By Mazin Qumsiyeh
Dec 10, 2025
December in history (history has a lot to teach us)
1 December (1947) Palestinians began a three-day general strike protesting
the UN General Assembly (UNGA) “recommendation for Partition” resolution
which violated the UN Charter (violates rights of people to self
determination)
8 December (1949) UNGA adopted Resolution 302 (IV), establishing the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA) to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees of the 1948 war until
they are allowed to return.
8 December (1987) Launch of the 13th Palestinian uprising known as
Intifada of the stones
9 December (1948) UNGA adoption of the Genocide Convention
10 December (1948) UNGA adoption of The Universal Declaration of Human
Rights
11 December (1948) UNGA adopted Resolution 194, which affirms the right of
Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands
11 December (1967) The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
established
13 December (2001) Israeli tanks and military vehicles surrounded Yasser
Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, beginning a siege that continued for 34
months and ending in his murder by poisoning (through people in his inner
circle)
14 December (2025) UNGA declared International Day against Colonialism
14 December (1987) Establishment of the Islamic Resistance Movement
18 December (1947) Massacre of Al-Khisas by Zionist gangs
31 December (1947) Massacre of Balad al-Shaykh
[note >30 massacres committed to ethnically cleanse the area before
“Israel’ was even created as a State on Top of Palestine 15 May 1848. Today
8.5 million of us Palestinians are refugees or displaced people]
Three articles of many published recently on SCHOLASTICIDE (the Israeli
educational destruction in Palestine)
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/hlps.2025.0348
https://www.e-ir.info/2025/11/25/scholasticide-in-gaza-settler-colonial-elimination-genocide-and-the-crisis-of-academic-responsibility
https://www.palestinenature.org/research/SftQumsiyeh-Banat.pdf
Take action to stop new colonial settlement on the land of Beit Sahour (the
Shepherds’ field)
https://www.sabeel-kairos.org.uk/urgent-take-action-to-stop-a-new-illegal-settlement-in-beit-sahour/
American woman rescued from under the rubble in Gaza
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nAEQ-zgmID8
Every month, our team holds briefings on progress of our own Palestine
Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability (palestinenature.org).
Separately I hold a human rights/politics briefing highlighting what is
going on in our area, the region, and globally. Here is an example
recording of the latter subject:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pHID87Zy6nXzg0Yg1ptvumaKyrOuVhTD/view
I also give several interviews every week related to issues ranging from
environmental justice to human rights to resistance. Here Peter Beinart
talks boycotts to me and to South African scholar and activist Zackie
Achmat https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-boycotts
What is a rare human quality? Evangelical “Christian Zionists” (the quotes
are needed since you cannot be a real christian if you support a racist
genocidal ideology) are being recruited to help the Israel apartheid regime
commit more violence. A provision buried deep in the proposed US National
Defense Authorization Act calls for the “continual assessment of [the]
impact of international state arms embargoes on Israel and actions to
address defense capability gaps.” The measure can be found more than 1,000
pages into the 3,000-page NDAA. We survey the world around us run by
despots and tyrants (the time of monsters) and we see so much suffering
caused by human greed, racism, and ignorance. The climate catastrophe and
wars are getting out of control and thanks to massive media machine are
missed by most people in the so called western world. Some two million
Palestinians (including friends of ours) in Gaza in tents, sick, wet, cold,
hungry. Famine in Sudan and Yemen and refugees from Western Sahara to
Myanmar who suffered unbelievable injustice. How do we mere mortals, living
(for a short while) in this world cope? What can really make this world a
better place and stop this madness (of rampant capitalism, mockery of
justice, wars that are all about profits etc)? And as we answer these
questions, can we avoid self-flagellations? Can we simultaneously
acknowledge our own limitations while getting energized to act even more
towards justice and rights to others?
Is empathy the rarest of human qualities and the most needed in today’s
world?
These and other questions swirl through my mind and I go back to reread
books like Howard Zinn’s “A people’s history of the United States” and
Avelar Idelber’s “Letter on Violence” (available here
https://direccionmultiple.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/avelar_-_the_letter_of_violence.pdf) .
Maybe I start to think the world has always had evil and good
struggling including within us. It reminds me of the story of the native
American who tells a child that two wolves are fighting within you, the
good wolf and the bad wolf. And when the kid asks which one wins, the elder
says “the one you feed more”.
Postscript: Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has
allocated 2.7 billion shekels ($843 million) over five years to
dramatically expand settlements across the occupied West Bank. This
allocation will fund 17 new settlements, legalize existing outposts, deploy
“absorption cluster” mobile homes that seek to become the nuclei of new
settlements, relocate three army bases into Palestinian areas, and result
in the building of new roads and structures within the region, Anadolu and
the Palestine Information Center reported. Israeli media have described the
package as “de facto annexation.” Already a million colonial settlers are
squatting here in the West Bank and many still blabber about a “two states
solution.”
Stay Humane, act, and keep hope and Palestine alive
Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinenature.org
facebook pages
Personal https://www.facebook.com/mazin.qumsiyeh.9
Institute https://www.facebook.com/PIBS.PMNH
.
We remind our readers that publication of articles on our site does not mean that we agree with what is written. Our policy is to publish anything which we consider of interest, so as to assist our readers in forming their opinions. Sometimes we even publish articles with which we totally disagree, since we believe it is important for our readers to be informed on as wide a spectrum of views as possible.
