Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
July 29, 2010 1 Comment
The following account is deplorable in the extreme – that the final conclusion was made by a female judge baffles belief.
Just for the record, the urge to respect perceived Islamic teachings can be taken too far.
As this utterly awful case demonstrates.
Cruelty, be it sexual or vengeful, is unacceptable in any true faith – this man was not acting out of religiosity.
It was madness.
And apparently the judge had been drinking from the same well.
July 28, 2010 Leave a Comment
A little light jollity after a day of bleak news is in order, methinks:
Personally, I love the Jacob cameo.
And another favourite, courtesy of the How It Should Have Ended crew:
Mwahaha.
July 28, 2010 6 Comments
Yes, that’s right: for one church in Gainsville, Fla. it is not enough to commemorate the ninth anniversary of 9/11 with prayers and remembrance: rather, it will burn Qurans on Eid el-Fitr:
“We feel, as Christians, one of our jobs is to warn,” said Jones. The goal of these and other protests are to give Muslims an opportunity to convert, he said.
In response to the posting of the event on Facebook a little more than a week ago, Jones said that people have been mailing Qurans to the church to burn. He said organizers got the idea, in part, from another Facebook page, called “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day.” [Source]
That’s right: while Palestinian webpages are restricted on Facebook, ‘Burn Quran’ events are sanctioned.
For want of a better epithet, this is some crazy shit.
July 28, 2010 Leave a Comment
And so Tunisia’s shady love affair with democracy and censorship trots into another phase of contradiction.
That the consistent infringement on the right to freedom of expression passes relatively unnoticed by the Western media is disappointing at best.
Had this been Iran, doubtless the case of Fahem Boukadous would have been paraded in all its garish monstrosity.
As it is, such instances languish on the worthy cyber-pages of organizations such as Reporters Sans Frontiers and the blogosphere.
As the latest on his condition denotes, imprisonment is but the pinnacle of his plight:
Sentenced to four years in prison for filming the popular demonstrations in the mining area of Gafsa in the spring of 2008 for the satellite channel El Hiwar Ettounsi, journalist Boukadous Fahm is in a dramatic condition.
Jailed on July 15, 2010 by police while his health examinations were still ongoing, Fahem is prone to acute asthma attacks. Locked in a cell in the desert, where temperatures can reach 50°C, without care or medical monitoring, his days are numbered.
During his visit to her husband, Afef Benaceur noted the extreme deterioration in his health. A victim of a violent asthma attack on Friday, July 23, Fahem could not see a doctor immediately.
Rather than give him oxygen as required by the medical procedure in such cases, he was kept in detention. It is the other prisoners who alerted the guards at the seriousness of the situation. Its inmates banging on doors, calling for help.
The doctor of the regional hospital of Gafsa not arrive until forty minutes later, finding Boukadous in serious condition. [...] Warned too late, he could have been found dead. [Source]
Far from the capital, abrogations are being enacted without comment from the wider international community.
The right to comment upon political developments is one to be enjoyed by all – to be sentenced to four years in prison for the coverage of a protest is deplorable.
It has been said before and must be emphasized again: such repression cannot pass without comment.
As bloggers the onus is our’s to keep the issue on the agenda, multi-lingually.
Human rights are a universal concern – not merely a critique reserved for countries in opposition.
July 28, 2010 Leave a Comment
It has not taken long for PM David Cameron’s likening of Gaza to a prison camp to draw ire:
Foreign Office sources suggested Downing Street had been remiss in omitting from Cameron’s speech the sort of “balancing” comments that are routinely made about Israel’s security – especially the fate of a captured soldier being held by Hamas – when its policies on the Palestinians are criticised. [Source]
While presenting my paper at last week’s conference I touched upon the subject of art and censorship vis-a-vis Palestine.
When, in 2006, the Israeli student Lior Halperin established an exhibition of child art from Palestinian refugee camps at Brandeis University, the exhibit was removed after a mere four days.
The reasoning behind the removal was cited as ‘balance’ – the university could not exhibit a Palestinian show without an accompanying Israeli exhibition.
That there was no Israeli exhibition resulted in the display being removed and the issue wiped from the agenda.
As I related the account various members of the audience nodded slowly or chuckled in anticipation – for they understood the subtext.
Likewise, the condemnation for what Cameron ostensibly addressed as the truth is merely post-quip censorship.
That Cameron did not mention the captive soldier, Gilad Shalit, in his speech does not lessen the gravity of Shalit’s circumstances as Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, denotes:
The people of Gaza are the prisoners of the terrorist organisation Hamas. The situation in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas’s rule and priorities.
We know that the prime minister would also share our grave concerns about our own prisoner in the Gaza Strip, Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage there for over four years, without receiving a single Red Cross visit. [Source]
Rather, it is rare occasion when the plight of Gaza is mentioned by a British leader – that it should be ‘balanced’ is irrelevent.
It is a situation that must not be detracted from and strong terminology must be used in cases such as this.
