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 the unscheduled break, I plan to resume shortly.

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 two factors —

(1) PalTel, getting nervous about the economic crisis in the West Bank, decided to cut phone service immediately for anyone who was even slightly late in paying their phone bill. This shows great disloyalty to PalTel’s customer base. Many people were affected, including the elderly and the handicapped. Some people don’t even ever get a bill — in Ramallah, it can be thrown over the fence, and then blown into the neighbors’ yards or down the street. In my case, it is because I am on the other side of the Wall, and my phone was put in before the Wall was closed [while the phone service I ordered from Israel's Bezeq company has not been installed yet...] Because of this greedy + insulting behavior from PalTel, I am strongly considering cancelling my line.

(2) Then, there were a series of hacker attacks on PalTel and including on the Hadara internet lines. Those attacks lasted for days. But, it took until the following week for officials to comment — and they had to be coaxed, at that. A story about these comments is posted on the Ma’an News Agency website, here, reporting that:

“In comments on PA TV program ‘Facing the Media’ Paltel Chief Executive Ammar al-Ikir said: ‘There is an electronic war against Palestine, which began after Palestine became a member of UNESCO’.”

em>and

“PA communication and information technology minister Mashhour Abu Dakka told the program ‘we were able to stop 99 percent of the hackers’ attacks and only a few of them were successful … [but] This attack will not be the last, and the hacking will not stop’, Abu Dakka said, calling Wednesday’s shut down a massive loss that tricked current systems by using new tactics” … On Wednesday PalTel issued a statement saying that its’ service is facing “interruptions” which are slowing down the connection, and last week several Palestinian news sites were temporarily shut down by hackers, including sites affiliated to Ma’an”.

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 an embarrassing symbol, both of US reliance on extrajudicial detention and harsh interrogation (which will continue on US military bases and in black offshore prison no matter what happens to the flagship enterprise in Guantanamo) and American political gridlock”.

The post, published on 16 January, gives a brief but interesting account of how U.S. Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich managed to ignite “the firestorm of criticism that prevented the public release of 17 Uighur captives from Guantanamo to Germany and the United States in early 2009″…

After reading that account, it would be interesting to compare it to this account of the release of one Uighur, “From Guantánamo to Palau: Exchanging One Prison for Another“, reported by Seema Saifee [a lawyer representing four Uighur detainees, including the one whose situation is described in this article], and published on 19 January on Spiegel Online here [found via a Tweet by the Miami Herald's Guantanamo correspondent, Carol Rosenberg, @carolrosenberg]

“Starved to death??? How could you!

Clubbed to the ground with a rifle butt by a proto-Stormtrooper, shot between the eyes, dumped in a Berlin canal … precisely 93 years ago today Sunday [15 January]. They’ll have gathered at spot, as they do every year.


Memorise Brecht’s rhyme — ‘She told the poor what life was about / And so the rich have rubbed her out’.

Slight frail fearless she was the real deal. Just who the Occupy movement could do with. Jewish, of course. Where’s her like today? Dare one wonder where she’d stand on … well you know what.”

UPDATE: Wikipedia reports that Rosa Luxemburg was questioned “violently” by Social Democrats and then executed [hit by a rifle butt and also shot in the head, then thrown into a river] on 15 January 1919 in the suppression of an uprising that the Spartacist League she co-founded took part in. The Wikipedia entry on Rosa Luxemburg can be read in full here.

Wikipedia also reports that “Luxemburg’s last known words, written on the evening of her murder, were about her belief in the masses, and in what she saw as the inevitability of revolution:
‘The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were on the heights; they have developed this ‘defeat’ into one of the historical defeats which are the pride and strength of international socialism. And that is why the future victory will bloom from this “defeat”.
‘Order reigns in Berlin!’ You stupid henchmen! Your “order” is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will
already “raise itself with a rattle” and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I shall be!”

And, Wikipedia lists some of her other better-known comments:
“Luxemburg’s best-known quotation is: ‘Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently’ (Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der Andersdenkenden) — this is from a fuller quotation:
‘Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of a party – however numerous they may be – is no freedom at all. Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter. Not because of the fanaticism of “justice”, but rather because all that is instructive, wholesome, and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effects cease to work when “freedom” becomes a privilege’.

‘Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element’.

And
‘Those who do not move, do not notice their chains’.”

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 military court and in connection with accusations about his role in protests against the military government.

Alaa has now just reportedly been freed today, just weeks after his son, Khaled, was born [within hours of a court appearance by Alaa's heavily pregnant wife, Manal, to plead for Alaa's freedom].

Alaa and Manal named their son Khaled after Khaled al-Said [see our earlier posts, here], an Egyptian blogger whose beating to death by Egyptian policemen in Alexandria in June 2010 eventually mobilized the big protest in Tahrir Square on #25Jan this year]…

[For further information on the Khaled Said story, our earlier posts are here, here, and here.]

