Commenter Profile

Total number of comments: 220 (since 2010-06-20 17:59:23)

Kate

American (New Englander); Muslim; B.A., M.A. in political science; former ISM volunteer in the West Bank

Website: www.theheadlines.org

Showing comments 220 - 201
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  • Religious zealots attack shepherd. Soldiers, playing 'messiah's donkey,' back zealots
    • Kate June 17, 2013 at 1:08 pm

      Thank you, Shmuel. I didn't know those terms. IDF euphemisms are interesting - like 'cutting the grass' or 'mowing the lawn' for deadly attacks on Gaza.

  • A tale of 3 villages: settlers cut down 20 olive trees, burn a car, scrawl 'Death to Arabs' on homes
    • Kate June 8, 2013 at 6:50 pm

      Daniel, the many horrible stories depress me too. Sometimes I can hardly make myself work on the list -- but someone has to. Certainly we can't depend on the MSM to do it. And then every time I am compiling the list there are particular stories that get to me more than others, because they are especially nasty or because of personal issues of my own.

      This time, for example, the story about the little boy Baraa' Badawi, who lives in fear that the rest of his family will die because his father and uncle were killed by the Israelis, really upset me since I lost my own 34-year-old father to cancer when I was four, and it was the end of my world. After that, I never had the sense that most American children have that the world was safe and just and everything would be OK. I tended to have a sense of impending doom that I imagine most Palestinians must share.

      Another story that got me was that of Kamel Dweikat being attacked by settlers for no rational reason whatever, when he was just trying to harvest his wheat -- isn't a 66-year-old man entitled to work on his land in peace? What on earth is wrong with the people who do things like this?

      And there were too many other upsetting stories to list.

      I will include stories on the USS Liberty in Sunday's list. It isn't up to me whether this story will be covered by Mondoweiss (as it has been many times before), but it seems likely.

      Thank you for your comment!

  • Updated: al-Aqsa Foundation discovers mass graves of Palestinians killed during the Nakba in Jaffa
    • Kate May 31, 2013 at 3:28 pm with 3 replies

      Annie, I added this comment to my Today in Palestine list for 28 May which included a Middle East Monitor report on this find, but that was days ago so most people won't have seen it:

      Early source for the Jaffa mass grave story:
      this article (Arabic) in the Lebanese As-Safir newspaper [28 May]:
      link to assafir.com
      See Al-Monitor’s English translation [29 May]:
      link to al-monitor.com
      (Many thanks to As‘ad AbuKhalil)

      Team Palestina stated that their source for these photos:
      link to facebook.com
      was the Al-Aqsa Foundation.

      I see that a short version of the story has today, miraculously, made the mainstream media (AFP):
      link to uk.news.yahoo.com

  • New report shows Palestinians own only 8% of historic Palestine
    • Kate May 30, 2013 at 11:21 am

      Source for the Jaffa mass grave story:
      this article (Arabic) in the Lebanese As-Safir newspaper:
      link to assafir.com
      See Al-Monitor's English translation:
      link to al-monitor.com
      (Many thanks to As‘ad AbuKhalil)

      Team Palestina stated that their source for the photos was the Al-Aqsa Foundation.

    • Kate May 29, 2013 at 7:10 pm

      That's about par for the course concerning news about Palestinians, isn't it? Especially the Nakba.

      The Middle East Monitor story referring to the Al-Aqsa Foundation announcement seems to have been the source for all the other mentions I've seen so far, at least those in English. MEMO says in the comment section for their article: "Hi Williams, this was a breaking news alert, hence the lack of details. We're hoping to get more on the story later. Yes, you find human remains in a cemetery...but they found a "secret" mass grave in this particular cemetery, cleverly hidden, since remains in a cemetery isn't normally suspicious..."

      I don't know the source of the photos posted by Team Palestina. As‘ad AbuKhalil, the Angry Arab, mentions the story on his blog ("Jaffa mass grave: not covered by US media protecting Zionist crimes") and includes one photo, the first one in the TP collection. Possibly they came from the Al-Aqsa Foundation also.

  • SF officials describe 'apartheid' label as 'intolerance alienating the Jewish community'
    • Kate May 26, 2013 at 4:28 pm

      Ramzi, bintbiba: I think this terrific saying is the same as this:
      ضربني وبكى سبقني و شتكى (Darabni wa baka, sabaqni wa shtaka) But I don't know much Arabic, so am not sure. I would like to ask a question.

      When you wrote ' in the middle of your version of 'he preceded / anticipated me' (saba'ni) did you mean hamza (ء)? Or perhaps ‘ain (ع )? And is that a common Palestinian substitute for qaf (q, ق ) as in the middle of the same word (sabaqni) in the above version? I noticed more than one type of Arabic in Palestine and don't know much about any of them.

      MRW, the linguist in me can't help noting that Arabic is not a stress language, it's a vowel-length language, so stress isn't really important in it - vowel length is. There aren't any long vowels in any of these particular words.

      Sorry for boring most readers stiff with this, but I am really interested in the answers to this question!

  • 'AP' says Barbara Boxer is favoring Israeli travelers over American ones
    • Kate May 15, 2013 at 3:23 pm

      From the AP article:
      'Ms Tamari said the State Department later told her she must have misunderstood the embassy official.

      Department spokesman Mark Toner, asked about the incident at a June 2012 press briefing, said, "We would never deny assistance to any American citizen, regardless of their religious or ethnic background." '

      What nonsense. American embassies are often not helpful to any US citizens. I was in Mali, West Africa at a time when the banks stopped accepting American money and travelers' checks. When I called the embassy, I was just told "Well I guess you'll be on bread and water for a while."

  • Israel approves draft law to displace dozens of villages and tens of thousands of Bedouins in the Negev
    • Kate May 8, 2013 at 10:46 pm

      On second thought, Joe, I just dropped the ball on that one. Even forgot your April article. No excuses!

    • Kate May 8, 2013 at 10:27 pm with 1 replies

      Thanks Joe. I put both the Ma‘an and PIC articles in because I thought each was a bit confusing and I was trying to cover all bases. Didn't see the Xinhua article - no Middle East RSS - and if the NYTimes one is the most accurate, that's unusual! Thanks for the clarification.

    • Kate May 8, 2013 at 1:20 pm

      David Doppler, I didn't see this comment of yours from several days ago. Sorry! Did not mean to ignore you.

      "Kate, your log of news from the West Bank fills a big gap in what is otherwise a “firehose” of online news and information. I find it hard to read through, not because it isn’t thorough and straightforward journalism, but because it is so dissonant with MSM accounts of life in the Middle East, and what it means to be an American or an important American ally. One story after another details such oppression, the lack of consequences leads to a sense of powerlessness that starts to breed despair. Thank you for what must be hard work. Perhaps someday you might share your reflections on collecting and publishing this important but suppressed tale. Where does the “feed” of stories come from, and is the MSM unaware, or willfully ignoring it? Do they rationalize by discrediting it? What are your experiences interacting with MSM writers and editors and producers in connection with these stories?"

      Thank you for your note of appreciation!

      I use an RSS feed from some 200 sites to gather the news. However, Google is dropping the Reader on 1 July so I will have to find an alternative. Even now, many sites that I use are no longer participating in RSS, which makes finding articles on them harder. I hope this situation will improve, since even with the Reader each compilation takes about six hours. Six very depressing hours, sometimes.

      Another problem is the number of online newspapers that have gone behind a paywall - notably Haaretz.

      I don't have much interaction with MSM writers and editors, having given up on them quite a while ago. Normally my emails have gone unanswered. I don't know for sure how many of these people are actually ignorant of what is going on in Palestine, and how many of them are just afraid that if they report it, they will either be considered 'antisemitic' or lose their jobs. And some, of course, are just pro-Israel and won't report anything that they see as detrimental to Israel's image.

      I will give you an example of stonewalling by a newspaper: In 2003, a reporter for a regional newspaper I read interviewed an FBI counterterrorism agent who had visited Israel, and quoted him as saying "Since September 2000 [the beginning of the 2nd Intifada] to mid-January 2003, about 40,000 Israelis have been killed in terrorist attacks." This figure was so obviously out of whack that I decided the reporter must have misheard him - the number of Israelis killed during this period was actually 677, including 217 members of Israeli forces, according to B'Tselem. I wrote to both the reporter and the editor, including the B'Tselem link, but received no reply; my letter was never printed. This erroneous figure must have done considerable damage to the Palestinian cause in the area served by this newspaper, since most readers would have taken the statement at face value -- how would they know any better? Multiply that by all the other 'mistakes' and omissions by the MSM.

  • Boston's interfaith memorial deflection
    • Kate April 20, 2013 at 5:36 pm

      You might be interested to know that the choice of Nasser Weddady to represent New England Muslims at the service was apparently made without consulting mosque leaders here or other local Muslims. I was expecting to see the imam of one or another of our larger mosques, and when Weddady appeared all I could think of was 'Who is that?' I don't know how he was chosen, or by whom.

  • Obama's heckler asked about Rachel Corrie, not Jonathan Pollard
  • Simon Moya-Smith relates the experience of settler colonialism on his native land
    • Kate March 15, 2013 at 3:46 pm with 9 replies

      I don't know how to think about the issue either -- it messes with my head. I readily agree that the colonists (some of them my ancestors) practiced genocide on the indigenous inhabitants of the U.S. and Canada, and that there is a lot of atonement and reparations that we need to deal with. I was long kept aware of the issues by a Chippewa friend, now dead, who was born on a 'reservation' in Minnesota and had a good deal of anger about the situation.

