Tag: Displacement

The Jewish National Fund Does Israel’s Dirty Work—Again

The JNF (Jewish National Fund) once again is in the news, this time for collaborating with the State of Israel in dispossessing Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. According to a 2010 UN report, this is not the first time Sheikh Jarrah’s residents have been dispossessed and, while illegal under international law, it is not illegal according to Israeli law. It is one more act of brutality, brought to you on a regular basis by Israel and the JNF since 1948.

On the evening of January 18, 2022, in Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli police attacked the home of the Salahiya family—a family that was originally displaced by Israel in 1948. The destruction of homes and land in such attacks is executed by the JNF. In the January attack, police arrested Mahmoud Salahiya and his sons and violently removed the rest of the family from their home.

Why Palestine Is Burning Like Never Before

Occupied Palestine – When no one is steering the ship, the wind, the currents and the waves lead it into the depths. This is what is happening in Palestine. The Naqab is burning, Sheikh Jarrah is burning, young and old Palestinians are being killed everywhere, Gaza is practically underwater with flooding, and Palestinian refugees are barely alive in camps throughout the region. Furthermore, in the U.S. capital there isn’t a single entity that represents Palestine; and, in those rare capitals where some representation does exist, it is quite useless.

Zionist trolls on social media are disrupting the lives of Palestinians and those who support Palestine, while social media platforms allow Israeli Defense Force (IDF) pages to portray hate-filled, racist Zionist terrorist organizations as peace-loving, attractive – even sexy – groups of well-meaning people.

Displacement Israel Occupation Palestine

The Jewish National Fund Is Ethnically Cleansing The Naqab

At dawn today, January 12, 2022, Israeli bulldozers and combat-ready soldiers raided the Palestinian village of Al-Atrash in the Naqab desert in southern 1948 Palestine [present-day Israel]. For the third day in a row, Israeli bulldozers have been bulldozing large swathes of land belonging to Palestinians from the village.

The escalated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Al-Atrash is part of a scheme that is being implemented jointly by both the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Israel’s Land Authority.

As a response to this, Palestinians from Al-Atrash and the surrounding areas have been protesting for three days now in an attempt to stop the seizure of their land.

colonization Displacement Jewish National Fund Palestine

Forced Displacements In Colombia Increase By Over 169% During 2021

The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), on December 22, warned of an alarming increase in massive and multiple forced displacement events in Colombia during 2021. The CODHES reported that between January and November, 2021, 82,846 people were forcibly displaced from their homes and territories, a figure that represents an increase of 169.3% as compared to the same period in 2020. The CODHES further reported that a total number of 167 displacement events were recorded in these eleven months, which represents an increase of 65.3% in relation to the same period in 2020.

CODHES also reported that this year’s increase in displacement incidents had been marked by an increase in displacement of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities.

Colombia Displacement Human Rights Violence

Afro-Indigenous People In Honduras Are Being Forcibly Displaced

On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I want to tell you about my people, the Garifuna. We’re an Afro-Indigenous people, descended from Arawaks and Africans. Our ancestral territory spans the Caribbean border of Central America.

Latin American and Caribbean communities like ours are rarely noticed in U.S. media — except when we migrate.

In summer 2021, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris came to Central America and told would-be migrants: “Do not come .” More recently, photos of U.S. Border Patrol agents whipping Haitian refugees in the Texas desert brutally drove that message home.

This anti-migrant message is dehumanizing and wrong. But the truth is, many of us would love nothing more than to stay in our homes. It’s Washington that’s making it difficult.

Displacement Honduras Immigration Latin America

A Global Anti-Olympics Movement Rises

Just three months into 2021, police officers wearing riot gear descended on an encampment of houseless people in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, forcing residents out in a sweep that went viral on social media. For Los Angeles-based activist Gigi Droesch, the videos were reminiscent of a park sweep that took place in 2015 on the other side of the world — in Tokyo.

“When I was looking at the footage from the Tokyo sweep, it looked really similar to our own footage,” Droesch said. “The way the police were hassling residents — it was the same sort of thing. There were people who were unhoused in this park, and the police came and violently swept them away.”

While some might think it’s a big jump to go from Los Angeles to Tokyo, it was a natural conclusion for Droesch, who has spent the past several years involved in an international movement to end the Olympics and the displacement, policing and militarization that the games bring to hosting cities.

Displacement Los Angeles NOlympics Olympics

War And Climate Disasters Displaced A Record Of 55 Million People In 2020

Amid a raging global pandemic, a record 55 million people were displaced from their homes but still living in their countries by the end of 2020, according to the latest report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

While the figures have been increasing steadily for over a decade, as per the Geneva-based center’s annual reports, ferocious storms, floods and conflicts displaced more people within their own country in 2020 – in spite of the global pandemic – than in any other year covered by the IDMC’s reporting. Shockingly, the report found that internally displaced people outnumbered refugees, those who flee to another country, by a ratio of two to one.

