Gate A-4 By Naomi Shihab Nye:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed four hours, I heard an announcement: “If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately.” Well— one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing. “Help,” said the flight agent. “Talk to her . What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this.”

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke haltingly. “Shu-dow-a, shu-bid-uck, habibti? Stani schway, min fadlick, shu-bit-se-wee?” The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be…

It is said of Albert Einstein that he gave a particular exam to a class that had already been given that exam. Alarmed at what he saw and thinking it to be the result of the professor’s absent-mindedness, an assistant warned Einstein of what he was about to do. The Professor just smiled and said: It’s alright the answers have changed. The same thing goes for the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the questions remain the same but now sixty years after the establishment of the Jewish State, the answers have changed.

Until about ten years ago the answer to the question of how to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East was clear: Allowing the Palestinians to establish a free, independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, alongside Israel. But this answer known as the “Two State Solution” belongs to a reality that no longer exists. Today, after 40…

Repressing free speech is undemocratic, that was established in the First Amendment a long time ago, and the right to boycott is enshrined within that amendment, including the right to boycott Israeli products. It was also established long ago that all men and women, including Palestinians, are created equal and are deserving of the same rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For many decades now, Jews around the world, including staunch Zionist Jews like the late Dr. Nahum Goldman and Professor Yishayahu Leibovitch had opposed the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and building Jewish settlements there – as have Israeli generals, former Mossad chiefs and countless lesser known Jewish people. But over the last fifty years consecutive Israeli governments of all parties have built Jewish settlements in the West Bank and no amount of talking and negotiating has made the slightest difference.

Israel claims that it…

A man rides his tricycle taxi during a thunderstorm in Havana in this 2010 file photo. REUTERS/Desmond Boylan

“A lot of the damage now comes from extreme precipitation. So that translates into floods, landslides, loss of life, loss of livelihoods”

As if hurricanes were not menacing enough, small Caribbean islands risk losing their entire way of life unless they urgently strengthen defences against a raft of future disasters, according to a climate change official.

“You don’t even need to have a hurricane to get extensive damage .. a tropical storm or depression, it comes and sits over a particular island or territory and it deposits rain,” said Ulric Trotz, deputy director at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC).

“For us small island nations, basically everything comes to a stop. As a region, we are very exposed to climate risk .. and our projections show that this will be exacerbated,”…

In what can only be described as the world’s largest event on Palestine, ten thousand people converged on the city of London to participate in the Palestine Expo, which was held at the Queen Elizabeth II center across from Westminster in the very heart of London.  Sponsored by the Al-Aqsa Foundation, the event drew criticism from pro-Israeli Zionist groups who tried to pressure the British government to prevent them from using the QEII which is a government run venue. They used the usual excuses claiming that the Al-Aqsa Foundation has connections to terrorism and that some of the speakers expressed support for terrorism and anti-Semitism and that some had even been arrested (yours truly included).

Two weeks prior to the event there was still concern that the British government might interfere and prevent the event from taking place.  A list of the terror supporting speakers was published as a warning.