I do what I want - You do what you're told

I’ll be away for some days so I can’t answer messages notes and comments.

I’ll be back….ehm…idk when…

Take care.

Love,

Tessa.

On Trust and Dialogue – My Personal Odyssey

By Miko Peled
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

It seems odd to me now, that growing up I never knew any Arabs.

I grew up in Jerusalem, which is a ‘mixed’ city, but I never had an Arab friend, or even an Arab acquaintance (Israelis growing up in the 60's and early 70's had never heard of Palestinians so we just called them Arabs.) There were never any attempts to integrate Israeli and Arab children in Jerusalem, nothing organized by the schools, no mutual cultural events, not even sporting events.  The two communities were and still are completely segregated.

My father (the famous Israeli General Matti Peled, hero of the 1948 and 1967 wars who shocked the country when he began a dialogue with Palestinian leaders in the early 1970's) spoke Arabic, and even taught Arabic language and literature, but I never learned Arabic in school.  And although my father had a few Arab acquaintances, he had no Arab friends. He would travel to the Galilee to Nazareth and other places in what we called the alilee Triangle’, where ‘Israeli-Arabs’ live, as part of his political and academic work. But for the most part for us Israelis, Arabs were different, they were a minority and all we felt towards them was fear, mistrust and contempt.

I became familiar with the term ‘Palestinian’ in the late 70's only because my father was involved in Israeli Palestinian peace efforts. Until then they were always called Arabs, or Al Fatah, or Fedayin, or terrorists depending on the time and context. The first time I met and talked with Palestinians was in California in the year 2000. I was 39 years old.

For years, the Israeli Palestinian conflict had been a source of great frustration for me.  It set me apart from my Israeli friends and I could find no peace inside me.  After the 2000 Camp David peace talks fell apart I was completely beside myself. So much hope and in the end it all came to nothing.  This prompted me to look for other people to talk to and I eventually found a Jewish Palestinian dialogue group in San Diego.  Someone recommended that I contact George Majeed Khoury, a Palestinian from Jerusalem, and he invited me to a dialogue meeting at his home in Rancho Bernardo.  It was obvious to me that with my background, I knew everything, or at least more than anyone else about the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

The meetings of the San Diego Jewish Palestinian Dialogue Group were held once a month. I learned that the purpose of dialogue is to eliminate the barriers between the two sides through listening and empathy, an objective that is easier to set than it is to achieve. It wasn't easy for me to accept that I did not have full possession of the truth.  It takes a serious personal breakthrough to give up one's long held beliefs and move towards the unknown territory of trust. For the most part I was close in my opinions to the Palestinian members of the group: I was vehemently opposed to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and I was a firm believer in the Two State Solution as the only means to achieve a lasting peace.  But I held on to myths on which I was raised and I can determine the exact moment when my own personal breakthrough began.

For me, the myths that we Israelis are tau ght regarding the war of 1948 and the establishment of the Jewish State were indisputable historical facts. They had to be so because my father fought and was wounded in 1948, fighting in the first Jewish army since the fall of Judea some 2000 years ago. I heard the stories directly from him and from my mother. My mother lived through the siege on Jerusalem, raising my older brother and sister on little bread and even less water.  We were few and brave and they were many and intent on killing us. My mother often told us stories about what it was like trying to raise two young children when food and water were scarce and danger was lurking all around.

She also told us that after the fighting was over and the Arabs fled from their homes in West Jerusalem - (Arabs in West Jerusalem, that took a while to really sink in, I never knew there were Arabs living on our side of the city), their vacant homes were distributed to the Jews (by whom? I always wondered).

My mother Z ika, was the wife of an officer in the young, heroic Israeli Defense Forces, and she was the daughter of Dr. Avram Katsnelson, a member of the ‘National Council’ which was the de facto Jewish government in Palestine.  So it was only natural that she was offered one of these lovely Arab homes in Jerusalem. But she said it made her sick to see Jewish people move in to these homes that were still fully furnished. She said that the Palestinian residents had to flee in haste and when the Jews took over, they found breakfast still warm on the dinning room table. She said she could not and would not take a home that belonged to another family.

I admired my mother's decision, if only because I knew that by refusing an Arab house she had to go on living with her mother in a small apartment in Jerusalem - living with my grandmother should have earned her a medal for service above and beyond the call of duty. I admire her even more today, knowing as I do Palestinians who still have the keys to the homes that they were forced to leave behind.  Still, Arabs in West Jerusalem - who knew? We learned about Jews building neighborhoods outside the walled city but not Arabs. There are many ‘Arab Houses’ in Western neighborhoods of the city, as there are all over Israel, but no connection is ever made between these homes and the homeless Palestinian refugees in the camps in and around Israel.

