“Israeli High Court Upholds Expulsion of Human Rights Watch Director Omar Shakir Over Alleged BDS Support” ….
Why was this blog silent for a while? Why have I suddenly posted a few times this week?
All of us who write run out of ideas. We run out of time. The energy that could be devoted to writing goes somewhere else.
I have two computers. On my older on I have all my documents and games – it’s starting to run slow after several years. The newer one is mainly used for browsing the internet and syncing photos.
On my older computer, which is a PC, was for several years the computer I used to write blogs. It still is, because it has all my sources. And then one day (once upon a time?), basic functions on the blog – like “Write” a new blog – stopped working.
I got distracted in life. A master’s degree. Attempts to organize my sources into something longer than a blog ….
Last week I found the time an energy to want to write a short blog. I opened WordPress and once again I was stymied by the fact that the “Write” function never opened (like the server was pinging the request and receiving no response). I decided to log out of WordPress – there was no point in being logged in if I could do nothing. And then, to log back in to WordPress.
Passwords are always an issue. Do I autosave a password? Do I need a different password for the dozens of websites that has asked me for a password? What would I lose if some hacker gained access to my computer because of my password – do I have any resources to lose anyway?!?
It might be best to not tell you how, but I logged back in to WordPress. And lo and behold, if you’re religious, or voila if you feel French, basic WordPress functions like “Write” worked again.
Clearly, my computer had a some point done something like adding a script to my browser, which prevented WordPress from allowing me to do things until I logged out and logged back in. It reminds me of the time the internet stopped working in my apartment once – my roommate and I spent hours doing everything we could think of on the back side of the server, until it occurred to us to press the restart button on the router.
It’s encouraging to know that I can write from my computer that has my sources. How often will I write? What will I write about? I don’t know. If there was nothing more to life than WordPress, it would be a lot easier to say.
The Fifth of November has been remembered as the “Gunpowder treason and plot” since Catholics Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, and others attempted to blow up the British Parliament with Protestant King James I and the lords of parliament inside.
Yasmeen Serhan in The Atlantic says that after the failed plot, the word guy developed to mean a grotesque person. Londoners celebrated the survival of the king by lighting bonfires. It has become an official day in Britain where people light bonfires and burn effigies (a ritual, Yasmeen says, that has expanded to effigies of Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and Boris Johnson).
The reputation and portrayal of Guy Fawkes has changed over the centuries. He became the basis for V for Vendetta and is now viewed as a popular underdog fighting the government. The iconic mask worn by protesters around the world represents Guy Fawkes.
History, Yasmeen Serhan, says, has evolved from representing Guy Fawkes as a religious fanatic to a popular folk hero.
It’s not wrong to remember Guy Fawkes, even though his representation in history has completely changed. But as far as I can tell – from the popular Remember Remember the Fifth of November ditty – we’re supposed to remember the day because the establishment won and monarchy prevailed. (I’m not saying that if Guy Fawkes and co. has succeeded monarchy would have ended). Be careful of why you’re remembering Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby – are you doing it because the establishment told you to?
Looking up “November 4” on Google I’m lead to https://www.onthisday.com. The first mention is that in 922 Richarius became bishop of Luik, and next that in 1333 the Arno River flooded, causing massive damage in Florence as recorded by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani (OnThisDay lists 208 important events in history on November 4).
In the interest of finding out more, I looked up Richarius. Wikipedia refers me to Saint Richarius, who lived in at the end of the 6th century. He had an interesting life as a pagan who was converted to Christianity by two Welsh missionaries he saved. He started a monestary, impressed king Dagobert I who gave him money which Richarius used to ransom prisoners in England, and had an interesting life according to his chroniclers who wrote about him a hundred years later.
Saint Richarius, who lived in the 6th century is not the Richarius who became bishop of Luik in 922. Also, last I checked (and according to the Wikipedia article that Wikipedia links to) England was not a country at the end of 6th century. The Anglo-Saxons were fighting the Danes.
I was curious about Luik, and whether it mentioned that Richarius became bishop in 922. It turns out that Luik is usual called Liège, a city in eastern Belgium. There is no mention of Richarius.
A lot of things happen every November 4. I’m sure that some person that might have been Richarius at some point founded a monestary in a city that has blossomed to 1,200 residents.
I’m fairly certain, though, that this same Richarius did not become bishop of Liège,
Check your sources.
