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birthday greetings .....
Two Men's Lives Reflect Divergent Fortunes of Jewish, Palestinian Peoples
By Griff Witte
Sixty years ago, Dror Gurel and Nabil Zaharan were born into a land at war.
Sons of middle-class families, they entered the world during the same week and along the same stretch of sun-splashed Mediterranean coast. Gurel was born in Jewish Tel Aviv; Zaharan's mother gave birth just down the road, in Arab Jaffa.
Yet it was a third birth that week that, more than anything, has shaped their lives.
Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, and Gurel and his family have spent the years since trying to build the Jewish state into a military and economic powerhouse. Gurel's father, an engineer, helped design the barracks, training grounds and ammunition depots of Israel's defense. The son, also an engineer, has constructed shopping centers and high-rises that have become emblems of affluence.
Zaharan, meanwhile, has spent his life dreaming of a place he lost but never knew, and wishing for a Palestinian state that may never be. He prays for his family's safety amid nightly Israeli army incursions, and hopes his children will find work despite a crippling siege.
The trajectories their lives have taken reflect the vastly different fortunes of two peoples who, to this day, remain in conflict over the same ancient land. Israel will celebrate its 60th anniversary Thursday with a nationwide party; Palestinians will solemnly commemorate what they call al-Naqba, "the catastrophe."
For Israel, this anniversary is a chance to reflect on wars won against seemingly overwhelming Arab armies, as well as the prosperity wrought by the nation's economic transformation from agricultural marvel to high-tech innovator. But Israel remains an unfinished project -- a state without final borders, a constitution, or a national consensus over the role its Arab minority should play in civic life or the sacrifices necessary to make peace with the Palestinians.
The birthday festivities will include fireworks, concerts, air force flyovers and visits by more than a dozen foreign heads of state, including one next week by President Bush. Israel's president, Shimon Peres, will mark the occasion with a reception for Israelis who were born on the original Independence Day. Dror Gurel is among them.
"I have a big problem," said Gurel, a slim man with graying hair who recently talked about his life as he sat in his spacious northern Tel Aviv apartment. "No one ever forgets how old I am." The state of Israel had existed only hours when Gurel's mother gave birth to her first child. The next morning, she rocked her new baby as bombs exploded outside her Tel Aviv hospital room. Her husband had to miss the birth because, like almost all young Jewish men, he was serving in the army as Israel successfully fought off first its Palestinian neighbors and then an alliance of Arab militaries.Born At The Dawn Of A New State
- By Gus Leonisky at 8 May 2008 - 10:14pm
- Gus Leonisky's blog
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El Nakbar denied...
AN EXHIBITION about the West Bank city of Hebron was pulled down after state counter-terrorism officers visited Leichhardt library last Thursday afternoon.
On Friday the council closed the exhibition, titled El Nakbar (the catastrophe), saying it could ignite community unrest.
Exhibition organisers, Friends of Hebron, blasted the council decision as "gutless". Group member Carole Lawson said the library's manager approved all but one of the panels before the display opened on Wednesday last week.
"She read every caption and looked at the whole exhibition. She was happy with it and said it was suitable for a community space," Ms Lawson said.
"She told me that they (police officers) put the fear of God into the library staff and described them as 'the men in black'. We're being censored as a group. It's denying the Palestinian story oxygen."
The display included photographs of Palestinian children walking to school, apparently being pelted with rocks by Israeli children, and burning houses.
Ms Lawson said the council panicked and pulled the exhibition after counter-terrorism officers asked to see the material to judge if it was inflammatory.
But a council spokesman said the decision was made by the libraries director David Marshall, mayor Carolyn Allen and the librarian after the exhibition was hung and they'd had the chance to fully examine it.
"The written description of some of the images and the headlines were clearly divisive in a public library," the spokesman said.
"The (counter-terrorism) officers didn't tell the council to do anything."
A NSW Police spokesman denied pressure was put on the council to close down the exhibition.
Community contact unit officers from the counter-terrorism command were "just down there as part of their normal duties", he said.
"The officers didn't even talk to the council, they just went down to the library to meet the display organisers just to say 'hi' and introduce themselves," the spokesman said. "They didn't go down for the exhibition."
Cr Allen said the council wasn't out to censor information but to keep the peace.
"I don't want to pit separate groups of ratepayers against each other," she said.
"It's not a matter of stopping people making statements."
She said the group hadn't followed the proper process agreed to last September when they were formed.
All projects related to Hebron had to go through the four-councillor panel and Jewish group Inner West Chavurah had to be consulted.
Judy Singer from Inner West Chavurah said she wasn't against the exhibition, but the group hadn't followed procedure.