Palestinian Solidarity

Cairo, Egypt

Yesterday we received a message from the US Embassy in Cairo that included the following:

May 15 is the anniversary of the Palestinian-Israeli territorial demarcations and is considered to be a significant date in the current Palestinian political situation involving Gaza and the West Bank.

Several Egyptian political groups have announced plans to commemorate this anniversary by staging large-scale prayer and protest gatherings, characterizing Friday as Unity Day. On Friday after mid-day prayers, there are plans for a large demonstration in Tahrir Square, with a number of protesters planning to proceed to the Israeli Embassy near Cairo University and to the Israeli Ambassador’s residence in Maadi....

On Saturday, May 14, political activists plan to converge on Tahrir Square and begin a march toward Suez, where they will link with groups from other Egyptian cities and then continue their march toward the Rafah border crossing.

The embassy probably thought this rally - as opposed to the usual Friday protests - would be of particular interest to Americans in Cairo because it can be a very short couple steps from pro-Palestinian to anti-Israeli to anti-American. As Lara Logan knows well, it only takes one person shouting "Spy!" to make a whole crowd turn on you. It certainly gave me pause.

Fajr Prayers on Tahrir
I was woken up in the wee hours of this morning to the news that thousands had started a Facebook page since yesterday, planning to have pre-dawn prayers for Palestine on Tahrir Square, led by prominent Salafi sheikhs. Since it involved defying curfew, my friend didn't go, but video was on YouTube almost immediately showing at least a couple thousand praying

By the time I did go down to Tahrir Square today, it was the biggest crowds I've seen on Tahrir Square since mid-February, though I understand the crowds were as big on April 9th.

Mixed Messages
In light of the violence and church-burning on Wednesday, there had been a call to make today a rally for Egyptian unity between Christians and Muslims, and there were plenty of signs to that effect. However, calls for solidarity with Occupied Palestine largely drowned out pretty much everything else, and there were plenty of other causes, too.

"The people want the opening of the Rafah Crossing, permanently and completely."

"The people want peace and security,"
i.e. new faces in charge of the Egyptian security forces.

The flag of Bahrain on the left, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as Hitler.

This one's calling for reform of traffic laws!

...and many more!

"Egypt and Palestine, one hand."

Third Intifada?
What concerns me even more amid these protests and calls for a Third Intifada on Sunday, the 63rd anniversary of the first Palestinian refugee crisis, is the ambiguity about who is calling for these actions and why. Egyptians are calling for a Third Intifada in an excess of revolutionary zeal, and I have to admit to a wild hope that Palestinians might have their own success in the Arab Spring, but are Palestinians themselves calling for an uprising? If they are, I haven't heard.

In fact, a spokesman for Hamas said today that it was "not necessary" for Egyptians to come to Gaza. On the one hand, this could be a neat way of avoiding responsibility. On the other hand, though, Hamas has taken bold steps this month to form a coalition with Fatah and work politically and peacefully towards greater Palestinian unity. An Intifada now would undo everything that's been achieved in the last couple years.

(Thanks to Emma for the photos!)

HR 1 and the Future of International Education

The memo below on budget cuts in the US Congress was circulated on Cairo Scholars today. The proposed budget cuts detailed below have profound effects on study abroad, cultural exchange, peace work and critical language teaching in the Egypt, the Middle East and beyond. These reductions effect both American students, professors and scholars seeking opportunities abroad, and also foreign students, professors and scholars wishing to enrich American institutions with their wealth of experience. It also represents a drastic reduction in resources and opportunities for American students starting at the kindergarten level to interact with the greater world.

In this era of globalization, interconnectivity and interdependence, we should be increasing our understanding of the rest of the world. I've seen photos of Egyptians holding placards in solidarity with striking government workers in Wisconsin, and government workers in Wisconsin holding placards in solidarity with Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Bahrain. This is how the world works now, and failing to prepare our youth for that reality will, in the long run, worsen our economic, political and cultural power far more than the deficit it reduces.

