307 My son born in Jerusalem as a Christian Arab

My son born in Jerusalem as a Christian Arab

(1) My son born in Jerusalem as a Christian Arab
(2) Israel sends Vanunu back to jail
(3) Sabbath’s Goy - Roy Tov
(4) Israel bars Chomsky from West Bank
(5) Planet Chomsky vs. Dershowitz’s Orbit - Gilad Atzmon
(6) Zionists vandalize California home of Leftist Rabbi Michael Lerner
(7) Israel calls for expelling anyone commemorating Nakba in occupied Palestinian lands
(8) Russia spurns Israeli rebuke over Medvedev meeting with Hamas leader
(9) New weapons tested in Gaza could cause genetic mutations
(10) Jewish High School students in US object to a Test's use of a quote by Edward Said
(11) Israelis destroy Palestinian Mosques

(1) My son born in Jerusalem as a Christian Arab

{At the author's request, I have edited this email to remove parts that could identify the author. But, anyone who can explain the puzzle, is asked to let me know; I will pass it on - Peter M.}

From Z (Name & Email Withheld) Date: 20.05.2010

In 1973, my son was born in the ... hospital in the Old City of Jerusalem, on ... September 1973.

The Yom Kippur War broke out ... days later, on 6th october 1973. we lived through the war at that time, in the Old City. Due to the fact that the Ministry of the Interior was closed, as most of the workers were drafted into the war effort, it took me several months to get an Israeli birth certificate for my son, which was a pre-requisite for us to be able to register our son with the British Consul at Sheik Jarrah in Jerusalem as a British Citizen (my son's father was also English, ... we were both nominal Christians ...)

The British Consul told us that without the Israeli birth certificate, they would only be able to register my son onto our passports as "unspecified nationality." I asked the Consul if this meant "stateless" and he said "yes." I told him that this would never happen and that when my son would be added, he would be added as a British citizen.

On my son's Israeli birth certificate, when we finally go it, several months later, the Ministry of the Interior, Jaffa Road, Jerusalem, entered onto my son's certificate that he was "Christian Arab."

Nobody has ever been able to tell me why they did this. Can you tell me please?  Do you know?

(2) Israel sends Vanunu back to jail

From: Michael <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> From: "Fredrick Toben" <toben@toben.biz>
Date: 19.05.2010 10:00 PM

May 16, 2010

Peter Hounam

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7127711.ece

A DECISION by the Israeli Supreme Court to send Mordechai Vanunu, the nuclear whistleblower, back to jail for three months has reignited calls for him to be freed from restrictions that have dogged his life for the past six years.

Amnesty International has pledged to make him a prisoner of conscience and his lawyers are considering taking action outside Israel.

Vanunu was released in 2004 after serving an 18-year sentence for treason and espionage after he revealed the secrets of the Dimona atomic weapons plant to The Sunday Times. The Israeli government immediately imposed severe restrictions that prohibited him from leaving the country, going near foreign embassies and even talking to foreigners.

In 2007 he was arrested and accused of giving interviews to foreign media, including the BBC and The Sunday Times. After a long court battle he was found guilty. His lawyers managed to have his sentence reduced to community service. But there was no community service scheme in Arab east Jerusalem, the only part of Israel where he feels safe.

Avigdor Feldman, his lawyer, said the decision on May 11 to impose the original sentence and make him report to prison next Sunday was grotesque.

“After being found guilty in 1988 he was kept in solitary confinement for more than 11 years and I am very worried at the effect this could have on his mental state,” Feldman said. “All he has been accused of is talking to strangers, not revealing any new secrets. It is surely time he was allowed to lead a normal life.”

Dan Eldad, of the state prosecution service, said there was no other choice. “The court was convinced that Vanunu is in possession of information that, if revealed, would jeopardise the state’s security even today,” he said.

This contradicts a recent statement from Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, who ran the Israel Atomic Energy Commission between 1976 and 1986. He said anything Vanunu might yet disclose about Dimona had little relevance: “I’ve always believed he should be let go.”

Vanunu’s brother Meir said the threat of going to jail had put Mordechai in low spirits. He was walking around the hills of east Jerusalem, getting a last taste of the outdoors.

