ALEXANDRIA RUG

The son of Zaher al-Kafarnah watches as his father's corpse is prepared for burial. His father was killed this morning in one of the thousands of Israeli missile strikes that have rained down every day and night on the tiny, walled Gaza Strip for the last few months. As has been the case for decades, the overwhelming majority of victims of israeli aggression are civilians, and particularly children. Since the beginning of July, about 4 civilians a day in Gaza are being killed - every day - by Israelis.

ORIGINAL PHOTO: Hatem Moussa
IMAGE ALTERATION: /anomalous
IMAGE TITLE: Victor Hugo

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God's chosen people
by Jostein Gaarder - Aftenposten
August 15, 2006


There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel, in its current form, is history.

We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.

Limits to tolerance

There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.

We call child murderers 'child murderers' and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!

Unscrupulous art of war

We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It may have been historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art sof war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.

We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

Without defense, without skin

May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.

We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.

They celebrate their triumphs

We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as "fitting punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.

For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.

The retribution of blood vengeance

We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

He said: "Do to others as you would have them do to you." We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanisti

Who knew that a morning jog isn’t just about getting fit?

Saturday. I woke up early despite the fact that it was a non-working weekend. My body clock would get me out of bed at around 4:30. But thank God I woke up at 6 am. Seeing as I haven’t jogged for awhile I woke up dad and invited him for a nice stroll around the subdivision. Getting healthy was all in mind.

Never would I’ve guessed that I’d run into my next still life series.

A headless salagubang in black and white.

You might have known most of my works are shots of dead…things. If time only permitted me to look for models or maybe schedule for a shoot somewhere nice, I’d go for it. But it has been busy. So when I stumble upon anything that can possibly be a new subject (and would fit my sched)…I’d instantly grab it.

I hesitated a bit for this one. I looked down at the salagubang. It was infested with red ants. Not the regular small ones. Not those huge ones either. But they looked scary the same way. I hated being bitten by an ant. Let alone a dozen of these guys.

I stepped back, kicked the salagubang’s remains until it’s ant-free. I grabbed a discarded plastic from a nearby empty lot. It was still wet from the rain. I closed my eyes and grabbed the insect. Fled the scene and followed my dad out of the street.

It wasn’t until 9pm that I opened the small plastic bag. I was surprised to find that it was still soaked.
And there it was…the salaubang’s wings glistening nicely by the light of my desk lamp. It was silky, like a new car. It took a while for me to get used to positioning it and pinning it down for a decent photo angle.

There were two parts of me that night that I knew I inherited from my parents. One was from my dad. Being a doctor, I think I inherited the stomach to look closely, move or even puncture a living thing (well, a FORMER living thing). Second was from my mom, how she can be scared shitless and grossed out at anything that was lacerated or a thing that everyone knew was dead. I felt both when I saw the insect.

At first I was calming myself, “It’s just a dead bug.” Not long after, I placed it on my palm. I never really liked a live one. I tried keeping one before, even made this small plastic house for it, carpeted with cotton balls. But it was a long time ago. I was scared then. I was still scared of it now. But since it wasn’t moving no more, I made an exception.

Over a hundred and seventy shots, I chose a few that I was pretty proud of. I let my sister see it. Chose the one’s she liked.
I didn’t give the little guy a proper burial. It was already 12 am in the morning, there was no way I’ll be hanging around the garden at that hour. So I placed it in the box, also with it were the stuff I used on it for the shoot. I wrapped it in a converse plastic bag and down it went…into my pink trash can.

Later little guy. Don’t worry, you are now…immortalized!