On November 3, 2016, al-Hammeh was rebuilt. In the northern end of the Jordan Valley, Abu Rasmi Ayyub, a shepherd whose family has been on the land since at least the mid-nineteenth century, lives with three generations of his extended family in a tiny hamlet – “actually only a confabulation of tents and sheep pens,” writes professor David Shulman – called al-Hammeh. Now the Ayyubs’ historic grazing grounds, next door to al-Hammeh, are rapidly becoming inaccessible to them because of the expansion of the Israeli settlement of Givat Sal’it. al-Hammeh is just a few miles from the Israeli border crossing to the city of Beit Shean.
al-Hammeh, in September 2016, consisted of a few tents and no amenities like running water. On November 3, 2016, al-Hammeh was rebuilt.
On September 27, David Shulman writes, the Civil Administration, a unit of the army that is the Israeli occupation authority (Civil Administration is part of COGAT, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which is a unit in the Defense Ministry.) destroyed al-Hammeh.
After all, al-Hammeh is a shepherding hamlet, and the beginning of autumn is when the lambs are born. It’s always good to destroy an enemies livelihood – any occupying force can tell you that. al-Hammeh, being in Area C as designated in the Oslo Accords, is “under direct and exclusive Israeli military, legal, and political control.” Shulman adds that large parts of Area C “are taken up by Israeli settlements or by lands that have been reserved for future Israeli settlement.” The Jordan valley, mainly under Area C, is also home to a Palestinian population of some 15,000 Bedouins who are settled in the valley and therefore tacitly targeted for expulsion.
On November 3 al-Hammeh was rebuilt. “Four days later the army returned to demolish everything once again, and this time they also confiscated the tents and anything of use or value that remained,” writes Shulman. At the same time, the Israeli neighbors in Givat Sal’it established a new outpost—illegal even under Israeli law—carefully situated to block the Bedouins’ only viable route to their grazing grounds, he added.
Shulman’s personal observations are disheartening to any person not invested in creating injustice:
Volunteers from Ta’ayush, Arab-Jewish Partnership—the activist peace group I’ve been part of it for the last sixteen years—saw the outpost at its bare beginnings, just bits and pieces of a wooden frame and a small shack for a single family. We alerted the police and the Civil Administration, who sent officers to see what was happening. These officers arrived, took pictures with their iPads, and were even prepared to acknowledge that the outpost was illegal. Meanwhile, Givat Sal’it II continued to grow. Within less than a month, it had four permanent buildings, several residents, and a link to the Israeli water system and to the electric power grid, all this with the silent collusion of the authorities. Soon it will also have soldiers guarding it.
His description, as he says, is how the occupation works throughout the West Bank. “On November 17, the Ayyub Bedouins, their homes and sheep pens now destroyed for the second time, decided to set up a protest tent not far from the new outpost. The fate of a Palestinian tent, old or new, is unlike the fate of an illegal Israeli outpost. Within a few hours soldiers arrived and quickly went through their standard repertoire—tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, and pepper spray .”
As we should all know ,
Israeli security forces regularly allow settlers to assault Palestinians and damage their property. In fact, soldiers sometimes safeguard the settlers in such situations, providing them support and at times even taking part in the assault. All this is compounded by an ineffectual law enforcement system that takes no action against the offenders and does not achieve justice for the victims. According to figures collected by Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, some 85 percent of all investigations into incidents of harm caused to Palestinians (physical assault, arson, damage to property, vandalizing trees, and taking over land) are closed due to flaws in police procedure. There is only a 1.9 percent chance of a police complaint filed by a Palestinian leading to the conviction of an Israeli citizen.
Shulman adds several more thoughts. But as he says, perhaps is most devastating observation is “in the long run, is the denial of water. It is very hot in the Jordan Valley for much of the year. In summer, daytime temperatures rise well above 100 degrees. If Palestinians living in tiny hamlets like al-Hammeh have the temerity to attempt to link themselves to the Palestinian Authority’s pipelines running down from the city of Tubbas in Area A, the army comes and breaks the pipes.”
Shulman says he’s seen this happen at al-Hadidiya in late summer. “Life in the valley is insupportable without water, and Palestinians have to buy and import water in tankers at vastly inflated prices. Remember that these are subsistence shepherds for whom the cost of a single water tanker is a huge sum—easily half the monthly expenses of a family in the summer. Simply stated, the idea is to dry the Bedouins out until thirst forces them to disappear, perhaps by migration to somewhere in Area A or even outside Israel-Palestine.”
