I wrote that this week, but a little too late to get it published since we're already May 15th. Oh, and I was writing mainly for a western audience - keep that in mind as you read...
Happy Nakba day everyone!
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As the world joins
In our finite world, land conquered by one party is necessarily lost by another (unless it’s Terra Nullius Antarctica), yet while the world has no trouble remembering the first event, Israel – along with some of its hard-line supporters – refuse to acknowledge that Zionist proto-military forces caused the displacement of hundred of thousands of Palestinians, pushing them into exile and barring them from returning to their ancestral homes for the following 60 years.
For
It would, however, be a large step towards understanding the central grief of a sizable segment of its population, an important step on the road to improving Jewish-Arab relationships within
Israel’s Jewish citizens are well aware that the land their country was built on a little over half a century ago was not ‘a land without a people’ as Israel Zangwill said, but most will quickly dismiss the thought, leaving this major event of their country - the story of its establishment - in an artificial darkness, somehow obstructing the millennia of history that took place between the destruction of the Temple and the twentieth century.
History is ugly by definition, and no nation has an immaculate past.
Recognizing the events of the Nakba would also allow
Understanding the “other’s narrative” is considered to be an essential part of conflict resolution, and reconciliation. Nowhere is this more valid than in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where the shared events with diametrically opposed stories are at the core of the negotiations’ main contentious issues. If
Luckily, an increasing number of courageous Israelis have been facing, head on, the question of the Nakba recognition and have sought to communicate with both the Palestinian and the Israeli public. With the Israeli public, in an effort to inform, educate, and challenge; with the Palestinian public, to let them know that someone listens. Zochrot (‘Remembering’, in Hebrew) is one such organisation. Through advocacy within
For if the State of Israel is “to make the Jewish state legitimate in the eyes of those who feel they are its victims” as former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said, the State must first understand why they feel they are its victims.
Then, perhaps, in the absence of a common narrative, a pair of mutually acknowledged narratives will exist. Much can be achieved from there.
(seen on Sandmonkey)
A Tunisian girl was having phone sex with a dude and seemingly punctured her hymen during the conversation..
Now her family is suing him for rape!
(Whahahahahaha... give me second to stop giggling...)
This is one of the most stupid news I've read in a while and it was sooo worth sharing :-)
I also like the fact that there are more that 500 comments on that story on the Arabeyya news website, half of whom complaining that it's a stupid piece of news...
Arabs are weird, man.
Apparently, the Onion does.
A major question of sovereignty is the control over one’s own borders. The Palestinians have none whatsoever.
To travel abroad from the oPt (Occupied Palestinian Territories), one can theoretically speaking either fly out of Tel Aviv, cross into Jordan from one of the three border crossings, or into Egypt.
The Palestinians, however, don’t get to choose: their only way out is through
And to get to 
So one has to travel to
Imagine if
So, Israeli customs will take as long as they will. You pay an exit tax of 105 shekels – a hefty 30 dollars. Which goes to
Then, you cross the King Hussein bridge, and you’re in
THEN you’re in
The trip took me 6 hours. 6 hours for 180 km tops.
In the summer, though, with delays and with the pressure on this single entry and exit point, it can take up to...
40 hours. 40 hours, sitting in buses or on uncomfortable benches to cross a stupid border.
The opening hours of the border don’t help, either. The traveller in me finds ludicrous that a border would close in the first place. Now, since the Israelis, whimsical as they are, control the King Hussein bridge on the Palestinian side, everyone follows their timing this it is the most constraining... 5 days a week, the Bridge is open from 8 to 4pm (officially to 6pm, but that’s a lie); and on Friday and Saturday, it’s open from 8 to 11:30 AM (officially to 2pm).
I was trying to travel back to the
I kept wondering how travelling would’ve been – if I were 70 years old, or if I were a mother with her three children. If I were sick. If I had an emergency.
I never do tags but I have been tagged by Injis so I’m doing this one because, well, it’s Inji. :)
Sooo... 10 random things about me... Let’s try.
1) I hit snooze on my alarm clock on average 6 times every morning (I know. I’m the roommate from hell.) and I still wake up at
2) I have discovered, just last week (thank you, dad), that I also have Sudanese blood. Which I think is mighty cool. Add that to various already acknowledged origins, I should claim the throne of the
3) I used to bike when I lived in the
4) I have an insane habit of fiddling non-stop with my hair. You’ve noticed, I know.
5) I stepped into a minefield in
6) I get bored way, way too quickly – particularly when it’s about long term projects (did I hear someone say PhD?) or long term relationships. And I'm not even sorry about it anymore - sorry about that.
