rest in peace

all those in favor say aye

The U.S. Senate unanimously approved a resolution calling on the United Nations to rescind the Goldstone report.

flotilla baby

Bouthina Haniyeh, daughter of Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, holds her newborn baby named Recep Tayyip Erdogan next to a Turkish flag in a home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010. Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has called his fifteenth grandson after his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is a hero in Hamas-ruled Gaza for unofficially sponsoring a doomed May flotilla that sought to break Israel blockade of the territory.
(AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

hamra graffiti

overheard

while waiting for my takeout order today ... two saudi men are sitting at a table nearby ... they seem to be on their lunch break ... they are older men ... maybe in their forties ... one has a newspaper ... he is telling the other guy about the flotilla ... how there is one more ship on the way ... that the ship is named rachel corrie and he explained to him who rachel corrie was ... then he said ... there were 18 kuwaitis on those ships ... and even some bahrainis ... but not one saudi ... then they started to discuss why that is ... is it because they can't ... because nobody cares ... they were still debating it when i left ...

word of the day

flotilla

God bless you

Palestinian sympathizers demonstrate on a boat on the river Seine in Paris, denouncing the Gaza Strip embargo. An aid flotilla due to sail for Gaza in defiance of an Israeli embargo and warnings will be delayed by a day until May 29, organisers said.
(AFP/Joel Saget)

gaza world cup

The Gaza Strip has kicked off its own version of football's World Cup, pitting 16 teams of local and foreign players in a contest to win a trophy made out of twisted metal and rubble from last year's war with Israel. Organizer Patrick McGrann says the Gaza World Cup is meant to highlight a three-year blockade that has prevented most of the tiny territory's 1.5 million residents, including athletes, from being able to travel abroad.
The two-week competition got under way Sunday with a match between the "Italy" and "Palestine" teams. Most of the teams are named after international football powerhouses like Brazil, Spain and France. The squads have a small contingent of foreigners from these countries — mostly international aid workers who are based in Gaza.
source

apparently

soccer trumps politics ...

الأشقاء العرب

يتعرض صيادون فلسطينيين للاعتداء الجسدي واللفظي وتقطيع شباك صيدهم، عندما يعبرون بقواربهم بضعة أمتار من الحدود البحرية المصرية، لأنهم بحسب القوانين والأعراف تجاوزوا سيادة بلد مجاور

ويعتبر الصيادون الغزيون الأمتار التي يلجؤون إليها في المياه الإقليمية المصرية مسرحاً للصيد الوفير بعد أن منعتهم إسرائيل من الإبحار في مياه بحر غزة الواقع تحت سيطرتها البحرية

ويقول الصياد جمال بصلة إن جنود خفر السواحل المصريين باتوا أشد قسوة من الإسرائيليين، وأوضح أنه تعرض للحجز والضرب وتمزيق شباكه على أيدي الجنود المصريين، مشيرا إلى أن مثل هذا العمل يمارسه الإسرائيليون بحق الصيادين الفلسطينيين كل يوم، ومن الغريب أن نجده من المصريين

المصدر

it's getting ridiculous

Israel's prime minister has ordered the construction of two massive fences along the long and porous southern border with Egypt, saying he wants to stem a growing flood of African asylum seekers and to prevent Islamic militants from entering the country.
The structure would come in addition to a massive fence surrounding the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, as well as a separation barrier that snakes along parts of Israel's more than 400-mile (680-kilometer) frontier with the West Bank, biting into chunks of the territory as it runs. Egypt has its own fence along Gaza's southern border, and is reinforcing the area with underground metal plates to shut down tunnels used to smuggle goods and weapons into Gaza.
story

quote of the day

When I was in the West Bank, before I went, I was told that the Palestinians are going to hurt me, they are going to do awful things to me. But they were the ones that protected me. In one demonstration, in 2006, near Ramallah, I lost some of my hearing because an Israeli sound bomb went off very close to me. The Palestinians near me were very concerned. I was strip-searched, internally searched at Israel's David Ben Gurion airport, I was told that “I was a terrorist, I'm a security risk.” An 80-year-old woman is a terrorist? What, do I have a bomb in my vagina?
Hedy Epstein

