Despite the Pain:A Youthbank Initiative in Gaza

http://www.dalia.ps/despite-paina-youthbank-initiative-gaza

When we think of the Gaza Strip, where the buildings bombed over a year ago still lie in ruins and the ground – visibly or not – is still stained with blood, it’s easier to think of suffering than inspiration. It’s easier to think of wounds than life, easier to imagine dust than light. It’s painful to envision a place where children can draw images of carnage and loss more readily than flowers or cartoons. When Gaza has cried out, the world has so seldom answered. And Gaza has not only asked Where is our justice? but also Where are our paintings? Where is our cloth? Where are our handicrafts? What can we create?

A group of young people (click here to see a report about them) from Gaza has asked these questions, and they have also answered them. Youthbank, a youth-led group that helps young people decide how to use resources and strengthen their own communities, decided to work together and create a Bazaar where young people who make products by hand (jewelry, embroidery, graphics, woodwork, pottery, food) could market and display their creations at the University of Palestine. Their work is not only energetic and resourceful; it is also inspiring in the truest sense of the world, borne of a spirit and resilience that refuses to be limited by the blows dealt to their home.

We at Dalia Association were struck and moved by Youthbank, and we wanted to connect our work to theirs. Among our goals is to make grants that support inspirational and relevant civil society initiatives, especially grassroots efforts that are supplement local resources. Community-controlled grantmaking increases the transparency, accountability and professionalism of local initiatives. We were excited by Youthbank’s work in Gaza in large part because it shares these goals: it supports youth initiatives by calling young Palestinians to present proposals and then allotting small grants for projects that aim to create social change. Facilitating creativity and change in Gaza felt all the more urgent.

Inspired by their mission, we gave a grant of $1200 to Youthbank in order to fund their Bazaar. This isn’t a great deal of money, but it creates many opportunities: to secure resources, to organize, to support each other, to network and build contacts, to improve their projects, and to market them effectively. The Bazaar required extensive planning and coordination: administrative tasks, meetings and communication both with the participants and with the university that housed them, arrangements with community organizations, marketing, financing, and so on. And the young organizers rose to the occasion every step of the way, showing exactly the kind of commitment and creativity that Dalia Association so admires. (Since Dalia Association cannot physically enter the Gaza Strip, the American Friends Service Committee in Gaza offered its help to Youthbank in their planning and reporting.)

The Bazaar itself was held for two days in December 2009, and it was a spectacular success. Around 450 people attended, and at least 200 purchased something – that’s an impressive percentage! What this means, too, is that people felt moved and impressed by the young people’s initiative and skill, and that they were compelled to support them. It’s possible to buy mass-produced, cheaply-made handicrafts for much less money, but this Bazaar was about something very different: community, strategy, and solidarity.

While the success of the Bazaar is certainly reflected in the quantifiable outcome (the number of participants, the number of purchases, and so on), the less tangible results are even more inspiring to us. By this we mean the way in which the participants, the young people themselves, gained skills and confidence from their work. Maha Al-Qdwa, a young woman who contributed embroidered handicrafts to the Bazaar, told Youthbank that she wanted to start her own small business selling jewelry and crafts. Another participant, Ahmad Abu-Za’iter, sold all of his products in the Bazaar, and expressed reassurance and renewed energy about finding other venues and securing other initiatives to sell his artwork. Clearly, the community project had been inspiring – to their community, certainly, but also to the young people themselves.

We were excited to sponsor a project that supported youth initiatives – both creative and entrepreneurial – and showcased their abilities. And we were moved to see this project make our core philosophy come alive. The Bazaar helped its young organizers build their capacities, but also realize the capacities they already had. It gave them a practical opportunity to participate in a complicated social and professional process and to see that they were more than successful. The project not only fulfilled its stated goals, but also opened new horizons for its participants, new ways to think about what they could do – as individuals and as a community so often categorized as a place of crisis, not creativity.

We’re grateful for the chance to work with Youthbank in Gaza, and we’re eager to keep supporting such inspiring initiatives!

Nobody mentions the Jewish Brotherhood

Israelis bemoan the alleged rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, ignoring their own local variety

While Israelis pay plenty of attention to the fear of the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, they steadfastly ignore the rise of the Jewish brotherhood in their own country.

