Sheikh Jarrah demonstration

Last Friday afternoon I went to the weekly demonstration at Sheikh Jarrah - an Arab neighborhood in east Jerusalem where Jewish settlers have taken over houses where Palestinians have been living for decades. The demonstration last week was peaceful, but that was not true yesterday, as I heard from several people who were there, who got shoved and elbowed by the Border Police. According to my friends, the police are openly on the side of the settlers and are uniformly hostile to the leftist demonstrators.

See this report in Haaretz: 'Unprecedented police brutality' at East Jerusalem protest.

Some 300 left-wing activists clashed with police on Friday during the weekly protest at the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Ten activists were detained and held for questioning over blocking roadways and failing to comply with police instructions. Every weekend, Israeli protesters demonstrate alongside the Arab locals against settler activity in the Arab neighborhood. The demonstrators decry the settlers' takeover of several homes in the area.

Participating in Friday's protest were renowned Israeli author David Grossman and former Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On.
The clash erupted when demonstrators tried to make their way to the contested homes in the neighborhood. Gal-On and Grossman said that they were pushed aggressively by police officers. Gal-On said that "it was one of the more violent events. We wanted to enter the neighborhood, but the police brutality was unprecedented." "They pushed, and I too got hit," Gal-On went on to say. "They just kicked the young people who were lying on the ground."

Gal-On added that former attorney general Michael Ben-Yair pleaded with the police to calm the situation, but they were uncooperative.

Some six weeks ago, several hundred Hebrew University students and lecturers marched from the Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem to Sheikh Jarrah in protest over the settlers' takeover of local residents' homes. The protest march included such prominent professors as Ze'ev Sternhell, Yaron Ezrahi, Ariel Hirschfeld and others.

The protesters carried signs calling for and end to settlements in East Jerusalem. "Democracy stops at Sheikh Jarrah," some signs said, while others read "stop ethnic cleansing."

Update tonight from Ynet:

8 Sheikh Jarrah protesters ordered to keep away for 2 weeks

Eight Sheikh Jarrah protesters arrested Friday during demonstrations have been ordered to stay away from the neighborhood for two weeks. Police said indictments against the eight would be submitted. Protesters complained Friday that even though their demonstration was passive, police used violent means against them when they tried to approach the Shimon HaTzadik compound. (Shmulik Grossman)

See also the report in Ynet from yesterday: Leftists Clash with Police in Sheikh Jarrah

Sima Schlossberg and her family in Jelgava

I just found another resource to research the Jews of Latvia - the Latvian Names Project. It is an attempt to do for all of the Jews of Latvia what Edward Anders and his co-workers were able to do for Liepaja - identify the fates of Jews who lived in Latvia before the Second World War. In 1935 the Latvian census recorded 93,479 Jews living in Latvia.

I looked up the name of my relative from Jelgava, Latvia - Sima Schlossberg. She came up on the list, and so did the names of her family - names that she doesn't refer to in her letters to my grandfather. Her sister's name was Miriam, and she was born on August 5, 1909. Sima herself was born on November 27, 1911. Their parents' names were Itzik Ruben and Esther Raschel. Only the possible fate of Miriam Schlossberg is mentioned - in the Riga Ghetto.

Looking back in correspondence from March and April of 2004 (with Miriam's daughter and with a cousin of Sima's), I discover, however, that I do know the fates of the people in the family. Sima escaped from Riga in 1941 with her parents first to Russia and then to Uzbekistan. Her sister Miriam was already living there because she had fled earlier. Sima's father Itzik died in 1942 from hunger. The two sisters and their mother survived the war. In 1942, Miriam married a man named Mikhail Golod, and her daughter was born in 1943 in Bukhara. They returned to Riga in 1945. Sima worked as a bookkeeper, and in 1955 was married to a man named Nohum Bruk and moved with him to St. Petersburg. She died there in 1988, leaving no children behind. Miriam died in 1980 and her mother Esther Raschel died in 1984 at the age of 100.

I'm going to have to write to the Latvian Names Project and give them information on all of these people.

Wikileaks

As much as I don't like the both cynical and naive reasoning that those in charge of Wikileaks give for publishing the U.S. State Department cables, I'm coming to the conclusion that their doing so is not such a bad thing. There's fascinating information coming out: about our relations with quite a variety of countries, about how Iran is seen by Arab countries, about how the Chinese government in all probability has sponsored many hackers' attacks against U.S. government targets, etc. The release of the cables is clearly embarrassing for the U.S. government (and may make diplomacy harder), but to my eyes the cables reveal the government doing a lot of things right.

And I'm increasingly disturbed by the vindictive attacks on Assange (again, as much as I don't like him), including calls for his assassination.

If you're interested in perusing the cables that have been published thus far, they are currently available at: Cable Viewer.

Volcano in Iceland

The Fimmvoruhald volcano erupting at Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull glacier, earlier this week. (Don't ask me to pronounce either name - when I listen to Eyjafjallajökull being pronounced via Slate or Wikipedia, it sounds very little like what it looks like).

I was living in Seattle in 1980 when Mount St. Helens blew (see the website for the Mount St. Helens National Volcano Monument for more information).

The winds never blew the ash cloud into Seattle, but Portland was hit several times by the ash when the wind blew in the right direction. It was still very dramatic - you could see the huge column of ash for a long time from Seattle. I never did visit the volcano, but one of the tourist souvenirs one could buy soon afterwards were little glass vials of volcano ash. I bought one but have no idea what happened to it.