Category: Palestine

Cincinnati and Dayton for Palestine

The BDS movement is gaining momentum. Inertia is important when reminding people that the “Universal” Declaration of Human Rights is not limited to a select group of nice people.

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No. It’s not.

Last week I uploaded a link that buoyed my spirit: a marginalized people may yet gain the attention it so desperately needs. It’s an article in Mondoweiss  that’s received 503 views so far on the CPSC FB page.

Viva Palestina! Boycott Israel Until Palestinians Have Equal Rights

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Yesterday the Cincinnati Palestine Solidarity Coalition hosted a taste of Palestine event to celebrate solidarity in electorally significant SW Ohio. About 30 attendees enjoyed a gathering of people from a range of interests, ethnicities and ages to engage in festive spirit.

The dishes were overwhelmingly vegan and a tribute to the healthy aspects of a Mediterranean diet.

Among the gentle people there was a contingent from Dayton OH where an active solidarity for refugees of the longest lasting refugee crisis since 1948, known as the Nakba. Please visit American Support Network for Palestine for some extraordinary links on Palestine after Nakba

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By the way, Naksa is the Arabic word the means The World Turned Upside Down for the further occupation of land west of the Jordan River in the year 1967. From the river to the sea refers to this very body of water and the Mediterranean Coast. A land that the poet Mahmoud Darwish expresses in his poem “Unfortunately it was Paradise.”

Take a look at a map of population distribution and you see that people like to live near bodies of water, particularly where the coast is superbly beautiful.

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Today this beach has the very un-Arabic name “Gordon Beach” located at the very un-Arabic name Tel-Aviv. Turning the ancient city of Jaffa.

 

In the Land of Xenophobia the Rosary is an Assault Weapon

Humans cast some long Jungian shadows. Xenophobia and racism flourish in dark places. 2016 witnesses a political voice “from the Land of Mordor where the shadows lie.”

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Two sides of the triangle described above have denoted Judeo-Christian values since the Common Era began: Christianity and Judaism, but never Islam, although Abraham is patriarch for all three faiths.

Broadcasters who welcome the views of demagogues Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and such ilk become proudly complicit in the crimes committed by members of their audience.

Perhaps I am too easily offended or I am missing the subtlety of radio programs that boast of a battle-ready Jesus. The search argument “A rosary is an assault weapon with a 50 round clip” yields

About 874 results (0.67 seconds)

Ishmael? Do you mean the third word in Moby Dick? Otherwise, no, we don’t talk about that family member. Oh, you meant Israel. Well that’s better.

Well indeed. I discovered that the sentence “Call me Ishmael” is not the first line. My thanks to Ken Jennings for that correction and for his website The Debunker.

Pope Francis reminds us that baptized Catholics are just as ready to become unwitting militants. Islamophobes are not entirely pleased with the Francis’ papacy.

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Israel is Sparta. It is also a laboratory for weapons and “security” systems. Jeff Halper just posted an item on FB that takes on the euphemism “security.” His suggestion: substitute “pacification.” Propaganda (hasbara) suggests a patriotic rush to judgement and to a false security.

The last thing a spartan state needs is another 1.5 billion dollars to top off the annual contribution from the United States and the Marshall Islands. A response to stones thrown by Palestinian youth. I sense overreach.

Thanks for reading.

 

Taking BDS Viral: Stanley Cohen OpEd

Just when will an article on Palestinian human rights ever go viral? My hope is NOW.

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It is not cheap to make all the news that’s fetid to print. You have to make it palatable while erroneous. American media giants are like Wonder Bread, not remotely wonderful but they knead a profit. What else matters?

A few days ago an Op-Ed written by Stanley Cohen popped up on Al Jazeera.

Here is my reaction:

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Stanley Cohen is major league.  Whenever perplexed on the state of the State of Palestine and the refugees living there, listen to someone who has been well informed for something like a half-century.

During that time he has not wavered from representing real Palestinians. Universal human rights belong to all 7 billion individuals on this battered orb. Pleas are not just for the chosen.