Dear MESA members,

Many of you will have been immersed in the news of the extraordinary events taking place in the Middle East over the last month or so. This update is to bring to your attention some important developments happening in the U. S. Congress that could affect programs in foreign language and area studies. A number of programs funded by the U.S government have been targeted for either major budget cuts or complete elimination.

Thinking that area studies specialists may be concerned about this possibility, I pass on information about a few programs particularly relevant to the broad disciplinary interests of MESA members.

Background
The U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 1 (H.R.1) last week. What is H.R.1? It is the 2011 full-year continuing appropriations Act. It would extend the current 2011 fiscal year funding which expires March 4, 2011.The Senate returns from recess next Monday (February 28) to begin work on its version of a budget for the remainder of FY11. Many things can happen in the negotiations between the House and the Senate.

In H.R. 1:

• State Department international exchange programs would receive a 21 per cent cut, or a reduction to $501.3 million from the current funding level of $635 million. Two examples of programs funded under this program (http://exchanges.state.gov/scho-pro.html) are the Fulbright Program for Scholars serving scholars and the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program serving undergraduate and graduate students.
• All funding from the United States Institute of Peace ($42.6 million) would be eliminated. www.usip.org USIP funds have supported hundreds of scholars and practitioners through its Senior Fellows program and hundreds of students through its Peace Scholars program. Its Grant Program has provided over 2,000 awards since 1986, a majority of which have supported the work of individual scholars around the world.
• Funding for the K-12 Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) would be eliminated ($26.9 million). This is the Education Department's only dedicated grant program for K-12 foreign language education.
• Funding for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education--FIPSE (including the International Consortia Programs) would be cut entirely ($58 million).
• $350 million from the National Science Foundation would be cut. This could affect research funds for such disciplines and fields as Anthropology, Election Studies, Geography, Linguistics and Political Science.
• For the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), H.R. 1 provides a FY 2011 budget of $145 million. This figure represents a $22 million (13%) cut from the agency's FY 2010 enacted budget. Examples of NEH grants are the NEH Research Fellowships, NEH Summer Institutes and Seminars for College and University Teachers, Collaborative Research Awards, Scholarly Editions and Translations Awards, etc.: http://www.neh.gov/news/recentawards.html
• Funding for the Grants and Administration portion of the National Endowment for the Arts would be reduced by $20.5 million. NEA has funded Literature Fellowships for Translation Projects.

Finally, although H.R 1 did not propose any changes to the funding levels for The Higher Education Act, Title VI and Fulbright-Hays 102(b)(6), changes may come up in next week's Senate deliberations or in negotiations with the House. Funded at $125.881 million in FY 2010, these programs represent less than 0.2 percent of the U.S. Department of Education’s discretionary budget. A cost-effective investment, this federal-university partnership stimulates substantial additional funding by universities and foundations.

Sincerely,
Amy W. Newhall
Executive Director

Gaza Graffiti Exhibition

Cairo, Egypt

Tonight photographer Mia Grondahl opened an exhibition at American University, in honor of the English translation published with AUC Press of her book Gaza Graffiti: Messages of Love and Politics. Before the gallery opening, she sat on a panel of experts on the state of the Gaza Strip since the Hannukah War of 2008/2009, the blockade, and the Freedom Flotilla.

Also on the panel were two Swedish journalists covering the region, and a Palestinian activist. They talked a lot about the dehumanization of the Palestinians by the media, which portrays them primarily as victims, which they are, but not often enough as human beings with personal joys and triumphs as well as personal dreams and tragedies. They talked at length about the need to build sympathy for the Palestinian cause by showing the people there as sympathetic, not as pitiful.

But Mia also talked about the graffiti movement in Palestine, which started in the 1980s during the first Intifada, when Israel had forbidden the Gazans from producing pamphlets or radio programs, and even from having telephones in many cases. Ever resourceful, Palestinians turned to graffiti as both a political tool and simply as a way to spread news. Graffiti artists themselves became polarized, some in the employ of Hamas, others in the employ of Fatah. Over time, Hamas developed a reputation for having the best calligraphers, because Arabic is a holy language, given to Muslims by God, and must be respected as such. Most recently, after Hamas's election victory in 2006, Fatah graffiti has all but disappeared.  All of this is chronicled in Mia's book.

