A Public Service Announcement: The Potential Dangers of the Word "Habibi"

Well, I'm depressed about the prospect of Mordechai Vanunu going back to jail. But never fear, I've been saving this video for such an occasion. I feel that sharing it is vital for the public interest:

Habibi is that wonderful word that is used approximately one million times in any given pop song. It means beloved and it was the second word in Arabic I ever learned (the first was "yalla.") But habibi has the potential for dangerous miss use. Watch and learn.

World Bank: 50% of West Bank Restricted

The World Bank has just come out with a report on movement restrictions in the West Bank. According to this report, access to more than 50% of the land in the West Bank is restricted for Palestinians. Check out the report, but take a look at some "highlights."

• Since Israel signed an agreement on improving movement and access for Palestinians in November 2005, restrictions have instead become tighter. Since the agreement, the number of physical obstacles in the West Bank increased by 44 percent, to 547.
• Israel's separation barrier slices off 8.5 percent of the West Bank. That area, declared "closed" by Israel and falling under a strict permit regime, is home to some 50,000 Palestinians in 38 villages and towns.
• Physical and administrative obstacles have divided the West Bank into 10 enclaves, and Palestinians have to move through checkpoints to get from one to the other.
• Israel's permit system can be used to control the movement of Palestinian residents outside their immediate municipal area and to restrict access to more than 50 percent of the West Bank. In compiling that figure, the bank considered the West Bank and east Jerusalem as a single unit, in line with the international community's refusal to accept Israel's annexation of the eastern sector of the city.

[Highlights taken from International Herald Tribune article]

At-Tuwani Blog "You're a Palestinian -- you need to go a hundred times."
From: http://heidischramm.livejournal.com
CPTnet

22nd March 2002

This evening we got a call that there was a checkpoint on the road. The mayor of Tuwani (who has been living in Yatta since his home was demolished in 2004) and his son were not being allowed to cross. The son is a twenty-three-year-old man with special needs and no ID. They have been trying to get an ID for him since he turned eighteen and are always denied. The father returned to Yatta to get his son's birth certificate but since he was born before the IDF started keeping their records electronically, the paper is now invalid. This means that birth certificates for all Palestinians over the age of about fifteen are worthless, which I'm still having a hard time comprehending. So they arrested him.

He went in the army jeep and Ilse and Marco followed with the father in his car. The Israeli police station for this area is inside the Kiryat Arba settlement, so Palestinians are not allowed in unless they are taken there by the police or army. (Another mind bender for me. Palestinians can't visit family being detained or pick them up from the station when they are released. They are released into the middle of a very hostile settlement and made to find their own way out.) Marco stayed with the father at the gate to the settlement and Ilse took a cab to the station. The police looked at the birth certificate and immediately said it was fine and he could go. (How much was due to the presence of an international, I do not know.)

Back at the gate, the soldier told the father he needed to take his son to get an ID. The father said they had been fifty times but were always rejected. The soldier said, "Fifty times? You're a Palestinian -- you need to go a hundred times." Which is just about the best summation of the occupation I have ever heard. Things that are a given for anyone else in the world take one hundred tries for Palestinians.

This photo of a jaunty 52 year old man and a star-struck young lady was a crime. The young woman you see is me and I am standing with Mordechai Vanunu. Mordechai is the Israel Daniel Ellesburg, a brave man who was imprisoned 18 years for exposing Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. Of those 18 years, Mordechai spent 11 in solitary confinement. “I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons which threatens this whole region. I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity,” says Mordechai. On April 30th, Vanunu was convicted violating a military order forbidding him from speaking to foreign journalists. Now this man, who has already suffered so much on behalf of nuclear disarmament, is facing more jail time.

I became interested in Mordechai’s continuing plight when I met with him at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerualem and he committed the crime of speaking to me. I found his story engrossing. For most of my life, Mordechai has been held captive for a disclosing a grave danger to my life and the lives of all of us on this planet. In 1986, when I was just two years old, Mordechai told Britain's Sunday Times that Israel assembled hydrogen and neutron bombs at the Dimona reactor and was annually producing 40 kilograms of plutonium, enough to make 10 atom bombs. He was soon abducted and imprisoned.