Gaza cannot be neutralized nor ignored – indeed, ‘prison camp’ is even an understatement in describing the conditions.
‘Hell’ would be a greater approximation, and yes, both Hamas and Israel are to blame at varying degrees.
July 27, 2010 Leave a Comment
As much as it pains me to break with tradition and agree with a Tory, David Cameron is (ahem) right on the mark:
The situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.
The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable and I have told PM Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. [Source]
Let’s hope he has more cojones than his predecessors in moving beyond statement and into action.
July 25, 2010 Leave a Comment
Although this deserves so much more than a brief snippet and a link, my flight from Barcelona beckons and I must type against the clock.
In essence, therefore:
Four bills and amendments are pending that would seriously restrict the rights of Israelis to criticize the policies and actions of their government, Human Rights Watch said.
One would shut down groups that communicate information that could be used in charges filed in other countries against members of the Israeli government or army for violations of international law. A second would penalize organizations and individuals who express support for, or participate in, boycotts against Israel. A third would impose onerous and immediate reporting requirements on any group that accepts any amount of funding from a foreign government for any purpose, and the fourth would punish anyone who assists refugees after they illegally cross into Israel.
Of course, this raises the whole spectre of Israel’s relationship with democracy: it is more on and off than a celebrity dalliance.
Before pouring forth condemnation, it must first be approved – or disapproved – and we can only hope some degree of sense will prevail and make the choice the latter.
Find out more at Human Rights Watch, here.
July 25, 2010 1 Comment
As Saudiwoman notes, you can run, but you can never hide when it comes to gender-based tracking in (and out of) Saudi Arabia:
I am currently on a family vacation in Italy but I had to post what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent my husband. Apparently they have a new service where they send the male guardian a text every time a “dependent” leaves the country. They don’t state which country the dependent left for but simply state that they did leave.
My husband tells me he got the same text when I left for Germany. I am an adult woman that has been earning my own income for over a decade now but according to the Saudi government, I am a dependent till the day I die because of my gender. [Source]
It is interesting that the tracking text does not detail the destination country – it would be too optimistic to imagine that it is concealed in the name of privacy.
No doubt coming soon: the Google App Wife Tracker: a dastardly fusion of Google Street Maps meets patriarchal yearnings to seek, control and curtail the freedom of every woman over the age of 18.
July 23, 2010 Leave a Comment
Running parallel to the conference through the week has been an Arabic film festival, comprising works from Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and North Africa.
Admittedly most frequently drawn into its dark depths by the promise of the most powerful air-conditioning on campus, some of the movies have been compelling (Maid for Sale), tedious (Basra) or oddly fascinating (Help).
By far the best however, is Pomegranates and Myrrh (Al Mor wa al Rumman), a 2009 Ramallah-based film by Najwa Najjar.
While the official blurb provides an idea of the film’s premise, it utterly fails to do it justice:
Ramallah, this decade. A free spirited woman dancer, Kamar, finds herself the wife of a prisoner, Zaid, and away from everything she loves until she returns to the dance, defying society’s taboos. At the dance, Kamar is confronted with Kais, a Palestinian returnee, who has taken Kamar’s role as the head choreographer. Sparks fly between Kamar and Kais, creating a more than passionate, emotional dance for both of them. Matters become even more complicated when Zaid’s sentence is extended.
To read the above would be to believe that it is a love story between two people (Kamar and Kais), with dance providing the backdrop.
This could not be further from the point, for central to Najjar’s piece is the land – indeed, a love-affair with the land, rather than Kais.
For Zaid, the land is worth more than his family, his wife or even his freedom: when Kamar tearfully pleads with him to sign the document that would allow the confiscation of the olive groves to proceed, but guarantee his freedom, he responds: ‘If the land is gone, then all is lost.’
Kamar’s relationship to the land is intrinsically linked to her own emotions: after the final argument with Zaid in jail, she ploughs the land visciously by hand.
Likewise, she dances her frustrations out on the bare soil of the night orchard, kicking up the dust and stones in feverish whirls.
The men, rather, assume a nominal role in the story.
During the Q&A session Najwa stressed the role of women not only in the movie, but in the making of it, with a number of significant positions being enacted by women.
Moreover, it is the mothers who support and guide Kamar, her sister who prompts her to return to dance and the formidable Umm Habib who provides a ballsy scene of rebuke to the IDF soldiers that raises a thousand goosebumps.
Surprisingly, in addition to these wonderfully profound themes Najjar brings the intifada to our midst in the most powerful manner.
The confiscation scene, the threat of the settlers, the futility of their Israeli lawyer and the endless injustice that is administrative detention is heart-breaking.
Pomegranates and Myrrh is quite possibly the best Palestinian movie in years – which makes it all the more irksome that the only copy on Amazon is a Swedish version.
But, should the lucky opportunity arise, do not miss what will be a truly moving and astounding piece of Middle Eastern contemporary cinema.
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