Palestine

Symbols are a powerful tool to push ideas forward. To promote the idea of a one state solution I am trying my hand at designing a flag to symbolize one country combining Palestine and Israel.

I am using the 5 Basic Principles of Flag Design, part of Good Flag, Bad Flag, published by the North American Vexillological Association:

Keep It Simple

The flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory

Use Meaningful Symbolism

The flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes

Use 2–3 Basic Colors

Limit the number of colors on the flag to three, which contrast well and come from the standard color set

No Lettering or Seals

Never use writing of any kind or an organization’s seal

Be Distinctive or Be Related

Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections

I want the flag to be easy to draw for a child. The blue flagstaff and the rising sun are easy for a child to put to white paper. The olive branch is also easy; it is big and has distinct shapes and colors.

Peace By The Sea

The symbols come from the joint history of Palestinians and Israelis:

• The blue flagstaff uses the blue stripes from the flag of the State of Israel to represent the Mediterranean Sea
• The rising sun symbolizes renewal and hope for the the future.
• The olive branch on the white field represents peace.
• The colors combine the four Pan-Arab colors and add the blue of the flag of Israel

The last three principles are preserved except for the principle of not using more than 3 basic colors.

Two days ago I came across Ibrahim Oweis' post "snow girl". The news of snow in Amman, Jordan moved me to email my father to ask him to snap me some pictures if there was snow in Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. My father emailed me back to let me know that there was no snow anywhere to be seen and regaled me with how terrible (in his words, shitty) the weather is. Maybe I'll appoint my father Minister of Tourism, he can really sell it. I thought that was the end of it.

When I woke up this morning I found a bunch of emails from my dad in my inbox. Apparently it had snowed during the night and when he woke up he snapped some pictures for me. I'm upgrading him from the Ministry of Tourism to the Ministry of Public Works and Making Samir Happy.

These two pictures are of Bethlehem as seen from Beit Sahour. You are seeing the eastern slope of Bethlehem as it descends towards Beit Sahour.

Snow in Bethlehem 00

Snow in Bethlehem 01

The next batch are all pictures of Beit Sahour covered in snow. These pictures all face south. In the second picture if you look at the horizon you can see a hill with a flat top, that hill is Herodion.

Snow in Bethlehem 02

Snow in Bethlehem 03

The next three images are cropped from another south-facing picture of Beit Sahour.

I like this part very much. You can see arable fields in the middle of the image then as you pan up towards the horizon you see Herodion again.

Snow in Bethlehem 05

I cropped out this image so that I could get an image that covered part of the southern horizon from my home. It is anchored on the left by Herodion again.

Snow in Bethlehem 06

This last image I like very much. It is the field directly across from our house. Usually I never get to imagine it this way because the background, in this case the ground, is almost always shades of brown. I love how the snow makes each olive tree pop out of the picture. What really makes the scene stand out for me is the shadows cast by the morning sun.

Snow in Bethlehem 07

If you liked these pictures leave nice comments. Maybe we can convince my father to take more pictures. Also, bribery works.

Every once in a while you'll hear a tidbit about how Israelis are mistreating Palestinians. Usually when something really terrible is perpetrated, like when a settler goes into a Mosque to kill people praying, or when the state of Israel sees fit to bombard the Church of Nativity for over a month, causing damage to century-old structures. While it is good that the world sees this the immensity of these acts make the actions of the state of Israel seem like abberations. The perception of these acts as so terrible and the resulting hue and cry raised over these acts obscures the small daily crimes perpetrated by Israel against Palestine and Palestinians, the accumulation of which is far more drastic in result than a massacre here or the desecration of a cultural landmark there.

I received these images a while back but haven't had the right context to write about them. I realized today that there never is a right context. These images don't show abberations in the behavior of the state of Israel but only one type of behavior exhibited daily by the state of Israel.

Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states in part:

Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict.

