Archive for the ‘Middle East’ Category
Wafa Amr: 60 years on, refugees visit lost Jerusalem homes
Sun May 11, 2008 6:09pm EDT
By Wafa Amr
JERUSALEM, May 11 (Reuters) - Eighty-year-old Beatrice Habesch sobbed when she caught sight of her father’s house in Jerusalem on Sunday and remembered how it was taken over by Jews in 1948.
“This is our house! This is my house!” she shouted as fellow Palestinians held her back from running towards the building.
Some 300 Palestinians marked 60 years since Israel’s founding in May 1948 with a protest walk through affluent Jewish parts of west Jerusalem that were once home to many Arabs. They wore black T-shirts with “This is my House” printed on the back.
Popularity: 87% [?]
Reuters Video: Palestinian couple yearn for home
May 7 - It’s only a short drive from their house in East Jerusalem to their ancestral home in West Jerusalem, but the journey is a long one for one Palestinian couple.
As Israel prepares to celebrate its 60th birthday, Wilhelmine and George Baramki return to the ancestral home in Jerusalem which they fled during fighting when Israel declared its independence.
Now, they wonder whether they will ever enjoy the ‘right of return’ enshrined in Palestinian demands for statehood.
Popularity: 86% [?]
Saree Makdisi: Forget the two-state solution | Gaza plunged into darkness for the second night
Israelis and Palestinians must share the land. Equally.
By Saree Makdisi, Los Angeles Times, 11 May 2008
There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon’s stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in.
All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that — after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war — Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.
Sixty years after Israel was created and Palestine was destroyed, then, we are back to where we started: Two populations inhabiting one piece of land. And if the land cannot be divided, it must be shared. Equally.
This is a position, I realize, which may take many Americans by surprise. After years of pursuing a two-state solution, and feeling perhaps that the conflict had nearly been solved, it’s hard to give up the idea as unworkable.
Gaza plunged into darkness for the second night
11 May 2008
GAZA, (PIC)– For the second night running the Gaza Strip is plunged into darkness as the sole power station supplying electricity had to stop because the Israeli occupation has stopped supplying fuel necessary to run the station.
The disruption of the electricity supplies threatens the lives of new-born babies who need to be put in incubators, patients on ventilators or those dependent on dialysis machines as hospitals have very limited amounts of fuel to run their emergency generators.
The Energy Authority in Gaza said that the Israeli occupation refuses to supply it with the necessary fuel to run the main power station at the pretext of security issues at the supply terminal.
Popularity: 87% [?]
Rela Mazali: Musing on memorializing
Rela Mazali, Jewish Peace News, 8 May 2008
Growing up and living mostly in Israel, I have long been aware of children’s complex reactions to the state sirens used in Israel to commemorate both the victims of the Nazis and the soldiers and para-military personnel killed while serving terms of duty. Many children find it hard not to giggle, others openly and subversively enjoy giggling, grimacing to make others laugh or squirming, still others are terrified or angry and defiant. Usually, as they grow up, they learn to contain these responses and comply with the national 60 second freeze. I note this because I think that children’s “borderline”, pre-socialization conduct can serve as a forceful illustration of how this ritual functions.
I won’t unpack the full complexity of what I believe the sirens are and do. This introduction to the following piece by Tamar Rotem is just a partial sketch in which I’d like to highlight the surveillance that I see as a central component of their function. Though moderately critical of the sirens’ use, Rotem’s opinion piece, from Haaretz, clearly illustrates of the power of this surveillance mechanism.
Popularity: 85% [?]
Crippled Election Commission
The New York Times
May 8, 2008
The White House is removing a member of the Federal Election Commission for standing up for clean elections, while trying to install another member whose specialty is keeping eligible voters from casting ballots. The Senate, which must confirm nominees, should insist that President Bush appoint commissioners with a proven record of supporting voting rights and fair elections.
Mr. Bush is purging the current F.E.C. chairman, David Mason, presumably because he was responsible enough to challenge the funding machinations of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. Mr. Mason shocked his fellow Republicans by notifying Mr. McCain that he might run afoul of the law by switching from public funding to private donations once he secured the party’s nomination.
The White House proposes to replace Mr. Mason with Donald McGahn, a Republican warhorse. F.E.C. commissioners are expected to be aligned with a party — one of the new Democratic nominees is a staff member of Senator Charles Schumer of New York — but Mr. McGahn has a particularly partisan background. He was the party’s Congressional campaign counsel — and the ethics lawyer for Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader from Texas who left office under multiple clouds.
The six-member commission, which now has four vacancies, has been rendered inoperable. If it is to perform its role as referee of national elections, it urgently needs a full complement — and it needs commissioners with the sort of professionalism displayed by Mr. Mason.
Senate Democrats should push for someone more suitable than Mr. McGahn, and they should continue to oppose Hans von Spakovsky, a terrible nominee with a record as a Justice Department lawyer of aggressive partisanship and opposition to minority voting rights.
For the latest reform news and to access previous reports, releases, and analysis from Democracy 21, visit www.democracy21.org.
Popularity: 84% [?]
U.S. Urged to Divorce Politics from Aid to Myanmar
Haider Rizvi, OneWorld US, 7 May 2008
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 (OneWorld) - A major U.S.-based humanitarian aid group is urging the Bush administration to revise its aid policy toward Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and provide immediate assistance to the cyclone victims in that country.
“Now is the time to support the Burmese people” said Joel Charny of the aid group Refugees International in a statement urging the U.S. government to change its funding policy on Myanmar.
The United States has put severe restrictions on humanitarian aid to Myanmar, and provides less aid to the country than any other major donor nation, the group said Monday. Despite the U.S. constraints, however, many international agencies and aid groups are currently operating inside that country.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Hillary Clinton’s Fuzzy Math
Clinton lends her struggling campaign $6.4 million as Obama outspends her
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press, 7 May 2008
WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lent her presidential campaign $6.4 million over the past month, her campaign said Wednesday, underscoring the financial advantage held by her rival, Barack Obama.
The money more than doubled Clinton’s personal investment in her bid for the Democratic nomination. She gave her campaign $5 million earlier this year.
Hillary Lied (again)
By thejoshuablog - May 6, 2008, 10:38AM
Lies of omission are still lies.
Hillary Clinton hid some $24 MILLION DOLLARS when she listed their income for 2004 - 2006.
What a shock!
Hillary Clinton dismisses “elite” economists on gas tax plan
By Andy Sullivan
5 May 2008
Clinton raised questions about Obama’s ability to connect with working-class Americans while dismissing economists who have said her plan to suspend gas taxes over the summer would do little good.
“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” Clinton said when asked to name an economist who backed her proposal.
“We’ve got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans,” said Clinton, a former first lady who would be the first woman president.
Sam Stein: Exit Polls: Limbaugh Effect Seems To Rear Its Head
Popularity: 8% [?]
