Today's Messages (OFF)
| Unanswered Messages (ON)
| Forum: The Middle East |
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| Topic: Ramadan Ending |
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| Ramadan Ending [message #119625] |
Wed, 08 September 2010 09:25 |
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I pretend no expertise. But I am aware that the Fast of Ramadan is soon to end. For our Muslim members, my best wishes. And for any in America, my wishes especially for safety as the Fast ends.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Isaac Asimov
Mark of Lewiston
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| | Topic: Happy New Year |
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| Happy New Year [message #119624] |
Wed, 08 September 2010 09:13 |
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A Happy New Year to our Jewish members. Let us hope, at least for a while, that this new year will bring an end to the conflict between Palestinians and Israel.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Isaac Asimov
Mark of Lewiston
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| | Topic: In Israel, the Noble vs.The Ugly |
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| In Israel, the Noble vs.The Ugly [message #118444] |
Sun, 11 July 2010 10:50 |
Israeli 
Messages: 562
Registered: November 2007 |
Member |
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In Israel, the Noble vs. The Ugly
by Nicholas D. Kristof -
NYT
8 July, 2010
Israel goes out of its way to display its ugliest side to the world by tearing down Palestinian homes or allowing rapacious settlers to steal Palestinian land.
Yet there's also another Israel as well, one that I mightily admire. This is the democracy that tolerates a far greater range of opinions than America. It's a citadel of civil society. And, crazily, it's the place where some of the most courageous and effective voices on behalf of oppressed Palestinians belong to Israeli rabbis — like Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.
Rabbi Ascherman — 50, tall, lean and bearded with mournful eyes (if central casting ever needed a Prophet Jeremiah type, he'd be it) — grew up in Erie, Pa. He fell in love with Israel on a brief visit between high school and college and moved here in 1994. At Rabbis for Human Rights, he presides over 20 staff members and hundreds of volunteers who sometimes serve as human shields to protect Palestinians — even if that means getting arrested or beaten.
I watched the ugly side of Israel collide with its more noble version, as Rabbi Ascherman and I visited a rural area in the northern West Bank where Jewish settlers have taken over land that Palestinian farmers say is theirs.
"If we try to enter our land, settlers will be waiting, and we will be beaten," said Muhammad Moqbel, a 71-year-old Palestinian from the village of Qaryout who pointed to fields that he said had been stolen by settlers. Last year, he said, he was hospitalized with a broken rib after settlers attacked while he was picking his own olives.
Rabbis for Human Rights has helped Palestinians recover some land through lawsuits in Israeli courts. And Rabbi Ascherman and other Jewish activists escort such farmers to protect them. The settlers still attack, but soldiers are more likely to intervene when it is rabbis being clubbed.
As Mr. Moqbel and Rabbi Ascherman were explaining all this to me, a settler vehicle came down to confront us. And then another. The settlers photographed us. We photographed them. I asked them if they would agree to be interviewed. They refused to respond to my questions.
"They're just trying to intimidate us," Rabbi Ascherman said.
As was the case in the American civil rights movement, the activists here often become targets. Palestinian youths have stoned Rabbi Ascherman's car, and he has been arrested and beaten up by security forces and settlers alike. (His car is almost as ancient as Jerusalem, and he has to lift the hood and fiddle with wires to get it started, which impedes fast getaways.)
Yet shared beatings also break down malevolent stereotypes of Jews among Palestinians.
Once, he says, he got a call that a 13-year-old Palestinian kid was being beaten by Israeli soldiers and rushed to the scene. Then he was himself tear-gassed, head-butted and arrested by the soldiers. The boy later recounted wonderingly that a tall Jewish stranger had run to his rescue and, in the process of being arrested, comforted him by saying: "Don't be afraid."
This "other Israel" extends far beyond Rabbis for Human Rights. The most cogent critiques of Israel's treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel's own human rights organizations. The most lucid unraveling of Israel's founding mythology comes from Israeli historians. The deepest critiques of Israel's historical claims come from Israeli archeologists (one archeological organization, Emek Shaveh, offers alternative historical tours so that visitors can get a fuller picture). This more noble Israel, refusing to retreat from its values even in times of fear and stress, is a model for the world.
In the Middle East, on all sides, the most religious people are sometimes the most hateful. By challenging religious extremism, Rabbis for Human Rights redeems not only Israeli values, but also Jewish ones.
Rabbis for Human Rights has had strong support from North American Jews, and some American children participate in the classic Zionist gesture — planting a tree for Israel — by sending money so that the rabbis can replant an olive tree for a Palestinian whose grove was uprooted by settlers.
Not everyone finds Rabbi Ascherman inspiring. He gets death threats, and hard-line Israelis see him as a naïve traitor.
He responds that he is struggling to uphold his religious and moral values. But he also argues that building bridges between Jews and Palestinians helps make Israel a safer place for his children. "In the long run, we're going to live here together," he says, "or we're going to die here together."
"When we get the death threats and people say we're traitors and anti-Israel, I think, 'Who is really doing more for Israel's physical survival?' " he says. " 'Those who demolish homes and uproot trees, or those who rebuild homes and replant trees?' "
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=41003
Peace is better than Greater Israel.
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| | Topic: When peace breaks out the builders move in |
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| When peace breaks out the builders move in [message #117994] |
Tue, 29 June 2010 22:31 |
 sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
Member |
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Social Enterpreneurship,
Skoll World Forum Panel in Oxford on Peace Building and Conflict.
Subject: When Peace Breaks Out. It's radio in the context of Peter Day's program called The World of Business. Push the button in the "Play recent episodes" box on the right.
Discussion includes people from different countries in this region talking about water ("political issue" or "human need"?), questions of ownership, etc.
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| | Topic: ACRI State of Human Rights in Israel Report, 2009 |
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| ACRI State of Human Rights in Israel Report, 2009 [message #114362] |
Tue, 05 January 2010 09:54 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
Member |
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Part of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) introduction summary of the 2009 State of Human Rights Report:
The realization of the entire spectrum of rights is now, more than ever, dependent on what we say or believe, what ethnic group we belong to, how much money we have, and more. We have the freedom to express ourselves and demonstrate - only if we don't say anything displeasing; we have the right to equal treatment and opportunities - only if we are "loyal" to the State; we have the right to health care - only if we have enough money to afford treatments and medications; and we have the right to adequate housing - only if our ideologies and lifestyles are acceptable.
According to ACRI, the conditioning of rights is contrary to the principle of the universality of human rights.
"Every individual has basic rights as a human being and these rights are inalienable," said ACRI President and renowned author Sammi Michael. "Just as rights cannot be conditioned, neither can democracy. As such, the conditioning of rights undermines the very foundations of Israeli democracy."
Below are highlights of the 2009 State of Human Rights Report:
Freedom of Expression - If they like what you say: In 2009, there has been a disturbing increase in infringements on freedom of expression, specifically when individuals and organizations criticized the government.
• In the context of the legal and non-violent campaign against "Operation Cast Lead", demonstrations were diffused, protesters arrested for no valid reason, and some requests to hold demonstrations not granted - because of the messages conveyed.
• Several legislative bills attempted to limit freedom of expression in an unprecedented manner: the "Nakba Law" would have rendered marking Israel's Independence Day as a day of mourning (many members of the Arab minority mark this day as the "Nakba" or catastrophe) punishable with imprisonment and the "Loyalty Law" would have ordered the cancellation of the citizenship of those who do not pledge loyalty to the State.
Delegitimization of Human Rights Defenders and Activists: Decision-makers and senior officials within the Israeli government have worked to silence activists and members of social change organizations, whose messages do not correspond to their own. This included aggressive media campaigns, demonization, the diffusion of false information, and attempts to sabotage their funding. Earlier this year, for example, the IDF Spokesperson savagely attacked "Breaking the Silence," a group which collects testimonies from soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories. In another instance among many, Interior Ministry Eli Yishai called organizations defending migrant workers' rights a "threat to the Zionist enterprise."
Read on here:
http://www.alternativenews.org/english/2325-association-for- civil-rights-in-israel-state-of-human-rights-report-2009-rig hts-on-condition.html
The report itself:
http://www.acri.org.il/pdf/state2009en.pdf
[Updated on: Tue, 05 January 2010 09:55]
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| | Topic: Flood disaster in Jedda |
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| Flood disaster in Jedda [message #112840] |
Sun, 06 December 2009 20:43 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
Member |
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A report about what happened in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabian town of Jedda while the Hajj was in progress not far away.
Jeddah flood deaths shame Saudi royals
For lack of a sewage system, many citizens in one of the world's richest countries died. The Al Saud family's misrule is to blame
Hundreds have died in the Jeddah floods. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Last week the Saudi city of Jeddah was afflicted by heavy rains that lasted only a few hours but caused massive flooding and the deaths of more than 500 people. To lessen the embarrassment, official reports shrank the number of flood-related deaths to just over 100.
Many Saudis are asking how such a catastrophe could occur in one of the world's richest countries and in its second-largest and most cosmopolitan city.
This was the most severe nature-related calamity that the world's largest oil exporter has seen in the past 50 years but the real reason for the death and destruction that occurred last Wednesday is endemic corruption in the Saudi government.
Jeddah is a great example of corruption. This city of more than 4 million people still lacks a sewage system and treatment facility. The rain that fell last week had nowhere to go but to flood the streets and neighbourhoods, creating havoc and death in its path.
Hundreds of bodies were swept in the current and up to 11,000 people may be missing in the sea, according to a report two days ago by the Saudi newspaper al-Yaum. This figure may be inflated but the number of the missing and dead surely ranks in the hundreds, and could turn out to exceed a thousand. For comparison, hurricane Katrina in the US killed about 1,800 people.
The Saudi government reaction to the disaster in Jeddah followed the usual formula of denial followed by blame of the victims for failing to follow government orders. Instead of taking responsibility, a Prince Khalid al-Faisal, the governor of Mecca region, in which Jeddah lies, blamed "arbitrarily built" neighbourhoods, and not the absence of a sewage system. Saudi media, which is mostly owned and fully controlled by the ruling family, followed suit and pointed a finger at citizens who bought land and built houses in unplanned areas.
This has brought to light yet another fact of life in Saudi Arabia: most citizens are unable to buy a home. The percentage of adult Saudis who do not own homes is around 80% – in sharp contrast to other Gulf countries such as Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, where home ownership rates exceed 80%, thanks to government programmes.
The cause of the low home ownership is the high price of land. This may seem surprising in such a huge country with a relatively small population, but it results from land grabs by members of the ruling family. Many Saudi citizens woke up one day to find that the land they had either inherited or paid good money for has been taken over by a member of the Al Saud. The land deed that the citizen holds becomes worthless and no court will take up the issue. If you complain too much, you will end up in prison.
We Saudis have witnessed massive land seizures across that bare country where fences are erected by princes to enclose hundreds of square kilometres. Jeddah is infamous for land grabs by members of the ruling family – land that is then sold to citizens looking to build a home, without the required planning and infrastructure such as sewage, electricity, water and phone.