She also talked about how graffiti has begun to change again in the last couple of years, a change not reflected in her book but present in the photo exhibition at AUC.  There's a new movement now of art students and independent artists taking to the walls of Gaza. This time the message isn't overtly political, or at least not in the way it's been in the past. This new wave of artists is producing murals of their hopes and dreams. Images of how they imagine the world outside the massive prison that is Gaza. Images of breaking out of the Strip. You can see pictures of some of those murals on Mia's blog. Even if you don't read Swedish, she's such an evocative photographer that you get the idea.

Ancient Palaestina

Bet She'an, Israel/Palestine

Originally, the plan was to cross the border into Jordan, and then head for Umm Qais (aka the Decapolis city of Gedara) for the spectacular view from the northwest corner of Jordan. When Michelle mentioned Roman ruins near her kibbutz in Bet She'an, though, Wade and I guessed that it might be another Decapolis city, one that neither of us had seen, so we decided to go there instead. (In fact, a quick trip to Wiki reveals that Bet She'an has a long and illustrious history, being mentioned in conjunction with most of the major periods of the region's history.)

In addition to suffering the consequences of last night's fun, we had an unexpected delay on the way there, being pulled off our bus at a checkpoint to have our luggage scanned and our IDs verified. But we weren't the only ones stopped at that checkpoint on our way to Bet She'an, and we managed to hitch a ride right to the gate of the archaeological park.

From A New Decapolis City

Wade, a theater management major when I knew her back at Goucher College, was thrilled by the beautifully preserved Greco-Roman theater. I was excited about the exposed heating system that would have been under the floor of the West Bathhouse, and by the pomegranate trees, which always remind me of my Peace Corps house. The views from the top of the tel were also quite spectacular.

From A New Decapolis City

Biting My Tongue

Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

From City of 3 Faiths

Midway through Peace Corps Pre-Service Training, we met our counterparts and were supposed to confide in them our greatest fears about the next two years. Mine was a fear of political discussions, especially of regional issues like Iraq and Israel/Palestine, which are such personal issues in this part of the world. This fear was partly because I remembered how frustrating it was to speak to my Jewish friends and classmates at Goucher College about Israel/Palestine; how entrenched and adamant they tended to be about their opinions on the issues. Now, living in a city that is at least 80% Palestinian, most of my friends in Jordan have family in the Occupied Territories, and are equally entrenched and adamant about their own opinions on the same issues. So when I came on this trip, I was firmly resolved not to be sucked into political conversations.

From City of 3 Faiths

I did pretty well for awhile. Plenty of things were said about Palestinians that made me bristle like, "They all want to kill us," or, "They don't know how to take care of their homes," or "I'm afraid to go through the Arab souq." I managed to bite my tongue and just enjoy the beauty of Jerusalem, to take pictures instead of taking offense. I really genuinely liked the people we spent time with, and I certainly didn't want to make them feel uncomfortable in their own city.

From City of 3 Faiths

I do have to admit to being much more moved by the view of the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount than by our excursion to leave a prayer for a friend at the Western Wall, but for aesthetic reasons, not religious or political ones.

From City of 3 Faiths

In the evening, we took some wine up to a beautiful overlook of the city, listening to the sunset adhan from the mosques of Jerusalem. Halfway into my bottle of wine, and most of the way through Michelle's, I lost my resolve. Michelle started to ask me how I could support Palestinian nationalism when it was a complete fiction, and there never has been a people known as the Palestinians. She asked, so I tried to answer, remembering what I'd learned in Prof. Magid's class on Palestinian nationalism at Indiana University. I particularly wanted to talk about Khalil Shikaki's results from polling about the Clinton Accords. But I never managed to finish an answer. (A bottle of wine does not a patient listener make!) Eventually I gave up.

