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    • NPR, Settlements, and Objective American Journalism

    03/19/2010

    OK I need to get this off my chest. So I’m listening to NPR the other day on my way back from Yousuf’s school (note to self: don’t listen to NPR’s coverage of the Middle East, even when there is nothing else on).

    They had a piece on on the “settlement row” in Occupied East Jerusalem, as though this were suddenly some new issue that is threatening to “derail efforts to get back on track” (what track? and where is it headed? the train analogies never cease).

    Their reporter in Jerusalem, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, then proceeds to take us with her on a journey to the settlement colony in question, and describes it as a “tranquil” place on a lovely hilltop, the settlers as simply facing a “housing crunch”. She then goes on to speak to a calm, American-accented settler who says he is oblivious to all that’s going on around him, that it really doesn’t matter, they just want to be able to accommodate the increasing numbers of Orthodox Jews in their “neighborhood”. By contrast, she says, in the West Bank there is “violence” again as “angry” protesters take to the streets hurling stones. We aren’t told why. We don’t get a chance to hear from any of them. The next day, the NPR anchor sums up the developments in one sentence: “more violence in the Middle East”.

    I was seething listening to this piece, more than usual, and immediately Joe Sacco’s words about “objectivity as practiced in American journalism” being unhelpful, non-educational, unfair came to mind. If I was an “average Joe” (what happened to him?) my take-away from this piece would be: Those angry violent Palestinians, always up in arms about something. So violent. Those poor calm settlers who just want to live in peace and expand out of their cramped quarters.

    I would not learn that in fact the settlements are illegal by international law and they they will create an uninterrupted stretch of Jewish-only housing and amenities between the eastern sector of the city and two West Bank settlement blocs.

    I would be given no context as to why the settlements are strategically located on hilltops nor of the assaulted lives of occupied Palestinians ghettoized around them.

    That the Palestinians in East Jerusalem have extreme difficulty obtaining building permits from Israeli authorities; that after a few years of being away from the city-for studying for example abroad, their residency permits are yanked and they are no longer considered city residents; have no rights to live there.

    That up to 25% of housing units in Israeli settlements are actually empty.

    That the unlawful appropriation of Palestinian land for Israeli settlements and “bypass” roads connecting the settlements, and of crucial resources such as water, has had a devastating impact on the local Palestinian population.

    That the settlements are funded by the Israeli government, and by American taxpayers; that colonists who choose to live there are given housing subsidies.

    But what does it matter to NPR? After all, we got a supposedly “objective” report, and that’s the important thing. Hmm.

     

    Radars and Fences Symposium-New York

    03/10/2010

    On my way to New York to be part of a discussion on borders at the third annual Radars and Fences Symposium. More specifically, designer and media activist Mushon Zer Aviv and I will be talking about the You are Not Here meta-tourism project and reinterpretations of the traditional understanding of borders; I will also be speaking about the Gaza tunnel trade.

    Radars and Fences 3 Program
    Event Time
    Friday, March 12, 2010
    9:30 AM – 5:00 PM

    Location
    Institute for Public Knowledge
    20, Cooper Square – 5th Floor
    New York, NY 10003

    Please RSVP at Council for Media and Culture Events’ page

    Description

    A symposium with Ricardo Dominguez & Amy Carroll, Teddy Cruz, Helga Tawil Souri, Laila el Haddad & Mushon Zer-Aviv.

    Radars and Fences 2010 will explore the production of the Israel/Palestine and Mexico/US borders, examining how they engage affects, bodies, and spatial scales. Despite their seemingly confounding specificities, it is our intention to open up a dialogue between these borders in order to enable new terms of practical and political engagement. By bringing this plurality of perspectives into dialogue around the themes of affect and space, we hope to reinvigorate critical analysis of the border in all of its (im)materialities and locations.

    More at the Radars & Fences website

     

    The radical babes of Gaza

    02/26/2010

    I want another baby. I really do. Yassine-not so much.

    But he may not have to worry-at least not if Martin Kramer has his way. The current fellow at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs has suggested I -and other Palestinian women from Gaza- should deliberately be stopped from having babies because chances are, they will be grow up to be radicals.