Expedience is not the name of the game today, it’s a character flaw that Mr. Cohen doesn’t have, and he is not about to change. Stanley is not a political animal, and that doesn’t play well among multicrats gazing at the weather vane and thinking about trial balloons.

As hard as they have tried the powers that be have never been able to pin a single charge on Mr. Cohen, it’s not the wonders of teflon at play. Actually just simple human integrity at work: rare mettle.

The injustice system of Prison America sent him to Canaan Prison for eleven months in 2015 while they looked for some evidence they could find or that they could convincingly plant. They have never found any, but that’s the genius of the Patriot Act. Make the prison industrial complex the heartbeat of America.

Through 2015 Caged but Undaunted kept his voice alive.  A tip of the hat to Marion Heads., another Mensch out there lighting candles for every fellow traveller suffering under the drang of fascism.

It’s expedient to imprison without cause. Today it’s Orwellian patriotism, though I don’t like calling it Orwellian. The word itself peals like something out of the NewSpeak Dictionary. George Orwell saw it coming point blank.

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Source

Previous stuff on Stanley Cohen that you won’t read this on NYT or NPR. Unfortunately they follow the expedient.

#UpTheRebels

Editor note: I am humbled by my readers. That’s as it should be. However, I published my last article before it could be properly edited and several of you read the more hapless early version, and so I Speak Arabic Openly and Joyfully.

Reporting from the land of the fête and the home of the Atlanta Braves. BDS USA BDS USA!

Thanks for reading. Opposing viewpoints welcome.

Speak Arabic Openly and Joyfully!

Arabic is a tapestry

Modern Standard Arabic is a construct used to help Arabic speakers living over a wide expanse to understand each other. To speak the language, and yet be understood, you have to choose among Arabic dialects specific to particular geographical areas, as suggested by the map below:

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Modern Standard Arabic is akin to Esperanto among its many speakers: about 400 million Arab speakers on this planet of ours!

Lines on a map I’ve viewed 10,000 times mask the neighborhood scenes, but empires find borders (preferably using a straight edge) an expedient means for control.  Africa before Europeans. Is there a downside?  Empires rape as much as they can as fast as they can, but what’s wrong with that?  Endless decadence for one.

My safari (سفر, from Swahili) into Arabic started some years ago when teaching a German class: sample, sample. One student was born in Jerusalem. Palestinians live under constant occupation. Occupied by Ottomans until 1923, British Empire until May 1948, then another legal entity to 2016 and counting (down). But Palestine is a forever place.

I made a good deal “if you can learn some German I can learn some Arabic.” It was a means for transcending culture and stereotypes, the kind explained in the documentary Reel Bad Arabs.

It’s fun tackling curiosities in Indo-European roots. Only recently did I discover that Persian shares Indo-European roots along with most European countries. Their alphabet looks like Arabic, but there isn’t much overlap in vocabulary.

Farsi doesn’t use the root system – a fundamental building-block system for assigning meaning. Arabic dictionaries are arranged by consonant groupings

SFR = SaFaRi, a journey

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Arabic script is brilliantly beautiful. The Roman alphabet has a tiny toolbox, as useful as thimbles for trumping fingers and thumb IMO.

Latin doesn’t even have lowercase letters and it does not often include curved letters like U when a V will do. But they are easier to chisel into stone.

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Nothing beats a zero when speaking the language of science. The Romans didn’t get there. To paraphrase the John Cleese (Why does British food suck? “they had an empire to run.” It’s not easy to derive square roots using Roman numerals.

Let me say something about resources: not all Arabic alphabet aids are good. This one helped me the most: Sugar comes from Arabic.

Many Spanish words derive from Arabic. They stayed on after Arabic culture was forceably ejected from Spain in 1492. So at least two all-time epic fails happened in 1492.

The Crusades and the Inquisition (The Church Militant) were not good ideas. Spreading lies like Joseph Goebbels lends not a single grain of truth. Truth went into exile from 1933 to 1945. No literature or art of any value springs forth under Fascism. Nothing good comes of Fascism. “When I hear the word ‘culture’…”

Islamophobia (from the xeno family of racism) will not lead to a better gentler world.

An earlier post on this theme: Thinking about language

 #RumiWasntWhite.