On November 3, 2016, al-Hammeh was rebuilt. How many times will al-Hammeh need to be rebuilt?
What can we do? You could encourage your legislator to support a bill like H. Res 221: Reaffirming the importance of upholding democracy, human rights, and the rule of law in United States foreign policy. Or H.Res. 527: Recognizing the goal of United States foreign policy should be to promote human rights and equal rights for all. Or even better yet H.R. 2407: Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act
“Let’s be realistic. Sometimes you have to build hellish devices and generate foul orc-spawn to get things done. That’s just how politics works.” – David Howard in his timely article “We Need a Wizard Who Can Appeal to the Moderate Orc Voter“
Last night’s dinner conversation was, by the standards around here, completely normal. For interest, posterity, and history, I’m sharing it with you. … Although not verbatim, we talked about these things.
I must interject.
I was having dinner with the parents. I don’t know how this conversation started; I walked into it. I walked into a discussion, or perhaps a reminiscence of what remembers from the books.
Now, political discourse tells us that politicians are supposed to be interested in conversations around the dinner table (and frankly, that we are inclined to vote for a candidate we’d have a beer with). So I hope that politicians and policy-makers are ready for this normal conversation (no liqueur included).
As I said, I entered a conversation where my dad was describing the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. My parents are trying to remember exactly when the Moroccans took over what is Spain, and how long they were there.
My dad couldn’t remember the name of the battle that stopped the Muslim conquest. We could remember that this was in the 700 hundreds, CE. Or maybe the 900 hundreds.
And, being that we remember that the Muslims took over the Iberian peninsula, the battle must have been somewhere in the Pyrenees between what is now and Spain. I was sure there was a battle in Carcasoone, or perhaps somewhere in the Languedoc. Of course, I was thinking of – and knowing it wasn’t what the same – the Albigensian Crusade that happened five hundred years later.
So out come the phone that searches for something like “Muslim invasion of iberian peninsula.”.
It tells us that there was a Battle of Tours (10 October 732). This didn’t seem right. Tours, and another search to refresh our memory, tells us, is west of Paris. But there is it is.
So now we must remember who was in the battle. Being Western-centered, we were not think of Abd al-Rahman. Was it Odo, I asked? It turns out that it was Odo – a faint ringing of a name that was delved up from somewhere in K-12 education. And also some famous guy names Charles Martel.
Charles Martel, I am reminded, was the founder of the Carolingian Empire and the grandfather of Charlemagne. He was also an ancestor to William I of England.
I was led down the rabbit-hole of Wikipedia searches thanks to the conquest of the Iberian peninsula, which led me to Odo and Charles Martel.
Many people consider Friday the Thirteenth an unlucky date. I don’t even need a citation for that. You know it’s true. But you do know why many people consider Friday the Thirteenth to be unlucky? An internet search could tell you the same thing that I will summarize for you. My source is Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Whether the book got some historical guesses wrong, which they now claim, the history of Friday the Thirteenth is very real and not guess work.
Many of you have heard of The Knights Templar, thanks to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and other recent readings.
The Knights Templar came into existence in the 12th Century, at best guess. Certainly they existed by the early 12th Century, because they were being written about between 1175 and 1185, and had already been around for a guess of fifty years. According to Guillaume de Tyre…
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H.R.2407 – Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act
The purpose of the bill reads: “To promote human rights for Palestinian children living under Israeli military occupation and require that United States funds do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children, and for other purposes.”
Currently, the U.S. government does fund the abuse of children living under occupation. Several, sometimes hundreds, of Palestinian minors are arrested every month by Israel. The interrogation process is unfair (it often consists of coercion or threats), and the courts have a 97% prosecution rate.
It should be a no-brainer to not fund human rights abuses. But up to now, only 21 Representatives have co-sponsored the bill.
Contact your Representative.
H.R.3396 – Functional Gastrointestinal and Motility Disorders Research Enhancement Act of 2019
I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t want a functional stomach.
But guess what, there are people who have paralyzed stomachs who can’t process food in the good old fashioned way.
Our government, even with its faults and its current buffoonery, is there to promote our health and wellbeing.
There’s even a bill in Congress to help research how a non-functioning stomach could be improved to normalcy.
I’ve written to my Congressman to support this non-controversial bill. Since he hasn’t signed on he still needs more cajoling.
Maybe your Congressman has more sense. Write to your Congressman. It’s not hard.
The Dole Blog 