Jerusalem is only an hour and a half drive away from where I live in Gaza City. I grew up contemplating the moment I would see Jerusalem, but that day wouldn’t come until I graduated from the American University in Cairo and was promised by my parents that they might be able to make the necessary arrangements (an Israeli-issued permit) for me to visit the holy city. Yasmeen El Khoudary writes from the occupied Gaza Strip. Read more about A day in Jerusalem
LUBBANAL-SHARQIYA, occupied West Bank (IPS) - “There is immense anger as well as a feeling of vulnerability and fear when a place of sanctuary and holiness is subject to indiscriminate violence,” says Issa Hussein. “Despite living under a brutal military occupation and being subjected to regular attacks by Israeli settlers for decades, normally places of worship were spared.” Read more about Israeli settlers attack Palestinian mosques
On Sunday, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood will accept the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University and her portion of the $1 million payout that goes with it. Meanwhile, a mere 40 miles away, students in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip will still be struggling to find the ways and means to continue their educations. Kristin Szremski reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Defying appeal from Gaza students, Atwood set to accept Israeli prize
RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Several Palestinians have set up a protest tent in no-man’s land in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Erez border crossing into Israel, as they protest their deportation from the Israeli occupied West Bank into Gaza where Hamas authorities have refused them entry. Read more about New Israeli order allows for mass expulsion from West Bank
“There was a single shot without any warning, and a young man was carried away,” Adie Mormech explained. Mormech, currently in Gaza, is a British activist with the International Solidarity Movement. He was an eyewitness at the 28 April demonstration at Nahal Oz, east of Gaza City, when Ahmed Deeb was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier. Eva Bartlett reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about The pretext of "security" along Gaza's buffer zone
Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed. Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the lid on Israel’s secret surveillance of the country’s Islamic leaders. Jonathan Cook reports from Jaffa. Read more about Israel's secret police surveilling Islamic leaders
Three weeks after saying goodbye to Palestine, with the pictures and faces of all those I met at Aida still fresh in my mind, I received a much-needed wake-up call that profoundly changed my life in ways I never could have imagined or expected. Dina Elmuti writes for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about I refuse to be complicit
As the sun set on a clear evening in Gaza City, Suleiman Baraka was setting up his telescope on the rooftop of the French Cultural Center as two dozen visitors waited anxiously to gaze into the stars. It was a rare occasion to break away — at least momentarily — from the siege on the ground in the Gaza Strip. Rami Almeghari reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Bereaved Gaza astronomer opens up the heavens
On 28 April, University of California, Berkeley’s Student Senate narrowly missed an historic opportunity to divest its funds from United Technologies and General Electric which manufacture F-16 jets and Apache helicopters — weapons sold to the Israeli military and used against civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Dina Omar reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about At Berkeley, moral victory despite divestment vote loss
A student group at Columbia called Campus Media Watch, backed by the pro-Israeli media monitor the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), recently violated university regulations while urging students to “report” on allegedly biased utterances by Massad and other professors, according to faculty members and students. Jared Malsin reports for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Pro-Israel group monitoring, intimidating Columbia faculty