But this is my take-away: There was almost nothing Michelle said that was objectively false. There is very little that my Palestinian friends say that is objectively false. But there is intense propaganda on both sides, which emphasizes some truths and ignores others. To parse just one sample argument from this evening: Yes, Gazans destroyed perfectly good settlers' houses and have not built new houses in their place. This ignores the fact, on one hand, that Israelis will not allow Gazans to import building materials for new houses, claiming that those materials could be used for military purposes. It also ignores the emotional impact of living in the abandoned housing of one's occupier. If the Jews had been liberated from the Warsaw ghetto, would they want to live in the former barracks of their Nazi oppressors? I'm pretty sure they would have torn those barracks down. The tragedy here is that passions are so inflamed on both sides that objectivity and empathy have become almost impossible.

Cuneiform

Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

I've written before about how I hate to travel where I don't know the language. In Hungary and Israel, though, the frustrations are different. In Hungary, the language was incomprehensible, but at least the alphabet was the same, so I could understand the cognates on the signs. Here, I can understand some words when I hear them – left, right, hello, goodbye, six – and more and more as Michelle teaches things to us. But the signs may as well be in cuneiform. I recognize only one letter – "sh" – and the numbers.

"At least I can read the numbers!" I heard one American say in Eilot, having just left Egypt. There must've been a time in Jordan when I felt this way, but it was too long ago to remember!

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Jerusalem -> Tel Aviv -> Nazareth, Israel/Palestine

From Arab Israel: Nazareth

...goldenrod, poppies, Queen Anne's lace, purple hollyhocks, flowering bushes in red, yellow, pink, white, lavender and fuscia, forests of tall imported eucalyptus trees. And then the agriculture, miles of lush, cultivated fields.

From Arab Israel: Nazareth

The driver opened the window and you could just smell the green, the moisture. I'm not unaware of the political implications, how Israelis' stewardship of the land has been used as a controversial and, frankly, poor justification for pushing the Palestinians out and keeping them out. I'm fully aware that the bus drivers on this trip are Arab, and I got quite an earful from last night's Arab cab driver about how the Israelis oppress the Arabs. But as far as pure aesthetics go, this side of the Valley is more to my liking. It's easy to see why the Palestinians want to come back here, and the Israelis want to stay.

Today I saw the mountain of Megiddo where Armageddon's final battle will rage, the hill where Jesus was revealed to his Disciples as the Messiah, and Nazareth, home town of Mary and Joseph, to which young Jesus returned after his family's exile in Egypt.

It was fascinating to listen to the tour guide talk about Israeli history. I've been reading for the last week about national narratives, in Mona Baker's Interpretation and Conflict, and Howard Zinn's famous People's History of the United States. They both talk about how we choose the narratives we tell ourselves about our nation, and how the narratives we've chosen change how we act as individuals and societies. The tour guide's narrative told so much about Israel. He talked about the Jews tiring of "the filth of Yaffa" and building Tel Aviv, meaning "archaeological mound of renewal." He described the brave settlers, buying the land no one wanted and turning it into an agricultural paradise. Tales of nameless national heroes defying the odds to build a majestic nation. Only the obliquest references to the people who preceded those settlers, and when they were mentioned, they were "the Ottomans," a nation that no longer exists either geographically or ideologically. I kept wondering what the driver would think if he could understand English. What Heba and my many other Palestinian friends would say.

My Story of Nazareth
My stay in Nazareth is best described in the captioned photos of my online album.

From Arab Israel: Nazareth

It was also really nice to spend the afternoon and evening with Andy Lehto. The last two times I saw him, he was in the most intense moments of getting married, so we didn't really get to catch up. This time, we had hours and hours to share our stories of being abroad, the triumphs and tribulations that are only fully understood by others who are straddling the same two worlds we are.

...Just Different

Eilot -> Dead Sea -> Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

I’ve heard so much about the stark differences between Israel and the Arab world, so of course it’s the first thing I looked for as I came across the border.

You can see it in the city of Eilot: cleaner, neater, and more central European in architecture. In the people, for sure! I haven’t seen so many mullets outside of Lower Chanceford Township, nor so many leggings since the 80s, not to mention the short skirts – far too short for my high school dress code! It’s also much harder to pick out the foreigners on sight.

But pass outside the city limits, and one side of the Rift Valley is pretty much like its opposite. It’s still Wadi Araba. It may be a touch more green.

