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Or see 2013 blog entries below
- June 29, 2013 Ben Gurion Airport June 29, 2013I am sitting in Ben Gurion Airport watching all the Christian pilgrims leaving the Holy Land. We are traveling on the Sabbath so we are avoiding the ultra Orthodox Jews and yes, I am doing my own racial profiling, but they look like goyim, have southern accents, are smiling in that unambivalent kind of way, ...
- June 25, 2013 Qalqilya: The Ariel Finger June 25, 2013After seeing patients in a PMRS clinic in Qalqilya, a northern West Bank city located against the Green Line, I join Suhad Hashem, an extraordinary, feisty activist for a “wall tour” of the city, the first city to be completely encircled by the separation wall in 2002. This is my third tour in nine ...
- June 24, 2013 Nablus: Resilience and Resourcefulness June 24, 2013The drive to Nablus is uneventful, unlike the experience of two of our delegates who got stuck in a massive four hour happening at a checkpoint that involved many IDF and tanks and lots of waiting and cigarette smoking and no clear explanations. The Al Yasmeen Hotel on the edge of the Old City, seems ...
- June 23, 2013 Lifta: Eracing History part three June 23, 2013I have seen many photos of the destroyed village of Lifta, which dates back 1,000 years and has tax records from the Ottoman Empire. The photos show a famous, archetypal vista of fragmented houses, piles of stones extending into a valley at the edge of Jerusalem, but Omar from the Israeli organization Zochrot, (Remembering) ...
- June 23, 2013 Wadi Aliam, the largest unrecognized village in Israel part two June 23, 2013We are back on the highway with Thabet from Adalah and I am puzzled why Israeli authorities are putting so much energy into displacing the Bedouins. He explains that the Naqab (Negev) is half of Mandatory Palestine, 60% of Israeli territory and contains 8% of the total Israeli population. Currently 1/3 of the population of ...
- June 23, 2013 We shall not be moved: Bedouins in the Negev part one June 23, 2013Today we take the long drive south to the Naqab (Negev) to tour with Thabet Abu Ras of Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, www.adalah.org, to meet with Arab Bedouin communities facing displacement. I am always learning from the landscape and I am familiar with the renaming of everything Palestinian that has ...
- June 22, 2013 Symbolism meets solidarity: the Saturday mobile clinic June 22, 2013I have to interrupt this message: Last night around midnight, the streets all over Palestine erupted with joyous crowds, cars honking in a delirious cacophony. A young man from Gaza, Mohammed Assaf, was voted the winner of Arab idol and either Abu Mazen or UNESCO (not clear) named him an Ambassador of Good Will. ...
- June 21, 2013 Beit Sahour: A True story of bovine resistance part two June 21, 2013Iyad Rishmawi appears to be an older respectable kind of gentleman, balding, neatly dressed, but the guy clearly has a sense of humor. He wants to talk about the First Intifada from the point of view of the people rather than the politicians, but first he wants to show us a documentary film, “The Wanted ...
- June 21, 2013 Battir: The colonization of the conifers part one June 21, 2013We are staying in Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, in a guest house which started in 1948 as a place for poor women to sew clothes, then became a childcare center, and now a renovated guest house. Everyone is talking about who will win Arab idol and will it be Mohammed Assaf, the sweet faced guy ...
- June 20, 2013 Deir Istiya: A little taste of paradise part two June 20, 2013Amal, one of the Palestinian-American members of the American Jews for a Just Peace – health and human rights project, has invited us to visit the village of Deir Istiya where she was born in 1948. We drive through an unusually lush valley, olive and carob trees densely growing everywhere, and there is a ...