Coexistence - Rami Kanzi

Coexistence

I don’t want to co-exist

Not like good guys and bad gays and dry lies and propaganda

put on black faces cab drivers or deli owners in your racist comedies

not bomb your Dunkin’ Donuts with my Keffiyeh

this powered Fox News

or let you still my food and call it Israeli salad

I won’t mess with the Zohan

Or let them turn rocks of Palestinian children into balloon animals

while Israeli soldiers snipe out children’s heads, shoulders, knees and stomachs

Hollywood snipes years of young ones with lovable tales of blue and white heroes

I’m not looking for your approval

Not a token roll or job on my knees scrubbing toilets in Israelis’ congress

I’d rather fight,

with Blacks and Latinos against oppression

than concede to the mainstream plantation

that sees me as other unless I am checking the college application

I don’t believe in tooth ferry or two thousand claims of homes you supposedly deserved

when people resurrected or walked on water all exist

and the world that fights against racism like Martyn & Malcolm

please get hotels and Steven Bico as a song that never dies no matter what apartheid makes of our bodies

feed mouths and Belfast streets and resurrects Bobby Sanders massage

so that we’ll never be hungry again

and weather you know it or now, I’m the best solution you have

one man asking for one vote only to look at the sea and I’ll never drive you into it

...

I’ll never return the favor

I’m not outstretching an olive branch and a rifle

I’m extending reality,

cause being surrounded by so called enemies on you borders is easier than in your towns and election centers

we may not be brothers! but this neighborhood has made us cousins

I don’t want to coexist, i want to exist as a human being

and justice will take care of the rest

Rami Kanzi

transcribed from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-8sDYO-EVM&feature=player_embedded

Palestinian Prisoners

“It would be better to drown these prisoners, in the Dead Sea if

possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.”

-Former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman

speaking on the release of Palestinian prisoners

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/IMG/pdf/factbook_Final_online-2.pdf

Palestinians of Concern to UNHCR

'The main legal instruments governing the legal status of refugees in international law are the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) and its 1967 Protocol. Although the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol are applicable to States, people meeting the eligibility criteria set out in them are refugees of concern to UNHCR. UNHCR encourages States to accede to the Convention and its Protocol and supervises their implementation. As of September 2006, 146 states had signed up to the 1951 Convention or its Protocol, or – in the great majority of cases – both.

The 1951 Convention in Article 1A(2) defines refugees as people who are outside their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group, and who, for persecutionrelated reasons, are unable or unwilling to return home.10 The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees Al-Tanf tented site on the Syria – Iraq border.

Article 1D of the 1951 Convention states that the Convention “shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance. When such protection or assistance has ceased for any reason, without the position of such persons being definitively settled in accordance with the relevant resolutions adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, these persons shall ipso facto be entitled to the benefits of the Convention”.

UNHCR considers that two groups of Palestinian refugees fall within the scope of Article 1D of the 1951 Convention:

(i) Palestinians who are “Palestine refugees” within the sense of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948 and other UN General Assembly Resolutions, who were displaced from that The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees 11 part of Palestine which became Israel, and who have been unable to return there.

(ii) Palestinians who are “displaced persons” within the sense of UN General Assembly Resolution 2252 (ES-V) of 4 June 1967 and subsequent UN General Assembly Resolutions, and who have been unable to return to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

A third group of Palestinian refugees consists of individuals who are neither “Palestine refugees” nor “displaced persons” but who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for one or more of the 1951 Convention grounds, are outside the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 and are unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return there. Such Palestinians can qualify as refugees under Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention.'

The United Nations and Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, 2007

UNRWA (12/1949)

United Nations Relief and

Works Agency for Palestine

Refugees in the Near

East

The Agency provides education, health care, social services, shelter, micro-credit loans and emergency aid to Palestine refugees in its five fields of operations: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

At the end of June 2008, there were a total of 4,618,141 refugees registered with UNRWA; 1,930,703 in Jordan, 416,608 in Lebanon, 456,983 in Syria, 754,263 in the West Bank, and 1,059,584 in the Gaza Strip.

UNHCR (01/1951)

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

principal aim of the agency was dealing with refugees in Europe left homeless by World War II. UNHCR has a world-wide mandate to protect, assist, and seek durable solutions for refugees as well as for other people in need of international

protection. UNHCR’s mandate covers Palestinians who are refugees within the meaning of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which could include Palestine refugees as defined by UNRWA. UNHCR normally takes up the case of Palestinian refugees only when they are outside UNRWA’s area of operations.

The vast majority of Palestinian refugees fall under the UNRWA mandate, but there is still a large number living in other countries of the region, such as the Gulf States, Egypt, Iraq or Yemen, or further afield in Australia, Europe and America

The refugees are now in their third and even fourth generation. In 1999, there were some 6 million Palestinians worldwide.

Tent #50

Tent #50

Tent #50, n the left, is my new world,

Shared with me by my memories;...

