Jeff Klein's blog

(June 29, 2013, published also at Mondoweiss)

I met Mr. Palestine today in Nablus. Really.

‘Imad AbdulAziz won the title Mr. Palestine in a body-building championship in the year 2000. As usual here, things get a little more complicated, even in a seemingly benign sport like bodybuilding.

As reported by the New York Times, Washington Post, 

On a hillside in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, overlooking the large West Bank Palestinian city of al-Khalil -- known to Israeli Jews and most foreigners by its biblical name of  “Hebron” – is the grave monument of Dr. Baruch Goldstein.

Maybe I should have been clearer in my previous post on the exaggeration of sectarian motives in the Syria and Lebanon conflicts.

Hezbollah fighters returning home to  their villages in the Bekaa Valley after their victory in Syrian al-Qusayr, had that to say when I spoke with them during a visit to the Baalbek area yesterday.  Al-Qusayr is just a few miles and a short drive from here.

Elite Hezbollah fighters celebrating their return
from al-Qusayr

False Friends?

As the press continues to report breathlessly on negotiations to avoid the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” – which is no immediate crisis unless it is used as the excuse to attack vital social benefits – there are mixed signals from the Obama administration and Democratic legislators. 

Bay State Banner, Community Voices, March 1, 2012

Thousands of people from communities across the state have written cards and letters to Senator Kerry; seniors and union members have rallied and marched; protestors have demonstrated in front of his district offices -- all of them with a simple message for the Senator: “Don’t Balance the Budget on Our Backs!”

August 12, 2011 - CounterPunch

When I was laid-off from the Lynn GE plant in the late 1980’s, it wasn’t because of the cancellation of any military contract. In those days, Lynn produced steam turbines to power civilian as well as Navy ships, commercial electric generating plants and gears for railroad engines, along with military and non-military jet engines. But GE was determined to shrink the Lynn workforce and one-by-one the civilian production lines disappeared.

April 17, 2011 - Mondoweiss

April 20, 2011 - Mondoweiss

You know, Lebanon – that small Middle East country wracked by a generation of bloody civil wars, the scene of periodic Israeli invasions and massacres, the battle ground for foreign armies. These days, when upheavals are rocking the Arab world in a crescent of unrest from Morocco to the Persian Gulf, you have to search hard for any news about Lebanon.

It is al-Quds in Arabic, Yerushalyim in Hebrew – a place much too “Holy” for its own good.