Bedouin from Bir Nabala village near Jerusalem
The controversy over displacement of Palestinian Arabs from Jerusalem is the subject of a British program called “Panorama.” This is available on Youtube. It is also enlightening to read the comments posted on the website.
Note: As a reader discovered recently, the episode has been removed from Youtube; it is available from the BBC Panorama website but only for viewing in Britain… However, an excerpt is posted at The Palestine Center.
[Webshaykh’s note: Carol Spencer Miller (1954-2004) worked as a photojournalist in the Middle East, covering the crises there for some of the major American and european journals and newspapers. She had access to the elites, including King Hussein and Yassir Arafat, as well as ordinary people. Although she died before publishing her reflections on this experience, her book has been edited by her sister as Danger Pay: Memoir of a Photojournalist in the Middle East, 1984-1994 and is now available as an intriguing first-person memoir of events that seem to recycle more than disappear from the news cycle. I provide here an excerpt about her feeling of disorientation reporting on the Israeli/Palestinian issue.]
It grows increasingly unclear to me why people call this a “Westernized†country. the phones don’t work, the press is censored, there are guns everywhere. I am perpetually uneasy. How, I wonder, can anyone relax when wherever you look, there is someone toting or pointing a machine gun? they casually rest across shoulders, carried by anybody who wants to. Will I get used to the sight of civilians wearing sandals, shorts, T-shirts, and Uzis. in movie theaters, at the supermarket, at shopping malls, and at bars? They aren’t frightening as much as disconcerting.
This is a difficult country to get accustomed to. There are bomb shelters in homes and children’s playgrounds, security at every store, the ever-present notion of “security reasons,†the way people dress, as if they don’t give two hoots about appearance (they don’t). Restaurants and movies open on Fridays are stoned by the ultra-Orthodox Haredim. Continue reading Why does this land make me quiver?
by David Newman, The Jerusalem Post, April 14, 2009
For the past two years I represented Israel’s universities in the UK in the debate surrounding the proposed academic boycott. There were many who could not accept the fact that a professor with left-of-center views should fill this role. The Department of Politics at Ben-Gurion University where I work has been described by its detractors as being the most left-wing academic department in Israel. After all, they would argue, people like myself are part of the problem, not the cause, and as proof of their argument they would roll out the same two or three names of Israeli academics (most notably Ilan Pappe) who had taken the unprecedented step of actually supporting the boycott. The proposed boycott proved to be a great opportunity for some left-wing bashing rather than focusing on the real problem – the growth of anti-Israel sentiment among specific groups within the UK university faculty union.
The last few years have been “in season” for attacking the academic left, a form of academic McCarthyism that is hard to recollect going back 10 or 20 years. Most pernicious and consistent is the self-styled Campus Watch, created by the neo-con critic of the Israeli left, Daniel Pipes. It uses students and faculty to spy on those teaching courses on Israel and the Middle East. Anyone who so faintly utters a word of criticism is immediately labeled as such, including some of the best critical scholars of Israel today. Continue reading Bashing the academic Left
“Kill the pigs.” After all, they are a bunch of swine. Were this the rallying cry of a terrorist group or the mantra of war-torn propaganda, such a phrase would not be a surprise. But beyond the barricades in the pigpen, there is a new strain in the refrain. It’s bad enough that the pig has been a symbolic target for censure by the orthodox in Judaism and Islam (Christians were saved by St. Peter’s dream), but now it is subject to literal swinocide. That is what is happening in Egypt, a country where pig bones are as much a part of the rich archaeological record as mummies. Here is the AP story, written by Maamoun Youssef:
CAIRO – Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country Wednesday as a precaution against swine flu even though no cases have been reported here, infuriating farmers who blocked streets and stoned vehicles of Health Ministry workers who came to carry out the government’s order. Continue reading Kill the Pigs
Palestinians walk in the rubble following an Israeli airstrike Wednesday in Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo by Khaled Omar, The Associated Press.
Why did Israel start this War?
by Amr al-Azm, Brigham Young University
There are several answers to this question depending on which angle you look at it from.
The facts on the ground (Time Line) run as follows:
June 19 – An Egyptian brokered truce begins between Hamas and Israel. It calls for Hamas to stop cross-border rocket fire and for Israel to gradually ease its embargo on Gaza.
July 27: Israel kills Shihab al-Natsheh, a senior Hamas fighter, in his house in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil. Hamas protests action and Israel claims that the West Bank is not covered by the ceasefire.
November 5: Israel raids supposed smuggling tunnels in the Hamas-controlled region. Six Palestinians killed in the attack. Hamas responds by firing several dozen rockets and mortar shells at western Negev in Israel in retaliation. No casualties or property damage is caused, but three women are treated for shock. Continue reading Reflections on Gaza
Divestment is a two-edged sword. Earlier this week a number of pro-Palestinian sites were ethused with the apparent decision of Hampshire College to divest its financial portfolio from investments in companies involved in the occupation of Palestine. I provide one such report below, followed by a clarification from Hampshire College that the decision was purely on financial grounds and not political.
Hampshire College becomes first college in U.S. to divest from Israeli Occupation!
Global BDS Movement, 2/12/2009[press kit attached below] – Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, has become the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College’s Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. Over 800 students, professors, and alumni have signed SJP’s “institutional statement†calling for the divestment. Continue reading Hampshire College Divests or Do They?
Residents returned to their homes around Gaza City on Friday. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Gaza is not history, nor is it likely to be soon. The bombs may have ceased on both sides, but the human toll presages a bleak future. Both sides have grievances, but the grief from death, maiming and sheer destruction of property and homes is incredibly disproportional. Even Independent observers must acknowlege this:
Up to 10 times as many Palestinians were killed as Israelis. The Palestinian Ministry of Health says 1,314 Palestinians were killed, of whom 412 were children or teenagers under 18, and 110 were women. On the Israeli side, there were 13 deaths between 27 December and 17 January, of whom three were civilians killed by rockets fired from Gaza. Of the 10 soldiers killed, four were lost to “friendly fire”.
Even if the Palestinian figure is disputed, it is clear that the death toll was massively higher for Palestinians than Israelis. Proportionality is not simply a matter of numbers, however. Continue reading Disproportional suffering
Professor John Mearsheimer
Another War, Another Defeat
The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.
By John J. Mearsheimer, The American Conservative, January 26, 2009
Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don’t believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win.
The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it withdrew from Gaza in August 2005; 2) to restore Israel’s deterrent, which was said to be diminished by the Lebanon fiasco, by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and by its inability to halt Iran’s nuclear program.
But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.†Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them. Continue reading Another War, Another Defeat