Qatari comedy with an Irish accent
Hamad al-Amari starts out his main stand up comedy routine wearing a traditional Qatari thobe and headdress, and speaking in broken English, offering the sort of observational comedy about life in Doha you’d expect from a 20-something Qatari. Only a few minutes into the set does he switch to his natural accent, which is thick and Irish.
A Qatari who grew up in Ireland, Mr. Amari’s comedy is as much about his own mixed identity as it is about the ethnic melting pot that is Qatar. The tiny nation in the Persian Gulf has about 2 million residents and under 15 percent of them are native Qataris. Outside of the office, there’s often limited interaction between the locals and expats, something that bothered Amari when he resettled in Qatar.
“When I came back I realized that everyone was speculating. Qataris had their views about expats and expats had their views about Qataris, but they never talked to each other,” he says. “I felt like the medium of comedy was good so people would relate to you and understand the issues that you’re talking about but can also have it presented in a light-hearted manner. You’re not being told off.”
Most of Amari’s material is inside jokes about life in Qatar, like a story about incorrectly serving coffee to an older family friend at a traditional gathering or good-natured ribbings of different expat groups. One of his biggest laughs is a joke about Qatari drivers who speed up behind other motorists and flash their brights until the car lets them pass.
Amari has only been doing stand up for about a year and a half now, but he’s already developed enough material to perform for up to 45 minutes. He’ll be one of the first people to tell you that his act is still a little rough around the edges, but for a beginning comic in a country without a real comedy scene he’s managed to make considerable headway.
He’s considering spending time in Ireland developing his comedy act the way all comics before him have: the painful process of trial and error in front of a live audience, but he says with the amount of opportunity for young, creative people in Qatar right now he plans to be here long term.
Indeed, many young Qataris like Amari see unparalleled opportunity to fulfill their goals, debunking the widespread misconception that Qatar’s wealth has made the young generation lazy and unambitious.
On the contrary, he says, the nation's natural resources provide a "safety net" that allows Qatar's bright young people to explore their talents. “If they feel safe," he says, "the things that they’ll come up with can’t be measured.”"
Graphic designer Yael Katsir moved to Kmehin, an agricultural community on the Egypt-Israel border, five years ago with her husband, who grows cherry tomatoes. (Christa Case Bryant/TCSM)
In southern Israel, barbed wire guards 'heaven'
As Yael Katsir tells it, the Israeli army makes it possible for civilians who live along the border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to have their cake and eat it, too – almost.
She and her husband moved down here five years ago to take advantage of the affordable agricultural land so he could fulfill his dream of becoming a farmer. Now, he cultivates cherry tomatoes on a moshav, Kmehin, and she works as a graphic designer from home.
"As farmers, this is heaven for us," she says.
This piece of heaven, though, comes with a bit of barbed wire for protection, a reminder of the smuggling and jihadist activity just across the border.
Just this week Ms. Katsir was at a birthday party with her daughter. They were just about to cut the cake when she got a text from the local security team warning of a potential border incident.
"We almost got to the birthday cake but everyone had to take a little piece and go home," she says. "Nobody wanted to get stuck if they close the area."
After nearly 35 years of quiet on the Egypt-Israel border since the 1979 Camp David accords were signed, smuggling and jihadist activity has caused Israel to take greater precautions in the last few years. Groups affiliated with or at least inspired by Al Qaeda roam the canyons, caves, and desolate terrain of the Sinai, which has an average population density of one person per square mile. After eight Israelis were killed in a brazen attack two years ago, the government accelerated plans to build a 150-mile fence – already in the works to stem human trafficking – and completed it in record time.
Smugglers will still throw bags of hashish over the fence, says local security team member Anon Seaon of the moshav Kadesh Barnea, who is responsible for the text messages that keep citizens informed whether at birthday parties or in their fields. Often there are as many as 20 alerts per day, though most pertain to smuggling activity rather than terrorist actions.
But last week school was canceled after a reported breach of the fence. Katsir and her kids made cookies for the soldiers who work nearby.
"I tell them, 'People are trying to hurt us, but the army is protecting us, so let's make the most of [the day off],'" says Katsir, who says she also has confidence in the Egyptian army’s efforts to protect the fence. However, she adds later, the recent upheaval in Egypt has put her more on guard. "I'm alert, more alert than other times."