      But recently I have been following the Idle No More movement, and somehow found myself out of my comfort zone - big-time. The problem? Being expected to consider myself a 'settler'! That term chilled my bones. B-b-but I'm an American! Some of the youngest members of my family are 16th-generation Americans! How long do you have to be in a place to be considered a native, or non-settler? Two generations? Thirty? Or do your ancestors have to be the first people ever to live there? In that case most of the people in the world outside the Americas aren't indigenous to the place they live now. What if some of your ancestors (Irish in my case) are here because they were starved out of their original place by other colonialists? There sure isn't anything simple about this.

      Let me quote from an article:
      link to uncomfortablycanadian.wordpress.com

      "Last week I attended a town hall-style panel discussion in Victoria on the future of Idle No More, one that posed the question that’s on everyone’s mind, “Where do we go from here?”

      In one of the evening’s poignant moments – there were many – a non-indigenous woman walked up to a microphone to bring attention to something that was upsetting her deeply. A previous speaker had suggested that non-indigenous people would be supportive of the movement just as long as it didn’t personally inconvenience them – a fair statement in itself, only the speaker didn’t use that politically correct appellation, non-indigenous.

      The woman at the microphone began to cry as she spoke about how she grew up on this coast and loved it deeply, how it was her home. “I am not a colonist,” she said, “I am not a squatter.” It must have been a hard thing to say, and might well have been on the minds of others in the room, but it also begged the further question, what was she?

      It can seem difficult to know exactly what us non-indigenous Canadians should refer to ourselves as in such contexts – there is certainly no shortage of options. Colonist or squatter? Settler, guest or newcomer? Simply Canadian?

      The crux of the issue, for many non-indigenous Canadians, is the question of guilt. To refer oneself as a colonist or squatter, or to be referred to as such, might well imply an uncomfortable degree of complicity in events that can seem historically abstract from our daily lives."

      I feel uncomfortable just discussing this issue - and perhaps I shouldn't have done so - but Phil has been so honest about some of his confusions and doubts about identity that I can be no less.

  • West Bank funeral highlights Israel's use of live ammunition to provoke violent resistance
  • 'You’re not allowed to use public transportation at all': A report from Israel's segregated buses
    • Kate March 5, 2013 at 12:46 pm with 1 replies

      Latest development on the segregated buses issue:

      Suspicion: Buses of company operating 'Palestinian' lines torched

      Following the uproar against its 'Palestinian-only' West Bank bus lines, two Afikim company buses caught fire on Monday night in Kfar Qassem.
      There were no reports of injury, and the police are investigating suspicions of arson.
      Due to the incident, the company's drivers were asked to remove all buses from the Arab town, fearing similar occurrences in light of the protest against the new bus lines.
      On Monday morning, a riot broke out at the exit point of the Eyal crossing, adjacent to Qalqilya, after numerous Palestinian laborers could not get to work within the Green Line.
      They protested the fact that as of now, they must arrive at the crossing from far-off places in the West Bank since the new bus lines are their only means of entering central Israel....
      link to ynetnews.com

  • Last week in the oPt: 12 Palestinians, incl 4 children, wounded by Israel fire; 26 Palestinian children arrested
    • Kate March 2, 2013 at 12:32 pm

      Couple of comments on Avi's post:

      1) Seham is gone only temporarily (since early December) - she's due back soon! We hope to get back to doing the list six days a week, instead of the current three.

      2) For a rather different kind of news roundup, see the PLO Negotiation Affairs Department's Daily Situation Reports. The latest one, for 28 Feb, is here:
      link to nad-plo.org
      It lists 168 'events' in chart form (there were 229 for 27 Feb). Usually there are more pages with details, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this particular day's report -- there seems to be some sort of formatting problem.

      There are also monthly reports - February's isn't out yet, but you can see January's here, listing 1898 'events' and containing useful graphics, including charts of trends in raids and casualties:
      link to nad-plo.org
      These PLO reports are good for the historical record, since they are more comprehensive than Seham's and mine, if also comparatively 'dry' and statistical.

    • Kate March 1, 2013 at 5:23 pm with 1 replies

      Thanks Annie - may the work all of us do result in the end of this madness!

  • Denied entry by Israel, American teacher prepares to say goodbye to Palestinian students
    • Kate March 1, 2013 at 5:56 pm

      "She was also asked if she knew any prisoners, a question she had not answered previously. When she said she did not, the Shin Bet members asked her whether she knew anyone who had a relative in prison."

      Just try and find a Palestinian with no relatives in prison or formerly in prison.

      "Since Israel's occupation of Palestine in 1967, an estimated 800,000 Palestinians have been detained under Israeli military orders. This constitutes over 20% of the total Palestinian population located therein, including 40% of the male population in the State of Palestine."

      Quoted from this article (included in my 26 Feb compilation of news and opinion on Palestine):
      link to english.pnn.ps

  • Emad Burnat's Oscar speech: 'We are seeking freedom and peace -- for my son Gibreel and his generation'
  • '5 Broken Cameras' director detained in LAX on way to Oscars (Updated)
    • Kate February 20, 2013 at 1:37 pm with 1 replies

      from the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar:
      link to english.al-akhbar.com

      "The director was interrogated, detained for an hour and a half, and had his fingerprints taken twice. Airport officers googled his name to confirm that he had indeed been nominated for an Oscar.

      LAX officials at first told Burnat they intended to deny him entry to the United States. “I told them I don't care if you send me back to Palestine, just don't detain me for any longer,” Burnat said.

      His wife and eight-year-old son, who is the documentary's main character, were also held at the airport.

      During his layover in Turkey's Istanbul, Burnat was also questioned by airport security officials.

      Asked whether he thought he was sought out because of his film, Burnat said: 'I don't know, but this is the first time this happens. I've been to the States six times in the last year.' ”

    • Page: 2
  • Sweeping the West Bank and Jerusalem
  • Video: Israeli Foreign Ministry film on Jerusalem features the Dome of the Rock being replaced by a Jewish temple
    • Kate February 3, 2013 at 7:48 pm

      As for the headline -- take it up with Adam or Phil, Elliot. I don't write the headlines or choose which story will lead.

      I don't think that "all the stuff about the Temple is mere words and persiflage" (MHughes), though. I wish I did. I can imagine all too well the smell of a burning sacrificial animal wafting over Jerusalem from a rebuilt Temple. A certain kind of fundie would think that was simply returning to the 'real' Judaism. And we know that fundies are becoming more influential in Israel. Let's hope this doesn't happen.

    • Kate February 1, 2013 at 6:02 pm

      See Richard Silverstein's Tikun Olam for the Dome of the Rock -> Temple video before it was amended.

      link to richardsilverstein.com

  • Forces prevent Palestinians from bringing saplings into occupied village, Beit Iksa
    • Kate January 31, 2013 at 11:56 am with 1 replies

      RoHa, I admit I get burned out sometimes. But I feel that it's just about the only thing I can do for Palestine, so I keep on. And I am inspired by the steadfastness and the courage of the Palestinians - they make any problems I have seem trivial.

  • Kentucky paper publishes piece describing Palestinians as 'chosen people'
  • On foot through the hills of E1 -- Palestinians join Bab al-Shams protest village
    • Kate January 13, 2013 at 5:56 pm

      The new Palestinian village is already gone.

      The Independent:
      Palestinians evicted from E1, east of Jerusalem, less than 48 hours after beginning protest

      A group of Palestinian protesters who had built a tented village in a strategically important area of the West Bank have been evicted by Israeli police, less than 48 hours after beginning their action.

      As many as 250 protesters were moved by the police and members of the Israeli Defence Force from the site in the area known as E1, east of Jerusalem, which has been earmarked for development by Israeli settlers.
      (...)
      Palestinian activist, Abdullah Abu Rahma, said that the protesters hoped to continue their action, and would re-pitch their tents. “Today, we will see if we can return," he said. It is thought that the Palestinians could also repeat the move in other parts of the West Bank.

      Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police evicted the protesters from the site after a court decision authorising their removal. According to the Associated Press, he did not know which court had allowed the eviction. Mr Rosenfled said that there had been no injuries, a point disputed by the Palestinians who said that six people had been lightly hurt.

      In a statement, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, a grass-roots Palestinian group, said: “Even though we were evicted, our strength was apparent since the police needed hundreds and hundreds of special unit police officers.”
      (continued)

      link to independent.co.uk

  • Cairo moves to halt Israeli demolition of Egyptian monument outside Ramallah
    • Kate December 17, 2012 at 12:53 pm

      I agree, American. For many years, the first word that has come to my mind every time I've thought of Israel is 'destroyer'. Looking at what it does makes it difficult sometimes to remember that in Judaism people are meant to 'repair the world', not wreck it, and to set an example of justice for others to follow, as so many Jews have done in the past and people like Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, and others still do.

      What happened to this idea? Is the explanation merely 'Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return'? I don't know. But it all makes me very sad and angry.

  • Family of teenager killed in Hebron calls fake gun story a 'fabrication'
    • Kate December 13, 2012 at 11:42 pm

      The cake in the photo is the one he had at his school birthday celebration. He was planning to buy another one to take home for his family birthday party. This was in my Today in Palestine newslist for Wednesday on Mondo:

      Photo: Young man celebrates his birthday, is killed by the army the same day
      Images from Palestine 12 Dec — Mohammed Al salayma, celebrate today his 17th Birthday in the school and just want to by his Birthday cacke to celebrate with his Family, but the IsraHelli soldier shoot him by 6 bullets and killed him
      link to facebook.com

  • Another 'NYT' reporter goes to Gaza and offers condescending anthropological observations on social media
    • Kate December 9, 2012 at 12:28 pm

      There is some confusion here, I think. According to Wikipedia, the number of 'Arabs' in the world (variously defined) is about 400 million. The number of MUSLIMS is thought to be about 1.7 billion - and that includes Indonesians (203 million) , Indians (161 million), Pakistanis (174 million), Banglasdeshis (145 million), Nigeria (78 million), etc.