The motto of the MB is “Islam is the solution”: faced with the failure of modernity in the Arab world, they want to step back into an imagined past of a pure Islamic rule – Sunni Islamism, of course. This interpretation of Islamic history has little relation to Islamic rule as it was in fact.

The Jewish Brotherhood, which uses widespread slogans such as “Jehova is the King” and “Return the Crown to its old glory”, address a much more mythical world: No “pure” Jewish regime ever existed. The very short years of independence in Judea – under the Hasmoneans – were run under a purely Hellenistic fusion of the rule of a king (who was, in Hellenistic and Roman propriety but hardly a Jewish one, also the high priest) and a council of notables, the Sanhedrin. Many of the Hasmonean kings relied on the Sadducees rather than on the Pharisees, who would give birth to rabbinical Judaism as we know it.

The rabbis would, in later ages, almost completely remove the hated Hasmoneans from history – the references to them in the Talmud would fill a very short brochure – and imagine their own independent government. It still has a king, but he was playing a decidedly second fiddle to the rabbis. And since the marking sign of Jewish thought from Talmudic days onwards was fanatical hatred of non-Jews (to whom they referred as “goyim”, similar to the Hellenistic/Roman usage of “Barbarian”), the future Jewish kingdom was supposed to be free of non-Jews, unless those who would either be subservient to the Jews, or would accept a version of Jewish law (“The laws of the sons of Noah”).

The Jewish state coming into being in 1948 was, as far as many Jewish fanatics thought, a total failure. It was the result of distinctly foreign ideologies, running the gamut between socialism and eastern European nationalism. Neither was particularly interested in Jewish law. The nationalists would show respect to its symbols – wearing the yarmulka when appropriate, held a kiddush from time to time – but would recognize the full monstrosity of Jewish law as their guide to life.

As a result, terrorist groups of ultra-Orthodox and Orthodox-nationalists abounded in the earlier days of the state; the famous if such terrorists was Mordechai Eliyahu, later to become Chief Rabbi and the father of Shmuel Eliyahu, the main engine of current ultra-Orthodox nationalism. Their purpose was to bring down the pseudo-democracy of the 1950s – Israel still held its Arab citizens under military law – and create, in its stead, a theocratic state.

They failed to win support. And, like the extremists among the MB, the Jewish right adopted terrorism as a tool. Jewish terrorists killed mostly non-Jews, but they put Jews in their sights, as well: Emil Grunzweig in 1983; Yizhak Rabin in 1995; The attempt by Ohad Bart, a Bnei Akiva (right wing Jewish Scouts) guide and later a National Unity Knesset candidate, to run minister Yossi Sarid off the road and into an abyss in 1996 (two months after the assassination of Rabin); The attempt by Chabad member Harry Shapiro on Shimon Peres’ life in Jacksonville in 1997; and various less deadly attacks, from the defacement of offices of human rights organizations and leftist organizations to arson.

Terrorism failed, as did rebellion. During the disengagement of 2005 – the removal of Jewish settlements from Gaza – there was a widespread attempt to bring about a revolt. I once interviewed the spokesman of the Yesha Council – the mainstream settler organization – about the focal point, the clash in Kfar Maimon, where Sharon forced the army to stand its ground and bring the revolt down. “They had tanks. They had gunship helicopters,” he told me. “Gunships! What could we be expected to do against that?” The Council was under attack by more radical settlers for not doing enough. I guess it’s a good thing the IDF brought along something heavier than jeeps.

Following the failure of the revolt, the movement’s ideologues – particularly Elyakim Levanon – began talking of taking over the establishment: more officers in the IDF, more “Emuniim” (“people of faith”) in every nook and cranny of the regime. It’s rather easy to identify religious reactionaries: the litmus test is their attitude towards women’s rights. Levanon forbade women from running in the elections for his settlement’s leadership (Hebrew), reminding them that Jewish law forbids “granting office to women.” His rabbinical position was strong enough to enforce the ruling.

Like the Muslim Brotherhood, whose basic assumption is that the first process towards a return to the glory days is cleansing society of non-Islamic elements, the Jewish Brotherhood always claimed that non-Jews ought to be removed from Jewish society. In this, they enjoyed wide support from most of Israeli Jewish society, which was always racist to the bone (a vast majority of Orthodox Jews in Israel consider a family member marrying a non-Jew to be a blot on the family’s honor). This process reached new peaks during the last few years.