The research center, which is part of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), also cautioned that their figures were likely a “significant underestimate” as global pandemic travel restrictions frustrated efforts to more accurately collect data.

climate crisis Displacement Refugees Wars and Militarism

Report: So-Called US War On Terror Has Displaced As Many As 59 Million People

The ongoing U.S. “war on terror” has forcibly displaced as many as 59 million people from just eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia since 2001, according to a new report published Tuesday by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

“U.S. involvement in these countries has been horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don’t think that most people in the United States have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms.”
—David Vine, American University

Titled “Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States’ Post-9/11 Wars” (pdf), the new report conservatively estimates that at least 37 million people have “fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001.”

Displacement Refugees US Empire War on Terror

Climate Migrants Still Face ‘Immense Disaster’

LONDON, 22 January, 2020 − If you are a climate migrant, how urgent is urgent? Slowing, or even stopping, the damage humans are doing to the physical world through profligate use of fossil fuels and casual extermination of other species is urgent. But what we are allowing fellow humans to tolerate is just as urgent, though often less remarked. Many millions more will be forced to flee their homes in a world experiencing intensifying climate breakdown.

Climate Change Displacement Migration

De Blasio Rejects Community’s Plan For Bushwick Rezoning

Mayor Bill de Blasio has rejected a community-driven rezoning proposal for Bushwick, dealing a significant blow to local residents who spent years drafting a blueprint aimed at addressing gentrification and displacement in the rapidly changing neighborhood. The administration’s decision was outlined in a letter delivered to local stakeholders this weekend by Deputy Mayor Vicki Breen, who said she was “deeply concerned” that aspects of the community plan amounted to a downzoning.

Development Displacement Gentrification New York

Over 9,000 Palestinians Displaced In A Decade Of West Bank Demolitions

Israeli authorities demolished over 6,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 2010 and 2019, according to the United Nations. More than 9,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result. The figures, collected by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – Occupied Palestinian Territory, show the scale of Israel’s demolition regime over the Green Line. The vast majority of the destruction (79 percent) has taken place in Area C of the West Bank, over which the Israeli army has full control.

Displacement Israel Palestine

We Can’t Obtain Immigration Justice In A World Of Borders And Nations

We can’t reckon with the extreme inequalities and inherent injustices of immigration policy without an analysis of how borders, the state and capitalism function to create them. Current liberal immigration news is often centered on reducing current harm — resisting Trump’s “border wall” and expansion of concentration camps, advocating for immigration reform and countering attacks on the asylum process. All of these efforts are critical to preventing more unnecessary death and suffering and should not be dismissed. We need more of them.

Borders Displacement Immigration Nationalism

Report: Climate Disasters Force 20 Million To Leave Their Homes, 200 Million Since 2008

Climate fuelled disasters were the number one driver of internal displacement over the last decade, forcing more than 20 million people a year – one person every two seconds – to leave their homes, said Oxfam today. The contentious issue of financial support for communities, including displaced communities, which have suffered loss and damage as a result of the climate crisis is expected to take centre stage at the UN Climate Summit in Madrid from 2 – 13 December 2019. Oxfam’s briefing ‘Forced from Home’ reveals that the number of climate related weather disasters that result in displacement have increased five-fold over the last decade.

Climate Change Displacement

Puerto Rico’s “Redevelopment” Plan Is Displacing Low-Income Residents

We would need three years to tell the story, being optimistic,” says Mirta Colón Pellecier, sitting in the doorway of her Section 8 apartment on a hot afternoon in March. A light breeze flows through the open door and is caught by a fan, blowing the fresh air into the living room. A framed photograph of Colón and her six adult children stands on a table to her right. To her left, Colón’s youngest son sits in the kitchen with his girlfriend, preparing to leave for work at his second job. “He was nine years old when I moved to Gladiolas. My daughter was 13”.

Affordable Housing Displacement Puerto Rico

Record 7 Million People Displaced By Extreme Weather Events In First Half Of 2019

In another sign of the climate crisis, a record seven million people were displaced from their homes by extreme weather events during the first half of 2019, The New York Times reported Thursday. The number comes from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), which has been using data from governments, UN humanitarian agencies and news accounts to publish annual reports since 2003. Their mid-year figures for 2019, published Thursday, marked the highest number of disaster displacements the organization has ever recorded by this point in the year.

Climate Change climate crisis Displacement Extreme weather

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