    According to the Electronic Intifada, who first broke the story last week, Kramer offered this fasinating piece of solicited advice in the annual Herzliyah Conference in Israel earlier this month in which he called on “the West” to take measures to limit the births of Muslim Palestinians of Gaza and consider them a form of terrorism, or, as Kramer puts it, “extreme demographic armament”. He also praised the unconscionable Israeli siege for getting the ball rolling already and reducing the numbers of Palestinian babies there (see: infanticide; Gaza Diet). If your skin didn’t curl watching the audience clap at the end of that video, well, save your soul somehow.

    Family Planning, the Martin Kramer way

    Kramer’s argument: Gaza is a cauldron of crazy; there is already an excess of aimless young Muslim men loitering around and many most all of them will be extremists! Solution: they shouldn’t be born to start with. Like I said: brilliant!

    How does he suggest they implement this ground-breaking plan? Stop providing “pro-natal subsidies” that encourage these births. Pro-natal subsidies, you might ask? Is that like pre-natal vitamins? Close, but spinal bifida or not, a baby is still a baby. Kramer is referring to food and humanitarian assistance for “Palestinians with refugee status”, who make up 70% of the Gaza Strip ( and of whom, I might add, 40% are already malnourished, and 80% rely on food hand-outs for survival).

    Yes, you read that correctly. “In other words”, says MJ Rosenberg, Kramer seems to be saying “starve the Palestinians so they don’t have babies and…starving the babies so they don’t grow up.”

    Lest an outraged public be all up in arms about…plagiarism, Kramer himself notes the idea is “not at all original”. Got THAT right…let’s see, where HAVE we heard this kind of chilling drivel before? Hmmm. Oh wait- the Nazis beat you to it! Except back then they called it Eugenics. Juan Cole contends it is a recycled form of Malthusianism.

    Nice company you keep, Kramer. Way to hog the limelight.

    One would think such unapologetic racism need not even warrant discussion. Ever the flag bearer of academic iniquity freedoms, Harvard disagrees.

    This, despite the fact that Kramer’s ideas appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide according to the Geneva Convention (which includes measures “intended to prevent births within” a specific “national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”).

    Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah spread the word about it, trying to force Harvard to take a stand, but instead they rushed to his defense.

    “I wonder how long Mr. Kramer’s views would be tolerated if — all other things being equal — he were an Arab scholar who had called for Jews to be placed in a giant, sealed enclosure which virtually no one is allowed to leave and enter, and deprived of food and schooling for their children in order to reduce their birthrate?” Abunimah asked.

    The ghastliness of it all was best summed up by an exchange between the mock Dan Halutz and Doron Almog to the real Martin Kramer on Twitter:

    danhalutz RT @doronalmog: @DanHalutz Remember that time u, me, & @Martin_Kramer debated @Harvard over drinks on how to get rid of those superfluous Gazans? Good times

    danhalutz @DoronAlmog Of course! @Martin_Kramer was all about the “pro-natal subsidies” and you just wanted to bulldoze those Gazans. Me, I like F16s

    danhalutz @Martin_Kramer Dear Sir: I admire your brilliant ideas but fear ending pronatal subsidies will not eliminate superfluous Arabs fast enough.

    danhalutz @Martin_Kramer: I say replace ‘pronatal’ subsidies with ‘pro-morbid’ ones: cluster bombs, white phosphorus, napalm. Let’s co-author a paper!

     

    Gaza, my city

    02/22/2010

    The other day, Yousuf came home from kindergarten with a small project. He was given a paper to fill out to help him learn his address. It listed several categories: Street, City, State, Zipcode and so on. He yanked it out of his backpack to show me enthusiastically. He had it filled out to the best of his ability (the teacher provided the correct address for them to copy). I tried to make out his elementary phonics-based handwriting and be encouraging all the while. I noticed though under “city” he had written something that did not exactly read like Columbia.

    “Gosa?” I asked.
    “It says Gaza” he said matter-of-factly.
    “Oh-I see. But that’s not your physical address, you live in Columbia, Maryland” I instructed him.
    “Mama, you don’t get it, that IS my address, its my my hometown, even if I live here, that is my real address!” he insisted.
    “But its not even in the United States” I replied.
    “So what. Its my city!” he answered.

    Ok, obviously this was a losing battle. Forget about explaining geography and the limits of physical boundaries to a 5 year old. What does it matter in his mind anyway? His “city” is Gaza; he is IN Gaza, even though he is physically present in the United States.

    That’s Yousuf for you. Even though he only spent a short part of his young life there (his first 2-3 years) Gaza has taken a big part of his heart and he never forgets it. I think in some way, that is how we all feel. No matter how far away we are, no matter how young or old, no matter where we are born and where we end up living, Gaza is in our hearts and is always our city. It casts a spell on you.