  • Scenes to remember (during the war)
  • Visit Hillary Clinton's settlement
    • Kate December 4, 2012 at 6:02 pm with 1 replies

      The situation of the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank often reminds me of the Little People in the Mary Norton novel "The Borrowers." It features a family of tiny people who live secretly in the walls and floors of an English house and "borrow" from the big people in order to survive.
      Except that it's the Israelis who hide the Palestinians from view, from their settler vipers' nests on the hilltops and their Israelis-only highways with no access to the hidden Palestinian villages -- while the Palestinians must use other roads which often run under the highways and are sometimes little more than tracks over very rough terrain. And of course it's the Israelis who steal from the Palestinians, not the other way around.

  • NYT's Rudoren: Gaza funeral 'didn't feel incredibly human to me'
    • Kate November 21, 2012 at 5:47 pm with 1 replies

      And then there is this, from her NYT article:

      "The three-hour ritual was a nearly all-male affair. Several dozen women did briefly view the bodies in a home near the rubble pile, one of them collapsing in grief. But even close female relatives did not attend the service at the mosque nor the burial."

      Doesn't she even know that women don't attend funerals or burials in this culture? It is not actually forbidden in Islam, but it is not customary. Since the Israeli army has been known to shoot at funeral processions, it is also dangerous. What DOES she know about Palestinians or Muslims, and why is she in this job when she is so clueless?

  • Couldn't make this up -- Official name of Israeli demolition plan for new East Jerusalem park is 'They Won’t Know and Won’t Understand 2012'
    • Kate November 13, 2012 at 5:52 pm with 1 replies

      I'd like to add the second paragraph in the Haaretz article:

      "The phrase "They See Not, Nor Know" appears twice in the Bible, for example in Isaiah: 44. In both places, it is used to denounce pagans and people who did not recognize the God of Israel."

      Makes the name seem even worse.

  • Netanyahu on election eve: Approves 1,200 new settlement homes while promising Israel won't wait for US to attack Iran
  • Bil'in father prevented from visiting 5-year-old son in Israeli hospital because of activism against settlements
    • Kate November 6, 2012 at 11:06 am with 1 replies

      UPDATE from Haitham!

      I want to thank everyone who helped me to get a permit to visit my son in the hospital in Jerusalem ... and here I want to tell you that there are dozens of people who suffer the same problem... today ... 06/11/2012

  • Israel announces 180 new settlement housing units in East Jerusalem
    • Kate October 30, 2012 at 12:50 pm with 1 replies

      Please watch the Jaffa video/film on Al Jazeera if you can spare the time. (The short video in this newslist is just a teaser.) The film showcases an exceptional example of how a Big Lie can endure for decades and influence millions of people, including policymakers. It includes original propaganda films and interviews with people who were actually around at the time. One friend describes it as "Fascinating. Moving. Depressing. Infuriating."
      link to aljazeera.com

  • 'Exodus' propaganda even converted Justin Raimondo (but now the dream is dead)
    • Kate October 27, 2012 at 1:41 pm

      I was taken in by it too, I hate to admit. Even dragged my long-suffering Iraqi boyfriend to a drive-in to see the film. There was all this stuff about making the desert bloom, with the clear message that the 'Arabs' were all living in squalor and too shiftless even to farm. Finally S. could stand it no longer, and he yelled "Wallahi, you'd think the Jews had invented trees!" We were shushed from all sides as I cracked up.
      Still, I was stupid enough to think a cartoon at the time of the 67 war (I think) was funny: one side had Pharoah and his Egyptians chasing the Jews across the Red Sea, while the other had Israeli jets chasing Egyptians back to Egypt. Takes a long time to get over decades of propaganda.

  • Settlers enter south Hebron village; throw rocks, insult Islam and strip naked to provoke villagers
  • Documents expose Boston police working with FBI to track Palestine solidarity activists
  • Israel vs. #2 pencils: Israel refuses to allow SAT tests to enter the West Bank
    • Kate October 18, 2012 at 3:47 am

      Oct 17, 2012 2:52 PM EDT

      JERUSALEM (AP) - The U.S. State Department said dozens of Palestinian students whose SAT exams were delayed because of Israeli customs will take the test this Saturday.

      State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday that about 100 students in the West Bank will sit the exam this weekend.

      "I'm happy to say that we have learned that this issue has now been resolved," Nuland said.

  • Israeli govt set to launch int'l PR campaign to 'bolster the legitimacy' of the settlements
    • Kate October 16, 2012 at 3:22 pm

      Pabelmont, I am no expert on this Jerusalem village, but from what I can gather Beit Hanina was under Jordanian rule from 1949 until 1967. After the 1967 war, it was divided by the Israelis into several parts, and declared a neighborhood of Jerusalem.

      From palestineremembered.com:
      "Location and population: Beit Hanina is located 4.5 miles (6 kilometers) to the north of Jerusalem, on the road which connects the holy city with Ramallah. It is surrounded by the villages of Hizma to the east, Shu‘fat and Lifta to the south, Beit Iksa and Nebi Simwail (Samuel) to the west, and Bir Nabala, Aljeeb, Kofr Aqab and Al-Ram to the north. The total area of Beit Hanina is approximately 20 square kilometers (about 15 square miles). The old village lies about one mile to the west of the Jerusalem-Ramallah road, while the new town stretches around that road and is considered another neighborhood of Jerusalem. The old village itself is within the Ramallah district."

      You can see photos of Beit Hanina here:
      link to palestineremembered.com

  • Video shows Palestinian father confronting Israeli soldier who beat his 7-year-old son
    • Kate October 14, 2012 at 1:54 pm with 1 replies

      From the description of the video on YouTube:

      Today the 13tth of October.
      An Israeli soldier beat ( Marwan Mufid Sharabati-7- years old) when he was passing checkpoint 56 to his house, the soldier terrified the little kid and after that he hit him on his chest and smacked him of his face.
      After that the father came angry toward the soldier and he was screaming and shouting, after that the officer came, but also the officer did not listen he started to shout on the angry father's face

  • Settlers destroy over 250 olive trees near Ramallah and over 120 trees in Nablus as olive harvest begins on the West Bank
    • Kate October 11, 2012 at 3:32 pm

      Well I didn't exactly miss it, Colin -- I'm sure 'Today in Palestine' will have it in her Thursday list. Note that this list was for Wednesday, sent out to the listservs at about 7 am GMT 11 Oct (bylines are 10 Oct or earlier), and nothing in it happened after the early Thursday morning Israeli airstrike on Gaza, reported by AFP at 4:32 am GMT.

      You are right that settlers' running over kids seems to be pretty much a weekly occurrence. It is hard to believe they are all 'accidents'.

  • Gaza-- and the failure of American charity
    • Kate October 4, 2012 at 3:29 pm with 1 replies

      The US goes further than this to prevent aid reaching Gaza. After supporting an orphan in Gaza for several years through Islamic Relief, I received the following from them on Nov 15 2011:
      "...Thanks to your contributions, Islamic Relief USA has supported more than 7,000 orphans in need in 22 countries, providing much needed food, clothing and education.

      For the past two years, IRUSA’s work in Gaza, Palestine has been made possible through a license from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). IRUSA’s OFAC license to operate in Gaza expired on July 31, 2011. Although IRUSA has applied for license renewal, we are still awaiting to receive approval from OFAC in order to continue our projects in Gaza. To ensure compliance with relevant U.S. laws, IRUSA has suspended its projects in Gaza, including the One-to-One Orphan Sponsorship Program, until we receive the OFAC license. We are extremely concerned over the welfare of these orphans and so we are taking every step possible to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. ...since we cannot currently transmit your donations to orphans in Gaza, we would like to kindly request that you re-designate your donation by choosing one of the options below."
      As far as I know, this situation has still not been resolved.

  • 15,000 Palestinians in Jenin area restricted to villages due to Israeli closure during Yom Kippur
    • Kate September 27, 2012 at 7:03 pm

      I guess it was too much trouble to follow him to the hospital through all those checkpoints. Or maybe they'd met their Wednesday quota. I've given up trying to see any logic in their actions. After serving in the West Bank for a while, they must have minds like corkscrews, anyway.

  • Protests against Palestinian Authority and high cost of living rock West Bank
  • Sheldon Adelson's daughter rams 'Democracy Now' crew as it questions her dad
    • Kate August 31, 2012 at 8:23 pm

      Mndwss, referring to your post above --

      Perhaps Jews' writing of 'G_D' or 'g_d' is more like Muslims writing 'Allah (SWT)' or saying 'Allah subhanahu wa ta‘ala' الله سبحانه و تعالى -- both roughly 'God, glory to Him, the exalted'. This indicates great respect for the Deity.

      I don't think one can equate writing 'G_D' with avoiding images of the Prophet Muhammad for the following reasons:
      1) The Prophet is not divine and so can't be compared with the Creator of the universe at all; and
      2) not all Muslims do avoid images of the Prophet - you can see paintings of the Prophet in Shi‘a areas.

