Category: Writing

Articles by Mya Guarnieri

African refugees join Palestinians as a “threat” to Israel

by adminin Israel, Writing

The National, May 10, 2012

On Tuesday Israelis woke up to the surprising news that the early elections Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced on Sunday had been cancelled.

In a deal made while the country was asleep, Netanyahu forged a new coalition with Kadima. Now the Knesset will march in lockstep behind the PM, meaning little will change. Not that elections would have made much of a difference, however – the popular Mr Netanyahu had been expected to win by a landslide.

Public support for him is somewhat surprising. Last summer’s protests against the cost of living suggested that many Israelis are less than satisfied with the state of the state. And almost a year later, life in Israel is only getting more expensive. Housing is as unaffordable as ever and wages are still relatively low. The gap between Israel’s rich and poor remains one of the highest in the western world. This winter saw a steep increase in electricity and gas prices. And, despite last year’s “cottage cheese protests”, food prices continue to rise.

“Social justice” – a term Israelis use not about ending the occupation of Palestinian land, but about building a more egalitarian economy – remains elusive. Meanwhile Mr Netanyahu’s government uses policy and rhetoric not only against Palestinians but also against Israel’s other “others” – migrant workers and African refugees.

Palestinians have been squeezed by the Netanyahu administration: increased settlement growth; a dramatic rise in demolition of Palestinian and Bedouin homes in East Jerusalem and Israeli-controlled Area C in the West Bank; and the approval of the Prawer Plan, which will see tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens of Israel forcibly removed from their villages in the Negev (Naqab) to make way for Judaisation of the area.

But Africans and refugees are under pressure, too. The list of examples includes a government campaign in which paid actors claimed that they are unemployed because foreigners took their jobs. It includes the deportation of Israel-born children of migrant workers, even though the Supreme Court overturned the policy that made their parents illegal. It includes the construction of what will be the world’s largest detention centre, a prison to house African refugees, including women and children. There, asylum-seekers will be held without trial, most for up to three years, some indefinitely.

Their only crime will be that they violated Israel’s 1954 Infiltration Prevention law, intended to criminalise the actions of Palestinian “infiltrators” – refugees who attempted to enter the newly created state of Israel to return to the homes and lands from which they had been expelled in 1948, during the nakba. Last year, this law was modified to include undocumented migrants who enter Israel via Egypt. A large majority of those coming in through the southern border are African asylum-seekers, a group the government, including Mr Netanyahu, calls “infiltrators.”

And then there’s the legislation that Israeli human rights groups call the “slavery law.” It’s a modification of the 1952 Entry to Israel law, conferring privileges on Jews while preventing Palestinians from returning. It places severe restrictions on the freedom of foreign caregivers, going as far as to limit them to a set region of the country.

It’s no coincidence that Israel is using laws intended to discriminate against Palestinians to tread on the human rights of another non-Jewish group.

In 2003 Mr Netanyahu, then finance minister, called Arab citizens of the state a “demographic problem” adding that the separation barrier would stop a “demographic spillover” of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. Fast forward to 2010: Prime Minister Netanyahu calls African asylum seekers a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and promises another separation barrier, this one to run the length of the border between Egypt and Israel.

When considered through the lens of the government’s goal of maintaining a “Jewish and democratic” country, every non-Jew – Arab or African, Christian or Muslim – becomes a “threat” to or enemy of the state. It’s not about Palestinians or Arabs per se. It’s about maintaining Jewish privilege.

The state’s policies have implications for citizens’ behaviour. As the state steps up its persecution of and incitement against foreigners – whipping the public into a nationalistic frenzy – Jewish Israelis are emboldened to ratchet up violence and discrimination against migrants. In Eilat, for example, African refugees have been banned from municipal schools. Several schools in Tel Aviv have also barred foreign children.

In South Tel Aviv, Jewish Israelis have held protests against the mere presence of Africans, calling on the state to deport them. Right-wing Knesset members have taken part in these demonstrations, lending an air of governmental approval.

South Tel Aviv is becoming a flashpoint for rising tensions. As Independence Day drew to a close a week ago, a 20-year-old Israeli threw Molotov cocktails at a kindergarten and four apartments that serve African refugees. A week later, two firebombs were hurled at the home of Nigerian immigrants.

In 2011, three teenage girls – the Israeli-born, Hebrew-speaking daughters of African migrant workers – were beaten by a group of Jewish teenagers. The attackers, one of whom was armed with a knife, allegedly called them “dirty niggers.” One of the girls needed medical treatment for her injuries.

There have also been a number of other violent incidents.

The new coalition just means more of the same, discrimination and violence against non-Jews on both sides of the Green Line. Whether that violence comes from the state or its citizens, whether it takes the form of bulldozers or firebombs, the goal is one – the preservation of Jewish privilege in a “Jewish and democratic” state.

A measured spring in Jordan

by adminin Middle East, Writing

The Caravan, May 1, 2012

Friday noon prayers find the faithful spilling out of al-Husseini Mosque in downtown Amman. They crowd the street and sidewalks, bowing between vendors. Four men kneel alongside a folding table loaded down with silver faucets, showerheads and handles. Others prostrate themselves next to a display of cheap plastic shoes. Those who can’t afford prayer rugs kneel on crushed cardboard boxes.

Some men don’t even have cardboard: They bow and put their heads on the asphalt.

As prayers end, the people rise—and the protest begins. Members of the Jabhat al-’Amal al-Islami (Islamic Action Front—IAF—a powerful political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Jordan’s biggest opposition party, which Parliament is now seeking to ban) organise the demonstrators in neat lines which, slowly, make their way down the street. The crowd, which numbers about 1,000, comprises mostly men. A small group of women brings up the rear of the procession.

Mufida Shakra, a mother of five, is among them. Shakra studied law and sharī’ah (Islamic law) in Kuwait and “Alhamdulillah,” she says, “I work as a teacher [of] sharī’ah.”

Shakra’s thanking God that she has a job. While 92 percent of Jordanians are literate, and many attend university, the official unemployment rate hovers at 13 percent. Unofficial estimates put joblessness at a staggering 30 percent.

In much of the Arab world, men are expected to provide for their family, and do not marry until they are financially stable. But, because Shakra has an income, she was able to help her unemployed 26-year-old son start a family.

