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Total number of comments: 6 (since 2011-11-15 19:14:25)

Website: http://www.bethlehemblogger.wordpress.com

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  • Why should I be accused of being Westernized?
    • Vicky December 27, 2012 at 8:55 pm with 1 replies

      "i think the writer would love to air her dirty laundry inside of the Palestinian discourse but it’s just not safe for her to do so."

      She works with a women's rights organisation in Gaza and she isn't afraid to open her mouth and say what's on her mind. She's among the most outspoken activists I know. You are making guesses about her and her motivations based on what you want to believe about her society. No one who knows her would recognise your description of her.

      Suggestions that she shouldn't 'air her dirty laundry' and she needs to 'prioritise' also make no sense, and are pretty insulting really (the insinuation being that a Gaza woman isn't capable of working out what's a priority or not). It's really not a question of either-or, and the empowerment of women can be seen as a vital part of ending occupation.

    • Vicky December 27, 2012 at 8:43 pm

      First of all, Hamas officials can read English. Often rather well. Writing in Arabic is no more or less 'dangerous' for Sameeha than using English.

      She complains to me that her literary Arabic isn't good enough for her to write articles. I think she is just being too perfectionistic, but she insists, and she always does use English when she writes. So, a very mundane reason.

  • 8 former board members of Free Gaza Movement deplore anti-Semitic messaging
    • Vicky October 12, 2012 at 4:53 am

      The comment profile for your account on Mondoweiss describes you as 'Long-time advocate for justice for the Palestinians. Co-founder of The Free Gaza Movement'. Greta, why are you writing about yourself in the third person?

      You also described Ali Abunimah as issuing a 'fatwa' in the Free Gaza Twitter feed. If you really want to get back to the business of justice for Palestine, as you say in your comment above, I think you need to stop using FG Twitter to promote your own personal ideas and views. Your story about the tweet was very garbled and it kept changing, and I am grateful that Ali took the trouble to verify it. The fact that you co-founded FG doesn't give you impunity on anything; we're all accountable to each other.

  • 'Do you feel more Arab or more American?': Two women's story of being detained and interrogated at Ben Gurion
    • Vicky June 4, 2012 at 8:00 pm

      Fred, you don't have to be 'prominent' to take this step. Everyone who visits Palestinians knows the drill. If you've got Palestinian friends, if you are planning to visit a Palestinian community that isn't on the tourist trail (or if you are planning to go to a touristy place like Bethlehem without an organized tour group), you do not tell the airport staff what you are doing. Because mentioning one Palestinian name is enough to have you detained and questioned for hours. Because saying that you're going to stay in a Palestinian area just increases your risk of immediate deportation.

      When I get off that plane, I'm usually tired and feeling airsick, and I'm not in the mood for games. I want to go to bed. I say what I need to say to get through. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether you're an activist or not.

      And you still haven't explained why writing an essay critical of Israeli government policy is such a terrible threat that deportation is the only way to go.

    • Vicky June 4, 2012 at 9:14 am with 2 replies

      On my first visit to Israel, aged nineteen, I was pulled aside because of the stamps for various Middle Eastern countries in my passport. (I'm not Arab or Muslim, but my dad's job took us all over the globe when I was a kid.) I was travelling with a Catholic youth group on a pilgrimage, and at first I didn't understand why I was being separated from my group. They asked what my dad had been doing in the Middle East, where exactly we'd lived, where I went to school, and so on. Then it came: "Did you have Arab friends?" I said yes. The next question: "Why?"

      They honestly seemed to believe that was a reasonable question to ask somebody. My mind boggled as I considered alternative ways of phrasing that. Do you have black friends? Why? Do you have gay friends? Why? It was the first indication I had that something funny was going on around here.

      And I am stunned by the mental gymnastics that people will go through to justify the routine humiliation that goes in that airport. She wrote an essay critical of Israeli policy? Presumably all the Israelis who have written similarly critical pieces will have to be imprisoned or deported, if writing these things is such a dreadful threat that it can only be resolved by keeping the writers out. And presumably the French authorities have now got perfect justification to detain me for fourteen hours and refuse me entry to France, because I once wrote a critical essay about the French government and the Rwandan genocide.

  • It’s not normal and you don’t get it
    • Vicky April 17, 2012 at 10:30 am

      "And I got so frustrated when they didn’t understand something. When they didn’t understand what was East or West Jerusalem. Where the Wall was or how its path twisted and turned and stopped and started. Or why this could happen out in the open, surely there must be something else I wasn’t explaining."

      I had a similar experience when my parents visited. On their third morning we went to Jerusalem, and as we were settling down for lunch near Salah Ed-Din Street, my dad said confusedly, "So - we're in the Palestinian-controlled bit now, are we?" At first I got snappish and impatient trying to make them understand the way in which East Jerusalem has been annexed, the permanent residency status of its inhabitants, the existence of such a large number of Palestinian citizens of Israel, but eventually my impatience gave way to shock at just how many things I have come to accept as normal. In Hebron my dad mistook a border police soldier for a Palestinian policeman, because his flak jacket had the word 'POLICE' printed on it. I had to explain that Palestinians are under martial law, imposed by the Israeli authorities, and that it is the Israeli army that mans these checkpoints. He hadn't realised. He knew that there was an occupation, but he had a very vague conception of it - land being taken, settlements being built - and he hadn't been able to envisage how it looks on the ground. My parents' stunned reaction to what they saw made me remember how I felt the first time I came and saw it, before the sense of normality set it. It's good to recapture that sometimes.

      I wrote about their visit here: link to bethlehemblogger.wordpress.com

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