Bank Barrier Turn Increasingly Dangerous,”
Guardian
, April 27, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/israel-security-barrier-protests ; “Harvard Fellow Calls for Genocidal Measures to Curb Palestinian Births,”
Electronic Intifada
, February 22, 2010, http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11091.shtml .
Update: Story #9 from Censored 2011 helps further illuminate the growing number of human rights atrocities occurring in the Palestinian region. As many Palestinians are further subjugated by colonial and imperial rule, they continue to be treated like second-class citizens as prejudicial attitudes further relegate them into a subservient role, giving the Israelis larger domain to throw their might around. Instead of shedding light upon the Palestinian struggle, many individuals throughout the community have been seen as the ones antagonizing, rather than being seen as autonomous (and whose plight has been largely overlooked by the international community). The community continues to persist in their fight for communal recognition as they’ve endured a series of resource redistribution tactics that have rendered this community dependent upon outside aid. To restore a diminished sense of Palestinian self-determination, efforts, though seemingly few, are being made in an act of solidarity to restore the community of their own cultural integrity.
In an attempt to protest Israeli aggression, and as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement, students have fired back and responded with their own protest of Sabra, a hummus brand available to most university students at their schools. This Middle Eastern chickpea dip is connected to the Strauss group, an organization that has knowingly funded the Israeli Defense fund. Much of the protest is done in a way to demonstrate that knowingly supporting an organization connected to human rights’ abuses is not something that can be done in good conscience. These students have worked in order to draw attention to the international community that disregarding the Palestinian struggle serves to further promote a mentality of apartheid.
While this has been occurring for decades, many that have been infringed upon in the queer community have come to the forefront to speak out about the Palestinian plight. A sense of universal identification has become visibly apparent as many can connect with this sense of alienation and the urgency of knowing that this subjugation need not continue. Muslims throughout the world are seeing this as a struggle not localized by region, but identifiable based on both cultural and human connections. Not only has this become a struggle for one group of people, but cross-culturally people are able to identifywith this sense that universal representation and a sense of equality is necessary to recognize Palestinian autonomy as a whole.
As we continue to see a growing trend of harassment, Palestinian women continually face harassment by the Israeli soldiers as they are subjected to rape and are tormented by these grueling acts to demonstrate power and authority. The prisoner rights organization “Women for Support of Women Political Prisoners” has published numerous testimonies illustrating the harassment and detention of women in the “Moscobiya,” a detention center in Jerusalem known as the Russian Compound.
Alleged rape and abuse continues to occur as we see a distinctive inequality in treatment toward women as opposed to men, illustrating a whole new range of mistreatment on the part of the Israelis who have demonstrated an attitude of degradation toward objectifying the female form. The plight of Palestinian women is one where there is a necessity for more information on their treatment as well as greater global involvement to promote awareness on the abject treatment