But I want to get back to dialogue. I can recall the day, the moment in fact when trust began to transform the way I saw the Israeli Palestinian reality. It was during a meeting at Majeed's house, and he said that the fighting forces of the Jews in 1948 amounted to about 30,000 fighters, while the Palestinians had around 10,000. I still remember the guttural reaction I had: Impossible, untrue, absurd!  I should know because my father fought in that war.  I remember stories of the sieges, the fierce attacks on civilians and battles where our forces were outnumbered and won because they had the wit and the moral high ground.  But for some reason I trusted Majeed and I felt that he would not say this unless there was something to it. That was my moment of truth.  That was the beginning of a breakthrough and that is the breakthrough without which dialogue is just talk.

I could have and perhaps should have said to myself that Majeed is a liar and an anti Semite, just like the rest of them. Why else would he be perpetuating this insane notion that we were not a ‘David’ defending ourselves against a ‘Goliath’?  But the trust had been created and it moved everything in a totally different direction.  It prompted me to do a little research, to question the myth and ultimately to learn that his numbers were accurate.  Because of that trust I learned a great deal more about my identity as an Israeli, about the Palestinian people, and about myself.

Several years later I met Nader Elbanna at a dialogue meeting.  He was very cold and reserved at first but with time he and I became close and closer, and with the passing of the years we became what we call ‘Peace Partners’. One year he and I ended up traveling to Israel at the same time.  This was his first trip back home after 50 years of exile. For me it was yet another trip to see my family as I do once or twice each year. Nader invited Gila and I to Nazareth to meet his family.  That was our first visit to Nazareth. Driving north from Jerusalem to the Galilee the scenery was very beautiful and familiar, but once we entered the Palestinian town of Nazareth we found ourselves in a world that was totally unfamiliar to us.

To begin with, everyone around us was an Arab. The street signs and the billboards were screaming at us in Arabic. Up on the hill is the Israeli town but we were going to see people in the Arab town, Palestinians. Who do we ask for directions? Is i t safe for us to get out of the car and ask someone, after all everything that we saw in front of us spelled: D A N G E R!  But, I said to myself, it is Nader, my dear friend and his family who we are going to see.  Besides which, this is Nazareth not Baghdad. Finally we stopped to ask for directions and a kind local merchant pointed us in the right direction. I couldn't help thinking to myself ‘These people are nice.’ We made our way to the Elbanna family home and we spent a memorable day with them.  When we returned home, to Jerusalem it was already dark.  The next day Nader and his family came to visit us in Jerusalem.

The following year Gila and I were in Israel again and we traveled to see friends in Nazareth even though Nader was not there.  Friends suggested that we stop at Umm al Fahm on the way to see the gallery there. Umm al Fahm is one of the largest Palestinian cities in the Galilee, known for political activism.  It is ass ociated with the kind of Arabs who are ‘trouble-makers.’ We pulled into the gas station at the intersection off the main road for breakfast before going into the town. The fear of having Arabs all around us hit us again. That deep fear that exists in the recesses of the mind and the heart, a fear over which you must exercise enormous control or it will consume you.  Breakfast was terrific and the hospitality too - and to think that fear would have stopped us from enjoying all that.

Now we were in Umm Al Fahm. But where do we go? To ask for directions is to admit you are lost - and that is a frightful thought, but what can we do we have to trust somebody.  And so we did, and again people were happy to help us, going out of their way in fact to help us.

Trust seems to build more trust, but you've got to meet it half way.  That was certainly true in my case, as the following episode will demonstrate.  Bil'in is a Palestinian village in the We st Bank that has distinguished itself through a commitment to persistent non-violent resistance to the Israeli Occupation. For several years now, each Friday, local residents, Palestinians from the surrounding areas and Israeli peace activists gather in Bil'in to protest Israel's illegal confiscation of land, the development of illegal housing for Jews only on that land, and the construction of the separation wall on this land that belongs to the people of Bil'in.

A fellow Israeli peace activist suggested that I contact with Mohammad Al Khatib head of the council of Bil'in. I initially called him from the US and we spoke several times. On my visit to Israel in December 2005, I went to meet him in Bil'in.  If Nazareth seemed like foreign land, the West Bank was enemy territory.  Once you pass the last checkpoint and turn off the main road you know you are in the West Bank.

