New York

Ali La Pointe and Zena's words on the New York streets



I was invited to teach at an art workshop, so yesterday I went. I gave a lecture in the morning and then in the afternoon I was asked to give the students an assignment that they could do in two hours. I decided to print emails from my inbox from the last two weeks. I also printed out the article about the Americans rushing bombs to Israel and spoke about the absurdity of the question Americans ask about wether to get involved or not when they are 100 percent involved! I gave each student a different email, and a copy of the article, and told them to go out into the streets and do something in the public sphere based on their interaction, (or reaction) or whatever with the emails. 

How Do we Sleep While Beirut is Burning?



“The paramount mood of Beirut in late-June 2006 was the hustle bustle of a thriving cosmopolis. Ours was a privileged perspective — two foreigners familiar with the pulse of the neighborhood, embraced and welcomed by a constellation of friends and acquaintances, comrades and colleagues… Beirut was thriving. Lebanon could have been a model of productive ideological conflicts, of civil discourse, progressive politics, foreign investments, domestic contestations, intellectual diversity, moral variations. Beirut was civil, civilizing, cosmopolitan.” In part one of a two-part series, Professor Hamid Dabashi reflects on the beauty of a country reduced to rubble by the Israelis and into two dimensions by the news media. 

Israel's latest attack on the poor



Residents of our village are leaving for fear of running out of food; water is scarce and there are only four small grocery stores for a population of about 15,000 people. This is common throughout the South, as most depend on the cities for commerce (cities they are now cut off from). My grandmother and aunt have left the safety of our family’s bomb shelter to stay in a village on the coast. What appalling choices they have been given — seeking refuge in a building with no bomb shelter, in closer proximity to Israeli war ships, or remaining in a village where food is running out. The death toll in Lebanon is now 150 civilians, with the number of injured rising to 350. 

U.N. Jenin Report 'Flawed'

The U.N. report on events in Jenin is seriously flawed, Human Rights Watch said today. The report, mandated by a U.N. General Assembly resolution after Israeli objections forced the Secretary-General to disband a U.N. fact-finding team, largely limits itself to presenting competing accounts of the events during the Israeli military operations. 

Israeli journalists come under fire

On August 11, Gideon Levy, of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, his photographer, Miki Kratsman, their driver, and a representative from an international human rights organization were traveling by taxi in Tulkarem. As they approached the IDF’s District Coordination Office (DCO) at about 15 kph, they came under fire from a soldier at a lookout post about 150 meters away. 

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