AxisMundi Jerusalem

It’s always sunny on West Bank’s Sesame Street

It’s always a sunny day on Sesame Street in the West Bank, where the neighbors are friendly and the muppets never see an Israeli army checkpoint all day long.

Shara’a Simsim, the Palestinian version of the popular television program Sesame Street, will air its fourth season on Palestine TV in January 2010. Funded through a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the new edition aims to teach Palestinian children that they can achieve their dream of an independent Palestinian state through tolerance, education and national pride, as opposed to anti-Israel violence.

“Our problem is that for so long we’ve been focusing on resistance and we gave up on other things like culture, education and tolerance,” said executive producer Daoud Kuttab.

The show will target mainly boys by teaching them non-violent ways of expression. Empowered characters such as six-year-old Basel, who in one episode is seen brushing his teeth, wearing his clothes and tying his shoelaces alone and then waving a Palestinian flag and declaring: “It’s Basel’s independence day!”, will serve as role models.

The show’s Palestinian producers chose to make no reference to symbols of the Israeli occupation such as the West Bank barrier and the network of Israeli army checkpoints, which Palestinians say are sources of hardship.

Mia Farrow visits Israel and the Palestinian territories

U.S. actress and U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow ended her week-long trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories today, after visiting the Gaza Strip, the southern Israeli town of Sderot and Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

She has been focusing on projects in Africa for the past several years but said “it was time” for her to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories. “My cause is children suffering in conflict zones, and this is the place for it,” she told Reuters.

Farrow visited a hospital and an artificial limb center and met children at a northern Gaza school last Thursday, deploring the living conditions in the Gaza Strip.  The next day Farrow traveled to Sderot, an Israeli city just a few kilometres (miles) from the Gaza border that was regularly targeted by rockets fired by Palestinian militants, and a nearby kibbutz.

Farrow ended her official schedule on Saturday with a visit to Jenin refugee camp, site of the fierce 2002 battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. She toured the camp’s women’s activity center and spent time with the children, dancing traditional Palestinian dances and playing games. She visited a home in the refugee camp and toured the streets to meet more residents.

She declined to comment on the political situation, except to voice support for Justice Richard Goldstone, who led a U.N. commission that found that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the December-January Gaza war.

“I’ve read facts lifted from the report, and I’m using the word facts, because it’s an independent investigation and I believe it is. I believe Justice Goldstone is an incredible man and he found fault on both sides,” Farrow said. “But I thought that Israel’s response was overwhelming and catastrophic. And I’ve seen that.”

As the children watched Farrow drive away from the refugee camp I asked Reema, a seven-year-old girl wearing braided pigtails, if she knew who the former fashion model and veteran actress with 40 films under her belt was. Her response: “I don’t know who she is… someone who likes kids and came to visit?”

Gazan zebra, the wild donkey

Palestinian children in Gaza received a very special treat today. They had the opportunity to see a zebra in flesh. Well, a “zebra”.

A small Gaza zoo dyed two female donkeys white and striped the two using women’s hair-dye and a paint brush. It charged $15 for a full busload of children to meet the zebras – a bargain for an animal that would have cost $40,000 to bring to the Israel-blockaded Gaza.

In Arabic the word for zebra literally means ‘a wild donkey’, so maybe these donkeys weren’t too far off.

Click below to judge the dye job for yourself: