Friday, May 8, 2009
Class
This class was very interesting. It looked at multiple spheres of a common issue of today. i enjoyed the visuals we were allowed to see in class to be able to grasp a different look, a more clear view, of what occurred in history in this area. This historical aspect helped me immensily in understanding what and why what is occurring today is happening. I did not really enjoy the blogs because i felt it to be tedious but otherwise i found everything enjoyable. i liked submitting my work through blackboard and i enjoyed the geography quizes. It was a great semester and i felt like i learned a lot in the short class meetings.
some of the major issues that Palestinians face
Some issues Palestinians face today is as follows:
• They do not have their own country, hence no passports and traveling is extremely difficult
• Many of the more than 40,000 pregnant women in Gaza are unable to leave their homes for medical treatment because of the Israeli onslaught and hospitals swamped with the thousands of injured
• Israel has been occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the 1967 War, ignoring the Fourth Geneva Conventions and over eighty United Nations General Assembly Resolutions.
• The Israeli military controls the movement of the nearly four million Palestinians through a system of checkpoints, roadblocks, and segregated roads
• The Israeli Army exercises virtually unchecked freedom to detain, threaten, arrest, imprison, torture, and even kill Palestinians, often without charge or trial.
• The Israeli government sponsors the transfer of Jewish Israeli citizens from Israel to Israeli colonies in the Palestinian Territories known as settlements
• Security Fence that is currently under construction by Israel in the name of preventing terrorism in fact weaves through, not around, the West Bank, with the primary effect of separating hundreds of thousands of West Bank Palestinians from their land and from each other.
• Denied legal citizenship anywhere, Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories are nonetheless required to pay taxes to Israel, which has an annual GDP over fifty times that of the Palestinian Territories, and an average annual income of more than US$20,500 compared with $750 in the West Bank and $550 in Gaza.
• They do not have their own country, hence no passports and traveling is extremely difficult
• Many of the more than 40,000 pregnant women in Gaza are unable to leave their homes for medical treatment because of the Israeli onslaught and hospitals swamped with the thousands of injured
• Israel has been occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the 1967 War, ignoring the Fourth Geneva Conventions and over eighty United Nations General Assembly Resolutions.
• The Israeli military controls the movement of the nearly four million Palestinians through a system of checkpoints, roadblocks, and segregated roads
• The Israeli Army exercises virtually unchecked freedom to detain, threaten, arrest, imprison, torture, and even kill Palestinians, often without charge or trial.
• The Israeli government sponsors the transfer of Jewish Israeli citizens from Israel to Israeli colonies in the Palestinian Territories known as settlements
• Security Fence that is currently under construction by Israel in the name of preventing terrorism in fact weaves through, not around, the West Bank, with the primary effect of separating hundreds of thousands of West Bank Palestinians from their land and from each other.
• Denied legal citizenship anywhere, Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories are nonetheless required to pay taxes to Israel, which has an annual GDP over fifty times that of the Palestinian Territories, and an average annual income of more than US$20,500 compared with $750 in the West Bank and $550 in Gaza.
the origins of the Arab-Israeli
We live in 2009 and yet we still think its right to exterminate people for economic and political means. It has always been about the power, no matter what happens, how many lives it costs, it is about Power. Human life is the most sacred thing we have and yet we sit and watch it be destroyed to achieve political and social means. Listed in chronological order are the events that took place that make up the origins of this problem.
1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II followed by the persecution of Russian Jews
1894-5 Alfred Dreyfus falsely charged with espionages
1896 publication of The Jewish State by Theodore Herzel
1897 first international congress of Zionists
1915-16 Sykes Picot Agreement
1917 Balfour Declaration- Arab Revolt
1930 White Paper seeks British disengagement from the Jewish National Home aspects of the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate
1939-42 Cooperation between British forces and Jews in Palestine
1945 President Truman supports the demand for a large number of immigrants to Palestine
1946 Truman endorses partition of Palestine and creation of a Jewish state
1948 Irgun led by Meacham begin massacre villagers at Deir Yassin, Palestinian civilians flee en masse fearing a similar fate
Ben-Gurion declares the State of Israel
Termination of the British Mandate
Arab armies enter areas assigned to the Palestinian state under the partition placed to support Palestinian resistance
Fighting between Israel and Egypt after Bernadottes assassination
Moshe Dayan drives all Palestinian civilians from lydda and Pamleh by force
UN resolution 194 states that Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes should be permitted to do so and that compensation fro loss or damage to property should be paid
1950 beginning of immigration to Israel of Jews from Arab countries
1967 Six day war United Nations Security Council resolution 242 issued
And since then it has been about fighting, combing air raids occupations, dead civilians endless fighting an d
1948 saw the end of the Palestinian state and the beginning of years of constant struggle. We were fortunate enough to invite the two top peace negotiators for Palestine and Israel to discuss the potential of peace in the Palestinian- Israeli conflict to our college. Dr. Saeb Erakat and Avi Gin talked briefly about this extensive issue concerning today’s media and the issue that was established in 1948. It was an amazing speech, which the entire audience enjoyed, especially because one could feel the sincerity and how hopeful these two men are for searching for peace. They stated that there are terms that need to agree upon from both sides about the division at the 67 lines in which both a state of Palestine and a state of Israel would be established and these lines would create the respected borders. They are doing what they can but they still have an optimistic view on the world. It was an incredible speech that gave us great insight on what they are doing to achieve peace. The 67 borders seem to be the best way to achieve peace, which is needed in that region.
1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II followed by the persecution of Russian Jews
1894-5 Alfred Dreyfus falsely charged with espionages
1896 publication of The Jewish State by Theodore Herzel
1897 first international congress of Zionists
1915-16 Sykes Picot Agreement
1917 Balfour Declaration- Arab Revolt
1930 White Paper seeks British disengagement from the Jewish National Home aspects of the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate
1939-42 Cooperation between British forces and Jews in Palestine
1945 President Truman supports the demand for a large number of immigrants to Palestine
1946 Truman endorses partition of Palestine and creation of a Jewish state
1948 Irgun led by Meacham begin massacre villagers at Deir Yassin, Palestinian civilians flee en masse fearing a similar fate
Ben-Gurion declares the State of Israel
Termination of the British Mandate
Arab armies enter areas assigned to the Palestinian state under the partition placed to support Palestinian resistance
Fighting between Israel and Egypt after Bernadottes assassination
Moshe Dayan drives all Palestinian civilians from lydda and Pamleh by force
UN resolution 194 states that Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes should be permitted to do so and that compensation fro loss or damage to property should be paid
1950 beginning of immigration to Israel of Jews from Arab countries
1967 Six day war United Nations Security Council resolution 242 issued
And since then it has been about fighting, combing air raids occupations, dead civilians endless fighting an d
1948 saw the end of the Palestinian state and the beginning of years of constant struggle. We were fortunate enough to invite the two top peace negotiators for Palestine and Israel to discuss the potential of peace in the Palestinian- Israeli conflict to our college. Dr. Saeb Erakat and Avi Gin talked briefly about this extensive issue concerning today’s media and the issue that was established in 1948. It was an amazing speech, which the entire audience enjoyed, especially because one could feel the sincerity and how hopeful these two men are for searching for peace. They stated that there are terms that need to agree upon from both sides about the division at the 67 lines in which both a state of Palestine and a state of Israel would be established and these lines would create the respected borders. They are doing what they can but they still have an optimistic view on the world. It was an incredible speech that gave us great insight on what they are doing to achieve peace. The 67 borders seem to be the best way to achieve peace, which is needed in that region.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Gate of the Sun
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is at the forefront of today’s politics, especially at the moment with the War on Gaza that occurred this past December. Since the state of Israel was conceived in 1948, conflict has been engulfing that region. Through media, literature, news, first-hand accounts, we, the outsiders, are able to see how multi-dimensional, extensive, and immense this situation is.
The plot revolves around the stories that Khalil, the narrator, tells his ‘father’, Yunes, who is hiding in a hospital, but in a coma due to an Israeli attack. These stories, reiterated by Khalil, speak of dreams, hopes, love, and the current reality of Palestine. Moreover, vital historical events that where occurring in Palestine are articulated while also acknowledging what was happening in the refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and other locales where Palestinians were dispersed. Furthermore, the Lebanese civil war is an influential event, which has an epic toll on the characters of the novel, is covered in the story as well as the massacres that occurred 1982 at the Shatila and Sabra camps. The significance of this novel is that it not only explains what is occurring to the people of Palestine in Palestine but what was happening to those dispersed in refugee camps.
Elias Khoury spent his time in Palestinian refugee camps interviewing Palestinians to take down first-hand accounts of what occurred in 1948 and throughout. He used the 1948 memories from others because he himself was too young to remember those events first handedly. The accounts obtained he used as the stories that Khalil tells his father. The Gate of the Sun is a conglomerate of the multiple stories obtained from these refugees- grandparents, children, mothers, and lovers all alike each have a tale to tell about the same event just seen through different eyes, hence a different story is obtained. Thus, the mood of the book jumps as different stories are being told, from joyful events to horrific ones. This story also comments how Palestine is more than a struggle of land; it is a struggle of dispersed people to unite, a struggle for young and old to keep their memories alive and their identity, of what was once a unified nation in order to keep the hopes of a bright united future, a state of Palestine.
Palestine is an example of how we are blind sighted because we are ignorant to what is really going on; the obvious oppression we embrace because of political and ideological motivations connected to the other side, the oppressors.
The plot revolves around the stories that Khalil, the narrator, tells his ‘father’, Yunes, who is hiding in a hospital, but in a coma due to an Israeli attack. These stories, reiterated by Khalil, speak of dreams, hopes, love, and the current reality of Palestine. Moreover, vital historical events that where occurring in Palestine are articulated while also acknowledging what was happening in the refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and other locales where Palestinians were dispersed. Furthermore, the Lebanese civil war is an influential event, which has an epic toll on the characters of the novel, is covered in the story as well as the massacres that occurred 1982 at the Shatila and Sabra camps. The significance of this novel is that it not only explains what is occurring to the people of Palestine in Palestine but what was happening to those dispersed in refugee camps.