I was not sure where Mohammad was going to meet me (or what he looked like) and I assumed i t was where I got off the main road right after the checkpoint. I was disappointed to learn that I was wrong.  Instead, as I turned into the road that eventually leads to Bil'in I took a local day laborer who needed a ride to his village. He had a speech impediment and spoke very little Hebrew and that put us both in quite a predicament. He was able to utter the word Bil'in and to point me in the direction of the village.

As I drove through the windy hill roads I called Mohammad on my cell phone just to be reassured I was on the right path. Was I frightened out of my wits?  I should have been.  Everything I ever learned and knew to be true said that this could be my last day on earth:  I was driving alone in a rented car with Israeli license plates through an area populated by Arabs who hate Israelis.  It seemed to me this road was leading me nowhere - but I was wrong.

Finally I stopped by a small house where an elderly couple was sitting in the front yard.  ‘Bil'in?’ I ask. Hadha Bil'in’ the old man replied, this is Bil'in. I call Mohammad again and he says to keep going until I reach the mosque.  On the way I see posters of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and the green flags of Hamas that seemed threatening to me at the time as well as more comforting pictures of Abu 'Ammar (who ever thought that a photo of Yasser Arafat could be comforting?) and lots of graffiti.

I found Mohammad near his home. He is a young man, a father of three children.  No sooner did I arrive than his mother brought out a fresh pastry baked with vegetables for me to eat.  He and I talked for a while, and then we drove to meet two of his friends, fellow peace activists. The main road in Bil'in is more like a narrow alley in a refugee camp:  Potholes, concrete and graffiti.  Children were coming home from school, backpacks on their shoulders.

We drove off the main road and into some unpaved alley when ou t of nowhere come two young Palestinians. Young, unshaven - picture perfect ‘terrorists’. We walked together to see the construction of the separation wall and the huge apartment complexes being built for Jews only on land that belongs to Bil'in. Since there was no army presence, we ventured beyond the confines of where they as Palestinians are permitted to go and we got a close look at the apartments and even spoke to a few orthodox Jews who were just moving in.

When we returned to Mohammad's house one of his friends asked to use my car to go buy groceries. I gave him the car keys without a second thought and he returned with it loaded with groceries from which a real Palestinian feast was prepared. I have found that Palestinian hospitality and cooking are not compromised under any circumstances. I had not realized this until months later, but here too my trust was being put to the test left and right. Lending a rented car with Israeli plates to a couple of young Palestinians in the West Bank who I had just met could and perhaps should have been considered a serious risk.  But here again, there was no risk just an issue of trust.

I spent the entire day with these young, committed freedom activists. They are all fathers of young children, and they refuse to engage in violence but will not give up their resistance to the Israeli Occupation.

It was getting dark and I still had to drive home to Jerusalem. They pointed me in the right direction and off I went, scared to death once again but trusting deep inside that these people would not put me at risk. I knew that they knew I was safe or they would not have let me drive alone. I picked up a couple of young school age boys who asked for a ride. They rode with me for a couple of miles and thanked me as they got out of the car. I rode through the potholes in the empty streets and all I had to comfort me was the greeting of these boys and the trust I had in Mohammad and his friends .

The following week I took Nader to see Bil'in. We drove through the Jewish Settlement because the Israeli army closed the road to the village that day. I introduced Nader to Mohammad and his other Palestinian brothers who brave the assaults of Israeli military and remain dedicated to non-violent resistance.

For Israeli - Palestinian dialogue to succeed trust is a major ingredient. Without trust there can be no progress.  Like a baby learning to walk, we have to trust that it's ok to let go of the comfort of holding on to what we know to be true.  Once we take a few steps into the unknown we find that there is something even more secure on which we can rely.  That thing is trust.

The meaningful dialogue I have had with Palestinians, and the deep friendships we have formed together, would not have happened without trust. When Nader tells the story of our first meeting, he says he thought I was an Israeli spy and that he felt he had to be on the alert in case I attacked him. This was at the home of our friends Doris and Jim, here in San Diego.  Since then his children spent the night at my home and mine at his.  He and I have been to Bil'in and back, we visited Nazareth and Jerusalem together, we traveled to Israel and Jordan together and we met one another's extended family.