King Abdullah has ordered the formation of an investigative committee, headed by the governor of Mecca himself. The committee will not hold any public hearing, or subject members of the "infallible" ruling family to its authority. Let us remember, this is Saudi Arabia, where the Al Saud family are considered above the law. The king's order was received with praise by Saudi media, who referred to his brilliant vision – as is the custom for all of the king's orders, policies, speeches and actions.
The facts, however, paint a very different picture. King Abdullah had ample time and money to meet the development needs for Jeddah and other cities and construct a basic sewage system and other infrastructures for every major city. But it appears that subjects' needs matter very little to an absolute ruler. The people of Saudi Arabia matter very little as well to Arab or international governments who have yet to send condolences or express sympathy for the victims.
Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia 71 years ago in 1938, but the kings' governments have failed to use oil revenues since then to build a decent infrastructure in Jeddah and other cities. The Al Saud tribe, led by the king, has ruled since 1932 bears all the blame for the disaster in Jeddah and all the government failures for the past 80 years.
No one should blame lazy municipal workers or cheating contractors, or even senior government officials who work under the Al Saud. Simply, we must blame the boss, the big boss. That's where the buck stops.
The state of our country is best exemplified by the Musk Lake, where 1,200 tankers of human waste from Jeddah sewage have been dumped daily for the past 25 years. Naming this chasm of foulness "musk" gives great insight in how Saudi rulers distort the simplest of realities. Musk Lake, not the only lake of human waste in the country, has been the source of diseases such as dengue fever, which has killed dozens and afflicted thousands for years.
At the end of the day, the Saudi absolute monarchy will absolve itself from any responsibility and shortcomings, and its princes will continue live the high life with very little care in the world. May the dead of Jeddah rest in peace and may their families find comfort in each other.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/03/jeddah-f loods-sewage-al-saud
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| | Topic: The first street named after a Twitter account! |
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| The first street named after a Twitter account! [message #109854] |
Fri, 02 October 2009 09:07 |
Michael II 
Messages: 1034
Registered: September 2006
Location: Europe |
Member |
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The world's first street thought to be named after a user name on the popular micro-blogging service Twitter is located in Askar Refugee Camp in the West Bank city of Nablus. The '@arjanelfassed tweetstreet' is situated within the municipal boundaries of Nablus, the largest city in the northern part of the West Bank.
http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=228153
Here's the actual account of Arjan El Fassed:
http://twitter.com/arjanelfassed
[Updated on: Fri, 02 October 2009 09:08]
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| | Topic: Fatah Revolutionary Council Election Results |
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| Fatah Revolutionary Council Election Results [message #109520] |
Sat, 15 August 2009 20:27 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
Member |
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Fatah's got a new Revolutionary Council. Most of those elected were born after 1965, which means that a new generation is going to predominate in the leadership. Jailed Marwan Barghouti's wife Fadwa was elected, as was Jewish, Jerusalem-born Uri Davis, who renounced his Israeli citizenship in protest over the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1980s and converted to Islam a few years ago in order to marry his Muslim wife. He is the only non-Arab out of a total of 81 members, of which 70 are new. 20 members are Gazans, 11 are women and 4 are Christian.
New members include a number of Fatah activists from the diaspora, including Samir Rifai, Fatah's secretary in Syria, and Khaled Abu Usba, who participated in a terror attack in the 1980s in which at least 30 Israelis were killed.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1107668.html
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=215804
It will be interesting to hear analysis over the next few days of how this is likely to change policy and whether the new membership is likely to toughen or moderate previously held positions.
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| | Topic: When the periphery becomes mainstream |
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| When the periphery becomes mainstream [message #109352] |
Sun, 26 July 2009 09:25 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
Member |
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Some of our recent threads and remarks have puzzled over what's called here the "Haredi sector". I don't know what percentage of Israel's population that and what's called the "Arab sector" forms. Here's a discussion that claims that currently, about 46% of children in Israeli schools come from either one or the other. Also some history and some interesting projections.
Yet public discourse in Israel still sees both sectors as being marginal, both being filed under the category of what are termed here "weak populations".
Our public education system has not caught up with these developments at all and still teaches its students as if they were secular Zionists. Unlike the Haredi sector, which has its own government-aided schools and curriculum, the Arab sector does not have a separate option, which is what makes the passage of the law removing the scant mention of the Nakba (that our last Minister of Education introduced into the school curriculum only two years ago) so damagingly poignant.
Here's Friday's Haaretz piece by Dr. Yousef T. Jabareen called
Who's Afraid of Educated Arabs?
It has long been the case that Israel's Arab students have performed significantly worse than their Jewish peers. The reasons for the gaps range from socio-economic disadvantages (more than half of Arab families are below the poverty line, more than three times the rate of Jewish families), to cultural biases in the standardized curricula (more lessons on Jewish heritage and religion), to the hard fact of unequal budget allocations - the state invests roughly $200 per Arab pupil annually, versus $1,000 per Jewish pupil.
However, the sharp decline in Arab students' performance, especially as the Jewish sector remains consistent, is cause for new concern and demands action.
The figures are telling. This month, Haaretz reported on an Education Ministry study showing that in 2008, only 31.94 percent of Arab pupils passed their matriculation exams. In comparison, 59.7 percent of Jewish students passed. Even more striking is the sharp drop that took place over two years: In 2006, 50.7 percent of Arab high-schoolers qualified for matriculation certificates. Additionally, those who pass score lower than the national average on both these and the psychometric tests required for university or college admission, and as a result, 45 percent of Arab applicants are not accepted to higher education programs. Currently Arabs account for only 10 percent of students in bachelor's programs around the country.
An international study last year allowed for a comparison between Israel's Arab students and those in neighboring Arabic-speaking countries. The results suggested that Arab pupils in Israel might do better in a school system suited to their cultural, historical and linguistic needs.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) showed that Israeli pupils ranked 24th and 25th in math and science, respectively, out of the 49 participating countries across the globe. But the breakdown between Jewish and Arab students revealed vast differences. Israel's Arab students, taken alone, scored below worldwide averages, equivalent to 37th in science and 34th in math. Compared with the last TIMSS test in 2003, Jewish students' scores fell slightly, but Arab students' scores fell dramatically.
Meanwhile, students in neighboring Arab countries scored higher than Israel's Arabs in both math (Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, among others) and science (Bahrain, Syria, Tunisia and Oman, among others).
Although last year's drop was precipitous, it was likely caused by a combination of factors that, if not dealt with, and fast, mean that we can expect to see performance continue to fall. One key problem is the physicial conditions in which Arab children study. In March, the state comptroller found that the Arab sector lacked 1,082 classrooms at the start of the 2007-08 school year.
The situation is unquestionably bad, yet one needn't reinvent the wheel to make significant improvements. In 2008, the last education minister, Yuli Tamir, had a team of Arab civil society representatives (including Dirasat, the organization I head) and Education Ministry officials produce a detailed plan and budget for improving Arab education. They have yet to be implemented.
It would seem that as long as Arab educators, academics and policymakers are excluded from planning, there will be no improvement. The Arab minority constitutes nearly 20 percent of Israel's population, but has little to no real influence over its own education policy, budgets, standards or curricula.
The creation of a professional Arab pedagogic council to address Arab education in Israel, in cooperation with the Education Ministry, has been proposed more than once by Arab education administrators and leaders, and the 2004 Dovrat report on education even alluded to such an idea. But the ministry has yet to consider the proposal seriously. Granting Arab society increased influence over children's education is apparently viewed as anathema by the Israeli public.
For years, the state-religious school system - which has no shortage of conflicts with the mainstream public - has been granted its own pedagogic council that decides on a vast range of substantial educational issues. Much like the state-religious schools, Arab society is not asking to separate from the public education system in Israel, but rather to tailor its own education system to the unique identity, culture, language and history of the country's Arab citizens.
Education should take precedence in any society, as a means of providing students with the academic tools to succeed and be productive, upstanding members of society, who can be proud of their unique identities - Jews and Arabs alike. It is sad to think that Israeli officials' fear of granting the Arab community meaningful influence could cause the continued deterioration of its educational system - which will in turn perpetuate social injustices, alienation and exclusion, and could lead to civil unrest.
Yousef T. Jabareen is a law lecturer, and founding director of Dirasat, the Arab Center for Law and Policy, based in Nazareth.
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102576.html
http://www.mossawacenter.org/default.php?dp=2&fl=11& lng=3&pg=5
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1333630
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| | Topic: Should I send my child to the army? |
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| Should I send my child to the army? [message #109192] |
Fri, 17 July 2009 19:49 |
zvi 
Messages: 207
Registered: November 2007
Location: montreal |
Member |
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Etgar Keret is one of my favourite short story authors. He is very effective at conveying deep and complex emotional textures.
Throwdown at the Playground
Mamas who don't want their babies to grow up to be soldiers
By Etgar Keret | 7:00 am July 17, 2009 Tablet Magazine
CREDIT: Playground by Anke L; some rights reserved.
I don't want to brag, but I've managed to earn myself a unique, somewhat mythic status among the parents who take their children to Ezekiel Park, my son's favorite spot in Tel Aviv. I can't attribute that special achievement to any overwhelming charisma I might possess, but rather to two common, lackluster qualities: I'm a man, and I hardly ever work. And so, in Ezekiel Park, I have been dubbed "ha-abba" or "the father," an almost religious and slightly gentile nickname intoned with great respect by all the park's regulars. It seems that most of the fathers in my neighborhood go to work every morning, so that the inherent laziness that has plagued me for so many years is finally being construed as exceptional sensitivity and affection, showing a genuine understanding of children's tender young souls.
As "the father," I can take an active part in conversations on a wide variety of subjects that until recently were alien to me, and I can expand my knowledge of such fascinating topics as nursing, breast pumps, and the relative merits of cloth diapers vs. their disposable counterparts. There is something almost perversely soothing about discussing such things. As a second-generation Holocaust survivor who considers his momentary survival to be exceptional and not the least bit trivial, and whose daily Google Alerts are confined to the narrow territory between "iranian nuclear development" and "jews+genocide," there is nothing more enjoyable than a few tranquil hours spent discussing sterilizing bottles with organic soap and the red-pink rashes on a baby's bottom. But this week, the magic ended and political reality crept its way stealthily into my private paradise.
"Tell me something," Orit, mother of three-year-old Ron, asked innocently. "Will Lev go to the army when he grows up?" The question caught me totally off guard. Over the last three-and-a-half years, I have had to deal with quite a few speculative questions about my son's future, but most were of the annoying but non-threatening would-you-advise-him-to-be-an-artist-even-though-from-the-wa y-you're-dressed-there-can't-be-much-money-in-it kind. But that question about the army thrust me into a different, surreal world in which I saw dozens of sturdy babies swathed in environmentally friendly cloth diapers sweeping down from the mountains on miniature ponies, weapons brandished in their pink hands, shouting murderous battle cries. And facing them, alone, stands chubby little Lev, wearing scruffy fatigues and an army vest. A green steel helmet, slightly too large, slides over his eyes, and he clutches a bayoneted rifle in his tiny hands. The first wave of diapered riders has almost reached him. He presses the rifle against his shoulder and closes one eye to aim....
