Palestinians in Bethlehem are building a stage for the pope right next to a towering concrete section of Israel's separation barrier. (Israel is demanding that they stop because they have no permits and it is a "security risk.")
Hard-line Muslims in Nazareth, where the pope will deliver one of his big sermons, say Benedict is not welcome because of a speech he gave in 2006 that criticized their prophet.
They were one of Hollywood's most-talked-about romantic on-screen stars in 2008: 19-year-old Dev Patel and 24-year-old Freida Pinto, the charismatic leads of the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
What is actually more interesting than the possible romantic exploits of the two young actors is the movie Pinto is filming.
Pinto a starring in Miral, a film by director Julian Schnabel about Hind Husseini, a legendary Palestinian woman who founded an orphanage for Palestinian children who were orphaned by the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, one of the most controversial attacks by Jewish militants fighting to establish the state of Israel.
The mere mention of Deir Yassin in these parts can start a fierce argument and its place in Israeli-Palestinian history is a source of constant friction.
"Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews," the fired guide, Itamar Shapira, told Haaretz. "I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation. The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation's trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things."
Shapira said he mentioned Deir Yassin because the ruins of the village can be seen from Yad Vashem.
It's not clear how much Schnabel's film will focus on the controversial massacre and how much it will focus on the establishment of Husseini's orphanage in the aftermath.
So far, though, the fact that Deir Yassin is a foundation for the film seems to have been ignored or obscured by the Israeli media.
In writing today about the Hollywood romance, Haaretz simply said the film "focuses on the interwoven lives of a few Israeli and Palestinian women, from the early years of the state through the early 1990s."
Last month, The Jerusalem Post omitted Deir Yassin in stating that the film "chronicles Hind Husseini's effort to establish an orphanage in the city following the creation of the state in 1948."
As it happens, Israel is celebrating its Independence Day tomorrow.
It is one of the best-known Biblical parables: The story of the Good Samaritan who is the only kind-hearted traveler to look after a man who had been robbed on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
To this day, a small, insular group of Samaritans lives in a tiny enclave near Nablus where a few hundred of the adherents are trying to keep their religion and culture alive.
More than a decade ago, journalist Matt Benyon Rees traveled to Nablus in a attempt to unravel the mysterious disappearance of the Samaritan's ancient Torah scrolls.
The Samaritans claimed the scrolls had been stolen and were asking then-PA President Yasser Arafat to pay a $1 million ransom.
Arafat refused and the scrolls apparently never returned.
This year, that journalistic whodunit became the basis for Matt's latest mystery novel, The Samaritan's Secret.
Matt is one of the more successful Middle East journalists to jump from reporting to book writing.
The Samaritan's Secret is the third book in a widely-praised, award-winning series featuring the world's first fictional Palestinian detective, Omar Yussef.
In what may become a regular feature on Checkpoint Jerusalem, Matt has agreed to write a guest column about his travels while working on the book.
Enjoy.
Baksheeshed to the Bone
By Matt Beynon Rees
It turns out Jesus was right.
I know, because I found a Good Samaritan.
Really, he was a good guy, and he actually was a Samaritan. There are still a few of them about.
In January, my new Palestinian crime novel, The Samaritan's Secret, was about to be published.
The story unfolds on a West Bank hilltop where the last remnants of the ancient Samaritan tribe live.
There are just 370 of them, high above the violent city of Nablus, near the site where they believe their ancient Temple stood.
To help my readers get a sense of the place, I decided to film a video clip using many of the locations from the book.
My friend, videographer David Blumenfeld. and I headed from our homes in Jerusalem to shoot the video.
The day before, I had spoken with a Samaritan priest to arrange some meetings and to be sure the enclosure around the Temple wouldn’t be locked.
“That depends on the money,” he said, in Hebrew. (The Samaritans mainly speak Arabic, but they also have Israeli ID cards and speak Hebrew. On their Sabbath, they speak nothing but Samaritan, which they believe is true ancient Hebrew.)
As a journalist, I’m not accustomed to paying to interview people.
“How much?” I asked.
“How much do you think?” he ventured.
Oh, no, we’re about to get all Middle Eastern, I thought. I hate haggling.