     

    Yousuf makes mahshi koosa

    02/02/2010

    Yousuf demonstrates how to properly core a squash (koosa) in preparation for stuffing and cooking mahshi koosa (stuffed squash). The key is not to pierce the squash with the corer (my mother was hovering the background ready to wring our necks if we did perchance make this critical error!). In the background one can hear Noor furiously scribbling with crayons on her table-eep.

    Ok so I’m gloating-but how many 5 year olds do YOU know that can core koosa :)

     

    Our Last Port is Freedom: Gaza Calling

    01/30/2010

    A press release from the Free Gaza Movement among other solidarity and pro-justice activists in Turkey and elsewhere. As many may recall, the activists sailed two boats to Gaza in August 2008 (my Aunt and Uncle were on one of the boats, met by my parents in Gaza City’s harbor on the other side. It was a euphoric-if fleeting-moment). These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since then, seven more voyages boarded Parliamentarians, human rights workers, and other dignitaries to witness the effects of Israel’s draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza. The last three voyages were illegally stopped by the Israeli navy when, in December, 2008, they rammed the DIGNITY in international water, turned back the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY by threatening to shoot all on board, then hijacking the SPIRIT on July 1, 2009, kidnapping the passengers and throwing them into prison for a week.

    Friday, January 29, 2010
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    Contact: IHH, Ahmet Emin +90 530 341 19 34
    Free Gaza Movement, Eliza Ernshire +44 754 011 22 94

    [Istanbul, Turkey] Yesterday, the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Relief Foundation (IHH), announced a joint venture, sending 10 boats in the spring of 2010 to the besieged Gaza strip. Organizations from Greece, Ireland and Sweden have also promised to send boats to join the flotilla with the Free Gaza movement and Turkey.

    Mr. Bulent Yildirim, chairman of the IHH said, “We sail in the spring to Gaza, and our last port is freedom; freedom for the 1.5 million Palestinians denied the right to rebuild their society. We will never stop sailing until Israel’s siege is lifted.”

    Two cargo ships will be part of the flotilla, one donated by the Malaysia-based Perdana Foundation and one from IHH. Both will be laden with building supplies, generators and educational materials that Israel prohibits from entering Gaza since their brutal attack on the civilian population a year ago.

    The many passenger boats accompanying the cargo ships will carry members of Parliament from countries around the world as well as high-profile journalists and human rights workers.

    According to the chair of the Free Gaza Movement, Huwaida Arraf, “The illegal blockade on Gaza and Israel’s continued intransigence make a mockery of international law. If our governments will not take a stance to stop Israel’s abuse of the Palestinian people, global civil society is showing that we will.”

     

    Breaking the Silence: female soldiers speak

    01/30/2010

    Breaking the Silence released a booklet of testimonies Friday by female soldiers recounting various abuse cases involving Palestinians in the West Bank. Testimonies include systematic humiliation of Palestinians, reckless and cruel violence, theft, killing of innocent people and cover-up.

    “I don’t know who or how, but I know that two of our soldiers put him in a jeep, and that two weeks later the kid was walking around with casts on both arms and legs…they talked about it in the unit quite a lot – about how they sat him down and put his hand on the chair and simply broke it right there on the chair” read one.

    The complete story here at Ynet.

    Back in July ‘09, the group made headlines when it published a booklet of testimonies that said they went into Gaza “with guns blazing” and orders to “shoot first, worry later”. “If you’re not sure, kill” one soldier was quoted as saying.

    In response, the government of Israel launched a campaign to repress the organization and pressure foreign governments from withdrawing their funding of it.

     

    Gaza Footnotes: Joe Sacco, my mom, and the 1956 Khanyounis/Rafah Massacres

    01/20/2010

    I recently had the opportunity to interview cartoonist Joe Sacco about his latest work, Footnotes in Gaza, for Aljazeera English. The book is an investigation into two little-known massacres in the 1956 Gaza Strip. I say little-known because there is little record of these two tragedies outside of a short UN document and local eyewitness testimony.