A different worry in the Mideast: 'Have you seen my sheep?'
The Middle East may be roiled by civil wars, sectarian violence, revolutions, and counter-revolutions, but for some people there are more important developments to worry about.
“Have you seen my sheep?” an elderly toothless woman asked me while I was out hiking recently. “I've lost three of them,” she said, holding up three calloused fingers in emphasis.
This unexpected encounter occurred in the barren mountain wilderness of central Lebanon, a forbidding sun-scorched rocky terrain pitted with deep cone-shaped sink holes and broken outcrops of limestone. There was not another person for miles around. Then I spotted a tiny black speck moving against the sepia-hued landscape. As I drew near I realized that the figure in a voluminous black dress and headscarf was a Bedu woman.
The Bedouin are transnational Arabs whose wanderings across the Middle East are set to the rhythm of the agricultural seasons. In summer, their dusty canvas tents are a common sight beside the few roads that cross the Lebanese mountains. The Bedouin shepherds, usually wiry youths with heads wrapped in red-and-white keffiyahs, roam the mountains, demonstrating much the same unflagging agility as their flocks of goats.
They are on the whole generous and hospitable, if simple, folk. Once one who came over with an AK-47 to see if my camping friends and I were sheep rustlers heard a strange language and asked what it was. English, we told him. “English? What's that?” he responded, having never heard of the language nor the country from which it came.
On another occasion I ran out of water while hiking in the wilderness. Fortunately, I stumbled across a shepherd's camp. He and his wife gave me a jug of icy spring water and then insisted I share with them some maqouq, a papery thin bread cooked on a domed oven, homemade labneh, a tart yogurt spread, and fresh goat cheese.
There is a downside to encountering shepherds, however, and that is their dogs – ferocious, hulking brutes that seem to treat any passer-by as a cross between an enemy and dinner. Usually, when I hear the distant clang of a bell around the neck of a goat signaling a flock – and its canine protectors – I head in another direction.
There were no dogs accompanying the elderly Bedu woman, however. She carried nothing but a plastic pint-sized bottle of water, which I noticed was empty. Her skin looked as dry as a strip of beef jerky.
“God give you strength,” she said in greeting.
“And God's strength to you,” I replied.
Then she asked about her sheep. I could understand her concern. A fully-grown sheep can be worth between $150 to $200. That meant somewhere in this wilderness was the ovine equivalent of up to $600 lost amongst the rocky crags.
I told her I would keep an eye open for them.
“If you see them come and tell me. I'm in the first tent at the bottom of the mountain,” she said pointing a gnarled finger toward the south.
I offered her water but she shook her head and stumbled away. Twenty minutes later, I looked back over my shoulder and once more she had turned into a tiny black speck wandering across the side of a mountain on her lonely quest.
A rare idealist in Yemen's hinterlands
In a part of Yemen where power often seems derived from guns, money, and pedigree, Nasser Muhtam is a rare idealist. Though a scion of a prominent local family – and thus part of a class often dismissed as self-interested keepers of the status quo – he has devoted himself to fighting for change, working to lay the groundwork for a civil society in one of the least developed areas of Yemen.
Mr. Muhtam is blunt when it comes to the problems facing Mareb. In most of the province, the government’s presence is nearly absent. The pervasive lack of security and development, he says, has effectively left governance in the hands of local tribal leaders, while groups ranging from Al Qaeda-affiliated militants to hashish dealers have taken advantage of the power vacuum.
As an attempt to help address such societal problems in an area largely beyond the reach of the central government, he founded the Mareb Generations for Development Organization in 2007.
Its headquarters' unassuming exterior may blend in with the cinderblock structures that dot the sweltering provincial capital, but inside the buzz of activity within the organization’s headquarters shows what the tenacious tribesman has been able to build. Youth activists move between offices, while photographic mementos of initiatives ranging from price-monitoring campaigns to charity projects coat the walls.
It’s a rare oasis of peace in the troubled province, but Muhtam admits that the world outside its walls is impossible to ignore. Family members often call on him to aid in resolving tribal disputes, while the general lack of security essentially requires him to carry a weapon when he leaves the center of the provincial capital.
