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Posted on Friday, 22 August, 2008 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Ships set sail for Gaza | First Rafah tournament kicks off
In between The Job and The Baby, there’s been a couple of projects I’ve been helping out with a little. One is a soccer tournament in Rafah, Gaza. The other is a project for activists to sail to Gaza in defiance of the Israeli blockade at sea. The latter has been a long time in development and the former was hatched in a shorter amount of time. Both are coming into their own now and warrant wider attention. Both speak to the larger problem Gaza faces as it remains a prison due to the Israeli occupation and US foreign policies. They also seek to help remedy some internal issues such as factioning and in-fighting, both resulting from the prison-like situation.
There is no such thing as too much cynicism in analysis of the situation involving Gaza. Take your pick of topics and you can’t really go dark enough. Some of the more macabre stuff out there refers to what Israel is doing to Gaza as “The Experiment.”
Here, we look briefly at The Experiment, and at the two projects I’ve had the good luck to be a small part of:
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Posted on Sunday, 2 September, 2007 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
I’ve set up a Robinhood Fund entry for the Life Makers center in Rafah, Gaza, which may have to close if it doesn’t get some income. By voting for this wish, you can help send $500 to this youth recreation and education center located in the middle of the most chaotic part of the Gaza Strip and help give kids there some slice of normalcy in their lives. — Link
Voting on this wish starts in three days, so bookmark the page and head back to it. Life Makers is run by my friend Fida Qishta, an Olympia+Rafah Sister City Project participant. The organization runs a playground, internet center, orchestrates field trips, English study and much more. To learn more about it, check out the official site.
UPDATE: To read more about the center, see this post at the blog, Raising Yousuf.
Posted on Saturday, 5 May, 2007 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
This was orginally published here.
On 17 April the Olympia, Washington City Council voted 4-2 against official recognition of the Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project. Of the few news organizations following the story, that was the headline. But it wasn’t really the news.
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Posted on Tuesday, 1 May, 2007 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Electronic Intifada has posted my write up on The Olympia-Rafah Sister City Project city council vote. — Link
Posted on Monday, 30 April, 2007 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
My friend Steve Niva, Middle East professor at The Evergreen State College, writes about his recent trip to Palestine. — Link
One can certainly blame the ineffectual Palestinian leadership for many mistakes and one can blame Palestinian extremists for damaging the moral justness of the Palestinian cause through murderous and strategically worthless suicide attacks.
But none of this justifies Israel continuing to illegally steal Palestinian land to build new settlements or building a wall deep within Palestinian land to annex these settlements, nor does it prevent Israel from taking unilateral steps to vacate completely the land that it has illegally occupied since 1967. Moreover, none of this should cause one to blindly support Israeli policies that crush the hope that Rachel Corrie helped nurture.
But instead of joining with Jimmy Carter, Rachel Corrie and countless others, many Israeli and Jewish, who recognize that Israel’s occupation and settlements are unjustified and prevent peace, these critics peddle defamation and falsehoods about Corrie masquerading as reasonable criticism.
Posted on Wednesday, 18 April, 2007 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
The xenophobic boo-scary crowd managed to keep the Oly+Rafah Sister City Project from getting official recognition for its good works of increasing understanding between peoples. Way to go.
“In keeping with its commitment to open government, the Olympia City Council is pleased to provide online access to live and archived City Council meeting videos, minutes, and agendas.”
• The meeting’s Agenda
• The background material that will be presented for our item (which seemed to have not been read by the majority of the council).
• Video of the meeting available here. (Warning: some freaky, racist anti-Arab statements lie within, as well as a lot of powerful statement in support of ORSCP)
• Or paste this into iTunes under the podcast section>subscribe to podcast
to have it download to your computer: http://olympia.granicus.com/ViewPublisherRSS.php?view_id=2
• Minutes of meeting available here.
Flickr photos of the meeting are here: Link
Some blogging on the vote:
• What This Town Needs
• Gabi Clayton ~ Inside the outsider
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“Some came and took our land, forced us to leave, forced us to live in camps. I think this is terrorism. Using means to resist this terrorism and stop its effects – this is called struggle.”