Israel

I have stayed away from this topic this summer, but you know how sometimes you go looking for stuff on the internet that you just know is going to make you mad. Well, I did that today - and it all began when I accidentally ran across the picture on the right from this CBN [...]

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I wonder how many of you have heard of the refuseniks. It is a movement, now around 635 soldiers strong, within the Israeli Defense Forces. It is a movement of soldiers who say that would die to fight for and protect Israel, but who will no longer do so within the Occupied Territories. It is [...]

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Sometimes I think I’m a pretty bad tourist. Hell, I don’t even like to be a ‘tourist’ but sometimes, you just have to call it like you see it, and frankly, sometimes, I am a tourist. But, a bad one. I was supposed to go to Nazareth today, which was poor planning on my part [...]

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This is a story about a passport.
Once upon a time there was a passport….and although he was new, and blue and shiny, he never really thought much of himself. After all, there were almost 60 million just like him. Blue and shiny. He never felt special; sure maybe on the inside he had a few [...]

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2-3 homes were demolished in the village of Al Khader, outside of Bethlehem, yesterday [more info here and there is another article which mentions the demolition here].
One of the statements in the letter from the Presbyterian group that I intend to address states, as a fact, that “…since house demolitions have ended in Israel…” and [...]

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This is the small village of I’billin, just about 20min outside of Haifa. This is the view from the balcony of the flat I’m staying at. I’m staying on the grounds of the Mar Elias Educational Institutions. Basically I’m using these days to stay up late, sleep in, rest, do some blogging, thinking, and processing [...]

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On one of the last evenings of my time in the West Bank, a few of us gathered on the back porch area to smoke some arguila and eat peanuts. As it got later and later, the group continued to get larger and larger, and at one point we had about 16-18 people sitting around [...]

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We spent Saturday in Ramallah, the same day that Condoleeza Rice met with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, and we met with a couple human rights organizations, including Addammer and Defence for Children International-Palestine section (DCI/PS) (which also has an Israel section). They were the kind of presentations that kind of leave you feeling sort of [...]

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[During this post, I will be having some quotations from Melissa (a pseudonym); while I did not have an audio recorder with me, and I don’t remember the quotes word for word, my paraphrases below certainly reflect the messages she was trying to get across to me. I will also be putting some words in [...]

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