Qalandia: Visiting An Israeli Checkpoint In Palestine

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A group of us waited in a rather short line designed for pedestrians-only (in contrast to the line for cars that backed up for a mile or two) at the checkpoint. It felt surreal, like how I imagined Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin before their Wall came down. We, a bunch of Westerners and East Asians, stood in the Qalandia checkpoint line that would allow us to enter Israel-controlled Area C from the ostensibly Palestinian-controlled Area A in the West Bank.

The turnstile allowed two people into the metal detector area at a time and we each had a difficult time getting through. The woman in front of me from Berlin had the most difficult time. She tried about 25 to 30 times to go through the turnstile, but each time she pushed it to go through, she was denied entry; it was still locked.

Though we could not see any Israeli “border” guards, for they use multiple cameras strategically placed to view us, I had the feeling that they must be laughing to themselves at the Berlin woman’s repeated attempts to go through the turnstile and continuously being denied access. A couple times, because of how the turnstile worked, the Berlin woman was locked inside the turnstile metal grates and because she could not go forward towards the metal detector area where passports are given to Israeli guards, she had no other option but to come back towards us (rather than stay locked within the metal grates).

Martin Luther King’s Lost Speech & The BDS Movement

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Earlier this month Democracy Now! aired the audio of a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., found by the the director of the Pacifica Radio archives, Brian DeShazor, about apartheid in South Africa and the struggle for black civil rights in the United States. Dr. King gave the speech in December 1964 at London’s City Temple.

This article won’t look at the parts of the speech that focus on civil rights, segregation (legal and de jure), or the “abyss of exploitation,” as King called it, that blacks faced (and continue to face) in America. Rather, it will compare what King said about South Africa and how that compares to the fight for justice in occupied Palestine.

During his 1964 speech, he compared the “struggle for freedom and justice in the United States” by black Americans to those engaged in a “far more deadly struggle for freedom in South Africa.”

In part, he said:

Exploiting Human Tragedy: Manipulating Emotions & Obscuring Facts To Justify Brutal Occupation

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I think that the loss of any innocent life from violence is regrettable. The question of innocence in situations where one people is collectively attempting to brutally dominate can always be academically debated, but I have no intention to introduce such arguments here nor to try to explain away this violence or diminish, in any way, the human suffering that it causes. It’s not necessary.

Instead, I want to express my sense of injustice in how our society’s emotions can be manipulated so easily into outrage at the killing of any Israeli at the hands of Palestinians, while consistently ignoring many more such attacks on Palestinians by Israelis. I find this one sided reaction rather disturbing in its bias, hypocrisy and blatant racism. The government and media feed and promote this reaction. They create criminally manipulative propaganda through their presentation of the facts and their context.

Let me put things in perspective to illustrate my point:

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