Just before I turned 20, Mordechai was released, but not freed. As soon as Mordechai stepped out of prison, he was slapped with a military order controlling his movements within Israel, preventing him from leaving the country and barring him from contacting foreigners. Israeli authorities insist that after 18 years, Mordechai still knows military secrets.

But Mordechai is easily the most stubborn person I know. When the Israeli military forbade him from speaking with foreigners, Mordechai decided to speak only to foreign journalists. Mordechai has become a master of non-cooperation, techniques that he says helped to keep him sane during his long years of solitary confinement. But Mordechai has paid the price of conscience and more. As he tells anyone who will listen, “All that I want is to be free, to leave [Israel].”

I am now 23 years old and Mordechai’s stubbornness has caught up him. On April 30th, he was convicted on 14 counts of speaking with foreign journalists, telling them, it seems, exactly what he told newspapers in 1986. Sentencing will take place May 18th. His lawyer has pointed out that, “this verdict convicts a person for being in contact with other people - regardless of the content of their conversation.” Amnesty International has said that if Mordechai is jailed, they will regard him as a prisoner of conscience.

Mordechai has more than served his time. How much more of my life will Mordechai spend behind bars for the crime of telling the truth?

At-Tuwani: "Palestinians are grazing in places they haven't set foot in years" (CPTnet)

The following blog entries by CPTer Heidi Schramm have been edited for length. To see her original entries and accompanying photos go to http://heidischramm.livejournal.com


4th March 2007
I've been thinking a lot about what it is that I am doing here, and I worry that this work is creating a sort of stalemate. The settlers are lying low, but they are still here. There is no pressing need for Israel to evacuate the outpost, let alone the major settlements in the area, as long as things are reasonably quiet. Unfortunately, there is no public outcry when children (and internationals) aren't being attacked. Without that pressing need, the government and military can continue to put off making decisions indefinitely. And while they do that, the settlers become more established. Look at the settlement block east of Jerusalem; it is not just right-wing Zionists who are now saying these settlements "are Israel" and must be on the Israeli side of any future border. It is the predominant opinion. It only got to be that way because the government intentionally neglected to take a stand, for or against, the settlement movement, allowing the radical factions to create the facts that are assumed today. And this is now happening within the occupation as a whole. It has become accepted that this is how it is and how it must be. And for all the speaking out I do against this occupation, I can't help but feel like I'm playing too big of a role in its continuation. Scanning through past entries, I see that I consider days when the settlers stay in the outpost to be "good" ones. But these people shouldn't be here at all, and I cannot allow myself to lose sight of that. They live on land owned by a man from Tuba; not in Israel.


7th March 2007
We went out near the Avigail outpost today because settlers were grazing their horses in a Palestinian wheat field. They did an incredible amount of damage in the few hours they were there. We are approaching harvest time here, and the wheat has finally begun to grow, so there is no chance that it can recover from the damage before it is time to pick. The landowner called the police and was told he had to come in to the station near Hebron to file a complaint. So he and a few family members went. After being made to wait for a few hours they were told to come back with evidence. Naturally, this is where we come in. It was late by the time we got back, so we uploaded the video, made some DVDs and they will return to the station tomorrow.

Our days have been full but relatively calm. I spend most of my time honing my shepherding skills and have even, on occasion, been charged with the task of retrieving sheep that wander away from the flock. The settlers have been out but not pushing much. The truth is, they have access to less land today than ever before. The Palestinians are grazing in places they haven't set foot in years. And the police and soldiers are allowing it.

Profiles of Peace: A New Resource from American Friends Service Committee

You know, 40 is a good number. And that's how many Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers American Friends Service Committee will be featuring on there website, each week from now until June 8th. It's a wonderful way to spread some hope and help to show people that there are plenty of Palestinians and Israelis who are dedicated to finding a just end to this terrible violence.

The first person who is being profiled is someone who is dear to my heart. Ghassan Andoni is the "Palestinian co-founder of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and the International Solidarity Movement. He has been a proponent of nonviolent resistance for decades." He is also an inspiring man and someone with tremendous wisdom, especially about the role that international solidarity can play in ending the occupation. He writes "Conflicts are fueled by the tendency of the powerful to exploit the power and the anger and frustration of the powerless, which turns into violence. International Solidarity Movement activists are attempting to confront the exploitation of power and to bring back hope to the powerless...."