About a year ago, some hitherto unknown group in Safed started demanding (Hebrew) employers sign their non-Jewish workers to a pledge to keep the “laws of the Sons of Noah” – i.e. recognize their subservience to Jewish law. By no accident, Safed is the town of Shmuel Eliyahu. The initiative spread to other towns. Then came Eliyahu’s ruling, forbidding renting apartments to non-Jews, which led to the “Rabbis’ Letter,” signed by more than 300 Israeli rabbis. Immediately afterward we were hit with the “assimilation” hysteria: The Rabbis Wives’ letter (apparently they’re denied political office, but are allowed carefully-vetted political expression), a ruling by the rabbi of Rosh Ha’Ayin forbidding the employment at Jewish women and Arab men in the same workplace; and the blood libel that Arab witches brew seduction potions, made of rabbits, to be used against Jewish females, particularly Orthodox ones (I shit you not; Hebrew).

The last few weeks have seen an acceleration: the LHVH organization, which focuses on “the danger of assimilation”, produced a new sort of kosher certificate - one noting the business employs no non-Jews – and it seems to be doing brisk business (Hebrew). Soon, MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) will use the podium of the Women’s Promotion Committee of the Knesset to hold a debate on the “perils of women assimilating” – i.e. promote the standard racist libel that “they” are trying to ravish “our” women, and grant it the imprimatur of the Knesset. I mean, if the Knesset debates it, it must exist, no?

It should be noted that Israeli law already fights interfaith marriages: A Jew and a non-Jew (as well as any Muslim trying to marry a non-Muslim) cannot marry in Israel, which stubbornly refuses to permit civil marriages and leaves standing the formation of the old Turkish Millet, or religious sect. An Israeli Jew wishing to marry a non-Jew is forced to marry abroad.

And, soon enough, his or her partner won’t be able to work alongside Jews, and she (or he) will be severely rebuked by the Knesset for defiling all that is holy in Judaism. So, once again – which of the two is nearer power, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, or the Israeli Jewish Brotherhood?

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'Mubarak to announce he'll step down after next election'

NOT GOOD ENOUGH. MUBARAK NEEDS TO LEAVE NOW. TO HELL WITH WHAT ISRAEL AND THE US THINKS.

Al Arabiya TV reported that Egypt's embattled president will address protesters on Tuesday to tell them he intends to stay in office until next elections to enforce reforms.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will say in a televised speech that he will step down at the next election but would stay in office till then to meet demands of protesters in that period, Al Arabiya TV reported on Tuesday.

It sourced the news to unnamed reports.

It said the president would make the comments in a speech later on Tuesday.

Anti-government riots throughout Egypt have continued unabated for eight days with protesters saying that the demonstrations won't stop until Mubarak ends his 30-year reign over the country.

The embattled president has tried to appease protesters by demanding that his cabinet resign and electing new officials in their place.

The next presidential election is scheduled for September. Until now, officials had indicated Mubarak, 82, would likely run for a sixth six-year term of office or in another scenario, that he is grooming his son Gamal to take over the office in his place.

The government's opposition, embracing the banned Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, Christians, intellectuals and others, began to coalesce around the figure of Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate for his work as head of the UN nuclear agency.

ElBaradei said on Tuesday Mubarak must leave Egypt before the reformist opposition would start talks with the government on the future of the Arab world's most populous nation.

"There can be dialogue but it has to come after the demands of the people are met and the first of those is that President Mubarak leaves," he told Al Arabiya television.

Mubarak sacked his cabinet on Saturday after days of unprecedented demonstrations, appointing former air force chief Ahmed Shafiq as his new prime minister. But Shafiq has yet to name his cabinet.

While the embattled president has said that he would press reforms through with the new government, he has made it clear that he has no intention of leaving office.

Mubarak has not received the world-wide support that he may have expected in the wake of the riots which have left a reported 100 dead and over 1,000 injured.

Although the United States, a strong ally of Egypt, has been careful not to take sides, the White House has called for fair and free elections in response to the unrest.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed Mubarak's move to appoint a new government, saying the situation in Egypt calls for action, not appointments.

"This is not about appointments, it's about actions," Gibbs said. "Obviously there is more work to be done ... The way Egypt looks and operates must change," Gibbs said.