7) I won't judge you by your thoughts, opinions, or behaviour; but I will judge you by your outfit. I can’t stand lousy colour coordination.
8) I have financially contributed (albeit a little) to the presidential campaign of a guy who’s running in a country that isn’t mine. Which is, let’s face it, the only time I’ll ever get to have a say in a presidential campaign.
9) I have eaten shark. And deer. And frog. And camel. Shark and camel didn’t taste particularly good, deer did. I blocked out the frog experience.
10) I purposefully don’t shave for two weeks before I take a plane in the
Inside the Qalandia checkpointMovement of people and vehicles in the West Bank “will be free and normal, and shall not need to be effected through checkpoints or roadblocks.”
The quintessential nonsensical expression of the Israeli occupation. A checkpoint is generally located between a Palestinian town and the next Palestinian town, where cars and buses are stopped. People are generally asked to step out of the car/bus, line up, show their IDs to a pre-pubescent soldier with a machine-gun and an Ipod. Then back in the bus.
Besides the checkpoints, there are numerous roadblocks: mounts of rocks, or sand, that the army uses to block a road, forcing people to do all sorts of monkeying around to find alternative routes. Pointless.
There are, as of Feb 2008, 580 checkpoints and roadblocks in the
A checkpoint every 10 km. that’s ridiculous.
Checkpoint on the Bethlehem/Jerusalem road. The ambulance was there for the 45 minutes my bus was waiting, with the paramedic frantically trying to talk the soldier into letting him through.The security purpose of these controls is frankly incoherent. Their real purpose, however, is control:
The biggest, baddest checkpoints are, I think, the ones that go from the
Take the Qalandiya checkpoint, for instance, which is the one between 
We have to get out of the bus, walk to the checkpoint, get through a very tight metal turning door, then another one, then a metal detector, then show our IDs to the kids-with-machine-guns hiding behind bulletproof glass, then another two turning metal gates. Average time: 30 minutes.
And this is actually one of the easy ones. Other checkpoints essentially put people into a series of cages – literally, cages – separated by metal gates, then more cages.
I mean, WHAT THE FUCK???
The immense majority of the checkpoints serve no security purpose WHATSOEVER, I can assure you. They are just there to piss off the Palestinians. They are insanely damaging to the economy – perishable goods can easily go bad if they’re stuck at a series of checkpoints for 15 hours each, which is not uncommon at all - and I’m not even talk to export/import of finished and intermediary goods from Palestine to Israel or other; to people, who take 2 hours to get through 30 km (ask my officemate, who commutes from Bethlehem to Ramallah everyday) and can’t get to their jobs on time if a soldier decides to physically search everyone in the bus (which they can do); to morale, because it’s frankly, really, really humiliating to be treated as a criminal or a suspect at best every single day, and seriously irritating to see your elderly mother have to get off the bus to show her ID to a barking soldier who has no right over her whatsoever; and to peace prospects, because when Israel decides that the only Israelis it will show Palestinians are the trigger-happy teenagers with machine-guns, talk about building positive relations.
I went to
(all photos are mine - and free to distribute with citation. Let the world know!! I'll try to upload some more soon...)
Occupation 101 is the name of an excellent documentary, but that’s not what I am referring to.
Now there are also more reasons for me to forget this – I don’t have to stand in line through four metal gates to get to the next city; I don’t have to do the 6 hours trek to the Amman airport, which is the only international hub for Palestinians; and I don’t get (too many) dirty looks when I walk in the streets of a Jewish neighbourhood or city (I somehow look more Indian than Arab, I am told).
Oh, and I also get to yell back at mean soldiers at the border crossings because, well, I’m a foreigner, with a shiny ID, and I can afford to do this.
However, you can try to live in a bubble but reality catches up with you anyway; plus, I’m doing my best to live as regularly as possible, not take a UN car to go do my grocery shopping... (which, I’m ashamed to admit, I did do when I was in another country. There was no public transportation/buses/cabs/nothing whatsoever there, though, if it’s any excuse).
So this little entry should be the first of many I hope, which will relate to you the daily little bit of nonsense that come with living in an occupied country. And as you read, think of what it must be like to live like this for every single day of your life.
A country with a once glorious history, which has for centuries been the cradle of civilisation in Eastern Africa, and has played host to various exiled communities, today’s Ethiopia is struggling with its internal economic and political issues, and seemingly engaging its neighbours in endless conflicts in a bid to maintain its internal cohesion vis-à-vis external enemies.
