“Wissam vendte 180 grader” – to gange. Den sigtede Odense-pistolmand i bakspejlet (LFPC).

Wissam kom som 7-årig til Danmark med sin mor og seks søskende i 1988. Den palæstinensiske familien kom direktefra en flygtningelejr i Libanon. Wissams far var kommet hertil fire år tidligere. Efter et par måneder i flygtningelejr i Bullerup uden for Odense flyttede familien til Birkeparken i Vollsmose.[…]

Wissam Freijeh er 14 år. Han løber ned af den lange gang på Humlehaveskolen i Vollsmose. Han har en boltsaks i hænderne og kun en ting i tankerne. Drengen, han er lige i hælene på, skal have tæsk med saksen. – Han havde selv slået mig med saksen. Og jeg blev så hidsig, at jeg sparkede døren ind til klasselokalet og hamrede saksen i bordet foran ham. […]
– Jeg fortryder meget, men jeg har en fremtid, siger Wissam , løfter endelig blikket og kigger over på mester fra produktionsskolen Elsesminde i Odense.[…]

Wissam blev den gang for otte år siden stoppet på gangen af ti lærere – ingen kom til skade. Efterfølgende blev han forvist til Bogø kostskole. Der gik imidlertid ikke mere end tre måneder før, han var tilbage på Humlehaveskolen. – Jeg truede med at brænde kostskolen af, og så sendte de mig hjem igen. Tilbage på skolen begyndte den gamle rytme at køre igen, forklarer han -igen uden at løfte blikket. Og med det mener Wissam slagsmål, smårapserier – og ingen skolegang. Han og de fem nærmeste venner i sorte pilotjakker var synonym med ballade. Og sådan gik der nok et par år.

– Vi blev kaldt en bande, men vi var egentlig bare venner, siger Wissam. Venner der aldrig gik til timer, men brugte det meste af tiden på ballade og slåskampe med andre elever – og lærere. – Skolen turde ikke gøre noget – lærerne var bange for os. Men da de fem venner var fælles om at tæske en anden elev, faldt hammeren. De blev smidt ud af skolen. Denne gang var der ingen vej tilbage. Wissam kom på kontanthjælp og sendt i aktivering. Men kriminaliteten fortsatte.

Og det var et forfærdeligt liv. – Vi fik det dårligere og dårligere. Politiet, kommunen – alle var efter os, forklarer Wissam mens øjenlågene igen sænker sig. […] Den forhutlede ungdom, mener Wissam selv, skyldtes et hidsigt temperament, problemer i familien og ingen tæt kontakt til lærerne på skolen eller det danske samfund – i det hele taget.[…] Wissam vendte 180 grader [Fyens Stiftstidende 14.3.2004, ikke online]

Wissam: The Road Movie

Altid skæg og ballade når Wissam er i byen (LFPC).

Wissam Freijeh har flere gange været tiltalt for mere alvorlige forseelser end en hastighedsoverskridelse. Han er også blevet dømt, men han har aldrig følt sig så uretfærdigt behandlet, som da han i slutningen af april blev dømt for at have kørte 84 km/t, hvor han kun måtte køre 50 km/t. Sagen har været ført både i byretten og i landsretten, og de samlede advokatudgifter for Wissam Freijeh løber op i 10.000 kroner. Derudover skal han betale 2500 kroner i bøde for at køre for stærkt, og han skal undvære sit kørekort i seks måneder, fordi han tidligere har fået det betinget frakendt. […]

– Normalt skal man være 100 procent sikker, før man dømmer nogen i retten, men det er åbenbart ikke de samme regler, der gælder, når vi taler om fartbøder. Kravene til beviser er langt fra de samme. Det her er langt det værste, jeg har oplevet i en retssal, siger Wissam Freijeh. […] Den 25-årige smed har ikke tidligere anket en dom, men det gjorde han prompte, da byretten kendte ham skyldig i at have kørt 84 km/t på Kochsgade ud for Sandhusvej. […] Han er overbevist om, at hans bil er blevet forvekslet med en anden. Og han synes, at retssagerne ikke har ladet tvivlen komme ham til gode.[…] Han har brugt 10.000 kroner i sin kamp mod fartbøde [Fyens Stiftstidende 6.6.2006, ikke online]

Hamas tvinger børn til at være menneskeskjolde

Angiveligt, og med forbehold for at andre hævder det viser børnene blive ‘tvunget’ i sikkerhed, men iflg. denne artikel. Læs også kommentarerne (LFPC).