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 00: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 03: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Note the part where Article 18 says: "maternity cases" as the next images shows destruction of a section of a clinic that is assigned to maternity care"

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 06: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Here the Israeli military destroyed an Ultrasound machine:

Israeli Military Damages Clinic 05: Palestinian clinic damaged after Israeli attack

Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states in part:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

When a healthcare organization has not committed an offence then the convention states that it can't be punished. Destroying this clinic is collective punishment, intimidation and terrorism. It punishes Palestinians collectively for offences unlisted, it intimidates law abiding Palestinians to stop them from taking care of Palestinians, and it is terrorism because the only reason to destroy property in such a way is to induce fear for the purpose of stopping Palestinians from taking care of sick people. Not just sick Palestinians but any sick person who walks through the doors of a clinic because that is what healthcare workers do.

drupal.org has user accounts to which one can add data, like gender, country, work field, etc. While fixing up my entry, I noticed that Palestine was missing from the country drop down. Sadly, this is an all too common occurrence that is usually the result of ignorance, not malice. While part of me wants to be angry all the time I recognize the need to be diplomatic. To attempt to remedy the situation I filed a bug report against the drupal.org website.

Aside from seeking self-discipline in the face of anger, I also wanted to communicate effectively. drupal.org is geeky software, maintained by fairly geeky people. So in writing the bug report I used the most neutral language available so that I can get what I need. Many geeks, while passionate about their own fields, can be charitably described as politically ignorant. The same skills that makes geeks really good problem solvers in the technical real, also make for really terrible people skills. I am generalizing a lot, and simplifying to boot, but not grossly I hope.

To make an analogy: problem solving humans is to problem solving technical issues as quantum physics is to Newtonian physics. Where in the former, particles can have multiple states, in the latter particles are or aren't. Humans and their multiple states interact in very weird and non-predictable ways making problem-solving them very tough and not necessarily rewarding. Filing socio-political bug reports with geeks can become interesting if the parameters of the exchange are not controlled.

One option I had in filing the bug was to feel angry, disappointed, and hurt. Expressing those "quantum states" makes no sense for an exchange system designed to filter these out. Especially when the person on the receiving end is not prepared to deal with those quantum states. The other, better option was to express myself in the most minimal fashion: how to find the bug, expectations for success, result. The result of writing the bug report in such a manner was to have the bug fixed in less than eight hours. That is a quick and speedy resolution to a problem. While the resolution of my bug doesn't address the quantum states of anger, disappointment and hurt, it addresses a cause of those states, opening up a path for those states to change. Anger, disappointment, and hurt can, and will, fade. With the passing of these states I am left; a Palestinian on drupal.org.

I really hate to come off as a total heartless bastard but I fear it seems like a done deal when I exhibit such schadenfreude at the plight of a sick man. Yet I can't help myself. Well, honesty compels me to say that it isn't that I can't help myself but I choose not to.

I wrote earlier about Ariel Sharon seemingly getting away with murder; killing thousands of Palestinians then dying a short and merciful death from stroke.

Fortunately he yet lives.

His capacities will be diminished and he won't regain his seat as Prime Minister. I can only hope that it leaves Israeli politician now fighting a three-way battle for Prime Ministership: Kadima, Labour and Likud. If we are extremely lucky there will be no strong enough Prime Minister and Israel is paralyzed politically as government after government fails.

I hope Ariel Sharon will have enough mental abilities to see all this happening while remembering that he could have pulled off a great political coup with Kadima and failed at the last minute. I hope he sees every failure of Israel and Israelis and it makes him bitter until the end.

Disappointment for a few months doesn't make up for the disappointment Palestinians have suffered for the last 57 years, but beggars can't be choosers. I hope his conscience weighs heavily. I hope our dead come to haunt him.

It appears that Ariel Sharon has suffered a massive stroke and cerebral hemorrhaging. I suspect that he'll be dead soon and good riddance.

I am saddened though. That the terrorist responsible for killing thousands of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila as well as killing thousands of Palestinians as a result of his rule between since 2000, not to speak of the thousands of Lebanese deaths he is responsible for gets away with a stroke and general anesthesia. It is not fair that he gets spared the pain and suffering that my people, Palestinians, have suffered, and suffered at his hands. This monster is getting off easy.

My only consolation is that he doesn't get to beat Bibi Netanyahu in the polls for Prime Minister. His death will leave a fractured and weak Israel which makes me happy.