“I gave him the money to marry,” she says, touching her hand to her chest. “He’s a graphic designer [with a university degree]—and he doesn’t have work. No job. He’s sitting at home. It’s a very bad situation here, really.”

Even if he had found a job, it probably wouldn’t have been of much help. Wages in Jordan are low compared to the cost of living, and Jordanians are finding it increasingly difficult to buy basics, including food.

The country’s distribution of wealth is just one of the protesters’ troubles. Demonstrators are also calling for greater government transparency, elections and an end to the corruption that they blame for their economic woes.

While concern about corruption isn’t new, what is new is that Jordanians are not limiting their criticism to government officials. They’ve taken the unprecedented step of critiquing the monarchy itself, a move equated with sedition and punishable by jail time.

In a February 2011 open letter to the ostensibly reformist King Abdullah II, Jordanians accused Queen Rania Al Abdullah of “stealing money from the Treasury”. It also called on the king to return the properties that have been given to the queen’s family. “The land belongs to the Jordanian people,” the authors wrote.

The letter reveals anxieties not just over the distribution of wealth but over who gets to control Jordan itself. Its signatories were 36 East Bankers from prominent Bedouin tribes; it took aim at Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent.

Perhaps because Jordan is a young state, still forging its national identity, sharp lines divide who’s in and who’s out. Those who were here before or during Jordan’s establishment in 1946 as a sovereign state are considered native ‘East Bankers’ with far more entitlements that those who came later—the outsiders. And they include the Palestinian refugees who arrived in the wake of Israel’s creation in 1948 and during other crises in the Middle East. Today, Palestinians constitute a majority of Jordan’s population. East Bankers fear that reform will mean increased Palestinian involvement in Jordanian political life. They also worry that the Palestinians will turn Jordan into their national homeland.

The thrust of the letter to the king was that Palestinian Jordaninans, his wife included, don’t care about the state or about public interests, a common sentiment among East Bankers.

Shakra and her husband are children of Palestinian refugees who were driven from their homes when the state of Israel was created. Even though she speaks to me in English, Shakra calls her parents’ hometown, Jerusalem, by its Arabic name, Al-Quds.

Her fingers trace the edge of her white hijab, tucking in stray hairs as she says, “I am from Al-Quds. I don’t want any country but [Palestine].”

And she wants the Jews out of Palestine, she adds. In the meantime, however, “Jordan is important to me.”

Despite her many grievances, Shakra is quick to add that she feels the king has done a lot for the people—she just wants him to do more.

Her comment points to one of the crucial differences between the protests in Jordan—which began in January of 2011—and those that brought down the regimes in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. In Jordan, people simply want reform—they do not want to topple the king.

This Friday’s protest reflects that. Chants—led by three men standing on the back of a pickup truck draped with the Jordanian flag—do not include calls to overthrow the monarchy. They run the gamut from a demand for a Jordan free of corruption to a free Palestine to “the Jews are pigs” to solidarity with the Syrian people.

The scattershot of slogans points to another reason why Jordan’s revolution is yet to take off. The energy that could be harnessed into a broad-based, popular movement is largely being channelled in multiple directions towards specific demands. In December, a small group of women protested the Citizenship Law, which does not allow Jordanian women married to foreigners to pass their Jordanian citizenship on to their children. In February this year, 20,000 teachers rallied in Amman to protest stagnant wages. The next day, hundreds of Jordanians demonstrated against changes made to the Social Security Law.

While Islamists led the recent protests, their participation in demonstrations has been inconsistent. They were in. Then they were out, and the unions and leftist organisations were running the show. Now, the Muslim Brotherhood’s IAF is back in. But for how long? And to what end? No one seems to know.

There’s another reason that Jordan is yet to see its spring: people here fear a revolution. Throughout all strata of Jordanian society, there is a consensus that widespread unrest would only exacerbate Jordan’s divisions, throwing a match on the proverbial tinderbox.

It’s not just the Palestinians who are causing apprehension. The number of Syrian refugees is growing daily. And many also find the East Bankers’ tribal Bedouin affiliations worrisome. A revolution could turn into a messy power struggle like that being played out next door, in Iraq.

Faced with unrest, the Jordanian government has played on the country’s fault lines to keep the small protests from snowballing into a bigger movement. So for now, Jordanians are making only modest demands. But, according to Hamed El Eid, a 47-year-old engineer and a member of the IAF, the people are getting impatient.

“Several months ago, the government promised us that it will make a big improvement,” he says. Improvement, however, has been “very, very slow”.

El Eid wears glasses, a crisp blue dress shirt and a navy windbreaker. His gray beard is neat and close-clipped. As we walk down the street, El Eid explains that while the Muslim Brotherhood has bounced in and out of the protests, he, personally, has stayed with them from the start.

“And I will continue,” he adds. “I will not stop until [the government has] satisfied all our requirements.”

He ticks the demands off on his fingers: “A parliament that will be elected in a transparent way without any corruption; we want to take out the corrupted people and put them in prisons because they have stolen from the country.”

Because a majority of the IAF’s supporters are Jordanian Palestinians, I ask El Eid about his national origin. He seems slightly offended. He straightens his glasses and answers, “Regardless of whether [our] grandfathers are from Palestine or Jordan, we are all Jordanian citizens. [The family’s roots are] meaningless when we are working on this issue [of reform]. We want to improve Jordan.”

Just as Palestine is not just for Palestinians, El Eid explains, “All Arab people are requesting [the liberation of] Palestine,” and Jordan is not just for East Bankers.

When asked if Amman will become Cairo, El Eid, like others, says he doubts it. The economy is a little bit better in Jordan than in Egypt, the situation a little less desperate. “Here, our requirements are for improvement; [in Egypt] their requirements are for change.”

By the time we reach the end of the street, the 1,000-strong crowd has thinned. Most of the demonstrators have dropped out of the lines and have taken refuge from the midday sun under the awnings that hang over the sidewalks. “Look,” one protester says, pointing at a group of men who have stopped to buy some sweets, “they’re getting a snack.”

