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Israel Is Forcing Palestinians in East Jerusalem to Demolish Their Own Homes
In the Shu’Fat neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Palestinian Iyad Al-Shaer stood inside the gutted interior of a modest breeze block structure. The building, an addition to Iyad’s own home, was set to be a new residence for his brother Baser and his fiancé. But the fully furnished home, complete with a heart-covered bedroom that Baser had designed for his future child, now had three gaping holes punctured in its roof.
Just days after completing construction, the Israeli-controlled municipality issued Iyad a demolition order for his “illegally” constructed home, built without one of the expensive permits issued by the same set of authorities. Unable to afford the protracted and costly legal battle, he chose to destroy the structure himself.
Self-demolitions like this began a few years ago and have continued—albeit somewhat under the mainstream media’s radar—ever since, with Palestinians compelled to destroy their own homes in order to avoid the steadily increasing fines leveled by the municipality.
The demolished roof of Iyad’s brother’s home
While the Palestinian population in the city has quadrupled to over 300,000 since 1967, municipal authorities have only zoned nine percent of East Jerusalem land for Palestinian construction. Even with this space being set aside, permits are rarely granted, and the result is widespread “illegal” Palestinian construction—which, of course, Israeli authorities can then order to be demolished.
Tens of thousands of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents now live under the constant threat of having their homes demolished by Israeli authorities, part of a policy of displacement that has been taking place in Jerusalem with a startling degree of public support for more than four decades.
“We know that there are some 20,000 ‘illegal’ Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem,” Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) told us. “[That’s] about a third of the Palestinian housing stock.”
“They don’t consider us citizens, so they push. It’s not a personal thing—I am one of many,” says Iyad. “They push us to go outside of Jerusalem. I call it a soft transfer.”
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when a post starts looking like this thats when you need to realize that no one cares
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Two Dreams
Last night, or this morning, I had two strange dreams. Well, 'strange' is redundant, dreams are always strange. From what I can remember: in the first one I was wandering around a silk road type desert marketplace and stumbled upon a camel the size of a large building taking a hit from a giant bong and blowing the smoke out while moving his giant shaggy camel head from left to right and everyone there seemed to act like it was a common occurrence.
The other dream began, I think with me and some friends wandering a hillside. We came across some uprooted cherry blossom trees in full bloom and I immediately thought it was a good idea to kick them down the hill. I sent one rolling down, its huge trunk smashing anything that came in its path. As I looked towards the top of the hill I noticed the ruins of of a lost civilization, the architecture and design suggested it was Aztec or Mayan, Mesoamerican. A man walked by and told us to leave the trees alone. I got the feeling that he had a great respect for this place. I felt slightly foolish and apologetic. He came to light candles and incense in the shrine within the ruins, and to worship the ancient gods that were housed there.
The dream then began to gradually transform into some kind of MMO virtual reality realm like Second Life. It became populated by avatars that ranged from medieval knights to naked women to anime pixies. What appeared to be the main activity of this community was sex and murder, and many of these characters started to either try to have sex with me or throw me down the hill, at which point I woke up.
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One Of The Things That I Love Best About Art Museums by Carl Miller Daniels people stand in front of stuff + say oh god is this supposed to be art + then they get real mad
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gonna roll around in the grass and smell flowers and chase butterflies and all that gay shit
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im gonna appreciate the fuck out of summer / some sunshine like wearing as little clothing as possible like i need that shit to convert into energy
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yeah im so over this snow right now. stuck inside the past 3 days like

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