"So what do you say?" Orit awakened me from my unpleasant reverie. "Are you going to let him serve in the army or not? Don't tell me you haven't talked about it yet." There was something accusing in her tone. As if the fact that my wife and I haven't discussed our baby's military future is on the same scale as skipping his measles vaccination. I refused to give in to the guilt feelings that come so naturally to me and replied unhesitatingly, "No, we haven't talked about it. We still have time. He's three-and-a-half years old."
"If you feel that you still have time, then take it," Orit snapped back sarcastically. "Reuven and I have already made up our minds about Ron. He's not going into the army."
That night, sitting in front of the TV news, I told my wife about the strange incident in Ezekiel Park. "Isn't that weird," I said, "talking about recruiting a kid who still can't put on his underpants by himself?"
"It's not weird at all," my wife replied. "It's natural. All the mothers in the park talk to me about it."
"So how come they haven't said anything to me about it till now?"
"Because you're a man."
"So what if I'm a man," I argue. "They have no problem talking to me about nursing."
"Because they know you'll be understanding and empathetic about nursing, but you'll just be snide when it comes to serving in the army."
"I wasn't snide," I defended myself. "I just said that it's a strange subject to be dealing with when the kid's so young."
"I've been dealing with it from the day Lev was born," my wife confessed. "And if we're already discussing it now, I don't want him to go into the army."
I was silent. Experience has taught me that there are some situations in which it's better to keep quiet. That is, I tried to keep quiet. Life gives me good advice, but sometimes I refuse to take it. "I think it's very controlling to say something like that," I finally said. "After all, in the end, he'll have to decide those things by himself."
"I'd rather be controlling," my wife answered, "than have to take part in a military funeral on the Mount of Olives 15 years from now. If it's controlling to keep your son from putting his life at risk, then that's exactly what I am."
At that point, the argument heated up and I turned off the TV. "Listen to yourself," I said. "You're talking as if serving in the army is an extreme sport. But what can we do? We live in a part of the world where our lives depend on it. So what you're actually saying is that you'd rather have other people's children go into the army and sacrifice their lives, while Lev enjoys his life here without taking any risks or shouldering the obligations the situation calls for."
"No," said my wife responded. "I'm saying that we could have reached a peaceful solution a long time ago, and we still can. And that our leaders allow themselves not to do that because they know that most people are like you: they won't hesitate to put their children's lives into the government's irresponsible hands."
I was about to answer her when I sensed another pair of huge eyes watching me. Lev was standing at the entrance to the living room. "Daddy," he asked, "why are you and Mommy fighting?"
Since that conversation with Orit, none of the mothers in the park have spoken to me again about Lev's military service. But I still can't get that image of him in uniform, armed with a rifle, out of my mind. Just yesterday, in the sandbox, I saw him push Orit's peacenik son Ron, and later, on the way home, he chased a cat with a stick. "Start saving, Daddy," I tell myself. "Start saving for a defense attorney. You're not raising just a soldier here, but a potential war criminal." I'd be happy to share those thoughts with my wife, but after we barely survived that last clash, I don't want to start a new one.
We managed to end our argument with an agreement of sorts. First, I suggested what sounded like a fair settlement: when the kid is 18, we'll let him decide for himself. But my wife rejected that out of hand, claiming he would never be able to make a really free choice with all the social pressure around him. In the end, out of exhaustion, and in the absence of any other solution, we decided to compromise on the only principle we both truly agreed on: to spend the next 14 years working towards family and regional peace.
Translated by Sondra Silverston.
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| | Topic: Dissolution of Palestinian Authority? |
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| Dissolution of Palestinian Authority? [message #106467] |
Fri, 01 May 2009 19:20 |
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Ma'an Exclusive: Fatah leader calls for dismantling PA
Date: 30 / 04 / 2009 Time: 21:46
تكبير الخط تصغير الخط
Bethlehem – Ma'an – A high-ranking Fatah official on Thursday proposed holding presidential and legislative elections as an alternative to the "useless" Cairo dialogue, urging Palestinians to choose between Israeli negotiations led by Fatah or a resistance agenda claimed by Hamas, but which it "does not practice."
Hussam Khader, a Fatah legislator within the Palestinian Legislative Council, said during a visit to Ma'an News Agency in the West Bank city of Bethlehem that "without agreeing on a decent election program between Fatah and Hamas that will specify the future of the Palestinians, these elections will not be held and the state of division that is supported by western parties and Israel will deepen."
"Palestinians are qualified more than others for such a situation since there is a geographical barrier between the West Bank and Gaza, which is the [Israeli] occupation," he added.
Khader also Palestinian President Mahmoud Abass' upcoming visit to the United States, saying that it will not lead to anything because "the US administration will just assure the promises of previous administrations toward a two-state solution."
He demanded that President Abbas present a draft to US President Barack Obama dismantling the Palestinian Authority in exchange for a commitment to end popular resistance against Israel. "President Abbas should present this solution, which is the right one, because "the PA is useless on the ground and is represented solely by the salary [for public employees] at the end of the month."
Regarding whether or not Fatah's sixth conference will go on as planned, he said it was "a big lie," noting that "there are persons inside Fatah who are afraid of democracy more than the [Israeli] occupation, because they fear for their interests, and will obstruct holding a conference using weak excuses and deceiving the movement's affiliates."
Meanwhile, the Palestinian national dialogue session between Hamas and Fatah was been delayed until mid-May, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
The talks had started on Monday, but on Tuesday it was announced that the parties will break to examine new Egyptian proposals on a range of controversial topics.
Senior Hamas leader and negotiator Mahmoud Zahhar said that talks would resume either 16 or 17 May. He told Reuters that the dialogue session "has been postponed in order for both delegations to go back to their leadership and discuss Egyptian suggestions and ideas."
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID= 37478
I came across this article last night. It raises all kinds of questions about the future and pressures on Mamoud Abbas and surprises for the US and Israel and the PA. I haven't even begun to catalog all the questions it raises in my mind, even though I've toyed occasionally with the idea of PA dissolution.
I guess the first question that comes to mind is the purpose of the PA. What is its purpose for Palestinians? What is its purpose for Israelis? Are the two synonymous?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Isaac Asimov
Mark of Lewiston
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| | Topic: Twelve Angry Lebanese in Roumieh Central Prison, Beirut |
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| Twelve Angry Lebanese in Roumieh Central Prison, Beirut [message #102457] |
Sat, 28 February 2009 21:53 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
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The notorious Roumieh Central Prison in Beirut is Lebanon's biggest high-security prison. One man who spent 15 years on death row but has always stuck to the story that he never committed the crime that put him there recently got the chance to present his case before uniformed cadres and a selection of top Government officials.
A young actress who works in drama therapy put in several requests to work with inmates there (see clip) eventually managed to put on an adapted version of the play 12 Angry Men called The Twelve Angry Lebanese.
Lebanese prisoners stage drama
By Natalia Antelava
Magdi has spent 15 years on death row, waiting for his execution in an airless, overcrowded prison cell.
The jail where his life is supposed to end is wrapped in miles of barbed wire, surrounded by checkpoints and perched on top of the mountain that overlooks the Mediterranean.
Roumieh Prison is Lebanon' s biggest high-security jail, notorious for bloody riots and terrible conditions, and home to some of the country's most dangerous criminals.
But Magdi, a thin, greying man, says he never committed the murder he was charged with, and that the trial that put him on death row was rushed and unfair.
Over the years, he says, he has written countless letters to the authorities begging them to review his case, but he never received a reply.
Then one February afternoon in 2009, he suddenly had a chance to tell his story face to face, to some of the country's most senior officials.
"I was so nervous," Magdi recalls. "Just imagine - the prosecutor general, the minister of the interior, high ranking generals - they were all right here."
Magdi, along with his fellow inmates, was on the stage while the officials were the guests of honour at the opening of the Twelve Angry Lebanese, a theatre play of a kind the Arab world has never seen before.
Role reversal
For two hours, seated just inches away from the improvised stage, the representatives of Lebanon's government listened as inmates questioned the country's judicial system, talked about prison conditions and told personal tales through their adaptation of Twelve Angry Men, a play by Reginald Rose in which a jury of 12 men meets to decide the fate of a boy who is accused of murder.
The performance was, the prisoners recall, a mind-boggling role reversal.
For Zeina Daccache, a young Lebanese actress and director with a passion for drama therapy, it was also a real triumph.
"The problem was that no-one believed in the project, in fact everyone thought I was crazy," she said.
Lebanese prisons are closed to the public and the media, and Zeina Daccache's proposal of drama therapy was turned down twice.
But eight months after being rejected she secured funding from the EU she managed to gain access to the jail.
Prison authorities agreed to turn a former prayer room into an improvised theatre, and soon the 200 prisoners who applied to take part in the project began attending daily drama therapy sessions.
Within months of workshops and play sessions the group shrank to 45 inmates with whom Zeina began working on the actual play.
"I picked Twelve Angry Men because it's the perfect play for this situation. It gives the inmates a chance to reverse roles, to be the jury, which is therapy in itself," she says.
The group was diverse. The crimes of the inmates ranged from drug dealing to rape and murder. The sentences varied from a few years to life, and death row.
Commitment
The only requirement for participation was commitment - of which there was plenty.
One of the inmates taught himself how to read so he could join the project, and another refused to quit despite serious health problems. Seated on benches in their barbed wire theatre, the inmates explain that the reason behind their enthusiasm is simple.
"This is the first time I have been treated as a human being," said Mullah, who has been in Roumieh for 15 years.
"There is nothing for us to do here," adds 28-year-old Joseph. "There is no exercise area, there is no entertainment, there is no proper food. It's just us crammed together in the rooms."
Zanelo, a 60-year-old drug dealer, added: "Others made fun of us for coming to work with Zeina, but I felt I suddenly had a reason to wake up in the morning."
All of them say that in one way or another the project changed their life.
"After the premiere, I cried. For the first time in my life," says Hassan, a 30-year-old with piercing green eyes, who is in prison for a brutal murder of two friends.
But the group bursts out laughing, when Abu Abdul, whose trimmed beard and thick glasses makes him look like a professor, launches into a long speech on how he has become a better man.
"It made me rethink my crimes," says Abu Abdul. "I used to sell drugs and forge money, but I will never do it again when I get out."
His jail-mates laugh, clearly sceptical of Abu Abdul's ability to reform.
Call for reform
But they are using the play to call for the reform of Lebanon's prison system. In the monologues in the play they question the very way justice here is done.
They ask why the Lebanese authorities do not enforce the law that allows prisoners to appeal for the early release on grounds of good behaviour.
They raise the issue of long term pre-trial detention through the real-life story of a prisoner who has been jailed, without charges, for nine years.
The Roumieh authorities, who were at first sceptical about the project, are now full of praise for it. They say it brought unprecedented and much needed attention from the government in Beirut.
The inmates say they want the project to continue, but Zeina Daccache is waiting to see whether she can get the funding and the permissions to carry on.
And Magdi, the prisoner on the death row, is also waiting - no longer for an execution but a decision on his future.