UPDATE: Tonight, Alaa Tweeted: “watching my wife feed my son for the first time, bliss”

The Egyptian military council SCAF took over direct rule of the country as long-time President Husni Mubarak left Cairo on 11 February. Mubarak is now ill, but also on trial with his two sons on charges of corruption and violence.

Alaa wrote a piece which contains a lovely description of his holding his baby son Khaled for the first time, for a half-hour, in jail. The article was smuggled out of jail, and published in the Egyptian newspaper Shorouk [Sun rays] on 19 December. An English-language translation was published the next day on the No Military Trials for Civilians blog, here.

Here are some excerpts from Alaa’s article that was smuggled out our jail:

“I was imprisoned in 2006 with fifty comrades from Kefaya [Enough!] movement and untold hundreds of the Muslim Brotherhood because of our solidarity with the intifada of the judiciary against Mubarak and his regime. We protested for the independence of the judiciary and their complete supervision of the elections, and so were imprisoned by the State Security Prosecutor for a month and a half.

And now, in the era of the revolution I was imprisoned by the military prosecutor as a punishment for insisting on appearing before a civil judge. And perhaps also as a punishment for my role in the events of Maspero [a demonstration outside the Egyptian state television building known as Maspero], which was also connected to the civil judiciary: our stand in the Coptic Hospital to ensure a serious investigation by the pubic prosecutor and our insistence on genuine autopsies by the coroner. This stand was the reason my name was listed in the files of the police and military intelligence.
…
In the era of the deposed we used to refuse being tried by state security prosecution because it is an exceptional judiciary. But in the era of Ganzouri [Egypt's current interim military-appointed Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri] we agreed to it on the basis that the exceptional civil is better than the exceptional military. And because it was a Ganzouri victory I did not rejoice. In fact I came back from the prosecutor in a miserable state. I spent my most difficult week in jail because what had gone before had been a struggle and a stand against military trials, and struggle inspires patience and makes resilience easy. But what was the meaning of my continued imprisonment after the case was referred? What’s the aim of my resilience?

The lawyers assured me that the appeal against the imprisonment on remand would be in front of a civil judge: at last I would appear in front of the judge for whose dignity, stature and independence we were tortured and jailed for.

I was thinking of nothing then except getting out to be there at the birth of my first child, Khaled. Our doctor had advised an early Cesarean for the sake of Manal’s health, and with every renewal of my imprisonment we took a risk in postponing the birth in the hope that we would win and I would be there.

Khaled was in solidarity with us; he would not come out despite the passage of his nine months and waited for our last hope: the appeal in front of a civil judge. Our hopes were high, for there was no reason to jail me. I am innocent until proved guilty, and my return from abroad specially to appear in front of the prosecutor was evidence that I would not flee. And in any case the charges against me were clearly fabricated, the investigation not serious, the testimonies of false witnesses conflicting. We put forward our evidence and asked to hear witnesses who would prove that I was not in Maspero at the time of the massacre. It seemed that the truth was clear.

Khaled did his bit and waited for the judge. The lawyers presented their defence. Manal stood in front of the judge and asked that I should be released to be with her at the birth. But my civil judge looked at her strangely. I think I knew when I saw that look that he would not do right by me.

My morale collapsed completely. I drowned in fear and worry for Khaled and his mother. For the first time I was sorry for myself. My imprisonment had become a kind of absurdity, and my mind and my heart could not bear absurdity. I understand why a state security prosecutor would jail me, but why would the civil judge jail me? What’s the enmity between me and him? And what’s to become of me now? Will I turn into one of the thousands of miserable creatures in Tora Investigation Jail? We wait for months, sometimes years for a judgement that never comes, from the hands of judges whom the law tells that we are innocent until proven guilty, and whom the constitution tells that our freedom and our rights cannot be constrained except by court order. But they do not hear. Our imprisonment continues, our cases never end, and we are forgotten by the world that stretches out beyond the prison walls. Everyone in the jail is faded and miserable, even the cats are pale; their movements slow, their eyes spent and broken.

I went to sleep convinced that this was my fate: I had six months at least before my case was brought before a court

And then came Khaled! Next day, in the afternoon, I got a message telling me he and Manal were well, and a photo. Love at first sight. Love at first photograph. The prison disappeared with its walls and its cats; everything disappeared except my love for Khaled and my joy at his arrival. I slept content.

On his third day Khaled visited me. It was a surprise. I’d expected that the doctor wouldn’t allow a visit until at least a week. Khaled visited me for half an hour. I held him for ten minutes.

