DefendMasaferYatta Digital Toolkit
Want to join the #DefendMaafer Yatta Action Days, September 16 – 19? Here is what you can do online during these days.
We start our mobilization on September 16, the 40th anniversary of the massacre in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. From our refugees still struggling for their right to return to their homes to those of us threatened by expulsion today, Indigenous Palestinians everywhere demand an end to Israeli impunity.
The Global Days of Action will culminate ahead of the UN General Assembly debates starting on September 20. From Masafer Yatta, we join the rest of Palestinian civil society in campaigning for #UNinvestigateApartheid, to hold Israel accountable, re-activate its anti-apartheid mechanisms and impose lawful and targeted sanctions, including a military embargo … just as it did to end apartheid in South Africa.
As with other racist, colonial and apartheid societies, denying the oppressed and Indigenous communities their right to education is a central pillar in the oppressors’ attempt to maintain supremacy. This adds to other apartheid practices and policies, including home demolitions, water apartheid, and ongoing land theft.
Let’s stand together to #DefendMasaferYatta and reach out to all students and teachers unions to defend the schools and education in Masafer Yatta.
Join the growing demand that the UN take action to dismantle Israeli apartheid.
#DefendMasaferYatta #UNinvestigateApartheid
CALLS TO ACTION
#DefendMasaferYatta Global Days of Action
Es – https://www.stopthewall.org/2022/09/10/defendermasaferyatta/?lang=es
BNC Global Day of Action, September 19 #UNinvestigateApartheid
EN Call – https://bdsmovement.net/UNGA77-Global-Day-of-Action
EN e-action – https://bdsmovement.net/unga77
HASHTAGS
#DefendMasaferYatta / #DefendamosMasaferYatta
#UNinvestigateApartheid / #ONUinvestigueApartheid
BACKGROUND + GENERAL TWEETS
General information about Masafer Yatta – A Firing Zone
Apartheid Israel aims to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from 8 villages in Masafer Yatta, claiming it is an Israeli ‘military firing zone’.
- Masafar Yatta, south of Hebron, is home to 20 Palestinian communities, which have been living and herding their livestock in the area for generations.
- Since the 1980s, the Israeli military has used Masafer Yatta – ’Firing Zone 918’- as a training ground.
- Since June 21, the Israeli occupation has besieged, invaded, and shot Palestinians in the streets of the Masafer Yatta villages of Jinba, Al-Markez and Al-Majaz as part of ‘military exercises’.
- Such practices are core elements in apartheid Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse the area, annex it, and further colonize it with illegal settlements. The illegal Israeli settlements of Mitzpe Yair, Avigayil, and Havat Ma’on are located inside Firing Zone 918.
What has happened since May 4 2022?
- On May 4, 2022, Israel’s Supreme Court issued a decision to ethnically cleanse Palestinians living in the eight villages, which number over 1000 people.
- 8 villages are directly subjected to destruction since they have received demolition orders, while there are also 4 more villages – located near settlements- where ongoing settler attacks and brutality aim to drive residents from their land.
General Tweets
Tweet #1:
1000+ Palestinians living in eight villages in Masafer Yatta are at imminent risk of forcible expulsion. I call on [tag your MEP/foreign minister/secretary of state] to hold the Israeli government accountable and demand #EndEthnicCleansing #UNinvestigateApartheid
Tweet #2:
Israel’s policies in Masafer Yatta amount to the crime against humanity of apartheid. Israeli apartheid practices aim to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land. @UN is obliged to investigate–and dismantle–Israeli apartheid. #UNInvestigateApartheid #DefendMasaferYatta
Tweet #3:
Since 1948, the brutal pre-meditated ethnic cleansing #Nakba has never stopped. #DefendMasaferYatta from destruction by Israel’s regime of settler colonialism, apartheid, and occupation over the Palestinian people.
Tweet #4:
Today, as we mourn the Palestinian refugees murdered in the massacre of Sabra&Shatila 40 years ago, we mobilize to #DefendMasaferYatta where Israel threatens to turn +1000 people into refugees.
