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This week in Israel: Remembering Yitzhak Rabin

Lisa N. Goldman · 19:06

On November 4, 1995, following a peace rally that is estimated to have attracted nearly 500,000 people to Tel Aviv’s central square, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. Rabin’s violent death is commonly regarded by the vast majority of Israelis as one of the most tragic and momentous events in their country’s history; every Israeli remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing that night. This week, is the 10th anniversary of what Israelis call “retzakh Rabin” – Rabin’s murder.

The commemorations began yesterday with the first of a series of ceremonies that will culminate on Saturday, November 14, when the Hebrew calendar date of the anniversary falls. The memorial rally will be held next Saturday night in Tel Aviv, in the place that is now called Rabin Square. Bill Clinton, who touched the hearts of so many when he bade farewell to Rabin in Hebrew with the words “shalom haver” (goodbye, friend), is scheduled to be among the speakers.

Israel’s three daily newspapers devoted most of their weekend editions, which are published on Fridays, to articles that commemorate Rabin and examine his legacy. Haaretz newspaper issued its Friday edition with a black border to indicate mourning, and included a supplement devoted exclusively to the 10th anniversary.

And several Israeli bloggers have written about their memories and feelings.

Shai has written a series of posts that include a vivid description of how he heard the news, what he saw on the streets of Jerusalem and a sober analysis of how the event affected Israeli society and politics. In the first post of the series, he writes:

Rabin’s murder was the first in a long chain of horrible events that destroyed a lot of our assumptions about how things are. It destroyed the idea that, no matter what, the internal political debate in this country would remain in the realm of the political and not veer towards the realm of violence.

The rest of the series is here, here and here.

Shai and I were also invited to participate in a discussion of Rabin’s legacy hosted by the BBC World Service’s programme World Have Your Say. You can listen to the audio link here. (You can hear us about 15 minutes into the programme).

Other bloggers who wrote about Rabin are He of Something Something and poet and Tel Aviv University professor of literature Karen Alkalay-Gut, who included a poem she wrote (November 3 entry) about Rabin. I also posted about my memories here.

But not everyone in the Israeli blogosphere is writing about Rabin this week, and I wouldn’t want readers to have the impression that we are all walking around in a state of mourning. We remember, yes, but we also live our lives. So here is what some other bloggers have been writing about.

Stephanie Freid of Stefanella’s Drive Thru wrote a hilarious post about English mis-spellings and mis-translations on menus in Israeli restaurants. Steak Intreecote, anybody?

Brian Blum of This Normal Life wrote a touching post about the bat mitzvah, or coming of age ceremony, of his daughter Merav in Jerusalem. It is customary for the young person to give a speech, and Merav chose to speak about how one should read the stories of the Bible. Should we take it as literally true that God created the world in six days? If we do not take this literally, then why are these stories important?

John, a non-Jew from North Carolina who lives with his Israeli partner (and clerk to Israeli supreme court president Aharon Barak) Yaacov in Jerusalem, writes about the issue of privacy versus security in a very security-conscious society. How would you feel if a police officer called you at home to ask if that was your car parked in front of the President of Israel's residence? John couldn't decide if he was thrilled about carrying on the whole conversation in Hebrew (he's only lived in Israel for one year) or disturbed that the government could track him down so easily.

And Chayyeisarah, a modern Orthodox journalist who moved from New York to Jerusalem two years ago, provides a lighthearted list of what she learned after her breakup with her first Israeli boyfriend.

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From the Jordanian Blogosphere

Roba Al Assi · 11:28

Jordanian Bedouin posing in one of Jordan's vast deserts by Laith Majali

With the occasion of Eid, a holiday celebrated bi-annually by over a billion Muslims, the Jordanian Blogosphere wishes everyone a happy and blessed Eid. Don't miss out pictures of Ma'mool, the holiday dessert, and a special Eid podcast by Ahmad Humeid.

Freedom of speech isn't having a very good week. Sabbah reports that the draft of Press and Publications Law is problematical and needs to be significantly reworked if the Kingdom is to deliver its stated goals of modernisation and democratisation. This event coincides with the detaining of Egyptian blogger Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman, and the sentencing of Libyan Abd al-Raziq al-Mansuri, an Internet journalist, to one-and-a-half years in prison after he published articles critical of the government.

On a more local front, Shaden of Sugar Cubes writes about the environmentalists protest against the pollution of Wadi Himara while Firas of IHeartAmman wonders “Why don't we have Greenpeace in Jordan?” Natasha Tynes of Mental Mayhem claims that she found the recent reports on drug-use by Jordanians disturbing, and Naseem Tarawneh of The Black Iris speculates, “Why is it that pessimism must surround everything in Jordan?“

Lina Ejeilat meanwhile poses a question to all- “Have we lost the ability to laugh at ourselves?”, and also has pictures of her explorations of the South of Jordan.

