Salon.com > Aaron Tapper

Ireland’s incendiary “flag wars”

Thu, 18 Jul 2002 22:08:00 +0000

My American friend and I took a taxicab tour around the city as Irish flags were raised atop storefront canopies and park fences while people ran through the streets waving the green, white and orange colors over their heads. Moments before, center-forward Robbie Keane had scored Ireland's only goal in a first-round tie with Germany in the World Cup. People were going nuts.

But within minutes, our tour guide, Paddy, had delivered us from an ebullient patriotic Irish fervor to signs of a much more ominous type of flag-waving. Driving through perhaps the best-known Protestant neighborhood, the Shankill Road, we saw numerous English flags paired with Israeli flags. It appeared that Israel had found itself a new ally.

From the moment I arrived in Belfast to learn more about the Catholic-Protestant conflict that has haunted this island for close to 400 years, I had used the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as my lens of understanding. I had lived four of the past nine years in the Middle East, the last two years spent (with a year each) in both Jerusalem and Cairo. And yet, after 30 minutes on the tour, I was startled to see how intensely many of the participants in this conflict identified with those in the Middle East.

Pok

Thu, 04 Apr 2002 23:23:00 +0000

To the National Transportation Safety Board, the 1999 crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 appears pretty cut and dried. On Oct. 31 that year, according to the NTSB's final report filed March 21, copilot and first officer Gamil Al-Batouti intentionally plunged a Boeing 767 into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket, Mass., killing all 217 people on board.

Here in Egypt, however, the NTSB's take on the tragedy is anything but conclusive. Official sources, such as the Egyptian government, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority and government-owned EgyptAir instead blame the crash on a mechanical malfunction. Several of the country's largest papers go much further, floating the idea that "the Israeli Mossad" was behind the attacks, infiltrating air-traffic control towers and somehow having the plane shot down.

Post-9/11, Americans have learned of the United States' credibility gap on the storied "Arab street." That is certainly true in Egypt, where the credibility problem has reached a boiling point in recent days. In the past week alone, protesters have taken to the streets, furious at Israel's response to Palestinian terrorism and what it views as the United States' uncritical support of Israel. And on Tuesday, Egypt -- which in 1979 became the first Arab country ever to enter a peace agreement with Israel, a plan largely brokered by then-President Jimmy Carter -- announced it would suspend diplomatic relations with Israel.

One murder, two stories

Thu, 04 Jan 2001 09:00:00 +0000

In a front-page story on Dec. 12, Ha'aretz, one of Israel's top newspapers, reported that the Israeli Defense Force "shot and killed Anwar Ahmad Himran, a senior activist in the Islamic Jihad," at about 1 p.m. in the West Bank city of Nablus.

The killing, at least according to Ha'aretz, appeared to be the straightforward death of a terrorist who lived and died by the sword. After all, not only was the 28-year-old Himran "suspected of being involved in the bomb attacks on Jerusalem's Mahane Yehudah market two years ago" but he "may also have been involved in the bomb attacks in Jerusalem and Hadera in the last two months in which four Israelis died."

The same day, a front-page article in Al-Ayaam, one of the three main Palestinian newspapers (along with Al-Quds and Al-Hayaat Al-Jadeeda), reported that "the Occupation forces assassinated yesterday a student in Al-Quds University who was a member in Islamic Jihad, next to one of [the] university branches ... in front of dozens of student and citizen eyewitnesses." The article further described Himran as "married and the father of three children" who had "left the [university] bookstore around 1 p.m., and when he approached the road soldiers opened fire ... Dozens of people saw what happened, including some children who were playing near the scene."

“I guess it’s every man for himself”

Mon, 16 Oct 2000 13:01:00 +0000

"Yeah. It's no problem at all, it's all hype," Larry said, trying to convince me, when I called him Wednesday evening, that it was safe to travel from my relatively safe abode in Jerusalem to Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. I hadn't been back in two weeks, because the area's unrest had been deemed too dangerous to navigate.

"In fact, I can meet you at Damascus Gate if you're worried," he added.

"No, I think I'll be all right," I replied, and hung up the phone.

"So there you go," I thought to myself, "back to school tomorrow morning." Larry, a classmate of mine, confirmed that getting from Jerusalem to class was no longer a problem. Things were finally returning to normal.

And I was grateful. As of Thursday morning, I once again considered myself a student at Bir Zeit, the Harvard of the Palestinian Authority. Though I'm Jewish, and have lived in Jerusalem off and on for close to two years, this year I decided to explore a "new" part of Israel -- Palestinian society.