      By the way, when Muslims write the Prophet's name you will usually see Muhammad (SAW/SAWS) or Muhammad (PBUH). SAW(S) is an abbreviation for the Arabic صلى الله عليه وسلم‎ ṣall'Allāhu ʿalayhi wa sallam, which means roughly "May God pray for/bless him and grant him salvation", and PBUH is an abbreviation for the shorter and less complete English version, "Peace be upon him."

  • California State Assembly passes resolution equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism
    • Kate August 30, 2012 at 10:47 am

      I'm amazed that not everybody got that Annie was referring to Israeli prejudice, not Californian, in her post above: "Recent polling revealed 50% of students in California schools oppose equal rights for Jews." Could anyone seriously believe that a California poll could produce such results?

      If they had followed the link she provided to the Haaretz article, they would have seen that Annie used information there and substituted 'California' for 'Israel' and 'Jews' for 'Arabs' (Palestinians)

      Poll: Half of Israeli high schoolers oppose equal rights for Arabs ... In response to the question of whether Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews, 49.5 percent answered in the negative...
      link to haaretz.com

  • Kahanist message holds strong, now with IDF's blessing
    • Kate August 15, 2012 at 1:18 pm

      "the Charity of Light Fund, which advertises to "rescue...thousands of Jewish women" from 'inter-marriage.'"

      I once tried to post a comment on a Ynet story about Jewish-Gentile intermarriage. I said something to the effect of "Even if the children won't be considered officially Jewish, they will still be human beings." Of course the comment wasn't approved.

      I am watching with interest while my younger (WASP) cousins marry or have children by people of Mexican/Latino, Lebanese, Armenian, Navajo, Jewish, Barbadian, Antiguan, Greek, Italian, etc. descent. The kids won't have to worry about WASPs becoming a minority in America, they will be part of the new majority.

      Why don't more people celebrate this phenomenon? It can only lessen racism. Tribalism is not good for anyone.

  • 127 new US immigrants to Israel join the army
    • Kate August 15, 2012 at 1:05 pm

      Exactly, Cloak. They should have to choose which country they have allegiance to. That goes for everyone. And as for people being able to VOTE in two different countries.... leaves me speechless.

  • Israeli military killed four Palestinians, detained 290 (including 42 children) during the month of July
    • Kate August 6, 2012 at 10:39 am

      Thank you Taxi and Blake! We very much appreciate the kind words from you and others here, even if we don't always acknowledge them.
      I don't meet many Palestinians in person these days, except online, not having been to Palestine for a long time. But even back then, Palestinians knew that they weren't alone, although it seemed that the numbers of their supporters were small in Israel and the US, where it counts most. I agree that the numbers are increasing; I only wish that they included more people with the power to do something about the situation.
      Inshaa'llah the Palestinians will get justice; I only hope I am still around to see it happen!

  • B'Tselem video shows Israeli soldier headbutting 17-year-old Palestinian in Hebron
    • Kate July 27, 2012 at 11:11 am

      You're welcome, WeAreAll. The newslist started in late 2002 as a way to try to get information out there about what was going on, at a time when the mainstream media only mentioned attacks on Israelis. More information appears in the MSM now, but still without much background and often with a slant toward Israeli government policy. There is also the deliberate Zionist propaganda to combat.

      At the time Shadi Fadda of Lebanon/Bosnia started the list, it was not apparent at all to most people outside Palestine that there was land-stealing going on continually. Now it is, I think. Perhaps even the ethnic cleansing is becoming apparent.

      But most people still do not know what the Palestinian people have to put up with every day, or how they cope and manage to enjoy life, which is why we tend to include what some call 'human interest' stories and to use names. Palestinians have been nameless and faceless for too long in the MSM, which has always made it easy to identify with Israelis and their stories.

      We don't manage to include everything that goes on in Palestine. To get a quick overview of attacks, raids, closures, etc., try looking at the PLO's PMG Daily Reports:
      link to nad-plo.org

  • Water Torture: Gideon Levy says 'water is for Jews only' in the Jordan Valley
    • Kate July 9, 2012 at 3:37 pm

      Eva, today's list is really three days' worth of crimes, so it seems worse than usual. 'Today in Palestine' hurt her hand more than three weeks ago, so that she is unable to type; we hope she'll be healed enough to come back to the list soon. This happens to be the time of year that I have a lot of visitors, some from as far away as Athens, so that I can't do the list every day. I know it's not optimal to throw several days into one list!

      I hate to say it, but our lists don't include everything that happens, not by a long shot. The PLO's Palestinian Monitoring Group produces a daily situation report that includes such things as closures of villages, main roads, and checkpoints, as well as flying checkpoints, wall construction, etc. Most are not reported in the press because they are 'normal' and 'usual'. Try this one for an example:
      link to nad-plo.org

      The incredible thing, to me, is that the Palestinians' situation keeps getting worse -- many of the things that happen now I could not have imagined ten years ago. It takes a really sick mind to think of some of these things. And I don't see light at the end of the tunnel. I am in awe of the Palestinians' power of endurance.

  • Arrests of Palestinian children-- 'a boy in leg irons' -- is becoming a big story in UK
  • Palestinian Bureau of Statistics: 262,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, living in 26 illegal settlements
    • Kate June 14, 2012 at 10:32 am

      Talknic, I take it you mean because the contents are so upsetting? I know. It can be hard to compile, too -- especially since the 'Situation' is constantly getting worse. But it's necessary , and every time a new reader realizes what is actually going on we have a new ally.

  • Israeli soldiers and settlers order Palestinian villagers to sing 'I love Israel'
    • Kate May 31, 2012 at 9:12 pm

      Exactly, Les. And there have been many other such things done by Israelis in the last few years, such as Israeli soldiers writing numbers on the arms of detained Palestinians from Tulkarem camp:
      link to beliefnet.com

      and at least two cases of soldiers forcing a Palestinian to play his violin at a checkpoint:
      link to haaretz.com

  • Nakba 64 years later, we will never forget
  • 'NYT' fails to disclose Kershner's tie to Israeli government-linked think tank
    • Kate May 4, 2012 at 1:32 am

      link to bostonglobe.com

      "By including digital subscribers, he said, circulation figures “better reflect the marketplace reality where readers are being counted, whether they are reading online or in print, and these new metrics are showing a strong demand for journalism in our chaotic information environment.’’

      That demand was perhaps best exemplified by The New York Times’s dramatic 73 percent increase in total circulation in the six-month report, fueled in large part by digital gains. The Audit Bureau of Circulations said the Times online now has more subscribers than the newspaper’s print version. Average digital circulation was 807,026, compared with print circulation of 779,731, for a total of 1,586,757."

  • Obama nutmegs Romney with Netanyahu condolence call referencing 'the Jewish people'
    • Kate May 2, 2012 at 4:44 pm

      Thank goodness for Wikipedia - I was totally mystified by your headline, never having seen the term 'nutmeg' before, but then I'm no football fan.

      As for Netanyahu's father 'resting in peace', why should he? He would have been the last person to want Arabs to live in peace. His influence on his son is most probably responsible for a lot of misery.

  • Major olive producing village ordered to uproot 1,400 trees by May 1
    • Kate April 28, 2012 at 11:13 am

      I can't help commenting on this post because I stayed in this beautiful village for a few days back in 2002 and still communicate with the family who opened their home to me. We picked olives on the hill across the settler road, keeping a sharp eye out for Israeli helicopters and jeeps. One day after some large helicopters went over the olive grove toward the village, Israeli soldiers in several vehicles closed the entrance to the village, leaving many Palestinians in their cars waiting to get in. When I went over to find out why, an obviously American-Israeli soldier said to me, "We just wanted to talk - you wouldn't want us to talk in the middle of the road, would you?" In fact the soldiers, including those from the helicopters, were preparing to hold some kind of practice maneuver on the far side of the village, as witnessed by some mortar fire a short time later. So what if the people couldn't get into or out of their village?
      Aside from the great economic value of olive trees, picking olives is an almost idyllic experience, except when the army is around. The setting is beautiful, the food brought from the village or cooked on the spot is delicious, the company is great. Everyone looks forward to olive-picking season, the anticipation tempered only by fear of attacks by settlers. I can't express my anger at the way what should be a peaceful experience is so often ruined by these invaders. And as for stealing, burning, and uprooting olive trees, this is unspeakable.
      Look at the entry for Deir Istiya on Palestine Remembered to see a photo I took of 'my' family returning to the village after a day of picking. The village on its hill in the golden light of late afternoon is truly lovely.
      link to palestineremembered.com

  • 'Foreign Policy' hookups: Resilient democracy seeks blue-eyed worshiper to make work in progress
    • Kate April 8, 2012 at 12:37 am

      'Martyr' (shaheed in Arabic) does not mean suicide bomber. There is a special word for that. 'Shaheed' means someone killed in a war, which the situation in I/P certainly is, and has been for decades. A child killed by a land mine is a martyr. A woman dying in childbirth because she isn't allowed through a checkpoint to get to a hospital is a martyr. A person killed as 'collateral damage' in a targeted assassination is a martyr. A person run over and killed by a settler is a martyr. Let's get this straight.

  • Tear Gas in the Morning
  • Israeli military shoots 14-year-old protester in face with rubber bullet
    • Kate March 24, 2012 at 12:12 pm

      Even worse photo:
      link to fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net
      This kid won't be 'OK' without plastic surgery, and perhaps not even then. I met a man in the West Bank who had been shot in the face like this, also just to the right of his lips, and he had had plastic surgery twice and still had a bad scar. With typical Palestinian resilience and humor, he said he was thinking of asking the Israelis to do it again so the two sides of his face would match.

  • The Norwegians, the settlers, the zealot, the olive seedlings-- and the Palestinian's suit against 'Nobody'
  • ‏A letter from under attack
    • Kate March 10, 2012 at 4:10 pm

      Izak, "Fortunately there were no collaterals" ? What do you call these people hurt in the Israeli strikes?

      link to maannews.net
      GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- A correspondent for Ma'an-Mix satellite TV and his pregnant wife sustained injuries late Friday in Israel's bombardment of Gaza.

      Muamin Shrafi was injured by shrapnel and his wife Iftikhar sustained bruises when a missile landed near their home in Gaza City's Shujaiyyah area.

      Or these?

      link to maannews.net
      GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces opened fire on mourners near the Gaza Strip's eastern cemetery on Saturday and injured four people, a government medical official said.

      Oh, I forgot, you probably consider all Palestinians terrorists.

  • Queer Arab women stage reading of 'real stories from real people'
    • Kate March 7, 2012 at 1:23 pm

      Pabelmont, it isn't new, really. It's been used in chatrooms for a long time, by people without Arabic keyboards, or in Latin alphabet-only chats. See link to en.wikipedia.org
      Arabic has a lot of consonants that aren't found in the Latin alphabet - so in English some letters are used for two different sounds in Arabic, like the two h's (the one in Muhammad and the one in hijra). The first one is often written with a 7 in chat alphabets - the letter in Arabic script looks a bit like a 7: ح‎
      A very common sound in Arabic is ‘ayn, as in Ma‘an, Shu‘fat refugee camp, Ni‘lin, Bil‘in, even ‘Abbas, ‘Arafat, ‘Iraq, ‘Anata (village). It usually isn't written in English when it's initial, as in the names just mentioned, though sometimes E is used (‘Urayqat rendered as Erekat). In other positions in a word it's usually written in English with an apostrophe (Ma'an, Ni'lin), but this is problematic because there is another sound in Arabic, hamza (the glottal stop, like the catch in the middle of uh-uh in English), which is also usually written with an apostrophe in English: Qu'ran. One well-known name with both of these sounds, ‘ayn at the beginning and hamza after the first vowel: ‘A'isha.
      I am not going to try to describe the sound ‘ayn, I will just say that it's made using muscles not used for speech in English, and is hard for speakers of other languages to learn. In chat alphabets it is often written 3, because one form of the Arabic letter looks like a backward 3: ع

  • Israel destroys wells in two occupied Palestinian villages, as right pushes plan to annex much of West Bank
  • US citizens arrested in Bahrain supporting peaceful protest near one-year anniversary of uprising
    • Kate February 12, 2012 at 4:55 pm

      Leah McElrath @alphaleah
      #BAHRAIN :MT @adshap: @radhikasainath punched n head; @huwaidaarraf hair pulled; no food/water/restroom whole flight - pilot didn't respond

  • Settlers beat shepherd, construction worker, and 60-year-old in separate incidents
    • Kate February 7, 2012 at 12:46 pm with 2 replies

      By the way, the beatings mentioned in the headline were done by Israeli forces and a settlement guard, not settlers themselves.
      One story in this list that rather intrigues me is this:

      Israeli guard suspected of confining Palestinian woman to get her phone number

      Haaretz 5 Feb -- Alleged incident took place in Jerusalem’s Ras Hamis checkpoint, where the Palestinian law student says she was detained until the security guard verified she gave him her real number ... Following the woman’s complaint, Jerusalem’s police department opened an investigation on the matter, following which the security guard was questioned under warning and released under limitation. Police sources indicated that he was suspected of harassment. Dozens of residents of the woman’s home village of Ras Hamis, upon gaining knowledge of the incident, raided the checkpoint, protesting what they called an abuse of the woman’s honor.
      link to haaretz.com

      What did this deluded security guard think he was going to do with her phone number? Did he seriously think she'd be interested in him? Amazing.

  • Food journalism has played insidious role in disappearing Palestine
    • Kate February 2, 2012 at 2:14 am with 1 replies

      It is not the case for most Muslims that only fish with scales can be lawfully eaten. Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, etc. are all considered halal, because all creatures from the sea are lawful.

      There are some Muslims and Muslim groups that believe bottom-feeders like lobsters are not halal, on analogy with non-halal carrion eaters like vultures.

      Some Muslims accept all meat slaughtered by other People of the Book (Jews, Christians), presuming that the animals are killed in the name of God.

      It's complicated.

      Our Sunni mosque holds discussion groups with the Conservative synagogue in the next block -- I remember that the one about kosher and halal was fascinating for the many different beliefs and practices among the attendees.

  • Killing of nuclear scientist in Tehran heightens threat to American's life -- says 'Washington Post' Iran bureau chief
    • Kate January 12, 2012 at 10:39 am

      Few seem to have doubts that the assassination involved Israel. The NY Times yesterday:
      link to nytimes.com
      "WASHINGTON — As arguments flare in Israel and the United States about a possible military strike to set back Iran’s nuclear program, an accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyberattacks and defections appears intended to make that debate irrelevant, according to current and former American officials and specialists on Iran.
      The campaign, which experts believe is being carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on Wednesday when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist in Tehran’s morning rush hour...."

  • Israel building walls on its borders with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon
  • 'If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed'
    • Kate December 23, 2011 at 11:36 am

      Memphis, go to Google Images and look for "O little town of Bethlehem cartoon"

      Several of the best Bethlehem cartoons are listed - the one I think you want is the second one, next to the one about the Magi stymied by the Wall. You can either just download the image as is, or go to the website it's on - find the image by clicking on "Christianity" in the list on the right side of the page and scroll down to #9. Then click on "O little town of Bethlehem alternative card"

      More Bethlehem cartoons interspersed with other things, as you scroll down the page.

  • Only a grinch could like restrictions on Palestinian Christians' travel
    • Kate December 23, 2011 at 9:21 am

      patm, I didn't mean that the MSM got stories from Shadi's/Seham's/my list, though that would be great if it happened. I just meant that we used to have to dig for stories in obscure places on the web, as well as in Palestinian and Israeli news sites, and now many of the very same stories (even if slanted in ways we don't like) appear in the AP or AFP or even the NY Times at the same time.

      Formerly only a few egregious misdeeds appeared. For example - while I was in the West Bank in 2002 a Palestinian friend at home emailed me that his 60-year-old cousin Shaden Abu Hijleh, a peace activist, had just been shot to death by an Israeli sniper while sitting on her front porch in Nablus doing embroidery. I thought this story would sink without a trace as usual, but amazingly, the story appeared in the Times and several other places:
      link to remembershaden.org

      I suppose it was the combination of her gender, age, peace activism, and the lack of any militant activity going on at the time that caused the story to come out - most other stories were ignored as usual. Still, it was a start.

      But now it is pretty common for such outrages to be covered in Western media. Not that that means anything is done about them.

    • Kate December 22, 2011 at 4:38 pm

      Thank you, patm and Woody. It is grim, but I am encouraged by the fact that more information about the whole awful mess seems to be making it into the MSM. Some of what I put into the list actually appears there also, something that still surprises me. That certainly wasn't the case when this list was started by Shadi Fadda in late 2002. The information appears in newspapers, that is -- I hope more will show up on TV soon, since that seems to be where most people get their news.

    • Kate December 22, 2011 at 11:49 am with 5 replies

      Thank you, john h. I'm sure many readers will find the information on those websites close to unbelievable, but unfortunately it's true.

  • Welcome Annie Robbins as Writer at Large
    • Kate December 6, 2011 at 4:53 pm with 3 replies

      There have been two trials, patm, one for each of the two Palestinian teens accused of the Itamar killings. (You must not have read all the way through all the Today in Palestine lists, but then I imagine few people have the time to do so.)
      TiP for 2 Aug 2011 includes a link to a Ynet article about Hakim Mazen Awad, 18, being found guilty after confessing in court.
      TiP for 5 Oct 2011 includes a link to a Ma‘an article about Amjad Mahmad Awad, 19, also confessing before a military tribunal and pleading guilty.

    • Kate December 6, 2011 at 11:32 am

      Hey Annie, I thought you already were 'writer-at-large'! I love your posts, and your passion for justice.

  • Pregnant Pulitzer prize winning American photojournalist humiliated as Israeli soldiers 'watched and laughed'
    • Kate November 29, 2011 at 12:23 pm with 1 replies

      Outrageous treatment by Israeli officials at borders and at the airport is common, though NYT journalists are not usually the targets. Check out this essay by Alison Weir on the subject from If Americans Knew (there is also a 13-minute video available there with interviews of victims telling their stories).

      Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Borders & Airports
      link to ifamericaknew.org

      This is a fairly well-known incident, but there are countless others:

      "New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was “seven, eight, nine years old” on family trips to visit her parents’ original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.

      Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight.

      Zayid, a former class president and yearbook editor at New Jersey’s Cliffside Park High School known for her irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing uncontrollably. “No one spoke up,” she remembers. “There were several women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom said a word.”

      When she boarded her flight, Zayid recalls, “The flight attendants looked at me in disgust.” She told them what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own clothing to use.

      In addition to taking her sanitary napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight. "

  • Israel plans forced transfer of 27,000 Bedouins in West Bank and Jerusalem
    • Kate November 25, 2011 at 11:42 am with 1 replies

      I think the Zionists have more than met their match in the Palestinians. Call it sumoud, steadfastness, determination, stubbornness, whatever - the Palestinians are NOT going to be defeated. And they are not going to leave. I'm not sure the Zionists realize this, even now. Their racism means that they will always underestimate the Palestinians.

