The Pessoptimist

Jew in Arabia, goy in Israel

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Haaretz reveals: population of Golan Heights also forcefully expelled and their villages destroyed

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Golan 1967. In the foreground an abandoned Syrian tank. The following is part of an article in Haaretz´ Friday supplement of 30 July 2010....
Friday, July 30, 2010

Settlers take over another large Palestinian house in Old City of Jerusalem

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Members of the extended Quirresh family sitting in front of the house from were they were eveicted. Some 90 people loose the roof over thei...
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Travelling

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I´m off to the land where the delicacies in these pictures originate from and I´m travelling without a pc.This blog is  temporarily closed ...

Renewed heavy fighting with Houthis in N-Yemen

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Tribesmen in northern Yemen . At least 33 people have been killed in several days of clashes between government-backed tribes and so-ca...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Posing as a Jew in order to have sex ...is rape

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An Arab resident of Jerusalem who had consensual sex with a woman who believed him to be Jewish, was convicted on Monday of rape by decepti...
Monday, July 19, 2010

Israel continues its demolitions and expulsions in Jordan Valley

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One year ago, on 16 June 2009,  Israel demolished in Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley, where mostly Bedouin live. Three families (28 persons,18 ...

Netanyahu bragging about how he wrecked Oslo

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Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit to a bereaved family in the settlement Ofra, in 2001 when he wasn't in the government any...

Attacks against Iraqi Sunni militia kill 43

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Photo Reuters A suicide bomber has killed at least 43 people and wounded another 40 in wester...
Saturday, July 17, 2010

Al-Jazeera: settlements dump wastewater on Palestinian land

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Israeli settlements dump wastewater in een canal that runs through Palestinian lands and refuse permission for the PA to divert the water th...

Hundreds killed in new clashes in Darfur

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   JEM rebels Nearly 400 people have been killed in recent clashes between the Sudanese army and Darfur's main rebel group, accor...

HRW report: Syria lost a decade as far as human rights reforms are concerned

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 Bashar al-Assad with his wife Asma In his inaugural speech on July 17, 2000, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad spoke of the need for ...
Friday, July 16, 2010

Lebanese parliament indecisive on issue of granting rights to Palestinian refugees

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The Palestinian camp Ain al-Helweh near Saida (Sidon) Lebanon's parliament on Thursday postponed to 17 August talks on the controve...
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Abu Pessoptimist
This blogname was derived from a satiric Arabic novel by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby. In the ''The Secret Life of Saeed The Pessoptimist'' he uses absurdism as a weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. I consider it to be an example for how events in Israel/Palestine best can be approached. The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. In a way that is also still my motto. My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. In 2018, I concluded the study 'Arabic language and culture' at the University of Amsterdam. I started 'Abu Pessoptimist' in January 2009 out of anger about the onslaught of that month in Gaza. The other blog, The Pessoptimist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)
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