Not for a woman in Amman

by adminin Middle East, Writing

Inter Press Service, April 12, 2012

Two young women in brightly colored hijab and tight jeans stand on the edge of a freeway as cars whiz by. They watch the traffic, heavy in Amman where car ownership is skyrocketing by 10-15 percent a year. When there’s a break in the steady flow of vehicles, the women hold hands and race across the road.

It’s an odd sight here. The city is not pedestrian-friendly. Nor is it common to see women walking, much less darting, across freeways.

Though Western media has praised Amman’s urban planning as a step towards egalitarianism, highlighting the fact that the ‘Amman 2025’ urban master plan won the 2007 World Leadership Award in Town Planning, a visit to Amman, home to nearly three million people, reveals a starkly different picture.

Poor public transportation keeps women isolated from city life; low-income families are dependent on cars; and, ironically, the Arab Spring has sidelined urban development.

One of the women, Sandra Hiari, is an architect, urban planner, and founder of Tareeq (Arabic for street), a website that focuses on city design in the Middle East.

“If you want to know if a place is safe or not, count how many women are walking on the street,” she said, adding that in Amman, women are visible only “in limited areas, like Rainbow (Street).”

Located in a bourgeois neighborhood, the avenue is filled with chic cafes, bars, and restaurants, drawing enough of a crowd for women to feel safe, Hiari explained. But the street is not an example of the city’s planning. It is a rare exception. Because women often face harassment and catcalls, many avoid public spaces including Amman’s public transportation system, relying on cars and taxis instead.

Women, Hiari said, have been forced to “resort to structures –buildings – and to stay there rather than to use the street as a safe place where they can navigate through the city. I think we women are captured in bubbles,” she reflected. “We move from one bubble to another in the city.”

Despite closing the education gap, with girls and women attending schools and universities in slightly higher rates than boys and men, Jordanian women comprise a smaller percentage of the workforce than their male counterparts.

According to Hazem Zureiqat, a transportation planner and economist at Engicon, the lack of transportation options in Amman – home to half of the country’s population – is largely to blame for this discrepancy.

Zureiqat pointed to a recent survey that asked Jordanian women why they don’t work. “Many of them cited mobility and transportation (issues),” he stressed, meaning that, often, women simply cannot get to work.

While at least half of Jordan’s low-income households have a car, the male usually drives it, leaving women, who might otherwise work, stuck at home.

When asked if creating separate bus lines for women is the answer to their transportation troubles, Zureiqat quickly answered, “No, no. I don’t support that…you have to fix the (social issue) rather than just separating women (from men).”

He added that service needs to be improved in general, not just for women. Amman’s few bus lines run infrequently and are very unreliable. Up until some shelters were erected at bus stops recently, Zureiqat lamented that there had been “barely any shelter from the sun and rain” for commuters.

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system was an ambitious project that sought to correct many of these issues with 32 kilometres of new, bus-only lanes. Each BRT lane would have carried three times the amount of people than a regular traffic lane.

Zureiqat said that the BRT wasn’t just about improving the movement of people throughout the city. It was also about “human dignity.”

Ironically, however, the Arab Spring led officials to scrap the project.

Zureiqat explained, “Fighting corruption became the buzzword here and everything (was called into) question.”

Former Amman mayor Omar Maani came under particularly intense scrutiny, as did the projects that the municipality had a hand in during his tenure from 2006 to 2011. That included the BRT; the Amman Institute for Urban Development, a city-funded “think and do tank” that sought, among other goals, to help reverse the country’s brain drain; and the Amman 2025 master plan, which emphasised public transportation and fostering a more pedestrian-friendly city.

Although the BRT passed an intensive governmental review that probed every aspect of the project – including its finances – it was sidelined in September of 2011.

In December 2011 Maani was arrested on unrelated fraud charges. He is currently out on bail.

While the Amman Institute for Urban Development was beset with problems from the get-go, the Arab Spring spelt the end for the inefficient organisation, including what many considered its “overinflated” wages.

Hiari, who was employed by the Amman Institute, explained that there’s a stigma attached now to the Amman 2025 master plan as well as projects that were born of the Amman Institute.

“Officials (at the Greater Amman Municipality) are afraid to sign off on anything associated with the Amman Institute and the master plan,” Hiari said, because they don’t want to be “associated with corruption.”

These reactionary changes have left the city as unplanned, chaotic and isolating as ever.

New threat looms over South Sudan refugees

by adminin Israel, Writing

Inter Press Service, March 19, 2012

Hundreds of African refugees and Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night under the banner ‘It’s dangerous in South Sudan’ to protest the imminent expulsion of 700 Sudanese asylum seekers, including children.

A small group of counter-protesters attended to show their support for the government’s decision to deport the refugees. One held a sign calling for an end to the asylum seekers’ “occupation” of South Tel Aviv, where many of the estimated 35,000 African refugees in Israel live.

Ethnic clashes between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes continue in the Jonglei region of South Sudan, where fighting has claimed thousands of lives since the country gained independence from Sudan in July 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 300,000 South Sudanese were displaced due to internal violence last year.

Despite the volatile situation in South Sudan, the Israeli government announced in January that it would no longer give group protection to South Sudanese refugees. They have until Mar. 31 to leave voluntarily. After that, they have been warned they will be deported by force.

A number of families will be affected. About 400 of those facing expulsion are children; many were born in Israel. Some of the kids held signs that read “Help Me”.

Speaking to IPS at Saturday night’s protest, Winni Govita, a 24-year-old mother of two boys, aged six and four, said she is simply unable to imagine returning to South Sudan with her children.

“I watch television and I see (what’s happening) and I think ‘How can we go there?’” she asked. “How, how, how?”

Govita added that she has no family left in South Sudan. She was 12 when she fled to Egypt with her mother. After spending six years in Egypt, she came to Israel. Her youngest child was born here.

While open racism is becoming increasingly common in Israel – and much of it is directed towards African refugees and their children, who have been banned from some municipal schools in Eilat and South Tel Aviv – Govita said she has not had trouble in Arad, where she works at a hotel.

“The kids go to school. Everything is fine.” But, in South Sudan, she said, “There’s no healthcare, no school.”

Due to the country’s extreme poverty, and lack of education and opportunities, the UN estimates that some 2,000 minors are currently serving in South Sudan’s army.

In South Sudan, one of every three children suffers from malnutrition; nearly 50 percent of the population lacks access to clean water.