  • Israel-Egypt pipeline bombed for the 7th time in opposition to natural gas deal
    • Kate November 10, 2011 at 6:59 pm

      Newclench, could you explain your comment? I may be blind but I don't see any combination of 'protest' and 'bombing' here.
      By the way, Phil chooses the headline and the lead story for each Today in Palestine lists - Seham and I do not.

  • The real question is: Does Netanyahu lie?
    • Kate November 9, 2011 at 11:30 pm

      See Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh's article on the subject of Netanyahu's lies (in Today in Palestine list for today, Wednesday); has link to interesting video.

      "Sarkozy called Netanyahu a liar. So what's all the fuss about? Netanyahu has admitted this publicly. The question now is whether or not his lies will pull the region into a war with Iran--a conflict that some Arab leaders support behind closed doors.

      "I do not know why people are surprised at what Sarkozy and Obama said to each other in private about Netanyahu as a liar. This is, after all, the same Netanyahu who gave a speech to dozens of Likud Party members in Eilat in which he admitted this is his strategy. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (15 July 2001): "...giving his audience a bit of advice on how to deal with foreign interviewers (Netanyahu said): 'Always, irrespective of whether you're right or not, you must always present your side as right.'" So Netanyahu admitted to lying and Sarkozy and Obama merely agreed with Netenyahu, and most of the Israeli public, that the current Israeli prime minister is a perpetual liar.

      "And here is Netanyahu, thinking cameras are off, bragging about how easy it is to manipulate the US and go around the Oslo commitments:
      link to youtube.com (make sure to click CC for English subtitles.)

  • 4-year-old Palestinian girl is rendered quadriplegic by Israeli military training in occupied West Bank
    • Kate October 28, 2011 at 5:55 pm with 6 replies

      I agree that it wasn't a good idea for PNN (or was it Ma‘an?) to use a 'file photo' of an injured child because they didn't yet have one of Aseel Arara. But many news outlets do this. One would hope that they usually do so for less sensitive stories, but I have certainly seen the same photos over and over again in the Western press when the subject was something in the Third World.
      I doubt that there was any intent to deceive.

  • Grapel deal includes US F-16 sale to Egypt & Jordan's King Abdullah reminds us he's Israel's only friend in region
    • Kate October 28, 2011 at 1:20 am

      The Palestinian Information Center has this to say Thursday about the little girl paralyzed by the bullet:

      OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- A four-year-old Palestinian girl was paralyzed for life after being hit with an Israeli bullet in her neck on Wednesday.

      Professor Samy Hussein, a neurosurgeon at Maqased hospital in Jerusalem, said that a medical team had performed an operation on Aseel Ara’ra, 4, and that she was currently in the intensive care.

      He said that the Israeli bullet penetrated her neck from the left and got out from her right shoulder directly inflicting irreparable damage to her spinal cord.

      Hussein said that the bullet was most probably of a machinegun and not a pistol, adding that the chances of improving the child’s condition were very slim.

      The Jerusalemite child was hit by the bullet on Wednesday fired from a training camp for the Israeli army built on Anata village land to the north east of occupied Jerusalem.

  • As settlers disrupt olive harvest, Israeli officer declares: 'I am the law, I am God.'
    • Kate October 24, 2011 at 2:49 pm

      As far as the settlers are concerned, I rather like this from Micah 2:

      Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil upon their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand.

      They covet fields, and seize them; and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance.

      Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, against this family I am devising evil, from which you cannot remove your necks, and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time.

      In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you, and wail with bitter lamentation, and say. "We are utterly ruined; he changes the portion of my people; how he removes it from me! Among the rebellious he divides our fields."

  • Homeland security and 'control of the sidewalks'
    • Kate October 20, 2011 at 12:47 pm

      Sorry, Pabelmont, but the US is not a "majority person-of-color population" yet, not by a long shot. From link to 2010.census.gov
      "While the non-Hispanic white alone [that is, not mixed with any other race] population increased numerically from 194.6 million to 196.8 million over the 10-year period, its proportion of the total population declined from 69 percent to 64 percent.
      "The overwhelming majority (97 percent) of the total U.S. population reported only one race in 2010. This group totaled 299.7 million. Of these, the largest group reported white alone (223.6 million), accounting for 72 percent of all people living in the United States."
      The difference between the 64% and the 72% is presumably accounted for by 'white Hispanics', who apparently do not view themselves as 'persons of color'.

  • UN: Israel cuts access to 85% of Gaza fishing waters
    • Kate October 20, 2011 at 12:54 pm

      Please look at this in the compilation above:
      VIDEO: Celebration of the release of the batch of prisoners of freedom / Haitham al-Khatib
      Haitham as usual manages to get to the heart of the matter. Hard to watch this with dry eyes.
      link to youtube.com
      Carlos Latuff has come up with a cartoon about the same thing:
      link to twitpic.com

  • The US media reports: Gilad Shalit swapped for 1000 non-people (per Blumenthal)
  • 'New York Review' publishes Patricia Storace deconstructing David Grossman's blindness
  • UN: Israel 'becoming more efficient in their demolitions, displacing ever growing numbers of Palestinians'
  • Kol Nidre in Cairo. Not
    • Kate October 7, 2011 at 3:18 pm

      I'm so sorry, Phil. I wish you could have gone to the synagogue at the right time. What a disappointment that must have been.

  • The Jewish-Palestinian book of life
    • Kate October 7, 2011 at 12:51 pm with 1 replies

      Here is another, written by Hannah Mermelstein (of Birthright Unplugged) in 2004.

      BOSTONTOPALESTINE
      http://www.ismboston.org

      Jewish activists paste Yom Kippur repentance-for-occupation message INSIDE the illegal Israeli settlement of Ariel.

      report below from Hannah
      ---------------------------------------

      Dear friends,
      I won't be going to synagogue this year on Yom Kippur, but this morning I
      participated in what I think is the most powerful thing I could have done
      for the holiday. Please read below and share the prayer with friends,
      colleagues, rabbis, and congregations. (Make sure you read it all - my
      favorite part is the TAPUACH part, which comes at the end).
      Hannah

      24 September, 2004

      International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) brings message of repentance to settlers

      On Friday morning, September 24, 2004, Jewish IWPS activists offered the
      settlers of Ariel and Tapuach a new penitential prayer for Yom Kippur.

      The women posted copies of an alternative « Vidui » inside Ariel and in
      areas around Tapuach, naming for each letter of the English and Hebrew
      alphabet a sin committed by settlers in the name of the Jewish people. With
      this revision of the traditional prayer, the activists hoped to communicate
      to the settlers that their continued residence in the West Bank is an
      obstacle to peace.

      Please find the text of the new prayer in English below. Visit our website
      at link to womenspeacepalestine.org for the complete flyer in English and Hebrew, along with photographs. [no longer available, but see sites listed at the end here]

      Ashamnu for Ariel and Tapuach – Yom Kippur 5765

      We have Appropriated land
      We have Burned olive trees
      We have Constructed Apartheid walls
      We have Dumped our trash on the village of Marda
      We have Erased history of Palestinians
      We have Falsified the teachings of the Torah
      We have Generalized about Arab people
      We have Hated people because of their race
      We have Ignored the suffering of our neighbors
      We have ‘Judaized’ Palestinian areas
      We have Killed children
      We have Lied about our history
      We have Manipulated public opinion
      We have Neglected our responsibility to work for justice
      We have Obstructed the right of refugees to return home
      We have Punished collectively
      We have Quietly transferred Palestinians from their homeland
      We have Restricted free movement of Palestinians
      We have Stolen olives from Palestinian farmers
      We have Thwarted peace initiatives
      We have Unfairly accused people of anti-Semitism
      We have Vandalized
      We have Wrongly educated our children
      We have eXpunged Arabic from road signs
      We have Yelled racist epithets
      We have promoted Zionism

      We have Acquiesced in things we know are wrong
      We have Refused to compromise
      We have Initiated false beliefs
      We have Encouraged home demolitions
      We have Lost our humanity

      We have Terrorized the Palestinian population in the name of G-d
      We have Aggressively prevented Palestinians from working on their land in
      the name of G-d
      We have Persecuted others in the name of our own persecution and in the name
      of G-d
      We have Used guns and laws to facilitate ethnic cleansing in the name of G-d
      We have Assaulted in the name of G-d
      We have Colonized in the name of G-d
      We have Harmed the Jewish people in the name of G-d

      For all these sins we have committed against G-d and our Palestinian
      neighbors, forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.

      link to lists.indymedia.org
      link to groups.yahoo.com

  • Anwar al-Awlaki's extrajudicial murder
    • Kate October 1, 2011 at 3:32 pm with 19 replies

      Hey lli, where do you think the US got the idea? Along with all the rest of it, hooding and humiliating prisoners, outright torture, etc. A horrible thing to watch, the US becoming more like Israel all the time.

  • A roundup of opinions from a busy week at the UN
    • Kate September 25, 2011 at 4:16 pm

      Funny thing, DBG, that link you gave is about Jews going to Israel from Arab and Muslim countries - and Ethiopia is neither. Maybe you're the one who should read some history - even your own links.

      And if you look up 1984's 'Operation Moses' you will find that the Ethiopian Jews were taken to Israel to save them from a famine, not from Muslims.

      Ethiopia adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century. It was Christian when some of the first Muslims fled there for safety from the pagans in the year 615. It is currently 62.8% Christian.

    • Kate September 24, 2011 at 1:14 am with 1 replies

      Taxi, thanks so much - you really made my week!