    Now, the subject war near and dear to my heart, as I disclose in my first question to him in the interview because my mother was a survivor and witness to those events in Khanyounis (her home town). She was eleven at the time, and I grew up with non sequitur details of what occurred that day-from the harrowing (mass executions) to the hilarious (my mother’s jokester of a cousin who-while awaiting imminent execution-asked his neighbor “what do you think they’re going to do to us??” (the reply: Make us dance-what do you think!!); My Aunt, who showed the soldiers about to execute her only son a coat she has purchased in Tel Aviv in hopes they would spare his life (it was, but only because a cease fire was declared)), never quite making sense of it all. ;Wasn’t 1948 was the really important date, I thought? And didn’t the Israelis occupy Gaza in 1967, so what were they doing there in 1956? And why haven’t I read about this anywhere?

    “I can’t forget Ahmed Bitar-the newlywed they executed just outside the shelter we were staying in because he pleaded for mercy with his pregnant wife; or the bodies-all those bodies soaking in their own pools of blood along the castle wall in the town center; of my baby sister Mona, who couldn’t stop crying because she lost her pacifier,” she kept telling me.

    And so when I came across Sacco’s book, I was thrilled-in whatever odd way one can be thrilled when reading about massacres…to discover that someone had finally bothered to investigate these incidents. I poured through the books pages one after another. I even showed some to my mother-she recognized many of the faces immediately.

    “This is not something you can just forget or [say] ‘let’s move on’ [about]. It has to be acknowledged, it has to be talked about. History has to be written not just by the victors, but by the people being victimized” Joe said to me in the interview.

    Afterward, he a request of me: that when the interview goes live, I re-link it here along with testimony from my mother. Well here it is that testimony, following by an exclusive excerpt from the book.


    Free website – Wix.com

     

    Food for thought: Rummaniya

    01/16/2010

    As many of you know, I am a foodie of sorts-some (*ahem* Yassine) would call me a slow-food activist. I am particularly interested in the connections between food, culture, and politics and have written a lot about the foods of Gaza in specific and Palestine in general. Here is a short video I made using my flip of my mom (who is still visiting us in the US) demonstrating how to cook Rummaniya, an unusual Gazan vegetarian dish made from the unlikely combination of sour pomegranates, eggplants and lentils. In the process, she gets a little homesick and emotional. FYI: the poem she recites in the end is attributed to a Imam Shafi’i, a Muslim jurist whose teaching eventually led to the Shafi’i school of fiqh named after him. It is said he was born and raised in Gaza and missed it so much after leaving that he wrote this poem.

    Rummaniya is a seasonal dish, made just before pomegranates are fully ripe in the fall. It is traditionally considered a “poor man’s food” because it is meatless and consists of cheap legumes and vegetables. You would be hard-pressed to find it in any restaurant (but hey-maybe one day at cafe Laila’s! ;) .

    The finished product

    The finished product

    Here is the recipe for those interested:

    Rummaniya

    1 cup brown lentils
    3 small eggplants (if they are big, one really big one, or two medium ones, or 1/2 kg)
    3 sour pomegranates if you really can’t find them anywhere, you can use a few Tablespoons of pomegranate molasses, found at most Middle Eastern grocers.
    1/2 cup flour
    1 small onion, diced
    2 T. Tahini
    3 cloves garlic
    2 whole dried red chili (or dried chili flakes)
    1 teaspoon caraway seed
    ¼ tsp ground cumin
    1 T. dried dill seed
    1-2 tsps salt

    1. Boil lentils in water until cooked.
    2. Remove pomegranate seeds, put them in a blender; puree and strain, reserving juice. Set aside.
    3. Cut unpeeled eggplant into cubes.
    4. In a mortar and pestle (we call them zibdiya in Gaza, basically an unglazed clay/earthen bowl; if you can’t find them, use a mini-food processor), crush salt, dill seed, garlic, and chili. Set aside.
    5. Saute chopped onion in some olive oil until golden brown; add eggplant until wilted and soft; add lentils; boil for a few minutes until well-mixed.
    6. Mix pomegranate juice (or pomegranate molasses diluted in a few T. water) with flour until well-mixed, then slowly add to stew on stove-top while mixing.
    7. Add crushed spices to stew and mix well until thickened.
    8. When thickened, add Tahini, mix through for 5 minutes, and turn off heat. Pour into bowls and allow to cool before putting in fridge.

    Top with extra-virgin olive oil, and garnish with pomegranate seeds if available. Serve with Kmaj/Arabic bread.

     

    Closed Zone

    12/27/2009

    On the first year of the onslaught against Gaza-against all of the Palestinian people, the short animated clip Closed Zone is as relevant as ever. More thoughts later.

     
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