After the opening of the Twelve Angry Lebanese, some officials, clearly moved by the play, went backstage and talked to him personally. He says they promised to look into his case.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7914973.stm
[Updated on: Sat, 28 February 2009 21:57]
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| | Topic: The notion 'Jew' |
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| The notion 'Jew' [message #95473] |
Tue, 30 September 2008 14:29 |
Edith
Messages: 75
Registered: August 2008
Location: Belgium |
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Because yesterday there was someone who said there are people who add a negative connotation to the word 'Jew', I translated this article I wrote in the early days of 2007.
Maybe you guys can enlighten me with your own feelings, and experiences about this. What feelings do you connect to the word Jew?
The Notion Jew
On December 27th 2006 Patrick Stouthuysen wrote in the Flemish newspaper 'De Standaard' that if you look at it over a longer period, a lot has changed. Old documentaries, novels, and newspapers from the fifties show it, he says. " We have become more sensitive for abusive language, for stereotyping. When my students read the word 'niger', they furrow their eyebrows. They never talk about 'Jews', but about 'Jewish people'. They are more aware of how they need to talk about others."
I don't agree entirely with Mr. Stouthuysen. It is not so that 'we' have grown more sensitive about using abusive language. There is a part of society that has grown more sensitive, and let us hope that segment grows. That quite a large part of society has redirected the valve for their negative energy to the Muslims does not mean our problems are over. It is troublesome, and requires without any doubt a code red.
I a way it is an improvement when people take the trouble to speak about 'Jewish people'. By doing so they show a clear concern for their fellow-men, and the readiness to do something for them by taking care of their choice of words. By emphasizing 'people' they dismiss the dehumanizing terminology that has been used all over Europe to indicate the members of the mother-religion. But this step forward is only half of the way. There is something important missing.
I suspect that Mr. Stouthuysen would not immediately understand it, but I switched back to the use of the notion Jew. The phase in which I felt the need to emphasise 'Jewish PEOPLE' I outgrew. Now, I strongly believe that is necessary.
At the time when I spoke with lots of stress on 'people' in Jewish people, I wanted them to come closer to us. I wanted to narrow the gap between us. We inherit our culture, we do not choose it, and the alienation from the Jews I had inherited through my upbringing in a catholic environment, and culture during the fifties, and sixties, I wanted to correct. My intentions were good, but something was still missing, and it struck me when I was talking to my Jewish friend about 'Jewish people' while he simply saw himself as a Jew, without any complexes.
"What are we doing", I asked myself.
After a few days simmering in the back of my mind, I came to the conclusion that in my use of 'Jewish people' there was a negative connotation to the notion 'Jew'. It was the same negative connotation that it has in Christendom, and it's various atheist variants. As long as I felt the need to talk about 'Jewish people' I had not freed myself from that element from our culture of anti-Semitism.
My Jewish friend did not have that problem. For him the notion Jew stands for 'the best of humanity', and I bestow it on him wholeheartedly. What hit to me was that I had a problem.
It is not easy to get rid of undesirable cultural common practices. To detect what is wrong in our own culture and correct it takes time, effort, and energy. The way love requires a lot of effort, so does the development of openness towards people who have been cornered in the role of the 'other', a great deal of effort. We need to search for elements in our culture we are not aware of. That is not easy. It is there, but we do not see it. And we have no idea how many elements there are. It is a lifelong search.
In the meantime I evolved to the level where I'm at least free of some of the negative connotations of cultural or religious identities I did not grow up with.
It is logic that differences in the pace of development in that specific territory can cause communication-problems. Every human being has the right on his own grow-speed, and on his own field of interest, but it is in to the advantage of everyone that no too important arrears grow.
We also need to look into the problem of regression. "There cannot be forcing in Islam", the Muslims say, and that means that any human being has the right on forgiveness when he makes a mistake. But we do need to avoid damaging our fellow men.
But that our differences in growing pace can lead to communication-problems is becoming very obvious in the strongly different interpretations people connect to the notion 'Jew'. Depending on whether the perspective is Christian, or Jewish, the idea's can be the opposite of each other, and that already has caused unpleasant reactions while discuss on internet-fora how we may have developed the cultural intolerance we are witnessing in Europe today. I am searching for a better way to deal with the differences.
Edith
PS: To the attention of those who were so generous to reward me for my thinking-trials with abusive language, such as Catholicophobe, I want to notify that for me the norm is that the well-being of people is more important than the big egos of people who are not strong enough to face their own history.
[Updated on: Tue, 30 September 2008 14:30]
There is only one kind of human beings, and the problems we have with being human we have in common. The best way to deal with these problems, we can find in the holy books.
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| | Topic: Islamic Bond Decree Cripples Sukuk, Imperils Projects |
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| Islamic Bond Decree Cripples Sukuk, Imperils Projects [message #92309] |
Thu, 04 September 2008 16:28 |
ODP1 
Messages: 6658
Registered: December 2006 |
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Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The fastest-growing part of the global bond market is faltering, and it has nothing to do with subprime mortgages or the credit crunch.
Sales of Shariah-compliant debt, which financed Dubai's Palm development, the world's largest man-made island and where David Beckham and Donald Trump have homes, fell 50 percent in 2008 and prices dropped an average 1.51 percent, according to HSBC Holdings Plc index data.
The so-called sukuk market, which has doubled each year since 2004 and grown to $90 billion, is declining after a Bahrain-based group of Islamic scholars decreed in February that most bonds ran afoul of religious rules. Only one that complies with the edict has been issued, pushing up borrowing costs on projects including $200 billion of real-estate developments in the United Arab Emirates capital.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a_Zh 0q70aPxY&refer=exclusive
"The idea of a two state solution is strongly supported [by Pals] but only if the border is the 1967 border and refugees are given the right of return. The question is what type of two state solution [is supported]?"- Dr Jabil Rabah Near East Consulting
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| | Topic: So Who Owns the Temple?!? |
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| So Who Owns the Temple?!? [message #87345] |
Mon, 21 July 2008 19:05 |
Jacob Blues
Messages: 4650
Registered: November 2006
Location: New York City |
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Now for something completely different:
July 21, 2008
Thai-Cambodian Temple Standoff Continues
By SETH MYDANS
KANTHARALAK, Thailand — Hundreds of Thai and Cambodian soldiers faced off at the ruins of an ancient Hindu temple here for a sixth straight day on Sunday, in a modern-day echo of the age-old clash of empires across Indochina.
The temple, perched high on a bluff on a disputed patch of border, may be the prize. But the conflict has also created a secondary, more prosaic target: an embattled government in Bangkok, where the opposition is using the historical dispute and nationalist fervor as weapons.
The fires of nationalism have spread in both nations over the past few weeks. Old grievances have flared, and troops and heavy weapons have been mobilized in the mists above the jungle. Over the weekend, truckloads of reinforcements from each country were seen heading toward the temple, called Preah Vihear.
Tense moments have been reported when weapons were aimed within the temple complex. The prime ministers of both nations have exchanged stern notes, hardening their positions.
The Cambodian government has taken its complaint to the United Nations, saying that Thai troops have intruded onto its territory. The Thai prime minister, Samak Sundaravej, insists that the area is Thai.
Neither government appears to want a war, and there were plans for the countries’ defense ministers to talk Monday.
The conflict comes at a delicate time for both countries. Thailand has its slow-burning political crisis, and nationalism is looming as a factor in Cambodia’s general election next Sunday as well.
But in Bangkok, political damage has already been done: the resignation of a cabinet minister, a censure debate in Parliament and accusations of national betrayal have further weakened a shaky, ineffective government.
“The Democrats have used this quite dishonestly to get at the current government,” said Chris Baker, a British historian of Thailand, speaking of the main opposition party. “This of course is a very dangerous game. A troop buildup is a very dangerous game. It’s a very stupid way for Thailand to deal with an important neighbor.”
Sovereignty is a volatile issue in a region where dominance has shifted over the centuries among empires in what are now Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. “The dark side of nationalism is as dangerous as ever,” said Thongchai Winichakul, a historian and the author of “Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation” (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
Cambodia, which has been annexed throughout history by its neighbors on both its eastern and its western borders, is particularly sensitive, and its temples are a source of national pride. They symbolize its last period of greatness, under the Angkorean kings, which ended with a Thai invasion in the 15th century.
Just five years ago, mobs in Cambodia burned down the Thai Embassy because of rumors that a Thai actress had claimed Thai sovereignty over Cambodia’s greatest temple, Angkor Wat.
The catalyst of today’s confrontation seemed mild enough: the naming of the Preah Vihear temple as a World Heritage Site, a designation that is meant to preserve historical monuments, not to call out armed soldiers.
The temple, built between the 9th and 11th centuries, is unlike any other. It is an ornate, sagging ruin of broken pillars and sweeping roofs that stands alone on a finger of rock, high above the forests of the Dangrek Mountains. It was consecrated to the Hindu god Shiva when it was built, but, like other temples in the Angkorean period, was converted to Buddhist use.
Questions of sovereignty are complicated by the temple’s location at the top of a 1,640-foot cliff. It is almost inaccessible from Cambodia, but it is reachable through Thailand by a comfortable drive over a paved road.
On June 17, Unesco placed the temple on its list of protected monuments, or World Heritage sites. It was responding to a bid from Cambodia that included a disputed map drawn up by French colonial rulers in 1907.
Legally, the temple has belonged to Cambodia since 1962, after a ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The French had left Indochina seven years before, and the temple had been occupied in the interim by Thai soldiers.
The Thais were forced to withdraw, and the court’s decision has rankled in Thailand ever since. The validity of the French map and the court’s logic have been questioned, and the focus is now on 1.8 square miles around the temple that were not specifically covered in the ruling.
In a strangely passive response last month, the Thai government failed to insist on joining Cambodia as a bidder for the Unesco designation and signed off on the questionable map that Cambodia presented.
This was fuel enough for the Thai opposition, which says, without presenting evidence, that a backroom deal had been struck and that the man behind it was the country’s most prominent wheeler-dealer, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
Mr. Thaksin, who was deposed in a coup in 2006, remains influential in business and politics, and has financial interests in Cambodia. The man who let Cambodia’s bid slip through — and who was forced to resign as a result — was Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama, once Mr. Thaksin’s personal lawyer.
The embattled prime minister, Mr. Samak, is also seen by his critics as Mr. Thaksin’s proxy, and, under pressure from the opposition, he has begun talking tough. Having earlier called the nationalist protesters crazy, Mr. Samak sounded a nationalist note on Friday, saying that the Cambodian presence at the temple “is a continued violation of Thailand’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The Dangrek mountain range and the high plains in Thailand that lie beyond it are home to dozens of lesser temples in Khmer style, including two in Thailand that Cambodia laid claim to in 2003. Experts say there are 15 more overlapping locations along the nations’ 500-mile border that need to be resolved.
But Preah Vihear, in its majesty and geographical ambiguity, has been the symbol for both sides’ claims of dominance. “The Preah Vihear temple is part of a wounded history of Thailand and Cambodia,” said Charnvit Kasetsiri, a historian Thammasat University in Bangkok.