“It’s an internal conflict,” he notes hesitantly. “I’ll leave my gun in storage for a month, for two months, but with the situation, it’s sometimes necessary.”
The tense political and security situation in Yemen, which is still looking for its footing after the 2011 Arab upheaval ended the 33-year rule of a president who often seemed to value his government's stability over the stability of the nation as a whole, may have forced Muhtam into a reluctant pragmatism. But he stresses his hopes for a better future for his homeland.
“My dreams are like anyone’s dreams,” he says. “Comprehensive development, people living in safety and security, with peace and dignity."
Over the weekend, young Israelis constructed a giant peace sign on the slopes of the Golan Heights in an effort at citizen-to-citizen diplomacy. (Courtesy of Amir Sade)
A sign of peace rises on the edge of Syria
Amid the smoke of battle in Syria, a sign of peace has emerged – literally.
Over the weekend, young Israelis constructed a giant peace sign on the slopes of the Golan Heights in an effort at citizen-to-citizen diplomacy.
The Syrian civil war has killed close to 100,000 people in the past two years, as an increasingly violent rebel movement seeks to overthrow the heavily armed Assad regime that has ruled for four decades. While the war is not directed at Israel, there is growing worry that the violence could spill over into the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war with its Arab neighbors.
In recent months, numerous mortars, rockets, and small fire have landed in the Golan. Rebels briefly seized the Israel-Syria border crossing in Quneitra in June and cross-border fire set off sirens just two days ago.
One night this spring while hearing the bombing from his bed, Golan resident Amir Sade decided it was time for Israeli citizens to convey a message of shared humanity to their beleaguered neighbors.
“I thought to myself … I am sleeping here, two kilometers (1.2 miles) from there, for two years already, and I thought that we need to tell them what we think … They should know what we want – not the [Israeli] government, not the politicians, but the citizens in the Golan.”
So the next time he had a break in his engineering studies, he organized 30 people from his community, Kibbutz El-Rom, to build a peace sign out of basalt rocks on the lower slope of a mountain near the de-facto border. By Friday evening, it was completed, with a diameter of more than 150 feet.
He confesses he knows little about life or politics in Syria, though he supports the popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
“I would like to see the people rising up, but I absolutely don’t know a thing about Syria,” he says in a phone interview. “I’m kind of living in this peaceful area in the Golan but there is war there, I don’t have any idea what they’re going through.”
If he could communicate to his neighbors with words in addition to his peace symbol, what would he say?
“I will say, ‘Let’s live together, let’s make it together. We’re the same people who want the same things,’” he says, adding that he would love to visit their country. “I want to go to eat kenafeh [a popular dessert] in Damascus without [a] border.”
Hanin Zayed, a graduate of Birzeit University in finance and banking, arrived more than three hours early for Mohammed Assaf's concert in Ramallah so she could get a good view of the man she says represents the 'strong youth of Palestine.' (Christa Case Bryant/TCSM)
Arab Idol's victory lap brings rare euphoria to West Bank
The sweet taste of victory is sweeping the West Bank as Mohammed Assaf, the newly crowned Arab Idol winner, takes to the stage this week to thank his fans and bask in a rare moment of Palestinian euphoria.
In Ramallah, where he kicked off his victory tour last night, young men shimmied up flag poles and tree trunks to get a view of Mr. Assaf as he performed outside the presidential compound to at least 10,000 exuberant fans waving flags and keffiyehs, the traditional checkered scarf.
For Palestinians, Assaf is not only a charismatic singer but also a symbol of Palestinian unity and dignity – two characteristics that they have struggled to maintain, particularly since the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, whom many saw as a successful champion of the Palestinian national cause on the international stage.
“The Palestinian people are very happy with Mohammed Assaf because they feel represented regionally and internationally by a successful person,” says Amjad Sadeddine, who took the day off from his job in a Nablus dry cleaning shop to come to Ramallah last night for Assaf’s first concert.
But despite his handsome face, radiant smile, and reputation as a modest guy, some fans say it’s not so much about Assaf’s personality as what he represents. After all, the Arabic term for “Arab Idol” evokes the idea of the beloved of the Arab world, not the idolized.