In the end, human contact is the only way to eliminate our fears and build trust.  That is why I am sorry that growing up I never knew any Arabs.

-Miko Peled is an Israeli peace activist and writer living in the US. He is co founder of the Elbanna Peled Foundation in memory of Smadar Elhanan and Abir Aramin. Peled is the son of the late Israeli General Matti Peled. Please direct all correspondence to mikopeled@aol.com

I had a bad flu for Christmas and my best friend will leave me alone for new years eve.

That’s all guys.

Do whatever, run fast as you can, be always there, help, listen, talk. And what you’ll have for exchange is a friend that will chose the (faked) cooler party instead being with the other friends.

She had the courage to invite me to, to go there. “Come with me, who cares?”. I care, me and Giancarlo and other friends we were bothering us all the days since December started, she was complaining she wanted more fun more fun more fun. As if the fun is made by something completely alien to the simple being together. As if the fun doesn’t come when you do this small thing, but all together, when you laugh your guts off.

No.

More fun, more fun, more fun.

She was crying at us for months. Now she found a guy to use, a nice guy that always say yes. So it’s easy now to turn her back and goodbye, have fun.

Where’s friendship? Is there a reason to keep bothering anymore?

I’ve always been the one, ready to run and change program if my friends asked for it. I never had something back and I’m still the one who can’t do what she want because…mehh this is not enough fun!!

I’m tired. And I’m really down for all those things.

The influence of this Christian Zionism is growing rapidly and threatens the thinking of a whole generation of mainstream Christians regardless of their denominations, including Christians in the Holy Land.

By Sonja Karkar
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.

Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of thinking about people’s relationship with God and with each other. It shook the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people. There was indeed much to hope for.

However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel’s occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. Yet, many Christians will again ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and in their land that Jesus was born. Priests will chant, masses will be said, carols will be sung and nativity scenes will be created, but it is unlikely that many sermons will urge Christian congregations to speak out against the crimes being committed in Palestine.

Only recently, a delegation of eminent Australian Church leaders returned from visiting the Holy Land and reported their distress at “the suffering and fear experienced daily by large numbers of people.” [1] The report criticizes Israel’s military occupation for the “systematic harassment, physical and psychological oppression, widespread unemployment, poverty, and economic deprivation” [2] of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. No doubt these church leaders will encourage their ministries to spread the word before the momentum is lost, but there are many forces working against justice for the Palestinians. Their statement has already been criticized by the Israeli ambassador and they are likely to face objections not only from Jews who support a Zionist state in Israel, but also from Christian quarters.

A dangerous Christian ideology which endorses the rhetoric of Zionism and the conquest of all Palestine for Israel is making its presence felt in Australia. This Christian fervour for Israel has found expression in a revitalised Christian Zionism that began back in the sixteenth century [3] and is directed today against Islam and Muslims. In America particularly, it has misconstrued the messianic and apocalyptic legacy of the Christian faith and has replaced the Jewish and communist Anti-Christ of Christian Zionism’s earlier imaginings with an Islamic Anti-Christ. This Anti-Christ, it believes, will be defeated in Israel where all mankind will gather for the coming of the Messiah. That it should take place in Israel, given the numbers of the world’s populations, is an absurd notion even amongst the most devout. That the dispossession, degradation and humiliation of the Palestinians who have lived in this land for millennia, can be condoned on such a pretext is even more abhorrent and preposterous.

Unfortunately, the influence of this Christian Zionism is growing rapidly and threatens the thinking of a whole generation of mainstream Christians regardless of their denominations, including Christians in the Holy Land. Father Rafiq Khoury of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, gives a very disturbing account of Christian Zionism’s effect on religion and politics. [4] Where once Christians and Muslims shared common values and aspirations in Palestinian society, Christian Zionism has succeeded in fragmenting this already battered community as it struggles to withstand Israel’s punishing occupation. Amongst certain sections of this society, Christians and Muslims are now viewing each other with suspicion, and Christians in Palestine, like those abroad, are beginning to see Islam as the enemy. Needless to say, this has been enormously detrimental to the Palestine liberation movement.