Hedy Epstein is what some might see as a contradiction in terms: a survivor of the Holocaust and also a staunch advocate for the Palestinian people. Born in 1924 in Freiburg, Germany, Epstein was 14 when she escaped from Nazi persecution via the Kinderstransport to England. Since her 1948 arrival in the U.S., Epstein has been an advocate for peace and human rights.
In 2001 she founded the St. Louis chapter of the Women in Black anti-war group that originated in Israel, and has actively advocated for Palestinian rights since visiting the West Bank in 2003. As the last decade came to a close, Epstein continued her advocacy by traveling with the women’s peace advocacy group CodePink to the Gaza Freedom March. The Dec. 31 march was a planned nonviolent demonstration to protest Israel’s blockade of Gaza, with 1,000 advocates from abroad joining Palestinians in a march to the Gaza-Israel border checkpoint.
source

beirut protests

Children with tape over their mouths, protest against Egypt's border barrier between Egypt and southern of Gaza Strip, during a demonstration in front the Egyptian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, on Sunday Jan. 3, 2010, with placards written in Arabic, at left, 'Hey Arabs, stop killing the innocents on your metal wall, and right, reading 'From Lebanese children to Gaza children, be patient the victory is soon'.
(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

A protester helps others setup a makeshift wall during a demonstration by Islamic groups to protest against Egypt's border barrier with the southern Gaza Strip, in front the Egyptian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010.
(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

everyone loves mubarak

Jordanian demonstrators burn a picture of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a protest against the installation of an underground metal barrier at the border between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip, in front the Egyptian embassy in Amman January 3, 2010.
REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed (JORDAN - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Jordanian demonstrators burn a picture of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a protest against the installation of an underground metal barrier at the border between Egypt and the southern Gaza Strip, in front the Egyptian embassy in Amman January 3, 2010.
REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed (JORDAN - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST IMAGES OF THE DAY)

أمة الإسلام

قال عليه الصلاة والسلام : مثل المؤمنين في توادهم وتراحـمـهــــــم وتعاطفهم، مثل الجسد الواحد إذا اشتكى منه عضو تداعى له سائر الجسد بالسهر والحـمى

********************

Egyptian soldiers are seen securing the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza, as Palestinians demonstrate on the Gaza side against Egypt installing a border barrier to block smuggling tunnels with Gaza, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 28, 2009. Egypt acknowledged last week it is installing a series of metal sheets deep along the Gaza border to block tunnels used to smuggle weapons into the Palestinian territory.
(AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

الأشقاء العرب

Egyptian soldiers are seen securing the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza, as Palestinians demonstrate on the Gaza side against Egypt installing a border barrier to block smuggling tunnels with Gaza, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 28, 2009. Egypt acknowledged last week it is installing a series of metal sheets deep along the Gaza border to block tunnels used to smuggle weapons into the Palestinian territory.
(AP Photo/Eyad Baba)

tfoo 3alaina ...

God bless you

A Palestinian woman cries as she holds a picture of her son who was killed during the war with Israel as she attends a demonstration held by Hamas movement, marking the one-year anniversary of Israel's offensive on Gaza, in Jebaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009.
(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

gaza

this post is dedicated in memory of the war on gaza ... which marks its first anniversary tomorrow ... i don't know what i could write on the subject ... what hasn't been said already ... i could recount the figures of the war ... number of people killed ... maimed ... houses destroyed ... i could post photos of the casualties ... of white phosphorous raining from the skies ... or i could tell you an irrelevant story about where i was when the war started ...
anyway ... they say a picture is worth a thousand words ... so i leave with you an album of cartoons about gaza and the war ... i had created it on facebook last year when the war was still happening ... there is a total of 60 cartoons in the album ... click here to view it ... feel free to lift some cartoons from the album and share them on your blog ... or on facebook ... or twitter ... or whatever it is you do ... just don't let the occasion pass without remembering it somehow ...

one year later