Palestinian Celebrators throw roses atop a giant Palestinian flag in the Palestinian Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, to celebrate the release of Palestinian prisoners in a prisoner swap between The Islamic resistance movement “Hamas” and Israel, October 18, 2011. Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released on Tuesday after five years in detention, exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in a deal with Hamas. AP
Against the blockades of humanitarian aid from reaching Palestine.
AFTER BEING HELD by IDF for 35 years !!!… Members of the Palestinian security forces carry the coffin of “Hafez Mahmoud Hussein AbuZant” to his family’s home in the West Bank city of Nablus October 9, 2011. Abu Zant was killed by Israeli forces in the Jordan Valley in 1976. His body was transferred to Palestinian officials in Nablus on Sunday after being held by Israel for 35 years. The occupied Palestine
A Palestinian man inspects an olive tree that was cut down -by the Jewish Settlers- in the northern West Bank village of Qusra on October 6, 2011. Around 150 olive trees were cut down overnight in Qusra in an act of vandalism blamed on Jewish settlers. #OccupationDelegitimizesIsrael
![FREEDOM … A Gaza flotilla activist holds a placard as he protests against the Greek government’s ban in front of the parliament in Athens, July 5, 2011. The captain of a U.S. ship, arrested for trying to sail to Gaza as part of a flotilla aiming to deliver aid to Palestinians despite a Greek ban, was freed on Tuesday, but three other activists were still in custody. [Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnxmj1fgUg1qbczcco1_500.jpg)
FREEDOM … A Gaza flotilla activist holds a placard as he protests against the Greek government’s ban in front of the parliament in Athens, July 5, 2011. The captain of a U.S. ship, arrested for trying to sail to Gaza as part of a flotilla aiming to deliver aid to Palestinians despite a Greek ban, was freed on Tuesday, but three other activists were still in custody. [Reuters]
HUMAN RIGHTS FOR GAZA … An activist stands in front of the “Stefano Chiarini” ship, which is part of the “Freedom Flotilla II”, during a demonstration against the Greek authorities’ ban on Gaza-bound ships on the Greek island of Corfu July 2, 2011. Greek authorities said on Friday that ships destined for Gaza — which involves transit through international waters — were prohibited from leaving Greek ports. [REUTERS]
This new interview with American author Alice Walker gives a brilliant insight into what motivates trendy pro-Palestinian sentiment in the West today. Notice how effortlessly she flits between talking about Palestinians in Gaza and chickens in factory farms. In one breath she talks about the “cruel and inhuman” treatment meted out to Palestinians, who are “frazzled and suffering everyday”. And in the next she talks about chickens that are “raised under horrible, torturous conditions”, and the fact that people who tuck into chicken dinners don’t realise that they are eating “something precious, beautiful, rare”.
Palestinians and chickens – these seem to be the two big moral concerns haunting Ms Walker’s head. She sees their predicament as comparable: just as Palestinians are caged in Gaza, so chickens are caged in factory farms. And just as we “must help those suffering in Gaza”, so we must “change the way chickens are thought about and raised”. Ms Walker is certainly doing her bit. Next week she will be on the latest Gaza-bound flotilla, named “The Audacity of Hope”, which will deliver letters from concerned American citizens to Palestinians, which is of course just what Palestinians need. And she spends the rest of her time meditating with animals, in particular chickens, as a way of rediscovering “the peace we once shared with the other animals on the planet”.
She might sound barking, but actually Ms Walker’s lumping together of Palestinians and chickens reveals much about the cocktail of pity and paternalism that drives influential Westerners’ pro-Palestinian lobbying today. They increasingly see Palestinians, not as a group of people capable of exercising the same democratic and political rights as the rest of us, but as wide-eyed and pathetic victims who must be saved from Evil Israel by the better-minded, better-educated activists of the West. Palestinians have been turned into the playthings of Western do-gooders, loveable victims deserving of pity and sad, tear-stained letters from Alice Walker and friends. In short, they’ve been reduced to the level of chickens: sad little creatures whom caring Westerners can coo over and stroke and maybe take home and put in the garden for their friends to marvel over. This is not solidarity – it is a public display of pity, designed primarily to advertise the superior moral sensitivities of anti-Israel Westerners than to do anything practical to assist Palestinians.
You know, if I were a Palestinian in Gaza, I wouldn’t only throw stones across the border at Israeli troops. I’d also hurl them at “The Audacity of Hope” flotilla when it turns up next week, with its cargo of insulting letters from achingly right-on Americans who have moved on from crying over baby seals to crying over poor Palestinians.
Palestinian security men stand near flags from different countries and a monument built to commemorate the first anniversary of the martyrdom of nine Turks, who were shot dead last May when Israeli naval commandos seized a Turkish ship -carrying humanitarian aid- that was part of a flotilla trying to break the Gaza blockade, on May 31, 2011 during a ceremony in Gaza City - Palestine [Getty]
Palestinian Chronicles ... From Palestine with Love .. Some words ... just words 
![HUMAN RIGHTS FOR GAZA … An activist stands in front of the “Stefano Chiarini” ship, which is part of the “Freedom Flotilla II”, during a demonstration against the Greek authorities’ ban on Gaza-bound ships on the Greek island of Corfu July 2, 2011. Greek authorities said on Friday that ships destined for Gaza — which involves transit through international waters — were prohibited from leaving Greek ports. [REUTERS]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnqgwtZeeu1qbczcco1_1280.jpg)
![Palestinian security men stand near flags from different countries and a monument built to commemorate the first anniversary of the martyrdom of nine Turks, who were shot dead last May when Israeli naval commandos seized a Turkish ship -carrying humanitarian aid- that was part of a flotilla trying to break the Gaza blockade, on May 31, 2011 during a ceremony in Gaza City - Palestine [Getty]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm32p82IrU1qbczcco1_1280.jpg)