“Well, let’s say 200 shekels.” That’s about 60 bucks.
He scoffed.
“A thousand.”
I made groaning noises to show that such a figure was painful to me.
“Five hundred.”
“Five hundred,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
When we reached the village, Kiryat Luza, the day was clear and sunny. The priest met us at the museum -- which he set up some years ago in his living room -- and we filmed a few scenes alongside his trove of photos and old documents.
Before we’d finished, he took out a receipt book: “I’ll do your receipt, shall I? What did we say? A thousand, wasn’t it?”
“No, it was five hundred.”
He started to tell me about how much work we were making him do. I gave him seven hundred and let it go.
Now, the priest was supposed to open the gates to the Temple compound for us. But somehow, after I’d paid him, that duty was delegated to another fellow.
As we filmed, the new guy complained that he needed to go home and eat. (The Samaritan village is about the sleepiest place I’ve ever seen. If anybody up there had anything pressing to do that necessitated hurrying me along, I’d have been very, very surprised.)
So, as we left, I gave him 100 shekels [about $25 US] and thanked him with my warmest collection of Arabic words of praise.
“Something for the other guy?” he said, pointing at a figure lurking near the gate. “He had to wait too.”
I peeled off 20 shekels more. I hadn’t been squeezed this badly since I was first in the Middle East as an innocent 19-year-old backpacker, shucked for “baksheesh” by every Egyptian within a mile of the Great Pyramid.
David and I had filmed for four hours in a ridiculously hot January sun. I had read my cue-cards in five different languages, and I’d been fleeced until the leather on my wallet started to look raw. Sustenance was in order.
We went down the slope to the village to look for food.
There are only two establishments in the Samaritan village that in any way resemble eateries. “The Good Samaritan Restaurant” would’ve been the best bet, you’d have thought. But it serves no food -- only whiskey.
Next door, the “Guests and Tourists Paradise” was open. Three men smoked cigarettes lazily at one of the tables.
“Is it possible to eat?” I asked.
A tall, thin young man rose and welcomed us. We took a couple of Cokes from the fridge and sat. There was much muttering among the three smokers. Two of them disappeared up the street.
“I think they’ve gone home to ask Mamma to make our lunch,” I said to David.
Certainly no cooking took place in the kitchen at the back of the restaurant.
The tall man smiled and nodded.
“No problem,” he said. “Food is coming.”
We waited... and waited... for half an hour. But the food did come, and it was good.
As we left, the young man told me his name was Samih. His father was the High Priest of the Samaritans. He gave me a free poster with historical information about the Samaritans and smiled very broadly.
Then he counted out my exact change.
I left a nice tip.
***
Here's the video for The Samaritan's Secret:
And, for those that missed it, here's an older video featuring Matt skulking about Jerusalem's Old City with a cigarette, revolver and raspy voice to promote his second Omar Yussef mystery
A Grave in Gaza.
Pork is considered unclean, and is a constant source of friction in Israel between the Kosher community and those who eat pork.
Thus, apparently, even using the word "swine" to describe a nasty, scary virus that actually originated with pigs, is somehow unkosher...
"In Judaism there is an anti-pig tradition," Israeli journalist Arieh O'Sullivan wrote in 2004. "This is the country where some Orthodox don't let their kids have piggy banks, and where plastic piggies are removed from the bags of farm animals in the toy shops."
Israel strictly regulates pig farming in the country. Most of the pigs raised in Israel are relegated to a pig ghetto in the north where they are raised by Christian Arabs.
But there is one Jewish-run pig farm in southern Israel where the kibbutz uses legal loopholes to raise pigs and sell the meat.
(The kibbutz technically raises pigs for "research" and then sells the "surplus" for slaughter... The kibbutz also reportedly raises the pigs on wooden slats so as not to defy religious edicts against raising pigs in the holy land...)
As journalist Jan McGirk notes over at The Huffington Post, the kibbutz also explored the idea of turning pigs into military mine-detecting machines.
"Mines are the garbage of war," one kibbutznik said. "We are taking this animal to clean up the garbage of war."
Despite the religious revulsion, pork is sold in Israel. And there are plenty of people to eat it.