(3) Sabbath’s Goy - Roy Tov

From: Roy Tov <tovroy@gmail.com> Date: 21.05.2010 09:50 PM

Sabbath’s Goy | On Jewish Discrimination

http://www.roytov.com/articles/goy.htm

Discrimination is an intrinsic and important part of the Jewish religion as practiced by Pharisaic Rabbis – all of them in other words. Simply, they base it not on the Bible, but on the horrific Talmud. “Let’s rape and rob, ‘cause tomorrow…” seems to be their dogma. Recently I published an article named God's Clowns: On Jewish Sabbath in which I reviewed some of the tricks designed by these rabbis to fool themselves into believing they fulfill the Mosaic Law. A friend contacted me afterwards and commented on a case of discrimination one of his friends faced while in Israel. Due to some sensitive issues, the name of this friend and the involved company in Israel won’t be published here.

For some reason the West is oblivious to Jewish discrimination in Israel toward anybody who isn’t a Jew (and who is a Jew?). Moreover, discrimination between different Jewish communities is common. Maybe the reason for this indifference is the misconception that the discrimination is applied towards Palestinians and not towards Europeans or Americans. Why should enlightened Europeans care about that?

In The Cross of Bethlehem  there is a detailed description of the exploitation of the Druze people in Israel. In the army they are restricted to certain units; very notoriously to the Interrogations Unit of the Military Intelligence. In the civil society they are often use as Sabbath Goy, a term referring to a gentile used by the Jews to perform actions forbidden them. I won’t repeat the descriptions appearing in The Cross of Bethlehem , but want to add now an example of an European citizen abused in a similar way while working in Israel.

Peter – citizen of a major European country – was hired by an Israeli company in the semiconductors market. He installed for them pipelines needed for the sputtering and epitaxing of semiconductor materials of the newest kind.

At first everything looked fine; though after a while he found that the payment for his work was about one third of the wages of the Israelis. The jobs were preferably given to the Israelis, no matter what the pricing was; if the Israelis couldn't perform, he was called in. As a free bonus, he had to endure quite a lot of negative remarks besides the treatments because of his being a German. Charming.

Moreover, he was used as a Sabbath’s Goy, being called for working on Saturdays, while the Israelis were exempted of that. By the way, this interpretation of the Sabbath Laws doesn’t stand even the lightest scrutiny of the Bible. Moreover, in the buildings he had to use on Saturdays the lifts that were programmed to stop at each floor, while his Israeli masters used the other ones that would go by demand to the appropriate floor without any stop. When he asked about this, he was said to keep his mouth shut.

Peter - a pseudonym is used here - took the job as a repayment of the guilt that his grandfather might have done to the Jewish community in Bohemia. Yet, in the party made in his honor in the last day of his job, he said: “"I am a German, who have worked here for one and a half year. I am proud of being a German and on my father. His name is Adolf. I feel myself a bit akward, as I have installed here in Israel a gas system for poisonous gases. I came here as an idealist, and I am returning to my great country Germany as an anti-Zionist forever, thank to your nazi-like treatment of foreigners, that have to work in a type of slave labour for you. I will never return to this country, thanks to you.”

A popular interpretation between Palestinians is that there is no point in fighting Israel; the racist state would just destroy itself given enough time. In this little event we can see they are right.

(4) Israel bars Chomsky from West Bank

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 17.05.2010 02:39 PM

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64F23H20100516

Israel bars academic Chomsky entry to West Bank

(Reuters) - Noam Chomsky, a leading American intellectual highly critical of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, was denied entry to the West Bank on Sunday by Israeli immigration officials.

Chomsky, 82, told Reuters in a phone conversation from the Jordanian capital, Amman, he had traveled to the Allenby Bridge crossing on the Jordan River where Israeli immigration officials refused to allow him across.

"They apparently didn't like the fact that I was due to lecture at a Palestinian university and not in Israel," Chomsky, who is Jewish, said.

Chomsky's Palestinian host, lawmaker Mustafa al-Barghouti said the American linguistics professor and philosopher was due to lecture at Birzeit University and the Institute for Palestine Studies in Ramallah in the West Bank.

"This decision is a fascist action, amounting to suppression of freedom of expression," Barghouti told Reuters.

An Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman said immigration officials at the border crossing had misunderstood Chomsky's intentions thinking initially he was also due to visit Israel.

She said officials were trying to get clearance from the Israeli military, which controls access to the West Bank to allow Chomsky to enter.

"We are trying to contact the military to clear things up and if they have no objection we see no reason why he should not be allowed in," spokeswoman Sabine Hadad said.

Chomsky said he was on a speaking tour in the region and added his schedule was too tight to allow him to try again to enter the West Bank during his current trip as he had other engagements.

Chomsky said he last visited Israel and the West Bank in 1997 when he lectured at Ben-Gurion University and also at Birzeit. He said all his previous West Bank visits had been as a part of trips to Israel.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Ramallah, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Matthew Jones)..

(5) Planet Chomsky vs. Dershowitz’s Orbit - Gilad Atzmon

From: ReporterNotebook <RePorterNoteBook@Gmail.com> Date: 18.05.2010 09:49 PM

Planet Chomsky vs. Dershowitz’s Orbit

by Gilad Atzmon

Monday, May 17, 2010 

On the face of it, Chomsky’s border incident shouldn’t take us by surprise. Israel is the Jewish state and as such it operates as a synagogue of great magnitude.  The synagogue is an exclusive entity, it only allows in those who fit. The synagogue is neither democratic nor liberal, it is actually subject to tribal judgments that have very little to do with ethics or universalism....

http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/planet-chomsky-vs-dershowitzs-orbit-by-gilad-atzmon.html

PLANET CHOMSKY VS. DERSHOWITZ’S ORBIT BY GILAD ATZMON

MONDAY, MAY 17, 2010 AT 5:44PM GILAD ATZMON

 The Israeli Interior Ministry on Sunday denied entry to Jewish American linguist Prof. Noam Chomsky turning him back from the Allenby Bridge border crossing in the Jordan Valley.  Seemingly, the moral ash cloud that is pouring out of the morbid Jewish ghetto known as Israel  is not going to clear. It is there to stay.

On the face of it, Chomsky’s border incident shouldn’t take us by surprise. Israel is the Jewish state and as such it operates as a synagogue of great magnitude.  The synagogue is an exclusive entity, it only allows in those who fit. The synagogue is neither democratic nor liberal, it is actually subject to tribal judgments that have very little to do with ethics or universalism.

In the Jewish State, Prof Noam Chomsky is apparently a persona non grata, however, Alan Dershowitz, a shallow intellect is seemingly the hero of Tel Aviv University.

A week ago, during a University symposium,  Dershowitz said that Israel's biggest problem is Israel-bashing ‘Jews’ like Norman Finkelstein and Gilad Atzmon. He said some people live on what he calls “Planet Chomsky”.  Dershowitz didn’t do his homework. Clearly I myself share very little with Chomsky. As if this is not enough,  I am not a Jew for more than a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0vvaNM9J0U

However, it doesn’t take a genius to detect a continuum between Israel and Dershowitz.  A week ago Chomsky was a ‘planet’. Yesterday, at a Jordan valley border crossing, he was denied entry to the ‘Jews only universe’. The astronomy of the Jewish cosmos is pretty simple. You do not need a Galileo figure. The Jewish planet seeks total submissive tribal conformity.

Interestingly enough, Chomsky is not exactly the harsh anti Zionist figure that Dershowitz wants us to believe. Along the years, Chomsky was flirting heavily with Zionism. He was often visiting Israeli universities. I myself attended his Tel Aviv University lectures in the 1980’s. Chomsky was spreading some bizarre ungrounded ideas defying early Zionist commitment to the Jewish state.   As American activist Jeff Blankfort pointed out recently Chomsky has been dismissing the power of the pro-Israel lobby.  He opposed the BDS movement and made some efforts to “dissuade people from using the term, apartheid, to describe Israel's control over Palestinian society”.  Chomsky  also opposes the Palestinian right of return and a one-state solution.  Chomsky is in fact, a liberal Zionist as well as a kibbutz enthusiast. He may as well be the prototype of the righteous Jew and Zionist fig leaf. And in spite of that Israel denied the entry of the 82 year old American academic

Israel now admits that it made a mistake. In fact Israel couldn’t inflict more harm on itself. As it happens, Chomsky’s border incident yesterday may as well be the biggest contribution the American academic has ever made to the anti Zionist struggle.