Tent #50, on the left, is my present,

But it is too camped to contain the future.

Without a Passport

I was born without a passport
I grew up
and saw my country
become prisons
without a passport

So I raised a country
a sun
and wheat
in every house
I tended to the trees therein
I learned how to write poetry
to make the people of my village happy
without a passport

I learned that he whose land is stolen
does not like the rain
If he were ever to return to it, he will
without a passport

But I am tired of minds
that have become hotels
for wishes that never give birth
except with a passport

Without a passport
I came to you
and revolted against you
so slaughter me
perhaps I will then feel that I am dying
without a passport

Translated by Sinan Antoon, in Rashid Hussein, Al-A`mal al-Shi`riyya (al-Taybe: Markaz Ihya’ al-Turath al-`Arabi, 1990)

Rashid Hussein (1936-1977)

Born in Musmus, Palestine. He published his first collection in 1957 and established himself as a major Palestinian poet and orator. He participated in founding the Land Movement in 1959. He left in 1966 and lived in Syria and Lebanon and later in New York City where he died in February, 1977. He was buried a week later in Musmus.

Jerusalem's Museum of Tolerance Under Fire—For Intolerance

by Andrew Lawler on 21 October 2011, 11:40 AM

'In a 20 October letter, leading archaeologists speak out against plans to break ground on a museum that they say will disturb an ancient Muslim cemetery in the heart of Jerusalem.

With a dramatic modern design and a central location in the contested city, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance is supposed to bring together people from a variety of viewpoints, religions, and ethnicities. But the project's Jerusalem site is on and adjacent to the ancient Muslim cemetery of Mamilla, located just to the west of the ancient city's walls. Mentioned in 11th century C.E. documents, the cemetery was the resting place for early Muslims as well as Christian crusaders, and was used as a burial ground until the mid-20th century.

In their letter, 84 respected archaeologists took the unusual step ofspeaking out against the museum project, which is scheduled to begin construction next month. The letter, addressed to center board members, Jerusalem's mayor, and the director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), says that the project involved "surreptitious and unscientific removal of hundreds of human burials," and broke Israeli laws requiring that all human remains be turned over to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for reburial. The archaeologists say that at least some of the remains were not properly handled or reinterred, and that the center "hurried the excavations" before construction, "resulting in poor archaeological practices." They also say that the center misrepresented data on human remains in a court case that recently went to the Israeli Supreme Court. Such lapses, the letter says, "would not have occurred with a Jewish burial site."

The researchers include Tel Aviv University archaeologist Raphael Greenberg, who said in a statement that "the case of Mamilla is a travesty of archaeological ethics" and that the cemetery should be "preserved as a demonstration of respect for Jerusalem's shared heritage." Yale University archaeologist Harvey Weiss denounced what has taken place as a "desecration."

Center officials did not return requests for comment. But the center in the past has hotly rejected such criticism. On its Web site, the center maintains that no one complained about the location during years of public hearings. The Web site notes that Muslim clergy invoked the concept of mundras—in which a cemetery is no longer considered sacred—in the 1920s when a Muslim university campus was planned at the site. That position was reiterated in 1964, although Muslim authorities have since voided that invocation. The site has largely been used primarily as a parking lot in the past half century; critics maintain that hundreds of refurbished grave markers have recently been bulldozed in preparation for construction.

In the Supreme Court ruling on a case that aimed to stop the project, the top Israeli judges noted that during the planning period, "no one raised any claim, on even one occasion, that the planning procedures violated the sanctity of the site." In addition, center officials argue, Mamilla is actually on an adjacent site from that of the actual museum.

The archaeologists' furor is just the latest problem for the museum. The company managing the construction project resigned a month ago amid differences with the Los Angeles-based center, and the original designer, Frank Gehry, pulled out of the project last year, though he said it was not due to the controversy.'

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/10/jerusalems-museum-of-tolerance.html

A creative liberal's response to the Middle East situation

15 January, 2009 | By Ian Martin

'One minute she wants to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the next she’s all ‘what would Jackie O do?’

MONDAY. My friend Yossi the town planner calls from Tel Aviv. His furious orthodox family have frozen him out. Not only is he gay, he’s opposed to the current ‘urban remodelling’ of Gaza.

He wants me to mobilise condemnation of Israel among Britain’s more thoughtful architects. I explain that as a ‘creative liberal’ I can’t get involved. Let’s be honest, equivocation has a pleasing Classical symmetry to it, and I simply must not appear to be taking sides.

Those of us in the Campaign Against General Unpleasantness in the Middle East recoil from all violence, equally. Just as we call upon Israel to stop firing rockets into populated areas of Palestine, we call upon Hamas to lift the blockade on Sderot to allow food, medicine and journalists in, and women and children out.

Yossi calls me something in Hebrew, ‘creative liberal’ maybe. Look on the bright side, I tell him: Israelis may despise you for your anti-war stance, but if you were Palestinian your gayness would be much more of a problem, so… The phone goes dead. I hope he’s all right. I was going to ask him if he’d planned any good towns lately.

