Middle East Report Online writes:

On October 8, Tawfiq Jamal, a Palestinian citizen of Israel living in the “mixed town” of Acre, got into his car to run an errand. That day was Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days of the Jewish religious calendar, on which the streets of Israel’s Jewish cities and towns customarily empty of traffic. Jewish residents of Acre, claiming an insult to their beliefs, chased Jamal inside a house and besieged the place; then Arab residents broke some Jewish shop windows; then Jews attacked numerous Arab homes, shops and cars. Understanding the rioting calls for a better understanding of what line Jamal actually crossed on October 8, in turn requiring that his journey that day be retraced, not through a maze of religious sensibilities, but backwards through history.

So argues Peter Lagerquist in “Recipe for a Riot: Parsing Israel’s Yom Kippur Upheavals,” now available in Middle East Report Online.

By Kobi Ben-Simhon, Ha’aretz, 27 November 2008

It’s the day after he was elected for the first time to the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal council, but Omar Siksek cannot bring himself to smile. Visitors to the office of the chairman of the Association for Jaffa Arabs, located on Yefet Street in Jaffa, want to celebrate his victory, but he is not in the mood. His face is somber.

“Arab-haters have established a settlement in Acre,” he says. “They are dangerous and capable of igniting the street at any time. I think the fire is close – if not in another month, then in two months. We can expect a replay of the events in Acre [where Jews and Arabs clashed on and after Yom Kippur], I have no doubt.”

[Read the report]

Related:
Isabelle Humphries: The Nakba Continues: The Ethnic Cleansing of Jaffa’s Ajami Neighborhood

Zochrot: Tour and Signposting in Ajami neighborhood, Jaffa

Gershon Baskin, Israel-Palestine Center for Research, 1 December 2008

I pass by the site of the Muslim Cemetery in Mamilla Jerusalem where the so-called Museum of Tolerance is being constructed every morning because it is near my son’s school. Last week I noticed some trucks entering and exiting the site so I tried to take some pictures. I was immediately accosted by some private security guards who conspired between themselves that I had attacked them violently. They said that they were calling the police to have me arrested on charges of assault. The photographed me and my car. I almost lost my cool, but decided “let them arrest me”. I am a public figure who has never raised a hand against anyone and has always led non-violent struggles against violence, wars and injustice. I have been arrested about 8 times before, never charged, so if I get arrested it will only bring more attention to the struggle to have the construction worked ceased. I waited for about 20 minutes for the police to come. When I had to leave to go to work, I gave one of the security cards my business card and told him it would make it easier for the police to find me. I guess they aren’t looking because I have not yet been arrested.

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Meet one of the human rights workers who broke the blockade of the Gaza Strip on August 23, 2008. Paul Larudee, is a piano tuner from El Cerrito. He says what he saw from his trip is something he’ll never forget. Currently, about 1.5 million Palestinians are stranded in Gaza after the Israeli government blocked them from crossing the seas. Israeli authorities say the blockade is in reaction against security threats made by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. Richgail Enriquez has the full report (via).

By Reham Alhelsi, Palestine Think Tank, 26 November 2008

Last week a friend of mine told me that she’d been invited to a debate at her University about the “Palestinian Mickey Mouse” Farfour, which is a Hamas-created children’s show that was broadcast on the Al-Quds TV in Gaza. The show was accused of conveying messages of hate by Israel, the US and a number of European countries. I never saw the show, but I remember the storm that was created because of it on a number of American and European networks. I remember also reading that there was some sort of mistranslation of what was being said on the show, which in a way had lead to the misinterpretations, and that none of these networks attacking the show “bothered to get independent verification of the translation“(1). This reminded me of the several occasions where I was confronted with questions about the Palestinian textbooks, and that they were breeding and spreading hate and Anti-Semitism.

[Read the article]