After visiting South Sudan last month, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos remarked, “The situation in the country is extremely precarious, and the risk of a dangerous decline is very real. Food insecurity has already increased, and 2012 will witness an earlier, and a longer, season of hunger.”

Wou Riek, 25, is worried about the violence in South Sudan. He is from Jonglei’s Murle community. His mother, he said, has fled the fighting.

Riek was 17 when he left Sudan and made his way to Israel after spending four years in Egypt. When asked about his last memories of South Sudan, which was in the midst of a civil war when he fled, Riek answered, “There is no need to recall this. Everyone knows what happened between the north and south.” He was referring to the 21-year civil war that saw more than two million killed and millions more displaced.

Riek said that he fears for his life in returning to South Sudan.

South Sudan’s army is widely reported to have been lax in its duty to protect citizens. Soldiers often identify with their ethnic group rather than the state, and sometimes turn a blind eye to attacks, or assist in them. Many have reportedly raped women and girls from rival tribes.

Cross-border clashes have also fueled concerns that war could erupt with Sudan again. Although a peace treaty was signed in 2005, Sudan has bombed the pro-south stronghold of South Kordofan in recent months. And tensions over South Sudan’s oil reserves remain high.

In a report released last week, the Israeli Knesset admitted that South Sudan is in a humanitarian emergency. “In recent months, we’ve received information on the deterioration of stability and the humanitarian situation in the state,” the report stated.

Responding to a recent letter protesting the deportation of South Sudanese, signed by 400 Israeli artists, writers, and academics, Interior Minister Eli Yishai remarked, “In my time as Interior Minister I have and will continue to preserve Israel as a Jewish state.”

In December 2011, Yishai told Army Radio that he intends to guard the state’s Jewish majority and that, accordingly, he will see to it that all Africans are returned to their home countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called African asylum seekers a “threat” to the state’s “Jewish and democratic character.”

The deportation of South Sudanese refugees is part of the Israeli government’s ongoing efforts to expel non-Jewish migrants.

Hundreds of children of Southeast Asian migrant workers, along with their parents, are currently being deported. Most of the mothers arrived legally but lost their visa because they gave birth in Israel and did not send their babies back to their home country within the three-month period allotted to them by the state. Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that this policy was a violation of Israel’s own labour laws.

In January, Israel announced its intention to expel 2000 refugees from the Cote d’Ivoire, despite the fact that some could face persecution, violence, and death back home.

The state is also deporting Eritreans of Ethiopian origin to Ethiopia, even though officials in the Ministry of Interior say that the country is unsafe for mixed Ethiopians. An Israeli judge has likened the move to “gambling with human life.”

Addressing the audience of refugees and Israelis on Saturday night, a 14-year-old girl from South Sudan said, in fluent Hebrew, “I know that you are all scared that we came here to take over your country and to take from you all something that isn’t ours, but that’s the last thing that I wanted in the world.

“I’m here to ask you for help, but I’m not here to stay here. I want to return to my country but I do not want to put my life in danger and the lives of my little brothers and that of my little brother who was just born.”

Killing of Zuhair al-Qaissi exposes Israel’s attitude to Supreme Court

by adminin Israel, Writing

The Guardian, March 14, 2012

The recent escalation between Israel and Gaza began after Israeli forces assassinated Zuhair al-Qaissi, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a militant group composed of members of various Palestinian parties. Haaretz noted that the PRC was “the organisation that captured Gilad Shalit”, the Israeli soldier who was freed in October 2011. The army says that al-Qaissi was behind the August 2011 attack that took place on the Israeli-Egyptian border – even though the PRC denied involvement and it was later revealed that the militants came from Sinai, not Gaza.

While army sources took care to point out al-Qaissi’s alleged involvement in the August 2011 incident, his assassination wasn’t just an act of punishment. No, Israel killed him on the basis of secret evidence – evidence that is not subject to legal or judicial review – that supposedly proves that al-Qaissi was planning a terror attack. Never mind that the Israeli supreme court’s December 2006 ruling placed numerous restrictions on such assassinations.

Fatmeh el-Ajou, an attorney with Adalah, the legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, explains that while the judgment did not place a blanket prohibition on targeted killings, it stated that the decision to carry out an assassination must be made on a case-by-case basis, “depending on the evidence that [security forces] have”. But, without seeing the security forces’ secret evidence, it’s impossible to know if al-Qaissi was indeed planning an attack, and if the army was in line with the 2006 ruling. There’s no transparency in this so-called democracy and, without transparency, there is no accountability to the state’s highest court. “From the perspective of human rights law,” el-Ajou adds, “assassinations are not legitimate … They should only be carried out if there is a ‘ticking bomb.’ [Suspects] should be brought to trial.”

To some extent, the 2006 ruling dovetails with this, stating that, whenever possible, the person in question must be arrested and tried – which is exactly what didn’t happen in 2007, when the army violated the supreme court’s restrictions on targeted killings and assassinated two men they had the power to detain instead. And then there’s the laundry list of less dramatic examples, instances when state bodies quietly ignore the court, revealing Israel to be the weak democracy it is. Such cases have spurred former deputy attorney general Yehudit Karp to send not one but two letters of complaint to the current attorney General Yehuda Weinstein. Here’s a partial sampling of rulings that Israel can’t be bothered to fully implement:

• In 2002, the supreme court ordered the municipalities of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Nazareth Illit to “add Arabic to all municipal signs”, Adalah writes. Last April, the supreme court chastised the municipality of Nazareth Illit (upper Nazareth, a predominately Jewish area) for its lack of compliance with the nine-year-old ruling.

• In 2006, the supreme court struck down the binding arrangement, a policy that binds migrant workers to one employer, essentially making his or her visa contingent on his employer’s whim. Last year, the Knesset circumvented this ruling, passing legislation so severe that human rights groups referred to it as the “slavery law”.

• In 2007, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the separation barrier in the West Bank Palestinian village of Bilin served no security purpose in its location and ordered the state to move the fence. While Israel did move it in 2011, more than four years after the court’s decision, villagersare still separated from some of their land.

• During the December 2008 to January 2009 Israeli military operation known as Cast Lead, Israel barred media from the Gaza Strip. Even though the supreme court ruled against the ban, the press was not admitted to Gaza.