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ARABS KEEP OUT! ISRAEL LAYS CLAIM TO ALL THE RESOURCES

by Manlio Dinucci

For years, various companies have been exploring the hydrocarbon deposits in the Levantine Basin, but only a handful of political and economic leaders were privy to the size of the prize. On 29 December 2010, the Israeli authorities gave Noble Energy Inc. the green light to release the news. The communication, announcing that exploitation was taking off after a political freeze, has been coupled with a diplomatic campaign to allow Tel Aviv to siphon off all the reserves to the detriment of the other coastline states.

U.S.-based Noble Energy Inc. recently announced a massive natural gas field discovery, located 130 kilometers offshore of Haifa [1] and consisting of an estimated 450 billion cubic meters. Resources in the surrounding area should total some 700 billion cubic meters. Exploration and exploitation are overseen by an international consortium composed by U.S. company Noble Energy Inc., currently the largest shareholder with a 40% stake, plus Israeli enterprises Delek, Avner and Ratio Oil Exploration [2]

This accounts for only a small part of the energy reserves abounding in the Levantine basin, which comprises Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and their territorial waters. According to U.S. Geological Survey, a U.S. Government agency which has been prospecting in the region for several years, the natural gas deposits in the basin consist of approximately 3 500 billion cubic meters, while the oil reserves have been assessed at 1,7 billion barrels.

The Israeli government, with Washington’s backing, considers it is entitled to all the energy reserves. Israeli national infrastructure minister Uzi Landau declared that the large natural gas fields would not only bring economic benefits to Israeli citizens but could also transform Israel into a gas supplier in the Mediterranean region. However, objected Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri, Israel is disregarding the fact that according to the maps the fields stretch into Lebanese territorial waters. The United Nations Convention stipulates that a coastal state may exploit offshore gas and oil reserves within a zone extending 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the shore.

According to the sample principle, the reserves belong in great measure also to the Palestinian Authority. From the map drawn up by the U.S. Geological Survey itself, it emerges that the major portion of the gas deposits (around 60%) lie in the waters and territory belonging to Gaza. Exploitation rights were granted by the Palestinian Authority to a consortium formed by British Gas and its partner Consolidated Contractors (based in Athens and owned by two Lebanese families), of which 10% is held by the Palestinian Authority.

Two wells, Gaza Marine-1 and Gaza Marine-2 are ready but not operational. In fact, Tel Aviv has systematically rebuffed all the proposals from the Palestinian Authority and the consortium to export gas to Israel and Egypt. Therefore, the Palestinians possess vast riches which they are unable to exploit.

To seize the totality of the energy reserves – both Palestinian and Lebanese – bathing in the Levantine Basin, Israel has chosen the military option. The Lebanese Foreign Affairs Minister Ali al-Shami recently urged the UN Secretary General to prevent Israel from exploiting the offshore energy reserves located in Lebanese territorial waters. Minister Uzi Landau claimed instead that the reserves are in Israeli waters and warned that his country will not think twice about employing force to protect them. Israel has therefore threatened to attack Lebanon again, like it did in 2006, with the intention this time of impeding it from exploiting its offshore deposits [3].

It is for the same reason that Israel does not accept a Palestinian state. To do so would imply the recognition of Palestinian sovereignty over a large portion of the energy reserves, which Israel wants to grab. It was to this end that the 2008-2009 “Cast Lead Operation” was launched and Gaza caught in the clutches of the blockade. Meanwhile, Israeli war ships control the whole of the Levantine Basin – and hence the offshore oil and gas reserves – within the framework of the NATO-sponsored “Mediterranean Dialogue” to “contribute to the security and stability of the regi

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Turkey PM: Netanyahu has worst government in history of Israel

Erdogan tells Al-Jazeera that Lieberman is Israel's 'greatest problem' and urges the Israeli public to 'get rid' of him; he also denies Western definition of Hamas as a terrorist movement and declares peace impossible until they are brought into negotiations.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyep Recep Erdogan on Thursday decried Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government as the "worst" in the history of Israel.

The once close ties between Israel and Turkey began faltering following the war in Gaza two years ago and spiraled to an unprecedented low following Israel's deadly raid on a Turkish-flagged aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip last May.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Erdogan said that Turkey would uphold the chill in relations until Israel relented in its refusal to apologize for the raid and compensate the families of the nine pro-Palestinian activists killed aboard the Mavi Marmara.