Palestinians demand an end to Israeli impunity.
#UNinvestigateApartheid
Tweet #5:
#DefendMasaferYatta from Israel’s violations of international law and its inhumane apartheid and ethnic cleansing practices to expel Palestinians from their lands. #EndEthnicCleansing
Tweet #6:
Indigenous Palestinians have been living in Masafer Yatta for centuries. Now Israel’s settler colonial regime works systematically to ethnically cleanse and replace them with illegal Jewish settlers. #UNInvestigateApartheid now.
WHAT APARTHEID LOOKS LIKE IN MASAFER YATTA
Twitter thread:
(1)
End of August, at the start of the school year, Israel escalated systematic attacks to stop families from sending their children to school.
Apartheid Israel denies Palestinians the right to education to try to drive them out of the 8 villages.
#DefendMasaferYatta
(2)
4 schools in Masafer Yatta (Jinba, Khalet Athaba’, Khirbet Al-Fakhiet, Khirbet al-Majaz) received demolition orders last week and Umm Qassah School, which serves 50 students from 4 Bedouin villages, is under threat from demolition since last year.
(3)
As the school year started, Israeli occupation forces denied teachers & students access to their schools in Jinba and Al-Fakhiet & arrested a teacher confiscating his car that he needs to reach the school.
#DefendMasaferYatta
(4)
Haitham Abu Sabha, Principal of Masafer Yatta Secondary School in Al-Fakhiet, warns ”if no action is taken to thwart Israeli plans, children will lose their right to education, as well as their right to life.”
#DefendMasaferYatta #UNinvestigateApartheid
Tweet thread:
(1)
Israeli apartheid persecutes activists but the Masafer Yatta solidarity tent keeps standing, the protests continue. Sami Hurraini, @YouthofSumud co-founder, says “Israel won’t stop our resistance”.
Build a Masafer Yatta solidarity tent in your own city, school or area!
[Link to call for action: https://www.stopthewall.org/2022/09/03/defendmasaferyatta-sep-16-19-global-days-of-action-for-masafer-yatta/]
(2)
In January 2022, Haroun Aram, from Al-Rakeez, tried to stop Israeli forces from confiscating his family’s power generator. Israeli forces shot him in the neck, paralyzing all his four limbs forever.
(3)
On June 13 2022, apartheid Israel sent demolition orders to the offices of the youth center ‘Youth of Sumud’ to bar people from organizing. [Link for more: https://www.stopthewall.org/2022/06/29/sami-huraini-israeli-detention-wont-stop-my-resistance/]
Twitter thread:
(1)
Israel apartheid systematically deprives Palestinians of their lands to allow settlement expansion and to steal natural resources.
(2)
In 1981, Israel declared 3000 ha of the 3600 ha that make up Masafar Yatta as military Firing Zone 918. Over 40 years later, this serves as a pretext to forcibly expel the Palestinian population.
#DefendMasaferYatta #UNinvestigateApartheid
(3)
Firing Zone 918 was created directly as a tool of expulsion and colonization.
Then agriculture minister, Ariel Sharon, later prime minister, proposed Firing Zone 918 with the explicit intention of forcing local Palestinians from their homes and build Jewish-only settlements instead.
Twitter thread:
(1)
Since the beginning of 2022, @JCBmachines, @VolvoGroup, @HyundaiHeavyInd, and @CaterpillarInc bulldozers have been used to demolish homes in Masafer Yatta. They have to be held accountable for their complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta.
(2)
Want to know more about who is aiding Israel? Check out the @StoptheWall corporate complicity update regarding the ethnic cleansing in Masafer.
(3)
It is time to mount pressure on Hyundai Heavy Industries through boycotts and divestment to effectively support the resistance of Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta.Learn more from @BDSmovement: https://bdsmovement.net/news/hyundai-heavy-industries-end-complicity-with-apartheid