I’m fascinated by the date plantations: hundreds of palms, all the same height and shape, in a perfect grid of straight lines and right angles, the dead fronds trimmed neatly away.

It’s at the northern end of the Dead Seat that I started to see a real difference in the natural scenery, about where I spotted the distinctive Wadi Mujib Bridge over on the Jordanian side. From there most of the way to Jericho, between the road and the Dead Sea, was miles and miles of salt marsh, thick with reeds, acacia trees and the occasional palm, and bordered with short grasses in vivid earth tones. All of it was protected by chain link fence topped with barbed wire. It was just beautiful, even if segments of the trees had been ruined in a fire in the last year.

Then we turned left at the top of the Dead Sea and went up, up, up to Jerusalem. As we wound our way through the hills, which on the Jordanian side are barren and rocky, on the Israeli side were covered in a soft fuzz of green and yellow grass. Where the road cut into the hillsides, you could see a thick layer of fertile soil above the sharp, white layers of rock. Then we got to the top and it was greener than the greenest parts of Ajlun. How much of that difference is Mother Nature and how much human (mis)management is not mine to judge, but it was a dramatic difference.

Then we ducked into a tunnel and...
...there it was, the holy city, with the golden Dome of the Rock glowing in the late afternoon sunlight.

Promised land, indeed!

Honestly!

Aqaba, Jordan / Eilot, Israel

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” said the young women at the security check at the Eilot crossing into Israel. They had just repacked my bags for me, after carefully removing and handling everything in the kind of clear plastic gloves you see at the deli counter. They had sent everything I'd brought one at a time through the detector, oohing and aahing over my Jordanian jewelry and hair accessories. “No problem,” I said, thinking, Better inconvenient than insecure. They’d already asked me how long I’d been in Jordan, what I do there, why I’d chosen to study Arabic (“It seemed like an interesting challenge” seemed the safest of my many reasons), and why I was going to Israel. They were very cheerful about it, clearly very comfortable in each other’s company, and I was feeling really good about crossing the border. Plus, Jordan didn’t charge me the exit tax, or for the days I’d overstayed my visa.

Of course it wasn’t that simple. I hadn’t gotten to passport control yet. They flipped through my passport and saw its many Arab stamps: 3 for each Jordanian tourist visa, 3 more for my residency, plus every other entry and exit, half a dozen from Egypt, and a trip to Syria. They sent me to my own special window with my own special official. “We’re going to do a background check. I’m going to ask you some questions, and then it’ll take an hour, maybe more.”

She was very friendly, meticulous but pleasant. The whole time, a voice in my head was critiquing every answer: Oh, yeah, tell her again how the U.S. government has financed all your trips to Jordan. Oh, no! “I don’t actually know the French girl I’m staying with. I don’t know what she does in Ramallah….” Way to look like a terrorist! Good point about how Peace Corps doesn’t let volunteers choose their destinations. Be sure to mention how your best friend in Jordan works for the U.N. and was sent to the States by the U.S. government. (Crap! How could you forget that the Israeli embassy held her passport for months!) Don’t forget to mention how your other friend became an Israeli citizen and lives on a kibbutz!

Then I sat with Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States and waited. An hour passed. I started to make contingency plans for how I’d spend my vacation if Israel turned me away.

But in the end, as I suspected, blundering honesty was the best policy, and they let me in. In the end, it took half as long and was far more pleasant than crossing the border into Syria. Where, by the way, I won’t be going again on this passport. I needed the stamps from my crossing to renew my visa for my last 6 weeks in Jordan, and Syria won't let people in who have Israeli stamps.

...And Now I Love Israel!

Amman, Jordan

I had another fascinating conversation with a taxi driver this morning. Almost immediately he announced that he was Palestinian. This isn't surprising, as most taxi drivers are.

Then he told me he'd been recently kicked out of Israel/Palestine, and would have to stay away for 6 years. I didn't ask why. I mean, what do you say to that kind of statement? ...smile and nod...

Then he told me that his daughter was in the hospital. This I do know how to respond to! Allah yasa3adha! (God help her!)

