Here is an excellent article about my friend whose husband was killed by the Israelis in Jerusalem last June.
Death in Jerusalem: An American woman seeks justice for Palestinian husband - latimes.com
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
What's the worst that could happen? Oh, yeah...
I know it has been ages since I posted and I don't know if anyone still reads this blog, but I have a story to tell that is just heartbreaking. Ziad Jilani, the husband of one of my closest friends was killed by the Israeli border police in Jerusalem on Friday, June 11. He drove his car into a neighborhood where kids were throwing stones and it looks like his car was hit and he lost control of it and swerved toward the border police. When they started shooting, he ran for his life, but he was shot several times and fell to the ground. Instead of arresting Ziad at that point, one of the police walked up to him and shot Ziad in the face and body. He never had a chance to explain or defend himself.
My friend is an American like me, who moved to Jerusalem years ago to live close to her husband's family. They have 3 lovely daughters, all US citizens, who are now fatherless. Ziad was a good man. he was a dedicated family man who always put his family first. It was so refreshing to see a married couple who were still so much in love after so many years and I can't even begin to imagine how Moira will cope with the loss of this wonderful husband and father. She has permanent resident status in Jerusalem, and plans to stay in Jerusalem and continue to raise her daughters here.
To compound this terrible tragedy, the initial press reports were calling Ziad a terrorist. He definitely was not, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His wife Moira filed a case in the Israeli courts, but Palestinians, and even pro-Palestinian Americans have gotten little justice from Israeli courts.
Al Jazeera English finally did a piece on Ziad today, and I wanted to share it with you, but blogger has changed and I can't figure out how to embed a YouTube video here. I will try to do it from YouTube later.
My friend is an American like me, who moved to Jerusalem years ago to live close to her husband's family. They have 3 lovely daughters, all US citizens, who are now fatherless. Ziad was a good man. he was a dedicated family man who always put his family first. It was so refreshing to see a married couple who were still so much in love after so many years and I can't even begin to imagine how Moira will cope with the loss of this wonderful husband and father. She has permanent resident status in Jerusalem, and plans to stay in Jerusalem and continue to raise her daughters here.
To compound this terrible tragedy, the initial press reports were calling Ziad a terrorist. He definitely was not, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. His wife Moira filed a case in the Israeli courts, but Palestinians, and even pro-Palestinian Americans have gotten little justice from Israeli courts.
Al Jazeera English finally did a piece on Ziad today, and I wanted to share it with you, but blogger has changed and I can't figure out how to embed a YouTube video here. I will try to do it from YouTube later.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
on the sunny side
After my last post, my younger daughter said "People who read your blog will think our yard is so beautiful." She is a "the glass is half empty" sort of person. There are ugly bits for sure, but why would I concentrate on them? She sees mostly the mud and weeds.
But I love the lush greenness of spring. I love the weeds.
If you get down close, they are spectacular. (The picture below was taken from under the tree in the picture above.)
There is this ugly fence all around the front yard. I try to keep it out of my pictures most of the time. See that bush hanging from the wall on the right?
It grows there every year, right out of a crack in the wall.
The flowers are amazing. In 2 months it will look entirely dead, but it will grow back next spring, inshaAllah.
I have been trying to get a good shot of these blue flowers for years, but I have such a hard time convincing my cheap, point-and-shoot camera to focus on them.
One is almost in focus! These flowers are about the size of my little fingernail.
There are so many cool shapes. Look at the little heart shaped seed pods.
Weird and cool.
Some of the flowers are bigger, and it is hard to believe they are wild.
This definitely is a weed, it has vicious thorns on the tip of each point on the leaves, but the pattern is cool.
So I have to be careful of those while I am roaming around trying to get eye level shots of tiny flowers.
I have a horrible time with the yellow and white flowers. They are always over exposed.
So I have to darken the pictures a lot to get any detail in the flower.
And the majority of the flowers are yellow.
I have tried taking the pictures on a cloudy day, but the white still over exposes.
Like so....
See these big leaves? That's khubaysah. The leaves are cooked and eaten, a spring treat my husband loves. I usually wander around taking pictures while I am picking the leaves.
