The Black Days of 1948

June 16, 2008 – 9:52 pm

For a long time the Israeli government has sought to perpetuate a myth that it did not expel the Palestinians out of their country, but that it was the Arabs that made them leave. This is how Israel justified and continues to justify the methods of its establishment, by denying what it has done to others.

The creation of the Palestinian Diaspora of 1948, in which over 750,000 people were forced to leave their homes, was made virtually at gunpoint. This year, as Israelis celebrated their 60th birthday, Palestinians remembered their Nakba of destruction and turmoil, signified by their uprooting from their land. This monstrous contrast has to be highlighted so that the world is educated about the crimes perpetuated against Palestinians.

Yet instead the Nakba of 1948 is remembered in passing. Death and destruction are treated like a casual event. Sure the Nakba is bemoaned, but the depth of the tragedy is not made apparent, as nobody has the right to question Israel.

Today Israel is seen as a a member of the world community, a nation with military and economic muscle, as well as a democratic state. Yet the facts of its creation are swept under the carpet.

Established Zionist politicians and military leaders understood there would come a day when the cat would be let out of the bag and the terrible reality of the massacres, transfers, expulsions, and destructions of whole villages would be broadcast to the whole world. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in palestine | Comments (0)

Gaza: What Can You Expect?

April 26, 2008 – 12:05 pm

As it stands, Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas has so far done little to improve the continuous calamity that is Gaza.

Just today, we are getting news of a fourteen-year-old child losing her life after a typically heavy-handed Israeli raid erupted in violence. Israel is showing the Gazans who’s boss. Vote for Hamas? Pay the price.

And yet, who was it exactly that the Gazans were supposed to vote for? Previous attempts at establishing a measure of good government have failed spectacularly. If you feel that your very existence is under siege, who do you turn to? That’s right, the guys with the guns.

I have no love lost for Islamic hard-liners. However, when I look at Israel’s policies toward this region, it seems to me that at this point, it’s as if no one is even searching for an actual solution. Gaza is troublesome and unstable, and who wants to deal with that? Why not just bleed it dry? Demoralize it to the point of it fading away?

The horrors of European anti-Semitism have paved the way for a series of new horrors elsewhere. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in current affairs, palestine | Comments (0)

The Phone Call from Kayfoun

March 8, 2008 – 6:01 pm

It was three o’clock in the morning when the phone rang. Sirena sat up in her bed when she heard the second trill break the quiet evening air, and an anxious feeling filled her stomach. There was only one place she hoped that call wouldn’t be coming from: Lebanon, the place her father called “back home.”

There was a war over there.

Her father had once stood with her and spun their globe. His finger covered the entire country. He pointed it out with the white crescent at the top of one nail. Sirena had squinted at the small blot, its name printed in a nearby sea. She imagined that the whole country was probably the size of her elementary school and pictured the blue and red hallways packed with tall men and women who looked just like her dad.

Sirena couldn’t remember when the war had begun. Her father said it started a long time ago. Her sister Aisha was ten now, two years older than Sirena. Aisha couldn’t remember when the war started either, but she said she was six when the first phone call came, and she could remember how things were before it happened. Aisha said Baba smiled a lot more and he used to read stories and sing songs before bedtime. Now he just tucked the covers around you and said, “I love you, baby. Sleep well,” before flipping down the light switch and pulling the door almost shut.

“The war,” Aisha had said, and she said it with authority, “changed everything.” In the last four years, there had been five phone calls, each reporting the death of yet another cousin, aunt or uncle that the girls would never meet. Of the calls, Sirena could only remember two. She was afraid this might be the third phone call she would come to remember. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, lebanon | Comments (0)

Gaza’s Troubles Spill Over: An Overview

February 20, 2008 – 11:55 am

On January 30 of this year, thousands of Palestinians dashed into Egypt for a shopping onslaught only previously seen at the annual wedding gown sales in Filene’s Basement, a Boston department store (75% off). Hamas gunmen and desperate family providers destroyed part of the Israeli-built barrier along the Gaza-Egyptian border.

During the last three weeks before the onslaught, after an upsurge in rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip, Israel had imposed a tight blockade, refusing to allow anything but some humanitarian aid to trickle into the region, and not much of that. Two weeks later, the Israelis opened the doors to allow heating oil only. That same day, three more rockets were fired off at Israel from the Strip.