“These people here are not coming here for the person Mohammed Assaf, they’re here because they love Palestine and they feel he represents Palestine,” says Hanin Zayed, a recent graduate of nearby Birzeit University in finance and banking who, like Mr. Sadeddine, came early to stake out a front-row view. “He gave a very strong message to the world that the Palestinian people are free in their thinking and their actions.”
Assaf nearly didn't make it onto the show. He was shut out of the auditions in Egypt and gained a right to try out only when he burst into song in protest and a fellow Gazan offered to give up his place for Assaf. Then, against formidable odds in the months-long contest, Palestinians managed to outvote even the Arab world’s largest country to give Assaf 60 million votes, giving him an overwhelming victory over runner-up Ahmed Jamal of Egypt.
And so, the humble, handsome guy who grew up in a refugee camp in Gaza singing at weddings and other local events with his pianist sister has suddenly become a star in the Arab world – such a star, in fact, that Hamas has largely refrained from criticizing the questionable morality of a flashy singing contest, and Israel has made a rare exception to its usual policies to allow a young man from Gaza to travel to the West Bank.
Though even die-hard fans seem sanguine about the challenges of translating such stardom into real political change, his success – and emphasis on unity – is bound to influence Palestinian politicians, particularly the divide between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank.
In the opening mawwal, or spoken introduction to his signature song, “Raise the Keffiyeh,” Assaf took each letter of his “beloved Palestine” and used it to expound on an aspect of Palestinian life, such as the plight of prisoners or the mourning visits paid to martyrs' homes.
“It was a very clever idea because he didn’t address one faction only,” says Salam Ahmed, a student at Al Quds Open University.
That is bound to have embarrassed political leaders, says Etaf Abdulwahab, whose husband has been in jail for the last 11 years.
“Even though his background was Fatah, the way he sang and the words he chose shows that he represents all the Palestinian people and that embarrasses them,” she says.
While Assaf’s niche seems to be singing rather than politics, he has clearly articulated his hope to have a broad impact.
“A revolution is not just the one carrying the rifle…. Everyone struggles for their cause in the way they see fit,” he reportedly said shortly after winning the Arab Idol title last weekend. “Today I represent Palestine, and today I am fighting for a cause through my art and the message I send out."
Fisherman bring their daily catch to the market near the Gaza City port as buyers gather to bid for fish one early September morning in 2011. (Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor)
Why I would rather live in Gaza than Egypt, my birthplace
The hell of Gaza is better that the paradise of Egypt: This could be hard to believe since Gaza has a reputation of being unsafe, but this is the conclusion I have reached after searching for a safer place to live with my wife and baby boy.
How could this be? Just two years ago, Egypt appeared to some to be on the cusp of an exciting democratic revolution, which would bring more power to the people and give them the freedom Arabs across the Middle East have been yearning for after half a century of Western-backed dictators.
Instead, on my nine visits since then, I have found the country so changed for the worse that I would rather live in a tiny coastal territory with no sovereignty, unemployment rates of more than 30 percent, and a government punished by Israel and the West, both of which consider the ruling Hamas movement to be a terrorist organization.
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Egypt? Take this quiz.
To be sure, I have faced frequent violence between Israel and Gaza militants, as well as hazards in my career as a journalist – especially during military conflicts with Israel, such as the 2008-09 war and the 2012 Pillar of Defense operation.
And I thought I had found a way out.
In 2012, I got Egyptian citizenship, since I was born to an Egyptian mother and a Palestinian father. This, together with my desire for safety and stability, was a strong motive for me to move back to Egypt, where I was born and spent 14 years of my childhood, and where three sisters and my mother's family live.
I received more than half a dozen job offers from media outlets, and also had promising plans to start an education center to teach students English, math, science, and other subjects.
The salaries were not as high as what I receive in Gaza, but since I was looking for safety and stability, I did not care much about money. Things were rosy in my eyes, although many of my relatives and friends in Gaza criticized my decision because the economic and security situation in Egypt was not that good.
I did not believe them until last month.
I traveled to Egypt together with a coworker to receive a media course for TV journalists, which also drew journalists from Yemen, Libya, Iran, and China.