The communist era, which ushered the beginning of the Ethiopian Civil war in 1974, was also characterised by the government-led Red Terror campaign which may have killed up to 500,000 persons (according to Amnesty International) also saw famines, forced deportations, and the use of hunger as a weapon.
The civil war only ended in 1991, amidst widespread famine (remember the 1985 Live Aid concert? It was raising funds for
Without entertaining the same dreams of grandeur that Milošević did,
Take
A wounded
Another confirmation of
The Ogaden conflict picked up last year, and is still raging. Referred to as “Ethiopia’s Dirty War” by Human Rights Watch, it has seen various human rights violations, including gang rapes, public ‘demonstration killings’, and burned villages; and saw the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontières expelled from the region by Ethiopia.
The motives are complex, and start from American pressure (or the sight of American brownie points) to expanding regional influence, to maintaining an external national unified target to divert attention from local problems (you know, extreme poverty and hunger and stuff?). Too long a debate to expose here, but the result of it is that Ethiopia has had combat troops engaged in a neighbouring country for 2 years, has helped topple a proto-government which seemed to be capable to restore order in Somalia after almost two decades of chaos (thereby negating its own claims that it was going in ‘to secure itself’ – try to do that with a dozen militias fighting next door rather than a strong government).
While the parallels with
The series of civil wars aimed at ensuring the territorial integrity of a larger
Ethiopia's threat must be contained. It's quite about time we started realising that.
Pope Benedict XVI has decided to baptise a former Muslim, Magdi Allam, in an über-publicised ceremony on Easter, a few days ago. A move criticised by various
voices, including Muslim scholars engaged in high-level interfaith dialogue, such as Aref Ali Nayed (interviewed here, in Islamica Magazine).
I think this gesture goes beyond simple provocation. Pope Benedict is indeed quite anti-Muslim, but he was making here a big, big statement – amusingly enough the best explanation I can find is on a conservative evangelist blog, “Per Christum”. A statement to Muslims, to Christians, to Evangelists as well as to their targets. Smart move, Pope.
In 2006 he received the Dan David prize from Tel Aviv Uni, for “his ceaseless work in fostering understanding and tolerance between cultures”. I guess insulting one culture and pledging allegiance to another is the TAU definition for ‘understanding and tolerance’?
And as a matter of fact, I’m glad he converted – that would stop the ludicrous vouching of his opinions as a critic of Islam as an ‘insider’, and would prevent newspapers from sensationalist titles like “Muslim, Italian and Zionist” as Haaretz did.
Dalia took me for brunch at “Delicate”, home to Jenin’s – and probably the
The pastries were divine, light, crunchy, tasty – just enough to make you want to rush in for the next bite, without overwhelming you with flavour and forcing you to pause. I had to stop eating so that Dalia wouldn’t see me as an ogre, and suggested we take out some pastries (for her mom, I said) – my excuse to take some snacks home.
And it seems that this experience has created a strange, a familial bond between all people working at Delicate, as well as with their regulars. “In it together”, essentially.
Alam – whose name means ‘tall mountain’, in old Arabic - smiles at his clients from behind his counter and his oval glasses, and his goatee dampens his warm smile into that of a polite clerk. I tend to think this was precisely the effect he was going for.
The cards? Well, Alam was in Israeli prisons, in Ofer then in
And during these three years in jail, he painted. And he wrote.
He painted what he wrote, he wrote what he painted. His thoughts flowed on paper, and what he wrote, he sent out – to the pastry shop.
He wrote to his clients – sometimes even naming them one by one, starting one his letters with “Dear Ashraf, Abboud, Khalaf, Ghassan, Jarrar, Hassan, Amin, Farid, Maher, Bahaa, Shalbek, Farouk..” He reminisced, with fantastic details, he thanked them for being the friends they did not plan to be.
Prison makes you thankful.
“To the customers whom we got used to seeing at Delicate.
Girls and boys, fathers and mothers. To those faces, to those shadows.
An impromptu salute from the
And in the prison, my dears, days are but days, carrying nothing but the rotation of the clock.
Yesterday I reminisced about days at ‘Delicate’, so I write today to reminisce about that door, these doors, the counter, the long chair in the corner, the gateaux fridge, the oven, the kitchen, the wooden floor... and other details, taking shape along the days, eventually becoming part of my life.
Yes, my dear friends... the palm of my hand longs to touching that doorknob.
Greetings,
Alam – 17th of April, 2004. “
I was taken aback by this dream of normalcy, of routine. May I say – of boredom.
Isn’t that the story of the Palestinian people, of all oppressed peoples, for that matter? The quest for normalcy?
