On Wednesday night Palestinian students organized an event with speakers, skits and traditional Palestinian dances. Speakers from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon all spoke of their solidarity with the Palestinians. It was all in Arabic so a friend had to translate for me. Here are two short videos I took of the event:
As you can see their arms are locked together. During this dance one of the guys moved forward too far and he dislocated his shoulder. Later that night he was still in the hospital.
This is recreation of a wedding ceremony. The groom is the guy in the tie. The others are dancing for him and singing about his strength. I wish the video of this had come out; it was quite powerful.
The only performance in English was Blue's "One Love." At one point the two guys stood inches from each other looking in each other's eyes and sang, "Baby, just love me, love me, love me. Baby, just hold me, hold me, hold me." It was uncomfortably awkward in this homophobic culture.
*****
The next day President Obama delivered his major speech on the middle east. He called on Israel to return to 1967 borders with a possible compromise of exchanging territories. He called for aid to help new democracies in the middle east. It was a remarkably responsible and sober speech. The right in the US has fallen in love with the right-wing in Israel. Predictably, they hated Obama's speech.
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