Hamas Battles Islamist Group

“Clashes that have left at least 16 people dead in the Gaza Strip have spread from a mosque in the town of Rafah to the nearby home of the leader of al-Jamaa al-Salafiya al-Jihadya in Palestine.

Hamas security forces sieged control of the Ibn Taymiya mosque late on Friday after several hours of heavy clashes, but several of the fighters holed up inside managed to escape.

‘Hamas security and the military wing of Hamas were able to take over the mosque, but in the fighting several fighters loyal to the sheikh and members of his armed group fled to his house,’ Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from Rafah, said…

…The group seeks a Palestinian legal system based purely on the sharia – Islamic law – and accuses Hamas of being too liberal. The group is said to have threatened to burn down internet cafes and to demand greater modesty on Gaza beaches.

‘We are today proclaiming the creation of an Islamist emirate in the Gaza Strip,’ Musa had told worshippers at a Rafah mosque earlier, according to witnesses.

Musa said that if Hamas were to implement sharia he would immediately instruct his followers to comply with the movement’s instructions…”

–Al Jazeera English, 14 August, 2009

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/08/200981420417893961.html

Other Recent News from Al Jazeera

Israel troops ’shot Gaza civilians’

“Israeli soldiers unlawfully shot and killed 11 Palestinian civilians, including four children, who were in groups waving white flags during the Gaza war, a report prepared by the US-based Human Rights Watch says…”

–Al Jazeera English, 14 August, 2009

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/08/200981335844986966.html

See Also the Latest News from Democracy Now!

“HRW: Israel Killed 11 Palestinian Civilians Waving White Flags in Gaza Assault

In Israel and the Occupied Territories, the group Human Rights Watch says it’s uncovered evidence of Israeli troops shooting dead at least eleven Palestinian civilians waving white flags during the US-backed attack on the Gaza Strip last January. Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch said most of the victims were women and children.

Joe Stork: ‘These are incidents in which eleven Palestinian civilians, nine of them children and women, were killed, despite the fact that they were holding or waving white flags to signify that they were civilians, they were unarmed, they had no hostile intent. But still, Israeli soldiers, in many cases after calling them out of their homes, shot them.’

In a homemade video, Gaza resident Khalid Abed Rabbo described the shooting death of his two young daughters.

Khalid Abed Rabbo: ‘When the soldiers arrived outside our house, they yelled for us to come outside. My wife, mother, three daughters and I went outside. We were holding cloths, because we are a peaceful family. I thought that the soldiers would realize that they were looking at women and children.’

Abed Rabbo’s three-year-old daughter and the children’s grandmother were also wounded in the shooting. The girls’ mother also witnessed the attack.

Umm Soad Abed Rabbo: ‘Right in front of me, they shot my eldest daughter. Then they shot the little one, Amal, and then Samar, who was in front of her. When we ran inside, they shot their elderly grandmother who can hardly walk’…”

–Democracy Now!, 14 August, 2009

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/14/headlines#5

And from The Electronic Intifada:

Gaza play highlights difficulties for artists under siege

“‘Don’t people in Gaza love to see films like people anywhere?’ aspiring filmmaker Hossam Abdel Latif asks. His wife, the more practical Souad, retorts, ‘Someone who can’t afford to eat is going to go to the cinema?’

The question of the arts in times of siege and occupation is one of the main themes in Gaza’s newest theatre production, Film Cinema, which opened on 4 August in Gaza City. A stage buried in film negatives, and adorned with a lone plump teddy bear, sets the scene of the three-person play.

‘I’m Hossam Abdel Latif, and I want to make a film,’ the would-be film director repeatedly begins, facing his running video camera, only to be repeatedly interrupted…”

–Eva Bartlett, The Electronic Intifada, 12 August 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10706.shtml

Upcoming USC and Los Angeles Area Events

USC Events, Week of April 12th

THIS WEDNESDAY, we will be having a meeting at 5:00 PM in Leavey Auditorium to discuss upcoming events- including our cultural event on Thursday.

