Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Ladder to the Moon
""The moon sort of guided us to points of intersection," Soetoro-Ng said. "She loved the moon so much because the moon was the same for everybody and all of these people and places were connected because we shared the same moon." Maya Soetoro-Ng, President Obama's little sister
The book describes how one night, a golden ladder appears at the girl's open bedroom window with her grandmother, hair flowing down her back and silver bangles tinkling on her arms. The two climb to the moon, looking down on a world filled with sorrow, from earthquakes and tsunamis, poverty and intolerance.
They invite children and others who are suffering to take refuge on their gray, glowing moon, until it's time for the girl to say goodbye and climb back into bed, knowing they've helped others heal.
My letter to IHT RE: "Pray. Hope. Prepare." By Thomas L. Friedman
RE: Pray. Hope. Prepare. By Thomas L. Friedmanhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/opinion/13friedman.html?ref=global
Dear Sir,
Thomas L. Friedman wisely and succinctly points out "The primary ingredient of a democracy — real pluralism where people feel a common destiny, act as citizens and don’t believe their minority has to be in power to be safe or to thrive...."
The first most obvious place to "Pray. Hope. Prepare." should be to do all we can to help end the Israel/Palestine conflict by advocating a just and lasting peace based on the rule of fair and just laws- and full respect for basic human rights, including but not limited to the Palestinian refugees inalienable right to return to original homes and lands.
Real pluralism respects property rights as well as every refugees' right to return- and every citizen's right to live in peace. Real pluralism rejects institutionalized bigotry- and religious tyranny: A fully secular two state solution to end the Israel/Palestine mess would go a long way towards empowering real democracy and pluralism, real peace and actual progress through out the entire region.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt
Nihal Rabbani remembering Juliano
".... When we finished filming, I noticed that there was something wrong with the sound. Jule was already late for his next interview and laughed, “You mean these two hours, which usually only take fifteen minutes – they were for nothing?” (As it happens, the local broadcaster wasn’t interested in this subject so never watched the footage. But I did keep the video tapes and decided to edit the material as an homage to Jule.)
Since the day we met, Jule never failed to mention my “crazy memory” to people he introduced me to. The camera woman who worked with us that day in 2003 had since become a friend. When I sent her a text message about what happened last Monday, she responded in disbelief, saying, “What terrible news, coming from such a beautiful and inspiring man.”" Nihal Rabbani
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/new-in-ceasefire/remembering-juliano/
Arts & Culture Remembering Juliano
My letter to the Independent RE: The ravaged palace that symbolises the hope of peace, Palestinian businessman is rebuilding his home....
RE: The ravaged palace that symbolises the hope of peace, Palestinian businessman is rebuilding his home after it was caught in the crossfirehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-ravaged-palace-that-symbolises-the-hope-of-peace-2266960.html
Dear Sir,
Good to see the story on the hope of peace for Palestine: I quite agree with the Palestinian businessman Albert Abu Zgheibreh who actively helps nurture a better way forward by clearly stating: "I'm building for the future and for my family. I hope now there will be peace. It's enough. For the Palestinians, for the Israelis, for everyone, peace will be better."
I very much hope that a viable sovereign and fully secular Palestine can emerge as a real nation state living in peace alongside a fully secular Israel, respecting the rule of fair and just laws- and basic human rights on all sides of every border.
Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab, American homemaker & poet
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto youThe ravaged palace that symbolises the hope of peace: Palestinian businessman is rebuilding his home after it was caught in the crossfire
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-ravaged-palace-that-symbolises-the-hope-of-peace-2266960.html
By Matthew Kalman in Beit Jala
Albert Abu Zgheibreh's home cost $880,000 and took five years to complete
The ravaged palace that symbolises the hope of peace
Palestinian businessman is rebuilding his home after it was caught in the crossfire
Albert Abu Zgheibreh's home cost $880,000 and took five years to completeWednesday, 13 April 2011
The first remodelling of Albert Abu Zgheibreh's impressive home in Beit Jala on the outskirts of Bethlehem was free of charge, but not to his taste. Hellfire missiles fired from Israeli Apache helicopter gunships left gaping holes in the walls, tank shells smashed through the supporting pillars of the verandas and the stonework was raked with heavy-calibre machine-gun fire.
