Bassam will be speaking at the Goodenough college on Monday. If you want to come, drop me a line.

Bassam Aramin is co-founder of Combatants for Peace, a movement of Palestinians and Israelis who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence and have decided to put down their guns, and to fight for peace together. Bassam’s determination was tested in 2007 when his 10 year old daughter, Abir, was killed by the Israeli border police on her way home from school. With the help of supporters from across the world, Bassam’s friends have built a garden in her memory.

Bassam grew up in Seir, near Hebron. He spent seven years in Israeli prisons. Since his marriage, he has been living in Anata, between Ramallah and Jerusalem. He works at the Palestinian National Archive Center in Ramallah.

Read: A Plea for Peace From a Bereaved Palestinian Father, By Bassam Aramin

Concierge.com is running a list of travel reviews for the World’s Most Controversial Destinations. Guess who’s number 10 of 13? Of course -

ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Why go: Old Jerusalem alone encompasses the Wailing Wall (pictured), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Via Dolorosa, and Al Aqsa Mosque’s Dome of the Rock. But it’s not all about religion: Israel also has sunning and surfing beaches on the Mediterranean coast around Tel Aviv, while Eilat, on the Red Sea, is the place for scuba diving and snorkeling. Caesarea, 35 miles north of Tel Aviv, has 12th-century crusader castles, the ruins of King Herod’s capital, and an undersea archeological park. The West Bank has more than 1,000 archeological sites and great tourism potential; security issues make travel inadvisable except to Bethlehem and the Dead Sea town of Jericho. In the Judaean desert, the Roman hilltop fort of Masada, reachable on foot or by cable car, overlooks the Dead Sea, whose shore is now lined with health spas.

Why not go: Both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have been accused of human-rights abuses linked to the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. The Palestinian Authority’s ruling Hamas Party, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization, refuses to recognize Israel and has condoned and carried out suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. Gaza militants have fired rockets at Israeli communities. Israel has been accused of discriminating against its Arab citizens and has a long history of air strikes and artillery shelling of Palestinian settlements in the Gaza Strip to combat militants in hiding, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, according to Amnesty International. Its policy of building settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is in violation of the Geneva Convention, and human-rights groups say the policy of barring Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza from entering or transiting Israel means they can’t go to school, find work, or visit relatives.

Fair enough (er, Roman hilltop of Massada? nice one). Who are our buddies on the list? Ethiopia, Sudan, China, Burma, Russia, Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea. eek. But here’s one review they missed:

United states of America

WHY GO: Beautiful country, friendly people (some), great cultural hubs.
WHY NOT GO: The government spends much more on military interference in other countries affairs than it does on its own people’s welfare. Recent years have seen a disturbing erosion of civil liberties. Amnesty reports consistent abuse of political prisoners. The economy is based on destructive and unsustainable exploitation of natural and human resources across the globe.

Bassam Aramin, co-founder of Combatants for Peace and Ra’ed Al Mickawi, director of Bustan, will be speaking this Sunday, 2:30-4:00 at ULU.

Bassam Aramin was a co-founder with Yonathan Shapera of Combatants for Peace.
He had spent many years in an Israel prison for his involvement with Palestinian
militancy, but came to the conclusion that engagement and dialogue are the only way
forward. Following the founding of Combatants for Peace, his new beliefs were sorely
tried by the killing of his 10 year old daughter, Abir, by the Israeli border police on
her way home from school and by the Israeli authorities refusal to investigate her
death properly. Combatants for Peace and local people are making a garden in her
name next to the school, supported by Jewish Groups across the world. A new play
featuring Bassam’s lifestory was performed in Jaffa recently, by well known Israeli actors.

Raed Al Mickawi is a compelling speaker who weaves his own personal story of growing
up Bedouin in the Negev with the larger civil and human rights issues facing Bedouin and
Arab people living in Israel—20% of the overall population. Learn more about the
“unrecognized” villages, the relationship between the situation of Palestinians inside and
outside the Green Line, and environmental and social policy towards Bedouin people.
Hear about BUSTAN’s role in building a sustainable, just future for ALL residents of the
Negev through small-scale, grassroots projects that advocate for human rights, cultural
preservation, and sustainable land use and development.

If hope, courage and determination have a face, it is the face of Bassam and Raed.

]]> http://yishaym.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/bassam-aramin-and-raed-al-mickawi-this-sunday-11-may-in-london/feed/ yish http://yishaym.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/italy-goes-radicaly-transparent-for-24hours/ http://yishaym.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/italy-goes-radicaly-transparent-for-24hours/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 11:46:02 +0000 yishaym http://yishaym.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/italy-goes-radicaly-transparent-for-24hours/

In a lavish vaffanculo, the outgoing Italian government has launched a web site listing the tax declarations of every citizen in the land.

