July 2008
Israeli-Palestinian photojournalism project underway
International Herald Tribune’s director of photography orchestrates Israeli, Palestinian photojournalists meet during symposium discussing representation of struggle between two nations
Cecilia Bohan, the International Herald Tribune’s director of photography, will visit Israel to participate in a symposium as part of a project called Frames of Reality, initiated by the Peres’ Center for Peace and the Local Testimony organization.
“The Israeli and Palestinian photojournalists will take part in a series of workshops,” one event organizer explained. “The goal is to strengthen the personal and professional relationships between them, and to allow for mutual creativity that will affect the way in which the conflict and the people living within it are represented and perceived.”
The symposium is said to include an open panel for residents of Tel Aviv and A-Ram, discussing the different aspects of photojournalism in the region. Bohan, who is considered one of the most influential figures in international photojournalism, will participate in the panel along with several prominent Israeli and Palestinian speakers such as journalists Hanna Siniora and Itai Engel.
Photo by Kika Kirshenbaum
Following the symposium, each of the 20 participating photojournalists will present a series photographs documenting a story or subject matter relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presented from the photographer’s point of view, while expressing his opinion on the issue.
The series’ showing will be open to the public in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and will be accompanied by a compilation of texts.
“We hope that the project announces tidings of a new beginning for multicultural activity, considering the long and difficult time experienced by the two nations,” one of the event’s organizers stated.
‘Palestine’ at the time of Christ?
Dear Zola,
Here’s a website and quote I found that gives a history of the Palestine name-145 AD is the first derivative of the name (Palaestina).
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_name_origin.php
The name “Falastin” that Arabs today use for “Palestine” is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Roman “Palaestina”. Quoting Golda Meir:
- The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation’s supposed ancient name, though they couldn’t even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity. [In an article by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, November 25, 1995]
Ben-Gurion Airport ranked best in Middle East
Hong Kong International Airport voted the world’s best for the seventh year in annual survey of 8.2 million passengers. Waiting times at security checkpoints mentioned as major cause of passenger discontent
Hong Kong International Airport was voted the world’s best for the seventh year in an annual survey of passengers, with Asian airports dominating the top positions in the list.
In the Middle East, passengers ranked the best airport for the region as Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport, followed by Bahrain.
The annual survey conducted by Skytrax, a UK-based consultancy, judges airports on more than 40 categories, ranking them after collecting 8.2 million questionnaires completed by passengers over a 10-month time period from 2007 to 2008.
The passengers judged 190 airports on factors like shopping, dining, staff courtesy, baggage delivery and wait-times at security.
Overall, airports in Asia did well. Hong Kong, with its reputation for efficiency and comfort, beat Singapore’s Changi Airport and Seoul’s Incheon Airport in South Korea, which were ranked second and third respectively.
Hong Kong has held the title of best airport seven times. Only once, in 2006, it was knocked from the No. 1 slot by Singapore’s Changi Airport.
“In recent years, the whole air travel experience has become much more focused on the time customers spend in the airport environment, and Hong Kong has established itself as a clear passenger favourite in this respect,” said Skytrax CEO Edward Plaisted in a statement.
Also in the top 10 were airports in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Kansai in Japan.
Munich in Germany was voted the top European airport, ranked fifth in the world, while Copenhagen in Denmark, Zurich, Switzerland, and Helsinki, Finland also made the top 10. Cape Town, South Africa rounded out the list at No. 10.
There were no North American airports in the top 10 list. San Francisco did best, ranked 11th, followed by Vancouver in Canada and Dallas/Forth Worth.
Israel Airports Authority ‘proud’
Plaisted said waiting times at security checkpoints was a major cause of passenger discontent.
“Easy transportation, quick check-in, good shopping and dining facilities, clean terminal areas - all the positives can easily be undone when confronted by a 20 minutes security queue, especially if one also finds that only half the security facilities are operational,” he said.
Plaisted said total customer satisfaction for many airports had improved in the past year but the financial crisis ahead would impact the airline industry and bring on a rash of operational difficulties, cancelled and consolidated flights and more airlines going under.
“In turn, this will put pressure on airports being able to react to and cope with the pressure points as they arise,” he said.
