Bin Laden's Porn and Zionist Porn

Well, some really dirty stuff on the internet today.  Do not click on the link below if you are squeamish about lascivious women!

here

PORN XXX stash found at Bin Laden home compound - wahabi Islam Hypocracy !

Bin Laden porn xxx pornography found Home Movie dod dept defense white house obama releases private movies osama sex tape Compound

Boy, I'll tell ya.  That really is lewd, no?  Or maybe it is a secret message for terrorists -- every gesture has a meaning?
Kids, if you really want porn, go to Yahoo or Google or BING.  This is way too heavy for you.

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On another front, no pun intended, George Mitchell finally said "Screw this" and gave up on peace talks. 

Here is an anniversary wish list:

Volume 9; Number 9                                                                   Occupation End Notes                                                     May 13, 2011 In this Issue: Nakba Art Alice Walker Cornell Journal BDS & its Critics Twitter Jamming Hedy Epstein Boycott Bibi! Evergreen State Blockade Quiz Healthcare Month Nadia Hijab Rashid Khalidi Shop our Store Member Groups Sustain our Work A growing community is saying YES to freedom, justice and equality for all, by joining the Olive Branch Club, for an automatic recurring donation. Take Action:  Boycott Bibi Don't let your representative entertain Israeli apartheid policies against Palestinians when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to address a joint session of Congress this month. Click to join our Facebook Cause. Events:  DC Washington May 15 Protest Against Israel's Occupation in Palestine Washington May 20 Breaching the Wall Washington May 21-24 Move Over AIPAC! Washington June 10-12 American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee National Convention Washington June 16 Israel in the Last Decade- A New Phase of the "Jewish State" MISSOURI St. Louis May 14 Made in Palestine WASHINGTON Olympia May 15 Palestinian Nakba Day: Reading and Remembrance Seattle May 15 Remember al-Nakba Register YOUR event on the US Campaign's online event calendar!  Follow Us:  Newsletters  Twitter  YouTube  Blog  Facebook  Vimeo Available NOW from our shelves: DVD by Anna Baltzer   A moving introduction to the plight of Palestinians, in simple, everyday terms, narratated by US Campaign National Organizer Anna Baltzer. $15. Upcoming Delegations to Palestine-Israel: Palestinian-led international delegation: July 8 - 15, 2011 ICAHD-USA: July 10 - 25, 2011 "Summer Rebuilding Experience"  Joint Advocacy Initiative: July 23 - 31, 2011 "Journey for Justice" youth program  Interfaith Peace-Builders: May 21 - June 3, 2011: Voices of the Peace-Builders July 16 - 29, 2011: Today's Realities & Tomorrow's Leaders July 16 - 29, 2011: African Heritage Delegation Oct. 29 - Nov. 11, 2011: Olive Harvest Global Exchange: July 1-11, 2011: Prospects for Peace with Justice October 14-23, 2011: Fair Olive Harvest December 2-12, 2011: Prospects for Peace with Justice Christian Peacemaker Teams: May 24 - June 6, 2011 July 19 - August 1, 2011 September 6-19 (German lang.) November 15-28, 2011 Friends of Sabeel North America: June 4-18, 2011: Two-Week Fact-Finding Trip Click for a more thorough delegation directory Occupation End Notes: Global Rallies as Commemoration of Nakba Nears   Above: Poster announcing New York City's premiere Nakba commemoration event for 2011 (click image for details). Dear Human, Sunday marks 63 years of Palestinian dispossession since "Al-Nakba" or "the catastrophe." Right now, in a movement organized with active participation of youth, Palestinians are seizing the occasion to organize homeward marches. These will draw Palestinians living in refugee camps, in the occupied territories, within Israel, and in exile, as well as thousands of Palestinian solidarity activists worldwide. In the months before and after May 15, 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced out by Zionist armed forces and the Israeli military, and became refugees throughout the world. Israel razed more than 400 Palestinian villages and barred the refugees from ever returning to their land -- even though this right is enshrined in international law and UN resolutions. In the coming week, the marches and demonstrations will attest to the Palestinian determination to struggle for freedom from occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and justice through the refugees' right of return. From here in Washington, DC, to Atlanta to the Bay Area to Boston to Detroit to New York City to Seattleto St. Louis (to name a few), dozens of U.S. communities, including many of our member groups, will hold events of commemoration, solidarity, outreach and education to transform U.S. support for Israeli occupation and apartheid into support for human rights, international law and equality. Below we offer you a sampling of the latest, most compelling initiatives toward that end, by our member groups and others. Be sure to send us your feedback here, see our recent issues here, and read on! Yours, Joshua Hough Communications Director Revisit "Expressions of Nakba" web site for audiovisual feast   Above: Winner of our visual arts award, by Anne Paq. The US Campaign was founded with the mission to change U.S. policy toward this conflict so that it upholds the application of international law and human rights.  At the Nakba's 60th anniversary in 2008, we organized the first-ever international competition for the most creative artistic rendition of the Nakba and the right of return. Enjoy the extraordinary results at our web site... www.expressionsofnakba.org... Alice Walker:  "This Is the Freedom Ride of this Era." By US To Gaza (a US Campaign member group), May 10, 2011   Above: Watch video featuring Alice Walker. 