• Fwr Vwls 4 Futr Englsh?

    Tablet, June 19, 2012 I’m used to seeing abbreviations on Twitter, Gchat, and SMS. But I was surprised recently when an editor closed an email with “Rgds.” The “s” on the end helped me guess that it wasn’t short for “Rigid” or “Raged,” or so I hoped. Given the context, I assumed he meant “Regards.” But …

  • Hiding in fear, nowhere to run for Israel’s South Sudanese

    Agence France-Presse (AFP), June 13, 2012 Abraham Alu, a 35-year-old asylum seeker from South Sudan, hasn’t left his apartment in south Tel Aviv for five days. He has run out of money and food. But he is too scared of the immigration police to venture further than the courtyard. Alu used to sell plastic work …

  • Africans fear more violence in Israel

    Inter Press Service, June 11, 2012 It’s Saturday night in south Tel Aviv. Amine Zegata, a 36-year-old refugee from Eritrea, is reopening the small bar he owns in the HaTikva neighborhood. The pub was closed after Jewish Israelis smashed his windows and the bottles within during the race riots two weeks back. But Zegata has been …

  • Israel bans mother from visiting daughters, deports families

    Inter Press Service, May 31, 2012 Hundreds of thousands of families — from Palestinians to Southeast Asian migrant workers to African refugees — struggle under Israeli policies that seek to limit the number of non-Jews within Israel and in the areas it occupies. Sitting in the living room of her home in East Amman, Jordan, Sabah Othman …