For nearly a decade, the ravaged beauty towered over the valley dividing Palestinian Beit Jala from the Israeli suburb of Gilo, its blackened holes and shattered stones like broken teeth in a gaping mouth silently bemoaning the folly of war.
It took five years and $880,000 to build the house. It was barely completed before the Palestinian intifada erupted in the autumn of 2000. Taking advantage of Mr Abu Zgheibreh's absence abroad, a group of gunmen decided to use it as a machine-gun nest to fire across the valley at Gilo, triggering the explosive Israeli response.
No one knows how many holes the Israelis punched in Albert's Hall, but now he has begun to fill them. "Last year I decided it was time to rebuild it again. I didn't want the people – Israelis and Palestinians – to have to keep looking at this reminder of what war could do," Mr Abu Zgheibreh, 69, tells The Independent as he conducts a private tour of the premises.
He has recalled the expert craftsmen, stonemasons and engineers and sunk another million dollars into a second remodelling, in the hope this stark reminder of recent violence will become, instead, a symbol of peace.
"This house has entered into history because of the Israeli bombardment. Everyone wanted to know why I wasn't rebuilding," he says. "I'm building for the future and for my family. I hope now there will be peace. It's enough. For the Palestinians, for the Israelis, for everyone, peace will be better."
Mr Abu Zgheibreh's story is almost a parable for the Christian Palestinians who now make up less than 2 per cent of the population and have been reduced to a minority even in the region of Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus....READ MORE
U.N. report: Palestinian Authority ready for statehood
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-report-palestinian-authority-ready-for-statehood/2011/04/12/AFoKaUSD_story.html
U.N. report: Palestinian Authority ready for statehood
By Joel Greenberg, Tuesday, April 12, 7:05 PM
JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Authority is ready for statehood, according to six key criteria, although urgent action is needed to bolster its progress in state-building, the United Nations said Tuesday.
The declaration, contained in a report prepared for a meeting Wednesday in Brussels of donors to the authority, is an important boost to Palestinian efforts to obtain international recognition of a Palestinian state in September.The U.N. study echoed findings by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who in separate reports prepared for the donors conference said last week that the authority was well-positioned to run an independent state.
“In six areas where the U.N. is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state,” said the report from the Office of the U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. It defined those areas as: governance, rule of law and human rights; livelihoods and productive sectors; education and culture; health; social protection; and infrastructure and water.
The Palestinian Authority has improved its ability to plan and budget effectively and has upheld transparency, media freedom and mitigation of corruption, while drafting laws to ensure compliance with international human rights norms, the report said.
The report noted improvements in security and the economy in the West Bank, with an estimated 8 percent growth in gross domestic product in 2010. It said that the area’s health-care system was well-developed and that government spending on social services had created a “comprehensive social safety net.”
But the report cautioned that the continuing Israeli occupation, the unresolved conflict with Israel...READ MORE
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Israel's bogus narrative on Palestinian refugees
"On setting up its state in 1948, Israel set about demolishing every vestige of Palestinian life and history in the land. The physical destruction of the villages, the replacing of Palestinian names with Hebrew ones and the wholesale takeover of Palestinian culture, whether in food -- "Israeli falafel" -- or in the traditional Arab dabke dance, renamed the Israeli "hora," were all aimed at making the world forget there had ever been anyone other than Jews in the Holy Land.
Through the work of Israeli filmmaker Benny Brunner, I have discovered another refinement of this cultural theft: the takeover of private Palestinian book collections, including ours. After 1948, Israeli officials took what books they found from abandoned Palestinian homes. Tens of thousands were looted in this way. Some of them remain in the Israeli National Library today, designated abandoned property. Brunner is currently making a film of this, "The Great Book Robbery."
