May, 16 2011, 12:52pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Israel Firing on Refugee Protesters
AFP is reporting: "Thousands of bereaved Palestinians in camps in south Lebanon on Monday laid to rest victims of a cross-border Israeli shooting, as shops and schools in the camps closed for a day of mourning.
"In the Al-Bass refugee camp, thousands of people gathered for the burial of 17-year-old Mohammed Salem, one of 10 protesters shot dead by Israeli troops on Sunday at the Lebanese border.
WASHINGTON
AFP is reporting: "Thousands of bereaved Palestinians in camps in south Lebanon on Monday laid to rest victims of a cross-border Israeli shooting, as shops and schools in the camps closed for a day of mourning.
"In the Al-Bass refugee camp, thousands of people gathered for the burial of 17-year-old Mohammed Salem, one of 10 protesters shot dead by Israeli troops on Sunday at the Lebanese border.
"More than 100 others were wounded when the crowd of thousands of refugees came under fire from Israeli troops near the Lebanese border town of Maroun al-Ras during a rally to mark the 1948 'nakba,' Arabic for catastrophe."
MATTHEW CASSEL, justimage@gmail.com, @justimage
A journalist and photographer based in Beirut, Cassel was at the Lebanese-Israeli border yesterday and just wrote the piece "Palestinians in Lebanon, at the lonely end of the Arab uprisings: Never is a refugee's right to return brought into question -- except when that refugee is a Palestinian," which states: "Climbing up the mountain to reach the Palestinian right-of-return protest in Maroun al-Ras in south Lebanon on Sunday felt a bit like being back in Tahrir Square."
Cassel's report on Al-Jazeera English yesterday
ILAN PAPPE, I.Pappe@exeter.ac.uk
An Israel historian, Pappe's books include A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. He said today: "In 1948, the newly founded state of Israel committed a crime against humanity; it ethnically cleansed half of Palestine's Arab population, destroyed half of its villages and demolished half of its urban centers. The crime was never acknowledged by Israel or the Western world. Because of this, the ethnic cleansing in Palestine continues to this very day. Only the acknowledgement of the crime, the return of its victims to their homeland and the end to the current ethnic cleansing will bring peace and reconciliation to the land of Israel and Palestine."
Pappe's articles include "The '48 Nakba & The Zionist Quest for its Completion."
He is professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK.
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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