A Hajj gets much more crowded than a Trump rally-- or inaugurationI lived abroad for 7 years and I'm a "member" of the century club (meaning I've been to over 100 countries). When I was still in my twenties and people asked me to name my favorite countries, it would always be Afghanistan, Morocco, Nepal and Ceylon (since re-named Sri Lanka). Over the years the only constant has been Morocco.
• To read this essay on the Americans for Middle East Understanding website, click here
• For a PDF version, click here
It was inevitable that when the coronavirus pandemic reached the occupied Palestinian territories, as it did in early March, it would find its first purchase in Bethlehem, a few miles south-east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
You know I have a travel blog too, right? In early February-- recently back from Thailand and having just canceled a summer trip to the Dordogne region of France-- I wrote a coronavirus travel post, much of it a warning about air travel.
A slow, tacking flight: float then flap. Then a pirouette and it has swung on to a different tack, following another seam through the moor as if it is tracking a scent. It is like a disembodied spirit searching for its host…” — description of the strongest of all harriers, the goshawk, by James Macdonald Lockhart in his book, Raptor: A Journey Through Birds
We’re watching a female red-tail hawk rejecting the smaller male’s romantic overtures barely 50 yards overhead.
The recent arrival of Africa’s most popular televangelist preacher, TB Joshua, to address thousands of foreign pilgrims in Nazareth produced a mix of consternation and anger in the city of Jesus’s childhood.
East Jerusalem has received new impetus from the rise of the Israeli far right and Washington’s decision to move its embassy to the city. But if completed, critics say, the long-running proposal would contribute to erasing the visibility of Palestinians in the city they hope to make their capital.
Planning for the $55 million tourism project continues despite unifying archaeologists, architects, Palestinians, and a tiny community of Jews against it – in a sign of Israel’s ever-growing confidence in making unilateral moves in occupied parts of Jerusalem.
I admit to feeling a slight sense of sadness watching the images of flames soaring from the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral, but once it was reported that no one had been seriously hurt, my slight sense of sadness quickly gave way to a feeling of pleasure. My slight sadness was because part of me appreciates the considerable amount of quality craftsmanship that went into constructing the thing, and it saddens me to see some of that beautiful work destroyed. But when weighed against the symbolism of a major institution of oppression engulfed in fire, it’s hard not to feel happy.
The 350,000 Palestinian inhabitants of occupied East Jerusalem are caught between a rock and hard place, as Israel works ever harder to remove them from the holy city in which they were born, analysts and residents warn.
That process, they say, has only accelerated in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s decision a year ago to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, effectively endorsing the city as Israel’s exclusive capital.
Tourism is up all over the world-- up 8% to quantify it. But not in Trumpland. My pal Roland and I travel a lot and he wants to go to exciting, adventurous places, and that often happens to mean places with unstable and even fascist governments. He's always trying to drag me back to Israel, Egypt and Turkey, places we've enjoyed but that I don't want to go to until their political situations are in better shape.
WASHINGTON — The Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington issued a starkly-worded travel advisory this week for summer tourists traveling to the United States, explaining in so many words that traveling to the country could be hazardous to one’s health unless one takes proper precautions.
The advisory reads in large part like a virtual laundry list of U.S. social problems, naming the exorbitant cost of healthcare, frequent crime, and gun violence as potential threats to traveler safety:
