The Nation.

Ho-Ho-Holiday Donations, 2007 Edition

subject to debate

By Katha Pollitt

This article appeared in the December 31, 2007 edition of The Nation.

December 13, 2007

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  • Please add Playgrounds for Palestine to your list of nonprofits worthy of support. This foundation was started by a Palestinian-American friend of mine, Susan Abulhawa. With donated funds, she buys playground equipment at discount from a Pennsylvania manufacturer, ships it to Israel, goes through endless time-consuming paperwork to get Israel's permission to transport it to the OPT, then hires locals to assemble and maintain the playgrounds in villages in Gaza and the West Bank.

    Palestinian kids live in abysmal conditions. Bringing a little joy to their lives is so easy for us, so meaningful to them. Susie tells me that the people living in Rafah in southern Gaza have planted gardens all around their playground and keep it in very good repair. They cherish it.

    Susie, a single mother with an MS in biology, works as a medical writer. She has also published a novel worth your attention, Scar of David. It has been published in several languages and has received great acclaim and awards in Europe. It has not so far received th attention it deserves in the United States. The story of a Palestinian family and their fraught entanglements with Israeli Jews, it is moving and compassionate.

    Evalyn Segal
    Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East

    Philadelphia, PA

    01/05/2008 @ 12:53pm


  • I'd like to make a short statement about being in Vietnam Veterans Against the War and in a community of concerned, caring, creative resourceful organizations. The alienation that I suffered from through many years has now empowered me, and I will, in fact, be speaking at a local high school before too long. It is simply amazing about the healing that can happen, and everyone of us who heals becomes a healer.

    Thank you for contributing to the empowerment of these groups.

    I want to be among the number when the saints and sinners go marching in.

    Jim Willingham
    Vets for Peace/Vietnam Vets Against the War

    St. Petersburg, FL

    12/18/2007 @ 4:39pm


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