Sometimes, things here in Israel-Palestine just get to be too much. There are always things to write about — too many, more than one person can possibly handle, sometimes 5 – 25 things a day. Due to this pressure, and circumstances beyond our control, I could not write for a while. So, with apologies for [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Palestine & Palestinians
Though our servers in California were fine, we did not have internet access from north Jerusalem for the past week, and were unable to post. Now, we are back online, and will update soon… [Oh, and by the way, no water either, from Wednesday until Friday...] UPDATE: This deprivation of internet services was due to [...]
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Filed under: Blogging
China Matters this week marked, here, the tenth anniversary of the U.S. Government’s founding of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp for illegal enemy combattants… China Hand [Peter Lee] wrote in his blog post that “January 2012 marks the 10th melancholy anniversary of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay … Meanwhile, Guantanamo remains open and [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Guantanamo
My Mentor, who shall be known as “Promeneur” until he authorizes otherwise, has sent a correction to a description I wrote about Rosa Luxemburg, in my post on Donor Opium [a film critical of Palestinian dependence on donor aid, which was sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation]. He wrote [from London, via email]: “Starved to [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Journalism and Journalists
A child is born… And his father, Alaa, a prisoner of conscience in Egypt, has today been released from detention [while investigations continue]… The Egyptian blogger, Alaa [Abd El Fattah], has been jailed for weeks [54 days, as it happens] by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Armed Forces [SCAF], for refusing to appear before a [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Egypt, Human Rights
Here is a tale that illustrates a number of things. Nablus, 3:30 pm on a sunny and relatively quiet Friday afternoon, at the entry to the city: an unmarked black SUV-type van, with very dark windows, was parked at 90 degree angle to road. The unmarked black van had a Palestinian Authority [PA] license or [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
Because my Israeli Government Press Office [GPO] has not been renewed [wrongly, I am claiming] since 2010, I have been unable to travel to Gaza the way all accredited journalists here can travel, via Israel’s Erez crossing, or “terminal”. Therefore, I have only read about the relatively new phenomena of Hamas press cards. I first [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians
This is something I found out quite accidentally, in a discussion yesterday with a Palestinian official in Ramallah about the lack of reciprocity in Israeli-Palestinian relations [including Press accreditation for media]: This year, for the first time since the Israeli conquest in the June 1967 war, it seems journalists holding ONLY Israeli GPO press cards [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians
Read it for yourself: here below is the full text, in English, of a press release announcing new rules, as transmitted from the Israeli Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs in conjunction with the Israeli Government Press Office [GPO] which is part of the Prime Minister’s Office [PMO] currently headed by Benyamin Netanyahu. First, [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists
OK, here we go, in an experiment in new media journalism: I’m going to repost, in chronological order from first to last, my Tweets this morning on a story about Jerusalem. Some related background, by Khaled Abu Toameh, was published on 17 December in the Jerusalem Post here. [Maybe it's a bit rough, this experimental [...]
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Filed under: Blogging, Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, Israel, Journalism and Journalists, Palestine & Palestinians