Israel is now home to a sizable group of residents who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian.  Many of these people are labor migrants who occupy a precarious position within Israeli society and a relatively invisible position within the often binary discourse on Israel/Palestine.  In order to get at some of the specific political dynamics associated with these realities, I recently interviewed Haim Yacobi (left), a lecturer in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University in Israel.  An architect and planner by training, Yacobi does research on the geopolitics of cities. In 1999 he formulated the idea of establishing "Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights," an NGO that deals with spatial planning, human rights and disadvantaged communities in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and currently he serves as the Chairperson of Bimkom.

 The fall premiere of PBS' Masterpiece Contemporary Theatre this past week was a film entitled Endgame. It outlines the secret negotiations between the white minority led apartheid regime and the ANC (African National Congress). The discussions begin thanks to a British business executive, Michael Young, who is concerned with losing assets in a diamond company. Young enlists deputy representative, Thabo Mbeki to the president of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, to be the voice for the ANC. Finding people to take with Mbeki was Young's challenge as the ANC was being depicted as violent and dangerous at this time, which is arguably true. Fortunately, Young is able to find voices to speak for the whites, among them Professor Willie Esterhuyse.

I want to share a short video that describes the work of the organization 100 Families Oakland.

Basically, families from Oakland come to together and through guidance from professionals create art. In so doing, they share their life stories with their communities, and therefore, create a more solid relationship with their immediate community instilling values such as solidarity, understanding, cooperation, dialogue, and much more. They create meaning within their family and open a dialogue with the greater community.

It appears that those who responded skeptically to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, insisting it would never amount to much, are slowly being forced to eat their words.  Since I began writing this series on BDS, the movement has celebrated a number of significant victories in its struggle to mobilize ordinary citizens and key sectors of civil society in opposition to Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.  In this fourth installment on the BDS movement, I will provide a brief overview of some of the movement's recent successes, including the creation of an ongoing campaign to free activist Mohammad Othman (pictured at left - image courtesy of Free Mohammad Othman) from Israeli custody. 

What made me happy in Ethiopia?

It’s been nearly four months since I returned from Ethiopia and I seem to miss it more with every day. Despite all the friends and family I have here in the US, something about Ethiopia clings to everything in my life; my job working with kids, my social life, and my future aspirations. Before I left Ethiopia, many of the people I had grown to know, my students, the shop-owners on my street, the kids living in my neighborhood, taxi drivers, teachers I worked with, and perhaps most of all the people who worked at the juice house that I would visit every day kept asking me the same question; when are you coming back? Every time I was asked this question it was not are you coming back but when? The truth is, then as now, they were right. I will go back someday, but alowokum meche (I don’t know when).