Umm Farouq mentioned khubaysah in a recent post, so I made a point of getting a picture for her. It grows all around the trunks of the olive trees. It doesn't seem to like growing in the open as much. I wish you could come pick some with me Umm Farouq. There is more than I can use.
MashaAllah,
wa alhamdulillah.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
I am still here
I don't know how to begin. I feel like I ought to write some long, angst-y explanation of why I suddenly stopped blogging but I don't feel up to it. I get the blues and withdraw from the world sometimes. Thank you to each of the lovely people who wrote comments to ask where I was and if I am ok. Sorry but I don't think I will respond to each of you individually. Will you forgive me if I offer you a few pretty pictures?
I have been mostly looking at spring through my windows this year. This is the view from my bedroom window.
I really need to get out more, get a little fresh air and sunshine. Today was beautiful, and since the next couple days have rain forecast, I figured I ought to have a look at my yard while I can.
The plum tree by my kitchen window has started to bloom. I can't look at those flowers and not feel cheered.
The garden is full of weeds and badly in need of some TLC. Those geraniums should have been pruned back last fall. I hurt my knee in October and haven't done a bit of yard work since.
Things are springing up all over the place. These snapdragons grew by themselves in the crack between the house and the sidewalk.
My camera's batteries need replaced. They don't hold a charge for very long. 
I charged them over night and then ran around the house snapping pix quickly before the batteries went dead.
I don't know why but I can't get a good picture of how the wildflowers look except as closeups.
What just looks like grass in this picture contains thousands of tiny flowers.
The cat divides his time between chasing butterflies in the flowers and waiting at the door for my husband to feed him.
Stupid kitty.
This all will need to be dug by hand. The plow can't get in these narrow parts of the yard without trampling the plants I want to keep.
Everything looked pretty today.
The field behind the house is full of pretty red flowers, but they don't grow much in my yard. I love to look at them, but it never looks as nice in the pictures.
Luckily, my youngest picked me a hand full of them on his way home from school, right before my batteries went dead. (The color here is totally wrong. They are a deep, true red.)
Bye for now. InshaAllah it won't be another 6 months before I post again.
I have been mostly looking at spring through my windows this year. This is the view from my bedroom window.
I really need to get out more, get a little fresh air and sunshine. Today was beautiful, and since the next couple days have rain forecast, I figured I ought to have a look at my yard while I can.
The plum tree by my kitchen window has started to bloom. I can't look at those flowers and not feel cheered.
The garden is full of weeds and badly in need of some TLC. Those geraniums should have been pruned back last fall. I hurt my knee in October and haven't done a bit of yard work since.
Things are springing up all over the place. These snapdragons grew by themselves in the crack between the house and the sidewalk.
My camera's batteries need replaced. They don't hold a charge for very long. 
I charged them over night and then ran around the house snapping pix quickly before the batteries went dead.
I don't know why but I can't get a good picture of how the wildflowers look except as closeups.
What just looks like grass in this picture contains thousands of tiny flowers.
The cat divides his time between chasing butterflies in the flowers and waiting at the door for my husband to feed him.
Stupid kitty.
This all will need to be dug by hand. The plow can't get in these narrow parts of the yard without trampling the plants I want to keep.
Everything looked pretty today.
The field behind the house is full of pretty red flowers, but they don't grow much in my yard. I love to look at them, but it never looks as nice in the pictures.
Luckily, my youngest picked me a hand full of them on his way home from school, right before my batteries went dead. (The color here is totally wrong. They are a deep, true red.)
Bye for now. InshaAllah it won't be another 6 months before I post again.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Jerusalem is now
This article is from Al-Ahram Weekly, but I found it at the Palestine Monitor. I don't recommend that you follow the link to the Al-Ahram site, because Google says that the site has had some sort of malware that downloads from it. Anyway, I liked this so much that I decided to print it all here instead of just linking to it. It's all about delay tactics. The goal seems apparent, to delay making "peace" until the older generation that remembers the nakba is gone, so that no one is left to say, "that was my house, there is my home." They think the old will die and the young will forget. Do they think that Jews spent centuries saying "next year in Jerusalem," but Palestinians will forget in a generation?