If I could get one wish in the world is that the fat, sorry carcass of Ariel Sharon gets buried face down at a cross-road, his body sprinkled with garlic and salt, and a stake driven through his back. Let no one remember him, and let those who stumble upon his grave wonder what kind of monster this was to deserve such an ignoble fate.

Edit: For more information:

The Guardian

Sharon's condition critical after surgery

The Independent

Sharon struck down by massive stroke

Ha'aretz has an interesting article on Israels' image problems in the USA.

Let me give some excerpts that are interesting:

The article talks about the group of professionals starting to deal with Israels image problem in the USA, they include such illustrious people as:

... Elias Buchwald, one of the founders of Burson-Marsteller, the second-largest PR firm in the United States; Fran Oppenheim, the owner of a consulting company and formerly brand director at the food giant Kraft General Foods; Helen Marlow, formerly Phillip Morris spokeswoman and vice president in the giant tobacco firm, who dealt with the "anti-tobacco" wave

Let's take for example Fran Oppenheim:

One right-wing, zionist organization reports she is a "representative for The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations". This is no big surprise, they aren't going to tap people to market Israel in the USA that are just middle of the road Americans. She'll be a true believer, or better yet, somebody who has totally bought into Israel as necessary for her social and political well being. Not that Israelis are necessary, just Israel. I doubt her Ashkanzi sensibilities really make her care about the unwashed masses our Arab Jewish Israeli immigrants. If the Israeli establishment doesn't care, I doubt these milquetoast-toast American Ashkenazis care.

The true believers are settlers. Not that I find settlers to be respectable people, but you gotta respect that sort of cheap commitment they have; Living in subsidized housing, getting what amounts to free water and power, and getting to shoot all the darkies you want without ethical or legal repercussions is hard living. By comparison this Fran Oppenheim really represent a weak commitment to Israel, living in the USA, being wined and dined by the cream of Israeli and American society, jetted here and there, without having to endure dealing with us smelly Palestinians.

I don't doubt she is a good marketer. After all it must take a wizard to try to sell utter crap. Just imagine what kind of integrity you must have as a person to stand in front of people and tell them that the rubbery piece of shit with a slightly yellow color is cheddar cheese?

That's right, she made her name selling crap and now she can cement it on the sidewalk of shame by trying to sell Israel, a racist, apartheid state that keeps ten million Palestinians under occupation, imprisonment, and terror, as a haven of not only democracy but good living and open-ness.

Next we have Elias Buchwald:

SourceWatch notes:

For the last 20 years Buchwald has been a volunteer media trainer at an annual program organized by the the American Jewish Congress and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

A racist zionist crazy person has a mirror of previous article mentioning Buchwald:

The program is designed to improve the primary task of the foreign ministry representatives: hasbara - that peculiar Israeli word that is a hybrid of information, public relations and propaganda.The chief exponents of this craft are supposed to be the prime minister and foreign minister, but their English, ability to express themselves and the content of what they say does not exactly help to promote Israel's hasbara efforts, say Buchwald and Greenberg.

As a side note it is amusing to me to note that the same kind of people who have no problem breaking every international human rights law also have no problem breaking copyright. Not surprised, just amused.

Here is an interesting tidbit:

Buchwald senses that the terror mantra may have worked last year but is no good anymore, given Arafat's death. He suggests delivering a positive message: telling the Palestinians, "Come, let's make peace. We want a good economy for you. We want a good economy for us. We've had enough war. Let's live together."

That old Elias, he is a funny man. Disingenuous shit that he is. You do not work for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs then preach peace with us Palestinians when the mission of the Israeli government, and Prime Minister after Prime Minister is to eradicate the last traces of Palestinians off the land of Palestine. Maybe Elias Buchwald knows something about Israeli policy we do not? Perhaps Elias Buchwald now makes Israeli policy with regards to Palestinians and not the Prime Minister. I doubt that. He says "Let's live together" as if the barrier to Israelis living amongst Palestinians has been Palestinians and not the pervasive destruction of Palestinian homes, the rape of Palestinian resources, the imprisonment of Palestinians, and slaughter of Palestinian refugees.