(a painting by Alam. It reads “To believe, you must understand”.)
I first wondered about that when I heard of the “First International Conference of Jews from
To be held, guess where?
The most amusing thing is that the flyer mentions the participation of the Israeli ambassador, “and Egyptian personalities”. I love their secrecy... I mean, people, it’s in the fucking Marriott!
Which, by the way, will be making lots of money since residency there is compulsory for all participants to the conference. I wonder whether there was a financial-political balance to strike within the hotel to host this conference...
Anyways.
0.14 seconds after typing in "Israeli academic center in Cairo" in my Google toolbar, I read that it's an organisation, located in the Dokki neighbourhood, "which assists Israeli scholars with research into Egypt and Egyptian culture, and facilitates cooperation with Egyptian academics."
A long and interesting article on the center is here, published in the NYC-based Jewish daily "Forward". A rather dumb article posted on a random website calls it a 'spy center in Cairo', as expected.
Not quite sure what I think about it. You make up your own mind - and let me know what you think about it.
I decided to give myself a break from over-thinking – which is hard when you’re in
Now a kibbutz is the socialist experiment par excellence. Shared property, communal work, self-sustainability, “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” kind-of-thing. By definition, a kibbutz is a secular place – it served primarily for very earthly needs (you know, survival and stuff?) and it’s generally a-religious.
(Ein Harod kibbutz. Pretty, huh?)
Today’s kibbutniks (kibbutz inhabitants) are often new immigrants, older people who have always been living there, young people who have either been too lazy, too incompetent, or too zany to leave.
Gan Shmuel was probably as tacky as expected: some of the people actually lived in trailers (think FEMA trailers), the place smelled of cow shit and the trees were unkempt. Nothing to write home about (despite the fact that I just did. Right, Kristen?)
A relaxed weekend in a great setting, nice walks in the countryside, great conversations, a bit of biblical history (this battle happened over there, King something took a dump by this hill, etc.).
You normally can't put the words 'Army', 'Bread', and 'Crisis' in the same sentence and hope for anything good to come of it.
And while shit will surely hit the fan soon, with an army intervention taming a bread uprising, well, luckily it's not today.
The production of bread in so disconnected from the demand that they had to start selling the army bread production to the public. I already mentioned people dying in queues to get subsidised bread (according to the BBC News, it's 10 to 12 times cheaper than the market price (10 to 12 times!!!!!) and if the government is backtracking on its plan to end subsidies, then it must be going REALLY bad on the ground.
Two - or three things I come up with from this story:
- That is only a temporary and unsustainable fix, that will only delay the inevitable. Kaboum.
- If that was an option - why was it not done before? Oh, wait, don't answer that. My bad.
- This example actually highlights a different issues - for some other day, perhaps: the advantages given to the army and police corps.
Of course the government must feed the soldiers, but what I'm talking about is the extra capacity - what will be sold to the public will surely not be taken from the mouths of the army...
Why does the army have enough capacity to feed itself AND the people? This is only a small example.
Overall, the army and the police have mad advantages in our country, from exclusive access to fancy clubs to pensions more than ten multiples the average wage in the country, to State cars, to placements everywhere with ridiculous salaries after they leave the military (despite their incongruous lack of skills in anything useful in the world..)
I know. It's a basic trait of a dictatorship to feed its hyenas. But I still abhor that.
I always wince whenever the Israeli government justifies its 'Palestinian Holocaust' and other campaigns against civilians by "the trauma caused to the children of Sderot by the constant fear of bombs falling on their heads".
I wince because the real trauma is precisely what the Israelis are causing. How does it feel to be a child who has lost everything, from their toys to their mothers?
Watch this 1 minute excerpt. The little girl from Gaza is candidly talking about the "bomb that entered from the ceiling.. everything was destroyed. We had to throw away everything. Even my clothes, we had to throw them away. They smelled so bad! Tell them to come smell our clothes!"
It's cute, isn't it.
And it's heartbreaking. Talk about robbing childhood, traumatising children? Welcome to Gaza.
From the multiple award laureate documentary "Occupation 101".
I smashed this poor pen against the wall - and the result is what you see.
I know. Poor, poor pen.
There is a reason, though - unconvincing as it may be.
Let me try to explain. There was a line in "The Good Shepherd" film (2006, with Matt Damon) where one of the characters said something along the lines of "You are afraid to go through life following the plan that was put for you". (I did say something along the lines of, didn't I?:)
I've always shared this fear. The number of things that we "should" do -- go to these schools, hang out with these people, work in these jobs, marry someone fitting this description, live in these places.
It's s