Jerusalem is now
Al-Ahram Weekly Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP
26 September 2008
One doesn’t need to be an expert in the so-called "peace process" to know that Israel’s aim for the past 40 years has been to deny the Palestinians their rights. Having failed to break the backbone of the Palestinians and end their resolve to resist, Israel resorted to delay tactics. When not postponing urgent issues, it tried to empty from them all meaning. Thus the idea of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state was diluted into that of creating a self-rule entity, shorn of any real authority, over fragmented patches of land.
This is what the Oslo process managed to produce over the past 15 years or so. The number of settlers in the occupied territories has doubled. A wall of racial segregation has been erected. The West Bank has been cut off from Gaza. And Jerusalem is now surrounded on all sides and stranded, with little or no connection to other Palestinian areas. When negotiations resumed, Israel tried to impart legitimacy on its major settlements, refusing to discuss the matter of the refugees and insisting on postponing any decision on Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Israelis tirelessly tried to change the face of Jerusalem, building settlements inside and around it, altering and Judaising it by the day.
Israel is now suggesting a Palestinian state with "interim borders". In return, it wants the Palestinians to give up, effective immediately, the right of return of the refugees. Israel also wants the Palestinians to cede claims to large swathes of their land — land that has been gulped up by settlements, land surrounding the Dead Sea, land in the Latrun villages (Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba), etc. Israel is not in a mood to discuss Jerusalem right now. But it is in a good mind to build more settlements inside and around it.
Israel may be changing its rhetoric, but not its tactics. Instead of opposing a Palestinian state, it is willing to accept a state that has no sovereignty to mention. Instead of keeping every single settlement it has created on Palestinian land, it is willing to pull out 3,000 settlers, leaving 450,000 in place.
Everything Olmert and Barak have said so far suggests that they want to transform Jerusalem beyond recognition. The Jerusalem we all know is not the one they have in mind. The Jerusalem of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives, Salwan, Al-Issawia, and other parts of the old town, is about to look very much like the neighbourhoods that have sprouted all around it: Izariya, Abu Dies and perhaps Beit Hanina.
Every time Palestinian negotiators give an inch, Israel takes a mile; the Oslo Accords are but a case in point. It is fine to negotiate, but not when negotiations undermine the very basis of international resolutions and norms. UN resolutions — backed by rulings from the International Court of Justice — state that all the land Israel grabbed since the morning of 5 June 1967 are occupied territories. This goes for the old city of Jerusalem and its surroundings, the West Bank, Gaza, the Latrun villages, the Golan, and even the Shebaa Farms.
Egypt insisted on taking back every inch of Sinai, just as Syria is holding out for every inch of the Golan. The Palestinians cannot accept less. We must insist on Israel’s withdrawal from all the occupied land, instead of being talked into a risky land exchange. It is bad enough that Israel took in 1948 half of the land the 1947 UN partition plan gave to the Palestinians. We don’t need to make things worse.
And what exactly is going on in negotiations? It’s all kept under a tight lid, except for the randomly leaked piece of info suggesting that the issue of Jerusalem would be postponed, yet again. The Palestinian people are left in the dark about what’s really going on. Given the bitter experience of Oslo, when a done deal was hatched behind the back of official negotiators, this doesn’t augur well.
Everyone knows that giving up Arab Jerusalem, or any part of it, is not an option acceptable to the Palestinian people. Also, any interim solutions, especially those postponing discussion of Jerusalem, are highly risky if not an outright sign of capitulation.
The last thing we need is another deal that undermines our rights and weakens our people. Those negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians bear a huge responsibility in this moment. Anything they do can have long-term consequences for us all.
Jerusalem is now
Al-Ahram Weekly Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP
26 September 2008
One doesn’t need to be an expert in the so-called "peace process" to know that Israel’s aim for the past 40 years has been to deny the Palestinians their rights. Having failed to break the backbone of the Palestinians and end their resolve to resist, Israel resorted to delay tactics. When not postponing urgent issues, it tried to empty from them all meaning. Thus the idea of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state was diluted into that of creating a self-rule entity, shorn of any real authority, over fragmented patches of land.