• In April 2011, the supreme court overturned the policy that stripped migrant workers who had children in Israel of their legal status, calling it a violation of the state’s own labour laws. Almost a year later, Israel is still deporting some of these women and their children, despite the fact that the very mechanism that made them “illegal” has been nullified.

In his 2006 ruling on targeted killings, former supreme court president Aharon Barak quoted an earlier judgment in which he’d stated: “At times democracy fights with one hand behind her back.” But in its war on Palestinians – and anyone that Israel deems an “other” – not only does the state use both hands, it fights with the proverbial gloves off.

Why would Israel budge?

by adminin Politics, Writing

The New York Times, March 8, 2012

Might Israel attend the meeting about a nuclear weapon free Middle East in Finland? Certainly. Just like it has “participated” in the peace process–with no real intention of making concessions. In both cases, there are no consequences for Israel sticking to its agenda. So why would Israel budge?

Israel won’t sign a nonproliferation treaty because that would mean giving up its military edge in the Middle East. Obama’s speech to AIPAC suggests that the US will ensure that Israel remains the regional powerhouse

And this question has arisen before, in 2010, when Netanyahu and Obama were already in office. The US supported the initiative; Israel, of course, rejected it.

What’s changed since then? Little to nothing. If anything, Israel has only become more defiant. Last year, Obama called for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal based on 1967 borders. But 2011 saw Israel increase settlements in the West Bank as well as demolitions of Palestinian and Bedouin structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The United Nations reports that the rate of demolitions in 2012 is already higher than it was last year.

But, for me, where it gets really interesting is that the US initially wanted Israel to sign the non-proliferation treaty, back in the late 1960s, and Israel wouldn’t. This is a reminder that the six decades of friendship Obama spoke of earlier this week weren’t always so friendly. Some argue that Israel’s refusal to sign this treaty may have given Iran the incentive to go nuclear. It’s similar, perhaps, to how Israel had a hand in creating Hamas. Israel wanted a rival to Fatah; instead, it got, as the Wall Street Journal says, “unintended and often perilous consequences.”

Speaking of Israel creating its own boogeyman, a pre-emptive strike on Iran might actually push Iran to accelerate its nuclear program, as it has been argued was the case with Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq—creating exactly the scenario Israeli leaders fear the most.

Where is the Bedouin Intifada?

by adminin Israel, Writing

CounterPunch, February 9, 2012

As Israel steps up its expansionist policies both inside and outside the Green Line, the Bedouin community has come under particularly intense pressure.

Inside of Israel, the state seeks to Judaize the Negev (Naqab) desert. This “development” includes last  year’s Prawer plan which recommends that Israel relocate some 30,000-40,000 Bedouin citizens, ripping them from their villages and sticking them in impoverished townships, to clear the area for Jewish-only settlements. `

After the Israeli cabinet passed the Prawer plan in September 2011, Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel likened it to “a declaration of war.”

Al Arakib could be considered an opening battle. The state first demolished the unrecognized village in July 2010—destroying homes and tearing olive trees from the ground to make way for a forest to be planted by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF). After the Bedouin residents of Al Arakib rebuilt their village, Israeli forces returned and destroyed it again. Since then, Al Arakib has been demolished and rebuilt over 30 times.

Israel’s policies are just as inhumane on the other side of the Green Line, where the so-called “Civil Administration” seeks to remove 27,000 Bedouin from Area C in order to expand illegal Israeli settlements. The Civil Administration’s plans will be carried out over the next three to six years.

The United Nations reports that Israeli forces demolished 44 Palestinian-owned buildings in East Jerusalem and the West Bank last month, including 14 houses. 66 people were displaced, 40 of whom were Bedouin.

Recent years have seen Israel escalate its campaign to push Palestinians and Bedouin out of their homes. According to the UN, nearly 1100 Palestinians and Bedouins were displaced by Israeli house demolitions in 2011—approximately 80 percent more than 2010.

So where is the Bedouin Intifada?

***

In 2004, the Israeli daily Haaretz called a Bedouin uprising “practically inevitable.” Lurching from one alarmist quote to the next, the article labeled the Bedouin a “ticking bomb,” a “keg of dynamite,” depicting them not as native inhabitants but as criminals who have taken over the Negev.

Amidst the hysteria came a fetishizing remark from Reuven Gal, then-Deputy National Security Advisor for Domestic Policy, who commented that, to the Bedouin, “honor is more precious than money.”

The writer concluded, ominously, “Every plan to develop the Negev is likely to face violent opposition because of the Bedouin who live in the area.”

The article drips with racism and colonialism—Israeli plans to displace the Bedouin constitute “development.” Not only are the Bedouin sure to oppose such “progress,” they are likely to be “violent.” And then there are the Orientalist depictions of the Bedouin as reactionary, volatile beings unable to control their impulses, especially when “honor” is at stake.

But it would be wrong to blame the writer and his interviewees alone.

In his book Good Arabs, Hillel Cohen describes an incident that took place in 1950, when the Israeli army’s chief of staff visited a Bedouin tribe, reporter in tow. The journalist recounted a “royal meal,” eaten against the backdrop of “the echoes of gunshots” and “riders’ galloping.” The evening climaxed with a ceremonial “presentation of the sword of the desert.”

Cohen explains that the reporter’s depiction “fit well with that period’s common portrayal of the Bedouin as hospitable noble savages…”

An Orientalist view of the Bedouin is deeply rooted and, as the 2004 Haaretz article suggests, persists. So feverish proclamations about a Bedouin Intifada should be taken with a camel-sized grain of salt.

We should also consider the motives behind such “warnings.” As, Jaber Abu Kaf, a representative of the Regional Council for Unrecognized Bedouin Villages told Haaretz in 2004, claims of an imminent Bedouin Intifada “are baseless and are intended to promote a political agenda.”

***

But, for argument’s sake, let’s say that the Bedouin would like to revolt, violently, against Israel’s discrimination.

Let’s set aside the quiet acts of resistance, the small, silent intifada, already taking place: rebuilding demolished homes; the day-long general strike held in December of 2011; the massive protest outside the Prime Minister’s office on the same December day.

And let’s set aside individual agency and pretend the Bedouin can only react, collectively, to Israeli policies.