On the second of day of the course, we had a field training, in which we were to film a feature story about how the roadblocks placed by the police around government buildings negatively impacted the lives of both pedestrians and residents downtown.
While filming, we were in front of Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the Egyptian revolution. A Yemeni colleague was taking photos with his mobile phone of the place that means a lot for a Yemeni who demonstrated in Sanaa’s Change Square to topple a dictatorship.
As he was taking pictures, a teenager snatched the iPhone 4 from my colleague’s hand and walked away confidently. The Yemeni followed him and tried to stop him. To his surprise, the boy turned back with a knife in his hand and threatened that he will stab my colleague if he continues to ask for the phone.
We were nine guys and three women. We thought that we could help him if we all go out of the minibus and frighten the boy, but the boy went wild and started to scream.
A few seconds later, more than 20 of his peers came with knives and sticks and were about to attack us. An older guy riding a motorbike came and the boy jumped behind the biker and they sped off. No one even tried to stop and watch what was going on. At this very moment, our fear made us get into the minibus and drive away.
This was a turning point for me. After watching this, only one thing was on my mind, how could I live here? It's not the incident itself that made me change my mind to move to Egypt, but rather the passersby who were watching us being attacked and blackmailed by thugs at daytime. While Egyptians are known for being helpful, the spike in criminal activity has made many reluctant to intervene as they would have before the revolution.
Tahrir Square is one of the most crowded squares, if not the most, in Egypt. To have your cellphone stolen at daytime and in front of hundreds of watchers, one needs to think 100 times before deciding to settle in Egypt, but thank God, I only thought once and decided not endanger the lives of family in country that almost has no safety.
It's not that I've given up on Egypt forever. My love of Egypt is endless and priceless. It's my birthplace and the country that embraced me for 14 years, the country that granted me citizenship.
But I feel so sad that Egypt is no longer safe. Once this country was the safest place in the world with millions of foreign tourists spending their most beautiful times under its warm loving sun or enjoying its golden beaches.
The problem is that after the revolution the prisons were emptied. There now seem to be more criminals than policemen on the streets. I have heard true stories of rape, kidnapping, murder, and many crimes.
One more thing that has frightened me about the new Egypt: extremism. Islamic extremism is growing rapidly in Egypt, this has been notable after the revolution, and more clear after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi took office a year ago today.
Gaza is ruled by an Islamic party, but there is no extremism. Gaza is blockaded and frequently attacked by Israel, but the crime level is very low and internal security is near to excellent.
From my heart, I hope that Egypt will be safe like Gaza soon.
Ahmed Aldabba is a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor in Gaza City, Gaza.
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Egypt? Take this quiz.
Prof. Meron Medzini of Hebrew University stands near the intersection of Israel, Jordan, and the Golan Heights as he explains modern Israeli political and military history. (Christa Case Bryant/TCSM)
Behind the wheel with a witness to Israel's history
It’s 7:15 a.m. on Shabbat (Saturday) and most of Jerusalem is asleep, but in 15 minutes our tour guide has already whisked us through the 1800s, the 20th-century breakup of the Ottoman Empire, Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank (the 1948 creation of Israel goes without saying), and into present-day troubles such as the impoverished nomads who live on either side of the highway heading down to the Dead Sea and Jordan beyond.
“These are Bedouins, and nobody has a clue what to do with them,” Prof. Meron Medzini says, waving a hand toward the shacks and the little boys and donkeys that orbit them in search of a bit of toasted grass.
Professor Medzini, a friendly chap who has every right to have retired a decade or two ago, still teaches political science at Hebrew University – “At least I get up in the morning and I know what I’m going to do,” he says. Despite finals coming up, he is spending his weekend driving me and my boss around Israel’s borders with Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The field trip extraordinaire includes not only an eye-opening look at the geography of Israel’s security, but also a dizzying tour of modern Israeli history.
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Israel? Take the quiz
Medzini is no stranger to such tours. Well before I was born, he introduced the Monitor’s legendary editor, Erwin Canham, to Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion. In the course of his storied career, he worked side by side with the country’s first (and so far only) female prime minister, Golda Meir – a childhood friend of his mother’s – and Levi Eshkol, the leader who presided over the 1967 war with Israel’s Arab neighbors, which drastically changed the landscape both politically and demographically as Israel’s settlement enterprise began sprouting throughout the West Bank.