50 years ago, on May 4, 1961, the first bus of the Freedom Rides left Washington, DC, headed to New Orleans, with people committed to challenging segregation. The Freedom Rides were one of the sparks that contributed to a movement to dismantle a degrading system that violated human rights. In an interview with organizers from The U.S. Boat to Gaza, Alice Walker, one of our nation's foremost contemporary writers and the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize, likened the planned Gaza "Freedom Flotilla II" to the Freedom Rides. In the U.S. the racist system of segregation was challenged; in South Africa the racist system of apartheid was challenged; in Palestine the racist system of occupation and apartheid, enforced by the Israeli government and supported by the U.S government, is being challenged and will come to an end. Article Continues with Video... Cornell students publish second annual journal, "Notes on Palestine/Israel" By Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine (a US Campaign member group) The occupation of Palestine will not end, but will only be managed differently, unless the regional system of military aid, client states, and despotism -- in a word, imperialism -- also ends. The good thing about a task this large is that one may start nearly anywhere. To this end, we've assembled this second volume to contribute our voices, critiques, and experiences to the mix, in the hopes that you find them informative, engaging, provocative, and useful: Max Ajl presents a view of the occupation from within Gaza, and Dan Sinykin relays his experience, on a Birthright trip, of the Israeli vision that blinds itself to Gaza. Howard Botwinick describes the burgeoning TIAA-CREF divestment campaign, and Beth Harris recounts her visit to the settler-targeted West Bank village of Iraq Burin. Kevin McGinnis traces the colonialist affiliations between the foundational myths of America and Israel, and Sayres Rudy concludes the collection with an extended meditation on the uses and abuses of the apartheid comparison. Download Journal in PDF... Power of BDS affirmed by its critics By Anna Baltzer, National Organizer, May 12, 2011 Are boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) proving effective as a form of pressure to isolate Israel and end its violations of Palestinian rights? We at the US Campaign think so, but you don't have to take our word for it. Two recent articles in the Jewish Daily Forward and the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz have affirmed the power of the growing BDS movement in placing a cost on Israel's occupation and apartheid policies. TheForward's piece, "Survey of Campus BDS Finds Few Serious Cases," sets out to diminish concern over the recent surge in campus BDS campaigns, but ends up making the case as well as anyone could for how and why ongoing BDS campaigns -- on-campus and off- -- are succeeding! Article Continues... AHAVA promotional campaign on Twitter jammed with BDS messaging By Maureen Clare Murphy on Electronic Intifada, May 11, 2011 The Stolen Beauty campaign focusing on a boycott of Ahava cosmetics, which are illegally manufactured in the occupied West Bank using Palestinian natural resources, has launched a culture jamming initiative currently underway on Twitter: [Ahava is] calling on people to Tweet skincare questions with the hashtag #AHAVAreborn ... a chance to win $300 worth of Mineral Magical Skincare... We are asking Ahava boycott supporters to use the hashtags #AHAVAreborn & #stolenbeauty... So many people have responded to this call that I can't see any tweets that aren't about BDS and Israel's rights abuses when searching "#AHAVAreborn" on Twitter. AHAVA is having an increasingly hard time covering up its human rights blemishes. It is has been dropped from retail stores in Canada and the UK and taken to court in France. As The Electronic Intifada reported last June, "Bad publicity caused Sex & the City star Kristin Davis to be dropped as a spokesperson for Ahava and as a goodwill ambassador for the international organization Oxfam after activists called on her to end her paid promotional appearances for Ahava." Learn More... Ambassador Charles Freeman to speak at Move Over AIPAC By CodePink (a US Campaign member group), May 6, 2011 We are pleased to announce that Ambassador Charles Freeman will be presenting his book America's Misadventures at the Move Over AIPAC Conference on Saturday, May 21, at 12:30 pm. Freeman has served as an American diplomat in China, Thailand and Africa, and as the United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992. Freeman was nominated in 2009 as chair of the National Intelligence Council because of his diverse background in defense, diplomacy and intelligence. News of his nomination infuriated the pro-Israel lobby and AIPAC launched a libel campaign against him. Ultimately, Freeman withdrew his nomination, publicly stating that, "I do not believe the National Intelligence Council could function effectively while its chair was under constant attack by unscrupulous people with a passionate attachment to the views of a political faction in a foreign country." Learn More... Take Action: Boycott Bibi! Members of Congress often declare that the United States is Israel's "best friend." As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu prepares to address a joint meeting of Congress later this month, it is time for us to wake up members of Congress and tell them that the United States must end its support for Israeli apartheid against Palestinians. Sign our petition to members of Congress demanding they boycott Bibi's address. Help us reach our goal of 10,000 signatures and we'll personally deliver your signature to House Speaker John Boehner, who invited Netanyahu to address Congress. Learn More & Take Action... Students to Board: "We will push you until you divest." Cooper Point Journal, May 12, 2011 "TESC Divest!" is a student group at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA   Above: On-campus representation of a refugee camp by student group "TESC Divest!" Click to enlarge. The Evergreen State College Board of Trustees' May 11 meeting was mobbed with students and community members full of opinions on the campus divestment