So why hasn’t that “ticking bomb” exploded?

The answer lies, in part, in the state’s founding. Before Israel was established in 1948, some 91,000 Bedouin lived in the Negev. After the war, only twelve percent of the original population remained. Many of the Bedouin facing forced transfer from the West Bank today are refugees whose families fled or were driven from the Negev during the nakba.

Shattered and scattered, the Bedouin were subject to additional Israeli efforts to divide and rule. A number of those who had managed to hang on to their land in the Negev were pushed off of it. In some cases, the state appointed local mukhtars, pitting families against one another, and putting weak leaders, or those who would serve Israeli interests, at the head of villages.

Israeli authorities also sowed seeds of disunity by actively encouraging–and rewarding–collaboration. That some took the bait undermines the Orientalist assertion that the Bedouin value honor more than money.

Israel has also fomented poverty in the Bedouin community. In the 1970s, the state built seven townships for the Negev Bedouin that are home today to approximately 80,000 Bedouin. These ghettos have the country’s highest unemployment and school dropout rates as well as the social problems that accompany poverty and hopelessness, including rampant drug abuse.

Those that remained in the desert have not had it much easier. Despite the fact that many Bedouin live in villages that predate the state itself, Israel does not recognize most of these communities. Some 80,000 Bedouin live in the unrecognized villages that lack infrastructure and high schools. Rawia Aburabia, an attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), calls the status of Bedouin education, “catastrophic,” pointing out to a drop out rate that tops 40 percent.

There is also the contentious issue of military service. Some Bedouin tribes serve in the Israeli army; many do not. This creates tension within the community and serves as yet another obstacle to the unity needed for a successful uprising.

***

With Palestine’s Bedouin divided between Israel and the surrounding countries; split between those who serve in the Israeli army and those who don’t; struggling to survive; lacking leadership and a cohesive national strategy, an organized and sustainable uprising is unlikely. The international community, then, has a responsibility to stop the home demolitions and forced transfers that Palestinians and Bedouin face in the West Bank and inside Israel.

Advocating for outside intervention runs the risk of sounding patronizing, at best, colonial, at worst. That’s the beauty of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. The call for BDS comes from Palestinian civil society and is self-empowering.

While some Palestinians don’t consider the Bedouin to be Palestinian—and many Bedouin don’t consider themselves Palestinian, either—BDS is an appropriate response to Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin. They suffer from the same discriminatory policies that plague the Palestinians. And the two communities share common hopes for human and civil rights, to return to their homeland, and to live in freedom, justice, and dignity.

Losing faith

by adminin Writing

The Caravan, February 1, 2012

When I put my silver digital recorder on the table, Kidane Isaac, an Eritrean refugee, eyes it and shifts in his chair. He angles his broken straw fedora downwards, tipping the rim lower, as though to cover his face.

The hat, which has a black band and a hole in the top—bits of straw unravelling, sticking this way and that—doesn’t suit the red, white and blue windbreaker Isaac wears. It’s also a poor choice for the weather. It’s a wintry day in Israel and the stylish summer hat is ineffective against the cold.

Not to mention that the fedora seems out of place here, at a coffee kiosk in South Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. The surrounding neighbourhoods, the poorest in the city, are home to a large population of foreign workers and African refugees as well as a handful of Palestinian collaborators. While some migrant labourers make enough to send remittances home to their families, most African refugees are barely hanging on to the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Some have fallen off completely—homeless, they live in the parks near the Central Bus Station.

When he opens up to me later—sliding his fedora back on his head, leaning forward, putting his elbows on the table—I’ll learn that Isaac, 25, isn’t homeless. But he is unemployed. Too proud to use the word, he says, “I’m taking a break.”

Jobs are scarce for Israel’s roughly 35,000 African refugees. The state does not provide work visas for them so they are forced to enter the black market, where they face exploitation. Because of increasing racism, refugees sometimes have a hard time finding work. Even if they can scrape together the money to rent an apartment, some Jewish landlords refuse to rent to foreigners.

Nor does Israel process their requests for asylum—a “policy of non-policy” that has been sharply criticised by human rights organisations, including Amnesty International. But, because Israel does not deport Sudanese and Eritreans to their home countries—as it does undocumented migrant workers—it tacitly admits that they are refugees.

Isaac left Eritrea five years ago, he explains, because his mandatory military service consisted of construction work, a situation he likens to “forced labour”.

“They don’t pay you, you don’t get to see your family,” Isaac, one of nine children, says. “I felt like I wasn’t a citizen in my own country, you know what I mean?”

According to the United States Department of State, military duty in Eritrea is “effectively open-ended” and human rights violations run the gamut from abuse and torture of prisoners and army defectors to “arbitrary arrest and detention” to “unlawful killings by security forces”. Civil rights are severely restricted, as is freedom of movement.

So in 2007, Isaac left. He fled to Sudan, where he lived in a refugee camp close to the Eritrean border. Because the security cooperation between the two countries made Isaac feel unsafe, he moved on to Libya where he spent more than three years “living in the hands of the smugglers”.

While he tried several times to cross the Mediterranean and reach Italy, Isaac recalls, he was passed from smuggler to smuggler. It’s the typical experience of African refugees in Libya, he explains, nonchalantly. “Or you might get put in jail and then you pay a lot [to get out]. There’s a lot of bribery and corruption in Libya.”

In 2010, he abandoned any hope of reaching Europe and, because he understood Israel to be the “only democracy in the Middle East”, he set his sights on Tel Aviv.

He adds, however, that when he left Eritrea, he had “no intention or inclination to go to Israel. At all, at all”.

He’d heard about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “all the problems and the Israeli Army. After what I’ve been through in Eritrea,” he says, throwing up his hands, “Khallas,” Arabic for enough.

“I wanted a place I could go and live peacefully,” he adds. “That’s why I preferred to spend all those years in Libya, trying to reach Europe.”

Isaac says he has been shocked by the conditions African refugees face here. “It doesn’t have any proper policy for us. [Refugees] are not allowed to do anything. I would say it would be better for [us] in prison.”

Jail, he explains, would be more honest than the current situation, which he calls a “trick”.

“Because then [the Israeli government] can say, ‘Oh, you’re free and you’re working and you’re living and, okay, we have African migrant workers here.’”