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY, we will be continuing our Middle Eastern Film Festival with the screening of DIVINE INTERVENTION, which is a 2002 film that consists largely of a series of brief interconnected sketches, but for the most part records a day in the life of a Palestinian living in Nazareth, whose girlfriend lives several checkpoints away in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

ON THURSDAY, we will be having a mock checkpoint set up at Tommy Trojan from 10 am to 3 pm. Please come by to check it out and support us, we also need volunteers to participate in taking on roles as Palestinian civilians and Israeli military guards, please contact us at shams@usc.edu or lmadriga@usc. edu if you can be there Thursday.

ALSO ON THURSDAY we will be having our cultural event, featuring Middle Eastern music and selling Palestinian food. This will be at Tommy Trojan from about 12 am-3 pm, please stop by and enjoy the good food and the good music!
JOIN US IN SOLIDARITY THIS WEEK!!

With Respect,
Alex Shams & Lorena Madrigal
Co-Presidents SJP

Also Check Out:

Peres: Obama ‘very impressed’ by Arab League peace plan; Sabra and Shatila ‘animated documentary’

“LONDON – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama proclaimed himself ‘very impressed’ with the Arab League’s peace plan when he discussed it with President Shimon Peres during a brief visit to Israel four months ago, Peres said Tuesday.

Peres, who had just arrived in London for an official visit, made the comment in interviews to be published in the British media. He was responding to questions about whether he thought Obama would advance the Middle East peace process in general and the Arab League’s plan in particular.

But he denied a Sunday Times report earlier this week which claimed that Obama had said Israel would be ‘crazy’ to reject the Arab initiative…”

–Anshel Pfeffer, Ha’aretz, November 19 2008

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1038636.html

War, death and animation: Cartoon film stirs Israel’s conscience

“Until a matter of months ago, very few Israelis realised that their army fired flares to light up Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Lebanese Christian militiamen committed the notorious massacre of Palestinian civilians there in 1982.

But Ari Folman, who as a 19-year-old soldier fired some of the flares, makes their descent through the sky over Beirut’s beachfront one of the recurring images of Waltz With Bashir, his ‘animated documentary’ that premiers in Britain this week.

In Israel, the film has rekindled discussion about the divisive invasion of Lebanon that was initially billed by Ariel Sharon, who was defence minister at the time, as a limited push to halt PLO rocket attacks, and the extent of Israeli responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre where the estimated number of victims ranged from 700 to more than 3,000. Folman has said he had no idea the massacre was being committed when he shot the flares.

The killings by Phalangist militiamen dispatched into the camps by Israel came after their leader, Bashir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, was assassinated in a bombing wrongly blamed on Palestinians. An Israeli state commission of inquiry set up as a result of a tide of public protest in the massacre’s wake found that Mr Sharon, today comatose from a stroke nearly three years ago, bore ‘personal responsibility’ for not having foreseen the danger that the Phalangists would commit the slaughter. He was forced to give up the defence portfolio, something that did not prevent him from being elected as premier in 2001 and re-elected in 2003. Lebanon, for its part, has never seriously investigated the massacre…”

–Ben Lynfield, The Independent, November 17, 2008

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-death-and-animation-cartoon-film-stirs-israels-conscience-1021732.html

Israel Opens Gaza Border; Rahm Emanuel Apologizes for Father’s Remarks

Israel Briefly Opens Gaza Border Crossing

“Israel temporarily opened a border crossing with Gaza today to allow a limited supply of humanitarian aid to reach the territory. Thirty trucks, including eleven from the United Nations, were allowed to travel into Gaza. On Friday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency announced it had run out of food and was unable to replenish storage facilities because of the Israeli blockade. The UN provides food aid to 750,000 Palestinians. Israel says the blockade is needed because Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets at nearby Israeli towns.”

–Democracy Now, Nov 17, 2008

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/17/headlines#8

Obama aide apologises to US-Arabs

“Benjamin Emanuel told an Israeli newspaper that his son, who is Jewish, would ‘obviously influence the president to be pro-Israel’. He also referred to Arabs in a way which a leading Arab-American group called an ‘unacceptable smear’. A spokesman for Rahm Emanuel said he had called the group to apologise.