Then the real drama began. When his daughter was well enough to go home, the hospital announced that he owed them 1,000 dinar for her care and stay at the hospital. He was a taxi drive, so of course he didn't have JD1,000, but he offered all he had, and promised to return with the rest within a week to 10 days. Not good enough, said the hospital; they refused to release his daughter until his bill was paid, while adding to his bill for every day she stayed in the hospital. Can you believe it? Holding his own daughter as collateral? And charging him for it. At a hospital! It took him another 2 days to beg and borrow the money from friends and family, at who knows what additional cost to him.

Now, this is the good part: Here's a Palestinian who's been kicked out of his home by the Israeli government, forced to move his whole family to Jordan and build a new life for himself. And yet he said to me, "As much as I suffer at the hands of the Israeli government, the people of Israel are so much nicer than the Jordanians. In Israel, I wouldn't have paid a cent for that hospital stay; the Israeli government would have paid for the whole ordeal automatically. I wish I were back in Israel. I love Israel!"

And as I was telling this story, I was thinking how like America this is. In fact, I mentioned that to him: that Americans are talking a lot back home about how many people go bankrupt from healthcare costs. He knew exactly what I was talking about, too.

NHS Bliss
On a similar note, there's been much scrutiny of the details of our company healthcare policy in the office this week, and British Melanie is appalled at the things that are not covered. Every time she brings it up, I think, It looks like a pretty good policy to me. Just like your average American healthcare policy....

Irish and Jewish Voices for Peace

Amman, Jordan

Oh, how I wish I'd had my camera this morning!
From the taxi down the Airport Road this morning, I saw a garishly amazing vehicle. It must have been an ambulance once; it still had "AMBULANCE" spelled backwards on the bonnet. It had rows of squares of colored reflective tape on all sides, and from either side of the back door flew Irish and Palestinian flags. Stamped across its sides were "Gaza Freedom March," "Viva Palestina" and "Derry Anti War Coalition."

Then I arrived at work and opened my email, and what should I find in my Inbox but a message from Jewish Voice for Peace to support their Gaza Freedom March through solidarity events and a petition urging the Egyptian government to let the convoy through. I've blogged about Jewish Voice for Peace before, and believe that this is the way peace in Israel/Palestine has to be achieved: through coalitions that include Palestinians, Israelis and voting citizens of Western governments with interests in the region.

But I was curious. I wanted a good picture of that crazy ambulance I'd seen on the Airport Road. I googled "Derry Anti War Coalition," and found something completely different from what I expected. DAWC made a big splash back in 2006 in response to Israel's attack on Lebanon, which was aided by bunker-buster missiles manufactured by an American company, Raytheon, in a plant in Derry, Ireland. Some coalition members, dubbed the "Raytheon 9," blockaded themselves inside the Raytheon facility for days, and were later tried under anti-terrorism laws. Last year, they were found not guilty. I have been unable, however to find anything about their ambulance travelling (presumably) to Gaza.

I did, however, learn a little more about Viva Palestina, under whose umbrella DAWC is sending its ambulance. There's been plenty of reporting on their caravan of ambulances, lorries and other vehicles making its way from London through Europe, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Egypt to the Rafah Crossing into the Gaza Strip. They've been picking up participants all along the way, in addition to having the very public support of British Member of Parliament George Galloway.

And finally I found it. You can catch glimpses of the DAWC ambulance at the beginning and end of this video, as well as seeing many other fantabulous vehicles.

Backing Hope With Action

If you've been following this or my other blog, Alternate Witness, you will know that I have been following two causes very closely in the last few year, one which gives me great hope, and one which gives me great pain.

I have followed with great hope, though equal amounts of skepticism, the campaign and now presidency of one Barack Obama. Since the very beginning, I have admired in him a humility one doesn't see in many politicians. Where other politicians, most notably our recently departed president, choose a political line and toe it against all opposition, Barack Obama is willing to admit when he doesn't know, and even when he is wrong, and is willing an eager to seek out the opinions of experts and hear all sides before reaching a conclusion.