This is what the Oslo process managed to produce over the past 15 years or so. The number of settlers in the occupied territories has doubled. A wall of racial segregation has been erected. The West Bank has been cut off from Gaza. And Jerusalem is now surrounded on all sides and stranded, with little or no connection to other Palestinian areas. When negotiations resumed, Israel tried to impart legitimacy on its major settlements, refusing to discuss the matter of the refugees and insisting on postponing any decision on Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the Israelis tirelessly tried to change the face of Jerusalem, building settlements inside and around it, altering and Judaising it by the day.
Israel is now suggesting a Palestinian state with "interim borders". In return, it wants the Palestinians to give up, effective immediately, the right of return of the refugees. Israel also wants the Palestinians to cede claims to large swathes of their land — land that has been gulped up by settlements, land surrounding the Dead Sea, land in the Latrun villages (Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba), etc. Israel is not in a mood to discuss Jerusalem right now. But it is in a good mind to build more settlements inside and around it.
Israel may be changing its rhetoric, but not its tactics. Instead of opposing a Palestinian state, it is willing to accept a state that has no sovereignty to mention. Instead of keeping every single settlement it has created on Palestinian land, it is willing to pull out 3,000 settlers, leaving 450,000 in place.
Everything Olmert and Barak have said so far suggests that they want to transform Jerusalem beyond recognition. The Jerusalem we all know is not the one they have in mind. The Jerusalem of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives, Salwan, Al-Issawia, and other parts of the old town, is about to look very much like the neighbourhoods that have sprouted all around it: Izariya, Abu Dies and perhaps Beit Hanina.
Every time Palestinian negotiators give an inch, Israel takes a mile; the Oslo Accords are but a case in point. It is fine to negotiate, but not when negotiations undermine the very basis of international resolutions and norms. UN resolutions — backed by rulings from the International Court of Justice — state that all the land Israel grabbed since the morning of 5 June 1967 are occupied territories. This goes for the old city of Jerusalem and its surroundings, the West Bank, Gaza, the Latrun villages, the Golan, and even the Shebaa Farms.
Egypt insisted on taking back every inch of Sinai, just as Syria is holding out for every inch of the Golan. The Palestinians cannot accept less. We must insist on Israel’s withdrawal from all the occupied land, instead of being talked into a risky land exchange. It is bad enough that Israel took in 1948 half of the land the 1947 UN partition plan gave to the Palestinians. We don’t need to make things worse.
And what exactly is going on in negotiations? It’s all kept under a tight lid, except for the randomly leaked piece of info suggesting that the issue of Jerusalem would be postponed, yet again. The Palestinian people are left in the dark about what’s really going on. Given the bitter experience of Oslo, when a done deal was hatched behind the back of official negotiators, this doesn’t augur well.
Everyone knows that giving up Arab Jerusalem, or any part of it, is not an option acceptable to the Palestinian people. Also, any interim solutions, especially those postponing discussion of Jerusalem, are highly risky if not an outright sign of capitulation.
The last thing we need is another deal that undermines our rights and weakens our people. Those negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians bear a huge responsibility in this moment. Anything they do can have long-term consequences for us all.
al Aqsa on Friday
UN-truth has some pictures of the crowds at Masjid al-Aqsa on Friday night, and also some pictures from the Qalandia checkpoint earlier that day.
She was wondering how so many people managed to get there despite all the checkpoints. Plenty of people who wanted to go, didn't make it. A friend of my son's from university tried to get into Jerusalem for Jummah and Taraweeh, but he is young and has a West Bank ID, so he tried to sneak through. He got caught, held for a few hours and roughed up a little. Then the forced him to sign a paper, ostensibly to promise he won't try it again, and then released.
She was wondering how so many people managed to get there despite all the checkpoints. Plenty of people who wanted to go, didn't make it. A friend of my son's from university tried to get into Jerusalem for Jummah and Taraweeh, but he is young and has a West Bank ID, so he tried to sneak through. He got caught, held for a few hours and roughed up a little. Then the forced him to sign a paper, ostensibly to promise he won't try it again, and then released.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Ramallah at night
I know these pictures are pretty blurry, but I wanted to show what Ramallah is like at night at the end of Ramadan. We went out for iftar and then shopping. Look at the see-through people! I had the shutter speed set at 1 second.
