Category Archives: Palestine

Picturing Bethlehem

Bible and Holy Land, Lithographs, Palestine

December eyes are fixed on Bethlehem, which has been an inspiration for artists over many years and indeed centuries. On this Christmas day, take a look at Bethlehem as it might have looked more than a century ago.


Left hand element of a stereoscopic photograph of the Bethlehem region circa 1900. Courtesy of Glenn Bowman.


Approaching Bethlehem. Source: Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee.

The following two illustrations of Bethlehem can be found on the website (Jerusalem in 19th Century Art) put up by James E. Lancaster.


Bethlehem Tinted lithograph printed by Day & Son, after David Roberts, published about 1855.


Bethlehem Engraved by S.Brandard after a picture by W.H.Bartlett, published in The Christian in Palestine, about 1840. Steel engraved print with recent hand colour.

Friend of Israel

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Israel, Palestine


Let’s hope Obama won’t be a ‘friend of Israel’
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz,
November 9, 2008

The march of parochialism started right away. The tears of excitement invoked by U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s wonderful speech had not yet dried, and back here people were already delving into the only real question they could think to ask: Is this good or bad for Israel? One after another, the analysts and politicians got up – all of them representing one single school of thought, of course and began prophesizing.

They spoke with the caution that the situation required, gritting their teeth as though their mouths were full of pebbles, trying to soothe all the fears and concerns. They searched and found signs in Obama: The promising appointment of the Israeli ex-patriots’ son, whose father belonged to the Irgun, and maybe also Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, who may, God willing, be included in the new administration.

But in the background, a dark cloud hovered above. Careful, danger. The black man, who had associated with Palestinian expats, who speaks of human rights, who favors diplomacy over war, who even wants to engage Iran in dialogue, who will allocate more funding for America’s social needs than to weapons exports. He may not be the sort of “friend of Israel” that we have come to love in Washington, the kind of friend we have grown accustomed to. Continue reading Friend of Israel →

Showcasing Palestinian cinema

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Israel, Palestine


Jackie Reem Salloum, the director of Slingshot Hip Hop, wants to encourage Palestinians to tell their stories through artistic expression.

Showcasing Palestinian cinema
By Deena Douara, Al-Jazeera, October 29, 2008

On the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival comes another motion picture fete about a people trying to carve out a state in a war-torn region.

From October 25 to November 1, Toronto will showcase 36 films about the Palestinians as part of year-long commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe.

Kole Kilibarda, one of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) organisers, believes audiences will be surprised by “the amazing cinema produced even under the most difficult of circumstances”.

The TPFF will include Canadian, North American, and world premieres of award-winning documentaries, features and short films.

Palestinian films have gained prominence on the international scene in recent years, beginning with the enigmatic Divine Intervention (2002) and the controversial Oscar-nominated Paradise Now (2005). Continue reading Showcasing Palestinian cinema →

Pay Dirt for the RNC

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Luke R. E. Publican, Palestine, Terrorism Issue


Where the RNC found Joe the Plumber

Yesterday the RNC (also to be known as Really Nasty Condemnations) slid out yet more mud trying to fearmonger Senator Obama yet again as a terrorist. Since they cannot find any smoking guns from Obama’s record, the exit strategy has come down to throwing smoke-filled room stink bombs around Obama’s Chicago neighborhood. The latest mudpie comes at the expense of Professor Rashid Khalidi, who holds the Edward Said Chair of History at Columbia University. When Obama taught at the University of Chicago he was a colleague, neighbor and friend of Khalidi. For the RNC all it takes to be labeled terrorist these days is to be Palestinian. But they have chosen an individual who is a recognized international scholar and who is admired across a broad spectrum of the academy. His most recent book, The Iron Cage, attacks the excesses of Zionism on the Palestinian quest for statehood, but is also critical of the PLO and Palestinian violence. He writes as a historian, not a polemicist only interested in political spin. Continue reading Pay Dirt for the RNC →

Mahmoud Darwish Dies

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Palestine, Poetry

Al-Jazeera, August 9, 2008
Mahmoud Darwish, the renowned Palestinian poet, has died after open heart surgery at the Memorial Hermann medical centre in Texas.

Ann Brimberry, Memorial Hermann’s spokeswoman, confirmed to Al Jazeera that Darwish died at 1.35pm (1835GMT).

Siham Daoud, a fellow poet and friend of Darwish, 67, had asked not to be resuscitated if the surgery did not succeed.

She said Darwish departed for the US ten days ago for the surgery, and he had undergone two operations for heart problems before Saturday’s surgery.

Best known for his work describing the Palestinian struggle for independence, the experience of exile and factional infighting, Darwish was a vocal critic of Israeli policy and the occupation of Palestinian lands. Continue reading Mahmoud Darwish Dies →

Virtual Vengeance

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Palestine, Terrorism Issue

There are more online shoot-em-up games than a person can shake an MK-37 at. The enemies are always the ‘bad guys,’ including Muslim terrorists, who might as well be Nazi or Japanese kamakazi pilots. Of course, video gaming (unlike duck hunting) is all fantasy, I am told. Isn’t it better to shoot fake bullets and rip apart digital bodies online than harm real people (or ducks)? Surely it is. So, if you are interested in seeing the tables turned and are concerned about the usual representation of Palestinians as terrorists, you may find the following video of interest. And remember, it is of course only fantasy.

Identity and Religion in Palestine

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Books You Should Read, Palestine

Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories by Loren Lybarger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)

This remarkable book examines how the Islamist movement and its competition with secular-nationalist factions have transformed the identities of ordinary Palestinians since the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, of the late 1980s. Drawing upon his years living in the region and more than eighty in-depth interviews, Loren Lybarger offers a riveting account of how activists within a society divided by religion, politics, class, age, and region have forged new identities in response to shifting conditions of occupation, peace negotiations, and the fragmentation of Palestinian life. Continue reading Identity and Religion in Palestine →