a couple of years ago we attempted to use Expedia to purchase tickets to travel to Dubai from Amman, it wouldn’t allow the Palestinian passport holders to purchase the tickets (this had nothing to do with the credit card used as i had used it before to purchase another ticket with an american citizenship, only when using a Palestinian document it did not work.)
Thanks for posting this, EddieGivenMorning.
I ordered my CapitalOne Credit card to come with this pic:
A day later I get this E-mail from them….
I checked their flag gallery, didn’t find the flag of Palestine, but I did find a Zionist one!
Article summary by BBC: “Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti reflects on the very practical benefits that statehood would have brought.”
Article summary by Me: Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti rightfully bitches about how goddamn infuriating it is to invisibilized each time he tries to answer a fact of birth.
Excerpt:
In newspapers, political discussions and even in the obscene peace negotiations (which have given us the process but not the peace) you will find references to the Territories, the Occupied Territories, Judea and Samaria, the Holy Land and the West Bank. West Bank of what? Of the River Jordan. But the west bank of the River Jordan is the east bank of Palestine - so why not name it?
The features editor for Buffalo News, Melinda Miller, failed to fact-check the location of Ramallah in an article about Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Below is an image of the text, which says the poet lived “in Ramallah in Jordan and the Old City in Jerusalem.”
When professional editors don’t fact-check basic geography when it comes to Palestine, what geographical understanding can we realistically expect from the casual news consumer?
Free Map Tools lets you measure distance from point A to point B in two ways: using roads and “as the crow flies.” Do how does this work in Palestine? Here’s an example:
See that? They can’t tell you how far it is on land. For one, the route is constantly changing as Israeli changes orders about which roads Palestinians can drive on or must drive around. Two, tools to aggregate such data don’t work in the occupied territories— GPS technology is deliberately scrambled and rendered useless by the Israeli military.
In addition, you probably noticed that Ramallah and Bethlehem — just 21 kilometers (13 miles) apart if you are a bird — are categorized differently. The drop-down menu gave me only “West Bank” for Ramallah. But look at the options I have for Bethlehem:
OK, I thought…here is a “compromise.” Depending on your politics, you can pick either Israel or Palestine (or even “Judea” for the Zionists). But here’s why I didn’t select “Palestine” for this post:
Yup….”Bethlehem, Palestine” registers as Palestine, Texas, USA. This distance is 7000 miles…which is how far distances in the West Bank can feel when the Israeli military puts Palestinians under house arrest (“curfew”) for weeks at a time.
TheWorldTime.net offers travel advice to people who want to go to Ramallah…in Jordan.
Here’s a list of the “other cities in Jordan” about which The World Time can so confidently misinform ignorant travelers:
Based on every “dialogue” I have heard, Jews who support the expulsion of non-Jews from Palestine/Israel defend their hypocrisy by explaining that the “never again” declaration after the Holocaust really means “never again for humans who are Jewish.”
Jewish people who do not subscribe to this racist belief must speak out (as these fine humans have, above) lest their silence be complicit to the ethnic cleansing and colonization currently being done in their name.
(via astrangerdanger)
Don’t get me started on Google Maps.
Posted by a friend who has been to Gaza…but according to TravBuddy.com, it’s Israel. The second image is cities in the West Bank mixed into the city listing for Israel.
A banner ad from the Haaretz website, as viewed by Palestinians in the West Bank, who can’t even go to Tel Aviv, much less live there.
White City, Indeed.
A mythical statement about Israel being "wiped off the map" has been quoted for years to justify the denial of human rights for Palestinians. The true "facts on the ground" however, is that Palestine is literally "wiped off the map." Seriously: try finding it on a map. This blog documents the many examples of how Palestine and its people are invisible-ized. It also features the exceptions -- those who dare recognize this occupied homeland and its millions of displaced sons and daughters.