Palestinians have never accepted our enforced oblivion. We are fighting to tell our history, win a future of political freedom and secure the return of refugees forced from their homes and never allowed to return..." Ghada Karmi April 12, 2011
Blowback: Israel's bogus narrative on Palestinian refugees
What the “Israeli Peace Initiative” has to offer
"... In the final analysis there is only one state’s recognition of Palestine that will be decisive: Israel’s, since it is in complete control of the territory that will constitute the Palestinian state. All roads ultimately lead back to negotiations, which is why documents like the IPI that reinforce the understanding that such a process is entirely plausible, and that therefore peace is genuinely achievable, are more relevant than they may appear at first glance." Hussein Ibish
UN says Palestinian Authority 'ready to govern'
JERUSALEM (AFP) – The Palestinian Authority is now largely ready to govern a state, the office of the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said in a report on Tuesday.
"In six areas where the UN is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state," said the report, which will be submitted to Palestinian donor nations meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.
But the report warned that it would be difficult for the Palestinian Authority to make any additional progress while the Israeli occupation continued and peace talks remained stalled.
"The key constraints to the existence and successful functioning of the institutions of a potential state of Palestine arise primarily from the persistence of the occupation and the unresolved issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," the report said.
"The institutional achievements of the Palestinian state-building agenda are approaching their limits within the political and physical space currently available."
Monday, April 11, 2011
Arabs yearn to move on and enjoy genuine peace
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Apr/11/Arabs-yearn-to-move-on-and-enjoy-genuine-peace.ashx
| Arabs yearn to move on and enjoy genuine peace |
| April 11, 2011 02:00 AM |
| By Hussein Ibish |
| The Daily Star |
Probably the most important clause in the Arab Peace Initiative, first adopted by the Arab League at the Beirut summit in 2002 and reaffirmed on several occasions including in 2007, is its commitment to “establish normal relations with Israel in the context of [a] comprehensive peace.”
This clause represented the culmination of decades of evolution of Arab thinking regarding relations with Israel, and the final repudiation of the Khartoum resolution of 1967, which insisted the Arabs would allow “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.”
In other words, rather than being surrounded by an Arab world that generally, if not unanimously, rejected the idea of accepting Israel as a permanent and legitimate presence in the Middle East, for almost a decade now Israel has been facing a united Arab world that has repeatedly made clear its willingness to make a permanent and normalized peace with the Jewish state.
The importance of this clause is that it affirms that at the end of negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel can expect recognition and acceptance in the region, not just from the Palestinians but from the other Arab states as well....READ MORE
Palestinian Road Warriors Give Jerusalem Streets New [old] Names
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=31881
Palestinian Road Warriors Give Jerusalem Streets New Names
Palestinian Road Warriors Give Jerusalem Streets New Names Written by David E. Miller
Published Monday, April 11, 2011
Signage is latest move in contest for control of city’s character
A group of Palestinian activists erected nine street signs in Jerusalem’s Jabel Mukabber neighborhood last Saturday, assigning the anonymous thoroughfares road names in Arabic and English. One was named Farouk Street, a popular nick name for Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, the Muslim general who conquered Jerusalem in 637 A.D.
Erected by a Palestinian NGO called Jerusalem Horizons, the street signs were a small but symbolic move in the contest over the character of a city venerated by three religions (Jews, Christian and Muslims) and claimed by two national groups (Israelis and Palestinians). Formed two months ago, Jerusalem Horizons strives to reclaim the Arab names of Jerusalem streets and neighborhoods, rescuing them from what organizers term the city’s "Judaization."
"Our main goal is to educate the people about the importance of maintaining the original Arab names," Fakhri Abu-Diab, a resident of Silwan and board member of Jerusalem Horizons, told The Media Line. "I fear the day my son will come home using the Hebrew name for a site." ....READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)