Rare film footage of Palestine from 1896, captured by the Lumière Brothers – pioneers of cinema. These unique films provide an invaluable glimpse into daily life in the Holy Land under the Ottoman Empire, offering a rare perspective of a time long past. Watch as Palestine appears over 100 years ago, during an era when the world was rapidly changing, and cinema was just beginning to take shape!

 https://youtu.be/f6gnUgxkfLE?si=rMiU1PA833rngj9H

Paddystinian

@Paddystinian

 

Palestine was never empty.  The camera already knew that. 

 

In 1896–97, the Lumière brothers sent Alexandre Promio to film the Holy Land under Ottoman rule. What he captured is among the earliest moving images of Palestine: Jaffa Port, the courtyard of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, Jerusalem’s railway station, sacred sites, and people in the streets. 

 

Muslims. Christians. Jews. Walking the same gates, the same roads, the same land. 

 

Not a slogan. Not a later map. Actual footage of a living country called Palestine — ports, churches, stations, markets, worshippers — before partition, before occupation, before the claim that this was a vacant stage waiting for someone else. 

 

Watch the people, not the propaganda. Jaffa was a port. Bethlehem was a town. Jerusalem was a city of three faiths under one sky. That is the historical record, not a talking point. 

 

Palestine had a name. Palestine had people. The film is still there.

 

https://x.com/Paddystinian/status/2100978157813744079 

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“What Are You Doing to My Brother?” A true story by Mike Hanini Odetalla (Abu Odeh) ... Here was an elderly Orthodox rabbi, aboard a plane filled largely with Jewish passengers headed to Israel, publicly kissing the hand of a Palestinian Muslim and calling him brother.

Good Morning! Rumaan Falasteen (#Palestinian #Pomegranates)... photo from Mike Hanini Odetalla

“What Are You Doing to My Brother?”

 

In October of 2007, my mother (AY) became ill and was hospitalized. I dropped everything and flew home, taking Lufthansa through Frankfurt to Tel Aviv.

 

The connecting flight was a packed 747, overwhelmingly filled with Jewish passengers headed to Israel.

 

I had specifically requested an aisle seat. But when I reached my row, I found an elderly Jewish woman sitting in it. Beside her was a very religious-looking man in his seventies.

 

As I started toward my seat, he immediately stood up.

 

“No! No!”

 

I understood what was happening. From what I knew of Orthodox Jewish religious practice, I figured he was uncomfortable with an unrelated man sitting beside his wife.

 

And being a Muslim, I understood the concern.

 

So rather than make an issue of it, I offered to take the window seat and let him sit in the middle—a “buffer” between his wife and me.

 

Problem solved.

 

Or so I thought.

 

Once we were seated, he began speaking to me in broken English.

 

“What is your name?”

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Jerusalem,” I told him. “Palestine. The city of my birth.”

 

He looked at me.

 

Then, to my absolute surprise, this man who had been struggling with English answered me in perfect Arabic:

 

“I too was born in Al-Quds.”

 

And just like that, everything changed.

 

As we talked, I learned that he had emigrated to Australia in the late 1960s and was a chief rabbi there.

 

I told him why I was traveling—that my mother was sick and hospitalized and I was rushing home to see her.

 

He promised me that he would pray for her throughout the flight and again as soon as his feet touched Jerusalem.

 

A Muslim Palestinian and an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, both born in Jerusalem, sitting together on a 747 somewhere between Frankfurt and the city we both called home.

 

But our seating adventure wasn't over.

 

As more passengers boarded, an Orthodox Jewish family arrived. The mother and children were seated directly in front of us. The father's assigned seat, unfortunately, was the window seat I was now occupying.

 

And he wanted it.

 

He made a fuss and refused to sit elsewhere because he wanted to remain near his family. Even the rabbi's pleas couldn't persuade him. Eventually he called the flight crew and demanded his assigned seat.

 

The rabbi and his wife were visibly distraught.

 

So I stood up.

 

“Find me another seat,” I told the flight crew. “Anywhere. Let them stay together.”

 

Eventually they found one.

 

As I prepared to leave, the rabbi stood.

 

I extended my hand to shake his goodbye.

 

Instead, he took my hand—

and kissed it.

 

Then he kissed it again.