movement. Evergreen alum Anna-Marie Murano vehemently demanded that the Trustees obey the student election supporting divestment. "So far, the board of trustees has failed us. The president [of the college] has failed us," she said. Article Continues... Gaza Blockade Quiz draws attention to Palestinian plight By Anna Balzter, National Organizer, May 10, 2011 Madison Area Peace Coalition is a US Campaign member group   Above: Madison Area Peace Coalition's Blockade Quiz Cinnamon or cumin, chocolate or coffee, fishing line or toilet paper -– which of these household items are allowed into Gaza under the Israeli blockade? Shoppers at the Madison, Wisconsin farmers' market were challenged to test their knowledge by taking the "Gaza Blockade Quiz." Each participant was asked to identify banned items from a table of everyday products. "This is a real eye-opener," said one college student. Many contestants stayed after taking the quiz to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others gathered around to watch the game being played. This provided an opening to ask shoppers how they would get by without fabric or vegetable seeds or toys for their children. Many were shocked by the capricious nature of the Israeli blockade. Not one respondent thought the prohibited items could be legitimately classified as military contraband. Article Continues... May is "Right to Health Care" Month Lori Helene Rudolph, Professor of Counseling and Consultant for the Palestinian Union for Social Workers and Psychologists Desperately ill men, women and children regularly suffer because they are needlessly delayed by Israeli-imposed curfews, blockades, and closures. I know because, as a mental health consultant and teacher who has lived and worked in the Occupied Territories for years, I've seen the unnecessary delays and the suffering with my own eyes. Jewish Voice for Peace is designating May as "Right to Health Care Month" as part of our "We Divest" campaign to get financial giant TIAA-CREF to divest from the Israeli occupation. Throughout May, we will offer many ways for you to learn about the health care situation in Palestine and will share tools you can use to reach out to medical, mental and public health professionals in your life to let them know about the vital role they could play in this campaign. Join the Campaign... Gaza and the Arab Spring: A Conversation with Nadia Hijab Shalom Rav blog, May 6, 2011 By Nadia Hijab, US Campaign Advisory Board Member Ta'anit Tzedek, Jewish Fast for Gaza, will sponsor "Gaza and the Arab Spring," a conference call with prominent Palestinian writer and human rights advocate Nadia Hijab onThursday, May 19 at 12:00 pm EST.  The Arab Spring -- a series of popular uprisings all over the Arab world -- has brought new hope for greater freedom, justice and democracy to millions of people throughout the Arab world and beyond. The uprisings have already brought about dramatic changes in several countries and the popular movement is growing in strength. How will these changes affect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more particularly the people of Gaza? Article Continues...  Prof. Rashid Khalidi on Hamas-Fatah agreement Rashid Khalidi is a member of the US Campaign's Advisory Board, and is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University's Middle East Institute, and editor of theJournal of Palestine Studies. On Palestine Studies TV, Will Youmans of the Institute for Palestine Studies spoke with Dr. Khalidi about the deal between Hamas and Fatah that is aimed at reconciliation after the state of division since 2007. This news set the theme for our previous edition ofOccupation End Notes. Watch Interview... L A S T   W O R D S The Flavor of Palestine We've teamed up with our friends at Canaan Fair Trade to offer you Palestinian fair trade products delivered directly to your door. Buying CFT products is a great way to support Palestinian farmers and the US Campaign. CFT olive oils make especially great gifts. Buy this Rumi Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil in a case of six 1-liter tins for $170. The Rumi Tree, cultivated in Palestine since the Roman Era, produces a robust and pungent olive oil with a buttery finish. It's USDA-certified organic, cold-pressed, extra virgin. Every tin sold sends $1 to Palestine Trees for Life, and an additional $1 for Canaan Scholarships. Shop Now... As the movement grows, so do we Rana Libdeh, Membership & Outreach Coordinator Following are the latest newcomers to our 350-strong coalition. It's great to have you!  Palestine Action Group, Corvallis, OR  Episcopal Bishop's Committee for Israel/Palestine, Seattle  Students for Justice in Palestine, Cornell  Students for Justice in Palestine, DePaul University  Students for Justice in Palestine, Florida International University To aid our members' networking efforts and to better gauge the coalition's regional diversity, we've mapped our member organizations, state-by-state! Click here to view the full list of groups. Has your group joined us yet? Join the Coalition... Back to Top Occupation End Notes is the US Campaign bi-weekly newsletter, designed as a tool for activists. For this newsletter to be successful, we need your participation. Use us to promote events, give feedback on recent actions, recommend resources, or just learn from other activists in the movement. If you or your organization is planning an event or you have information for the Newsletter, please contact the US Campaign by emailing us here. The US Campaign aims to change U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 43-year occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and that deny equal rights for all. ABOUT | TAKE ACTION | GET INVOLVED | STORE | DONATE | RESOURCES | MEDIA |SUBSCRIBE |  UNSUBSCRIBE | FORWARD TO A FRIEND US CAMPAIGN TO END THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION | PO BOX 21539 | WASHINGTON, DC 20009 202-332-0994 | USCAMPAIGN@ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG |WWW.ENDTHEOCCUPATION.ORG