Dhimmiwood: Når tv må forme virkeligheden

Er der ikke en stigende tendens til at inkludere etniske figurer som ikke helt kan genkendes fra virkelighedens verden, i tv-drama? Sådan ser en fiktiv historie om et drab på en tyrkisk pige og hendes østrigske ven ud, når den har været igennem den multikulturelle vaskemaskine (LFPC):

[…] To return to the story of the prime time movie: It’s a rather simple story revolving around an Austrian and a Turkish family, which included all the necessary clichés: The “evil”, “right-wing” Austrian warning about the dangers of “us mixing with them” on the one side; on the other side, the poor, almost angelic Turkish family, very traditional, the mother in her headscarf, her two girls in love with Austrian, non-Muslim boys, one of them murdered (and pregnant), her son and her husband in charge of all matters relating to the family’s honor. There is some discussion about honor killings and segregation of sexes. However, the end was disappointing: It was not an honor killing, but the victims’ friend who committed the crime, precisely because he wanted to prevent the mixing of Austrian and Turkish blood. At the very end of the movie, the Austrian and the Turkish father met in the mosque and “peacefully” sat next to each other. […] Parallel Societies in Telfs

Pæredansk

Bliv fuld uden at blive fed. Nu mangler man bare den økologiske slanke-elefant-bajer. Det er kun i Danmark, man kan opfinde sådan noget. Først syntes jeg det var depraveret, men ved nærmere eftertanke får den øl mig til at føle mig hjemme i “det lille land, beboet af smilende gale“. Også selvom mine egne “drinkin´days are long gone“. Der er nok af folk, der ville opfinde den modsatte bajer – svulstig smag og nul beruselse. Eller den nikotinfri cigar, eller den alkoholfrie snaps, som Jörn Donner engang påstod findes på Systembolaget. Beruselsens ultimative zipless fuck. Jeg har aldrig spurgt efter andet end O.P. Andersson.

The Challenge of Urban “Stateless” Regions

Today’s Washington Post has an interesting look at one of the growing challenges of statelessness and where much of the world is heading. It also has stark implications for terrorist organizations and their ability to operate. The story looks at police attempts to take over the Santa Marta favela in Rio de Janeiro, where drug dealers have long been the primary, if not sole, source of authority.

Using tactics similar to the U.S. “surge” strategy in Iraq, police are seeking to build permanent bases among the population, fix broken services, gather intelligence, and stick around so the drug traffickers lose their operational freedom. The story showed that there was much to be done to allay the fears of the civilian population and win them over in some fashion.

What is striking is that, while we often look at ungoverned spaces (generally a misleading term because, while the state does not govern there, some person, criminal organization or militia almost certainly does), we view them as vast swaths of territory with little population and empty territory where one could hide. In reality, many of the “stateless” areas are in the rapidly-growing mega-urban centers that are growing up around the world. See National Geographic map for a fascinating and terrifying graphic of the trends.

In these urban settings, there are densely-populated sectors where the state has no presence or power. These areas offer an entirely different set of challenges from stateless territories that are both larger and much less densely populated. My full blog is here. Douglas Farah: The Challenge of Urban “Stateless” Regions

Henryk Broder i orkanens øje

Dér er som bekendt vindstille og roligt. Eller også er det Broder, hvis ro er uforstyrrelig :

The Eye of the Storm
By Henryk M. Broder in Tel Aviv

War is raging in Gaza, people are fighting and dying. Only 30 minutes away by car in Tel Aviv, you could be forgiven for thinking nothing was happening in the Middle East.

It’s almost as if the war were a PR gag whipped up by city officials in Tel Aviv to attract tourists who can’t afford to take an adventure vacation to an al-Qaida camp. The sky over Tel Aviv is bluer than blue, and on the Jaffo promenade, Japanese tourists take turns photographing each other before moving on to Abulafiah to buy a sesame bagel with Safed cheese.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has just announced that Allah will punish Israel for its turpitude, but the Turkish Culture Center at Kikar Ha-Shaon, or clocktower square, will soon be opened. The Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv has painstakingly restored the old seraglio, where the Turkish district governor once resided, to its former glory. A young Turkish officer named Kemal Ataturk was also in charge here for just about a year.