The Gaza Strip is roughly 25 miles long by 8 miles wide. Except for a seven mile southern border with Egypt, it is surrounded by Israel to the north and east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The area has been occupied almost continuously since the time of ancient Egyptians, with Philistines, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British and the Israelis as overseers. It was even occupied by modern Egypt in the aftermath of the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Israel took control during the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, east Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula.

Israel withdrew its physical occupation from parts of the Strip in accordance with the 1979 Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords also affirmed the Palestinian right to self-government. The Palestinian National Authority and Israel then shared control in the Gaza Strip until 2005, when Ariel Sharon unilaterally ended Israeli’s military presence and withdrew all Israeli settlements, making the Strip the first territory to come completely under the PNA. The peace, however, did not to last.

Yasir Arafat’s PLO had become cynically corrupt, tired, and had generally lost its way. As we know, in 2007, Hamas, a militant group and determined foe of Israel, was voted in by the Palestinians to replace the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, causing a schism with the Fatah party, the PLO’s political wing, which dominates Palestinians in the West Bank.

Since the reluctant withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in 2005, Gaza is almost entirely Palestinian Arab. At least 99 percent of the population are Sunni Muslim with a scattered few Christians. The region saw a massive shift of population following the conflict of 1948, when Israel was created. By 1968, the region had grown in population six times. Right now 1.5 million people live in the Gaza Strip and it has, at 146 square miles, one of the highest population densities in the world. Eighty percent of Gazans live below the U.N.’s poverty level.

Israel and Egypt signed a treaty in 1979 that returned control of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Strip, to the Egyptians. As part of that treaty, a 100 meter wide band of land was designated as the Philadelphi corridor was set up as a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt. Israel subsequently built a corrugated sheet metal barrier there during the intifadas of the early 2000s. The barrier is topped by barbed wire.

Egypt and Israel then enacted a military accord in 2005 after the Israeli military pullout. This agreement was ostensibly built on the 1979 peace pact. This pact specified a deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards along the length of the border, which is, remember, seven miles long. These guards were to man the border helping Israel defend against terrorism, arms smuggling and other illegal behavior. That was the deal.

The Rafah Crossing, the only entry-exit point along those seven miles had been controlled by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. The E.U. was to monitor any Palestinian impulses to misbehave on their side of the wall. However, in July 2007, the E.U. pulled out after Hamas defeated Fatah in their elections for the right to speak for the Gazans. At the time of the pullout, Egypt and Israel agreed to shut down the Rafah Crossing, effectively sealing Gaza off from the rest of the world. The Israelis hoped that such a blockade would choke off Hamas-directed mortar and rocket attacks into southern Israel. It did not stop those attacks, but it did stop anything (i.e. heating oil, baby diapers, blankets, coffee and so on) from getting in. It was winter, and it was bitterly cold (Western observes, of course, regularly assume that the entirety of the Middle East is hot year-round). Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in current affairs, palestine | Comments (1)

Notes from the Dubai International Film Festival: The Battle for Haditha

December 13, 2007 – 7:41 am

This article is part of a series on various films at DIFF 2007.

Nick Broomfield’s “The Battle for Haditha” has not yet gotten enough press. In some ways, this is understandable. Despite the explosive subject matter, this is a low-key film. There are no big-name actors, no enormous budget, and, most importantly, the picture’s stylistic elements tend toward a stark, bare-boned simplicity. Nevertheless, this is a film to see.

Broomfield cast many amateurs for key roles, among them some ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, and this is both good and bad. There is a definite air of authenticity surrounding the film, yet the acting occasionally appears forced. Some of the dialogue struck me as contrived- although this may have something to do with the subtitles. I do not speak Arabic, but having been accompanied by an Arabic speaker at the screening, I discovered that the subtitles are not as good as they could have been.

This movie is earnest, but, in some scenes, it also comes across as didactic. Do we really need to see the chief insurgent character, a disgruntled former member of the Iraqi army, spelling out the message with lines such as: “The Americans created the insurgency by dis-banding the army”? Does the chief insurgent furthermore have to opine stiffly on the future of Iraq, noting (in a manner that suggests that he is channeling Fukuyama) the bleak possibility of the country inheriting a new leader, someone who will be a helluva lot worse than Saddam?

Yet in spite of a few missteps, this is a haunting picture. I can’t get it out of my head, and I probably won’t for a long time. Broomfield captures the comings and goings of the residents of Haditha, people whose lives are about to be shattered, with intimacy and grace. I was floored by the character of Rashied (Duraid A. Ghaieb), a young man besotted with his pregnant wife (Yasmine Hanani - who attended the screening alongside the director, and ex-Marine actors Elliot Ruiz and Eric Mehalacopoulos), keenly aware of the growing danger of staying with his family in Haditha, and yet unable to do much about it.

