Some of Reuters best shots in 2007

Islamabad

Gaza

Beijing

Pakistan

Nahr el Bahred

After the rain

In Ngongongare, Tanzania, a Friday afternoon

Women in Black marks 20th years, but occupation continues

By Tamara Traubmann, Haaretz

The hundreds of women and the few men who on Friday celebrated the 20th anniversary of Women in Black didn’t seem to know whether the event they were attending was a somber one, or a party. After all, the cause the movement has championed for the past 20 years has not been achieved. The israeli occupation still exists.

“It’s the only demonstration that has been going on for 20 years now”, one of the participants said.

The place where the crowd of 250 women gathered was the same place where Women in Black always hold their Friday demonstrations: Paris Square in Jerusalem. As always, they were carrying signs against the occupation.

“The peace movements have succeeded. We have thousands of demonstration hours,” Hanna Safran boasted. “We have all been very creative. We’ve marched naked, we went down to the Territories. Our message has been accepted, but it hasn’t put an end to the occupation and the wrongdoings that go along with it. In fact, things only got worse.”

The movement was born in late 1987, weeks after the outbreak of the first Intifada, which turned the attention of most Israelis to the very fact that the Palestinians were living under occupation. The first demonstrators, Safran among them, gathered at Paris Square, not far from the prime minister’s official residence. They stood in silence, carrying signs the shape of a stop sign, reading: “Stop the Occupation.”

Within several months, other women joined the protest, demonstrating at junctions outside towns and cities. The members of Women in Black represent the full spectrum of the Israeli Left, from Labor to the anti-Zionists.

Two of the most frequently asked questions Women in Black have had to answer over the years were why women, and why black. They say the absence of men in their ranks is meant to allow women to make their voice heard in a militaristic society.

As for black, there are several versions as to why the color was chosen as a trademark.

"What can I tell you, it's just a visually strong color," said Debbie Lerman from Tel Aviv.

One characteristic of Women in Black's protest rallies was the torrent of swear words, curses and fulminations they usually elicited from passersby, who vent out their hostility toward the organization. But nowadays they are no longer targeted.

Women in Black members explain that the hostility subsided because 20 years ago, a congregation of women engaged in political protest was perceived as defiant ipso facto.

"That's why the first demonstrators were spat on, and subjected to sexist and bigoted remarks from passersby," one activist said.

In Israel, Women in Black has failed to bring about the end of occupation. But the movement has become a role model for other countries, where certain sectors of the population have to endure humiliation, oppression and racism.

At present, Women in Black organizations exist in over 40 countries, the Israeli members say. In India they are protesting religious discrimination. In the former Yugoslavia, various splinter states saw the formation of Women in Black protesting the war. In Germany they address fascism, nuclear weapons, and the Israeli occupation, too.

My life in Tanzania

It took me a long time... after a month here, in Ngongognare, I finally seat down, and write on my blog. Actually, I don't know where to start... so many news things in my life in the last month, but at the same time I feel like I have always been here. The first thing would probably be the giraffes! I think that I've never see such a beautiful thing in my life. I could say that giraffes are my only neighbors since we are only 100 metres from the Arusha National Park, and they often come around the house looking for some nice trees to eat. The second thing would be Mt. Meru and when the sky is clear from clouds, even Mt. Kilimanjaro. The third thing would probably be work... the medicinal plants, the healers, the local communities... I love it!

Will soon post more pics!

The Tragicomic Mulatto

By Emily Raboteau

The security personnel of El Al Airlines descended upon me at Newark International Airport like a flock of vultures. There were five of them, in uniform, blockading the check-in counter. they looked old enough to have finished their obligatory service in the Israeli Defense Forces but not old enough to have finished college, which put them beneath me in age. I was prepared for their initial questions, "What are you?", which I've been asked my entire life. Really, there is no satisfactory word for what I am. "Mulatto" is now considered taboo since at its root is the four-legged beast that results from the union of a horse and a donkey (though I am told mules are smarter than both of those breeds). "Mixed is a more proper adjective for a cocktail. "Interracial" is too vague, and "bi-racial" is similarly unspecific. Though it chafed me, I knew the canned answer that would satisfy: "I look the way I do because my mother is white and my father is black". This time the usual reply wasn't good enough. This time the interrogation was tribal.

"What do you mean black? Where are you from?"

"New Jersey."

"Why are you going to Israel?"

"To visit a friend."

"What is your friend?"

"She's a cancer."

"She has cancer?"

"No, no, I'm kidding. She's healthy."

"She's Jewish?"

"Yes."

"How do you know her?"

"We grew up together."

"Do you speak Hebrew?"

"Shalom," I began. "Barukh atah Adonai..." I couldn't remember the rest, so I finished with a word I remembered for its perfect onomatopoetic rendering of the sound of liquid being poured from the narrow neck of a vessel: "Bakbuk."

It means bottle. I must have sounded to them like a babbling idiot.

"That's all I know, " I said. I felt ashamed somehow, but also pissed off at them for making me feel that way.

"Where is your father from?"

"Mississippi."

"No;" By now they were exasperated. "Where are your people from?"

"The United States."

"Before that. Your ancestors. Where did they come from?"

"Ireland."

They looked doubtful. "What kind of name is this?" They pointed at my opened passport.

"A surname," I joked.

"How do you say it?"

"Don't ask me. It's French."

"You're French?"

"No, I told you. I'm American."

"This!" They stabbed at my middle name, which is Ishem. "What is the meaning of this name?"

"I don't know, " I answered, honestly. I was named after my father's great-aunt, Emily Ishem, who died of cancer long before I was born. I have no idea where the name came from. Possibly it's a slave name.

"It sounds Arabic."

"Thank you."

"Do you speak Arabic?"

"I know better than to try."

"What do you mean?"

"No, I don't speak Arabic."

"What are your origins?"

I felt caught in a loop of that Abbot and Costello routine, "Who's on first?" There was no place for me inside their rhetoric. I didn't have the right vocabulary. I didn't have the right pedigree. This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question. This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat.

"Ms. Raboteau. Do you want to get on that plane?"

I was beginning to wonder.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Answer the question then! What are your origins?"

What else was I supposed to say?

"A sperm and an egg," I snapped.

That's when they grabbed my luggage, whisked me to the basement, stripped off my clothes and probed every orifice of my body for explosives. When they didn't find any, they focused on my tattoo, a Japanese character which means different, precious, unique. I was completely naked, and the room was cold. My nipples were hard. I tried to cover myself with my hands. i remember feeling incredibly thirsty. One of them flicked my left shoulder with a latex glove. "What does it mean?" he asked. This was the first time I'd ever been racially profiled, not that the experience would have been any less humiliating had it been my five hundredth. "It means Fuck you," I wanted to sat, not because they'd stripped me of my dignity but because they'd shoved my face into my own rootlessness. I have never felt more black in my life then I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.

This is an extract from Emily Raboteau's essay "Searching for Zion", originally published in Transition 97 (www.transitionmagazine.com)