It would surprise many Christians in the West that Palestinian Christians and Muslims have prayed in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity for centuries. In fact, the Qur’an - the holy book of Islam - refers often, and with great reverence, to Jesus and Mary. Muhammad himself preserved an icon of Mary and the child Jesus after the conquest of Mecca and ordered that it remain within the Ka’ba to which Muslims make their obligatory pilgrimage from all over the world. [5]

Since 638 CE, Muslims have had the right to pray in the south aisle of the church when the Patriarch of Jerusalem handed over Palestine to Caliph Omar as he swept into Bethlehem with his Arab armies. [6] Muslims recognise Jesus as the Christ, the mightiest Messenger of God who was born miraculously of the Virgin Mary and who, through God, was able to perform miracles. However, Christians and Muslims part ways on Christ’s divinity. Muslims believe that there has always been and continues to be one God only and that joining Christ and the Holy Spirit with God the Father in what is known as the Trinity – a major tenet of Christianity – compromises that singular divinity of God.

It has not though affected their recognition of, and reverence for, Jesus and Mary. The highly regarded theologian of the early Christian Church, St John of Damascus actually thought that Islam was merely another form of Christianity[7], and indeed today, St John would probably be more comfortable with the practices and beliefs of Muslims than he would with the form of Christianity that has developed in the West, particularly Christian Zionism.

So much of the fear and antagonism we see today against Muslims come from ignorance. In Palestine, Christian and Muslims have lived together in harmony for centuries, and particularly in Bethlehem, they have not only shared Christmas celebrations, but even the Muslim feasts Eid al-Fitr at the end of the Ramadan fast and Eid al-Adha. As one young Bethlehem tour guide commented in 2002:

“We know how to celebrate together, because we know how to weep together. We have suffered as one people under 35 years of occupation. The same week that Mary, a Muslim mother of seven was killed in Beit Jala, Johnny, a 17-year-old, died in Manger Square as he was coming out of the Church of the Nativity, both shot by Israeli snipers. We’re all inmates together, Muslims and Christians, in the same miserable prison called Palestine. We have no freedom, no peace, no jobs, no money for winter heating, no travelling to Jerusalem or between towns and villages, no future.”

And that is the sum of what is so often forgotten in the search for peace and justice: the escalating inhuman situation suffered by the Palestinians – Christians and Muslims.

Sing as we might this Christmas, the hopes and dreams of all the years is unlikely to be met in Bethlehem for those who live there. Nor are they likely to be met for the Palestinians barely hanging on to their miserable existence in Gaza, or the Palestinians in the other cities, towns and villages in the Holy Land and even less for the stateless Palestinians long deprived of hope in the refugee camps. Every chorister’s hallelujah will just be a death knell for another generation of Palestinians and every Christmas reflection will become meaningless words of Christian faith, unless we are prepared to look beyond the tinsel and the feasting and really do something to stop Israel’s crimes against both Christians and Muslims in Palestine.

Notes:

[1] Statement by Australian Church Leaders, Bethlehem, 18 December 2007
[2] Ibid.
[3] Fr Rafiq Khoury, “Effects of Christian Zionism on religion, Christian local churches and peace research”, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Jerusalem, 2004 (a presentation given at the Al-Sabeel International Conference on 15 April 2004)
[4] Ibid.
[5] Uri Rubin, “The Ka’ba: Aspects of its Ritual Function and Position in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986) 97-131
[6] Dr G S P Freeman-Grenville, The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine Exploration Fund, January 1994
[7] William Dalrymple, “What Muslims and Christians share: A Christmas meditation”, The New Statesman, 19 December 2005

The Devastation Our Disunity has Created

Joharah Baker, MIFTAH

True Aim of Annapolis, and Why It Failed

By Ramzy Baroud
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

The US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland was neither a success nor failure, if one accepts that its so-called objective was indeed ‘peacemaking’.

From a US perspective, the meeting was, at best, a diplomatic manoeuvre on the part of the Bush administration, a last chance for becoming relevant to a region that is quickly escaping its grip. At worst, the conference was a desperate public relations charade aimed at convincing the American public that the administration’s plans for democracy and peace in the Middle East are unfolding smoothly. In both scenarios, the conference was a necessary but fleeting distraction from the prevailing criticism that the Iraq war is a ‘nightmare’ without end .

Bush’s words at Annapolis suggested he was playing exactly the part Israel expected of him. His emphasis on the Jewish identity of Israel, itself a crude violation of the principles of secularism, seems more than a mere gesture to appease the concerns of Israel and its backers in the US; it was actually a subtle acceptance of the ethnic cleansing that continues to define Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. After all, millions of Palestinians have for decades been expelled from their land for no other reason than not being Jewish, while millions of Jews around the world are welcomed ‘back’ to Israel – a land that they never lived in or had prior ties to. Could Bush not have known about this when he emphasised the need for a Jewish state? I doubt it.