It was very crowded, but there were hardly any cars, and everyone was walking in the streets. The were street vendors selling balloons and toys all over the place, and everyone seemed cheerful except my poor husband. He hates shopping more than I do.
The guy on the left is selling sunglasses, and the girls in the red and pink hijabs are my daughters. I guess the good thing about blurry photos is that you don't have to worry about invading someone's privacy putting the pictures online.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
It's gone
I have tried to be so careful with the water this summer. I let a lot of the garden die, because I was trying to save the water from the cistern for use in the house. I always use it to wash the clothes and floors, and when the water from the main runs out we use the cistern water to flush the toilets and wash the dishes. I have gotten used to having the garden hose coming through the salon window and running to the kitchen or bathroom. The kids are even used to using it for their baths, after heating some on the stove.
Today it was cloudy and on the cool side, but these pretty yellow flowers we beginning to get wilted looking. (I took the pictures a few days ago.) 
The orange ones have almost finished for lack of water. I am trying to train them to grow over the ugly chain link fence.
So I decided to go out and water the garden. Before I got even half way finished, the water stopped. It's empty. We have got about a month before there is a chance of any substantial rain. And then this evening, the water containers on the roof ran out. So no baths tonight, no toilet flushing. I PRAY the water will come on tomorrow, inshaAllah.
Monday, September 22, 2008
I hate shopping
MashaAllah
Obviously, there is something odd about me. Women are supposed to love shopping, especially for clothes. Women are supposed to love fancy clothes and weddings and dancing and all that stuff. But I seem to have been born without that gene. I even hated clothes shopping when I was a teenager. My favorite place to shop was in my sister's closet. She liked to shop and brought home the nicest clothes. I would look at her wearing them a couple of times, and if I decided I liked the way she looked in them then they probably would be ok on me. She liked to shop... she could go buy more. ;-) My oldest daughter is like her. "Shop 'till you drop" is fun to her, not a threat. And she is good at it too, and finds lots of bargains.Well, Miss Shop 'Till She Drops is getting married in less than a month. And oh my goodness there is a lot of shopping involved in getting married. In this culture, the groom pays for almost everything. Not only does he have to buy the wedding dress and gold jewelry, but he also has to buy his bride a new wardrobe. Some of everything. Suitcases full of new clothes. Then he has to buy furniture and rent a hall, and feed the guests. He pays for it, but she usually goes shopping with her mother and future mother-in-law. We went and chose the dress the week before Ramadan. It was too hot, but it was almost fun to see my daughter trying on wedding dresses. She looked so happy. And lovely. And I am pleased to report that I didn't cry even once. In public at least.
After the dress was chosen, well, that's when my enthusiasm ran out. Sure I want to see my daughter get all the pretty stuff she wants, but I would rather not have to walk all over creation to do it. Luckily, I got out of my motherly duty after only one day because they decided to shop in Jerusalem and I don't pass the checkpoint. So they finished it without me. I am sure I should be sad, or at least guilty, but I am not.I always thought people here were to into the gold jewelry, but my daughters are not. Neither of them likes wearing gold much, but my older daughter loves the bling bling stuff. Which is fine, since the bride is supposed to get one of these rhinestone-y sets to wear with the wedding dress before they give her the gold.
I am usually content to go along with whatever local customs are if they are important to other people, but there is one custom I just cannot tolerate. A lot of the weddings I go to have one part where the bride sort of sashays around the stage to the beat of a drum holding a Qur'an in a weird, fuzzy white cover. I have no idea why they do this. I don't think it is a custom for all Palestinian families, maybe it's only the Khalilis who do it. (Khalili = someone from the city of Hebron, which is called al-Khalil in Arabic. My husband's family is originally from there, although my husband was born in Jerusalem.) Anyway, I always found this custom inappropriate., and told my daughter that I do not want her to do it. We saw these examples in Ramallah. It looks like they are not whole Qur'ans but just 2 pages on a base that looks like a book. But look carefully at them. They have glitter hearts glued *on top of* the page, on the writing! A'uthu billah! Who thinks this is appropriate? These*will*not*be*at*my*daughter's*wedding! 