      I was already proud and happy to see Abu Mazen stand up to those SOBs in spite of all the threats, regardless of what happens next.

      And Boney M! Love their music. I watched the first video you linked to, and was thinking about mentioning Rivers of Babylon, one of my favorite songs of all time, and then saw that you had that too... we must be on the same wavelength.

      Psalm 137, as you pointed out, is relevant to the Palestinians today:
      "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion ... For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning..."

      [If you haven't heard Fairouz sing about Jerusalem/al-Quds, try this video: link to youtube.com
      There is anger as well as longing in this song, understandably, but then the last verse of the Babylon psalm is angry too: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."]

      I suspect that since descendants of slaves in the Americas have forged such a strong connection through the Christian church between their history and the Bible's stories of the Jewish Egyptian and Babylonian captivity, it is difficult for African-Americans to see the Israelis as Pharaoh and the Palestinians as the Israelites. This might be why we don't yet see very many African Americans who are Palestinian activists as we would like. But this is changing, I think.

  • Settlers destroy Beit Ommar farmer’s crops
    • Kate September 13, 2011 at 12:26 am

      You are right, ToivoS. I have been thinking for some time about merging my "settlers" and "Israeli forces" categories in the Today in Palestine list - it doesn't seem that it is any longer possible to separate many of the misdeeds of one group from those of the other. To say nothing of the Israeli government's official actions.

      I can't get this poor man's misfortune out of my head - not that that will do him any good. Gratuitous cruelty is really not understandable by normal people - and if there's a remedy for it outside of locking people up I don't see it.

  • On September 11, 2011
    • Kate September 11, 2011 at 1:07 pm with 1 replies

      Thank you! All I've heard for the past week at least is grief and fury over American losses. This I can understand from family members of those killed and those who were in New York or the Pentagon that day. But from other Americans? Don't we have any empathy at all for the thousands of innocent people killed overseas in our orgy of revenge?

  • Summer lesson
    • Kate September 11, 2011 at 1:25 pm with 2 replies

      Woods Hole, hmm? Can hardly think of that extreme SW corner as Cape Cod - I've never been there, am familiar with such central Cape places as Hyannis, West Yarmouth. I thought Woods Hole was mostly government and scientific installations - which it is, I think. Population 925 in the 2000 census. But I looked it up in Wikipedia and found this:

      "Notable property owners on Penzance Point at the beginning of the twentieth century included Seward Prosser of New York's Bankers Trust Company; Francis Bartow, a partner in J. P. Morgan and Company; Joseph Lee, a partner in Lee, Higginson & Co.; and Franklin A. Park, an executive of Singer Sewing Machine. Other notable businessmen established homes on Gansett Point, Nobska Point, and at Quissett Harbor, further from the village center." Notable indeed.

      I went to a Seven Sisters college in the late '50s - at that time the quota (upper limit, not lower) for Jews was 18%. I think this kind of anti-Semitism was widespread in the WASP upper class, and Woods Hole probably wasn't unusual.

  • In occupied Nablus, people live inside a 6-kilometer radius and dream of a normal life
    • Kate September 11, 2011 at 12:56 pm

      Thank you, Lynn. Reading your evocative piece I almost think I was there too. Wish I had been. The way Palestinians manage to make a good life out of the little they've been allowed to keep is an inspiration to everyone.

  • Settlers announce plan to shoot Palestinian protesters (and they demand legal protection for it)
    • Kate September 10, 2011 at 8:09 pm

      Welcome, Remax!

      This worries me too, but perhaps not quite for the same reason. The extremist settlers have always had plenty of weapons. What worries me is the extra excuse they now have for shooting Palestinians - they are 'planning to march en masse against the settlements' or some such nonsense. Considering how close many Palestinian villages are to settlements - after all, the settlements were carved out of the village lands - how close would a Palestinian have to be in order to be 'legally' shot - 20 yards? 100 yards? And not in the legs, either. God help any kid looking for a lost sheep, or any family trying to go from village to village in the vicinity of some nutcase settlement if a relative is taken sick suddenly or something.

  • Bulletin: Children's pictures from Gaza are banned in Bay Area
    • Kate September 10, 2011 at 12:58 am

      This is not the first time. Something similar happened at Brandeis Univ. in Mass. in 2006.

      link to haaretz.com AP May 3 2006

      "Brandeis University officials have removed from a school exhibit artwork that depicts injured and bloodied Palestinian children, according to a media report.
      The images were painted by Palestinian teenagers at the request of an Israeli Jewish student at at the Jewish-sponsored college who wanted to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to campus. But school officials said the paintings were too one-sided.
      The paintings were removed Saturday, four days into a two-week exhibit at a school library, The Boston Globe reported on Wednesday.
      Lior Halperin, the student who organized the exhibit, called the school's action "outrageous."
      "This (is) an educational institution that is supposed to promote debate and dialogue," Halperin told The Globe. "Let's talk about what it is: 12-year-olds from a Palestinian refugee camp. Obviously it's not going to be about flowers and balloons."
      The images include a bulldozer threatening a girl, and a boy with an amputated leg on a crutch. Halperin had contacted a friend who works in a Bethlehem refugee camp and asked teenagers to paint images of Palestinian life.
      Brandeis was founded in 1948 and is the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college in the United States. Half of its students are Jewish. School officials said between six and a dozen complaints were made.
      "It was completely from one side in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and we can only go based on the complaints we received," Brandeis spokesman Dennis Nealon said, according to The Globe.
      Nealon said the school would consider displaying the artwork again in the fall, if it is alongside pieces showing the Israeli point of view, The Globe reported.
      Halperin, 27, is an Israel Defense Forces veteran. Her "Voices from Palestine" exhibit was a final project for a class called "The Arts of Building Peace."
      ....
      link to democracynow.org
      Brandeis University Takes Down Palestinian Youth Art Exhibit Mounted by Israeli Jewish Student - May 10 2006
      An art exhibit at Brandeis University featuring 17 paintings by Palestinian youths was removed by university officials last week, after several complaints from students. We speak with the Israeli Jewish student who organized the exhibit and the director of Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. [includes rush transcript]
      We look at a controversy that has erupted over an art exhibit at Brandeis University in Boston. The exhibit features 17 paintings of Palestinian youths who depict their perspectives on life under Israeli military occupation. But just four days into a two-week run, the exhibit was removed by Brandeis officials after several complaints from students. A university spokesperson has said the school would consider re-mounting the paintings if they were to appear alongside paintings showing an Israeli perspective. The exhibit was organized by an Israeli Jewish student who said she wanted to showcase a Palestinian perspective on campus. The exhibit was subsequently moved to MIT where it is being housed for one week.

  • Tel Aviv coffee shop chain instructs employees to speak Hebrew only (when they're not speaking English)
    • Kate September 2, 2011 at 5:45 pm

      "On numerous occasions, Palestinian citizens of Israel have found themselves fired from jobs for speaking their mother tongue."

      Reminds me of the treatment of Native Americans/American Indians, put by the US gov't in boarding schools where they were not allowed to speak their own languages -- in the name of 'assimilation'.

      link to npr.org
      "The federal government began sending American Indians to off-reservation boarding schools in the 1870s, when the United States was still at war with Indians. An Army officer, Richard Pratt, founded the first of these schools. He based it on an education program he had developed in an Indian prison. He described his philosophy in a speech he gave in 1892.

      "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one," Pratt said. "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

      Fifty years later, Pratt's philosophy was still common.

      In 1945, Bill Wright, a Pattwin Indian, was sent to the Stewart Indian School in Nevada. He was just 6 years old. Wright remembers matrons bathing him in kerosene and shaving his head. Students at federal boarding schools were forbidden to express their culture — everything from wearing long hair to speaking even a single Indian word. Wright said he lost not only his language, but also his American Indian name."

      Similar things happened in Australia, to 'half-castes' who were considered to be too white to be allowed to grow up 'uncivilized'. They were taken from their Aboriginal mothers and brought up in a sort of prison school. I have met some of the victims of this policy.

      It's 2011! Is Israel forever stuck in the past? I do not understand people who want everyone to be the same.

  • Carmageddon, Irene-- what will Americans dream up next to make ourselves feel important?
    • Kate August 28, 2011 at 2:25 pm with 2 replies

      Phil, I have to disagree with you on this one. I do agree about the media hype, but not about the state of emergency and the hurricane warnings.

      We are through the worst of Irene here in southern New England, at least I hope so. We lost power for about an hour, and there are trees down in various places in town. The stores here did not close, though people did rush out yesterday and the day before to buy batteries, bottled water, even generators.

      Why? Because some of us have long memories of previous hurricanes in this area. Carol, in 1954, took a track similar to Irene's, and our town lost 4,000 trees and was without power for 10 days (all those trees landing on power lines, not enough repair people to fix things faster, although some came in from as far away as Québec and Illinois). Carol did not weaken as much as Irene did when it made landfall - but you can't know in advance what will happen to the intensity. A couple of weeks later we had another hurricane, Edna. The two of them did $500m in damage in 1954 dollars. In 1960 there was Donna, which hit every state on the east coast of the US. Since then it has been relatively quiet here, though the coast has been hit a few times. Perhaps this decade will be like the 1950s when it comes to New England hurricanes - hope not.

      Judging from the flickering of the lights, I think we are about to lose power again. Just thought I'd get this in while I still could.

  • What I've witnessed on the West Bank
    • Kate August 28, 2011 at 12:18 am with 5 replies

      "I have watched wholesale fondling of Palestinian women’s breasts by the IDF and armed settlers usually when the husband was present to degrade the man in front of others."