As the truth of Israeli barbarism is unfolding, more and more Westerners admit that time is ripe for the nations to spit out Israel, for the Jewish state doesn’t have room amongst nations. But the nations shouldn’t stop there. Time is also overdue to spit the Dershowitzes and other Zionist comic figures from our public, academic, social and intellectual life.  De-Zionification is of the essence in the search for peace and humanity.

(6) Zionists vandalize California home of Leftist Rabbi Michael Lerner

From: IHR News <news@ihr.org> Date: 21.05.2010 09:50 AM

Tikkun Magazine
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/vandalism

Rabbi Lerner's Home Attacked by Right-Wing Zionists

(A Press Release from Tikkun Magazine on May 3, 2010)

Press Release: From Tikkun Magazine   

Berkeley police today confirmed that the attack on Rabbi Lerner's home late Monday May 2nd or early morning Monday May 3rd was in fact a crime and was being investigated. This followed a week in which Rabbi Lerner received several verbal death threats on the phone and lots of hate mail to him and to Tikkun.

The attackers used a powerful form of glue to attach posters to his door and around the property of his home attacking Lerner personally, and attacking liberals and progressives as being supporters of terrorism and "Islamo-fascism." They posted a printed bumper sticker saying "fight terror--support Israel" next to a caricature of Judge Goldstone whose UN report on Israel's human rights violations in its attack on Gaza last year has been denounced as anti-Semitic and pro-terror by right wingers in Israel and the U.S.. The caricature has Goldstone talking about his being kept from his grandson's bar mitzvah, and the caricature of Rabbi Lerner responds by saying "any enemy of Israel is a friend of mine." This attack and vandalism follows on a week filled with Lerner and Tikkun staff receiving hate mail, prompted apparently by Tikkun's announcement that in case the South African Zionists had succeeded in preventing Judge Goldstone from attending his grandson's bar mitzvah, as they threatened several weeks ago, that Rabbi Lerner would gladly hold the bar mitzvah in the SF Bay Area instead, and following Tikkun's announcement that in light of Goldstone's courageous willingness to stand up for human rights in Israel (his report called on the Israeli government to do its own independent, public and credibly objective investigation, punish those responsible for the crimes or show that they didn't happen, and thereby show that these actions were not government policy but the mistakes or evil choices by people in the IDF who were acting as rogue elements and not as a manifestation of the people of Israel) that Tikkun will award our prestigious Tikkun Award to Judge Goldstone in 2011 at the event celebrating our 25th anniversary! This story, which was prominent in Ha'aretz and many other Jewish magazines and websites, has intensified anger against Lerner and Tikkun among those who seek to perpetuate the Occupation, and great support among those who realize that the Occupation is really hurtful both to Israel and to the Jewish people world-wide. ?

In the 24 years of Tikkun's operation, we have received many death threats and vicious hate mail, including phone calls to our office announcing that "Rabbi Lerner is dead" and others saying "We will kill all of you." This particular attack has two worrisome elements not previously there:

1. They attack Rabbi Lerner's home. As law enforcement people told us, this is a way of conveying the messages to Lerner: "We know where you live, we know your house is vulnerable, so don't ignore our threats."

 2. By linking Lerner to alleged terrorism, they provide for themselves and other extremists a "right-wing justification" to use violence against Lerner, even though Lerner has been a prominent advocate of non-violence. He regularly critiques Palestinian acts of violence when they occur, including the shelling of Israeli towns by Hamas,  just as he critiques the violence of the Israeli occupation, and as he critiques the US war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the occupation of Chechnya by Russia, the occupation of Tibet by China, the human rights violations against their own people by the rulers of Iran, the acts of violence of those resisting the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the violence against women and homosexuals in many Arab and African countries (and in the US and Israel as well), the genocide in Darfur, the violence against Jews in some parts of Europe, and the list goes on.