TUESDAY. Lunch with Rock Steady Eddie the Middle East fixer. ‘Listen, I know what you’re gonna say. It’s tasteless, and a bit previous. But you think about it. Not every day you get a pop at 40km of Mediterranean coast. Oh yeah, it’s gonna happen. And I know some people who are looking for rough ideas, tourist settlements, whatever. Interested?’

I look genuinely disappointed, get out my diary and shrug. Booked solid all the way through to July, mate. Eddie looks menacingly thoughtful. When he doesn’t get his own way he either pretends he couldn’t give a toss or turns into a villain from an Ian McEwan novel.

Luckily, no probs. ‘Plenty of underemployed architects around, my son, bite my arm off for an entrée to Gaza Med. Talking of which, what you having for starters?’

WEDNESDAY. Frank, the world’s greatest architect, calls for a quick catch-up. He asks me how things are going with Wap Biddly Pish, the envisioning consultancy I launched last year.

Pretty well, I say. We’ve been hired by Michelle Obama to re-imagineer the White House. Naturally I don’t tell him that we haven’t even agreed a brief yet. Dithery cow is permanently torn between frugality and glamour. One minute she wants to be Eleanor Roosevelt, the next she’s all ‘what would Jackie O do?’

I ask Frank how his Museum of Tolerance is coming along in Jerusalem. If it all works out maybe Israel can set up a Guggenheim-style chain of them across the region to promote peace and understanding. ‘You fucking with me?’ he snarls. No, no, I assure him. If the two key elements are an ‘iconic’ design and a location above a Muslim cemetery, you could bang them out all over the place. Hey, what about a Museum of Tolerance in Rafah? You know, when it’s quietened down a bit.

Click. Dial tone. Beginning to think there’s a fault on the line.

THURSDAY. Inevitably, I am Skyped by the lying shit Blair. ‘Hi, happy new year, shalom! Can you see me OK?’ His neurotic grin swims into focus on the screen.

As Middle East envoy, his job is to offer tough love to Israel. ‘Look, Iraq’s bought me a lot of clout here. I’m like a best friend who not only has the courage to say hey, you’re doing the wrong thing, but who goes beyond that and DOESN’T say it…’

He draws an obvious distinction between the terrorist entity notionally running Gaza, and ‘the moderate authority that runs the West Bank’. I think he means Israel. He needs concrete proposals. I suggest:

• An international competition to design New Gaza, recycling current residential landfill into humane refugee storage units.

• Replacement eco-tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, above ground and transparent, so that all smuggling may be UN-monitored.

• An urgent conservation and enhancement programme to protect those lovely ancient villages in Israel discovered intact yet mysteriously devoid of people in 1948.

• A green design guide for future illegal settlements.

FRIDAY. Darcy calls. His new outfit apparently expresses even-handedness. ‘Restraint on both sides, and a sort of sparkly buckle thing in the middle…’

SATURDAY. Despair, lunch, read some architectural bullshit about the vibrancy of dense urban environments, more despair.

SUNDAY. Lull in the recliner. ian@martian.fm'

[Thank to Jake for finding this]

Deluze and space of warfare

How IDF uses Deluze - they walk through walls!

this paragraph from 'Hollow Land' will explain

'Reference to Deluze i and Guattari is indicative of recent transformations within the IDF, because although they were influenced by the study of war, they were concerned with non-statist forms of violence and resistance, in which the state and its military are an arch-enemy. In their Book 'A Thousand Plateus', Deluze and Guattari draw a distinction between two kinds of territoriality: a hierarchical, Castesian, geometrical, solid, hegemonic and spatially rigid state system; the other, flexible shifting, smooth, matrix-like 'nomadic' space. Within these nomadic spaces they foresaw social organizations in a verity of polymorphous and diffuse operational networks. Of these networks, 'rhizomes' and 'war machines' are organizations composed of multiplicity of small groups that can split up or merge with one another depending on contingency and circumstances and are characterized by their capacity in themselves with military ideals such as those described above.

Naveh [Major General in IDF] observed that "Several of hte concepts in 'A Thousand Plateus' became instrumental for is... allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise explained. It problematized our own paradigm ... Most important was the distinction [Deluze and Guattari] have pointed out between the concepts of 'smooth' and 'striated' space ...[which accordingly reflected] the organizational concepts of the 'war machine' and the 'space apparatus'. In IDF we now often use the term 'to smooth out space' when we want to refer to operations in a space in such a manner that borders so not affect us. Palestinian areas could indeed by thought of as 'striated', in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, road blocks and so on ... We want to confront the 'striated' space of traditional, old-fashioned military practice witch smoothness that allows foe movement through space that crosses any borders and barriers. Rather than contain and organize our forces accordingly to existing borders, we want to move through them' ... ' travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice. Transgressing boundaries is the definition of the condition of 'smoothness'. '

end of quote, very interesting!