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Bragging rights: Today, the managers of the website "Offexploring.com" chose my blog of April 4, from among hundreds of other blogs on its site, as its choice for "Blog of the Day"! (That's the blog about Tighe Barry and his report from the hugely successful GMJ mobilization in Jordan of April 4.)
PALESTINIAN EMBASSY, & THE AL-SAHA
(This blog continues my description of the events of March 29, 2012, from the successful media conference to the dinner at the Al-Saha that evening.)
Immediately following the media conference, a young woman from PressTV asked me for an interview. The first question she asked was whether this was my first trip to Beirut. In response, I told her that I was here forty years ago and toured the Palestinian refugee camps at that time. It was disappointing, then, for me to observe that the Palestinians were still living in these camps four decades later, amid poverty and squalor, and had not yet been able to return to their homes and farms in Palestine.
Her next question was about the growing support for the Palestinian cause around the world, including North America. I responded thus: "Your president (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) put it very well when he said, 'It is hard to find a person of good conscience in the world who does NOT support the Palestinian cause, whereas every absolute monarch, every dictator, every capitalist supports the criminal regime in Al Quds.'"
I went on to say something to the effect that, every since the Israeli war crime of attacking the defenceless civilians of Gaza in operation Cast Lead in 2008, there had been a shift in world public opinion against the Zionist state and in support of the Palestinian people. Apparently, the interview was actually played on PressTV Live because my wife, Kay, sent me a short but excited e-mail message which read "YOU WERE ON PRESSTV!"
Well, that was nice to know. Kay and I like to watch the news at dinner. Before we remodelled the living room, we only had the option of watching the mainstream media - CTV, CBC, Global, BBC, Al Jazeera - and usually, in intense frustration at Marcia MacMillan or Peter Kent, I would want to throw my eating utensils at the TV screen. However, once we renovated and installed a new wall-mounted TV, we could run a wire to our computer and play PressTV Live.
Let me tell you it makes for a much more pleasant dining experience. When you watch Press TV news, there are people marching on the screen everywhere in the world against injustice - from the Occupiers in the USA, to workers in Greece and students in Chile, and to demonstrators against the royal family in Bahrein. It reminds me fondly of the 1960's!
Anyway, I digress...
When the internationals left the press building, we headed for our blue bus. But now, the blue 25-seater bus was parked behind four gray, Mitsubishi 25-seater buses. These buses were for the members of the Asian convoy. I have not quite figured why, but it always took at least an hour to load up the buses.
I think what finally got us into the buses was a thunderous downpour that flooded the streets of Beirut with rivers of rain, cascading in torrents down the hillsides, in just a matter of minutes. However, the rainstorm brought traffic to a virtual standstill. It took quite a while to get to the Palestinian Embassy.
The fact that we were late for lunch didn't deter the ambassador from giving us a very warm welcome.The embassy is a rather modern building flanked by guard posts, manned by armed men in uniform. The big red and white steel gate was lifted and a red carpet was actually rolled out for us! The ambassdor and the his staff were lined up in suits on the carpet to welcome his international guests. Each guest was handed a Palestinian flag and fringed kaffiyeh (scarf) bearing the colours of the Palestinian flag and the likenesses of Yaser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Then, we walked down the ramp into the reception hall.
The next thing I knew I was being guided to the podium to be seated with Nabil,
one of the Lebanese co-ordinators, just under the podium where the ambassador, Paul Larudee, and other dignitaries, including several imams (Muslim faith leaders) in long black robes and turbans, were seated. Nobody explained why I had been chosen for this honour or what I was expected to do. The hall was filled with hundreds of guests, seated on white plastic chairs, including all the international delegates, except those still interned at the port of Beirut. The program began with playing of the Lebanese and Palestinian national anthems. Everyone stood. Then, the speeches started. The ambassador spoke in Arabic which was translated into English by the only woman on stage. I didn't hear him or the imams.
I was busy working out in my head what I would say, in one or two paragraphs, that was in line with my speech at the media conference. Paul Larudee cleverly worked a personal vignette about his reaction to seeing a Palestinian t-shirt that read: "We are all Palestinians!" many years earlier into a brief speech about the global significance of Jerusalem and thanking the ambasador for his generous hospitality in including us in his celebration of Palestinian Land Day. The translator rendered the speech into Arabic.
I resolved to do the same as Paul. I would link a personal experience of mine from the struggle in the 1980's against apartheid in South Africa to the Palestinian struggle today against apartheid in the Occupied Territories and then touch on the significance of the GMJ.
Fortunately, due to the translations, the speeches ran overtime and the oratorical program was abruptly terminated before my turn came.
Whew!
We broke for lunch at about 4:30 pm. A delicious buffet had been set: chicken, rice with nuts, humus, pita bread, tabouli, pastries stuffed with spinach or meat, desserts, fruit, soft drinks, tea, coffee. Most of us had not eaten or drank anything since breakfast and so ate heartily.
Then, we filed back onto the buses and travelled back to our various hotels. We were told to be ready for pickup at 8:30 pm (I seem to recall) to travel to the Al-Saha (loosely translated as "forum" or open area") for dinner.