The rape of palestine

It never seems to stop.  While we attack elsewhere, the press ignores Palestine and Gaza.  Any ideas why?

Al-Aseifar and Susya, May 7, 2011 In This Issue... Al-Aseifar and Susya, May 7, 2011 More Recent Articles Search The Only Democracy? Two things strike you immediately, closely followed by a familiar third. The first is the sheer brazenness of the theft—or, rather, of the thief, who stands before you jeering, smug, sure of his power, eager to hurt. He has already taken some 95% of your family’s land, and now he bullies his way into the tiny patch that is left in order to harass you and humiliate you further, for this evidently gives him joy. Then there is the pure racism, purer perhaps than what one sees anywhere else in the world today. The thief regards you as barely human, an object capable only of feeling pain, though he needs you as his victim, for without you he is incomplete, profoundly frustrated, lonely, unfulfilled. Thus the settler in his Shabbat white, a huge knitted skullcap on his head, takes a pebble and holds it out on his fingertips to a Palestinian woman from Susya as he clucks his tongue at her, beckoning her, teasing her, as one would a dog, then tosses the pebble at her in contempt, as one throws a dog a biscuit, and he laughs. I saw him do it this morning in Susya, and I wasn’t the only witness. The third thing is the system that protects the thief and ensures that no harm will come to him and that he will never be punished, for the system is built upon his theft. None of this is new, only somehow starker, more palpable, yet hardly credible, on this perfect spring morning in south Hebron. Drops of bitter-sweet dusty rain fell in Jerusalem as I left home, but here in Susya we witness a shocking choreography of cloud and sun, and the air lingers on my tongue and the light caresses my eyes and the wind is here, too, to welcome us back. The stubborn barley is a bit higher than it was when I was here three weeks ago. It is 9:00, and there is no time to lose. We rush from the van over the hill to the olive grove in the wadi; a donkey brays. Past the trees, up the slope, on Palestinian land, a group of ten or twelve settlers is enacting a brutal ritual of mockery, singing, snarling, making obscene gestures, sneering at the Palestinians who stand in disarray just below them. The leader—the one of the dog-gesture—literally dances in and out of the Palestinian clusters, daring them to stop him, taunting them, and from time to time he lashes out at them with his fists, pushes, shoves, pounds at them, demonstrating his absolute superiority, relishing this moment of his power and the precious opportunity to insult. The three soldiers who have clambered down the hill from the settlement cannot stop him, nor do they seem very eager to do so. They struggle vainly to separate the settlers from their victims, but this is not a static setting; the settlers push ever more deeply into the tiny Palestinian enclave, and movement swirls and spills out over the hill, an alternative, ugly human choreography to match that of clouds and sun above as we ebb and flow in arcs and circles, trying to shield the Palestinians from their attackers, and the soldiers bark their futile threats and orders, and soon we’re already half a mile north of the olive grove where we began and the settlers are closing in now on the sheepfold and the tents and the access road, still very much in control. More soldiers—Border Police—arrive. They begin, as usual, by arresting, more or less at random, an elderly Palestinian gentleman, whom they spirit away to a makeshift holding area among the trees. By now a second Ta’ayush contingent has arrived, a large group. Amiel strides straight into the battle zone and, within seconds, is arrested and handcuffed; as always, he is calm, self-possessed, and unafraid, but the Border Police officer tells him he is resisting arrest and will suffer the consequences. Why, one wonders, should the officer want to lie? No one touches the rampaging settlers. So it goes for a long time, maybe two hours or so of dashing madly over the hills to head off one settler attack after another, and then the settlers send their large herd of sheep to graze, where else, in the Palestinian fields and the soldiers force them back uphill, and a vast line of settlers from Susya, women, children, men, some armed with machine guns, emerge for their Shabbat stroll through the lands of their