My biggest headache now is that I have to get a dress. No, I have to get at least 2 fancy outfits. My daughter will not let me wear my plain old black jilbab. Unfortunately I am a little on the big side. OK, not a little. And I am also taller than the average Palestinian woman, although I wouldn't be considered tall in the US. My sisters-in-law mostly come up to my shoulder. So finding clothes for me is a headache. I was hoping to get a nice conservative suit, or a plain dress with a pretty jacket. No luck. We went to the shop where I bought a dress for the engagement party last winter. That time, I got a rather simple brown dress with brown sequins on it. We went to several shops that had fancy falahi (village) and Khaliji (gulf) style dresses. My daughter insists that I choose something fancy, and glittery.
I like the traditional embroidered dresses, but no one in my husband's family wears them. It's a falahi thing it seems, and his family are "city folks." But I would love to have one of the cross stitched dresses anyway. Many of the women in the village I live in wear just gorgeous hand made dresses as a regular thing. I fell in love with the machine embroidered green one below, but they didn't have my size. I don't think my daughter would have thought it was fancy enough for her wedding anyway.
I love-loved this faux calligraphy embroidery abaya we saw, but of course that wasn't fancy enough either.
This dress fit, just. She didn't seem to think it was fancy enough. Everything that fit and I thought was comfortable looking wasn't fancy enough.
I kind of like these two. They were a little snug, but the lady in the store said they could be let out. I wish the burgundy one didn't have those big gold jewels. The fabric is kind of shiny although that doesn't show in the picture, and it is supposed to be wrinkly like that. 
I hated the pink one, but the brownish might be ok.
The problem is that I like looking at this stuff, but I really want to buy it and hang it on the wall to look at, not wear! I wish my big sister could come and wear them a few times so I could decide, lol.
We also looked at fabric. I can't understand why fabric stores here are so small and have such a limited selection. I miss shopping in the US. The problem is I am not too confident about trying to make a fancy dress for my self. I am an ok seamstress when I have a pattern, but I don't have a pattern for a nice jacket. And I would be nervous cutting into an expensive piece of fabric. The dots on the fabric in the picture below are all glittery, but it didn't show in the picture, so I "photoshopped" some glitter into it.
We spent the day shopping, and I still have no idea what I will wear. I didn't spend this much time on MY wedding clothes.Something I noticed about the wedding dresses here. None of them have sleeves. They are all strapless or have narrow straps. You can buy little bolero type jackets to go over them for mixed weddings, but the weddings in our family are segregated. The bride wears a long hooded cape over her dress when entering and leaving, and during the short part of the party when the not closely related men will come in to congratulate the couple. The ladies all show up in their abayas and jilbabs, but they shed those during the women only part of the party so they can dance, dance, dance. My in-laws love to dance.
My mother actually picked out my wedding dress. It was off white had long sheer sleeves and a high neckline. It was sort of Victorian looking and I wore an antique brooch at my throat. It suited me perfectly, and was much more modest that anything I saw in the shops here.
I got married in the US, and when we came here, my in-laws wanted to make us a Palestinian style wedding. I said "thanks, but no thanks." (Unlike Ms. Palin, we didn't take the money anyway. Can I get through a post without mentioning something political? Probably not.) I am just not into all this hooplah and fancy clothes and dancing. Ya Allah! And they are going to expect me to dance too! I forgot I have that to worry about too.
This last picture was taken out of a window in one of the buildings we were shopping in. It is looking north from the center of Ramallah. As you can see, Ramallah really isn't a big city. Before you get to the hills in the back you will see farms, not city. Actually, I think you can find fields of olive trees less than a 15 minute walk from the center of Ramallah. And I have seen a horse drawn cart going through the center of town and passing the Palestinian Legislative Council's building many times, although I never manage to get a picture of it. And it is not there for tourists or something, just regular use hauling stuff.
MashaAllah
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