I have also been following, since I was an undergraduate, the situation in the Palestinian Territories. I have been particularly concerned since Hamas won free and fair elections and the serious blockading and humanitarian crisis began. If you've been reading carefully, you'll understand that I am concerned about both sides of this conflict, both the Palestinian and Israeli victims. They are both victims of birth, of circumstance, of history, of violence, of intolerance, of religious extremism, of poor governance, and of propaganda on both sides. There are children dying in this conflict who did nothing wrong but be born on the wrong side of some arbitrary line in the dirt. That pains me in ways I can't describe.

Recently, I've started following an organization that unites those two causes. Jewish Voice for Peace is encouraging Americans, Israelis, Arabs and others to speak together in calling for a resolution to the conflict in Palestine. They started Thank You Jon Stewart, which I've seen posted on a number of my friends' blogs and Facebook pages. They petitioned President-elect Barack Obama to support a ceasefire in Gaza. Now that there is a ceasefire (of sorts), they are preparing an open letter to President Barack Obama about the situation in Gaza. I received the following as part of an email encouraging me to sign the open letter, and the words express very accurately how I am feeling right now:

Every time I saw one of those Obama posters with "HOPE" on it, I felt it. Hope, that is. Hope against hope that perhaps this new President would pursue a just peace with the same fervor that he pursued hope before he was elected.

And in the short time since the inauguration, we're seeing reasons to believe our hope was justified. But, here's the big challenge: Israel, Palestine, Gaza. Turning hope into reality comes down to how President Obama deals with this ongoing tragedy. This week's announcement of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy -- the man who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland-- signals that Obama is serious about even-handed diplomacy. For so many, our hope is that Mitchell and Obama will now take serious and meaningful steps towards a just and true peace.

I am also quite passionate about the idea of balanced journalism, not just in regards to Gaza, and I thank Amina for forwarding me information about a campaign by Avaaz to improve fair journalism vis a vis Gaza.

Bike for Gaza

...or, How Jordanian Youth Respond To Crisis

Amman, Jordan

From Bike For Gaza

I was only a very minor participant in the amazing recent campaign wonderfully described by Black Iris here and here. I dropped off just one bag of non-perishable foodstuffs, having been unemployed for a number of weeks and unable to contribute more. I knew from some of my friends in Tareef Cycling Club when and where they were loading on New Years, and it was just across the Airport Road from my apartment, but I grossly underestimated the Jordanian people and didn't think they would need my help. I regret this, despite lingering shreds of my Peace Corps training telling me to avoid politically sensitive gatherings, because I think Black Iris makes a great argument in support of what I've been telling a half-Jewish friend here in Jordan: for all the anger that there is here about what is happening in Gaza, it's not being directed at individuals, but at the Israeli leadership.

I also did my part today, and a little bit more, when I went on the Save Gaza bike trip with the Tareef Cycling Club this morning. I mean, let's be honest, I was going to go anyway, because Tareef goes cycling every Friday, and I'm fulfilling a promise to myself from several years ago to become a competent cyclist post-Peace Corps. But when I found out that Tareef would be donating all the usual 5 dinar fees to the Red Cross for the relief effort in Gaza, I was especially determined to go, and even to contribute more than the usual fee.

I went because, while Tareef's members are passionate about the Palestinian cause and they were eager, as I am, to make some contribution, that was not the sole purpose of today's ride. These guys and gals get together to go cycling. Some of them are members of the Jordanian national team, others are even less athletic than I am, and there is absolutely no censure. These are some of the easiest people to spend time with that I know in Jordan, because they are all very ambitious, successful people, but they don't take themselves very seriously. The girls are very stylish, even at the end of a long bike ride, because there's absolutely no avoiding it here, but they're not the Barbie dolls you usually see around town. I suspect that most of them are of above average wealth, but you'd never know it by looking at them. And they didn't disappoint today. There was some talk about Palestine, but there was no diatribe, no vitriol, no censure of other viewpoints. More than angry, the people on this trip were disappointed.

But mostly, we were just biking!

