The taxi driver said that I should go to checkpoint 300 tomorrow if I wanted “to see people treated like animals.” Friday during Ramadan Israel permits Palestinians from occupied West Bank to visit Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem. Only women and men under 15 or over 55 are allowed to try to get through. Most have to turn back.
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I am currently at the Palestine Museum of Natural History in Bethlehem, section A of West Bank.
Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh, shown below, started the museum. He is growing endangered native orchards in the terraced back yard of PMNH.
Mazen and Jessie, his wife and cofounder of the Palestine Natural History Museum, took me, Andrea, and another aid worker out to dinner. This is a small portion of the amazing feast.
Was lucky to sit in on an interview Prof. Mazen had with an Italian and Russian journalist (who actually were maybe Israeli spies?!?)
Will post clips below.
He says the only options are endless war or an end to the Zionist project. Either way, Zionism will lose.
Palestinians’ ancestors were Canninites in the Fertile Valley (what is now called West Bank) who themselves arose from Natufian culture. The Natufian agriculture period was when humans first developed plant and animal domestication.
When Israel was invented May 1948, it began its colonial project by intentionally destroying Palestinian communities. They bulldozed the earth, drained wetlands and lakes, and planted European trees which acidified the earth. They declared areas with Palestinian villages National Parks in order to remove the people of their land then just as quickly redefined the empty area as military zones or for Jewish settlements only.
The first Israeli order was to control water- including rainwater, springs, and rivers- because they know that water is the primary source of life. National parks have been one of Israel’s many tactics of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
After hearing Mazen speak I have been reflecting about how one can tell who truly belongs to a place by how they treat the land.
In nature, biodiversity is strength. Palestine is a forest, Israel is a monoculture farm.
Turns out Signal won’t let me post an hour video so this is the shortest clip of the segment. Will write a summary of what was discussed and post the full interview on a different platform at a later date.