So what kind of peace process are we talking about? By any reasonable definition, peacemaking usually occurs to bridge the gap and resolve disagreements between antagonists; friends don’t n eed to ‘negotiate’ through the use of ‘initiatives’ and ‘painful compromises’ to find a ‘common ground’. While both Israelis and Palestinians are in urgent need for peace to replace the hostility caused by Israel’s illegal military occupation, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could hardly qualify as ‘enemies’ caught in a state of ‘hostilities’ from which they require escape. Indeed, both men are individually beleaguered in many ways and engaged in a war of their own – but not against one another. If anything, both Abbas and Olmert are in a state of political symbiosis, a mutual dependency that borders, strangely enough, on solidarity.

Annapolis was the perfect platform for both leaders to alleviate their individual woes.
Abbas needed the international validation after his non-constitutional response to the clash with Hamas in Gaza. Being unpopular among Palestinians, the survival of his regime is solely dependent on his ability to sustain the patronage system of his authority in the West Bank. Without international funds, US validation, and Israeli permission, Abbas cannot run his nepotistic empire, itself under Israeli military occupation. Therefore he needs to keep up the balancing act, and cannot be expected to infuriate Israel by pushing for serious demands at the negotiating table, scheduled to begin December 12.   

Olmert, overseeing a shaky coalition, is gripped by two daunting realities: one, he has no mandate to make any ‘compromises’, painful or otherwise, and two, the fact that a two-state solution is close to becoming obsolete. In a rare frankness, he expressed these fears in an interview with the daily Haaretz right after returning from Annapolis. “The day will come when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights...As soon as that happens, the state of Israel (as an exclusively Jewish state) is finished.”

In retrospect, this helps to explain Bush’s insistence on the Jewish identity of Israel.

What’s ironic is that the same parties that once considered the recognition of the word ‘Palestine’ as blasphemous and anti-Semitic are now advocating a Palestinian state. David A. Harris, Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee told the Los Angeles Times, November 30, that even the two-state solution has to be qualified. “No. no. Two-space-nation-space-states. Not just two states, two nation states. A Jewish state called Israel, and a Palestinian Arab state called Palestine. This is the language that Prime Minister Olmert has been using, that Foreign Minister Livni has been using, that President Bush has embraced, and (was also used by) President Sarkozy (of France).”

Olmert, like many Israeli and Jewish Zionist leaders (a s opposed to non-Zionist Jews who refuse to subscribe to this archaic mindset) increasingly realizes that Israel’s colonial euphoria is backfiring; the failure to define Israel’s borders – left open with the hope of further territorial expansion – is making it impossible for Israel to achieve total dominance of Jews over Arabs, while still calling itself a democracy. There is hardly a doubt that the bad choices made by Israel in the past are now irrevocable, and that indeed the future struggle will be that of equality within one state.

Rather than being a right, or wrong, step toward peace between two conflicting parties, Annapolis has provided a stage for much sweet talk, hyped expectations and soundbytes for leaders with pressing motivations. Reporters may have been told that Annapolis offered “hope...cautious hope, but hope” by Olmert’s spokesperson, but neither hope, nor breaking the seven year of ‘deadlock’ - as prophe sized by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat – are relevant here. The meeting and the year of ‘negotiations’ expected to follow it are part of Israel’s last attempt at ‘preserving’ its Jewish identity, and creating a South Africa-style Palestinian Bantustans. Palestinians will be granted the freedom to call such disconnected islands whatever they wish, and to hoist their flag within the caged entities, if they must, but nothing more.

Although both Bush and Abbas are willing collaborators in this undemocratic endeavour, Israelis must wake up to the fact that their country is knee-deep in Apartheid, and nothing is significant enough to salvage their racially-selective democracy, except true democracy. It’s time for people like Harris to stop talking of ‘two-space-nation-space-states’ and other such nonsense, but instead to invest sincere efforts in finding a formula that guarantees peace, justice and security for both Palestin ians and Israelis, without overlooking the historic responsibility of Israel over the plight and dispossession of the Palestinians.

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

I passed the last one! With a score of 30/30 and it was fun because I didn’t really thought of knowing all the stuff I said! So then…I can have happy holidays and days without bothering me with that “Omg I got to study!!” And you’ll will not be bothered anymore with me being always studying!! Yup!!