      I was stunned by this sentence. I have never heard of this happening. This is such a gross violation of the women's honor and that of their families that I wonder how they survived it. I suppose the soldiers and colonists enjoy doing this because they think of it as the ultimate emasculation of Palestinian men.

      I still can hardly believe this. Can't think of anything bad enough to say about it. Except that I can't regard men who do this as truly human.

  • Independent: How Israel takes its revenge on boys who throw stones
  • Another congressperson writes home from the Jewish State, surrounded by madness she compares to Nazism
  • 104 young Americans reported to go join Israeli army
    • Kate August 23, 2011 at 11:57 am with 4 replies

      This was in Ynet on 11 August, so the story is probably legit.

      American olim seek combat service
      Ynet 11 Aug -- Some 100 young Jewish adults from US, Canada to join IDF immediately after arriving in Israel next week; nearly all of them want to be combat soldiers ... These young Jews are immigrating to Israel as part of a joint campaign launched by the Nefesh B'Nefesh organization, the Jewish Agency, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), Garin Tzabar of the Friends of Israel Scouts and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry.
      link to ynetnews.com

  • Cheers and laser show as man removes Israeli flag from Israel Embassy in Egypt
  • Occupied Gaza-- where warplanes fire shells, soldiers kill a teenager, and bulldozers remove internet service
    • Kate August 17, 2011 at 5:00 pm

      LOL Woody. In any case, as you know, it is almost impossible to aim the homemade rockets. Grads, that might be another story, though they rarely seem to hit anything either.
      It is interesting that most rockets from Gaza harm no one. Yet the 'retaliation' very frequently results in deaths.

    • Kate August 17, 2011 at 3:00 pm with 1 replies

      You are quite wrong, LongLive. I always include rockets fired at Israel in my newslists. And if you look at the second Gaza article above, you will see:

      "The Israeli army confirmed that airstrikes had hit the coastal enclave. "Overnight, IAF aircraft targeted four targets in the Gaza Strip. Direct hits were confirmed," a statement said. "These sites were targeted in response to the firing of a rocket from the Gaza Strip at the city of Be'er Sheva." The projectile that hit near Beersheba did not cause any damage or injuries, the military said. Israeli public radio said a second projectile had been fired at Beersheba, but it was not immediately clear where it landed."

  • Israel scores yet another own-goal in the destruction of its int'l image
    • Kate August 16, 2011 at 2:17 pm with 1 replies

      Jeez the AP is slow! I had this in my Aug 12 Today in Palestine list, from a Hamas site:

      Israeli intelligence tried to recruit Al-Jazeera journalist
      OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (PIC) 12 Aug -- Samer Allawi, who is detained by the Israeli occupation authorities said that the Israeli intelligence tried to recruit him but he refused and that he was threatened with being accused of something serious. Allawi, a Palestinian journalist who works as al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Afghanistan, was visited by the lawyer of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society in Betah Tekva detention centre where he is being detained. Allawi told the lawyer that his detention is to do with his work as a journalist in Afghanistan and called on human rights organisations and international journalist bodies to pressure the Israeli occupation to release him ... He was detained on Tuesday at the Allenby Bridge on his way to Jordan after the end of a visit he made to his family in the village of Sabastya near Nablus.
      link to palestine-info.co.uk

  • WASP society is disintegrating
    • Kate August 14, 2011 at 1:31 pm with 2 replies

      Your houseguest must be one of those people who consider 'WASP' to stand for upper-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants only. (I see that Wikipedia agrees with him, to my surprise.) When he talks of communities based on trust funds he apparently refers to the WASP elite that used to be celebrated in the society pages. Certainly ordinary WASP communities as in many small towns all over the country have not disintegrated at all, and they were never 'based on trust funds'. If anything they were (and are) based on churches and kinship. They never had more than local power, and often had great resentment toward the elite, even though that elite had similar ancestry. (In New England, the lower-class 'swamp Yankees' are perhaps even more likely than the elite to have 17th-century settler ancestry, and many know it and are proud of it. For example, the ancestor of the 'Boston Brahmin' Cabots immigrated from the Channel Island of Jersey only in 1700, 80 years after the Mayflower; Paul Revere's immigrant father, Apollos Rivoire, was a French Huguenot who arrived here around 1715.)

      It is indeed interesting to see that the upper-class elite of the past is no longer in power, and to see how they were replaced. As a non-elite WASP who attended a Seven Sisters college on a scholarship and met there far too many arrogant debutante types, I won't miss them. But let's not make that elite synonymous with WASPs. The latter is a much broader group. Poor Southern whites are WASPs too, and the descendants of Dust Bowl refugees in California, not to mention the millions of ordinary middle-class Americans of English/Scottish/German descent. A lot of non-elite WASPs would be surprised and furious to find that some people deny them their membership in the group. After all, there is no other term for such people.

      During the Black Power movement there were a number of other ethnic groups that started researching their subcultures, finding out much that they hadn't known in the process. I attended a few meetings of such an 'identity' group in California in the early 1970s - a WASP one, which I suspect was unusual. It was sometimes farcical -- for example, two Japanese anthropologists were present at the first meeting to study us (they were not welcome, any more than whites were in similar black groups).

      I learned some things -- for example, that it was typical of WASPs to walk tensely with their shoulders raised. Nonsense, I thought, and then the next time I was walking I noticed -- yep, I was doing it! We talked about WASP mothers, and how they were always wrongly portrayed on TV, presumably because the writers were not WASPs themselves. (What real WASP mother would say "After all I've done for you, the least you could do is...."? She'd be more likely to say "Do it, or you'll wish you had.") We discussed the fact that the WASP majority culture was the background against which other cultures were studied, so that there were few studies of WASP culture itself.

      What I found most interesting was the argument about who was a WASP and who wasn't. One woman who was half Italian and a Catholic insisted she was a WASP (to hoots of derision) - she apparently thought WASP was an economic designation. No one else agreed with her. Since the meetings were held in a church and included some congregants, some people thought being a practicing Protestant was important - although the 'practicing' part would exclude a lot of WASPS. To me the 'Protestant' part of the acronym just meant non-Catholic, non-Jewish, etc. 'Anglo-Saxon' meant any traditionally Protestant group, mainly the English, Scots, and some Germans. The 'white' part is of course redundant.

  • In Honolulu Star-Advertiser: they tried to suppress MLK's boycott too, but nothing can defeat this movement
  • Palestinian journalist goes into hiding, fearing arrest by P.A. for her coverage of protest
    • Kate August 8, 2011 at 3:11 pm

      Glad you appreciate them, Annie. I know some of them are quite long, esp. the two-day ones.
      Hope you didn't fall asleep on top of the computer!

    • Kate August 8, 2011 at 11:32 am

      The article below certainly explains a lot. I couldn't really understand why so many soldiers, etc. treat Palestinians as if they were inferior, or even non-human, but now I see they're brought up to think that:

      Academic claims Israeli school textbooks contain bias / Harriet Sherwood

      Guardian 7 Aug -- Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli academic, mother and political radical, summons up an image of rows of Jewish schoolchildren, bent over their books, learning about their neighbours, the Palestinians. But, she says, they are never referred to as Palestinians unless the context is terrorism. They are called Arabs. "The Arab with a camel, in an Ali Baba dress. They describe them as vile and deviant and criminal, people who don't pay taxes, people who live off the state, people who don't want to develop," she says. "The only representation is as refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists. You never see a Palestinian child or doctor or teacher or engineer or modern farmer." Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has studied the content of Israeli school books for the past five years, and her account, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, is to be published in the UK this month. She describes what she found as racism -- but, more than that, a racism that prepares young Israelis for their compulsory military service ... In "hundreds and hundreds" of books, she claims she did not find one photograph that depicted an Arab as a "normal person".
      link to http://www.guardian.co.uk

  • What is Palestinian statehood up against? (US Israel lobby group organizes junket for 18 ambassadors from mostly-little countries)
    • Kate August 7, 2011 at 4:11 pm

      I would expect some more Latin American countries to fall in behind the Palestinian effort. Note this from Wikipedia:

      "In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter.[137] Many emigrants were from the Bethlehem area. Those emigrating to Latin America were mainly Christian. Half of those of Palestinian origin in Latin America live in Chile.[6] El Salvador[138] and Honduras[139] also have substantial Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (in El Salvador Antonio Saca, currently serving; in Honduras Carlos Roberto Flores). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister – Said Musa.[140] Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants

    • Kate August 7, 2011 at 1:40 pm

      I read that Chronicle article with disbelief, wondering just who in Israel had managed to come up with the idea of equating East Timor's struggle with Israel's. They'd have to have really twisted minds. In 1975 when Indonesia invaded E. Timor, I was living near Darwin, Australia, 400 miles away. There soon were Timorese refugees in northern Australia, mostly if I remember correctly running food stalls in markets or small general stores. Many Australians were sympathetic to the E. Timorese fight for independence, in which a very large number of Timorese were killed. I certainly can see the similarities between the Palestinian and Timorese struggles, but as for Israel's? No way.

  • Video shows undercover Israeli police abducting a Palestinian minor while playing soccer
    • Kate August 3, 2011 at 5:02 pm

      When I was in the West Bank the IDF's idea of 'protecting' the Palestinians from the settlers carrying guns and knives was to evict us - Palestinians and Internationals - from the Palestinian olive grove where we were trying to pick. The idea of evicting the settlers instead seems never to have occurred to them. In fact some of the soldiers were walking around arm in arm with some of the the settlers.

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