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An uncertain Ramadan in Beirut

Mayssoun Sukarieh Beirut 21 October 2006


“I told my wife, you just buy clothes for our son. I do not need any new clothes for myself and if you postpone getting a new outfit for yourself too, it will be good. Who knows what will happen in the next few months. Whatever we have saved, we spent during this summer, and now we need to save so we can eat during the next war.” This is what the taxi driver tells me in response to my remarks that Beirut does not feel as it did during previous Ramadan seasons. He was trying to explain to me why there is no movement in the city, why the city is dead despite the holiday season. 

Twenty-eight Palestinians killed this week in OPT

21 October 2006


This week, 28 Palestinians, 17 of whom, including two children and a woman, are civilians, were killed by IOF. Each of the two children was killed together with the father of each. Six of the victims were extra-judicially executed by IOF in three separate attacks. Forty-five Palestinians, including 14 children, IOF have continued to launch air strikes on houses and civilian facilities in the Gaza Strip; five houses were destroyed and a number of others were severely damaged. IOF conducted 30 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and six others into the Gaza Strip. IOF arrested 48 Palestinian civilians, including seven children, in the West Bank, and eight others in the Gaza Strip. 

Death waits for no one in Balata refugee camp

Mohamed Farraj Balata refugee camp 21 October 2006


Skipper, the son of an electrician, grew up with his three brothers on the outskirts of the camp. Though his given name was Osama, most people in the camp called him “Skipper” and his close friends called him “Disco Skipper.” “Skipper” was a nickname given to him in school, and “Disco” came from his love for dancing. Skipper would be the first one dancing at all the wedding parties in the camp. Like many of his peers, in tenth grade Skipper left school to work for his father. However, he couldn’t stand working while the situation around him was worsening and his friends were being killed or arrested. His friend Ramzy says that Skipper would hang out with young men who were “wanted” by the Israeli army. Skipper was considered guilty by association and he too became “wanted.” 

"Nafas Beirut": A platform for artists bearing witness

19 October 2006


Espace SD and xanadu* present Nafas Beirut, a multimedia venue for artists bearing witness. The aim is to create a platform for artists, poets, writers and filmmakers to share their work produced during or in reaction to the Israeli siege of Lebanon of Summer 2006. Believing it crucial to highlight these works, Nafas Beirut documents the emotions and experiences, and brings artists and viewers together, historicizing the moment. Nafas Beirut is a platform for these immediate responses through a multimedia exhibition and a month long series of events including, video screenings curated by various organizations and collectives, concerts, an open mike poetry jam, and a lecture on the oil spill. 

Your Thoughts: Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East

19 October 2006


BNN’s Your Thoughts is brought to you by the BNN Under Department of Tahta Maintenance, the department that exists to recycle graphics in a low maintenance kind of way, in order that we have to struggle less on our budget to come up with original content. Partially original content is what cable news is all about, so we’re definitely making big strides on the road to media professionalism here in our corner of the truth-telling universe, or as Stephen Colbert might have put it — if he’d thought of it first — the “Truthiverse”. 

Most blue helmets now in place in southern Lebanon, says UN force chief

19 October 2006


Considerable progress has been achieved in southern Lebanon since the Security Council resolution ending the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah, and most of the expected force of blue helmets to monitor the cessation of hostilities has now been deployed, the senior United Nations commander in Lebanon said today. Briefing reporters at UN Headquarters in New York, Maj.-Gen. Alain Pellegrini said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has 7,200 soldiers on the ground, including a contingent of 1,500 Germans that is part of the taskforce designated to protect Lebanon’s maritime boundary. 

Top UN envoy says only dialogue with all parties in the Middle East will bring peace

19 October 2006


Warning that “crisis and opportunity” exist side-by-side every day in the Middle East, the top United Nations envoy for peace in the region told the Security Council today that only simultaneous dialogue with all parties in the conflict will bring a lasting end to the bloodshed. “A serious and systematic search for peace in the region requires dialogue with all the parties in the conflict, pari pasu, to ensure that crises are managed and opportunities explored, and that developments on one track are not undermined by developments on another,” said Alvaro de Soto, the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. 

Palestinians apprehensive about CIA money

Khalid Amayreh 19 October 2006


Palestinian nationalist and Islamic leaders have strongly denounced efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and affiliated foreign aide bodies to recruit Palestinian journalists, politicians and certain political groups to work against the Islamic group Hamas. Western news agencies last Friday reported that the US was quietly starting a campaign projected to cost up to $42 million to bolster Hamas’s political opponents ahead of possible early elections. The plan includes funding the Fatah group, providing training as well as offering “strategic advice” to politicians and some liberal secular parties opposed to Hamas. 

BBC publishes list of "key terms" used in Israel-Palestinian conflict

19 October 2006


The BBC Governors’ independent panel report on the impartiality of BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict recommended that the BBC should make public an abbreviated version of its journalists’ guide to facts and terminology. The following list of terms used in the conflict, their definitions, and notes for their correct usage, reveals a news organization trying to find a balance between accurate reporting and leaning towards the semantics of the Israeli side in the conflict. 

Lebanon's irreplaceable cultural loss

Mulham Assir 19 October 2006


The loss inflicted by the Israeli war on Lebanon is measured in the 1,400 people killed, the thousands maimed (with more continuing to be killed and maimed by the hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs left behind), the hundreds of thousands displaced or left homeless, and the wholesale destruction of infrastructure essential to life. Colonial wars of aggression like the one waged by the US in Iraq or the slow genocide carried out by the Jewish state against the Palestinian people have a more profoundly destructive effect than the most brutal barbarian invasions of old because they aim deeper, into the very soul of the nations under attack.