Lastly we have Helen Marlow. Her name doesn't bring up much usable data, but "formerly Phillip Morris spokeswoman and vice president in the giant tobacco firm, who dealt with the "anti-tobacco" wave" should be sufficient to show what her merits are to the campaign. She defends selling deadly poison to an increasingly anti-smoking USA. That's right, she defends causing cancer, arteriosclerosis, emphysema. Hell, by comparison defending genocide, breaking international law, and torturing children should be easy for her. Maybe her epitaph will say "I was doing a job. I was just following orders."

Let us review:

Elias Buchwald is a professional salesman. His job is to sell anything to anybody. We know he is a long time media volunteer for Israel, but aside from that his credentials are selling the unsellable.

Helen Marlow a shill for the tobacco industry.

Fran Oppenheim salesperson for Kraft Foods. Selling the crappiest food in the world.

If this is Israel's Branding Dream Team then you know that Israels case is extremely weak. It is like getting represented by Johnnie Cochran, you know the perp is guilty when Cochran represents you. We know Israel is a genocidal, law breaking, occupying country, which is only reinforced by the presence of Buchwald, Oppenheim, and Marlow who come to whitewash and prettify the strange fruit hanging from the trees.

Wolfensohn is going to cry to Condi 'My Penis is an Oil Tanker' Rice about how bad the Palestinians and Israelis are treating him:

Wolfenson said he was close to a decision to return home and added that he will convey his worries to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after she arrives in Israel on Sunday evening.

More at Ha'aretz

Palestinians and Israelis have played the diplomacy game longer than Bush has been sober. While both play within the general game that the US sets through policy both use their respective positions to play as best they can. The Palestinian Authority has never really understood the parameters of the game, and therefore play pretty badly, but they have moments where they seem to be able rise above their endemic stupidity and corruption to make a brilliant play. But hey, even a chimpanzee can come up with something higher intelligences think is art, even if they only play with sticks and feces.

The Israelis are playing more and more dangerous games. They are coming up hard against the 15-20 year population limit which will turn the 'Jewish' state into a minority state. After over sixty years of racially cleansing Palestine the Zionists are coming to a world where they are the minority in Palestine. People like Sharon are smart enough to see it, but I think most Israelis are not ready for the consequences and are not able to appreciate the fact that the State of Israel as we have known it for the last 60 years is in its' twilight.

The Palestinian Authority can play stupid. Yes Palestinians are dying, yes they are becoming miserable and more desperate on a day to say basis. Sometime you can see desperation percolate as the minutes go by, but what is that in comparison to the power the Palestinian Authority can reap when the Palestinians get a state. Whatever that state may be. Say Israel faces the music and allows Palestinians to becomes "Israeli" citizens, then the PA is poised to reap the goodwill of that exchange for several years and be a political power amongst Palestinians. On the face of things they will have brought this change. Another scenario is that the US forces the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza or both separately, in order to wash its hands of us. This would also leave the PA in a position of power, for a while, but very likely short lived and forced to share with Hamas. Either way, time is on their side, despite the high costs. They already sold out the essence of the Palestinian struggle and given up any claim to Palestinian principles so the misery of several million Palestinians isn't something that weighs too heavily on their conscience.

The Israelis are in the unenviable position of having won almost every single battle, having scored almost every point, having dominated the enemy so thoroughly only to see themselves lose the war. Right now world Jewry is centered in the US and Israel, and with the economic situation for the Israeli state becoming more and more tenuous over the next 15-20 years their prospects for recruiting more Israelis are very low. At this stage almost anyone who is going to emigrate already did. Despite highly publicized trips to Israel, nominally free, filled with propaganda, brainwashing, and lots of emotional arm twisting, more people are leaving Israel, for Europe, Canada and the USA, than are coming in. Palestinians have a much higher reproductive rate that Israelis, and the reproductive rate is not about to go down as the economy totally gets destroyed and more and more people become ultra religious. Between the anvil of poverty and the hard hammer of Occupation ignorance and desperation are being born in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen. Higher Palestinian reproductive rates spell doom for Israel. Israel has always had a hard time selling its image. Only the facts that the occupation happened "long ago" and that Arabs and Jews have been fighting "forever" and that the occupation is "fait accompli" has given Israel the veneer of respectability, but as the Palestinian population keeps rising the veneer is eroding as the State of Israel ceases to have legitimacy as a "Jewish" state. At some point the fragmented West Bank and Gaza might become self-governed, but they'll be self-governed slums and right next to the pristine white Riviera style homes of the European settlers. Coming only within a generation since the end of Apartheid, these images are deadlier than a thousand suicide bombers.