That history — as the troops and heavy weapons deployed at the temple show — has not yet receded into the past.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/world/asia/21cambodia.html ?ref=world
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| | Forum: The World Around Us |
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| Topic: Jews leaving parts of Sweden due to anti-Semitism |
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| Jews leaving parts of Sweden due to anti-Semitism [message #118497] |
Mon, 12 July 2010 17:53 |
Lynn
Messages: 3245
Registered: November 2006 |
Member |
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Hey Magnus,
When you get a chance, can you comment on this article? You're the closest of any of us to Sweden. What do you think? Also, do you see any of this in the other Scandinavian countries or is it mainly a problem in Sweden?
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jews-reluctantly-abandon -swedish-city-amid-growing-anti-semitism-1.301276
Jews reluctantly abandon Swedish city amid growing anti-Semitism
By Donald Snyder
At some point, the shouts of "Heil Hitler" that often greeted Marcus Eilenberg as he walked to the 107-year-old Moorish-style synagogue in this port city forced the 32-year-old attorney to make a difficult, life-changing decision: Fearing for his family's safety after repeated anti-Semitic incidents, Eilenberg reluctantly uprooted himself and his wife and two children, and moved to Israel in May.
Sweden, a country long regarded as a model of tolerance, has, ironically, been a refuge for Eilenberg's family. His paternal grandparents found a home in Malmo in 1945 after surviving the Holocaust. His wife's parents came to Malmo from Poland in 1968 after the communist government there launched an anti-Semitic purge.
But as in many other cities across Europe, a rapidly growing Muslim population living in segregated conditions that seem to breed alienation has mixed toxically with the anger directed at Israeli policies and actions by those Muslims — and by many non-Muslims — to all but transform the lives of local Jews. Like many of their counterparts in other European cities, the Jews of Malmo report being subjected increasingly to threats, intimidation and actual violence as stand-ins for Israel.
"I didn't want my small children to grow up in this environment," Eilenberg said in a phone interview just before leaving Malmo. "It wouldn't be fair to them to stay in Malmo."
Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city, with a population of roughly 293,900 but only 760 Jews, reached a turning point of sorts in January 2009, during Israel's military campaign in Gaza. A small, mostly Jewish group held a demonstration that was billed as a peace rally but seen as a sign of support for Israel. This peaceful demonstration was cut short when the demonstrators were attacked by a much larger screaming mob of Muslims and Swedish leftists who threw bottles and firecrackers at them as police seemed unable to stop the mounting mayhem.
"I was very scared and upset at the same time," recalled Jehoshua Kaufman, a Jewish community leader. "Scared because there were a lot of angry people facing us, shouting insults and throwing bottles and firecrackers at the same time. The sound was very loud. And I was angry because we really wanted to go through with this demonstration, and we weren't allowed to finish it."
Alan Widman, who is a strapping 6-foot-tall member of parliament and a non-Jewish member of the Liberal Party who represents Malmo, said simply, "I have never been so afraid in my life."
The demonstrators were eventually evacuated by the police, who were not present in sufficient numbers to protect their rally. But some participants complained that the police's crowd-control dogs remained muzzled.
The Eilenbergs are not particularly religious, but they have a strong Jewish identity and felt unable to live in Malmo as Jews after this episode. Eilenberg said he knows at least 15 other Jewish families that are thinking about moving away.
Anti-Semitism in Europe has historically been associated with the far right, but the Jews interviewed for this article say that the threat in Sweden now comes from Muslims and from changing attitudes about Jews in the wider society.
Saeed Azams, Malmo's chief imam, who represents most of the city's Muslims, is quick to disavow and condemn violence against Malmo's Jews. Recently, he, along with Jewish leaders, have been participating in a dialogue group organized by city officials that seeks to address the issue. But Azams also downplayed the seriousness of the problem, saying there were "not more than 100 people, most under 18 years old," who engage in violence and belong to street gangs."There are some things I can't control," he said.
There are an estimated 45,000 Muslims in Malmo, or 15% of the city's population. Many of them are Palestinians, Iraqis and Somalis, or come from the former Yugoslavia.
But the problem is not just Muslims, and not just Malmo's.
A European Problem
A continentwide study, conducted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, released in December 2009, found that that 45.7% of the Europeans surveyed agree somewhat or strongly with the following statement: "Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians." And 37.4% agreed with this statement: "Considering Israel's policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews."
"[There is] quite a high level of anti-Semitism that is hidden beneath critics of Israel's policies," said Beate Kupper, one of the study's principal researchers, in a telephone interview with the Forward, citing this data and a tendency to "blame Jews in general for Israel's policies."
Kupper said that in places where there is a strong taboo against expressions of anti-Semitism, such as Germany, "Criticism of Israel is a great way to express your anti-Semitism in an indirect way."
According to Bassam Tibi, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Goettingen in Germany, and author of several books on the growth of Islam in Europe, Muslims form a significant subset of this problem. "The growth of the Muslim diaspora in Europe is affecting the Jews," Tibi said. Among some Muslim populations in Europe — though not all — "every Jew is seen as responsible for what Israel is doing and can be a target."
In Malmo, this population's role in the problem is seen as significant. Most of Malmo's Muslims live in Rosengard, the eastern part of this de facto segregated city, where the jobless rate is 80%. Satellite dishes dot the high-rise apartments to receive programming from Al-Jazeera and other Arabic-language cable networks that keep Malmo's Muslims in constant touch with the latest Arab-Israeli developments.
Sylvia Morfradakis, a European Union official who works with the chronically unemployed, those who have been without work for 10 to 15 years, said that the main reason that 80% to 90% of Muslims between the ages of 18 and 34 can't find jobs is that they can't speak Swedish.
"Swedish employers insist workers know Swedish well, even for the most menial jobs," Morfradakis said. She added, "The social welfare concept for helping without end does not give people the incentive to do something to make life better."
But Per Gudmundson, chief editorial writer for Svenska Dagbladet, a leading Swedish newspaper, is critical of politicians who blame anti-Semitic actions on Muslim living conditions. He said that these politicians offer "weak excuses" for Muslim teenagers accused of anti-Semitic crimes. "Politicians say these kids are poor and oppressed, and we have made them hate. They are, in effect, saying the behavior of these kids is in some way our fault," he said.
According to Gudmundson, some immigrants from Muslim countries come to Sweden as hardened anti-Semites.
The plight of the Jews worries Annelie Enochson, a Christian Democrat member of the Swedish Parliament. "If the Jews feel threatened in Sweden, then I am very frightened about the future of my country," she said in an interview with the Forward.
A Chabad rabbi's experience
Because he is the most visible Jew in Malmo, with his black fedora, tzitzit and long beard, Malmo's only rabbi, Shneur Kesselman, 31, is a prime target for Muslim anti-Jewish sentiment. The Orthodox Chabad rabbi said that during his six years in the city, he has been the victim of more than 50 anti-Semitic incidents. An American, Kesselman is a soft spoken man with a steely determination to stay in Malmo despite the danger.
Two members of the American Embassy in Stockholm visited him in April to discuss his safety. From Keselman's account, they had good reason to worry.
The rabbi recalled the day he was crossing a street near his house with his wife when a car suddenly went into reverse and sped backward toward them. They dodged the vehicle and barely made it to the other side of the street. "My wife was screaming," the rabbi said. "It was a traumatic event."
Local newspapers report that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Malmo doubled in 2009 from 2008, though police could not confirm this. Meanwhile, Fredrik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Malmo Jewish community, estimates that the already small Jewish population is shrinking by 5% a year. "Malmo is a place to move away from," he said, citing anti-Semitism as the primary reason. "The community was twice as large two decades ago." The synagogue on Foreningsgatan, a fashionable street, has elaborate security. Reflecting the level of fear, the building's glass is not just bullet-proof, Jewish communal officials say; it's rocket-proof. Guards check strangers seeking to enter the synagogue.
Some Jewish parents try to protect their children by moving to neighborhoods where there are fewer Muslims in the schools so that confrontations will be minimized. Six Jewish teenagers interviewed recounted anti-Semitic abuse from Muslim classmates. According to their families, though the incidents were reported to the authorities, none of the perpetrators was arrested, much less punished.
One victim was Jonathan Tsubarah, 19, the son of an Israeli Jew who settled in Sweden. As he strolled through the city's cobble-stoned Gustav Adolph Square on August 21, 2009, three young men — a Palestinian and two Somalis — stopped him and asked where he was from, he recalled.
"I'm from Israel," Tsubarah responded.
"I'm from Palestine," one assailant retorted, "and I will kill you."
The three beat him to the ground and kicked him in the back, Tsubarah said. "Kill the Jew," they shouted. "Now are you proud to be a Jew?"
"No I am not," the slightly built teenager replied. He said he did this just to get them to stop kicking him. Tsubarah plans to go to Israel and join the army.
Weak government response
Many Jews fault Swedish police for not cracking down on anti-Semitism. Most hate crimes in Malmo are acts of vandalism, said Susanne Gosenius, head of the newly created hate crime unit of the Malmo Police Department These include painted swastikas on buildings. According to Gosenius, police do not give priority to this type of crime. "It's very rare that police find the perpetrators," she said. "Swedes don't understand why swastikas are bad and how they offend Jews." According to Gosenius, 30% of the hate crimes in the Malmo region are anti-Semitic.
Members of Parliament have attended anti-Israel rallies where the Israeli flag was burned while the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah were waved, and the rhetoric was often anti-Semitic—not just anti-Israel. But such public rhetoric is not branded hateful and denounced, said Henrik Bachner, a writer and professor of history at the University of Lund, near Malmo.
"Sweden is a microcosm of contemporary anti-Semitism," said Charles Small, director of the Yale University Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism. "It's a form of acquiescence to radical Islam, which is diametrically opposed to everything Sweden stands for."
A dialogue initiative
The situation has generated some points of potential light. Recently, Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmo, convened a "dialogue forum" that includes leaders of the Jewish and Muslim communities, as well as city officials, to improve social relations in the city and the city government's response to conflicts.
During an interview in his office, Imam Saeed Azams said it was wrong to blame Swedish Jews for Israel's actions. The wheelchair-bound Azams stressed the importance of teaching young Muslims to stop equating the Jews of Malmo with Israel. But this seemed to include an assumption that Jews, in turn, should not permit themselves to be seen as pro-Israel.
"Because Jewish society in Sweden does not condemn the clearly illegal actions of Israel," he said, "then ordinary people think the Jews here are allied to Israel, but this is not true."
The imam is an advocate of dialogue with Jewish leaders, and welcomed the creation of the dialogue forum. Reepalu, Malmo's mayor, has appointed Bjorn Lagerback, a psychologist, to take charge of the newly formed forum. And Sieradzki, the Jewish community leader, was optimistic about its prospects to eventually improve relations.
Reepalu created the forum in the wake of last year's violence against the Jewish demonstrators and his own controversial remarks that angered Jews. Saying that he condemned both Zionism and anti-Semitism, Reepalu criticized Malmo Jews for not taking a stand against Israel's invasion of Gaza. "Instead," he said, "they chose to arrange a demonstration in the center of Malmo, a demonstration that people could misinterpret."
Interviewed at Malmo's city hall, Lagerback acknowledged an "awful situation" in Rosengard, where fire trucks and ambulances are often stoned by angry Muslim youth when the emergency vehicles go there. But like the imam, he hastened to add that those engaging in violence were a small number of young people. He attributed such behavior to living conditions of poverty, overcrowding and unemployment, as well as to cultural differences.
