Hummus and Whiplash in Ramallah with Bassem Eid

JewishJournal.Com ^ | August 10, 2010 | By David Suissa

[fight_truth_decay]

It was the best hummus I’ve ever tasted. It came in a bowl, drenched in olive oil, with a few small garbanzos and shreds of parsley and hot green peppers sprinkled on top, and just the right amount of lemon juice. The elderly Palestinian man had made the hummus from scratch and served it to us with a salad plate, a bowl of falafels and a tall stack of hot pitas for just under 8 shekels.

I was eating in a refugee camp in Ramallah with Bassem Eid, the founder and director of an NGO called Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. We ate at this hole in the wall off a skinny alleyway nestled in a labyrinth of ramshackle houses, tiny grocery stores and one little mosque, with a U.N. mini-truck riding around the alleyways picking up random garbage.

Outside the camp was a different story. Ramallah is a happening city with construction everywhere and a sea of people lining the sidewalks of boulevards teeming with commerce.

[rahbert]

Excellent. The Palestinans should concentrate on making money and getting along with their neighbors.

[Hillbillary]

And you walked out of there alive? Holy Crap!

[SJackson]

Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume

If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

[SunkenCiv]

Shooting Sarah Palin
By David Suissa
September 17, 2008
http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/shooting_sarah_palin_20080917/
http://www.seraphicpress.com/images/lith_palin-frank_091908-thumb.jpg
She’s a quick study. “Unlike a well-known current resident of the White House, she’s not intellectually lazy or impatient with details. What I saw was a probing, engaged woman who’s always on — and is anything but a naive, small-town hick.”

[justiceseeker93]

Seems like this author David Suissa is trying to tell us that if you look hard enough, you might find a moderate and somewhat sensible Palestinian in Ramallah. I suppose he later realized that he was fortunate to have survived his adventure.

[justiceseeker93]

Yes, I recall seeing that old article from '08 about Palin and the Israeli filmmaker.

Has anyone seen any of Ehud Frank's film on Palin?

[SunkenCiv]

/bingo

[Mr170IQ]

I don’t know anything about this “Bassem Eid” fellow.

But I do know that if he were the leader of the “so-called palestinians” he would face a binary choice: either restrain the “radicals” (the huge percentage of the PA population that supports violence against Israel) with sufficient force to neutralize them (and be considered a traitor and collaborator by most of his people), or to just talk peace while Hamas, Fatah, et. al. continue to attack Israel without restraint (and essentially allow them to de-facto take over the PA)

I find it hard to believe he would choose Option A.