In light of this morning's news ...

... (Haaretz, BBC, Al-Jazeera) ...

Here is a link to a portrait by the photographer AnomalousNYC.
It's part of his Palestine Project.

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In Paris

I just spent the weekend in Paris. On Sunday, there was a small anti-Zionist manifestation at Palace de Chaillot. On their flyers they advocated "a democratic and secular Palestine for EVERYONE" in place of the apartheid state of Israel.

Last weekend there were only this kind of small, decentralised actions for Gaza in France, but there is a huge national manifestation planned for January 24th.

Click the photos for larger view:













(Photos by Tinet)

Israeli soldiers are such great propaganda material

Photo by Gallo/Getty images, via Al Jazeera.

Young Israeli men (and women) tend to be very photogenique. I suspect the Israeli propaganda machinery is well aware of this, since the media right now is flooded with photos of handsome Israeli soldiers ... (Of course, all of them taken while the soldiers are hanging out and posing next to their Merkavas outside the Gaza Strip, since Israeli officials do not allow journalists to enter and with their own eyes witness the carnage and destruction the formidable Israeli military machine is wreaking upon the people in Gaza, who have, what? Rudimentary home made rockets that have killed three people so far?)

The individual Israeli soldiers are of course very much pawns in a game, caught up in the demands of political ambitions and extremist groups, as well as a macho culture where army service is an integral part of your life.


Photo from Getty Images, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier watches an Air Force bombing attack against the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, on January 9th.


Photo by AFP/Getty Images, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier prepares a tank on January 14th, before rolling on towards the Gaza Strip.


Photo by Anja Niedringhaus/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli Army soldier recites morning prayers on January 13th.


Photo by Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli infantry soldier.


Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier sleeps on top of a tank, January 11th.


Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images, via the Boston Globe. An Israeli soldier prays as troops take position on the Israeli-Gaza Strip border on December 30th.


Photo from Reuters, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier just outside the northern Gaza Strip, January 12th.


Photo by Alex Majoli/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier at a deployment area on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, on Thursday, Jan. 15th.

But it doesn't have to be like this! Here, girls from the Shministim, an organization of Israeli conscientious objectors, are working to convince cute soldiers that they would be even more of real men if they refused to carry arms:





You too can help! To find out more, visit the websites of the Shministim and New Profile, an Israeli feminist anti-militarism group which provides support to the Shministim and other conscientious objectors:
december18th.org
newprofile.org



Photo by Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier, injured in operations in the Gaza Strip, is wheeled into Soroka Hospital in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba, January 10th.
He is one of the 77 Israeli soldiers who have been wounded in the last 21 days. Maybe he, and many others of them, will one day wonder what his injuries were for.


Meanwhile, a Palestinian man cries in face of the death of his family, outside Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital on January 5th. Photo by AFP/Getty Images, via Daylife.

The inevitable comparison, since December 27th:
Israelis: 13 dead and 159 wounded (source)
Palestinians: more than 1,100 dead and 5,200 wounded (source)

It seems chillingly obvious that the Israeli government is using their "last chance" at living out their genocidal tendencies before US president-elect Obama's inauguration on Tuesday. Because, who knows, after that maybe games like this can't be played anymore?
I wish.

Men who once were, or would have been

In the last thirteen days, the Israeli army has killed more than 700 people in Gaza, 210 of them children. (Source: Democracy Now) The motivation for thir deaths is apparently to protect against and/or take revenge for the rudimentary qassam rockets fired from the Gaza strip into Israel. 10 Israelis have died in the same period, a couple of them civilians killed by qassam rockets and the rest soldiers.
In the three years between the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the recent attack, 11 Israelis were killed by qassam rockets fired from Gaza. Meanwhile, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza. (Source: Avi Shlaim)

Anyway, this is all statistics. But behind the numbers are individual fates. Here are two men from Gaza who were killed by the Israeli army - one of them once was a handsome young man, and the other would surely have grown up to be one if he had not been killed.


According to the caption at the Boston Globe, this is the body of a Palestinian security force officer, who lays in the rubble after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Gaza City, Sunday, Dec. 28, 2008. The Photo is by Fadi Adwan/AP.
It is unclear what his exact age was, but his hair is mostly black, so he was not very old, and from his wedding ring we can tell that he was married. Maybe he had children. While most of his face is hidden, what we can see hints at handsome features.


