Gaza Teach In this Wednesday!

Gaza Teach-In his Wednesday, Feb. 18th at 7 pm, in Soc. Pysch classroom 130.

- Laila El-Haddad is a freelance journalist from Gaza. Her blog, "Raising Yousuf and Noor: Diary of a Palestinian Mother,"
explores the complex relationships between the personal and the political as she raises her children while negotiating
displacement and occupation. http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

- Rann Bar-On is an Israeli activist and graduate student at Duke University. He has worked with the International Solidarity
Movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Rann advocates for an end to the Occupation and resistance to militaristic
Israeli government policies. He is especially interested in the Shministim - a group of Israeli high-school students who are
imprisoned for daring to refuse to serve in Israel's occupying army.

-Dr. miriam cooke is a Professor of Arabic in the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department. She also co-teaches a class on
the Arab-Israeli conflict through literature and film in the fall. Dr. cooke is also the Education Director of Duke's Islamic
Studies Center.

- Abdullah Antepli is Duke's first Muslim Chaplain. Apart from being a Chaplain, he teaches courses on introductory Islam in
Duke's Divinity School. Antepli has also worked on a variety of faith based humanitarian and relief projects in Myanmar
(Burma) and Malaysia with the Association of Social and Economic Solidarity with Pacific Countries.

Some news

So Hamas says it may be on the verge of an 18-month ceasefire. A prisoner exchange may be in the deal, something Israel has said is a precondition. We'll see if this goes anywhere.

Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs has resigned, saying that lo and behold, the Shi'a fundamentalist government is not giving her Ministry adequate support. She is Sunni, which may also be a factor.

The "Good War" ? A Feminist Look at Afghanistan

Join us this Tuesday February 17, 7pm in the Duke Coffeehouse! Duke Against War will be looking at the U.S. war in Afghanistan through a feminist lens. Has the U.S. saved Afghan women from the Taliban? What is the status of Afghan women's safety, education, and political freedom? What will Obama's plans for increased troops to Afghanistan mean for women? There will be a presentation on these issues, followed by discussion. Some brief readings, articles, and videos are available for those who wish to learn more beforehand:

Excerpt from Chapter 19 “Updating the Gendered Empire: Where are the Women in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan?” in The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire by Cynthia Enloe, 2004, University of California Press. Get pdf here.

Laura Bush Radio Address, November 17, 2001.

Video of Laura Bush speech, November 2006 (1 min).

Radio interview with Eman of RAWA on Uprising Radio, November 13, 2008.

"Lives on the Line." Ms. Magazine, Winter 2009. Get pdf here.

President Obama on Afghanistan, Press Conference, February 9, 2009.

Hampshire College Divests!

Hampshire College has become the first college in the U.S. to divest from Israeli apartheid.

Congratulations to Hampshire College SJP for all the work they've done to make this dream a reality!

Check out the group's website for more info or to congratulate them yourself!

Far Right Gains in Israeli Elections

The openly racist Yisrael Beitenu party won 15 seats in Israel elections Tuesday. With Likud grabbing 27, Kadima 28, and the ultra-orthodox Shas party 11, it is increasingly likely that Likud will form a government with Yisrael Beitenu and Shas. This bodes very, very ill for Palestinians within Israel as well as in the West Bank and Gaza. Yisrael Beitenu has suggested Palestinians in Israel take a loyalty oath, and promised "no citizenship without loyalty." Netanyahu, head of Likud, has supported expanding West Bank settlements, and said recently that the war in Gaza ended too soon and didn't go far enough.(Netanyahu was also part of a right-wing rebellion against Ariel Sharon when Sharon sought to disengage from Gaza in 2005.)

(Those interested in a very in-depth analysis of political parties in Israel should consult Jews sans frontieres' primer on Israeli elections.)

What is clear is that these elections represent a significant shift to the right among the Israeli people.

In addition, still more voices are joining the chorus proclaiming the possibilities of a two-state solution dead. Juan Cole recently declared as much, and none other than Stephen Walt, of "The Israel Lobby" fame and no wild-eyed radical by any means, wrote an editorial in Foreign Policy online magazine asking "what do we do if the two state solution collapses?"

As always, a picture is worth a thousand words. The one accompanying this article says it all: Univesity College London, bedecked with a Palestinian flag by militant students. In the US, students at the University of Rochester recently occupied a building in solidarity with Palestine, and won significant demands. Palestine solidarity activism is sweeping across the UK and Canada, and it looks like it is coming to the US as well. Militant young folks are providing the answers policy wonks like Cole and Walt fail to imagine - direct, people-to-people solidarity with Palestine, standing up to the powerful interests of the status quo.

Free Palestine!

The Case Against the "Good War"

Here are a couple articles on Afghanistan that might be helpful for folks to check out as we prepare for our event coming up next Tuesday.

1. Jonathan Neale, "Afghanistan: The Case Against the 'Good War'"
2. Tariq Ali, "Afghanistan, Mirage of the Good War"

South African Dock Workers Boycott Israeli Ships

This from DemocracyNow.org:

As Israel blocks aid ships from reaching Gaza, dock workers in South Africa are refusing to unload Israeli goods at their ports. The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union says it will no longer unload Israeli ships in solidarity with Palestinians. Last year, South African dock workers refused to unload a Zimbabwe weapons shipment in protest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.