The tax authority’s website was inundated by people curious to know how much their neighbours, celebrities or sports stars were making.

Unfortunately, some up-tight privacy group had it shut down before I had a chance to dip in.

Now before you roll your eyes, think. Your supermarket knows how much you earn. Your bank manager knows how much you earn. Isn’t taking the veil off, and letting your neighboors see it all, a small price to pay for knowing back?

Knowledge is power. If we can’t lock the man from knowing all about us, the only way to balance the field is to have everything out in the open.

| digg story

This from All Nations Cafe:

Last December, before the winter, we had our first Ein Haniya Fair. Ever since then, farmers and conscious consumers have been waiting for the fair to return.

Next week on Friday, May 9th, starting at 10 am:

Local farmers’ and shepherds’ organic produce, home made food, arts and crafts, and live music.

It’s all happening at Ein Haniya Spring, on the Wallaja/Har Gilo road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Getting to Ein Haniya Spring

Coming from Jerusalem, you go to Malha train station, near the shopping mall (which is easily reached by Jerusalem city buses 4,5,6,17,18,24,31,160-167,440) turn to the railway station and follow the Wallaja road to Gush Etzion. After crossing the railway line you can either hike a few kilometers or easily hitchhike with any car going in that direction. About a kilometer after passing a checkpoint you will see a dirt road on your left hand - the spring market is a few meters up that road.

Coming from the West Bank and from Gush Etzion, you go from Beit Jala and Har Gilo towards Wallaja and Jerusalem. Down the steep road to the bottom of Refa’im valley, you see Ein Haniya spring on your right.

Contacts

For people interested in selling/presenting at the fair, call:
Timna: 052-8669170  (email:  tim_shar@yahoo.com)

For All Nations Cafe and general matters call:
Nimrod: 050-2600590,   Abed: 052-2458216

This past Friday morning, as weekend strollers on Tel Aviv’s peaceful, tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard were on their way to cafes, yoga class, and shopping, many were surprised to find their path blocked by what looked like a section of the wall that forms large parts of the separation barrier between Israel and the Palestinian territories. read more

You know, the new highway 6 passed some 10meters from the real wall. Thanks to some creative landscaping, you have to look really hard to find it. We need more of these. Perhaps someone should project images from Shovrim Shtika on it.

| digg story

Yossi Sarid unleashes the A word.

(ht Velveteen Rabbi)

Clay Shirky makes an interesting analogy between Gin and Television, and their relationship to social and cognitive surplus. Couldn’t help thinking about Hogarth.

Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer. … On the simplest level, Hogarth portrays the inhabitants of Beer Street as happy and healthy, nourished by the native English ale, and those who live in Gin Lane as destroyed by their addiction to the foreign spirit of gin; …Gin Lane shows shocking scenes of infanticide, starvation, madness, decay and suicide, while Beer Street depicts industry, health, bonhomie and thriving commerce, but there are contrasts and subtle details that allude to the prosperity of Beer Street as the cause of the misery found in Gin Lane.

Nowadays you can get any form of trash on the TV, yet governments from US to China are trying to control the ‘net. Looks like the man has sided with the Gin makers this time.

Kinda gives a new dimension to “free as in beer”..

Ignatia saya:

So I was looking for a short, yet vibrant post to put on my blog today and in comes Wilfred Rubens with an amazing story of consumption versus art. A Danish artist Nadia Plesner (now working in the Netherlands at the renowned Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam) was trying to do her two cents to make the world a better place. So she pondered on Darfur and how she could make an art piece that would be meaningful and immediately capture the imagination as well. So she came up with a t-shirt, depicting an black child with Paris Hilton dog and handbag.

After a couple of months - last February - the people from Louis Vuitton got hold of her t-shirt and campaign and they urged her to stop the campaign, because she was unlawfully depicting one of the really ugly Louis Vuitton handbags. The thing is, it is just a handbag image, you cannot tell which label it would be from. So… engaging art can truly trouble high-end posh handbags making manufacturers (that produce their material in low income countries, in many cases without insurance of any kind) . By this time the Dutch newspapers are on the story (in Dutch) and it begins to stir digg. Nadia risks having to pay if she keeps her t-shirt and campaign going.

Acting is easy: buy her t-shirt (or art) and boycot Louis Vuitton.

digg story

order the T