Palestinian neighbors with four or five army command-cars to protect them—as if the Palestinians and not these settlers were the threat to peace and quiet on this bright windy morning. “They always want to make trouble, and the soldiers go with them,” says a dignified Palestinian shepherd, watching this long column in disgust as he holds high the upper row of a make-shift barbed-wire fence so we can pass through. It’s been some time since I’ve run so far and so fast over these rocks. We’ve got it all down in high-quality digital films. Someday, I think, not yet but someday, some of the criminals will yet pay for their crimes. Their time will come. When at last it’s over and we’re no longer needed, we split into two groups. One crosses the road to what’s left of the Jbur family’s encampment, which the Civil Administration demolished on Thursday. Yesterday the family itself was driven out with stun grenades and tear gas and blows—one woman was wounded in the leg. I won’t repeat the whole story, which I’ve described before. But I take this demolition as a personal affront, since among other acts of violent destruction the army obliterated a large well that I helped dig out from the stones and dirt left by its previous demolition. We worked for hours that day, and it looked like the well would eventually be serviceable again. My back hurt for weeks. There’s nothing left there now. The Civil Administration prides itself on its efficiency. The other group, which I join, heads for the Abu Kbeita fields on the slopes under a small khirbeh called al-Aseifar. This is another long and tortuous story. We are close to the Green Line—and, indeed, the main checkpoint on the road, recently privatized, is several kilometers north of the border, as if Palestinian lands lying to the south had already been annexed to Israel. What this means in practice is that the Abu Kbeita family, among others, have been turned into Illegal Aliens (shabachim) while residing in their own homes. They’re not the only ones to suffer this fate, heavy with consequences for daily survival; but in addition, they have to deal with a settler, Danny, who claims that the Abu Kbeita fields, leased from the original owner, Hawamdi, in Samu’a, belong to him. He is wrong: the case went to the Supreme Court, which decided in 1991 in favor of the Palestinians. None of this has stopped the settlers, including those from Beit Yatir just across the main road, from trying to drive Mahmud Abu Kbeita and his three brothers off the land. These settlers, like so many others in south Hebron, are often violent; they have stoned the Abu Kbeitas when they felt like it, broken the arm of Osama, one of Mahmud’s sons, and even penetrated into the family house in al-Aseifar where, according to some testimonies, they drove a large knife or other weapon right through the wall. Here’s a lesson in reality in the south Hebron hills. In November the family plowed the main field and sowed it with barley and wheat. In December settlers came and plowed over the fledgling shoots. The family sowed again, and now it is harvest time—but two weeks ago the settlers invited the police to arrest Mahmud on some trumped-up charge, and the police acceded with alacrity to this request. He spent 24 hours in one of the ugliest lock-ups in the country, handcuffed and footcuffed much of the time. When they finally brought him before a judge, the latter could find no evidence of any possible violation that could be attributed to this man, but the judge fined him anyway with a 5000-shekel “bond”– a huge sum of money for a Palestinian family of small-scale farmers– and also ruled that he could not approach his fields for 14 days. If you have ever met a farmer, you know what this means. Mahmud is that rarest of beings, a really good man. You know this from the first instant you meet him. Decency and goodness and good cheer radiate from him, and from his sons as well. He tells me the sorry story without acrimony but with a kind of aching bewilderment. “I don’t understand the judge. He could find nothing against me, but still he ruled that I have to pay and have to stay away from my fields. Where is the law? Why should it lie? And how can Danny the settler stand in front of me and lie to my face? I thought I’d go crazy in the jail; I’m a farmer, I am always outside in the fields and the open air, not confined and chained. After 24 hours, your whole body aches. Then they bring you to the court