Check out the rest of AFSC's Profiles of Peace as they go up!

PS: 40 can also be a pretty terrible number. 40 is the number of years that Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The 40th anniversary of the occupation is coming up this June. I hope that we can find 40 thousand Americans who are ready to say it's time for something different.

Occupied Voices: Sami Awad - "Never Give Up"

I've been meaning to write about this topic for a while, but the truth is that I've found this to be a surprisingly emotional topic and I haven't wanted to face it.

Last week I received an email from my friend Sami Awad, director of the Holy Land Trust with the subject "From Palestine to Virginia Tech: We a you with you in this Time of Pain." Sami explains that they had dedicated there weekly demonstration to the victims of Virginia Tech:

Once we reached the path created by the by the bulldozers for the building of the Apartheid Wall we dug the earth and plated the thirty two olive trees in a row...Over 150 Israeli soldiers came to dismantle our protest. Our commitment to nonviolence and to achieve our goal completely paralyzed their weapons and their goals and eventually our power made them withdrawal. The planting of the trees was followed by reciting the names of all those who were killed in the Virginian massacre followed by a fifteen minute period of silence before the group moved back to the villages.

I think that this is the aspect of Palestine that I will never really get used to. Time and time again, my Palestinian friends express an incredible sympathy for the pain and grief of my community. When the four CPTers were kidnapped in Iraq, our Palestinian friends organized huge protests on their behalf. I could understand that - CPT has worked hard to end the occupation of Palestine. But I'm blown away by the incredible compassion my friends have for people who they don't know, who probably don't care about their pain. There's some much that I need to learn from Palestine.

Sami is always blogging about the dynamic nonviolent movement that continues in Palestine. Check out what he has to say - I believe that it the most important news coming from the West Bank. http://samiawad.wordpress.com/

Occupied Voices: Voices from Palestine - Palestinian Children Write

I woke up as usual this day, went to school but first I got to Qalandia’s checkpoint the first part of my long journey to school. Passing it has become a normal thing for me. Most of the people might think it’s easy, but no one really knows what I go through everyday just to educate myself to the best of my ability at school.

More and more Palestinian children are sharing their stories through blogging and "Voices from Palestine" is particularly charming, terrifying, and sad. Children contribute their thoughts and photographs and incredibly well spoken. Check it out! http://voicesfrompalestine.org/

The Palestine Fair Trade Association Featured on PBS Foreign Exchange!

Fair trade olive oil from Palestine, Canaan Fair Trade and the Palestine Fair Trade Association will be featured in a segment that will air on PBS Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria the weekend of April 20 - 22. Check the website for local listings and after the weekend for streaming video.
http://www.foreignexchange.tv/

PS: No Sweat is now featuring shirts made in Bethlehem. Yay!

Death and Taxes

It's tax day and what could be more fun than a look at some of the places that America's tax dollars are going!

Percentage of US discretionary budget spent on education and other social services: 8%

Percentage of US discretionary budget spent for military: 53% - 57% (depending on how you calculate it)

US Military Budget as a percent of World total military expenditures: 49%

Number of Americans classified as “food insecure” in 2004: 38 million

Number of Americans without health insurance: 45 million

Total direct aid to Israel 1948-2006: $255 billion

Total Cost of US Support for Israel: $1.688 trillion

Federal aid for each resident in Louisiana in 2002: $1,500

Direct U.S. aid for each Israeli citizen in 2003: $581

Direct U.S. aid for each Ethiopian citizen in 2004: $2.50

Percentage of U.S. foreign aid that goes to Israel: 27%

Population of Israel as percentage of total world population: 0.1%

Number of Palestinian minors killed by Israeli security forces (2000-2007): 814

Total number of Palestinians injured or killed (September 2000-April 2007): 31,296

Number of bullets fired by Israeli security forces in the first week of the second Intifada: 1,300,000

Number of unexploded Israeli bombs strewn across South Lebanon after the 2006 war: 1,000,000 or 1.4 per resident

Slightly modified from the 1040 ez tax form available at
http://www.archive.org/details/1040WAR

This came to me via Mazin Qumsiyeh, but I think it's been floating out in the world wide web for a while...Chart from the War Resister's League.