And this is one of the most fascinating parts of the tour, indeed of working in Israel today: that it is still possible to meet people who participated in the founding of the state and its formative early years, or worked closely with those who did. In an American context, it would perhaps be akin to meeting George Washington’s friend, or Thomas Jefferson’s aide.
Medzini knew Golda Meir best, later writing a biography of her ("Golda: A political biography").
As we drive along the border with Jordan, lined with barbed wire, mines, sensors, and daily Israeli patrols looking for footprints – a fence put in place shortly after the 1967 war and kept in place even after the 1994 peace with Jordan – Medzini recounts Meir’s rocky shuttle diplomacy with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
We pull off the road to see a hydroelectric dam on the Yarmuk River, where the two met “by accident.” Abdullah developed a “headache” after lunch, Medzini recalls, and had to retire to the bungalow of the stationmaster. Golda was there.
But Abdullah disliked the fact that Israel had tapped a woman to deal with him and their diplomacy was perhaps not as fruitful as either side had hoped.
Her secret visits with Abdullah’s successor, King Hussein, had a warmer tenor.
“Golda met Hussein seven or eight times,” recalls Medzin.
The press would ask Hussein, “Did you see Golda?”
And he would coyly respond, “Yes, on television.”
During the 1973 war, Hussein informed Golda that Jordan had to take some “token” action, says Medzini.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Hussein essentially said. “We’ve sent a brigade to the Golan.”
“So we were shooting at them in the Golan and trading with them 100 miles away,” says Medzini, chuckling.
There are definitely more somber parts of the tour as well, though, such as a stop at the Nahariya hydroelectric dam on the Israel-Jordan border where in 1997, three years after the two countries made peace, a Jordanian soldier inexplicably opened fire on a high school field trip and killed seven teenage girls.
Hussein personally visited each of the seven families and asked forgiveness, says Medzini.
In a land where the phrase "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" was coined, Hussein's gesture seems like a noble answer to the criticism of Christians such as former US Sen. Warren Austin (R) of Vermont, who famously said that Jews and Muslims should reconcile their differences in a Christian spirit.
Mazen Saadeh, a Palestinian restaurateur, takes a sunset stroll down through his land, where he grows everything from cashews and pistachios to olives and grapes. (Christa Case Bryant/TCSM)
Home-cooking lures Palestinian expat home
With everything from chickens and rabbits to cashews and apricots out back, Mazen Saadeh is part restaurateur, part survivalist.
“I think the world is going very fast to hell and I want to be safe and find something to eat when the shelves will be empty,” says Mr. Saadeh, a Palestinian novelist and filmmaker who lived in Vienna, Paris, and Iowa before returning home to the West Bank several years ago. “If any war happens between the US and any countries, or Israel and Iran, it means the price of bread [will be] minimum $100.”
Then he adds that he doesn’t like bread.
That’s a pity, because the crusty loaves that come out of his outdoor oven and are served up on the porch of his renovated 1944 farmhouse are as delicious as the sunset colors that spread out over the valley below.
Inside, blinking red Christmas lights adorn the main dining space, which is further furnished with a guitar, poster of Hugo Chávez, accordion, chess set, and an African drum.
He hadn’t been planning on coming back here; he and his wife, Julia, had found an old house in Portland, Ore., and were planning on converting it into a weekend restaurant. But at the last minute he felt the pull of his native land. He told her, “No, khalas [enough], let’s go back to Palestine.”
The mayor of Bir Zeit, a university town near Ramallah, offered him a restaurant property he couldn’t refuse. But Julia apparently didn’t feel the same draw.
“So now she is making wine in Portland and I am making wine in the West Bank,” he says matter-of-factly, fiddling with his Apple computer.
