A story I wrote for the Daily Star last week on a few American students who went to Palestine. Photo by friend Greg Jeske, a documentary photographer and student at AUC.
With Palestinian frustrations rising — and demographers predicting an eventual Palestinian majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan — just saying no is not a viable option for Israel. The responsibility of the United States, as Israel’s most vital ally, is to keep that uncomfortable reality firmly in Israel’s sight.
The Times warns demographics will rear their head sometime in the future, thus bringing a shift to historical population levels. It doesn’t mention that the local, Arab population in Palestine always vastly outnumbered the Yishuv — until 1948, mass explusion, and the advent of exclusion laws. 1967 helped too. But colonization is a stinging word, and rather than look back on that, the editorial board wants to warn Americans of this surprising, novel, and "uncomfortable" reality ahead.
Maybe Times readers just don’t care for history, or the Times doesn’t want them to.
Photo: Galilee, October 1948, Palestinians fleeing to Lebanon.
From Thursday’s story in the Daily Star Egypt, more photos of the textile factory in the mid-Delta city of Shibin Al-Kom.
The Spinning and Weaving Factory, state-owned until recently sold to an Indian company, which took over operations this past Thursday. We talked to a security guard, quoted in the story, who eventually led us on a quick tour of a mill.
The first mill, where workers stopped and smiled at our guide, who was head of security.
Walking out of the main gate and down the main street along the factory, we saw a crowd of men walking down the street. Was there going to be a protest? Some anticipation. We walked down toward the crowd, over sticky, newly paved blacktop, and then a loud siren, prison-break-style, went off in the tower. Time for work. It was 3:00, and went off at 3:15. The evening shift, 3-11pm.
Talking to workers on the street, some reluctant, terse, others crowding around to see who we were and what others were telling us. We met one worker who, after talking to Adam for a bit, was leading us down the street, back to the factory and inside through the workers’ entrance, before the main gate.
We criss-crossed through the complex, down big factory roads and mill houses, before going inside one, maybe three or four rows from the main gate. We’d been thinking there wasn’t going to be much of a story, just one security guard and some workers on the street, reluctant. But we were led through rows of spinning machines by a 19-year-employee who only gave his first name, Ashraf, talking to worker after worker on our way to an upstairs office looking over factory floor. We sat and talked to a manager and two other men in the office, and had tea over explanations of their wages - a pound an hour, 8 hours a day, paid each month - and the sale to the Indian company. Then they showed the new working conditions under globalization — one worker to a machine that otherwise had three. Workers gathering in pockets row after row told us how it was impossible for one man to work a machine — “look at him over there, he cannot keep up with the machine.”
Gas truck explosion in southern Giza village, Saturday AM
Full Story coming today in The Daily Star Egypt. Photos by Frederick Deknatel.
A lot in the village of Temoua, in southern Giza. The main drag of Temoua St., a few blocks away, was lined with about a dozens of state security and police trucks on Saturday afternoon. They arrived sometime in the morning after a gas truck exploded here around 1.30 am. When the government arrived exactly wasn’t clear — on Temoua St. officers said they first arrived soon after the blast, though people in village said no one was there until 11. Three officers on Temoua St. did not know when the rubble would be cleared. Crowds of children in the neighborhood were standing around and playing around the blown-up truck site, kicking gas tanks. One kid picked up the truck’s muffler when I took a photo.
The truck was loaded with hundreds of gas tanks, and Adam Makary was talking to people there who said the gas was for residents to use. First one tank ignited, then another blew — 3 blasts, accorinding to local witnesses. Firas al-Atrqchi, the DSE’s editor, had taken video footage of the blasts from his Maadi apartment window, across the Nile and miles away, having heard the blasts from there. Perhaps I’ll try and post the clip.
The ruined, charred gas truck and tanks littered one end of the muddy lot in Temoua on Saturday afternoon. Across from the rubble, on the two far ends of the lot, two other trucks, also loaded with gas tanks, were parked, apparently moved in that day, according to residents. There is a storage facility near Temoua and other sources said the exploded truck had been parked overnight on its way there. Fortunately no one was hurt, although two similar explosions occurred elsewhere very recently, as our story reports, causing two deaths.
So when will the rubble be moved? Late last August, my first week in Egypt, I was on a train to Alexandria four days after the major train crash just north of Cairo that killed 58 people, and we passed the wreckage, lying on the side of the tracks.
Cairo, Daily Star Egypt 9:09 pm
Been off here for a while. Arrived back in Cairo a little over a week ago; a two week break in the States was full of family, friends, great food, and cold, cold weather. Hoping to get into more of a routine on the CP like in the balmy days of September and October. I felt hot in a taxi for the first time in a while today — high of 73, sunny — maybe a shift to warmer weather will bring back regular posting.
I’m continuing to write for the Daily Star Egypt, with a number of stories before I left Cairo in mid-January and a few since returning back last week. Building up an archive, here’s the file so far:
The strange case files of Egypt-Israel espionage (Feb. 5, 2007)
No easy opinions in America on Bush, future direction (Jan. 31 ,2007)
Political activism continues to create a buzz on Egypt’s political blogs (Jan. 15, 2007)
Egypt teen finds his game squashing the best (Jan. 14, 2007)
Torture victim sentenced to three months in jail (Jan. 13-14, 2007)
New web portal to improve Iraq news coverage (Jan. 5, 2007)
Saddam execution reopens Iraq discussions in Cairo (Dec. 28, 2007)