Needless to say, this latest attack, on Lerner's home, has caused great concern to his family.  It should also raise deep concerns about protecting freedom of the press (Lerner is attacked because he is the editor of Tikkun magazine). And it should provide incentive for the Jewish community to stop labeling people as anti-Semitic for the “crime” of critiquing Israeli governmental policies toward Palestinians. To take a flagrant example that may have been part of the causal chain leading to the attack on Lerner’s home, two days before that attack Lerner was attacked personally by Alan Dershowitz. In an article labeling all the rabbis who had publicly protested against Goldstone’s exclusion from his grandson’s bar mitzvah, Dershowitz, writing in the Jerusalem Post and on Huffington Post April 29,  labeled the protesters “Rabbis For Hamas.”  He went on to say that Lerner was the worst among them. Dershowitz is well known for defending the alleged right of Israel and the Jewish people (and Bush) to take pre-emptive action against “suspected terrorists” through “targeted assassinations.” So here Lerner is being identified as supporting terrorists,  coming from an advocate for those who take violent action against those “suspects.” It isn’t hard to see how others would follow through against Lerner, and against others in the future, perhaps even with the kind of violence that now leads some right wing Jews to be violent against the Israeli army. The Dershowitz quotes are worse than you would believe: read it at cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/it_is_goldstone_who_is

And we at Tikkun know that this dynamic of demeaning and incitement too frequently leads to violence. Please be aware that these same right-wing Zionist forces state openly that they believe Obama is trying to destroy the state of Israel and that he is an anti-Semite. So these are issues that should concern everyone in America. The attack on Lerner should be challenged now, before it becomes a new level of “acceptable” behavior in the Jewish world.

What can you do? Let people know that this kind of thing is happening in the Jewish world to people who critique Israeli policies. And demand that the Jewish organizations, newspapers and official bodies state clearly that they oppose any efforts to label as “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating Jews” those whose criticisms are focused solely on the policies of the government of the State of Israel. Help alert the general public in the US to help their Jewish neighbors by letting them know that by using the term “anti-Semitic” or “self-hating” against those whose offense has been to strongly critique Israeli policy is to risk emptying those terms of the power that they might otherwise have to deter racism against Jews.

--Tikkun Magazine

To reach Rabbi Lerner directly: RabbiLerner@Tikkun.org or call the Tikkun office at 510 644 1200.

(7) Israel calls for expelling anyone commemorating Nakba in occupied Palestinian lands

From: Sami Joseph <sajoseph2005@yahoo.com> Date: 18.05.2010 01:34 AM

Palestinian Information Center

May 17, 2010

http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=66076

NAZARETH, (PIC)-- Israeli minister of finance Yuval Steinitz called for withdrawing the nationality from everyone inciting against Israel and commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe).

During the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Steinitz said it was intolerable and unforgivable to see Arabs and some Jews challenging the mere existence of Israel.

The Israeli minister also condemned the recent remarks made by head of the Islamic Movement Sheikh Ra’ed Salah in which he highlighted the Arab identity of occupied Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque and defended the right of return.

For its part, the right-wing party of Yisrael Beiteinu led by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman called for opening investigation with Arab Knesset member Jamal Zahalka for his participation in a march organized to mark the Nakba anniversary.

In a separate incident, Israeli minister of education Gideon Sa’ar declared his intention to force the Palestinian high school students in the 1948 occupied lands to study the Nazi holocaust as of next year.

Yedioth Ahronoth on Sunday reported that Sa’ar also intends to send a delegation of Arab teachers and school principals to Poland to visit the alleged Nazi extermination camp in order to qualify them to teach this subject efficiently.

In the same context relating to Nakba, Palestinian officials and politicians called Sunday for pooling the efforts to protect the right of return and confront attempts to dilute this right and twist its concept into the idea of resettling Palestinian refugees in their current residential countries and compensating them.

They stressed during their participation in a conference on the Nakba held in Gaza the need for raising the awareness of the Arab nation about the right of return so as to sustain it.

Dr. Ahmed Bahar, the first deputy speaker of the Palestinian legislative council, stated in his speech that the right of return is a sacred right that belongs to all Palestinians and anyone waiving it is considered an apostate from the Palestinian national rank as stipulated by the right of return law.

Dr. Bahar stressed that the Palestinian people reject to be resettled in alternative homelands and insist on returning to their homes they were expelled from, adding that this right can come true only through the option of resistance and national unity.