A Photo-Tour of the Bethlehem Checkpoint

Two years ago, if you wanted to go to Bethlehem, you would pass through this checkpoint. Vehicles could travel through, along with tourists.


Today, the gap in the wall and a soldier with a gun has been replaced with a terminal, complete with metal detectors, x-rays, and video monitors.


Most vehicles are barred entry, squelching all hopes of economic development. Coming into Bethlehem, you hop off the bus and see this sign.


Next, you enter the first of several turnstiles and show your ID to the soldier sitting behind plate glass.


A turnstile later, you cross the past the sign saying "Peace Be with You"


through another turnstile, and out into the city of Bethlehem.

But this route - traveling from Jerusalem to Bethlehem - is comparatively easy. Going from Bethlehem to Jerusalem is more guerling. This is the enterance to the Bethlehem checkpoint from Bethlehem city at 6:20 in the morning. Hundreds and hundreds of people line the wall, waiting for hours to show their ID cards at least twice so that they can go to work in Jerusalem.


These Palestinians are lucky. They hold a coveted Israeli-issued permit to travel to Jerusalem, a permit available to less than one half of one percent of Bethlehemites. But holding a permit isn't neccessarily enough. Palestinians can be turned back by Israeli soldiers at any time. Palestinians first pass through a door and show their ID to the first Israeli soldier. Then they must stand in line instead a structure resebleming a cattle chute

until they get to another turnstile. A disembodied voice yells through loudspeakers at people as they wait for the lights above an automated turnstile to flash red to green. Israeli soldiers control these serral system, giving orders (often unintelligibly) through the loudspeakers, watching waiting Palestinians through video cameras, and pushing buttons. It's chrystal clear who is in control and even priveledged forgieners, like myself, feel frustrated and dehumanized.

Next, Palestinians have to place their belongings on conveyor belt of that a soldier sitting in a glass both can x-ray them. Then it's time for another turn stile and another line. Finally, a soldier checks IDs and permits again and, hopefully, the ordeal has ended.

Inside the terminal there are special rooms for interrogations and searches where no one can see what is happening. Separation, humiliation, and dehumanization seem to be designed into the very architecture of this terminal. I can't tell you of many times that I've stood inside this checkpoint- trying to understand what the soldiers were saying, trying to lug a bag through a narrow door, or just trying to figure out which way to go - and knew that if this were my life, if I were subjected to the same rudeness and restrictions that Palestinians experience, I wouldn't be able to stand it.

There's no way to describe that feeling.

(most of the photos are credit to my friend Jill, photographer par excellence. I took only the first. The "peace be with you" photo was taken by the lovely and talented Frank.)

At-Tuwani: Israeli military targets shepherds, seven-year-old boy in South Hebron Hills
CPTnet
16 April 2007

This week, Israeli soldiers abducted several shepherds, including a 7-year-old boy, who were grazing their sheep near Israeli settlements in the Southern Hebron District. In none of the cases did they send them to the Israeli civilian police for the required legal processing.

On Sunday, 14 April, Israeli soldiers detained seven-year-old Maher Ahmed Moussa Ibnes and his cousin, sixteen year old Nadal Samir Moussa Ibnes in Imneizel. At approximately 9:00 a.m., Maher Ahmed Moussa Ibnes was grazing sheep on Palestinian land near the Israeli settlement of Beit Yatir when a stone he threw to move the sheep in the desired direction hit the settlement fence.

At approximately 9:00 a.m., Israeli soldiers arrived at the boy's home. They informed the family that they had surveillance video of the boy throwing a stone at the settlement and insisted on taking him into custody. They allowed his cousin, Nadal Samir, to accompany him in the military jeep, which took both boys to the checkpoint at Beit Yatir. The boys' families and members of the community of Imneizel followed on foot to the checkpoint. IDF soldiers informed the family that they would release seven-year-old Maher Ahmed, but would arrest his cousin, Nadal Samir, who was not present at the alleged incident, and did not appear on the surveillance tape.

The soldiers then blindfolded Nadal Samir and transported him to the military base at the settlement of Susiya, which has no police station. They released him about two and a half hours later in response to calls from a representative of the Red Cross.