An Israel Airports Authority told Ynet in response, “We are proud about this ranking and will continue to exert efforts and put the issues of safety, security and passenger service at the top of the IAA’s priority list.
Bahai Gardens named World Heritage Site
UNESCO committee’s praise of Bahai shrines in Haifa expected to bring substantial rise in city’s income from tourism
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee determined on Tuesday that the Bahai shrines in Haifa and in Akko are official World Heritage Sites. The declaration, which was made in Quebec, Canada is expected to bring a significant rise in tourist-based income to the city of Haifa. Just last year, 600,000 people visited the Bahai Gardens.
Statistics gathered at the Haifa Tourist Office show that 43% of the tourists in the city stated that the gardens were their main reason for visiting the city.
Albert Lincoln, secretary-general of the Bahai International Community, investment, establishment and planning costs for the gardens in Haifa reached $250 million and maintenance costs $4 million a year.
Money for building the site comes solely from members of the Bahai religion. This is since the religion refuses to accept money from a person who is not of the Bahai faith and this is also the reason why entrance into the gardens is free of charge.
The Bahai religion was established in 1862. Its believers support the unification of religions and world peace. They preach equal rights amongst men and women, the dispersion of knowledge, education around the world and the creation of one worldwide community based on justice and equality. They Bahais don’t have priests or set rituals. The most holy site for people of this faith is their founder, Baha’u’llah’s grave in Akko.
This year, 27 sites made the UNESCO list. Amongst them are the Malaysian historical cities of Malacca and George Town, the ancient city of San Miguel in Mexico and the San Marino Historic Center.
Until now, UNESCO has placed numerous I sites on its World Heritage list. These include, the Old City of Jerusalem, the White City of Tel Aviv, Masada, the Old City of Akko, the Incense Route in the Negev and the Biblical Tel of Megiddo, Hazor and Beersheba.
Ancient Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection
JERUSALEM � A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era � in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.
It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.
Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.
�Some Christians will find it shocking � a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology � while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism,� Mr. Boyarin said.
Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet�s contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.
The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.
How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.
Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.
�I couldn�t make much out of it when I got it,� said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. �I didn�t realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. �You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,� she told me.�
Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.
Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.
Palm cultivated from 2,000-year-old seed
JERUSALEM- Researchers have germinated a sapling date palm from seeds 2,000 years old, in a bid to find new medicines that would benefit future generations. Sarah Sallon, of the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Center in Jerusalem, said she and her colleagues used seeds found in archaeological excavations at the ancient mountain fortress of Masada, where ancient Jewish rebels chose suicide over capture by Roman legions in 73 A.D. She said they were the oldest seeds ever brought back to life.
“A lotus seed was germinated (in China) after 1,200 years, but nothing has been germinated coming from this far back, not to 2,000 years,” she said. Carbon dating of a fragment from the Masada seeds put their age at between 1,940 and 2,040 years.
Hope for the future
The palm plant, nicknamed Methuselah after the biblical figure said to have lived for 969 years, is now about 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall. Sallon and her colleagues have sent one of its leaves for DNA analysis in the hope that it may reveal medicinal qualities that have disappeared from modern cultivated varieties.
Date palms now grown in Israel were imported from California and are of a strain originating in Iraq, she said. The Judean date prized in antiquity but extinct until Methuselah’s awakening, might have had very different properties to the modern variant. Sallon said the project is more than a curiosity. She and her colleagues hope it may hold promise for the future, like the anti-malarial treatment artemisinin, developed out of traditional Chinese plant treatment, and a cancer medicine made from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree.
Both males and females valuable
“Dates were highly medicinal. They had an enormous amount of use in ancient times for infections, for tumors, “she said.”We think that ancient medicines of the past can be the medicines of the future.” If the plant survives, it will take some 30 years to bear fruit, provided it turns out to be female. Sallon, however, said that even a male would provide food for thought.
-”The genetics of this plant will be very interesting whatever sex it is,” she said. “It’s the females that produce the fruit…but the males are very valuable as well, they’re no less valuable than the females.”
Thousands of date palms are cultivated today by kibutzes around Masada 