From Bike For Gaza

A Call For Moderation

Amman, Jordan

I am not a touchy-feely person. It takes a great deal of effort for me to not laugh or at least roll my eyes at touchy-feely people. But what I have seen on Facebook today has really hurt me. I am literally crying as I write this. What is happening in Gaza is tragic, it really is. It is painful to watch. It has also engendered some real positive movement, like the food and clothing drive I contributed to today, and the decision of the Tareef Cycling Club to donate the rental fees for Friday's ride to the Red Crescent Society.

Unfortunately, there has also been a lot of vitriolic response as well. I have seen a lot of hate on Facebook and elsewhere on the Web today, and it really pains me. I know that a lot of it is engendered out of fear, anger and frustration. I've seen fellow Goucher Girls rail at Palestinians out of fear for their families in Israel. I've seen my Arab friends, whether Palestinian or not, lash out at Israel with equal vehemence. It really saddens me.

After the 2006 Lebanese War, an interdisciplinary group of Arab and Israeli professors (and all good friends) was formed at Indiana University, calling themselves the Mid East Conflict and Reform Group, and they began a series of guest lectures with a panel of those same IU profesors on the 2006 Lebanese War. I asked in this panel discussion if it was not true that economics has a great deal to do with the Mid East conflict, that from the Arab side of the border, Israel looks like a green, modern paradise, built on unequal water rights, unequal treatment by the West, and unequal military power, and this frustrates many on the Arab side. The Lebanese political science professor, Dr. Abdulkader Sinno, said something to me that has really changed the way I look at this conflict. He said that life is not a paradise in Israel, that poverty and especially child poverty are very high, and that this is largely because Israel chooses to spend its money on fighting its neighbors rather than providing services to its own people. The Bank of Israel released this report 18 months ago, including the following statistic:

Child poverty, as measured by the relative indices, rose by 2 percentage points in 2005 to an unprecedented 35.2 percent, which is high also by international comparison. The high rate of child poverty not only harms the children's current standard of living, but also adversely affects the creation of human capital, which is important for future earning power.

This is one of the highest child poverty rates in the West, right behind the good ole US of A!

I took a class on Palestinian nationalism from another member of IU's Mid East Conflict and Reform Group, Dr. Shaul Magid, who grew up and raised his own family in Israel, whose son is in the Israeli Defense Forces right now, and who is blacklisted on the Internet as a "self-hating Jew" for his views on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He told us a horrific story about a triathalon in Israel, during which a bridge collapsed under a dozen professional cyclists, who fell into the river; half of them died of the effects of pollution in that river. This is not, he assured us, the only instance of ecological disaster in Israel.

I am generally pro-Palestinian because I feel that they have definitely gotten the short end of the stick in this conflict. As a teacher, a woman, or simply as a human being, I cannot help but be touched by the plight of children in the Palestinian Territories, generation after generation of them, who have lived in fear and uncertainty all their lives, who are dealing with enormous and weighty issues of traumatic and post-traumatic stress, all because they were unfortunate enough to be born on the wrong side of some arbitrary line in some "Imagined Community."

I simply don't understand why this isn't obvious to everyone! We don't choose where we were born, we don't choose our ethnicity, our mother tongue, or our childhood cultures. None of us did. We can grow up and change our language, our culture, our community, our identities (though not our ethnicities, if there even is such a thing), but Palestinian children are trapped in their parents' hell, as are Iraqi children, Sudanese children, Zimbabwean children, Tibetan children, Kashmiri children, Afghan children, and many Israeli children.

I do not believe in collective guilt or collective punishment. Not for Gazans, not for Lebanese, not for Iraqis, and not for Israelis. When we close a border to basic humanitarian aid, when we bombard a civilian population, when we cut off the electricity or water to an entire community, when we pray for a painful New Year for an entire nation, whenever we inflict or call for collective punishment, and whenever we are silent and allow it, we are also condemning large numbers of undeserving children and adults who are victims of circumstance and genetics.

So I beg you, my Arab friends and my Jewish friends and all my other friends alike, that when you speak of this conflict in Gaza or any conflict anywhere, remember that every community is made up of a great many diverse individual stories, many of them only just beginning to be written!