In 2007, Israeli-Russian tycoon Arcadi Gaydamak created a mini-furor when he bought one of the country's biggest supermarkets (one of the biggest to sell pork) and vowed to transform it into a Kosher chain by banning the sale of pork. (The deal fell through in the end...)
Israel is one of the small number of countries so far to report possible cases of swine flu, er, Mexican flu...
Four months after Israel launched its devastating military offensive in Gaza, one of Israel's most prominent spokesman says the operation deserved a better name.
"I didn't like the name," said Mark Regev, who serves as a leading spokesman for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and also held the same post for Bibi's predecessor, Ehud Olmert. "From a public relations point of view, it was a mistake."
The name came from a Hanukkah poem by a pioneering Jewish poet about a dreidel cast in lead.
"The truth is that the Hebrew name Oferet Yetzuka [referring to Hanukkah dreidels] sounds lovely," Regev said during a talk this week. "It's the translation into English which sounds inappropriate."
Regev told listeners that he never used the term when talking about the Gaza offensive.
"The English translation wasn't the most effective way to get our message out and it's an important point because if you can control the terminology of the debate, you can win the debate," he said.
In response, the IDF said: "Mark Regev's opinion is legitimate."
"While Gaza's 1.5 million residents, blockaded by Israel, face electricity shortages, the Palestine Electric Co.'s (PEC) PEC.PL profits were $6.3 million in 2008, up from $4.4 million in 2007," Reuters reported. "Profits are largely distributed in tax-free dividends."
How is this possible?
According to Reuters, the cash-strapped, financially struggling Palestinian Authority is required to pay the PEC about $30 million a year to run the plant - and to pay for the fuel to keep it operating.
This allows the PEC to hand out annual dividends to investors, including a firm where the PA president's son is a vice president.
"A review by Reuters of internal U.S. government records about aid programmes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip found that construction and public relations firms managed by Tarek Abbas and Yasser Mahmoud Abbas received over $2 million in contracts and subcontracts since 2005, when their father became president," according to Reuters.
While Reuters uncovered no explicit wrongdoing, and the US and Abbas sons said the contracts were won through a competitive-bidding process, the stories are likely to undercut PA President Mahmoud Abbas' image as an anti-corruption reformer at a time when the US is looking to draw Israeli PM Benjaman Netanyahu into substantive peace talks with the PA.
There is more info on the stories, including links to the supporting documents, over at Axis Mundi Jerusalem.
The idea was simple: Cull scores of clips of amateur musicians on YouTube and transform them into a musical medley to create an innovative YouTube musical mash-up.
The result, created by a little-known Israeli DJ, has been surprisingly successful.
In a series of video mash-ups, Ophir Kutiel, better known as Kutiman, has created a pioneering musical sensation known as ThruYOU.
The site currently has seven video mash-ups featuring everyone from street corner rappers and solo apartment bongo players to church organists and darbuka drummers.
"On the one hand, it is moving, because it rescues the lonely from the isolation of their wretched room - which of course is no different from that of their online audience - and makes them part of something larger," Haaretz writer Ben Shalev said of ThruYOU. "On the other hand, it further underscores their anonymity and its irredeemability."
Since Kutiman takes samples from others, ThruYOU has also sparked a new debate over copyright and fair use.
"If you come to the Net armed with the idea that the old system of copyright is going to work just fine here, this more than anything is going to get you to recognize: you need some new ideas," writes Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig.
"I doubt any of the musicians who found their way in any of those videos will have any problem with Kutiman," says Richard Menta at MP3newswire.net "Combined, the whole is greater than the parts. So much so that the Kutiman ThruYou videos have the potential to inspire millions to follow suit."
"This is what your Elvis looks like, gang," writes Merlin Mann at 43 folders. "Even in the face of bullying, obfuscating, and throat-clearing from corporations with a homemade timetable for evolution, more and more folks like Kutiman will just keep making and releasing stuff. Cool stuff, 'illegal' stuff, niche stuff, and stuff that doesn’t require the benediction of a middle-aged executive in order to reach its precise audience with almost zero friction or overhead."
On the face of it, Israeli historian Michael Oren would seem like a good choice to be Israel's next ambassador to the United States.
Born in New Jersey, trained at Princeton and Columbia, and author of respected books on the Middle East (including the most recent, "Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present"), Oren is well-suited for the role, especially when compared to the two other names floated for the job: Dore Gold, a conservative former Israeli ambassador to the UN, and Zalman Shoval, a Netanyahu loyalist who served two stints as Israel's ambassador to the US.
But Oren is not without his detractors. He has never been a diplomat, and he holds conservative views at a time when Democrats hold a near-lock on power in DC.
The main focus of concern is a detailed pre-US election analysis in which Oren compared the Middle East policies of Obama and McCain.
In the piece, Oren presented what could prove to be a prescient analysis of the Obama administration's approach to Middle East policy.
"An Obama presidency... may well launch an entirely new initiative, one based on zero tolerance for Israeli settlement-building and checkpoints, as well as on the belief that the road to Baghdad and Tehran runs through Bethlehem and Nablus," Oren wrote. " Obama might be expected to show deeper sympathy for the Palestinian demand for a capital in Jerusalem and greater flexibility in including Hamas in negotiations, if only indirectly, through the national unity coalition with Abbas. Obama will probably seek a broader accord, including Syria as well as other Arab countries, while McCain would focus on the Israeli-Palestinian dimension. McCain's démarche is unlikely to ruffle the U.S.-Israel relationship; Obama's is liable to strain the alliance, especially if, as recent polls predict, Netanyahu and the Likud return to power."
In some circles, the piece was seen as a critical slap at Obama and a tacit endorsement of McCain that was wrapped up as analysis.
“Sending such a person at a time when a Democratic administration is serving in Washington, which could enter into a diplomatic confrontation with Israel, is not necessarily the correct step, and Netanyahu should consider sending a person who is close to the Democrats,” Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper quoted anonymous Israeli sources as saying.
In Washington, one anonymous wag dubbed a "plugged-in Washington Middle East hand" (whatever that means) told Foreign Policy that the possible appointment was puzzling because Oren has stong ties to neocons and not to the new Democrats in charge.
But Netanyahu certainly isn't going to send a diplomatic dove to represent him in DC, and Oren would probably receive a better reception than either Gold or Shoval.
Blogger Richard Silverstein says Oren's appointment would make both "perfect sense" and "no sense."
"On the one hand, Oren is wise to the ways of American politics and the corridors of Washington power," Silverstein writes. " He probably won’t embarrass Bibi as a staunch Liebermanite would in this position. But on the other hand, Oren will have no cachet in a liberal Obama administration. His views will be totally out of touch with those of the policymakers with whom he will interact. At most, Oren will be able to put a brave, articulate face on Israeli policies which will find little resonance in the White House. It doesn’t exactly put Israel’s best foot forward in D.C."
One editorial called the one-day, closed door trial "a travesty."
The New York Times called on Iran to "end this dangerous farce" and free Roxana Saberi, the 31-year-old American-Iranian journalist recently sentenced to eight years in an Iranian prison on charges of spying for the United States.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling for her to be "released on bail."
Thousands have signed petitions calling on Iran to free Saberi.
"Resolving Ms.’s Saberi, Lee, and Ling’s languishing travails would be the first step in illustrating that Iran, North Korea, and the US have the capability of resolving their differences, a critical process as we inch toward a brave new world where our economies, ecologies, and basic survival is inexorably tangled together," writes Chopra The Younger. " We have to solve these problems or we will soon have a single problem of planetary extinction, be it by nuclear detonation or some other unleashed fanaticism."
"To answer the immediate critics, yes it does involve the US extending itself beyond just finding middle ground," he continues. "It does mean making concessions and inevitably planting karmic seeds that run the risk of producing even more problems down the line. But that’s the role and risk a parent sometimes has to play with a child that acts out in an effort to get attention. It’s not stooping to their level. It’s just bending down to look them in the eye and let them know you’re taking them seriously. It’s the end that matters most, so let’s get creative with the means."
TPM takes a more grounded look at the case and predicts that Saberi will be freed soon after Iran's presidential election in mid-June.
