Last few days, and back home

So, a final few days in Palestine and Israel after all the interviewing of Palestinian women workers from the settlements. Chaos, generally, as final few days tend to be.
A few little things that stand out:
- a stunningly repugnant front page of the Jerusalem Post (usually a pretty vile rag anyway), announcing that Israeli soldiers had worked hard to prevent civilian casualties in the overpopulated chaos that was Gaza during the invasion. Poor dears. I'm sure they bust blood vessels making that effort. The Israeli police spent all of about 2 seconds 'investigating' reports made by soldiers who served in Gaza of war crimes before declaring them 'hearsay';
- the truly appalling state of unrecognised Bedouin villages in the Naqab, shanty towns of ragged tents - a few of them the traditional camel and goat hair, but most of them made from plastic sheeting. And the horrid irony, pointed out by my friends L and U, who live down there, of Bedouin villages with no running water or electricity, sandwiched at just a few hundred yards' remove by a power station on one side and a water treatment plant on the other, both serving Israeli communities;
- the utter gutless half-witted rubbish being spouted by some god-awful journalist on the BBC World Service, trying to find ways to justify the British police apparently adding newspaper sellers on their way home to the list of people - Brazilian electricians, any black youth they fall over - who it's ok to murder. RIP Ian Tomlinson. The video which the Guardian managed to get hold of which reveals the extent of police lies - that they were pelted with missiles while trying to save him, when actually they basically killed him and then ignored him and impeded medical care - is here:



Yes, coming home has been less than cheerful (apart from being back with my wonderful husband, lovely friends and gorgeous cats), with police brutality and suppression of environmental and anti-capitalist protests topping the bill. But the amazing Marc Roberts has, as usual, managed to crank out a topical cartoon at light speed. For Arabic readers, some of his climate change work has also been translated for a Lebanese audience at al-Bia wal-Tanmia.