Swedish experts agree that integration of Muslims into Swedish society has failed, and this undermines the development of a more diverse society. Many pupils in heavily Muslim schools reject the authority of female teachers.
"We are Swedish but second- or third-class citizens," said Mohammed Abnalheja, vice president of the Palestinian Home Association in Malmo. The organization teaches children of Palestinian descent about their bond to a Palestinian homeland. "We have a right to our country, Palestine," he said. "Palestine is now occupied by Zionists."
Abnalheja was born to Palestinian parents in Baghdad and came to Malmo with his parents in 1996. He has never been to the place he calls Palestine.
Meanwhile, 86-year-old Judith Popinski says she is no longer invited to schools that have a large Muslim presence to tell her story of surviving the Holocaust.
Popinski found refuge in Malmo in 1945. Until recently, she told her story in Malmo schools as part of their Holocaust studies program. Now, some schools no longer ask Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, because Muslim students treat them with such disrespect, either ignoring the speakers or walking out of the class.
"Malmo reminds me of the anti-Semitism I felt as a child in Poland before the war," she told the Forward while sitting in her living room, which is adorned with Persian rugs and many paintings.
"I am not safe as a Jew in Sweden anymore," a trembling Popinski said in a frail voice. But unlike others, she intends to stay in Sweden. "I will not be a victim again," she said.
Contact Donald Snyder at feedback@forward.com
[Updated on: Mon, 12 July 2010 17:57]
The optimist says the glass is half full, the pessimist that it is half empty.
The engineer says the container is twice the size it needs to be.
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| | Topic: The Frankenstein Factor: Scientists Come Closer to Creating a New Life Form |
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| The Frankenstein Factor: Scientists Come Closer to Creating a New Life Form [message #93098] |
Wed, 10 September 2008 07:09 |
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I found this fascinating article today in Wired magazine. It's about how close science is coming to infusing inanimate material with life and thereby creating a new life not based on any currently existing life template.
This project, I believe, holds tremendous ethical and moral, as well as scientific and cosmological, implications. Does this give us any indication of how life began on our planet, giving us insight into our own origins? What could be the consequences of constructing new life for us...and for the new life form created? How far should science go in this endeavor? And, most important to me, What are its possible implications for space colonization and future terraforming of inhospitable planets? I mean, if they can create life based on a whole different model, could they make it so it survives in climate where we can't, and could that ever be used in terraforming to make a previously inhospitable planet, well...finally hospitable for us? Finally, does this hold any implications for the value and uniquesness of life itself?
I hope to hear your thoughts on these issues. The article itself is a fascinating read.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/biologists-on-t.h tml?npu=1&mbid=yhp
Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life
By Alexis Madrigal
September 08, 2008
A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life.
It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.
Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.
While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the Origin of Life in Florence, Italy, last week. The replication isn't wholly autonomous, so it's not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.
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| | Topic: Ahmed Maher's internet activism |
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| Ahmed Maher's internet activism [message #88580] |
Sat, 02 August 2008 21:30 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
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When Egyptian factory workers, unhappy with their low pay, began talking about a national strike earlier this year, Ahmed Maher, 27, decided to help out the best way he knew how: by starting a group on Facebook. His anti-government page on the popular social-networking website soon attracted over 60,000 members. But it also drew the attention of Egypt’s feared state security agents, who arrested him and subjected him to 12 hours of torture. Now free, Maher says that he will continue to fight for democracy.
(....)
I think the Egyptian people can be broken into two groups. The first is human beings who think and have ideas and analyse the world; the others are just melons. They eat and sleep and work and don’t think about anything else. I got involved in politics because I believe thinking human beings have a duty to change the melons into thinking human beings too.
There is a historical problem with politics here: everyone thinks it's too dangerous to get involved. But during the 2005 elections there was a lot of political activism and there were demonstrations every day. Later on, when the American government realised that it was in their best interests for Mubarak to stay in power, they started ignoring issues like torture. Political activism became dangerous, and people started to seek refuge on the internet.
Being involved in politics is usually about joining some organisation or other, but that route is blocked to us by Egypt's state security. People might think it's time for a change but they have no outlet. If our parents had rebelled our lives would not be like this; if we do it now maybe we can create a better future for our children.
This isn’t about a revolution – people are afraid of revolutions. The situation here is a crisis. No one can bear any more of it, but they don’t want to revolt because it could lead to chaos and that would be just as bad. What they want is an organised, peaceful process of change.
I know it's a long journey, but I think we will get there, to real democracy (not just a game like the one we have now), one in which power is decentralised and officials are accountable for the decisions they make; where people can make their own decisions and the government uses the country’s resources well.
We have to get rid of the fear people have of politics. They think that if they get involved they will be abused and oppressed. Democracy is a hard, long goal; a government like this, with so much centralised power, will never give the people their rights. We have to demand them.
http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=653&a mp;catID=1
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| | Topic: The return of the immigrant's son |
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| The return of the immigrant's son [message #74310] |
Thu, 10 April 2008 08:59 |
Michael II
Messages: 1034
Registered: September 2006
Location: Europe |
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Here's something amusing that many people can probably relate to: an immigrant's son returns to the homeland, but doesn't speak the language - basically a leftover of the Middle Ages. So he signs up to learn it in a remote area.
The twist is that the son is American and the language he is learning is Irish. Oh, and he's s stand-up comedian:
http://www.rte.ie/tv/inthenameofthefada/watchtheshow.html
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| | Topic: China Admits Recent Protest in Muslim Province |
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| China Admits Recent Protest in Muslim Province [message #72948] |
Wed, 02 April 2008 16:23 |
Jacob Blues
Messages: 4650
Registered: November 2006
Location: New York City |
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April 2, 2008
New York Times
China Admits Recent Protest in Muslim Province
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
SHANGHAI — Acknowledging a recent protest in the Muslim, northwestern province of Xinjian, the Chinese government has announced that Islamic separatist groups are seeking to foment unrest there.
The demonstration, which appears to have been quickly suppressed, took place in the town of Khotan on March 23, at a time when China was already grappling with widespread protests in Tibet and in neighboring provinces to the south and east of Xinjiang where Tibetans live in large numbers.
The news of the protest in Xinjiang underscored the breadth of China’s problems with ethnic and religious minority groups in the country’s vast western regions, where there is a long history of unhappiness with Chinese rule.
“A small number of elements tried to incite splittism, create disturbances in the market place and even trick the masses into an uprising,” a statement published on the Web site of the Khotan government said Wednesday in the first acknowledgment of the disturbances.
Uighur residents of Khotan reached by telephone either claimed not to understand Chinese or refused to talk about recent events there. But Han residents said that as many as 500 members of China’s Uighur minority group protested in the center of the city. Some reports have said the Uighurs, who are Muslim, were objecting to restrictions on wearing Islamic scarves and head coverings. Some interviewees, however, said the protesters were seeking independence. The demonstrators were quickly arrested by security forces who took control of the area.
Zhu Linxiu, a senior police official in Khotan, declined to comment in detail about the incident, saying it was “inappropriate to publicize.” He refused to confirm the number of protesters or arrests, but said the demonstrators were “instigated by bad elements.”
Two weeks before the reported protest in Khotan, China announced the discovery of what it called a terrorist plot in Xinjiang, which it said involved the smuggling of combustible liquids onto a commercial airliner by a Uighur woman who had spent time in neighboring Pakistan.
Officials called the incident part of a terrorist campaign by a radical Islamic independence group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Uighur groups have denied the reports, and called them part of an effort to justify heavily stepped-up security in the region and the suppression of dissent before the Olympics.
In recent days, Beijing has also accused supporters of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of plotting a suicide bombing campaign against China, as part of a separatist campaign.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International criticized the government for its crackdown on protest in Tibetan areas of China, and said the country’s efforts to silence dissidents before the Olympics violated Beijing’s pledges to improve human rights before it hosts the games in August. “The Olympic Games have so far failed to act as a catalyst for reform,” the international human rights groups said in a statement. “Unless urgent steps are taken to redress the situation, a positive human rights legacy for the Beijing Olympics looks increasingly beyond reach.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, denounced the Amnesty statement as “biased,” saying “anyone planning to use the Olympics to threaten China, or planning to put pressure on China, has miscalculated.”
Like Tibetans in Tibet, Uighurs have historically been the predominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, indigenous groups have chafed at the arrival of large numbers of migrants from China’s Han majority, who have been spurred on in recent years by official government encouragement of western migration by Han.
Uighurs, like Tibetans, have complained over economic domination by the recent Han arrivals, over the predominance of Han in senior government and Communist Party posts in the province and over what they perceive as heavy-handed Chinese government control over their religious activities.
In telephone interviews, Han residents of Khotan and nearby areas said there was a long history of distrust and tension between Han and Uighur communities. Some Han migrants insisted the atmosphere remained volatile, and said that the Uighurs had been inspired by the recent Tibetan unrest.
“Some of jobless people here have heard about the situation Tibet, and they also want to make trouble,” said Wang Guoliang, a Han grocery store owner in Khotan. “They want independence and they want to expel the Han, who they dislike. Most of the main cadres in the Party, from counties and the cities to the provincial level are all Hans, while the local level officials are Uighur.” Mr. Wang called the purging of Uighur officials several years ago after a previous bout of tension “the root of the protest.”
Another Han, a clerk in a local bank who would only give his name as Chen, said there had been a long history of discontent in the region, and that people had been “on the lookout” since mid-March. At his bank, Mr. Chen said there had been grumblings over the restrictions on Muslim headgear, which he disagreed with, saying: “It is their national custom and we should respect it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/world/asia/03china.html?_r =1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=12071484 03-XT1gPS0dMyTZrlf1Haq9nQ
[Updated on: Wed, 02 April 2008 16:23]
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| | Topic: North Korea.... |
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| North Korea.... [message #68037] |
Wed, 05 March 2008 21:21 |
Tess
Messages: 2075
Registered: January 2008 |
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Well, I have been thinking, if you want to take down a Superpower, you do it by overextending it. I have found it funny that Chavez moved troops to the Columbian border just days after the USS Cole arrived in Lebanon. Given that Chavez seems to have a cozy relationship with Iran. So, then I thought I wonder what their other ally is doing. So, I looked up the news of North Korea.
Honestly, everytime I read something new on North Korea, I wonder how long until the economic situation crumbles the country.
For anyone interested:
North Koreans 'shot at frontier'
North Korea has executed 15 people in public for trying to flee or help others to escape across the border into China, according to an aid group.
Good Friends, based in South Korea, said the 13 women and two men were shot on a bridge in the north-eastern town of Onseong two weeks ago.
The aid group said those executed had been trying to get economic help from relatives already in China.
Tens of thousands of North Koreans are thought to be in hiding in China.
In a newsletter, Good Friends said residents who witnessed the shooting were shocked at the harshness of the punishment. Some were crying at the scene, it reported.
The group quoted a woman as saying: "Everyone is anxious about a lack of food. The shooting has made people angry."
'Shot as a warning'
A local North Korean official is also quoted in the newsletter.
"It has become a daily routine for a few residents to disappear and illegally cross the border to visit relatives in China," he is reported as saying.
