Dove's Eye View

UC Berkeley Summer Reading 2005

My local university issues a summer reading list to its incoming freshmen every year. The rest of us like to browse it as well: UC Berkeley Summer Reading 2005.

A professor in the Near East Studies department recommends:

Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914 Edited by Rosemary O'Brien with photographs by Gertrude Bell Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000

This book publishes Gertrude Bell's diaries of her expedition through partly unmapped areas of the inhospitable northern Arabian desert from December 1913 to May 1914. The 45-year-old Bell wrote the diaries for Major Charles Doughty-Wylie with whom she was in love. Throughout the journey, she documented the lives of the Arab tribes she encountered and surveyed the land, providing valuable information for the British government on the eve of World War I. Bell has been called the most powerful woman in the British Empire during the first decades of the 20th century. She counseled kings and prime ministers and helped create the boundaries of present day Iraq. These diaries present a small but important chapter in Bell's life, told in her own evocative prose and illustrated with her photographs.

Thanks to Rebecca for the tip. Go to her site for lots of other summer reading list links.

Israeli Documentary about the Occupation

From the israelinsider, a newsmagazine: Settlers up in arms about TV anchorman's pro-Palestinian anti-settler documentary. Thanks to Nur al-Cubicle for alerting us.

"The Palestinians are a people and we have to share this land ... We have to wake up from our dream."

By Associated Press May 31, 2005

The documentary was filmed by Haim Yavin, longtime news anchor of Israel TV's state-owned Channel One. Yavin, who earned the nickname "Mr. TV" after delivering the main evening news for 37 years, portrays settlers in an often negative light and blames Israeli society for letting the Palestinians suffer under "occupation".

The five-part documentary, which begins airing Tuesday, criticizes not only settlers, but also Israeli society for letting settlers set the agenda after Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war.

"We have to go through a mental revolution," Yavin said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "The Palestinians are a people and we have to share this land... We have to wake up from our dream."

Another version of the AP report:

In his documentary, Yavin repeatedly shows Palestinians suffering at the hands of arrogant settlers and soldiers. In one scene, he filmed a crowded Israeli army roadblock, showing sick women and crying children waiting in the hot sun for hours.

Israel set up the roadblocks at the outbreak of the current round of fighting in 2000, saying they were needed to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen from reaching Israel.

At one point, Yavin shifted the camera toward the Israeli soldiers to ask why they weren't letting people through. "I look for danger in these people and I can't find it," Yavin said in the film.

In another scene, settlers chased Palestinian olive pickers out of an orchard, accusing them of planning terror attacks. The scene ended with an elderly Palestinian woman asking: "Is it forbidden for us to pick olives? Isn't it a sin not to let us pick?"

"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."

Complete, nuanced analysis from Juan Cole. He points out something that I noticed but refrained from discussing - the whole argument is framed from an Israeli point of view. However, since I don't believe the majority of Israelis, or their supporters abroad, are going to change their minds by listening to a Palestinian point of view, I consider this frame useful. The documentary is a sign of hope because I believe the situation will change when those on the inside want it to change; and I believe, perhaps naively, that if the Israeli public can shed some of their denial about what is going on under the Occupation, change will happen.

RAWI::Radius of Arab American Writers Conference

I'm off to New York City on Thursday to speak on a panel at this conference: RAWI::Radius of Arab American Writers. The talented and very organized writer Laila Lalami made this happen; writer and translator Randa Jarrar, aka rockslinga, will also speak. If you're in the area, come and visit us.

New museum honors Arab-American culture

From the Detroit News: New museum honors Arab-American culture.

When the new Arab American National Museum opens to the public on Thursday, the $15.3 million cultural center will get the red-carpet treatment.

Arabian horses in full regalia, a band, jugglers, drummers and dancers will join the 5 p.m. celebration for the museum, the first to exclusively display the rich heritage and achievements of Arab Americans.

A red carpet will start on the steps of the Dearborn City Hall and travel across Michigan Avenue to the museum entrance. Guests at a civic reception will be able to walk across the street for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5:30 p.m. with Amre Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League.

The museum is an offspring of the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS), whose executive director, Ismael Ahmed, is gratified by what has been accomplished.

"There are some 15,000 museums in the U.S., but since this is the first to be devoted to Arab Americans, we had no model to work from. I'm proud that our museum is done in an interactive, engaging way."

Abbas insists era of suicide bombers is over

From the Beirut Daily Star: Abbas insists era of suicide bombers is over.

The era of suicide bombing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be over and the culture of violence is changing in the region, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in an interview aired on Sunday.
...
In an interview broadcast on ABC-TV in the U.S. last night, Abbas renewed calls for Hamas to renounce violence and enter into dialogue with Fatah.

"The climate right now is ready for political negotiations," said Abbas.

"Hamas should reach that conclusion that now the way is the political way and not any other way," he said.