This teenage boy is 13 year old Na'el Zohair Abu-`Oun, who was killed March 1st, 2008 in the Eastern Jabalyah camp in the northern Gaza Strip. As he and six school mates were curiously watching clashes between Palestinian fighters and Israeli army forces, an Israeli reconnaissance plane fired a missile at them, and Na'el, along with two of his friends, was killed on the spot.
According to Islamonline.org, Na'el liked to draw and to swim, and he wanted to be a lawyer like his father.

Baghdad Calling

Baghdad Calling is a book by photojournalist Geert van Kesteren. In interviews and photos - both his own and those collected from Iraqi amateur photographers - it shows the everyday life of Iraqi refugees, most of whom have escaped from the centres of conflict to calmer parts of Iraq or neighbouring countries like Jordan, Turkey and Syria. There is hardly any relief in any form for these refugees, "with all the attendant consequences: children do not go to school and people are denied any medical care", as Jan Gruiters writes in the introduction.

People cope as they can - in the photo below, for example, two boys entertain their family by putting on a muscle show ...



Photo by Geert van Kesteren, Syria 2007.

Find out more about the book and see more photos: www.baghdadcalling.com

Challenge!

How can I match the previous awesome posts by Tinet?
I browsed desperately through Flickr for ideas. There was plenty of the stuff that Chirayliq are made of, including cute and mischievous Jews and cuddly grumpy Arabs (doesn't he look a bit like Adriano Celentano?) and their slightly insane admirers.*)

*) Yes, those are all devoted fans of the young prince of Dubai whom Sweden's crown princess Victoria visited a few months ago. I guess I am a bit insane too. I blame Tintin comics, they always had lots of cute swarthy Arabs running about in flowing robes. The stereotype totally backfired. Just look at this guy... mashallah!

But what really took the cake was this video found through the always entertaining desi blog Sepia Mutiny (!). Giju John (33) was born i Thiruvananthapuram, India, and is now an engineer in Silicon Valley. He also dances a mean salsa - Hindi style.



Watch out for the cute East Asian couple's acrobatic routine right before the end!

A merry meeting

A merry meeting, originally uploaded by Ainurel.

Swedish crown princess Victoria meets the crown prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Spotted in Svensk Damtidning, some May issue.

I think the monarchy should be abolished, but there's one thing Vickan could do to make me a bit more interested in the Swedish royal family. I have no idea why she keeps dating those greasy Swedish gym teacher brats called "Daniel" (they all look alike to me and the king anyway) when she could vamp us a real sheik instead.

Naseer Shamma

Naseer Shamma is an Iraqi musician who has specialized in playing the 'oud, a traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument.

Shamma's interest in the oud awoke already at 11 years of age, when he was a young boy in the city Kut on the Tigris river. Since then he has become a world-renowned master of the instrument.

The classical 'oud has six strings, but Shamma has constructed an 8-string 'oud following a manuscript of the 9th century music theorist Al-Farabi, expanding the musical range. (Read more about it and see Farabi's manuscript at Shamma's official website.)

He has also developed a new method of playing the 'oud with only one hand (something that was originally invented by the Iraqi 'oud master Salim Abdulkarim), so that children and soldiers who have lost one arm in war could play the 'oud.



Here, Naseer Shamma is performing "رقصة الفرس" ("When the mare is dancing"):

And here, he demonstrates his one-handed 'oud technique (clip originally from Mike's ouds):

Shamma has lived in exile in Cairo since 1993, but remains conscious of the plight of his fellow countrymen, 4.2 million of whom are refugees, both within Iraq and in neighbouring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan. In December he helped launch a 90-day fundraising campaign to aid Iraqi refugees, in cooperation with the League of Arab States and UNHCR. Back in October, Shamma had approached the League of Arab States offering to help after watching a documentary on Iraqi refugees in neighbouring countries:

"I have not been able to sleep more than four or five hours a day since that documentary," he said, sitting at his office in a 14th-century house in Cairo's Islamic quarter, where he founded a school to teach youngsters how to play the oud, the Arab cousin of the European lute.
"Winter is approaching. I cannot imagine myself sleeping on a comfortable bed while others are cold, cannot afford medicine or dinner," he said in an interview on Monday. (Reuters)

Read more about the campaign.