Where does this leave the Americans? American policy had centered around using Israel as a fulcrum to move the Middle East. The actions in the Gulf War have given rise to a situation where Israel is becoming more and more obsolete and expensive. The US cannot have an about face that is too quick or it will risk looking weak in the Middle East. Should it cut Israel loose it would signal a free for all against Israel that could strengthen too many opposition parties in the state the US is trying to cultivate pro-US regimes in. After the first Gulf War American policy makers began realizing that it is cheaper to have people 'voluntarily' support you than to grind them into the ground to achieve the same object. The Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Egypt are such examples. Especially where the local regimes are already weak domestically on a variety of issues. Yet, the Americans can't be seen as being too friendly to Israel, at least not unacceptably so. So who is sent in to pass these rocky rapid? Is this intrepid band of adventurers lead by people who are articulate, versatile, and capable of dealing with so many nuances of the Middle East? No, they send in the most dogmatic, inflexible, inarticulate, and plain stupid gang that can't shoot straight. At the time where the USA needs more capable leaders American hobble themselves by electing not the smartest and the brightest, but people who reflect them so honestly as to be painful. Venal, vindictive, provincial, ignorant, xenophobic, misogynistic, short sighted, dogmatic, corrupt, and arrogant are not traits that are helpful to have when you are trying to lead the world from over six thousand miles away and never have come together so clearly as they have in the second Bush Administration.

They send in a succession of envoys, special envoys, friends, people of interest, Big Names, and characters to massage the "Palestine Problem" all of which are destined to fail. The Palestinian Authority isn't stupid enough to trust the US so completely as to undo themselves, and like chimpanzees cornered by hunters that aren't above flinging shit at the US as last resort. The Israelis on the other hand know full well how expendable they are. If need be the US would cut them loose without a second thought and as the situation gets less favorable to the US Israel is jockeying for a better position hoping that when the fall comes, it doesn't come to hard.

For all its might though the American game is impotent. The Neocons in power haven't yet realized the magnitude of changes coming across the Arab world. Their destabilization of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have too many consequences their simplistic world view cannot grapple with. What has not happened yet is somebody calling them on their game. Nobody has yet made the decision to deal with the unknown instability and forsake the current instability that everyone thinks they know.

People talk about the 'realities of the Middle East', the weight of history, and people bred to do this and that, what people haven't confronted yet is that we are for the time being prisoners of little else but out our conceptions. The danger is always there for those people who think that change is not in the air when it is, very few people recover from that mistake. So many agencies making the same mistake has the ingredients of great comedy, tragedy, or most likely, both. Whatever the change though, the people who are paying for it are the people who always pay for it. While governments may lose power and prestige the ordinary person on the street is more likely to lose their life.

So apparently spammers do read the news. I wonder if one day we can draw broad strokes of history from what 419 scam emails have to say. This is one recently reported on in The Register:

My name is MRS LIGI SOLOMON; a contractor from ISREAL

The statistics shows that the Economy of your country is getting better and will be more profitable in few years to come.I am interested to invest in your country through you. I am now in London with the Sum of US$8,400 000.00 Dollars which I would like to invest in your country if possible?

Click Here

I made this money through one of the contract I handle in Jerusalem during the relocation of Gaza trip and I am not safe if go back to Gaza since we are not allowed to stay there again. I hope you can understand.

Please kindly get back to me as soon as possible.

Best regards, MRS LIGI SOLOMON
Tel: +44 7031923299
Email: ligisolo@yahoo.com