Abbas said violent attacks in the Gaza Strip area had been reduced by 90 percent since his government took office four months ago.

Asked whether the era of suicide bombing was over, Abbas said: "I believe it is over. We have started to deal with the culture of violence, we stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop."

Underappreciated books

Moorish Girl has been running a feature called Underappreciated Books in which guest contributors recommend books you may have missed. This week Jonathan Edelstein recommends Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist, about an Arab Israeli. (Palestinian Israeli?) Go over and have a look - you'll be delighted with all the finds.

California to tackle global warming

From the San Jose Mercury News: State to tackle global warming.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to unveil an ambitious plan this week to combat global warming that would make California the largest state in the nation to set concrete goals for cutting greenhouse gases, the Mercury News has learned.

San Francisco Hosts U.N. Green Conference

City mayors from around the world will arrive in San Francisco Wednesday for a UN conference on making cities green. As reported in the SF Chronicle: San Francisco Hosts U.N. Conference / Green agenda for world's urban mayors.

The U.N. conference -- an annual event in its third decade, but the first in the United States -- comes 60 years after the city served as the setting for the signing of the charter that created the international body.

This time, the issues at hand are quite different. The theme of the conference is "green cities,'' and the mayors will hammer out an accord on ways to improve energy use, recycling, environmental health, urban design, transportation, metropolitan parks and water quality and supply.

World Environment Day, a five-day conference that begins Wednesday, will also spotlight initiatives in the Bay Area that conserve resources and cut pollution at the local level. And it will give residents a chance to find out what they can do.
...
Many in the international community "believe the United States has forgotten its global role when it comes to the environment,'' said (Jared) Blumenfeld, who worked on projects for the Cape Cod-based International Fund for Animal Welfare before accepting the city job in 2001.

"Whenever I go anywhere, recently to Shanghai, people come up and say, 'It's so sad the U.S. isn't doing anything on the environment. It used to be such a leader.' My response is that U.S. cities and states are doing a huge amount when it comes to environmental protection, but that's not what anyone is hearing,'' he said.

The United Nations, he said, likes "the work we've done in the Bay Area on the environment. We have a large number of community groups and nonprofits, and the U.N. likes the fact that we're involved with urban density and smart growth issues, pesticide reduction, solar power and green building.''

If the national government is too ossified and ideological to plan for change, then thank goodness smaller entities at the state and local levels press forward. The Dove is reading Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel; Diamond discusses the phenomenon of individual societies rejecting technologies or innovations that would have helped them progress or dominate. Japan rejected the gun in the 17th century, after developing the best firearms in the world. Later China rejected various innovations, including ship building, and turned away from the world. Because it had a strong, unified central government, the capacity to build ships was lost. No province of China could rebel and adapt the innovation once the central government quashed it. Now our own irrational ideologues reject progress in energy efficiency and alternative energy (not to mention certain life sciences, i.e. stem cell research); but at least our federal system, and perhaps the economic power of California, allow us to innovate anyway.

Berkeley: KPFA pair give young Palestinians a voice

This piece was in the "East Bay Life" section of the SF Chronicle today, but it's on the headliner spot of the web site tonight (Friday): Berkeley: KPFA pair give young Palestinians a voice.

They say the journalism being practiced by kids as young as 14 in the refugee community of 12,000 people was compelling enough that it could become a peaceful force toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has enmeshed the youngsters' elders for more than 50 years.

With KPFA and the Berkeley Middle East Children's Alliance, Barrows- Friedman, a Berkeley resident, and Tondre, who lives in Oakland, formed the Freedom Radio Project. Their goals: to give Palestinian youth the means to speak for themselves and to be heard outside their own communities.

"You have a new generation of Palestinians growing up who are watching satellite TV, learning different languages," said Tondre, 36, a producer for KPFA's Voices of the Middle East program. "They're getting new ideas about the world. They're breaking some of the cultural barriers. They have an open tabula rasa about what to do."
...
"These kids are incredible because they're some of the best journalists I've ever seen, and they live in a refugee camp," said Danny Muller, a volunteer at the camp through Chicago's Voices in the Wilderness. "They cut through the bull and see the world in an amazing way."

During her visit to the camp last fall, Barrows-Friedman, the senior producer for KPFA's Flashpoints program highlighting human-rights abuses around the world, led workshops in radio journalism skills, from developing story ideas, to interviewing, writing narration, sound layering and editing. With Tondre providing technical help, the camp journalists completed 14 short radio segments.

The article is quite long and detailed, for the Chronicle. The Dove thinks it's a positive view of Palestinian young people, and certainly is more meaningful than a photo of a random Arab-American peacenik flying a kite...

Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!

Aya de Leon, the brilliant and fabulous writer, performer and youth activist, sends us this link: Buy Your Gas at Citgo: Join the BUY-cott!.

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him "the Anti-Bush."

Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (Click here to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela's democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.