I think of the detention facility the state is building in the south of Israel to house African refugees caught entering the country. I consider the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were dispossessed when Israel landed upon them. I think of the Israeli blockade of Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Checkpoints. Home demolitions. Political prisoners.

I think of what the Jews have themselves suffered and the biblical command to care for the strangers among us.

“Do you believe in God?” I ask Isaac.

Isaac angles his hat, which I have come to see as a small act of rebellion to circumstance. “Yes, I do,” he answers.

“Even after all this?”

“Religion, I don’t believe in religion. It’s just a drop, some sort of organisation … But I believe in some superpower or whatever.”

Since the state of Israel was established in 1948, it has granted recognised status to fewer than 200 refugees.

Instead of reviewing the cases of African asylum seekers, the Israeli government calls them a faceless mass, “infiltrators”. It’s a word preferred by politicians, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also claims that Africans are a “threat” to the “character of the country”, our “Jewish and democratic” state.

On 9 January, just a week after I interviewed Isaac, the Israeli Knesset passed a parliamentary bill that modifies the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law. Initially created to keep Palestinians from returning to their homes in Israel after the 1948 war, the updated legislation will subject African refugees and their children to three years in jail, without trial. Those from “enemy countries”, including the Darfur region of Sudan, could be imprisoned indefinitely.

But, even before this legislative change, Africans caught entering Israel via its porous southern border with Egypt already faced jail time. Sunday Dieng, a 26-year-old refugee from what is now South Sudan, was held in an Israeli prison for 14 months in 2006 and 2007.

When I ask about the conditions and whether or not he received adequate food, Dieng looks down at the coffee I’ve bought him and gives a polite smile. The gesture matches his slightly formal dress. He wears a starched shirt with a stiff collar. His brown sweater is zipped up. A tiny Mercedes pendant hangs from the tab.

“Yeah, food was no problem,” he says, still looking at his cup. “But, you know, to live in jail for one year and two months for no reason, even though you have food and everything—it’s terrible. It’s very difficult.”

He looks up at me and flashes his teeth to make me, or himself, feel better, perhaps.

“It causes damage to the [mind], because you know you didn’t do anything wrong, you didn’t do any crime.” Dieng, who was not charged with a crime, was held without trial.

He forces another smile before he goes back to the beginning, to 1993.

Dieng was 12 when his village was bombed and soldiers from northern Sudan killed his parents, before his eyes. He and his eldest brother fled, eventually making their way to Ethiopia. But Dieng had his heart set on studying. The refugee camps lacked “proper facilities”, he says, so he went on to Egypt alone.

Because he didn’t feel safe there, he eventually continued on to Israel, making his way through the Sinai on foot until he reached the border.

Speaking of Israel’s unwillingness to process requests for asylum and the refugees’ inability to support themselves financially, Dieng remarks, “How can you let someone into your house if you don’t want to give him food, if you don’t want to give him a place to sleep? This is like killing him in a political way.”

With contributions from Yohannes Lemma Bayu, founder and director of the African Refugee Development Center. 

Photo: Mya Guarnieri. Refugees march in Tel Aviv in December of 2010. The sign reads: “We asked for shelter, we received jail.”

Into an unsettled new year: settler violence rising in the West Bank

by adminin Writing

Inter Press Service, January 22, 2012

An elderly Palestinian woman spent last week on hunger strike to protest violent attacks by Israeli settlers.

Hana Abu Heikel went on the hunger strike on behalf of her family after settlers burned the family car during the previous weekend. Since Israeli settlers moved into the houses surrounding the Abu Heikel family home in Hebron in 1984, the Abu Heikels have seen eight cars burned. Six vehicles were also smashed by settlers.

Settlers also pelted the Abu Heikel’s home with stones last weekend. Two young Palestinian men were attacked and beaten by Jewish settlers in Hebron during the same period. The young men were jumped on Shuhada Street which was once the bustling centre of Palestinian commerce in Hebron. Because of the street runs through an illegal Israeli settlement, it has been closed. Its shuttered storefronts are covered with spray-painted Jewish Stars of David.

When Israeli soldiers intervened, they arrested the Palestinian men and did not take any action against the settlers.

The second weekend of January also saw settlers cut down over 100 olive trees in two small villages near the West Bank city of Salfit.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved measures to curb settler violence last month, January’s incidents reflect Israeli authorities’ continued refusal to protect Palestinian civilians and their property.

Recent settler attacks also point to growing violence in the West Bank.

According a year-end report compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler violence against Palestinians and their property went up 40 percent in 2011 compared to 2010. When compared to 2009, it rose 165 percent.

While settler violence is on the rise, it is not new. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Israeli settlers killed 50 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza between September 2000 and June 2011. During the 13 years spanning December 1987 and September 2000, 115 Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers.

Many of these deaths were not acts of self-defence but malice. On numerous occasions, B’Tselem reports, “Israeli civilians chased Palestinians who had thrown stones, and killed them by shooting directly at their bodies.”

According to the U.N., 2011 saw Israeli settlers kill three Palestinians and injure 167; settlers damaged or destroyed approximately 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees, mostly olive trees, in the same year.

The Abu Heikels’ olive grove was ruined after settlers set fire to it in 2008.

Abu Heikel’s brother, Hani, estimates that the family has filed approximately 500 complaints about settlers with Israeli authorities in the past 28 years. He says that the police have not investigated these complaints and that authorities are dismissive of the family’s troubles.

“They tell us to ‘leave the area, leave the house’,” Abu Heikel says.

OCHA reports that over 90 percent of monitored Palestinian complaints about settler violence are “closed without indictment.”

Some settler assaults on Palestinians and their property are “price tag” attacks – retribution for the evacuation or threatened demolition of illegal Israeli outposts. But, in many instances, settler violence is an attempt to run Palestinians out of their homes so that some Israelis can take the property and tighten Israel’s grip on the West Bank.

While the Abu Heikels are surrounded by settlers and are under immense pressure to leave, they refuse to abandon their house. When discussing his family’s long history in Hebron, Abu Heikel notes that his grandparents were one of the Palestinian families that sheltered more than 400 Jews during the 1929 massacre in Hebron that saw 67 Jews killed.

Still, settlers seem intent on driving the Abu Heikels out.