On 15 April, Israeli soldiers took shepherds Yusef Ibrahim Abed Mur of Imneizel, and Muhammed Jihad Halil Abu Aram, of Qawawis as they were grazing on Palestinian land. The arrests occurred after Yacov Dalia, a settler from the area, invited soldiers onto the land and argued that the State of Israel owned it.

Soldiers arrested Ibrahim at approximately 11:00 a.m. and Jihad at 3:30 p.m. The soldiers took the shepherds without warning, and without allowing them time to secure their flocks. Ibrahim was grazing his sheep by himself, and a shepherd from the Palestinian village of Jinba collected his sheep for him. Soldiers released the detainees at 7:00 Sunday night from the military base at Susiya, forcing them to walk home past the settlement in the dark.

Last month on 18 March, soldiers detained five shepherds near Beit Yatir. Soldiers took the shepherds, Jihad Ibrahim Mor, Mohamed Halil Suliman Rashid, Ahmed Mohamed Halil Rashid, Ezhaq Ahmed Ali Hrezat and Samir Ahmed Mohamed Hrezat, to the army base at Susiya and released them without any legal processing in the early evening.

Slingshot Hip Hop TRAILER

What can I say? My love for Palestinian hip-hop is simply unending. This video comes to you courtesy of the Slingshot collective.

Thanks to http://antiorientalist.blogspot.com/

Welcome to Absurdistan


A West Bank woman has developed special socks to help Palestinians suffering from swollen feet as they wait at Israeli military checkpoints...The socks are made from nylon and gel that molds around wearers' feet to prevent discomfort, even if they stand for hours, as they sometimes have to...Ms Latif says the socks are "like sleeping on a waterbed, which is far more comfortable than a regular mattress.

- "Palestinians Invent Queing Socks," 3/19/2007, BBC

Jean Zaru is the matriarch of the Ramallah Friends (Quaker) Meeting and one of my favorite people. She has a gift for both honesty and love- a rare combination. I'm told that she has been know to quip that occupied Palestine should be called "Absurdistan." I couldn't agree with her more.

When we think of war, we think of dead children, bombed out buildings, a pulverized infrastructure. Those who live in safe, wealthy, well-guarded lands are often drawn into a strange sort of algebra, a calculus of how many people must die before the situation is really "bad," before we'll bother to care. 926 Palestinian children killed since 2000? 118 Israeli children? Oh, that's nothing. That's hardly a war. It's hardly worth caring about.

I could pontificate about this sad lack of compassion that privileged people, like me, fall into, but that's not my point. Palestine has no lack of dead children, demolished houses, or destroyed infrastructure. But what privileged people are most unable to see is the systematic injustice, the death-by-unfair-bureaucracy, the economic strangulation, and the utter absurdity that comprises so much of Palestinian daily life. Perhaps we are blind to this aspect of Palestinian oppression because it too closely resembles the systems of oppression and exploitation that our own privilege rests upon. But for whatever reason, we are able to see (and dismiss) the death, the destruction, and the grand tragic elements of the occupation, but we are utterly blind to the pain of daily life. We can't see Absurdistan.

Absurdistan is the land of gel-filled socks to ease the discomfort of standing at checkpoints for hours. It's a country where 14 year-old-boys are beaten and jailed for throwing rocks at well-armed men and women. Its citizens are 6 year olds who are denied permission to visit the zoo, only 5 miles away. Its cities are cut in half by a concrete wall, separating Absurdistanis from fellow Absurdistanis. The homes of Absurdistanis who fail to obtain impossible-to-obtain permits are demolished, but the practice of demolishing the homes of alleged terrorists has ended because it's been shown to increase terrorism; naturally, demolishing the homes of law abiding Absurdistanis will have no consequences.

Absurdistan is an unending and always changing maze. Roads close, checkpoints move, and walls appear suddenly. On a hot summer day, my friend Allyn and I drove around the back roads of Ah Ram, trying simply to find the entrance of the checkpoint so that we could flash our passports and re-turn to Jerusalem. The "security" wall had been built and then re-routed since Allyn had last been in Ah Ram and the streets had been transformed into a maze we couldn't see our way out of.

'This is what drives people over the edge,' said Allyn.

30 minutes later, still driving around Ah Ram, I believed him.

Welcome to Absurdistan.