My God! How come he’s so beautiful? Love at first touch! In half an hour he gave me joy to fill the jail for a whole week. In half an hour I gave him love I wished would surround him for a whole week. In half an hour I changed and the universe changed around me.

Now I understand why my imprisonment continues: they wanted to deprive me of joy. Now I understand why I will resist: my imprisonment will not stop my love. My happiness is resistance. Holding Khalid for a few moments is carrying on the fight.
…
Half an hour in which I did nothing except look at him. What about half an hour in which I changed him? Or half an hour in which I fed him? Or half an hour in which I played with him? What about half an hour for him to tell me about his school? Half an hour for him and I to talk about his dreams? Half an hour to argue about whether he should go down to a protest? Half an hour for him to give me an impassioned speech about the revolution and how it will free us all? About bread and freedom and dignity and justice? Half an hour for me to feel proud that my son is a brave man carrying the responsibility of a country before he’s of age to carry the responsibility of himself?

* * * *

How much happiness in half an hour like that? In that last half hour the father of the shaheed [a killed protester, referred to as a martyr] spent with this son?

Prison deprives me of Khaled except for half an hour. I’m patient because we shall spend the rest of our half hours together.

Why is the father of the shaheed patient?

The shaheed is immortal, in our hearts immortal, in our minds immortal, in history immortal and in paradise immortal. But does his immortality bring happiness to his father? His heart will burst with love for the remaining half hours of his life. Will he empty what’s in his heart in the arms of history? I wait for my release and I’m resilient. What does the father of the shaheed wait for? That he follows the immortal to heaven?

We thought the judge would do right by us; in 2006 we chanted, ‘Judges, free us of the tyrants’, then my natural judge jailed me to deprive me of Khaled. The father of the shaheed thought that the solider would do right by him, and in February we chanted the Army, the People, One Hand, then the soldier killed us to deprive us of the immortal.

Looking for the reasons for my imprisonment is absurd. My imprisonment will not restore their state. Similarly, the death of most of the shuhada [plural form of shaheed, martyr = martyrs] is absurd; perhaps at the beginning they killed the shuhada to stop the revolution, but why did they carry on killing after it was proved time and time again after it was proved that the revolution would continue? The killing even increases as they draw closer to defeat. I remember the snipers appearing on the day of the camel [one remarkable demonstration in Tahrir Square earlier this year], they came late, after it had become clear that the square would hold. It was killing for the sake of killing: killing simply to deprive us of the immortal. Absurd; for killing us will not restore their state.

We need to be vigilant: they do not kill us to restore their state; they kill us because killing and jailing are normal behaviours in their state. Yes, normal behaviours.
…
I did not imagine that my heart carried the love that burst forth with the birth of Khaled; how can I understand the sorrow that is in the heart of the father of the shaheed? My God, how can it be so cruel? That you should bury your son rather than he bury you? Is there a worse injustice? Is there a worse imbalance? We kid ourselves and pretend it’s an exceptional event and that it is possible to reform that state, but all the evidence shows that it is a normal event and there is no hope except in the fall of that state.

Yes, their state should fall. We fear facing this truth, we fear for the country if the state should fall; if the Midan [Tahrir Square] should cause the state to fall what remains for us? Egypt is not the Midan.

It’s true that Egypt is not the Midan. But we have not understood the Midan. What do we do in the Midan? Well, we meet, we eat, we sleep, we discuss, we pray, we chant, we sing, we spend effort and imagination to sustain ourselves, we rejoice and cheer at a wedding, we sorrow and weep in a funeral, we express our ideas, our dreams, our identities, we quarrel sometimes, sometimes we’re at a loss and confused, searching for the future, we spend each day as it comes, not knowing what the future hides for us.

Is this not what we do outside the Midan? Nothing is exceptional in the Midan except our togetherness. Outside the Midan we think that we rejoice at a wedding because we know the bride and groom, in the Midan we rejoiced and celebrated at the wedding of strangers. Outside the Midan we think that we grieve at a funeral because we know the deceased, in the Midan we grieved for strangers and prayed for them.

Nothing is new in the Midan except that we surround ourselves with the love of strangers. But the love of strangers is not a monopoly of the Midan: hundreds sent me messages of love for Khaled from outside the Midan, some describe themselves as belonging to the sofa party. Millions grieved for the shaheed in every home in Egypt.

We rejoice at a wedding because it is a wedding. We grieve at a funeral because it is death. We love the newborn because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. Our hearts break for the shaheed because he’s human and because he’s Egyptian. We go to the Midan to discover that we love life outside it, and to discover that our love for life is resistance. We race towards the bullets because we love life, and we go into prison because we love freedom.

If the state falls it is not just the Midan that will remain; what will remain is the love of strangers and everything that impelled us towards the Midan and everything that we learned in the Midan.