Business was so great in Bir Zeit that he decided to open a second restaurant here in Beit Jala. But the drive between the two properties, which would take 45 minutes or less if he were allowed to drive on Israeli roads, consumes two hours each way and it became untenable to manage both properties. So he shut down the Bir Zeit restaurant, his “favorite baby,” and is now putting everything into this property, where he has established a Palestinian-style locavore restaurant. He has seven employees, all university students – “now there are seven families [making a] living,” he says – and a handful of volunteers that come from as far away as Hungary.
As the last rays of sunlight grace the tops of his fruit and olive trees, he heads outside and pads down the rocky path, bending over his peas and tomatoes, and wagging a finger at the small swimming pool that he is renovating for carp – right next to a larger one that local elders remember using as kids.
Evening prayers echo across the valley, mingling with the sound of silverware tinkling in the outdoor kitchen as the minutiae of daily life makes itself heard amid the strains of religion and politics in this storied land.
World-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma plays in the rotunda of the State of Illinois building, the James R. Thompson Center, in Chicago, March 2012. This year's winners of the Dan David Prize, which gives $3 million annually to a handful of recipients, join a long list of distinguished laureates who have received the prize since 2002, including Yo-Yo Ma. (Kiichiro Sato/AP/File)
Israel sees prestigious academic prize as tool to engage increasingly hostile academic world
The Olive Press blog will be on hiatus until late June.
At a time when the international pressure on academics to boycott Israel caused even Stephen Hawking to decline an invitation to a prestigious conference in Jerusalem, it is perhaps surprising that one of the most generous prizes in academia is based in Israel.
The Dan David Prize, which gives $3 million annually to a handful of laureates – almost none of whom are Israeli – is intended to reward innovation in a variety of disciplines.
But the prize is also aimed at helping Israel further integrate with the rest of the world, says Ariel David, president of the Dan David Foundation and the son of its namesake. Headquartered at Tel Aviv University, it requires each laureate to come to Israel to collect his or her award, and partake in a cross-pollination of ideas with Israeli professors and students.
“Isolating Israel and putting it in the corner just reinforces its existential fear, which isn’t completely unjustified,” says Mr. David, citing Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. “On the contrary, the more Israel gets the feeling that it’s part of the international community economically, culturally, and politically, the easier it is to set aside its existential fear.”
RECOMMENDED: How much do you know about Israel? Take the quiz
Each year, themes or areas of studies are chosen in three categories: past, present, and future. This year’s winners include Prof. Sir Geoffrey Lloyd, recognized in the “past” category for his comparison of Greek and Chinese science; philosophy professor Michel Serres of Stanford University and The New Republic’s Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier in the “present” category; and MIT economist Esther Duflo and Prof. Alfred Sommer of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the “future” category of preventive medicine.
They join a long list of distinguished laureates who have received the prize since 2002, including Tony Blair, Al Gore, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Winston Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert, and Israeli novelist Amos Oz. The winners all donate 10 percent of their prize to fund scholarships, and have a say in choosing the recipients.
A $200,000 that kick-started his career
David’s father, Dan David, grew up in Romania during World War II and became active in Zionist organizations. He had dreamt of establishing a fishing kibbutz on Israel's Mediterranean coast, but due to communist rule wasn't able to leave until 1960, under a law promoting the reunification of families. He left with one suitcase and the equivalent of $10.
During a year in Israel, he established the country's first photo booth. The mother company then authorized him to open a branch in Italy, which was made possible by a $200,000 loan from a distant cousin that kickstarted his career as a highly successful entrepreneur. He went on to start companies in Spain, the US, Japan, and even his native Romania after the fall of communism.
In part due to gratitude for his cousin’s crucial donation, the late Mr. David donated most of his assets to his foundation 13 years ago and launched the prize a year later.
Two novelist laureates reject pressure to boycott Israel
As the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement has gathered steam in its efforts to punish Israel economically for occupying Palestinians, some recipients of the prize have been pressured to decline it. Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and joint literature recipient Amitav Ghosh of India faced a particularly intense lobbying effort.
However, they held firm to their position that novelists boycotting Israel would not effect the desired change in Israeli policies.
“We have to stand, as we have stood from the very beginning, against the very idea of a cultural boycott,” they said in a joint acceptance speech, quoting Anthony Appiah, president of PEN American Center, an organization that promotes literary endeavors. “We have to continue to say: Only connect.”
Become part of the Monitor community