New meaning for the phrase "house-to-house fighting"

My parents have just returned from the Sabeel Conference in Palestine, an especially sobering event because 2008 means 50 years have passed since the Nakba of 1948.

Mom got to see and/or speak with a number of people who have been in the international news. (My mother is the white haired grandmother seated at table in bottom right corner; photo is from Sabeel's slide show on their website).


Fawziya Khurd: My mother spoke with her in her tent in a parking lot in East Jerusalem. She was evicted from her home after settlers occupied it. She is living in the parking lot next to the home she lived in since the mid-1950s, and told my mother she is being fined close to $100 per day for living in a tent in the parking lot. To learn more, see details of Jonathan Cooks' reporting on this story, Who Will Stop the Settlers? in Counterpunch.

Samia Khoury: Mom writes: "When she stood up after Mr. Ben-Eliezer's speech and basically said we the Palestinians accept your apology it was so amazing that I was in tears."

Email from Samia Khoury to Sabeel conference attendees:

A short and small man physically, Josef Ben Eliezar stood tall as he asked for forgiveness from the Palestinians at the Sabeel 7th international conference on the Nakba: Memory Reality and Beyond which took place in Nazareth and Jerusalem (November 12-19, 2008). He shared with the participants his testimony for taking part in the expulsion of the Palestinian population from Lydda and robbing them of their money and personal possessions when he was an Israeli soldier in 1948.

Josef could not live with the reality of that day in July 1948. He realized then that what he was doing to the Palestinians was what the Nazis had done to his family and people before he had immigrated to Palestine after the holocaust. He did not find a listening ear in the newly established state of Israel, and the inhumanity of that war which as a Jew he thought was a war of liberation continued to pursue him until he eventually left the country and settled in England.

I wonder how many Israelis would have the courage and the magnanimity of Josef to admit that they have done the Palestinians wrong, let alone ask for forgiveness. Although his testimony was mostly in front of an international audience, yet there were a number of Palestinians from Jerusalem and Nazareth who heard him loud and clear. I was so moved that I felt I needed to get up and recognize his courage and thank him for his testimony assuring him that we do forgive him. (check out his book The Search)

As people came up to thank me later on for my words, I could not help but wonder how meaningful for the Palestinian people it would have been and how much suffering could have been spared had the Israelis since day one of the establishment of the state in 1948 admitted the wrong and grave injustice that they had inflicted upon the Palestinians, asked for forgiveness, and allowed all who were evicted to return to their homes. A dream that could still be realized if the Jewish people can ponder and act in accordance with the words of their great prophet Micah (6:8) " What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."

Samia Khoury

"Do unto texters as you would have lecturers do unto you"

The professors/bloggers over at "Rate your students" think they have a keen eye for edgy writing and expletive-laced colorful rage about the daily inanities of teaching -- and they do. I took up the challenge of responding to this query: "So what do you do about texting in your class" and they included my answer in their line-up -- mine is the third down., beginning: "I teach one of those 100-student things, but since I don't take attendance and my detailed PowerPoint lectures are all on-line, the crowd is cut down to about 70...."

Is homosexuality only "okay" if it isn't your choice?

As part of giving a lecture on homosexuality in my developmental psychology class, I looked up Lisa Diamond's new book, because in past year's I've had to point out that most of the work on homosexuality is on male homosexuality -- it feels funny to spend an hour on theories of why men become gay addressing a room of 70 students that is 85% female.

I'd read some journal articles by Dr. Diamond and knew she had a book coming out, Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire.

The following blurb is from University of Chicago Magazine:

Is love "blind" when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This unsettling and original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Lisa Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships.
This perspective clashes with traditional views of sexual orientation as a stable and fixed trait. But that view is based on research conducted almost entirely on men. Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked 100 women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: "I fall in love with the person, not the gender," say some respondents.
Sexual Fluidity offers a new understanding of women's sexuality--and of the central importance of love.

See also this review.

While googling around, I stumbled upon the controversy regarding Dr. Diamond and NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality). NARTH has been citing Diamond's research as evidence that female homosexuality contains an element of choice, which supports their view that homosexuality can be changed. Diamond contests their misuse of her findings.

"In the Black Hawk Simulator, participants experience flying through a mountain village whilst shooting at enemies"

In an effort to raise the profile of the US military, a mall in Philadelphia recently became home to the first Army Experience Center. (More from blog.800hightech.com)

Read the Military's own description at http://www.army.mil

See myspace video of kids mowing down simulated villagers.

Columnist Him Hightower criticizes this facility, which is in a huge space at an urban mall.

More videos.

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