Last week the Kit from the lovely Seek New Travel blog tagged me to participate in HostelBookers 7 Super Shots. So here are mine. I’ve chosen a bit of a street-art/graffiti theme and stuck to the suggested titles in only the very loosest of ways. 1. A photo that…takes my breath away This shot was […]
December 16, 2011
Every day, Fred Schlomka’s Green Olive tour company picks up a car full of Jerusalem tourists and guides them through the Separation Wall into the Palestinian West Bank, visiting refugee camps, social enterprises and – in what’s been seen by some as a controversial move – settler communities. Having joined one of these tours earlier […]
April 23, 2011
On the sunny April afternoon I’m invited to check out the fortnightly protest against Ahava’s Covent Garden store, it’s clear that this week – perhaps more than most weeks – emotions are running high. It is just one day after the body of peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni was found by Hamas forces in an abandoned […]
April 8, 2011
With construction beginning in 2003, the Israeli authorities erected the 8m concrete wall with incredible speed. It’s aim, they say, is to help stop Palestinian suicide bombings on Israeli soil. Since then, the number of attacks has declined by more than 90%. However, the wall makes life for many Palestinians even more difficult. For a […]
February 26, 2011
Having escaped the bustling streets in favour of nursing a strong macchiato in the wonderful Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem, I got talking to a girl on the next table who, it turned out, worked for the Palestinian News Network. Mentioning this blog, we got talking about the challenges of writing about the conflict here in […]
April 16, 2010
Those of you following the Israel-Palestine situation closely will have noticed the development of a new conflict in recent months – that between the Israeli thinkers (in the form of the Reut Institute think tank) and the prominent author and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activist, Naomi Klein. The debate centres on the fundamental issue […]
August 4, 2009
This documentary and video material has been selected to help you get to grips with this particular conflict. Some of the videos I’ve been directed to by my wonderful I-P course tutor, and some of them I’ve found myself. Where possible, I’ve embedded the videos into this article. 1. For getting a good overview: The Promised Land? (Al Jazeera […]
July 28, 2009
Given that this conflict is at the centre, or at least near the inner edge of most foreign policy decisions across the world, no one knows anything about it! It's like Fightclub. The first rule of Fightclub is...you don't talk about Fightclub. And why don't you talk about Fightclub? Because, if you do, you get in trouble. It'll be bad. Presumably even worse than actually going to Fightclub. Where are all the films about Israel and Palestine? Not the cool hip indie films; the big films, the blockbusters, the Blood Diamond of the Middle East? Or if not films, maybe books? Not high-brow academic histories or intellectual policy hardbacks; I'm talking the Kite Runner of Ramallah; the Book Seller of Tel Aviv? You can hear the producers and publishers squirming in their seats as they say, quietly, 'don't go there.'
April 24, 2012
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