(See heading “NEW: Calendar” above for listing of events of interest.)

❶ From ALMONITOR
GAZA DOCTORS FIND JOBS IN GERMAN CLINICS
Hazem Balousha Posted June 17, 2015
TranslatorPascale Menassa
June 17, 2015
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — In one of the rooms of the Goethe Institute in Gaza City, 13 students attend a German-language class. Five of them are doctors seeking to study and work in Germany due to the tough economic and political situation in Gaza, which has been under Hamas control for eight years.
____According to figures published by several sources, some doctors employed in Gaza are looking for work in German hospitals. Germany has been offering extensive incentives for doctors from outside the European Union for years.
(More. . .)

❷ From MA’AN NEWS ANGENCY
ISRAELI POLICE ISSUE 15-DAY AQSA MOSQUE BAN FOR 6 PALESTINIAN WOMEN
June 23, 2015
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli police on Monday banned six Palestinian women from visiting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound for 15 days, a lawyer for the women said.
____Ramzi Kteilat, from Jerusalem based rights group Qudsuna, told Ma’an that the women were arrested earlier in the day and taken to Qishla police station near Jaffa Gate.
(More. . .)

❸ From INTERNATIONAL MIDDLE EAST MEDIA CENTER (IMEMC)
SOLDIERS KIDNAP FOUR PALESTINIANS IN BETHLEHEM
Tuesday June 23, 2015
Israeli soldiers invaded, on Tuesday at dawn, four young Palestinian men in the ‘Aida refugee camp, north of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, and handed three from Bethlehem, military warrants for interrogation.
____ Local sources in the camp said the soldiers stormed and searched several homes, and kidnapped. . .
(More. . .)
http://www.imemc.org/article/72023

❹ From MA’AN NEWS ANGENCY
ISRAEL RENEWS JERUSALEM BAN ON ISLAMIC MOVEMENT HEAD
June 23, 2015
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities on Tuesday extended an order banning the head of the Islamic Movement from entering Jerusalem.
. . .
____The prominent Islamic cleric called the ruling “unjust,” while the Islamic Movement said that entering Jerusalem is Salah’s legitimate right and he will exercise it “whenever he sees appropriate.”
(More. . .)

❺ From THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
NEW EVIDENCE FROM 1967 WAR REVEALS ISRAELI ATROCITIES
Ilan Pappe
June 23, 2015

“In the operation we had to cleanse the inhabitants. This uprooting of a villager, rooted in his village and turning him into a refugee, by simply expelling him, and not one, two or three of them but a real eviction. And when you see a whole village is led like lambs to the slaughter without any resistance you understand what is the Holocaust.” — An Israeli soldier’s testimony in the documentary Censored Voices, directed by Mor Loushi (2015)

In the wake of the June 1967 war, the Israeli author Amos Oz, then a reserve soldier in the Israeli army, together with a friend collated interviews with Israeli soldiers who participated in the war and asked them about the emotions the fighting triggered in them. The interviews were published as a book titled Conversations with Soldiers, more popularly referred at the time by my generation as the ”shooting and crying” book.
____The military censor (a function that still exists today, held recently by the present minister of culture, Miri Regev), erased 70 percent of the evidence since he claimed it would have harmed Israel’s international image.
____This month an industrious Israeli filmmaker, Mor Loushi, is showing her new documentary based on most of this erased material.
(More. . .)

“HOW ARE YOU?” BY MOURID BARGHOUTI
Waiting for the school bus,
watching his breath turn into mist near his nose
in the icy morning,
the schoolboy’s fingers are frozen,
too stiff to make a fist.

On the pillow of regret,
the defeated soldier
lazily tries to get up,
raising his broken toothbrush
to his teeth.

Early or late,
The stranger awakens in his exile, his homeland.
Their clothes, their car number pates, their trees,
their quarrels, their love, their land, their sea
belong to them.
His memories are like rats gathering on his doormat,
new and warm
in front of his closed door.

On a lonely pillow,
the mother throws a quick glance
at the bed of her elder son,
made for the final time
and empty, forever.

A voice from the neighbouring window is heard:
“Hello, good morning, how are you?”
“Hello, good morning, we’re fine,
we’re fine!”

From: Barghouti, Mourid. Midnight and other Poems. Trans. By Radwa Ashour. Todmorden, Lancashire, UK: Arc Books, 2008. Available from B&N.
Murīd al-Barghūti (born July 8, 1944, in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah, on the West Bank) is a Palestinian poet and writer. While Barghouti was studying at the University of Cairo in 1967, the 6-Day War broke out, and he was unable to return to the West Bank until 1996. He was expelled from Egypt in 1977 and was exiled in Budapest separated from his wife, the Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour. They have been together in the West Bank since they were allowed to return together in 1996. Their son, Tamim Al Barghouti, born in Egypt in 1977, is himself an important Palestinian poet.
Other poems by Mourid Barghouti here, and here.