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My friend James

Cassian Harrison 6 May 2003

“Late on Friday night, I received a phone call: Reuters was reporting that a man had been shot dead in Rafah, on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. That the man was a cameraman and director called James Miller. The sense of shock and fury with which I put the phone down has still not faded: James was a man with whom I spent some of the most extraordinary times of my life, a man of talent, intelligence and integrity. A man I was plotting to go down the pub with in a few weeks’ time.” Cassian Harrison remembers her friend James in the pages of The Guardian — and joins a growing call for a complete investigation into his murder by the IDF. 

Israel: incommunicado detention and ill-treatment of Palestinian student

World Organisation Against Torture and Public Committee Against Torture in Israel 2 May 2003

Iman Shukri Abdl Rahman Jamjum, a student from Hebron, was held in isolation for twenty-two days, without access to legal counsel. Mr. Jamjum was arrested on April 4th, 2003, and has reportedly been held in the GSS Interrogation Unit at the Shikma Detention Center in Ashkelon. 

Documentary review: "Jeremy Hardy vs. the Israeli Army"

Maureen Clare Murphy 27 May 2003


Although the film Jeremy Hardy vs. the Israeli Army was “on one hand [intended for] a British audience,” as explained by director Leila Sansour, it also aimed to communicate to the rest of the world that Palestine isn’t just a land of “sad faces and dead bodies.” Sansour wanted to show a universal audience “that it’s a hospitable place” like the Palestine that lives in her memory. Maureen Clare Murphy writes about Sansour’s documentary about the ISM. 

Settler violence and harassment in Sheikh Jarrah

Annabel Frey East Jerusalem 5 May 2003

“They do it in the middle of the night. On dark nights. Quietly, stealthily. In large groups. Well organized militias - armed and all. A crowd of about 50 religious settlers. Came in the night to two houses in Israeli-annexed, Arab East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah, over the Green Line. They threw a child out of the broken window they’d entered by. A two-year-old flying baby, falling from the 2nd storey window, five meters high, ending up in hospital traumatised. They hit a man so badly he was driven away unconscious in an ambulance; I saw him go.” Annabel Frey reports on settler harassment in Jerusalem. 

"We are not just numbers": Commemorating the war victims of Iraq and Palestine

Rosemary Sayigh 7 May 2003


The commemoration programme was built on the traditional Arab format of the condolence visit (ta’aziya). All participants were invited to wear mourning clothes, and behind the whole area hung an obituary notice, an eighteen-foot-long banner inscribed with words: ‘The sisters of the children of Baghdad and their families, and the paternal uncles of the families of Mosul, Al-Nasirya, Jenin, Rafah, and Nablus, and their kin living in the Arab world and abroad, mourn with deepest sorrow their dearly beloved deceased: The victims of American and Israeli aggression, cut down in their childhood, and their youth, and their prime, members of humanity’.” Rosemary Sayigh reports from Beirut on a symbolically charged protest action. 

A Middle East Road Map to where?

2 May 2003

Scepticism about the Middle East Roadmap is warranted: in its current form, it is unlikely to lead to its stated destination – a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 2005. But it could still be a catalyst for change. The International Crisis Group published a report making specific recommendations to the Quartet, U.S., Israelis and Palestinians about how to maximise the effectiveness of the new approach. 

A Roadmap of Spin

1 May 2003

A messaging missive attributed to the Republican Party’s favorite pollster and spin-doctor explains how the war in Iraq can be turned to Israel’s favor. MotherJones about EI’s publication of a document prepared for pro-Israel activists by the public relations firm The Luntz Research Companies and The Israel Project.