"As long as Netanyahu's government does not change its policies, it cannot expect us to change ours," Erdogan told Al-Jazeera.

Erdogan added that Turkey had no interest in renewing any of the accords it had signed with Israel and would also consider refreshing relations once Israel acceded to its demands.

Erdogan also deemed Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Israel's "greatest problem", reacting to the latter's remarks that Turkey's demands for apology were cheeky ("chutzpah"). The Turkish premier told interviewers that the Israel public should "get rid" of Lieberman, who he called a "despicable" man.

"It is up to them, not us" to unseat Lieberman, said Erdogan, adding: "If they don't, Israel's problems will only get worse."

Erdogan also voiced support for the Hamas rulers of Gaza and denied the Western definition of the group as terrorists.

"Hamas is not a terrorist movement. They are people defending their land. It is a movement that entered the elections and won," he declared, adding that the group has never been given the chance to rule as a democratic regime.

The Turkish premier added that Hamas must be brought into negotiations for a permanent settlement to the conflict, declaring that without their input Palestinian-Israel peace was impossible.

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Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews During World War ll

Posted January 7, 2011 by Patrick Mac Manus in International.

It has been said “the story of Albania’s Muslims, and what they did during World War II, is one of the great untold stories of the world.” In recent years, these private heroisms have been revitalized through the lens of Jewish-American photographer Norman H. Gershman and his collected images and oral histories that make up the travelling portrait exhibit called Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews During World War II.

The story is quite an extraordinary one. When Hitler’s troops began invading the Balkan States in the early 1940s, Muslims across Albania took an estimated 2,000 Jewish refugees into their homes en masse and welcomed them not as refugees, but as guests.

They disguised these Jews as Muslims, took them to mosque, called them Muslim names, gave them Muslim passports, hid them when they needed to, and then ferried them to inaccessible mountain hamlets.

“In fact, Albania is the only Nazi-occupied country that sheltered Jews,” says Gershman. The Jewish population in Albania grew by ten-fold during World War II, and it became the only country in occupied Europe to have more Jews at the end of the war than at the beginning. Records from the International School for Holocaust Studies show that not one Albanian Jew or any of the other thousands of refugees were given up to the Nazis by Albanian Muslims. “They did this in the name of their religion,” Gershman says. “They absolutely had no prejudice what so ever.”

That is because these Muslims held themselves accountable to what Albanians call Besa, which is still upheld as the highest ethical code in the country. “Besa is a code of honour deeply rooted in Albanian culture and incorporated in the faith of Albanian Muslims,” the gallery explained in the show’s press release. “It dictates a moral behaviour so absolute that non-adherence brings shame and dishonour to oneself and one’s family. Besa demands that one take responsibility for the lives of others in their time of need. This Islamic behaviour of compassion and mercy celebrates the sanctity of life and a view of the other- the stranger- as one’s own close family member.”

“Most remarkably, this was all done with the consent and support of the entire country. Thousands of Jews, hidden in plain sight- everyone knew- and no one told.”

Over a five-year period that began in 2002, Gershman travelled to Albania to document these surviving Muslim families and collect their stories, both through pictures and words. A man who worked for the Albania-Israel Friendship Society carried a small notebook with the names and addresses of these Muslim families, and with that, an interpreter, a driver and an assistant, Gershman crisscrossed the country, finding these families in cities, villages, even at the end of gravel roads. Yad Vashem knew of 63 families on record, but Gershman’s trek led him to more than 150. “I travelled all through Albania and Kosovo where I met the rescuer’s children, who are in their sixties or even older, the rescuers’ widows, and in some cases the rescuer himself.” He took their portraits and began with the same question: What is your story?

“I asked them, ‘Why did you do this? What was in the Quar’an that you did this?’ They would only smile. Some of them said: ‘We have saved lives to go to paradise.”

“There was no government conspiracy, no underground railroad, no organized resistance of any kind-” Gershman said, “only individual Albanians, acting alone, to save the lives of people whose lives were in immediate danger. My portraits of these people, and their stories, are meant to reflect their humanity, their dignity, their religious and moral convictions, and their quiet courage.”

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