A Mideast Bond, Stitched of Pain and Healing
By Ethan Bronner
JERUSALEM — He can be impulsive. She has a touch of bossiness. Next-door neighbors for nearly a year, they talk, watch television and explore the world together, wandering into each other’s homes without a second thought. She likes his mother’s eggplant dish. He likes her father’s rice and lamb.
Marya, a Palestinian, and Orel, an Israeli, are 8-year-old neighbors at Jerusalem’s Alyn Hospital.
Friendship often starts with proximity, but Orel and Marya, both 8, have been thrust together in a way few elsewhere have. Their playground is a hospital corridor. He is an Israeli Jew severely wounded by a Hamas rocket. She is a Palestinian Muslim
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by Raquel Evita Saraswati on January 11, 2010 · 6 comments
“None but a noble man treats women in an honorable manner. And none but an ignoble treats women disgracefully.”
- The Prophet Muhammad (At-Tirmithy)
Last year, I was approached by MarcGopin.com to write a column focusing on positive incremental change.
While I am always in favor of an optimistic approach, I confess that it is sometimes hard to remain positive. This is especially difficult considering the many challenges women – and especially Muslim women – continue to face in establishing and preserving their rights.
For example, it is true that the tribal practice of honor killing – in which women are slain to restore the “honor” of their families and communities - is not exclusive…
Hamas advocating dialogue through children’s cartoon? Not exactly.
By Roi Ben-Yehuda
From France 24’s The Observers:
Last month, on the controversial Palestinian children’s program, “The Pioneers of Tomorrow”, a cartoon was aired (on the Hamas owned Al-Aqsa TV) ostensibly aimed at teaching kids Islamic values. The cartoon features a conversation between a Palestinian boy and a young Israeli Jewish settler. Through their dialogue and interaction, the Jewish settler learns to question everything negative he had been taught about Palestinians.
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Roi Ben-Yehuda, a Ph.D. student at ICAR, is an Israeli writer based in the U.S. He is a regular contributor to Haaretz and France 24. He also writes his own blog, RoiWord. This article of his, which discusses Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement to pass a bill banning alcohol from kiosks and gas stations as well as limit its sales and advertisement, was published recently.
A Toast for Peace
By Roi Ben-Yehuda
A couple of weeks ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his intention to pass a bill that would ban alcohol from kiosks and gas stations as well as limit its sales and advertisement. The purpose of the bill is to reduce the seemingly rising
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By Kobi Skolnick
It has been six months since Israel launched an incursion into Gaza, and the anniversary has prompted the Red Cross to release a report on life since the operation.
According to the report, 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza are “trapped in despair” because of the continuing Israeli blockade, and since April 2007 there has been an 80% decrease in the number of truckloads allowed through the boarder. With the population of Gaza being made up mainly of teenagers and children, this means many children are suffering from malnourishment and poor health. Furthermore, the Red Cross reports the people of Gaza are powerless to restore their lives and are sliding deeper into hopelessness. (See…
By Aziz Abu Sarah
In the midst of violence, intolerance and darkness, humanity often shines through.
On June 9th a group of young Palestinian men saved an Israeli settler and her four-month-old infant after her car flipped over on the main road in Tuqu village east of Bethlehem (click here to read the story).
This story presents a reality that differs from the normal styerotype of Israeli-Palestinian relations. By their actions, this young group of Palestinians reminds us that humanity has the power to overcome hatred. People are not born bloodthirsty and violent – most people care about life, morality and a prosperous future.
If there is one thing we should draw from stories like…
Rabbi slams Jewish ‘hooligans’: Rabbis, Yesha leaders, ministers to join forces in condemning recent settler violence
Excerpts:”What happened yesterday is not violation of law and order – it’s much worse,” said Rabbi Menachem Fruman, addressing the torching of a Palestinian field in Samaria by what he referred to as “hooligans.”
“Targeting Palestinians and their property is a shocking thing,” he said. It’s an act of hurting humanity.” Fruman, who is the rabbi of Tekoa and one of the leading religious figures in Judea and Samaria, harshly condemned recent violence, which radical settlers refer to as a “price tag” for the evacuation of unauthorized outposts. The rabbi is joining forces with settler leaders and ministers in condemning acts he
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The revelations about massive abuse over decades at Catholic religious schools in Ireland continues to call attention to the Church’s need for massive reform of its approach to children and their protection. But this is not a uniquely Catholic problem, and it goes deeper than that in terms of our whole approach to political and military conflicts facing humanity. Too often as we confront the conflicts facing humanity we look for political, economic, security, ethnic and religious roots of conflict. But in one study examining a thousand children who suffered child abuse, over half of those who were followed through to the age of thirty two were arrested for one crime or another. For…
Many voices were clamoring to be heard this past week as President Barak Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington to discuss the future of Israel and the Palestinian Territories. At this important time, Israeli Kobi Skolnick and Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah came together to produce this joint letter, aimed at showing Israeli and Palestinian solidarity toward a new era in Middle Eastern policy.
Open Letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Barack Obama
Kobi Skolnick writes:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when I was young…
In the context of major global conflicts, where everyone is analyzing what is right or wrong, black or white, left or right, it has occured to me that the definition of reality sometimes gets lost in the mix.
Here are few definitons of reality occording to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary
‘Reality’
1: the quality or state of being real
2 a (1): a real event, entity, or state of affairs reality> (2): the totality of real things and events
reality> b: something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
Imagine for just a moment if headlines coming out of the Middle East read like this…
