Stealing the Towb, Palestine's Cultural Identity

Department

Art

Document Type

Editorial

Publication Date

1-11-2019

Abstract

For the record, “I don’t do Facebook.” Never had the desire to do so, and will likely not do so for a long while.

I’d rather spend my time in the garden, reading books and online blogs, wood pecking on my keyboard, shooting deer with my camera, and occasionally firing up my welder to make a sculpture.

CounterPunch, Al Jazeera, Le Monde Diplomatique, and TomDispatch are favorite staples. The Gangland emails, a rich daily fount of former Colleague Johnny Wink’s poems, comments on language, linguistics, grammar, Latin and a miscellany of copious quotations and suggested reading lists is a daily feast. Mondoweiss, Informed Comment, Electronic Intifada, and Ha’aretz are noted for having the backbone to take on Israel, AIPAC and their hangers-on with hard-hitting reporting. HuffPost is OK for quick news updates, and, except for an occasional decent BBC report on art/culture, I find the BBC brexiting into a sub-standard news outlet.

On January 4, 2019, La Belle Femme shared a Facebook photograph of M., a childhood friend from my days in Jerusalem, Palestine. M., her sisters, my twin brother, and I attended the Mawardieh convent school (Arabic for Sisters of Rosary) in Jerusalem, a Catholic convent adjacent to the U.S. West Jerusalem Consulate. All the sisters were of Palestinian descent; most were kind, loving, patient, and friendly. Two 8 foot mason hewn rock walls transected by a narrow cobbled alley served as the demarcation line that segregated the convent’s nuns and school children from the consulate staff and U.S. Marines guarding the consulate.

Publication Title

CounterPunch

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