So…..SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!

*ronf ronf ronf*

I passed the Roman Archeology exam today!

You know…I was bothering all of you for it in these days!

I got a score of 2530. It’s not good and neither that bad and I could do better, but I completely hate that stuff and I was fuckin’ tired.

Now I have the next one on Wednesday. It’s Assiriology as many of you already know….I’m studying it since….ages!! LOL….Now it’s the time to pass it and leave it behind….and then….some holidays…maybe.

Fuck I need SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!

Kisses, Tessa.

Last night I went to sleep at 2 AM, because this morning I had an exam!

This morning I woke up at 6 AM and went to University….I arrived there and the teacher told us “I can’t do all the exams because I’m busy in Rome this afternoon! One group will have the exam today another one on Monday!”………..

Guess what? I’m on the Monday group!!

I hate that! If you’re busy why the hell did you tell us this date? Just put all the exams in Monday if you are busy!!

Now  I’m fainting of sleep and why? I just didn’t get my credits and I have to study for two fuckin’ exams in two days!!

EWWWW

I HATE THAT!!

Today’s the day of sorrow.

In Torino we got the burial of 4 men.

They died doing their work, they died as heroes, they were killed.

Those four men were working at the Thyssenkrup Foundry, while their work the oil they use to freeze the iron took fire. In the building there was no safety stuff, nothing to heal the fire, nothing for helping the people, even the telephones didn’t work and the gates are locked and firemen couldn’t open it!! They were trapped inside and burned.

They leave families and soon and daughters and friends.

They were heroes because they worked in a dead factory, a factory that was ending its production and that didn’t care of them anymore. There were no controls and no controllers. Like an abandoned house….They kept on working there because of the wage, the salary, because they needed it for their wives their soon their families. They were heroes for their families and now?

Now everyone is talking, here it’s all a blablabla about this “accident”, somebody even said that “shit happens”….

We’re in 2007 and a factory has no anti-fire system, no telephone and “shit happens”….

What to say more?

Rancid released a new album today 11th december 2007. It'a collection of rarities and its title is "B Sides And C Sides".
I've never liked collection out before Christmas, I look bad at those things...but hell we are talking about Rancid so...I'm quite happy....even if I already got some of these tracks!
Now we can fully and completely wait for this fuckin' new album we are waiting since ages!!

Green Day has been nominated for another Grammy. This year they were nominated for 'Working Class Hero' (info) in the 'Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group' category. They are up against U2, Daughtry, The White Stripes, and Nickelback.

Last year Green Day was nominated for a Grammy alongside U2 for 'The Saints Are Coming' in the same category, but lost to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And in February 2006 Green Day won the Grammy for 'Record of the Year' with Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

The 50th Annual Grammy Awards will be handed out February 10th in Los Angeles.

http://greendayauthority.com/

Blender.com has a list of 28 Most Recognizable Guitars...and Blue is #18, just before Jerry Only (The Misfits) LOL....you can check the full list here:

http://www.blender.com/articles/default.aspx?key=10046&pg=2

18. Artist: Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day
Instrument:Blue
Description: A Fernandes Fender Stratocaster copy with a humbucker pickup in the bridge position and Duncan JB neck pickups, Armstrong covered the entire body with various band stickers.
Factoid: Armstrong’s mother surprised him by buying Blue from his first guitar teacher when he was 11. Being from a lower-middle class family, Armstrong was shocked, and the gesture inspired him to write the material that later became Green Day’s early recordings.
Shining Moment: Best known from the “Longview” and “Minority” videos, Blue has also been a live staple at Green Day shows ever since. (Hem...I find something wrong there but...anyway...)

Then….Rolling Stone has a List of Fifty Best Songs Over Seven Minutes Long and it includes, obviously we must say, Jesus Of Suburbia. It is in alphabetical order…so….no ratings!!

You can check it here:  

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17504918/rock_list_the_fifty_best_songs_over_seven_minutes_long/3

Kisses…Tessa.

We got an update this week from Green Day's manager about what the band is up to now. He let us know that Green Day will be going back to the studio in January, and that we should look forward to a new greenday.com and perhaps some new photos around that time.

He mentioned that the band was going to begin stepping away from all American Idiot themes, and that the new site wasn't going to be themed around the new album. I asked about the progress of the new album, and it didn't sound like we should expect anything too soon. Lets hope we'll get a full update about what kind of stuff they're working on early next year.

credits to: http://www.greendayauthority.com