Hello from Charlotte Mendel,
I am doing Protective Presence in the West Bank for 6 months and, for part of each week, I stay with a cluster of Palestinian families who are being targeted by extremist settlers. I have been hit, kicked, cursed—on my first day the army confiscated my passport and detained me. I experience it like a nightmare; I loathe every minute—my first head-on experience with a distorted ideology that justifies evil—and it’s my own fucking people! But also my first experience of the immense bravery of my fellow Israelis and the solidarity they are creating with Palestinians throughout the West Bank. And my Palestinian family is still in their homes, and they know that they are not alone.
Strong fences are one of the best protections for these families. My sister Tessa and I have launched a fundraiser to purchase 500m of metal fencing that the settlers won’t be able to cut through https://chuffed.org/project/185832-fences-for-taybeh.
If you love Israel like I do, please donate to the campaign. These settlers are destroying everything that Israel once stood for. If we want Israel to survive and thrive, we must fight this evil, for the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Thank you!
Charlotte
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LEFTIST ZIONIST STATEMENT, by the chief editor of Centre of the Web (this will be reposted at the bottom of all COTW submissions from Israel-Palestine). 1. I am against the antizionist misinformation and hate movement, including the very unholy alliance between Hamas and its sympathisers, and the so-called progressive left; I am a left wing zionist; i.e. I assert the right of Israel to continue to exist, to not be destroyed, to not be dismantled (often used as a euphemism for destruction). 2. Like the original Kropotkin-reading zionists, my politics is anarchistic. My ultimate belief in a stateless global society does not mean that Israel should dissolve before any other state. Considering global history, it should probably be one of the last states to dissolve. However, the dissolution of a state is not the dissolution of a people or its historical link to its homeland. 3. Hamas (Queer-hating, women-oppressing, Jewish-world-domination-conspiracy believing Hamas) are not a liberatory movement. Their founders had strong links with movements whose representatives met with Nazis in Nazi Germany, to collaborate on eradicating all Jews. (Do your research). This is nothing to do with resistance against so-called settler-colonialism. Moreover, extremist settlers in the West Bank are not representative of Israel as a whole. 4. I am not Islamophobic. I support a peaceful solution in the Middle East in Israel-Palestine and the wider region. This of course includes an end to the horrible government of Netanyahu, and an end to the destruction of Gaza. It also includes an end to Hamas and all associated groups and governments, including the Iranian regime. This does not mean I support Trump and Bibis war. 5. Supporting the same ends as another, does not mean that I support another`s means. 6. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Think about that before you get into bed with Hamas. // Thank you. In solidarity with Standing Together, Movement Against Antizionism and Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism
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