The Al-Saha Traditional Village is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever entered. From the outside, it appears as a large fortress-like structure with domes, made of medium-sized, sandy-coloured, roughly-hewn, carved stones. Inside, it is divided into rooms, alcoves, shops, unusual staircases, long and short, broad and narrow passageways, unique arches (the likes of which I had never seen before) with inlaid gingerbread stonework at the most unxpected spots, and a large open plaza.
The wordwork inside is also unusual. Whole logs are woven into the ceilings and wooden rails
poke through walls. All the wood is finished in a reddish, brown natural tone. Someone told me that the whole building was made of recycled rubble from the Lebanese civil war. This fact would not surprise me, if true, because the custom in this part of the world is not to waste usuable building materials from buildings collapsed during wars, fires, and earthquakes. In fact, archeologists are always finding materials in buildings recycled from earlier buildings and civilizations.
The purpose of the building was to recreate, in the middle of run-down, urban, and Shia working class district, a building recreating traditional village life in Lebanon that would draw tourists. And so, on the inside, the visitor is treated to 7000 square metres of village scenes: the marketplace, the neighbourhood mosque complete with minaret, cafés, a restaurant, a motel, a wedding hall, terraces, a children's playground. No alcohol is served and the food is strictly halal. It provides a form of what is termed, "pious entertainment", which fits in with the largely Shia neighbourhood and the politics of the largely Shia community.
On the top floor of the Al-Saha is the restaurant/banquet hall. The walls of the room are (the same as) the stonework outside, intersperced with little alcoves that seem to have no practical purpose at all. The ceiling is a web of whole logs. The backdrop to the stage is a purple curtain. With the recessed lighting, the room is very earthy and cheerful.
The building and its architect have won many prizes. I recommend reading more about it at:
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/17057/ISIM_17_Pious_Entertainment_Al-Saha_Traditional_Village.pdf?sequence=1 .
A reception line of imams and officials welcomed us into the banquet hall.
I was seated next to Sarah Masurek, who was the heart and soul of the GMJ effort in Lebanon. She effectively put aside her graduate studies for six months in order to organize the Lebanese event. The good news she had to tell me was that Feroze Mithiborwala, the originator of the the GMJ idea, and the rest of the Asian convoy had just been released from detention at the port of Beirut thanks to intercessions at the highest levels of government. The bad news was that Feroze and the just-released Asian delegates were too worn out to attend the dinner in their honour tonight.
I was having a nice chat about the events of the day with this beautiful and charming young activist when a Turkish delegate tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to come over to their table. At their table, I was asked to sit down by "George" (his anglicized nickname), a Turkish international delegate whom I had met at the media conference earlier today, and made to understand that I was going to be eating dinner at his table tonight.
Okay....
I was surprised to learn that Turks and Kurds were sharing the same table. I thought there was some animosity between the two national groups. If so, it wasn't reflected tonight where the subject was Palestine. I think I disappointed them because I could hardly eat anything after the very late lunch at the Palestinian embassy. We swapped e-mail addresses and I was hospitably offered a place to stay right on the Bosporus if I ever came to Turkey.
After dinner, the speeches began. The first speaker was an imam who leads an organization in Lebanon that tries to maintain unity in the Muslim ummah (community). In short, it is a successful attempt to unite Shia and Sunni so that any divisions between the two sects can't be exploited by those power-brokers who love to divide and rule. He was followed by a Palestinian speaker, who welcomed the efforts of the Global March to Jerusalem in support of Palestinian Land Day. The last speaker was one of the Naturei Karta rabbis. Like his colleagues earlier in the day, the rabbi slammed the Israeli state for invading Lebanon and causing so many deaths and so many years of destruction. He repeated that the Israeli government had nothing whatever do with Judaism except to give Jews a bad name all over the world and he finished with a wish that the Israeli government would disappear and be replaced with a Palestinian state in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews could live together again in peace in Jerusalem, just as they had before the advent of the Zionist movement in the early twentieth century. Lots of applause. The speeches were translated, again by the only woman on the podium.
When the speeches ended, a number of the Asian delegates took to the stage enthusiastically to chant slogans and to wave flags in time to the (taped) resistance music being played. This posed a small problem because the Asian delegates were waving flags of various Palestinian and Lebanese parties that had been given to them as souvenirs during the events of the day. They also took these flags home to their hotel and brought them to the demonstration the next day at Beaufort Castle. There had been previous agreement that the flags of none of the Palestinian or Lebanese political parties would be displayed at any of the GMJ mobilizations, because the GMJ aims to be a coalition built on civil society or, if you prefer, a grass roots movement and is focused on only one country, Palestine. (By a decision of the International Central Committee, only the Palestinian flag and the flags of the countries represented by the international delegates could be flown.) Political parties are purposely not represented on the global GMJ executive committees, though some people (like me) may be members of different parties. (I belong to the New Democratic Party of Canada.)
This was one of the several problems encountered at the event at the historic Beaufort Castle the following day.
But, as you know, this was the very first Global March to Jerusalem. It my take a couple of more years to iron out all the kinks.
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