Two news stories some of you may find interesting.

The first is about how Palestinians are portrayed in Israeli textbooks:
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli academic, mother and political radical, summons up an image of rows of Jewish schoolchildren, bent over their books, learning about their neighbours, the Palestinians. But, she says, they are never ( Read more... )

If I were in a position to deliver a message to the people of the Middle East, including Israelis, I would proudly declare myself an Arab Jew and remind everyone that Jews have been an integral part of the Middle East mosaic for millennia. We are not the enemy, and often we speak the same languages - Arabic, Farsi, Turkish etc. Our ancestors have ( Read more... )

I meant to post shortly after returning home from visiting family for Christmas. And then I meant to post about New Year's resolutions, last year's and how I did (or, more accurately, didn't) and this year's and how I will. But life has a way of continuing on faster than one intends, and now it's February and I'm finally going to write about ( Read more... )

“What’s great about Gaza - you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him. In our case it was an old woman on whom I did not see any weapon when I looked. The order was to take down the person, this woman, the minute you see her. There are always warnings, there is always the saying, ‘Maybe he’s a terrorist.’ ( Read more... )

More than 5,000 Hamas supporters rallied in Gaza on Friday, as a leader of the Islamic militant group emerged from hiding to declare victory in the 23-day Israeli offensive that devastated much of the Palestinian territory.

from here.

I guess defeat only happens if Israel doesn't ever leave Gaza??

One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza's densely populated civilian areas ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

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Be aware before you watch this that there is violence committed in this video, though only the perpetrators and not the victims are visible.

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I've been avoiding posting about this much recently, partially because I haven't had anything new to say. I'm still horrified by what's going on. But one of Israel's actions that has me particularly concerned is that they're not allowing international journalists to enter the Gaza Strip. This means that all the news articles about the Gaza Strip ( Read more... )