It’s easier to imagine what Jaffo looked like more than a century ago than it is to imagine what is happening just a half-hour’s car journey to the south.

There’s a war in Gaza – with gunfire and deaths, but there is no sign of that tumult here in Tel Aviv. And with the exception of a few attacks by the Italian air force during World War II and Iraqi Scud missiles fired at the city during the second Gulf War, Tel Aviv has always been a war-free zone. Jerusalem may be the official capital of Israel, but Tel Aviv is its metropolis. People pray in Jerusalem, but they live in Tel Aviv.

This year, Tel Aviv will turn 100 years old. The residents of cities like Cologne, Krakow or Kiev might have a good laugh over such a youthful birthday, but for this city, built from scratch on sand dunes, each year counts as two or three. And anything older than 30 years is almost an eternity.

Rehov Herzl and Rehov Nachlat Benjamin are amongst the oldest streets in Tel Aviv, and the further south you go, the older it gets.

For years, the Palm House, built in Art Deco style in the 1920s by an architect named Joshua Tabatchnik, stood crumbling, held together by only a few supporting beams. It was recently restored, and a 40-square meter apartment sells for 1.3 million shekel, or about €260,000. Most of the businesses surrounding the Palm House aren’t old — they’re older than old.

The cloth stores, for example, where fabric is sold by the meter for other shops to make curtains, clothing and upholstery. The rolls of fabric are delivered with bicycle carts. In a corrugated iron hut with bars on the windows, a jeweller is working on watches that have stopped ticking — he’s been in the business for 50 years. How he can manage to make a living with this trade is a secret he will take with him to the grave.

A walk along Nachlat Benjamin is like driving a car that goes forwards and backwards at the same time, like an LSD trip for architecture fans and design avant-gardists without the drugs. One never knows what to expect at the next corner. There are Bauhaus buildings — 4,000 of them in Tel Aviv, in fact — that are being restored bit by bit. And there are businesses that confirm the famous line by novelist and Zionism founder Theodor Herzl, “If you want, it is no fairy tale!”

At the corner of Nachlat Benjamin and Rothschild, a specialty store selling olive oil, pesto and vinegar has been opened. The store belongs to the Kibbutz Revivim in Negev, which sells its products there. The idea isn’t new — what is new, however, is the willingness of people to spend five to ten times as much for a bottle of oil or vinegar than they would in a normal supermarket. One block further, at Benedict, the modern resident of Tel Aviv can not only eat 24 hours a day, he can also have breakfast at any time. Ten years ago, that would have been considered decadent.

Florentin, at the southern end of Nachlat Benjamin is probably the last neighborhood in Tel Aviv that has not been steamrolled by progress. But the precursors to gentrification are already there: boutiques and galleries that sell things that people don’t need but some still buy anyway. And no one seems to be bothered by the fact that laundry has been hung out to dry on the balconies above the lifestyle stores.

In his restaurant Elimelech in the middle of Florentin, Avi Berman serves dishes that the Eastern Europeans brought with them to Palestine. Minced liver, gefillte fish, aspic made from beef bones. Earlier, these were peasant dishes that could be found on every second corner, but today they have become rare specialties. You have to search long in Tel Aviv to find a restaurant that still tastes like Poland and smells like Ukraine. Elimelech, established in 1936 by Avi Berman’s parents, is the oldest eatery of its kind. The restaurant has been certified kosher by the Tel Aviv rabbinate. It has received this certification despite the fact that the restaurant is also open on Saturdays in violation of the strictest interpretation of the word kosher – the standard set by the rabbinate of Jerusalem.

But Tel Aviv is different. The city’s most beloved kosher bakery, Piece of Cake, is located in the Arab quarter Jaffo, and the Jews stand in line here on Friday afternoons right after they have eaten the best hummus to be found between Akko an Arish at Abu Hassan. When they finally head home, they drive by a wall covered with fresh graffiti: “The 2008 war in Gaza = Shoah 1942”.

That’s certainly no PR stunt thought up by city officials.

Spiegel Online: TEL AVIV, ISRAEL’S METROPOLIS