Word: martyrdoms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Wael Imad wanted a one-way ticket to martyrdom. It was an early morning in late October, just as the latest Palestinian riots were gathering strength, when the lively 14-year-old entered his father's tiny used-furniture store in Jabalia, a ramshackle town in the north of the Gaza Strip. "I won't be able to come see you tomorrow, Daddy, so can you give me two days' allowance right now?" he asked. Mohammed Imad, unsuspecting, forked over the money. It was less than a dollar, the cost of a shared taxi to the Israeli outpost at Erez...
...arrest is a high-stakes maneuver for Putin, in light of Gusinsky's efforts to portray the legal proceedings against him as nothing more than a political witch hunt. The spectacle of Gusinsky being sent home in handcuffs by Spanish law enforcement officers will undermine his claims to martyrdom - at least in the court of Russian public opinion. But then the converse may also be true: If Spain's courts fail to find merit in the case brought by Russia, it may actually help Gusinsky paint himself as the victim of political machinations...
Aysan Celik's Antigone, on the other hand, captures the ambiguities and changing motives that Sophocles built into her role. At the beginning of the play, she trespasses Creon's decree with an eye to glorious martyrdom, only to become hideously frightened once her execution is inevitable. Thompson's Creon acts on character; Celik's Antigone is impulsive. These two actors' interpretations of the role are the closest the production comes to being a prism that reflects contemporary times. Antigone is the baby boomer of the 60s, fighting the good fight for all the reasons right and wrong; Creon...
...territories under Yasser Arafat's control - others share the concerns of international monitors over the long-term effect of such a strategy. After all, the declining economic circumstances make it a lot easier for Hamas to recruit young men as suicide bombers, its promise of the paradise of martyrdom holding considerably more allure amidst squalor and hopelessness than it would if those same young men could measure it against a more promising future. And the impoverishment of the incipient Palestinian state darken the already diminished prospects for harmonious coexistence with its Israeli neighbor...
...challenge to Arafat is partly generational. The kids on the streets are unlikely to listen to the cautionary advice of elders who they see as enfeebled by decades of Israeli occupation. In the face of their powerless parents, the "authority" projected by demagogues hawking martyrdom and the promise that sacrifice and confrontation will earn their freedom has an irresistible appeal for many young Palestinians. And, of course, parents may have a hard time stopping their children from doing what they themselves grew up doing - after all, the occupation began 33 years ago. Arafat should know better than anyone, because...