A maze of dead ends
The man behind the counter at the embassy told Hisham* he would have better a better chance of getting into Germany if he crossed the Mediterranean and snuck into Europe illegally.
“You look appropriate and you have all the papers required, you have nice degrees, and that’s why I owe you an explanation and tell you to not even apply,” Hisham remembers him saying.
“A lot of Syrians are now doing the same. They’re going to Germany […] get stuck there and become a burden on the community. I don’t know what your intentions are but I will be the first one to say ‘no’ to this application, even though it’s perfect.”
Continue reading on Mashallah News
Turkey's witch-hunt against the Gülen Movement should stop
We’re told they are “vampires” and “traitors”, “pawns of foreign powers” and “cancerous cells” and a “blood-sucking virus” to be “annihilated,” “cleansed,” “vaporized,” and “separated into its molecules.”
Is this the violent invective spewed at dissidents from the pages of Pravda at the height of the 1930s Soviet purges or from some official mouthpiece of the North Korean regime promising to crush the enemies of the people? No. These are phrases taken in 2014 and 2015 straight from the front pages of Turkish newspapers, like Sabah, Aksam, Takvim, and Star, that are known to be unconditional supporters of Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
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Israeli expat asks whether it is possible to come home
In one of the most affecting scenes of her documentary “P.S. Jerusalem,” filmmaker Danae Elon follows her two little boys and their Palestinian schoolmate, all three dressed nearly identically in hooded sweatshirts and jeans, as they navigate the streets of the city at night, traversing Jewish majority and Arab majority neighborhoods while clutching their skateboards. The boys, who attend the bilingual Hand in Hand School, switch from one language to the next depending on the area they’re in. “Don’t speak Arabic here,” whispers her son in Hebrew to his Palestinian friend. Two minutes later, the Palestinian boy whispers to them in Arabic, “Sh! Not a word in Hebrew!”
Continue reading on +972 Mag