 

And he hugged me.

 

In Arabic, he said:

 

“Thank you, my dear brother.”

 

The cabin seemed to go silent.

 

Here was an elderly Orthodox rabbi, aboard a plane filled largely with Jewish passengers headed to Israel, publicly kissing the hand of a Palestinian Muslim and calling him brother.

 

You could hear a pin drop.

 

I thought that was the end of our story.

 

It wasn't.

 

When we landed at Ben Gurion Airport, I encountered something much more familiar to me: I was pulled aside and being led away for “further questioning.”

 

Normally, that could mean four or five hours of security questioning for me.

 

Then suddenly, the rabbi appeared.

 

He hurried toward us, took my hand again and kissed it.

 

Then he confronted the security personnel:

 

“What are you doing to my BROTHER?”

 

Apparently, having a chief rabbi vouch for you carries some weight.

 

They let me go.

 

It remains one of the few times I can remember passing through Ben Gurion without spending hours being questioned.

 

And there is one detail that matters.

 

In Palestinian and Arab culture, kissing someone's hand is among the deepest gestures of respect. This rabbi didn't know whether I needed his respect. He didn't know whether anyone around us would understand what that gesture meant to me.

 

But he did it anyway.

 

Twice on the airplane.

 

And once more when I needed someone to stand beside me.

 

Nearly twenty years later, I don't remember his politics. I don't remember everything we discussed on that long flight.

 

But I remember his Arabic.

 

I remember his prayers for my sick mother.

 

I remember his lips touching my hand.

 

And above everything else, I remember one word:

 

“Brother.”

 

Sometimes humanity doesn't announce itself with speeches, flags or slogans.

 

Sometimes it finds you at 35,000 feet, in the person you were supposed to see as the “other,” and quietly reminds you that we were brothers all along.

 

~ Mike Odetalla (Seems like a lifetime ago)

 

Grandfather. Historian. Story teller. Dreamer. Witness. Palestinian. Human. Cancer survivor 

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Never forget also means remembering who else was hurt on 9/11 | - Ann Van Dyke, PennLive letters

 Published: Sep. 16, 2026

Twenty-five years ago, I worked for the PA Human Relations Commission. Part of my job was to follow up on reports of bias incidents to determine whether they violated anti-discrimination or criminal law, or were constitutionally protected acts of miserable behavior, which sometimes do not violate any law because of our extremely strong freedom of speech and expression.

Bias incidents directed at adults and children who appeared to be of the same ancestry or religion as the attackers surged.

While some people expressed widespread unity immediately after the 9/11 attacks, others carried out what they considered acts of retaliation. For example, a home in Enola belonging to a Muslim family originally from India was defaced with hate graffiti, and their mailbox was blown up anonymously.

While that was happening, members of the family were at a fundraiser for the 9/11 victims. “Acts of revenge” against people who had nothing to do with the attacks continued intensely in the months after and never stopped: destruction of property, assaults, anonymous hate mail, graffiti, slurs yelled during drive-bys, and public discourse increasingly full of vicious, false stereotypes.

All of that was and continues to be directed at adults, children and families who are Muslim, Middle Eastern, of Arabic descent, or who appear to be.

Twenty-fifth-anniversary calls to “never forget” need to include the innocent people who were harmed then and now because of what their ancestry or religion is or appears to be. The U.S. still strives to be better than that.

Ann Van Dyke, Mechanicsburg, Pa.

https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2026/09/never-forget-also-means-remembering-who-else-was-hurt-on-911-pennlive-letters.html?gift=e4c9a45f-441e-497f-84c7-31f77e3d66eb

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Jordan is convening an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the Arab and Islamic world over what it says is an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”. The meeting on Wednesday – and the Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site. On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right – mostly settlers led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – stormed the area...

On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right stormed the area. Photograph: Ilia Yefimovich/AFP/Getty Images

Jordan

Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site facing ‘imminent’ threat of Israeli takeover, says Jordan

Country convenes emergency meeting of ministers from Arab and Islamic world, fearing such a move could ‘trigger a religious conflict’

Jordan is convening an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the Arab and Islamic world over what it says is an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”.

The meeting on Wednesday – and the Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site.

On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right – mostly settlers led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – stormed the area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. They prayed and performed rituals all around the compound in what Jordanian officials said was the worst violation in modern history.

Amman has also been alarmed at a recent recruitment drive for religious Jews for a special Temple Mount police unit, and is braced for more direct challenges to traditional Jordanian custodianship by extremist Israeli leaders in the major Jewish holidays in September. This year, those holidays will come amid an intense election campaign, in which the far-right coalition of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be fighting for survival.

“This is a constant threat, a dangerous threat that we’re trying to counter in every tool that we have possible,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told the Guardian. “We warn that tampering with the status quo … could trigger a religious conflict that will reverberate beyond Palestine and Jordan into the whole Muslim world.”

Safadi, who will host Wednesday’s emergency meeting, bringing together his counterparts from Arab League countries, as well as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, said it was “something that the whole international community should be aware of. Jerusalem is a tinderbox.

“We’re trying to explain the danger. We’re protesting legally. We are trying to create awareness of the imminent danger in the continuation of those Israeli measures.”

Jordan’s custodianship of al-Aqsa compound dates back to Ottoman times, and the status quo encompassing the city’s religious sites was enshrined in the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. The Hashemite kingdom’s oversight in Jerusalem was expanded to cover Christian holy sites in the 20th century, and its custodianship was reaffirmed after the 1967 war, and in the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

Infringement by Jewish extremists... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/04/jordan-convenes-emergency-meeting-israel-religious-conflict-jerusalem

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“I have never in my career witnessed the level of atrocities and targeting of my medical colleagues as I have in Gaza,” Adam Hamawy, The doctor who came back from Gaza and is leading a New Jersey congressional race

Adam Hamawy, candidate for New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, in Gaza in May 2024. Photograph: Hamawy for New Jersey

The doctor who came back from Gaza and is leading a New Jersey congressional race

Frontrunner Adam Hamawy has gone from political nobody to endorsements from Bernie Sanders, AOC and Ilhan Omar

Knocking on strangers’ doors on a warm May afternoon in Trenton, New Jersey, Adam Hamawy did not seem fazed when more than a few went unanswered.

It’s his first time running for office, but this is an area where he has experience. After returning from a medical mission in Gaza in 2024, Hamawy went to Washington to describe the crisis – which he viewed as a US-funded genocide – to lawmakers, only to encounter “too many doors that were closed, that didn’t even want to listen”.

“I could only define it as a genocide, because I saw the bodies of the people that came in,” the veteran army trauma surgeon and political newcomer reflected, while walking between houses. “And it wasn’t an accident. You can’t have an accident, every single day for three years.”

“When the hospital shakes and I see the bodies come in, I’m paying for it with my tax dollars,” he said. “I don’t want my tax dollars doing that.” ... READ MORE    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/31/new-jersey-congress-adam-hamawy

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"We're talking about a federal administration that has spent close to $30 billion dollars killing thousands of people at a time when working class people across this country cannot afford the bare minimum," he said. "And to be told that a city-run grocery store is implausible, but spending more than $500 million a day to kill people in Iran and Lebanon is not only plausible but necessary, it speaks to a broken kind of politics." Zohran Mamdani April 17, 2026 NPR interview

The war in Iran speaks to a "broken kind of politics"

That chasm is most clear in his deep opposition to the U.S. war on Iran, he said.

"We're talking about a federal administration that has spent close to $30 billion dollars killing thousands of people at a time when working class people across this country cannot afford the bare minimum," he said. "And to be told that a city-run grocery store is implausible, but spending more than $500 million a day to kill people in Iran and Lebanon is not only plausible but necessary, it speaks to a broken kind of politics."

He said that New Yorkers feel the effects of that war beyond their pocketbook.

"At the core of any war is a dehumanization that takes place, and that dehumanization is not limited to any battlefield," he said. "It extends into the lives of people across this country."

He shared the story of a young Muslim woman he called after seeing the news that she had been thrown to the ground at a New York City subway stop.

"She told me that the first thing her attacker said to her before he attacked her was, 'I wonder how many Iranians we killed today,'" he said. "That is what we are allowing to take hold in our politics."

Zohran Mamdani says Iran war speaks to a 'broken kind of politics'

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/16/nx-s1-5785163/zohran-mamdani-interview-first-100-days 

 

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