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Suffocation in isolated Bethlehem

Nora Barrows-Friedman Bethlehem, Palestine 14 January 2006


Today is my mother’s birthday. She called my cellphone as my dear friend Areej and I were walking in the late afternoon shadow of the brand-new Apartheid Wall and “terminal” seperating Bethlehem from the rest of the goddamn world. To prove that i was there, i held the phone up to the wall and slapped it as hard as i could. The “terminal,” as it is being called, is a cattle-catch maze of turnstyles and x-ray machines, all enclosed in an enormous building of wire and steel and sniper weapons with crosshairs tuned like a fiddle. This is on the “Jerusalem” side of the wall, which one is able to access only after papers are shuffled, cars are inspected, and people are humiliated and intimidated, or perhaps beaten and arrested and tortured. 

The Arabs Are Coming! New York Arab American Comedy Festival heads for LA!

13 January 2006


(New York, NY) - Organizers behind the groundbreaking New York Arab American Comedy Festival (NYAACF) announced that they will be taking their critically acclaimed Festival on the road for the first time ever as they travel to Los Angeles for three nights: Tuesday, January 24 - Thursday, January 26, 2006. This LA run follows the overwhelming success of the third annual NYAACF held in New York City from November 13-17, 2005 and which saw over one thousand people attend the five nights of sold out events. 

"Munich": Spielberg's thrilling crisis of conscience

Maureen Clare Murphy 14 January 2006


“What’s going on in that head and that mind?” an American news commentator asks during a montage of media reports on the kidnapping of eleven Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September group. The astonished newsman is questioning the Palestinian hostage takers who end up murdering their eleven captors during Germany’s botched rescue attempt. But Munich’s director Steven Spielberg, for now, is more interested in what’s going on in the mind of the Israeli agent in charge of the state’s response to the Munich killings. However, whether we really get into the minds of the unlikely group of Israeli Mossad agents who are assembled by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to avenge the killings is debatable. It is mostly Spielberg’s moral dilemmas that we access, but not all the questions necessary to resolving his moral dilemma are posed. 

Hebron disengagement and violence begin

International Solidarity Movement and Tel Rumeida Project 13 January 2006


A mob of 30 female settler teenagers rampaged through Tel Rumeida on Thursday, 12 January. Ten of them wore black ski masks to hide their identities, and attacked everyone they encountered, including IDF soldiers and Israeli police officers, with spit, paint bombs and insults, and surrounded a human rights worker, violently stealing the battery of his camera. Six male settlers have begun attempts to illegally occupy an empty Palestinian home located on the path near a Palestinian girls’ school. Settlers entered the home on Tuesday, 10 January, cleaned out two rooms and broke a hole in a wall to access other rooms. 

Dogs - Reconnaissance tool of the Israeli occupation

Adri Nieuwhof and Walid Abdelhadi 12 January 2006


The Israeli military is using dogs as a reconnaissance tool in its actions against Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. The dogs’ actions are controlled remotely through sophisticated technology; commands are issued by way of a radio transmitter. This evokes much fear and deepens the alienation of Palestinians. The way Israel is using dogs is yet another dehumanising step, taking place under the “cover” of war. The dogs follow the orders of their military masters. In no way should the international community permit the Israeli government to escape its responsibility for these barbaric practices in enforcing its brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories. 

Modern Activism: Palo Dutch Concept Factory

Arjan El Fassed 10 January 2006


Let’s face it. So far, Palestinian PR and communications were not entirely successful. Just ask any person in the streets of Amsterdam, London or New York what he or she knows and thinks of Palestinians and Palestine. Palestinians who have never travelled outside Palestine will be shocked. On the other hand, almost every visitor to Palestine will start crying after three or four days. Based on these thoughts, The Palo Dutch Concept Factory is looking for creative talents. The Palo Dutch Concept Factory, boarded by some very good and well known Dutch PR professional, is founded by Dutch columnist Justus van Oel. In February 2005 he visited Palestine. He has been deeply moved by what he saw and became motivated to contribute to advocate for Palestine. 

To Palestinians, Sharon was a man of war, not peace

Maureen Clare Murphy Palestine, Ramallah 8 January 2006

The streets of Ramallah had a festive atmosphere last weekend as people bustled about the main commercial drag buying goods for this week’s four-day holiday Eid al-Adha. Campaign banners fluttered in the main square, and music blasted from political parties’ offices as official campaigning had just begun for the much-anticipated legislative elections to be held at the end of the month. However, conversation hushed in one corner shop in Ramallah’s old city when there was a televised update from Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, where Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been lying in a medically induced coma that will most likely be the end of his political career, should he survive. 

"This is our land, we are not going to move"

Adri Nieuwhof and Bangani Ngeleza 8 January 2006


More and more, comparisons are being made between the living conditions of Palestinian Bedouins and those in the townships and informal settlements of apartheid South Africa. Human rights advocates Adri Nieuwhof and Bangani Ngeleza visited unrecognised villages in the Nakab (Negev). They travelled from Haifa in the North to the villages in the South of Israel. Near Tulkarem they noted how the Wall looked quite friendly from the Israeli side. There is a slope of earth planted with shrubs and flowers from the roadside up to the Wall. It covers the ugly high concrete Wall from the eyes of travellers on the Israeli highway. 

The whitewashing of Ariel Sharon

Saree Makdisi 8 January 2006


AS ARIEL SHARON’S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as “a man of courage and peace” who had generated “hopes for a far-reaching accord” with an electoral campaign promising “to end conflict with the Palestinians.” But even if end-of-career assessments often stretch the truth, and even if far too many people fall for the old saw about the gruff old warrior miraculously turning into a man of peace, the reality is that miracles don’t happen, and only rarely have words and realities been separated by such a yawning abyss. 

Weekly report on human rights violations

4 January 2006


This week, Israeli forces killed five Palestinians. Two of the victims were assassinated. Israeli forces wounded 29 Palestinians, including 19 children. Israeli forces conducted 25 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Palestinian homes were raided and 30 Palestinians, including 9 children and a girl were arrested by Israeli armed forces. Israeli forces turned seven Palestinian homes into military outposts. Israeli forces shelled a civilian facility in Khan Yunis. Israeli forces continued to impose a total siege on the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel continues to construct the Separation Barrier in the West Bank and razed Palestinian land near settlements and uprooted 400 olive trees.