Dear Coen Brothers, It’s Nothing Personal (It’s all Political)

Ethan and Joel Coen recieve the $1M Dan David Prize on May 15th 2011 at Tel Aviv University. ~ Photo by REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Ethan and Joel Coen recieve the $1M Dan David Prize on May 15th 2011 at Tel Aviv University. ~ Photo by REUTERS/Amir Cohen

On May 15th, while thousands of people were getting shot and gassed in the streets, the Coen Brothers (and many others) took a million dollars from Tel Aviv University, in the form of the Dan David Prize. I’m sure someone would have cared to protest, had  over 15 people not been killed and hundreds injured, during the Nakba Day commemoration demonstrations, that same day.

Update (17.5.11): 21 dead, and over 200 injured.

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Protesters shot dead for shouting: Nakba Remembrance Day 2011

by Brenda Heard

The 15th of May is a day of remembrance. Around the world, we remember the systematic displacement and massacre of the Palestinian people. In their honour, we take note of the necessity of safeguarding the sliver of impoverished land that has been left to the survivors. We pay tribute to those who have refused to be stomped into oblivion.

Yet the Israeli newspaper Haaretz bemoans self-righteously the ‘Palestinian protests for the annual Nakba Day, which mourns the creation of the State of Israel’. At this phraseology we can only shake our heads and say, ‘no, it is not about you; it is about the injustice done to the Palestinian people; it is this injustice that is the catastrophe’.

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Return to Occupied Golan

UPDATE I:  Ali Abunimah describes below what is happening in the video. UPDATE II: an eyewitness report on the aftermath of the march.

Dramatic footage of Syrians and Palestinians braving bullets and landmines to return to occupied Golan.

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15 Palestinians killed on Nakba remembrance day

nakba day crossing into israel

Palestinians crossing border: ” We are going back to Palestine.”

Edmund Sanders reporting from Jerusalem, with Ahmed Aldabba in Gaza City; this report first appeared in the L.A. Times, with pictures from the L.A. Times available here:

Israeli soldiers opened fire Sunday on throngs of Palestinian refugees and protesters as they attempted to cross Israel’s tightly secured borders with Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, killing as many as 15 people and wounding scores of others, officials said.

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Jeffrey S Wiesenfeld is Harassing Me

Like many activists, I get hoards of hate mail. As someone who’s committed to abolishing violence, whether it be peer-to-peer or on a global scale, I believe that none of us should fear exposing violence towards us, or our friends and loved ones, who don’t have the privilege to do so. In my case, I truly believe I have absolutely nothing to fear, and so I bring to you a “correspondence”, initiated by Jeffrey S Wiesenfeld, after I had sent a stencil letter to the CUNY Board of Trustees members, including himself, regarding the Tony Kushner affair. I believe this is called harassment.

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Talbeeseh for Um Shurshouh

Syrian revolutionary chants are as distinctive, creative, as powerful and sometimes as comical as their Egyptian equivalents. One of my favourites parodies Qaddafi’s threat to hunt down the Libyan opposition ‘alley by alley, house by house’:

zanga zanga dar dar                              alley by alley, house by house

bidna rasak ya bashaar                         we want your head, O Bashaar

In the film below, residents of Um Shurshouh in besieged Homs enjoy a talbeeseh, or bridegroom’s wedding party. The neighbourhood itself is the bridegroom. The leader calls out a verse, and the crowd repeats it.

Traditional calls of welcome to those arriving at the party:

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Risking it all: Trucks over the Lowari

I was born in Chitral so I’ve travelled over this pass several times (part of my family still does). It is ironic to see the truck decorated with pictures of Benazir Bhutto since it was her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who had first promised to build a tunnel and a safer road to connect Dir and Chitral. But that was over four decades back–and the promise never materialized. (Benazir also made a similar promise but proved no more eager than her father to deliver). I am shocked to see that things have actually gotten worse since my last trip.

Palestine Whistleblower Speaks

Ziyad Clot writes for the Guardian on why he leaked PA documents to al-Jazeera.

In Palestine, the time has come for national reconciliation. On the eve of the 63rd commemoration of the Nakba – the uprooting of Palestinians that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948 – this is a long-awaited and hopeful moment. Earlier this year the release by al-Jazeera and the Guardian of 1,600 documents related to the so-called peace process caused deep consternation among Palestinians and in the Arab world. Covering more than 10 years of talks (from 1999 to 2010) between Israel and the PLO, the Palestine papers illustrated the tragic consequences of an inequitable and destructive political process which had been based on the assumption that the Palestinians could in effect negotiate their rights and achieve self-determination while enduring the hardship of the Israeli occupation.

My name has been circulated as one of the possible sources of these leaks. I would like to clarify here the extent of my involvement in these revelations and explain my motives. I have always acted in the best interest of the Palestinian people, in its entirety, and to the full extent of my capacity.

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