Amiry and Hasan-Rokem

Not the Mother of all Cities: A Feminist Perspective of Jerusalem struck on something new with me: I had never really considered cities to have a specific gender before, but upon reading her article about Jerusalem's ability to have "every possible emotional need: for softness, security and calm; the need to adorn, to conquer, to overpower.  And most of all the need to be her master" it all started to make sense.  She emphasizes the point that we've discussed in class many times but I think is sincerely overlooked in the international media coverage of the issue--"recognition that the population of Jerusalem has real, concrete needs to be taken care of: schools, parking lots, respectful neighbors, freedom to live with all one's family members, the right to express one's cultural, religious, ethnic or national identity"


Questions for Galit Hasan-Rokem
1. If you believe Jerusalem is perceived to be a women or mother, how would other big, international cities be classified?
2. Is this problem specifically male? How do females in Israel perceive Jerusalem?
3. Does the feminist perspective see a different solution to the conflict than those males that are currently in power?


I really enjoyed Sharon and My Mother-In-Law: Ramallah Diaries because it offers a great first-hard perspective to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and I thought it was very appropriate that we read these articles immediately following the video on Wednesday.  These personal experiences humanized the atrocities from multiple perspectives (Israeli, Palestinian, male, female, and all different age groups) allowing us to try and wrap our heads around such a foreign concept.  I was a little confused about the concept of the "curfew" until reading in Amer's blog that it literally meant no traveling outside of the house under any circumstance. In today's society, this concept is unfathomable... Saud Amiry seemed to find a way to write about these painful experiences with a great deal of humor-a coping mechanism perhaps? Being a coffee-aholic myself, I enjoyed the idea of the coffee and the conversation surrounding it very fitting.  Unfortunately the racial profiling in these two stories "The Promised Gas Masks" and "A Dog's Life" is not humorous and the fact that there are people living under such circumstances is unreal.  When she talked of the people taking Jerusalem IDs for granted (and the fact that it was SO simple for a dog to receive such a precious commodity) while there are those people stuck in limbo (the child without any ID at all because her parents had different identification cards or the married couple of 24 years who still had different IDs) reminded me that every day in the United States we take such small luxuries for granted while there are millions of people in our country (and around the world) that go without. If that doesn't make you want to get out and better the world I don't  know what would....