Elias Khoury spent his time in Palestinian refugee camps interviewing Palestinians to take down first-hand accounts of what occurred in 1948 and throughout. He used the 1948 memories from others because he himself was too young to remember those events first handedly. The accounts obtained he used as the stories that Khalil tells his father. The Gate of the Sun is a conglomerate of the multiple stories obtained from these refugees- grandparents, children, mothers, and lovers all alike each have a tale to tell about the same event just seen through different eyes, hence a different story is obtained. Thus, the mood of the book jumps as different stories are being told, from joyful events to horrific ones. This story also comments how Palestine is more than a struggle of land; it is a struggle of dispersed people to unite, a struggle for young and old to keep their memories alive and their identity, of what was once a unified nation in order to keep the hopes of a bright united future, a state of Palestine.
Palestine is an example of how we are blind sighted because we are ignorant to what is really going on; the obvious oppression we embrace because of political and ideological motivations connected to the other side, the oppressors.
The man who changed the world
In class we saw a set of videos describing what was occurring in Iran in the late 70s. This time is crucial in understanding because during this time things occurred that would ill relations between the US and Iran to today. The documentaries were extremely interesting in that we learn the history and the politics and speak to the important people involved. Visuals I find are extremely important in order to really understand what occurred. In these videos we hear from other Iranian religious figures commenting on Khomeini, the man who changed the world; how the students overtook the embassy; U.S. politicians specifically Carter. We these first hand accounts we can understand the atmosphere surrounding that time, in Iran and the U.S and see the reaction on events such as the when the Shah was accepted into the US and when the students overtook the embassy. With these videos we see the steps in which Khomeini came into power and how the Revolution of 1979 occurred.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Current News
News for the Middle East reported by Al Jazeera
Two bodies where uncovered from a tunnel that went from Gaza to Egypt. These tunnels have become a political issue, in which Israel uses to defend their ongoing bombing on Gaza to this day. The two bodies where victims of an Israeli Air raid that are being defending because these tunnels are considered the ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are obtaining arms. Although this gives Israel a motive to continue what they are doing one must also try to see what is really going on. These tunnels are targeted by the media as ways to obtain arms, however, if one truly uncovers the current situation these tunnels are one of the few ways that the inhabitants of Gaza are obtaining materials needed to survive, like medicine, foods, rubber for tires, diapers etc. Because of the blockade and Israelis checkpoints and the security wall, Palestinians lack basic things of living. Hence these tunnels were created to smuggle these items into the country however, it is only seen as methods for obtain arms. Maybe if they opened the border between Gaza and Egypt, arms smuggles would be more secured, and civilians would have items they need to survive and Palestinians would not be dying in these unsecure tunnels.
Two bodies where uncovered from a tunnel that went from Gaza to Egypt. These tunnels have become a political issue, in which Israel uses to defend their ongoing bombing on Gaza to this day. The two bodies where victims of an Israeli Air raid that are being defending because these tunnels are considered the ways in which Palestinians in Gaza are obtaining arms. Although this gives Israel a motive to continue what they are doing one must also try to see what is really going on. These tunnels are targeted by the media as ways to obtain arms, however, if one truly uncovers the current situation these tunnels are one of the few ways that the inhabitants of Gaza are obtaining materials needed to survive, like medicine, foods, rubber for tires, diapers etc. Because of the blockade and Israelis checkpoints and the security wall, Palestinians lack basic things of living. Hence these tunnels were created to smuggle these items into the country however, it is only seen as methods for obtain arms. Maybe if they opened the border between Gaza and Egypt, arms smuggles would be more secured, and civilians would have items they need to survive and Palestinians would not be dying in these unsecure tunnels.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Touba
The plot revolves around Touba, the young heroine, and what she must do at a young age after her intellectual father dies when she is twelve years old. She subsequently, decides to marry in order to be financial secure. However, her first marriage does not go well and she gets a divorce; however, she finds a new husband who has ties with the fallen Qajar dynasty. Even this marriage does not conclude well but throughout it she is introduced to the very influential court system and bears children with the ex-prince. As historical as this novel is it has been banned from Iran and has forced Parsipur into exile.
The significance of this novel is to understand a, although non-fiction, point-of-view of what was occurring in Iran during those 80 years: the struggle within a patriarchal religious culture; with feminist empowerment at hand; and the complexity invoked to embark on a journey to learn the meaning of life while finding social repression. Furthermore, the significance of the presence of outside influences, specifically here, Russia and Britain, in Iran, and the changes created within government, politics, and society. In summation, the twentieth century embraced a path where the status of women changed due to the impact of colonialism and the rule of Reza Shah and Mossadeq and the occurrence of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
In summation, the purpose of book is to intertwine Iranian history while telling it through a story, which makes it more comprehendible and personal while contributing to modern feminist literature.
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