and keep you there, handcuffed, for a whole day with nothing to eat or drink, nothing, your bones hurt, and when you finally come before the judge you can’t find the words. I and my family own 350 dunams, all the way up to and beyond the checkpoint, and I lease this field from Hawamdi and have all the documents to prove it; the Supreme Court also confirmed this, but the settlers still harass us day by day. I submitted a complaint to the police, and you know what happened? Nothing at all. But today you are here, and this is as life should be, Arabs and Jews working together as friends.” And indeed we are working hard: after a short lesson from Isma’il, another gentle, good-natured son, in the ancient mysteries of ripe barley and wheat, we crouch in the fields and pull the stalks from the caked brown earth with our fingers, brush off the clods sticking to the roots, and pile our treasures here and there in the field in small, slowly swelling heaps. I don’t remember the last time I harvested the spring wheat crop, like in the Book of Ruth, but I remember well the unearthly joy of it, which can, in my view, heal all sorrows of the soul (as I guess it did for Ruth). I’m not sure I can tell the barley from the wheat, even after Isma’il’s lesson, but clearly both somehow manage to emerge, in bright greens and yellows, out of this unpromising, desiccated soil. When I’m not bending over the stalks, I steal glances at the hills and the Yatir forest and the not-so-distant desert, a landscape that ravishes the heart– perhaps, I think to myself, the most beautiful I’ve seen in the world. They bring us tea and fresh bread and white cheese made this morning and the salty hard yellow cheese of this region that lasts forever, and after a while they invite us to feast on fariki: you take the green, freshly-harvested wheat and roast it in fire, there in the field, then you crack it open and let it rest on your tongue, still hot and pungent, before your swallow. There’s nothing like it, take my word. A great peace comes over me. For just a moment I let go of the questions that torment me: how can anyone, man or woman, steal such a field and then stand before the true owner and lie shamelessly to his face? I’m 62 years old and I don’t understand, will clearly never understand. I can imagine greed, in all its cruelty and obsession, can even find it in myself, but that brazen lie, eye to eye, troubles me—that and the ruthless assault on the goodness that the earth offers those who care for it. Anyway I’ve been thinking about truth and its intrinsic worth, and the value of the moral act, even if it goes unnoticed. It is so easy to say in a wishful, or hopeful, romantic way that truth—speaking truth– will necessarily leave a mark on the world. Is there a deeper, tougher way to think about it? I indulge the romantic notion, no question. And yet to stand up to the lie, even for a moment, even on the simplest and lowliest level, surely heals some small abrasion in the body of a wounded world. Israel today is ruled by lies, beginning with most everything the Prime Minister says and moving down the scale through his ministers and members of his cabinet to infect large parts of the press and the army and the courts and thence to the soldiers who man the checkpoints and the policeman who arrested Mahmud and the Border Police who arrested Amiel today, on and on downwards all the way to a Hell entirely of our own making. Yet I know indubitably from my own body that an act of truth can cut like a knife and that in the end it will not be wasted. This I have learned in south Hebron. When it is time to leave we gather up the stalks and sheaves and load them onto a tall cart coupled to a tractor that Isma’il has driven down the hill. There is enough, Mahmud says, to feed the animals for over a week, and some will be left over. And there is still a vast piece of the field waiting to be harvested: maybe next week. You take the sheaves in your arms and hold them to your chest, and then there is the sudden, wild movement when you fling them upward into the cart and let them go, like the wild movement that may happen soon when Palestine flings itself free.   • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • Track comments • • More Recent Articles New Egyptian government stops helping starve people of Gaza U-N-I-T-Y of Palestinian factions. 5 things you may not know about Silwan RIP Vittorio, z”l Interview with BDS leader Omar Barghouti