On one occasion, a settler cut the fence surrounding the Abu Heikel’s home and entered the garden. The Israeli woman was accompanied by her children, pointing to one reason settler violence proves so intractable – some settlers teach their children to behave in a violent manner towards the local Palestinian population. This writer has interviewed children, including a 13-year-old girl, who openly admitted to throwing stones at Palestinians.

The United Nations’ recent report on settler violence pointed out that international law mandates that Israel must protect civilians and their property and “ensure that all incidents of settler violence are investigated in a thorough, impartial and independent manner.”

Israel’s High Court has also ruled that the army is obligated to protect Palestinians and their property in the Occupied Territories.

Abu Heikel says that when he asks Israeli police and soldiers for help, they answer, “‘Our work is just to protect the settlers’.”

While the third weekend of January was quiet, human rights groups in the West Bank were bracing themselves for “price tag” attacks due to Israel’s recent demolition of an illegal outpost. Speaking to IPS, a spokeswoman for the Christian Peacemaker Teams said that her organisation and others were preparing for imminent violence in the Hebron area. The groups were scheduling shifts to maintain an international presence in the city and to monitor both the settlers and the Israeli army.

The spokeswoman, who asked to remain anonymous because she does not want to attract the attention of Israeli authorities, added that while the settlers were unusually calm last week, Israeli soldiers from the Golani brigade broke into the CPT’s building and a neighbouring apartment.

Photo: armed settlers walking on Shuhada Street in Hebron (ISM Palestine)

My mom joined Twitter and it brought us closer

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Slate, January 4, 2012

When my mom started following me on Twitter, I felt a bit like a teenager who couldn’t get any privacy. After I tweeted a friend to say that his brother was unusually handsome, she chimed in, writing, “Ooooo, he *is* cute.”

I deleted the tweet and kept it strictly professional after that.

But the change she made recently to her profile was even more jarring. She added one word, putting it right at the beginning of her self-description:

Artist.

I knew that my Mom had gone to art school when she was young. I also knew that she’d dropped out. Eventually, she became a graphic designer. A single watercolor was all that remained of her life as a painter. It showed a woman with long, flowing hair standing in the rain, trying, unsuccessfully, to hold petals in the cupped palms of her hands. The picture hung in our study in a plain, silver frame.

I’d always admired the piece. But I’d viewed it as the youthful work of a dilettante, of someone who liked going to galleries and museums but who wasn’t a true artist.

She’d been on Twitter for over a year when she made the change to her profile. My first response to my mother’s update was guilt. What else had I missed about my mother?

I studied her tweets. Looking for a new camera, she said.

Was she into photography now, too?

And then another surprise:

I do love Savannah.

My whole childhood in Gainesville, Fla., I listened to her wax poetic about “the city”—her native New York. “I should have never left the city,” she said, as we puttered along in our battered, blue Ford Pinto. A Jew, she felt oppressed by the evangelical Christianity she sometimes encountered in the Deep South—people who urged her to convert, who told us we were going to hell because we hadn’t accepted Jesus Christ as our personal lord and savior.

“Look at this place,” Mom would say. “There’s a church on every corner.”

She’d made me wear a chai pendant. The Hebrew word for life, my classmates had pointed at the necklace and teased me. It was strange, it was foreign. I wanted out but a scholarship to the local university kept me in the South and my college sweetheart anchored me. When our relationship failed in my late 20s, I went as far away as I could.

Sitting at my computer in Israel, I wondered when Mom had made her peace with everything, when she’d embraced the South enough to publicly express her adoration for Savannah—a place as Southern as collard greens.

I considered the emotional distance between us and wondered if we’d be closer if I didn’t live half way around the world.

I tried to remember the last time we’d asked each other questions that went beyond the superficial details of our lives.

There’d been hints that we didn’t know each other very well anymore. When Mom came to visit me in Israel in 2008, she brought me a pink sweater—a throwback to the days when I was a little ballerina who hung her pink toe shoes on the handle of the door that led to her pink bedroom.

Today, I am a woman who categorically rejects pink. I do not wear it. Under any circumstances.

This summer, when I visited the States, I made a guilty confession to my mom: Yes, I go out for a jog once in awhile, but I don’t enjoy it. My parents are avid runners and my father is a track and cross-country coach. Mother-daughter runs were the core of our relationship during my teenage years. She didn’t take the news well—she continued to protest, “But you told me once you wished you hadn’t quit the team …” she said, on Skype.

So I emailed my mom, asking her about the update to her Twitter profile and if she was doing photography. I worried that this admission of how little I knew about her life would hurt her feelings. But I asked myself what would trouble her more—that I didn’t know? Or that I didn’t ask?

I hit send.

Mom is usually a little slow to respond. But, this time, I got a reply the same day:
I’ve been feeling very frustrated creatively for quite some time, since I no longer do design for a living … I’ve been searching for a creative outlet for a few years. And I’ve been quite interested in rug hooking. It is a little expensive to start up. But, finally, I have all the major supplies I need.

So I started rug hooking. My own design.

I attend a class once a week. It’s mostly older women. I enjoy just sitting there hooking while listening to them chitchat.

This didn’t jibe with the image I had of my mom. She’d been a New Yorker—impatient, walk fast, talk fast. And she’d always turned her nose up at crafts. Who was this woman who sat, quietly, hooking rugs, listening to the ladies around her? I struggled to picture it.

As for the photography, she continued, I’ve been missing that as well …

It turns out that she’d always taken black and white stills. How can it be that I hadn’t noticed?

She went on, explaining that her new hobby had led her to some realizations of her own. Mom had had a strained relationship with her stepmother, who passed away recently. When she’d gone to New York to console my grandfather, guess what Mom noticed on their shelves? Books on rug hooking. They’d had more in common than they’d known.

You know, Mom added, when I was young, I kept these little notebooks. I wrote everything down. I wanted to be a writer, too. Like you.

Our pictures of each other need updating. But, I realize, we know each other’s core, some essence that stands still, unmoved by time. Yes, the adult me can’t stand pink. But I always wanted to be a writer. And that never changed.

I tapped out a quick email asking Mom, “What’s all this about loving Savannah? What about New York? Do you still want to move back to the city someday?”

She sent me a short answer: I do.