Mr Emanuel also offered to meet members of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In the interview last week with the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv, Israeli-born Benjamin Emanuel talked about his son’s new job.

Anger at remarks

He said: ‘Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House’…”

–BBC, Nov 14, 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_elections_2008/7729046.stm

See also:

Rahm Emanuel Apologizes for Paternal Insult of Arabs

“Exactly 48 years ago in Atlantic City (on Nov. 16, 1960), Rabbi Bernard Bergman, president of the Religious Zionists of America, made a plea to President-elect John F. Kennedy: Time to get the Israelis and the Arabs together for some peace negotiating. Not a bad idea after two wars in 12 years. Specifically, the rabbi said, Kennedy, once president, should do everything in his power to get then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to the same table. Bergman was addressing the annual National Convention of the Religious Zionists of America at the Chelsea Hotel in Atlantic City.

Wonderful sentiments and worthy aims, you might tell yourself. Especially in light of what we know happened in the intervening 48 years. Imagine if Kennedy had taken just such initiative. He didn’t. He wasn’t interested in the Middle East.

But wait. There was something more about those wonderful sentiments by the rabbi, once he got done with the obvious. According to an account in The New York Times, ‘Rabbi Bergman said the Arab countries would benefit from Israel’s great store of trained personnel if they abandoned their “foolhardy and nonsensical program of bestiality, venom and rancor toward Israel.” ‘

Was the rabbi kidding us? Bestiality? It gets worse…”

–Pierre Tristam, About.com Guide to Middle East Issues, Nov 16, 2008

http://middleeast.about.com/b/2008/11/16/rahm-emanuel-apologizes-for-paternal-insult-of-arabs.htm

Mahmoud Darwish: The New Yorker and Other Tributes

A young Mahmoud Darwish in Cairo. (Al Akhbar)

“The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died Saturday from complications of major heart surgery, in Houston, Texas. Darwish, born in 1941, was also a newspaperman, an activist, and a drafter of the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Darwish spent much of his life in exile, but he remained stubbornly attached to his homeland. In his poetry, he used its landscape to describe the struggles of his people and his feelings on life, love, and death. Though a polyglot, he wrote in Arabic; his work quickly became popular, and has been translated into twenty languages. In 2000, the Israeli education minister proposed that Darwish be taught in schools, but Prime Minister Ehud Barak declared the country ‘not ready.’ If not then, perhaps now. In 2007, we published Darwish’s poem ‘Remainder of a Life,’ which begins: ‘If I were told: / By evening you will die, / so what will you do until then?” The poet lists a variety of tasks, some quotidian (bathing, shaving), some pleasurable (drinking wine, reading), all described with a rebellious glee. The poem ends:

Then I’d comb my hair and throw away the poem… this poem, in the trash, and put on the latest fashion in Italian shirts, parade myself in an entourage of Spanish violins, and walk to the grave!

That final exclamation point is a salute to an extraordinary life.”

–Jenna Krajeski, The New Yorker, August 11, 2008

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2008/08/mahmoud-darwish.html

See also:

Here the Birds’ Journey Ends

by Mahmoud Darwish English Translation Published in The New Yorker on August 25, 2008

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2008/08/25/080825po_poem_darwish

More Darwish Tributes:

Mahmoud Darwish: Palestine’s prophet of humanism

Saifedean Ammous, The Electronic Intifada, 12 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9758.shtml

A guest of eternity: Mahmoud Darwish in memoriam

Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 13 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9761.shtml

The poetics of Palestinian resistance

As’ad AbuKhalil, The Electronic Intifada, 18 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9772.shtml

Failing Darwish’s legacy Sumia Ibrahim, The Electronic Intifada, 19 August 2008 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9774.shtml

Farewell Mahmoud Darwish Sinan Antoon, Al-Ahram Weekly, 14 – 20 August 2008 http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/910/fr1.htm

…and finally, a piece from The Economist, which, in spite of some questionable statements, remains informative:

Obituary: Mahmoud Darwish Aug 21st 2008 From The Economist print edition http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11959317

