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Good Shepherd Collective needs your help to fight Annexation, Demolitions, and more

URGENT CALL-TO-ACTION. Webinar Sept. 5 addresses how Jewish National Fund engaged in the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the confiscation of their lands.

With all eyes on the United States’ presidential election, the Israeli settler movement has been inciting violence, ransacking Palestinian lands, and methodically taking Palestinian lands for Jewish only construction.

From January 1 to August 31, Israel has demolished 476 Palestinian homes and structures. This onslaught of demolitions has displayed over 600 Palestinians; the majority, of course, are children. This number does not include the dozens of Palestinian homes that Israel has demolished in the Naqab or the northern areas near Haifa and Nazareth. Demolitions are set to escalate, as Israel issued over 650 demolition orders in the West Bank alone so far this year.

Israeli soldiers abuse civil rights of Palestinians everyday. Photo courtesy of the Good Shepherd Collective

At the grassroots level, Palestinians have been resisting Israel’s program of colonization by protesting in places like Nablus, Kafr Qaddum, and Dura. As effective as these protests are in highlighting the resolve of indigenous resistance and the necessity to make material sacrifices, US supporters must take up meaningful campaigns in order to enact change.

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is hosting the Good Shepherd Collective, Myssana Morany of Adalah, and Palestinian scholar and activist Kholoud al-Ajarma to discuss the role that the Jewish National Fund plays in the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and the confiscation of their lands. The webinar takes place on September 5. You can register here.

The Jewish National Fund is just one of the thousands of organizations that exploit charitable giving laws as a function of Israel’s process of colonization of Palestinian lands.

Furthermore, the Good Shepherd Collective, along with a broad coalition of Hebron-based Palestinian organizations, is calling on US citizens to revoke the charitable status of one of these settler organizations, the Hebron Fund.

The Hebron Fund, a Brooklyn-based charitable organization, has channeled millions of dollars Israeli settlers in Hebron – against US tax law. We ask folks to sign this petition asking New York State Attorney General Letitia James to revoke the Hebron Fund’s charitable status. You can sign the petition here and pass it onto your networks: bit.ly/FreeHebron.

Lastly, the Good Shepherd Collective runs exclusively from individual donations and the revenue generated by our local programs. In this way, we are not reliant on large donors and the restrictions that come with their funds.

The Good Shepherd Collective has been particularly hard hit this year, since we have literally no tourists or political groups heading to Um al-Khair. Over half of our projected funding is gone for 2020. You can help fill this gap by donating here. Your financial solidarity is crucial to keep us moving forward until next year when we expect our local programming to resume.

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rayhanania

Op-Ed writer, author, radio host, podcaster at The Arab Daily News

RAY HANANIA — Op-Ed writer, author, radio host, podcaster

Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.

Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).

Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.

Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.

His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.

Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.

Click here to send Ray Hanania email.