Madison Rafah Journal

James Zogby, Arab American Institute, June 22, 2003

It was more than 30 years ago that I fell in love with Palestine. It was 1971 and I was in Lebanon doing research for my doctoral dissertation. Ghassan Kanafani, the brilliant Palestinian novelist, advised me “to learn about us, you must go to the camps and immerse yourself in the people.”

And so off I went to Ein al Helweh to spend some time with Abed, a new friend, who introduced me to his family and so many other unforgettable refugees. During my time with them, they told me stories about the homes and villages they left in Palestine, about the trauma of the 1948 exodus and about their lives in the camp, their “temporary Palestine”.

They also showed me pictures and other remnants of the life that had been—most especially their treasured keys to the homes they had left and to which they hoped to return.

Far from being a depressing experience, there was beauty in Ein al Helweh. The camp, though desperately poor made a remarkable statement about the power of the human spirit to create and to hope. Internally Ein al Helweh was organized as a recreation of Palestine. Its inhabitants had clustered together in neighborhoods reflecting the towns and villages from which they had been expelled. Each neighborhood bore their Palestinian names. Walking down the streets of Ein al Helweh I passed through Safsaf, Ras Al Ahmar, and Safad.

I left the unpaved and dusty alleys of the camp and entered one of its homes where I found another world. There was a courtyard under a trellised grape vine. The homes were small and somewhat tattered and, on inspection, I noted that the grape vines had been planted in a barrel. But they were homes, a proud recreation of Palestinian village homes. These families, like so many others I would meet, had not surrendered to despair. For them Palestine was not just a memory, but living reality. They carried Palestine with them. They made it come to life in their stories and their new temporary homes. And to it they were determined to return. (Read on …)

Hadeel Abukwaik, standing, an engineering software instructor in Gaza, was in disbelief over losing her Fulbright grant. (Ali Ali/European Pressphoto Agency, for The New York Times)

ETHAN BRONNER, The New York Times, May 30, 2008

GAZA — The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave.

Israel has isolated this coastal strip, which is run by the militant group Hamas. Given that policy, the United States Consulate in Jerusalem said the grant money had been “redirected” to students elsewhere out of concern that it would go to waste if the Palestinian students were forced to remain in Gaza. (Read on …)

Ramallah: Allan Richardson stands in the empty office where he plans a call center for Palestine’s second mobile network. (Joshua Mitnick)

Joshua Mitnick, The Christian Science Monitor, May 28, 2008

Mobile phone service in Gaza Strip and the West Bank could spur investment – and bolster prospects for peace.

Ramallah, West Bank – After getting Iraq’s first post-invasion cellular phone network operational in four months, Allan Richardson expected that launching the second Palestinian mobile service would be easy.

But nearly a year and a half after arriving here, the chief executive officer of Wataniya Palestine Telecom is still waiting for Israel to release cellular frequencies. (Read on …)

(AP Photo/Dunkin’ Donuts)

MARK JEWELL, Associated Press, May 29, 2008

Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The coffee and baked goods chain said the ad that began appearing online May 7 was pulled over the past weekend because “the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.” (Read on …)

STEPHANIE CLIFFORD, The New York Times, May 30, 2008

IT was a peculiarly Internet-age controversy.

On May 7, Dunkin’ Donuts began running an ad on its Web site and others, featuring the celebrity chef Rachael Ray holding a cup of the company’s iced coffee while wearing a black-and-white fringed scarf. In the ad, which was shot in a studio, she is shown standing in front of trees with pink blossoms and a building with a distinctive spire.

On May 23, the conservative blog Little Green Footballs posted an item that likened Ms. Ray’s scarf to the type typically worn by Muslim extremists. The blog said that the ads “casually promote the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and the intifada, the keffiyeh, via Rachael Ray.”

Later that day, the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin chimed in, likening the scarf to a keffiyeh and calling it “jihadi chic.” Then the story, as they say on the Internet, went totally viral.

• (Read on …)

Mehdi Lebouachera, AFP, May 28, 2008

Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu on Wednesday plunged into the harsh reality of the conflict in Gaza where a tearful Palestinian family recounted losing loved ones in an Israeli attack and the ruling Hamas movement expounded its hardline stance.

The South African cleric, heading a team of UN human rights observers, listened to members of the Assamna family tell of a 2006 Israeli shelling of their village that killed 19 civilians, including eight children, while they were sleeping.

On the top floor of the Assamna’s bombed home, the glass in the windows is gone and there is a hole in the ceiling and the blue sky can been seen through the rusted iron frame of the house. (Read on …)

AFP, May 27, 2008

Thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank risk being displaced as the Israeli authorities threaten to tear down their homes and in some cases entire communities, a UN agency said on Wednesday.

“To date, more than 3,000 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank have pending demolition orders, which can be immediately executed without prior warning,” the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.

“At least 10 small communities throughout the West Bank are at risk of being almost entirely displaced due to the large number of pending demolitions orders,” OCHA said. (Read on …)

AFP, May 25, 2008

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Sunday described Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip as "one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth."

In a speech at a literary festival in Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner said: "There is no reason to treat these people this way," referring to the blockade, in place since the Islamist Hamas movement seized Gaza in June 2007.

While president from 1977 to 1981, Carter was the architect of the landmark 1979 peace deal between Israel and Egypt, the first such treaty between the Jewish state and an Arab country.

According to Carter, the failure of the European Union to support the Palestinian cause was "embarrassing." (Read on …)