Poets for Palestine Anthology Published

“Poets For Palestine was published to unite a diverse range of poets, spoken word artists, and hip-hop artists who have used their words to elevate the consciousness of humanity. Sixty years after the dispossession of the Palestinian people, this anthology presents forty-eight poems alongside original works by Palestinian artists. All proceeds from the sale of this collection will go toward funding future cultural projects that highlight Arab artistry in the United States…”

http://www.poetsforpalestine.com/index.html

Mahmoud Darwish: 15 March 1941 – 9 August 2008

(Photo: Mustafa Abu Dayeh/MaanImages, posted on Electronic Intifada)

Electronic Intifada: Remembering Mahmoud Darwish

“Mahmoud Darwish, the iconic Palestinian poet passed away on 9 August in Houston, Texas at the age of 67 following unsuccessful heart bypass surgery. The Electronic Intifada editorial team share the sadness of the Palestinian and world literary communities and express their condolences to his family.

Over the next few days, EI will be publishing a number of tributes to Darwish. We begin with his own words, his 1964 poem ‘Identity Card,’ from his first collection, Leaves of Olives. The verses express the spirit resistance of Palestinians in the face exile and dispossession. Among his best known poems, it has lost none of its power a generation after it was first written.

‘Identity card’

Write down!
I am an Arab
And my identity card number is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth will come after a summer
Will you be angry?

Write down!
I am an Arab
Employed with fellow workers at a quarry
I have eight children
I get them bread
Garments and books
from the rocks …
I do not supplicate charity at your doors
Nor do I belittle myself at the footsteps of your chamber
So will you be angry?

Write down!
I am an Arab
I have a name without a title
Patient in a country
Where people are enraged
My roots
Were entrenched before the birth of time
And before the opening of the eras
Before the pines, and the olive trees
And before the grass grew

My father … descends from the family of the plow
Not from a privileged class
And my grandfather … was a farmer
Neither well-bred, nor well-born!
Teaches me the pride of the sun
Before teaching me how to read
And my house is like a watchman’s hut
Made of branches and cane
Are you satisfied with my status?
I have a name without a title!

Write down!
I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks …
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!

Therefore!
Write down on the top of the first page:
I do not hate poeple
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper’s flesh will be my food
Beware …
Beware …
Of my hunger
And my anger!”

–Tribute, The Electronic Intifada, 11 August 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9754.shtml

Also,

Democracy Now: Mahmoud Darwish, Poet Laureate of the Palestinians, 1941-2008

“Three days of mourning have been declared in the West Bank and Gaza to mark the death of Mahmoud Darwish, the Poet Laureate of the Palestinians. Darwish was considered one of the most important Arab poets, a towering literary figure for over four decades. The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish is well known and loved across the Arab world by people from all walks of life…

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/11/mahmoud_darwish_poet_laureate_of_the

The Official Site:

http://www.mahmouddarwish.com/english/

Updates from the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

The year 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“the catastrophe”): the expulsion and dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948.

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is soliciting entries for a commemoration of the Nakba through personal expressions in the form of visual arts, essays, poetry, music, video, and digital media.

Learn more about the competition and how you can participate.

DEADLINE MARCH 30, 2008

http://expressionsofnakba.org/mainmenu.html

Tax Day Is Coming: Offset Your Tax Dollars to Israel

In 2007, the United States gave Israel $2.34 billion in military aid to enforce its illegal military occupation and siege of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem , and the Gaza Strip. As Tax Day nears, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation wants to give you an opportunity to offset the tax dollars you give to Israel .

 

http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=1607

Birth Right Palestine

” The First Annual Birthright Palestine Program is launching in the summer of 2008!

Birthright Palestine is a unique program created by Native Palestinians for Diaspora Palestinians. The concept, created by the Palestine Center for National Strategic Studies (PCNSS) – a new non-profit, non-governmental Palestinian organization, is meant to gather first-generation, western-born Palestinians (over the age of 18-years old) in their ancestral homeland, so that they can reunite and witness firsthand how their brethren are living under illegal Israeli military occupation…”

http://www.birthrightpalestine.com/

Artist Banksy’s Latest Work on the Wall

BBC In Pictures