Love is immortal and sorrow is immortal and the Midan is immortal and the shaheed is immortal and the country is immortal. As for their state it is for an hour. Just for an hour.

[Alaa] Abu Khaled [Father of Khaled]
The morning of Friday, 9 December 2011
Cell 6/1
Ward 4
Tora Investigation Jail”

This post, on the Egyptian blog, No Military Trials for Civilians, administered by{River Dry Films} Omar Robert Hamilton, is entitled: “Half an hour with Khaled”

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 number plate [white, with green numbers on white background], with the number 7-8600-91.

I glanced at it as I drove past, never having seen any of the usual white and marked PA security vans parked at the entry to the city — they used to be further in, at the point where you would turn if going to the Balata Refugee Camp, but never here.

But this was not a normal PA security van — it was black, unmarked, with very dark windows. Just one.

It could be PA, but not the usual security.

However, I thought, it could be Israeli … they could be using false PA plates. But, it was just one van, and the Israelis don’t ususally station themselves around the West Bank so exposed.

Suddenly, just after I passed, it pulled out right behind me, and drove quickly right up on my tail, flashing its headlights on high beams. As I slowed down, it zipped around to cut me off in front, blocking me diagonally.

Immediately, four men in civilian clothes (nice clothes, too — there were some honey- or cognac-colored suede jackets, trousers, normal shoes in good condition) jumped out of the side doors of the black unmarked van with black windows. At least two men remained inside, in the front seat of the van.

The four rush, but do not run, to my window. They’re suddenly right there. They don’t show any ID, but they don’t show any weapons, either.

In Arabic, they demand to know where I’m from. New York, I say. Then they ask to see my “hawiyya” [Palestinian ID card]. I tell them I don’t have a “hawiyya”.

I thought the best first thing to show, in the circumstances, might be my PA Press Card.

Luckily, I was right. Oh, a journalist! they said, and backed off. That was an immediately improvement in the situation. But, I felt I had to ask them why they had chased and stopped me, in such an alarming manner.

What was the reason? Why had these plainclothed officers in an unmarked black car with black windows chase + stop me for no apparent reason without showing ID? Why did they never give me any explanation? They didn’t even relax and smile, and say “Welcome”, the way the green-uniformed PA Security did at the very few Palestinian checkpoints that exist in the West Bank [at several places in Jericho, at the northern entrance to Nablus coming on the road from Shavei Shomron, and maybe one or two other spots]…

They just backed off, got into the unmarked black van, and drove away…Scary.

At least, it showed the utility and usefulness of PA Press Cards…

Therefore, I have only read about the relatively new phenomena of Hamas press cards.

I first saw one in Bethlehem on Thursday night: a journalist colleague + friend showed me her one-year Hamas press card [issued, as de rigeur, after a first temporary Hamas press card valid for a couple of months].

It was issued by the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Interior in Gaza.

One of the most striking things about it: it includes a one-year residence permit, in Gaza…

However, yesterday, I was informed by the Palestinian official I discussed the matter with that “Anyone who thinks that they can come to cover the Bethlehem Christmas events this year with just an Israeli GPO card [and without a PA Press Card] is in for a big surprise … I will personally escort him/her back to the checkpoint”.

This morning, to clarify this surprising change, I phoned Ghassan Khatib, Director of the PA Government Media Center in Ramallah.

[Ghassan Khatib was for years the head of the JMCC [Jerusalem Media and Communications Center], based in East Jerusalem until the closure of Jerusalem to most Palestinians, and he continues to be editor of the weekly Bitterlemons online publication. Khatib also served as the PA Minister of Planning, and formerly as PA Minister of Labor, and then as the Vice-President of Bir Zeit University just outside Ramallah.]

He replied to my question about the new requirement for PA Press Cards this way: “Um, Well, Why not?”

Khatib added that this is standard practice in every place [country] in the world — to require specific press accreditation for coverage of major events.

Was there notification of this new policy?

“A statement was distributed to all journalists”, Khatib replied.

This statement was issued jointly, Khatib added, by the PA Government Media Center, by the PA Ministry of Tourism, and by the Bethlehem Municipality.

But, though I have a Palestinian [PA] Press Card, and have had for several years — and though I have several times requested to be added to the PA Government Media Center’s email distribution list — I have not ever received any of the PA Government Media Center’s emails or statements…

Khatib, who recalled one of my requests during an interview with him, in his office, in September, said he would look into it.

[During that interview, in September, Khatib suggested that he was thinking of doing away with the PA Press Cards, and wondered if they served any useful purpose...I argued that they were very important, even essential, especially in combat and conflict zones, and most particularly when crossing checkpoints and dealing with various security officials ...]