"We shot them to send a warning to people over this."
There has been no official word from North Korea on the executions and South Korea's Unification Ministry said it could not confirm the report.
Acute food shortages have led to thousands of North Koreans fleeing their homeland through China.
Food aid
Many hope to make their way to South Korea - the Unification Ministry in Seoul says more than 12,000 North Koreans have fled to the south since the 1950-53 Korean War.
Others cross the border into China with the intention of returning with food supplies.
North Korea received hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food aid last year, more than half of it from Seoul.
An unusually dry and mild winter has raised fears of worse shortages to come.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7279996.s tm
Force is a physical power; I do not see how its effects could produce morality. -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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| | Topic: 911 Conspiracies |
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| 911 Conspiracies [message #66256] |
Wed, 20 February 2008 09:35 |
Walid 
Messages: 14089
Registered: October 2006 |
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911 conspiracies are outnumbering the JFK ones now but some are more plausible than others. This one asks some short but very pertinent questions:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9124194186333362123
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| | Forum: Cinema |
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| Topic: Brandenburg goes Israel & Palestine |
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| Brandenburg goes Israel & Palestine [message #116713] |
Sun, 11 April 2010 23:11 |
Michael II
Messages: 1034
Registered: September 2006
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Producer Stefan Arndt (X Filme Creative Pool) and the Medienboard will be presenting the film "The White Ribbon" in Tel Aviv as part of a business trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories with Matthias Platzeck, Minister President of the State of Brandenburg. On the schedule for the Palestinian territories is a visit to a cinema in Jenin that is currently being reconstructed and is the subject of the documentary film "Cinema Jenin." For more information, please visit www.zab-brandenburg.de.
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| | Topic: Coincidence! |
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| | Topic: O'Horton |
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| O'Horton [message #110887] |
Sat, 17 October 2009 03:22 |
whodey
Messages: 5179
Registered: December 2006 |
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In the little town where I currently am, there is only one movie theater. But they do have a "cinema society" and every Sunday at 4.30 they show some "not your run of the mill -movies".
Last year while I was here, it seemed to be an Israeli film festival, for three weeks in a row the movies were Israeli-made. This year they seem to be more international , last week was Sin Nombre (Honduran teenager Sayra reunites with her father, an opportunity for her to potentially realize her dream of a life in the U.S. Moving to Mexico is the first step in a fateful journey of unexpected events)and this Sunday it's a Norwegian film called O'Horton.
Here is a short description - I will go see it, maybe it will help me understand Norwegian humor better 
"After forty long, hardworking years, sixty-seven-year-old Odd Horten (veteran actor Bård Owe, frequently cast by Lars von Trier) retires from his dutiful, comfortably routine position as a train engineer. With his new-found freedom and lack of daily structure, Horten finds it increasingly difficult to adapt to his new and unruly existence as a pensioner. Little does he know that his uneventful way of living is about to take an invigoratingly quirky turn, as he will soon discover that life still has much more in store for him. Instead of sitting back and enjoying his well-earned retirement, he finds himself wedged in the centre of gradually more awkward affairs. Horten becomes increasingly involved in the bizarrely unconventional as he meets new friends, rekindles old flames, wears sexy red high heels and finds himself accepting a ride from a blindfolded automobile driver. Dimitri Eipides (http://tiff08.ca/filmsandschedules/films/ohorten)"
Wonder if Magnus is familiar with or ever heard of this movie?
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| | Topic: Va, vis et deviens |
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| Va, vis et deviens [message #109052] |
Mon, 29 June 2009 17:55 |
zvi
Messages: 207
Registered: November 2007
Location: montreal |
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Not sure when I first heard about this movie, but I overheard some teenage girls recommending it to someone else and decided to take a look myself. It is a truly moving story which touches on many of the complexities of modern Israeli society.
I do not want to publish the plot summary which gives too much away, but the following user comments do portray it nicely:
Fascinating, Moving Story of a Falasha, 1 May 2005
8/10
Author: genevadavid from Switzerland
Twenty-four hours after seeing this extraordinary, multi-layered film about a boy who is airlifted out of Ethiopia and brought to Israel, I am still reviewing images in my mind and wondering at the courage and audacity that must have been necessary to bring this story to the screen.
Salomon was nine years old, living in a desperate refugee camp in Sudan. In late 1984, there was a covert Israeli-American operation to save Ethiopian Jews, known as Falashas, by airlifting them to Israel. The Falashas, are a small branch of the Diaspora. But as they lined up for their exodus, Salomon's mother tells him firmly to "go, live and become", the title of the movie. She saw in the exodus an opportunity for her son to escape the death, disease, famine and civil war that were ravaging Ethiopia. Salomon's mother would stay behind.
The trauma of being told by his mother to leave was already strong stuff. But there is more; Salomon is not even a Falasha. So the arrival in modern Israel is a double shock for him. However, Salomon becomes Schlomo, and we see that he is a quick learner. He learns Hebrew and, when he is adopted by a bi-lingual French-Hebrew family, he learns French, too.
However, Schlomo has a persistent and profound desire to see his mother again. He is wounded. On top of that injury, he has to deal with racism and bigotry in Israel, while hiding the fact that he is not a Falasha. Schlomo carries a lot of emotional baggage, but he has some good people rooting for him. Like the Yarom and Yael, the couple who adopt Schlomo, and Sara, the girl who has him firmly in her sights. The story of Schlomo's trials and tribulations is moving on several levels.
What makes this film audacious is that it confronts the question "who is a Jew". The answer is not self-evident. Indeed, the question has been the subject of impassioned debate in Israel for years. The Falashas are just one case study. It is simply remarkable that someone would make a film that touches on this issue. Bravo!
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| | Topic: Israeli films at Cannes |
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| Israeli films at Cannes [message #105908] |
Fri, 24 April 2009 15:55 |
Michael II
Messages: 1034
Registered: September 2006
Location: Europe |
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I just recevied an e-mail from the German film promo people about their movies at the 62nd Cannes fest. They include two co-productions with Israel:
"The Israeli-French-German co-production JAFFA by Keren Yedaya will be shown in the Official Program's Special Screenings . The German producer is Rohfilm/ Berlin&Leipzig. The film tells the story of Jewish Mali and the Arab worker Taufik, whose secret love affair is met by great difficulties when Mali accidentally gets pregnant.
The co-production EYES WIDE OPEN by Haim Tabakman (IL/DE/FR) will be presented in the Official Program's Un Certain Regard . Riva Film/ Hamburg is the German co-producer of the film which recounts a gay love story in Jerusalem doomed because of social and religious barriers"
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| | Topic: Palestinian Film Wins at Dubai Film Fest |
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| Palestinian Film Wins at Dubai Film Fest [message #100729] |
Sun, 21 December 2008 09:38 |
Walid
Messages: 14089
Registered: October 2006 |
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Canada Park, a Jewish post-67 settlement built on the ruins of a destroyed Palestinian village is the subject of the Palestinian documentary that won at Dubai:
Palestinian project wins 2008 Dubai Film Fest for best Arabic documentary
Date: 20 / 12 / 2008 Time: 21:40
Bethlehem - Ma’an – A Palestinian documentary won first prize in the Arabic category in the third annual Dubai Film Festival on Friday.
The film, Dhakirat As-Subbar “Cactus Memory,” was produced by the Human Rights organization Al-Haq and directed by Hana Musleh.
The 42 minute documentary narrates the story of the expulsion of the residents of the Al-Latrun villages (including A’mwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba) west of Jerusalem. The villages were destroyed by the Israeli army during the 1967 war and replaced by an Israeli settlement, Canada Park, built with funds from the National Jewish Fund of Canada.
Director Hana Musleh told a gulf newspaper that he expected to win the prize, since the scale of the project was large and it was made under very difficult circumstances. He said winning the competition affirmed for him that Palestine is in the heart of all Arabs.
The first place award comes with a 500,000 US dollar prize, and was judged by a panel of cinema critics from around the world. The festival includes categories for short, documentary and narrative films.
Also of note was the first place finish of Palestinian – American Director Ann Mary Jaser’s script for her film “Salt of this Sea.” When accepting the award Jaser dedicated the achievement to the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist Muntadher Az-Zeidi.
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| | Topic: Zeitgeist |
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| Zeitgeist [message #100014] |
Mon, 08 December 2008 22:41 |
whodey 
Messages: 5179
Registered: December 2006 |
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I dont know if any of you have seen the documentary "Zeitgeist" or heard of it.
I was recently told by a good friend that I should watch it.
I am sure some of you will call it "the mother of all conspiracy theories" 
But there are a lot of things in there that cannot easily be dismissed and make you go "huh?" 
I have to warn you, it's a bit long - a little over two hours. But it comes in three parts and can be watched one part at a time. The first part deals with religion, focusing on Christianity, the second one with 9/11 and the last with the Federal Reserve.
I would really be interested to hear peoples opinion on the theories ( conspiracy or not) that are stated here.
Anyone game? Here is the link ( you dont have to download it, but can stream it).
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197
It's starts out a bit slow, and you just get a black screen for a few minutes with audio only, and then there are some very graphic images of violence, but dont give up right away, ok? Or, if you prefer, you can start at 9 minutes into the stream, which is where the real movie starts.
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| | Topic: Euromed provides support for Mediterranean cinema |
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| Euromed provides support for Mediterranean cinema [message #98578] |
Fri, 21 November 2008 22:50 |
Michael II
Messages: 1034
Registered: September 2006
Location: Europe |
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I like the definition of Mediterranean cinema, as it covers an awful lot of ground.
The Euromed body has been supporting various projects from Israel, Egypt and Lebanon. They have just announced films that will recevie support for distribution and promotion.
http://www.euromedaudiovisuel.net/newsdetail.aspx?lang=en&am p;treeID=74&documentID=10201
"Bashir" is in there (it's making waves in the UK for the moment), but also coincidentally "Sous les bombes" by Philippe Aractingi (Lebanon).
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| | Topic: The War Tapes |
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| | Topic: Zrubavel |
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| Zrubavel [message #97758] |
Wed, 05 November 2008 07:02 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
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Last week a film made by Shmuel Beru, an Ethiopian actor who has never studied movie-making, won an award at the Haifa Film Festival.
For him, this was more than just a personal achievement, it was an achievement for an entire community. "Zrubavel" is essentially the first Israeli film created by a team of Ethiopian Israelis. The screenwriter and the director, the actors and the composer who wrote the film score - all of them are Israelis of Ethiopian origin, who enthusiastically devoted themselves to this project, practically on a volunteer basis.
(...)
"I felt a responsibility toward the community from which I come. I didn't want to represent them as people who made a nice film, and that's all," continued Beru. "No! It was important for me that they [the characters] come out very strong, not apologetic.
(...)
"To me, the character of the father in the film is a summary of the story of the Ethiopian Jew," says Beru. "I feel [the family] is a representative example of an Ethiopian family that comes to a certain place, thinking it will be warmly received there, as part of the ingathering of the exiles, but that is not what happens, and there is a terrible disappointment. Despite this, the father tries to raise his children to love their country - his is as patriotic as they come - and when everything starts to fall apart, he is still optimistic. For me, that is the message of this film: Even when you are in the deepest pit, be strong, because life is stronger than anything, and the fact that society does not accept you is irrelevant."
