It's been a supremely long and full year so far -- and by that I don't just mean spiritually, emotionally, physically, schedule-wise, and in terms of having sufficient mental capacity for fully processing experiences-wise. But email-wise as well.
Even my gmail inbox has not been free from the enormous figurative scale of this year and the massive amounts of ideas, content, figurative clutter and political noise and controveries that have been constant fixtures of my life here.
So just to give you a taste of what my gmail's life has been like this year, here's an assortment of various listservs and auto-group-distribution type things I've found myself on the receiving end of this year.
(This isn't a particulary content-ful blog post, BUT, hopefully it's still a little interesting, and it might be an opportunity for you to follow some of these links and check out a Middle Eastern listserv for yourself! Or just look around their websites to see what they do.)
(All of these below I get some sort of at least vaguely regular email contact from. Also I'm fans of many of them on Facebook, which means I see their stuff there too!)
Al-Monitor: Excellent, reliable political coverage from local correspondents throughout the Middle East. I get daily briefings/collections of headlines from them.
A billion YAGM newsletters from all over the world: It'd be kind of ridiculous and irresponsible to put all their email addresses up here, but it is possible for you to join these mailing lists! Look for them, or just ask me to help you if you're that interested. Also here's a link to other YAGM volunteer blogs.
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Churches for Middle East Peace Sends out briefings every couple of weeks with the major news updates on the general Israel/Palestine context. Good way of keeping up-to-date with the basics, and there's good resources on their site too. Also it's an organization made up of American churches working for "Middle East Peace," so that's cool, and provides easy opportunities for getting involved, advocacy/activism-wise.
B'Tselem (occasional e-newsletter) B'Tselem is a prominent Israeli organization that monitors human rights abuses in Israel's occupied territories. (East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza) Lots and lots of good internet resources too.
Combatants for Peace Organization of militants from both sides of the conflict who've come together to advocate for peace and an end to endless cycles of violence and occupation. They send me something every now and then about events they're planning.
Breaking the Silence: Organization made up of Israeli soldiers who, after finishing their military service, decided to speak out about the things they saw and participated in. They do a lot of education and tours and such, and you can find many testimonials from individual soldiers on their site. Their newsletters are just updates on what the organization has been doing from month to month. (They also released a large report on testimonials from soldiers who were in Gaza last summer.)
Kids4Peace: This organization gets kids together of all three Abrahamic faiths, from all across the political, racial, and socio-economic spectrums here in Israel/Palestine, and they go through a 6-year program of dialogue, co-existence, peacemaking skills, etc., and they spend a lot of time with youth in America too. I blog for them occasionally and I get cool newsletter updates.
Emek Shaveh: Emek Shaveh is an organization of Israeli archaeologists fighting against the way the Israeli establishment uses archaeology as a political tool to aid in the continuing confiscation of Palestinian land and the slow expulsion of Palestinians themselves that goes along with that.
Wadi Hilweh Information Center: One of the biggest current arenas of this politically-charged archaeology/confiscation/expulsion thing is the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in Jerusalem. (Emek Shaveh has a lot of good information on this too.) The Wadi Hilweh Information Center is the outreach and education wing of the local Palestinian community center in Silwan. (Here's the main community center page although I don't think I get any emails from them.)
Zochrot: Zochrot is an Israeli NGO that works generally in outreach and education to raise awareness of the Palestinian Nakba in Israeli society. The Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic) refers to the massive displacement and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the destruction of their villages in 1948 when the state of Israel was established. (The existence of this event and its legitimacy is not usually recognized by any governmental Israeli organization, and many many Israelis are similarly unaware or critical of it.)
Tourist Israel: The events and tours it talks about are usually way too expensive for me and my volunteer stipend, but this organization is about exactly what it sounds like.
CJS Tours: The Palestinian Center for Jerusalem Studies does cool educational tours on the many complicated layers of history in the Old City and Jerusalem! Attached to Al-Quds University. (Al-Quds is what Jerusalem is called in Arabic. Literally means "The Holy," but is short for "The Holy City."
Shutterfly: Seems silly to link to this. We have a fancy photo site for pictures of the kids in the kindergarten, but it's private, so if you want pictures of the kids make sure you're on my newsletter list! More of that coming soon.
Redeemer Lutheran Church: Arabic (daily) & English (weekly) newsletters: Oh my gosh I'm running out of steam so fast. Ask me if you're interested in these. (You can also sign up for regular (I think quarterly?) updates on the English congregation and local goings-on, specifically for people who actually don't currently live here.)
Haaretz popular Israeli newspaper
Yabous Cultural Center
Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem
The Lutheran Magazine
Tantur Institute Notre Dame satellite ecumenical center in East Jerusalem
Oud for Guitarists
Interfaith Encounter Association
The Parents Circle: Bereaved Family Forum
Rabbis For Human Rights
Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture
The East Jerusalem French Institute
Search for Common Ground
(And this was just listservs, mass e-communication. The interpersonal communication here has gotten complicated over time for a somewhat different reason -- namely that whole "language" thing. By which I mean "Arabic," because neither my spoken nor my written ability in Hebrew is beyond the please/thank you courtesies and the occasional "shalom" salutation tag at the end of emails/postcards. But for Arabic I end up having to switch to my phone whenever I want to draft an email or respond to someone on Facebook who doesn't speak English.)
Cause while I *can* type Arabic letters on my computer keyboard, it's not a fun time. (It involves a lot of guess-work, you might call it trial-and-error word-processing.) For younger people there's a whole common internet e-slang style of writing Arabic with non-Arabic letters, but that gives me a massive headache. So instead I downloaded an Arabic keyboard on my phone.
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