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“Mort Pour Rien” - Dead for Nothing in Paris

Sokari Ekine · 09:43

Bouna et Zaid

Members of Paris’s African community have been rioting in the streets of Paris for the past 9 days. The riots were triggered by the death of two youths of African descent, Bouna Traore, aged 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, were electrocuted at an electricity sub-station in Clichy-sous-Bois as they ran from the police. A third youth who escaped death, said they panicked and ran because they found themselves near the scene of a break-in incident where police began to arrive. The police deny any involvement in the boys' death. It should be noted that these young people are not immigrants. Their grandparents and possibly their parents are but they are born in France and are French citizens. Constantly referring to them as "immigrants" is a problem in itself and reinforces their exclusion from mainstream French society.

The boys did not have criminal records, nor were they known to the police, so why did they run? The explanation given in Indymedia Paris by Laurent Levy is very plausible given the appalling racist record of the French police. They knew what would happen to them if they were stopped for an ID check. They would risk being detained and spending several hours being humiliated at the police station - you do not have to have much of an imagination to know the kind of taunts the boys would be subjected to. It was late and they wanted to get home where they were expected by their families. Levy also asks why the Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy had to say that this drama took place after a burglary attempt implying the boys were invovled or boys "like them": i.e. Africans and Arabs.

Following the death of the boys on Thursday there were two days of riots. On the Saturday community members in an attempt to calm the situation organised a silent march in memory of the teenagers. In the evening, some 150 young Africans met with the Mayor to discuss the events. The mayor talked about the cost of the damage but did not make any reference to the heavy handed policing. The youths became very angry at the police, the repression, the abusive language directed at their mothers, calling them sluts. The police began to arrive with flashballs (for shooting rubber bullets) and riot gear provoking the crowds. They then told the brother of one of the dead youths to go home. He took three steps towards the police who then began to fire tear gas at the crowd. The following day, about 8.30pm on Sunday evening there was another incident which took place around the local Mosque. By this time according to Netlex things had calmed down but it seems the police presence was heavy in the area. It is not clear what exactly happened but the police released tear gas grenades one of which landed in the local Mosque during prayers which was full of families. A panic followed as the building filled with smoke and people were crying and coughing and running. It is this incident that triggered the riots again and they have continued ever since spreading into a worsening situation and spreading to other French cities.

Tarik parle : «J'aimerais rappeler les faits, dit-il d'une voix posée.
Il y a eu énormément de comportements agressifs, d'insultes, vis-à-vis
des gens qui habitent ce quartier. Dimanche, il y avait des policiers
qui étaient là pour taper du bougnoule, il faut bien le dire. Il y a eu
des femmes insultées en sortant d'ici. Les policiers en sont venus à
tirer une grenade dans la mosquée. Et la violence est repartie.» Il conclut : «On
est dans un Etat, mais on ne sait pas si c'est un Etat de droit. Je
demande aussi un message du gouvernement pour nous rassurer.
Rassurez-nous. (Liberation)

Tarik said"I would like to remind you of the facts. There was a lot of aggressive behaviour and insults towards the people who live in this quarter. On Sunday there were police here who came for a fight. There were women who were insulted as they were leaving the mosque. The police came to throw a grenade in the Mosque and the violence started again. We are in a state (government) but I don't know if it is a state of rights. I am also asking the government to reassure us.

The riots are reminiscent of the inner city riots in England during the mid-1980s when racial tensions came to ahead and Black people in a number of inner cities took to the streets in running battles with police following arrests of Black youths. The reasons then are the same as the ones facing North and West Africans in France today; inferior education, lack of job opportunities, appalling housing conditions in run down estates (three arson related fires have taken place this year in properties lived in by West Africans) exclusion from the political process with no representation in government or in the police force; institutionalised racism, racist police who systematically harass young West and North African males; the criminalisation of wearing headscarves.

Senegalese blogger, SEMEtt ou l'étincelle noire explains how minorities feel in today's France (translated).

France has to get a grip of itself. It is becoming less and less a prized destination because of the increasing racism and the incongruous nationalisms and xenophobia. The bad treatment of Africans and minorities in general such as the fires in the buildings and expulsions from our point of view constitute violations of our human rights. This makes us look at the coup d'etat of the French National Front at the last elections as the symptom of the social explosion that is lying in wait for France.

In other words the two issues, first the abuse of people and secondly the popularity of Le Pen's Front National, when the two are put together you get what is happening in Paris and other French cities today - explosions of people.

The response of the Government has been to encourage the police's heavy handed methods of control including the use of arms. A video recording shown on Afrik.com shows what appears to be plain clothes policeman shooting at civilians on the streets of Paris. Their intransigent refusal to acknowledge the economic and social deprivation that ethnic minority communities face is further proof of France's failing race relations. Nicolas Sarkozy ( minister of the interior) has further inflamed the situation by describing the youths as "racaille" - scum.

"vous
en avez, assez, hein! Vous en avez assez de cette bande de racaille. On
va vous en debarrasser" (You have had enough eh! You have had enough
of these gangs of scum. We are going to get rid of them for you.)

Netlex Blogs
adds that by borrowing the language of the extreme right to stigmatise
"the Scum" "le ministre ne joue-t-il pas les pompiers pyromanes?" - literally - "isn't the Minister playing at being an arsonist firefighter?"

One interesting factor emerging in the blogosphere and mainstream media is that references are now being made to "terrorists" "Islamists" and "fundamentalists". LittleGreenFootballs, makes reference to a report in an English speaking French paper, Expatica, that claims an "Algerian" group has called France "Enemy no.1".

"The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr," the group's leader Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also own as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, was quoted as saying in an Internet message earlier this month.

The report goes on to say that nine people arrested by the French police on Monday were supposedly part of this group - the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat).

Another blog, AndrewSullivan.com, has a report from the New York Post which concludes that

This is still a religious war: of fundamentalism versus secularism. And Chirac is discovering that no amount of appeasement can stave it off.

Palemtto Pundit continues with the references to "terrorists and islam". This kind of language is inflammatory and distracts from the root cause of the disaffection and marginalisation of ethnic communities in France.

One has to ask who benefits from spreading this kind of information when the reality is that the Muslim community leaders have themselves tried to calm the situation.

The Maghreb blogosphere (Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria) except for The Moor Next Door is surprisingly quiet on the Paris riots? Why?

There will people out there who will say - nothing justifies the rioting and vandalisation that is taking place. Of course one could say that but I do not think it is particularly helpful or constructive as the rioting is happening and there are reasons why it is happening. What is taking place in France today has been brewing for the past 30 years. People and especially young people who are constantly and incessantly faced with racism and marginalistion in their daily lives whether on the streets of the US, Europe, Palestine, apartheid South Africa, or Bolivia will eventually take to the streets. The riots are the outcome of a culmination of experiences and incidents over a period of time, they are not simply happening in a vacuum of nothingness. France will have to face the reality of this otherwise it and Europe will sink into further violence as communities become even more polarised.

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Participative news blogs, a new Chilean voice

Rosario Lizana · 03:12

Chile’s first participative news blog, “El Morrocotudo”, was born last week in the northern city of Arica. The newly launched blog has already attracted 200 registrations from all over Chile. The focus of interest spreads from local concerns in Arica to national Chilean and international issues.

The project has been promoted by students of Senator Fernando Flores, who has been actively promoting blogging as part of his lectures at Tarapacá University. Some of these students are also part of this university’s innovative Entrepreneur Center, created in 2001.
Over the last 15 years since the restrictive period of military government (1973-1990), journalists have been able to develop their profession in increasingly autonomous ways. Changing journalism practices however move within an ambiguous terrain. Mauricio Hoffman, a well-known television news presenter, recently had to close his blog after a misunderstanding regarding his personal analysis of media, which in turn triggered a public controversy about blogs and identity.

On the other hand, almost the 90% of the newspaper market is owned by just two large enterprises: Copesa (publishers of “La tercera”, “La Hora”, “La Cuarta”, “Siete mas siete”) and El Mercurio (with “El Mercurio”, “Las Ultimas Noticias” and “La Segunda”). This situation was enough motivation for a group of active journalists to launch a blog to discuss subjects that the existing media would not publish.

At present, of the press market, El Mercurio, has its only one RSS system in its editorial content - for the youth-oriented magazine, “Zona de Contacto”. From Copesa, there are blogs for the sports section of “La Tercera” and the top selling newspaper “La Cuarta”, however neither critical issues.

Another news blog, “Lanalhue Noticias”, produced by interested local people appeared recently in Cañete, a very small city over 2,000 miles to the south of Arica; however unlike “El Morrocotudo”, the public can only comment upon articles, not submit them.

The new Chilean grass-roots blogs “El Morrocotudo” and “Lanalhue Noticias” have been launched to offer news in different participative ways and to provide other alternatives that allow ordinary people to participate in the debates of national issues.

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