Alongside U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield dares to portray the members of the Iraqi insurgency as human beings. These people are not just fundamentalist foreigners, they are also ordinary locals who are infuriated with what has happened to their country. This simple truth is about as inconvenient as anything Al Gore can come up with, and is bound to make American audiences squirm in their seats. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in arts and literature, dubai, entertainment, iraq, terrorism | Comments (3)

Lessons Learned from the 6th War

September 3, 2006 – 11:33 am

1. The legend of Israel’s military might is shattered for good. A few brave knights together with God’s angels defeated the 5th strongest army in the world.

2. Israel as a strategic ally is a fallacy and U.S. tax payer’s money is wasted. Israel was not able to help out in the first or the second Gulf War and was not able to help itself in Lebanon. Israel is strongest against the weak, but Hezbollah ate their lunch with chutzpah.

3. The assertion of Israel from the river to the sea is a pipe dream. To expand you need to occupy and subjugate. This is no longer in the realm of reason. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in current affairs, lebanon | Comments (0)

The Kindness of Strangers

February 22, 2005 – 11:35 am

President Bush wants me to be excited about the recent elections in Iraq while the news shows lines of Iraqi voters, segregated by sex. I’m supposed to be thrilled, elated, waving an ink-stained finger around a pasty version of E.T., while the ballots specifically asked the voter to disclose his or her sex. Smug American politicians repeat the word “freedom” like a broken record, while already on the streets of Baghdad women are harassed for wearing pants.

It funny, for all the current saber-rattling going on about Iran at the moment, Bush seems completely ignorant of the fact that he himself has just helped create a new Iran: a battered, bitter post-Saddam Iraq at the risk of succumbing to fascism in the guise of moral authority. Oh sweet irony. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in current affairs, iraq, muslim women | Comments (0)

A look in the mirror

December 13, 2001 – 11:49 am

Never did I yearn to have the drawing talent of a satirical cartoonist more than these days as words can hardly do justice to the tragic black comedy the Arab-Israeli conflict has become.

The picture I want to draw today is of a mad circus with Sharon running a bizarre show of trained animals. In this number, Sharon, with his long hovering whip, orders Arafat to run after members of Hamas while sadistically preventing him from doing so by tying his feet together. When Arafat starts to run and falls down, more lashes come his way for failing to obey the orders to chase after Hamas. Of course, the whole spectacle has nothing to do with Hamas. The joke is being played on the ageing and helpless Arafat to humiliate and paralyse him.

Or maybe the setting would be in a bull ring with Sharon, the over-sized matador, teasing Arafat, the obliging bull, with Hamas as the muleta (red cloth). When the bull with the poisoned spears dangling from his spine is dared to aim for the muleta, the matador swiftly pulls it away to the cheers of the intoxicated crowds. The elusive red cloth was never the point, you see. The plan all along was to slowly exhaust the big fat bull until the matador could easily aim for the kill. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in current affairs, palestine | Comments (0)

Media Coverage of the Intifadah - the Logic of Power

March 30, 2001 – 11:52 am

I was watching an episode of “Diplomatic License” on CNN the other Sunday. It was hosting one of those supposedly fair and evenhanded discussions on the Palestinian Uprising (the “intifadah”).

Of course, each side was represented: on the right corner, you had the two debating champs representing the Israeli point of view, one of whom is the editor of one of the leading “current affairs” magazines in the US, and the other the head of one of the myriad Israeli lobbies. And for the Palestinian side, you had two protagonists (how admirably neutral of CNN): one was a spokesman for an Islamic organization that is as famous in the United States as the author of this article, and another who heads a Jerusalem Studies Centre that must have been established on the day on which “Diplomatic License” was recorded! And so the debate raged on and on.

Richard Roth, the program’s presenter and debate arbitrator par excellence, presided over the proceedings and portrayed an image of utmost impartiality. Equal time was given to each side to air its views, Richard acted graciously, both sides raised their issues, and the program concluded with a quote from Kofi Annan’s speech before the recent Arab Summit in Amman. Kofi Annan, god bless him, was of course a picture of justice and righteousness. His quote had something for both sides - yes, the Arabs had every right to be miffed by the continued occupation of Palestinian territories, but Israelis had a right to worry for their security.

On the other side of the world, on the same day, Slobodan Milosevic was being arrested. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in current affairs, palestine | Comments (1)