What Beru expresses here is, in reality, what every immigrant who comes here feels but never shares. But if you read the article through you will not only see his history, you will find out also that no TV company has approached him to screen it. That is where his experience differs from that of other immigrant groups.
Beru says the outline of the next film he is planning is already sitting in a drawer. It is a story that has yet to be told, he says, about the journey of Ethiopian Jews on their way to Israel - the long treks on foot, the perils along the way and the strong faith that enabled them to survive the grueling journey.
"I want to tell this story first-hand, with someone who experienced it, not from the perspective of someone from the outside analyzing what happened," says Beru. "I want to make something that people will see and say, 'Wow, I salute you. Now I feel that I know you better. I'm pleased to meet you, and that's it, I won't curse anymore, won't call you nigger. Truly, I mean it. From now on we will accept you to whatever school you want, and you won't have to come to a job interview and be told the position is already filled. It will be okay.'
"And yes, I really believe this is possible. I believe that the media can make a difference."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1034197.html
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| | Topic: In the Valley of Elah |
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| In the Valley of Elah [message #97509] |
Thu, 30 October 2008 05:48 |
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I missed this in the theatres, but saw it on HBO. It is the story of the family of a soldier who was in Iraq, came home and died under mysterious circumstances. The soldier's father is a retired Army noncom and relentlessly pursues the truth behind the son's death. I'm given to understand it was based loosely on an actual incident.
It's hard to watch. But gives some insight into why so many of our returning soldiers have mental health issues.
It stars Tommie Lee Jones.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Isaac Asimov
Mark of Lewiston
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| | Topic: Graduation |
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| Graduation [message #95673] |
Fri, 03 October 2008 15:46 |
sh
Messages: 8918
Registered: December 2006
Location: Israel |
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This film is in the process of being made in Hebron by young film director Yaelle Kayam. It will be released in April 2009.
Hebron is the site for what its Israeli makers claim is the first fictional feature film ever to be shot in the city.
The city has become a byword for some of the sharpest tensions on the West Bank. It is the only West Bank city where Jewish settlers live in the midst of Palestinians.
The plot of Graduation is slender: it tells the story of a young Palestinian woman called Ayat, who is played by 23-year-old actress Yousra Barakat.
Ayat is attempting to reach her college graduation on the night of the Jewish festival of Purim. The Palestinians in the centre of the city are under curfew, so that the Jewish settlers can hold their Purim parade - a wild whirligig of coloured lights, loud music, fancy dress and feverish dancing.
I wanted to make the smallest story I could possibly tell, so that people could identify with it, but also say to themselves, 'This is really crazy, how can people live like this?' But yet this is the routine
Ayat decides, along with her younger brother, to break the curfew. Theirs is an attempted journey past roadblocks, sealed entrances and checkpoints, and past soldiers and settlers.
Ms Kayam believes that the majority of people in Israel are "not aware at all" about what life is like for Palestinians in Hebron, or how the settlers behave.
She says that when she showed friends in Tel Aviv some of the earlier material she had shot, from the Purim parade, they thought that it had all been staged.
The article then goes on to describe the house in which one of the scenes is being shot and ends:
Zlika does have another doorway she can use, but it takes her on a much longer detour, through several more checkpoints, to get to where she wants to go.
At least she does have another entrance. That is an improvement over the Qafisha family, who live a short walk away, and whose house has also been the site for some of the filming.
Five years ago, their only door to the street was welded shut by the Israeli army. Since then, the 10 members of the family - from grandparents to grandchildren - have a rather more complicated route to the outside.
They have to ascend uneven, switchback stone steps, stooping to avoid the ceiling, in order to reach their roof. There they cross through a ragged hole in an outside wall on to their neighbours' roof.
They then make their way down a series of steep stairways to the neighbouring doorway.
The older women of the family say that they have been left depressed and sometimes injured by the ordeal of just coming and going from their home.
Graduation is due to premiere next April. It is a work of fiction. But only just.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7649354.stm
[Updated on: Fri, 03 October 2008 15:47]
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| | Topic: Hot Fuzz |
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| | Topic: Israeli actor feels he is Saddam |
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| Israeli actor feels he is Saddam [message #91823] |
Mon, 01 September 2008 12:47 |
tsedek
Messages: 5184
Registered: May 2007
Location: Ramat-Gan |
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Igal Naor raised the roof playing Saddam Hussein in the BBC drama series 'The House of Saddam'.
His portrayal of the Iraqi ruler is "beyond acting, it's just being," says Naor. "I am him, and he is me." What, he is Saddam? "Yes. I won't kill you, but it's me," he says. "You don't find many opportunities to play someone that you know is you, perfectly you. The soul, the essence, we share it, me and him. I was astonished to realise that, but playing him, I felt that everything he did was exactly what I would do if I were in his place." We are talking about the ruthless dictator, torturer and murderer of thousands, including close friends, long-time colleagues and family-in-law? "I understood him perfectly," says Naor. "It is something that is connected with childhood, with pains that you have in your first years."
(He goes on to explain his childhood and "He grew up feeling different. "I thought, I don't speak the language, I don't belong to you ... and life is a fight, a struggle and you have to change the world," he says. "Sometimes you realise that the biggest revolutionaries just wanted to change something in their childhood that was painful - and Saddam was a socialist revolutionary in the beginning. He did many great things for his country at first, like building a health system, education and nationalising oil revenues. And then he took the country to war with Iran and destroyed everything."
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More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/26/television.bbc /print
It Is A Sin To Kill In God's Name
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| | Topic: Matabb |
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| Matabb [message #91807] |
Mon, 01 September 2008 09:42 |
tsedek
Messages: 5184
Registered: May 2007
Location: Ramat-Gan |
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Palestinian soap opera depicts daily life under occupation
First Palestinian made soap opera to debut on first day of Ramadan; faces competition from other shows
Roni Shaked
Published: 08.31.08, 10:09 / Israel Culture
Day to day life in the Palestinian Authority from a comedic point of view and an unavoidable love story are just some of the plot elements of 'Matabb' (speed bump in Arabic), a Palestinian soap opera set to debut on Monday, the first day of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3589881,00.html
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(Anyone notice I miss tv?  )
It Is A Sin To Kill In God's Name
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| | Topic: Mongol |
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| Mongol [message #86206] |
Sun, 13 July 2008 07:28 |
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While visiting my daughter, I got to see this bio-pic about Genghis Kahn's early life - from the age of 10 to his ascendancy over all Mongolia. I appears to be a joint Mongol-Russian-Chinese production in the Mongol language with subtitles.
Apparently in the US, it has limited distribution only in metropolitan areas.
I recommend it. It's a far cry from the John Wayne movie of the late 50s. 
It has a feel of historical authenticity. Best of all - no modern politics!
[Updated on: Sun, 13 July 2008 07:29]
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent - Isaac Asimov
Mark of Lewiston
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| | Topic: Bruriah |
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| Bruriah [message #85388] |
Sat, 05 July 2008 11:10 |
Walid
Messages: 14089
Registered: October 2006 |
Member |
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New film coming out in Israel and promising to be controversial on the role of women in Jewish life, from Haaretz today:
The Makings of History / Coming to a theater near you
By Tom Segev
One cloudy day in Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 years ago, the city's sages sat listening to a woman named Bruria. It is said that on that day she instructed them on 300 points of rabbinical law. In the history of Judaism there has never been another woman who enjoyed such authority. Dalia Hoshen, who wrote a biography of Bruria, has described her as a Tannait, a Mishnaic sage. In the Talmud she comes across as knowledgeable, opinionated, blunt, tough, and with a violent streak. There was also a terrible scandal linked to her, which was kept secret until Rashi revealed it after a delay of several centuries. Now this secret is at the center of a new feature film, "Bruria," directed by Avraham Kushnir.
Bruria often insulted people - kicking some, mocking others - in what can almost be called a feminist spirit. A certain Yossi Hagalili once stopped her and asked: "Which road should we take to get to the city of Lod?" Instead of showing him the way, she called him "a stupid Galilean" and rebuked him scornfully: A Hebrew man must not speak much to a woman; it would have sufficed had he asked "Which way to Lod?"
It is not clear how Bruria acquired her knowledge of rabbinical law. Perhaps it came from her father, also a Tannai and one of those "Asara harugei malhut," meaning the ten martyrs executed by the Romans. Bruria was married to another well-known Tannai, Rabbi Meir. They had two sons, both of whom died on the same day, a Sabbath. Bruria laid them on a bed and covered them with a sheet. On Saturday evening, at the end of the Sabbath, Rabbi Meir returned from the study hall and asked where his sons were. Bruria evaded the question and instead gave her husband havdalah wine (drunk in the ritual to mark the end of the Sabbath), served him a meal, and launched into a conversation about the laws of deposits. In this context, Rabbi Meir said that a person who receives a deposit as a surety must return it. Bruria then took him up to the bedroom and removed the sheet that covered the two dead children. The father burst into bitter tears, but his wife, who apparently had no feelings, commented: "Didn't you tell me that we have to return a surety to its owner? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, may the name of the Lord be blessed."
Nearly 800 years after the two children passed away, the following story appeared in Rashi's commentary on the Talmud: Bruria was arguing with her husband about the verse "Women are light-minded." The meaning of these words is debated; they could refer to sexual licentiousness. Bruria argued against such an interpretation. Her husband's reply was that she would eventually admit that it was true, and he secretly sent someone to seduce her. Bruria submitted to her seducer's charms. But once she found out that her husband had been behind it all, she committed suicide. A huge scandal erupted, Rabbi Meir was unable to remain in Jerusalem and he went into exile in Babylon.
The film, which premieres at the Jerusalem Film Festival this month, depicts a crisis in the life of a modern ultra-Orthodox family, which in certain aspects resembles the story of Bruria and Rabbi Meir. Its plot is based on the assumption that it was not by chance that Judaism concealed this story, which contains a message of equality between the sexes.
Dalia Hoshen's book, "Beruria the Tannait: A Theological Reading of a Female Mishnaic Scholar" (University Press of America, 2007), has thus far been published only in English. Hoshen, a researcher of the Talmud, says one must distinguish between the Talmudic Bruria, who is deserving of admiration as a Tannait, and the post-Talmudic Bruria, the protagonist of the very embarrassing "tale of Bruria." Hoshen, who lectured this year at The College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel, says that this story "somehow got itself mixed up" into Rashi's writings, perhaps under the influence of similar stories she says exist in the heritage of Islam.
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| | Topic: Go in Peace, Jamil |
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| Go in Peace, Jamil [message #82194] |
Sun, 01 June 2008 12:12 |
Michael II
Messages: 1034
Registered: September 2006
Location: Europe |
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I haven't seen this, so I'm only going on the attached feature.
"Go With Peace Jamil"
Ancient Grudge and New Mutiny
Palestinian-Danish director Omar Shargawi casts the warring Shia and Sunni factions in contemporary Copenhagen as modern-day Montagues and Capulets
http://www.cineuropa.org/ffocus.aspx?lang=en&documentID= 84441&treeID=1564
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