(8) Russia spurns Israeli rebuke over Medvedev meeting with Hamas leader

From: Sami Joseph <sajoseph2004@yahoo.com> Date: 15.05.2010 12:53 AM

Russia spurns Israeli rebuke over Hamas meet

May 13, 2010

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3889325,00.html

Russia on Thursday rebuffed Israel's criticism of President Dmitry Medvedev's meeting with the leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas this week.

Calling Hamas "a terror organization in every way", Israel's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday it was "deeply disappointed" that Medvedev met the group's exiled leader Khaled Mashaal during a visit to Syria this week.

Russia, the United States, European Union and the United Nations, make up a quartet of Middle East mediators. The US, EU and Israel consider Hamas a terrorist group. Russia insists that Hamas should not be isolated.

"Hamas...is a movement supported by the trust and sympathy of a significant part of Palestinians," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said in a statement. "We have regular contacts with this movement."

"It is known that all other participants of the Middle East quartet are also in some sort of contact with Hamas leadership, although for some unknown reason they are shy to publicly admit it," Nesterenko said.

During the meeting with Mashaal, Medvedev called for the quick release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip for nearly four years. Hamas later dismissed the Russian pressure and said Shalit would not be set free without an "honorable" prisoner exchange deal with Israel.

Also Thursday, Hamas hailed Russia and Turkey for suggesting the movement be included in the Middle East peace process.

"The invitation by Russia and Turkey to include the movement in the political process reflects the true political weight of the movement," senior Hamas leader Salah al-Bardawil said.

"Recognition of the legitimacy of Hamas will increase to include other countries besides Russia," he said.

(9) New weapons tested in Gaza could cause genetic mutations

From: Sami Joseph <sajoseph2005@yahoo.com> Date: 13.05.2010 06:33 AM

New weapons experimented in Gaza: population risks genetic mutations

New Weapons Committe May 12, 2010

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=65920

Toxic and carcinogenic metals, able to produce genetic mutations, have been found in the tissues of people wounded in Gaza during Israeli military operations of 2006 and 2009. The research has been carried out on wounds provoked by weapons that did not leave fragments in the bodies of the victims, a peculiarity that was pointed out repeatedly by doctors in Gaza. This shows that experimental weapons, whose effects are still to be assessed, were used. The researchers compared the quantity of 32 elements present in the tissues through ICP/MS (a type of highly sensitive mass spectrometry) . The job, carried out by laboratories of Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), Chalmer University (Sweden) and Beirut University (Lebanon), was coordinated by the New Weapons Research Group (Nwrg), an independent committee of scientists and experts based in Italy, who is studying the use of unconventional weapons and their mid-term effects on the population of after-war areas. The relevant presence of toxic and carcinogenic metals found in the wound tissues points to direct risks for survivors, but also to the possibility of environmental contamination ...

(10) Jewish High School students in US object to a Test's use of a quote by Edward Said

From: Kristoffer Larsson <kristoffer.larsson@sobernet.nu> Date: 15.05.2010 01:44 PM

High School Students Object to AP Test’s Use of a Quote by Edward Said

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Published May 12, 2010, issue of May 21, 2010.

http://forward.com/articles/127972/

Nearly 2 million high school students worldwide are taking Advanced Placement tests this May, hoping to impress college admissions counselors with high scores and, perhaps, earn a few college credits. But one test question citing the late Palestinian-American scholar and activist Edward Said on the theme of exile is prompting protests from some Jewish students.

The English Literature and Composition test, in which the question occurs, requires students to read excerpts of poetry and prose and compare them to other works they have studied in class. The passage from Said contains no reference to Palestine or Israel. But the test’s description of the late Columbia University humanities professor as a “Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic” has led some pro-Israel students to object that the test has been politicized.

“I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn’t mention the writers’ nationalities,” said Ayelet Pearl, a senior at New York’s Bronx High School of Science. “For me including this one clearly had political implications.”

The Said quote on the AP test reads: “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and its native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.”

“I’m in a public school and most students here have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians],” the 17-year-old Pearl said. “To put a quote in like this subconsciously reinforces the idea that Israel’s the antagonist, the aggressor, the one in the wrong.”

Though she had just 40 minutes to write the required essay, Pearl froze when she encountered the Said text. “I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t comfortable answering it,” she said. She decided to put a paragraph objecting to the quote’s inclusion at the top of her essay. “I find it really inappropriate to put a political question like that on a test,” she said she wrote.

