Reading Response # 1

After reading through the first paragraph of the article, "Researching East Jerusalem," by Suad Amiry I had a vision of what Jerusalem was/is like. He says that Jerusalem is a placed filled with beauty, yet a place filled with problems. I admire Suad for attempting to neutralize the rage between the Israelis and the Palestine's. In her article she explains that there are problems pertaining to minute (or at least seem to be minute) issues such as the name of the festival, to more substantial issues such as the nature of the boundary separating the two Jerusalem's. I also really enjoyed the article"Representing Jerusalem" because it was an interview with Suad Amiry. Her responses to the questions differed from what I would have guessed. In particular, I thought it was interesting that the Jerusalem Festival was postponed due to a lack of funding. Funders weren't willing to give the Festival money because they despised the fact that the funds would be shared amongst the Israelis and the Palestinians. In addition, it was interesting to learn that government from either side was uninvolved. The Festival was planned to occur without the funds from either government.

Galit Hasan-Rokem's article, "Dialogue as Ethical Conduct" had me pondering a few questions. First of all, is progress being made towards a new 'Festival'? If so, when can we expect this Festival to occur? Are there any underlying reasons (unmentioned in these articles) that could be causing such conflict between the two sides?

The article written by Professor Horowitz also caught my interest. It was amazing to read a published text written by a person that you are in contact with on a weekly basis. I was intrigued by the section focusing on ethnography because I believe that in order to get the most out of this course, we as students need to become ethnographers ourselves. In the text, Professor Horowitz writes "our ethnography developed counter representations and displayed the contested chronologies that undergrid the ideologies of contending national, ethnic, and religious communities." We must carefully study and analyze the conflict in Jerusalem. We must look at it from multiple angles and perspectives as well as through the eyes of Israelis and Palestinians.