Week Five Review (2 days late)

Since moving in with the Americans, it has been a busy couple of days. Combine that with the less than stellar internet in the new apartment and it combines to only two posts in the last week. Even now the internet is not as good at work and considering that I have two people sitting behind me, I feel a lot more self conscious about blogging in the middle of the work day. But because they're in a meeting right now...

I made two mistakes. The American students are actually from Goshen college, you know the one that has decided to stop playing the National Anthem. Also, Zoughbi has three sons.

My favourite memory from this last week was when I was in a northern city called Nablus. I was walking around the market with a friend of mine from work. Behind me, a guy on a bicycle was trying to get past me. He said some things in Arabic but I did not understand. My friend moved me out of the way, but as the biker passed, he asked my friend if I was French, in a not too polite way. (This was all in Arabic and later translated to me). My friend said no, he is a Palestinian like me.

On Friday night I went to a concert for a band called CultureSHOC. It was pretty interesting and I liked the music. They played a lot of their own stuff but also "Pump It" and "Sweat Dreams." The strangest part was immediately after the show, when the entire theater cleared out in a about 30 seconds. There was no call for an encore and even the band was gone. When I turned around from chatting with the people I came with the place was empty. The lobby was also desolate when we got out there. Apparently this is a very common cultural response.

This last week has been an interesting one at work. It started by struggling to find meaningful things to do, to sending hundreds of emails a day. I am currently working on sending Wi'am's biannual newsletter to all of their contacts. I can send it to 100 people at a time and the sever can only handle a certian number of emails per day. I am on day 4 now, averaging 15 emails a day (1500 people). I am at the Ds.

On the weekend I went to the Bethlehem Nativity Meuseam. They have hundreds of nativity scenes from all over the world. These were my favourites:

I have been unofficially named Wi'am photographer. This will come as a surprise to most people who have seen my work. I would say that this is an indictment of Wi'am lack of choice, rather than their ability to assess talent. Maybe they saw this photo though:

The other day we had a small conference on Palestinian nonviolence. I spent some time looking around the internet afterwards and found these two articles. After I read them I spent some time reading the comments posted, followed by the blogs and articles that those comments linked to. I am feelings physically distraught now. Partially because of the hate, but also because of the sound religious and political arguments that are so convincing. I do not want to become someone who denounces arguments without facts, but I am exceedingly frightened by the results of these arguments. They are based upon setting up two sides and creating self sustaining arguments about the other side. Part of what is making me so sick is that I am reading a parallel story about the Boston Bruins and Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup playoffs. (I suggest you check out the articles titled "On Stanley Cup Final coverage and the problem of bias" and "Irresponsible coverage leads to irresponsible fan behaviour" at PiTB if you don't know what I'm talking about). Hockey is a competitive game and people want their team to win, but it is not the same as fighting over land and resources, survival and oppression. But in both cases people are demonizing each other and misquoting the opposition to gain an edge. If the Cancuks and Bruins were locked in a conflict where people were dying, now much louder would the hysteria be? Are we only one good news story away from hate?

I need to stop reading internet comments.