Using this quote in the AP exam “is very reflective of the widespread use of education and testing as a platform for anti-Israel propaganda,” she told the Forward.

The College Board, which develops and administers the Advanced Placement exams, requires test-takers to pledge not to discuss test questions for 48 hours after taking the assessment. Two nights later Pearl began an open Facebook protest group, called “Protest the 2010 AP English Literature and Composition Free Response Question.”

As of press time the Facebook group had attracted 493 members, many of whom were engaged in lively discussion of the issue.

College Board spokeswoman Jennifer Topiel told the Forward, “We have heard no concerns about this exam question, which contains a quotation about exile and does not contain any political subject matter.”

Pearl and her Facebook protest group co-creator Alyssa Blumenthal, a senior at Long Beach High School in Long Beach, N.Y., said they had not yet contacted the College Board directly.

Said, who was born in Jerusalem, was raised there and in Egypt. He went on to become a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University from 1963 until his death in 2003. His 1978 book “Orientalism” is a touchstone for the field known as postcolonial studies. Controversial both as a writer and as a political activist, Said for decades campaigned for Palestinian statehood but was often at odds with Palestinian political leaders.

In a much-discussed incident in 2000, Said was photographed hurling a stone from Lebanon into Israel — at Israeli soldiers, some witnesses claimed, though Said and other witnesses denied this.

Blumenthal stressed that she objected to the identification accompanying Said’s quote about exile, not the text itself. It was, she said, more detailed than the identifications of other authors, if they were even described at all.

“It creates a bias that can potentially make students feel very uncomfortable and make their ability to respond [to the test question] feel compromised,” the 16-year-old Blumenthal said. “We don’t feel that a standardized test should be the place for anything dealing with politics regardless of the stand being taken.”

Another College Board spokeswoman, Sheila Jamison, responded, “The characterization of AP exam questions as typically excluding nationalities of writers quoted is not accurate. In fact, it is typical that when an author is cited their heritage is cited. The sample AP Exam questions demonstrate this.”

In fact, the other five writers quoted in the free response section of this year’s AP English Literature and Composition exam — now posted on the College Board’s website — are listed simply by name. The most recent example available of an author being listed with more than a name goes back two years, to the 2008 version of the test, which describes Anita Desai as an Indian author.

Some 1.8 million students worldwide are taking the 30 different AP tests currently offered this spring, on subjects ranging from art history to statistics.

“We aren’t sure whether others have ever used Facebook to register opinions about AP exam questions,” said Jamison of the College Board.

Contact Debra Nussbaum Cohen at DNussbaumC@forward.com

(11) Israelis destroy Palestinian Mosques

From: WVNS <ummyakoub@yahoo.com> Date: 06.05.2010 12:10 AM

Soldiers Level Mosque Near Rafah, Settlers Torch Mosque Near Nablus

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

http://www.imemc.org/article/58593
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/soldiers-level-mosque-near-rafah-settlers-torch-mosque-near-nablus/

Israeli soldiers invaded an area in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, leveled the Al Dahniyya mosque and uprooted farmlands on Tuesday at dawn. Local sources reported that the mosque was leveled to the ground after several armored military vehicles and bulldozers invaded Rafah.

Also in Rafah, soldiers uprooted farmlands near the Yasser Arafat Airport east of Rafah. Several military bulldozers and armored vehicles bulldozed farmlands and opened fire at random in Al Dahniyya area. The vehicles, originally stationed at the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) military post, advanced 800 meters into the area and placed sand hills.

Also on Tuesday at dawn, a group of fundamentalist settlers torched the main mosque of the Al Lubban Al Shariyya village, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The settlers attacked the mosque approximately at 3 A.M., rounded up several copies of the Holy Koran in one place and set them ablaze. The fire caused excessive damage to the property of the mosque, including its ceiling, its fans and walls. Its 450 square meters of carpet and eight air conditioners were burnt also.

This is the third mosque to be torched by the settlers this year as the settlers torched a mosque in Yasuf village near Salfit and another mosque in Huwwara town, near Nablus.
Photo credit Maan Images/Wissam Nassar