All Blog Posts Tagged 'Middle' (131)

Israel's new weapon: water?

Yet another report accuses Israel of human rights abuses, this time for denying Palestinians water. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

JERUSALEM — Human-rights reports condemning Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians have become so frequent of late they’re like the dripping of Chinese water torture.

In the last few… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 30, 2009 at 1:17am — 2 Comments

No more Mister Nice Guy

This is where it gets ugly.

Last week I zapped off the manuscript of my new novel to my agent in New York. My wife told me to get working on the next book. It’s not because she’s worried about me slacking off and failing to pay the rent. No, it’s because she knows what happens when I’m not writing.

Ever read “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”? When I’m writing, I’m Dr Jekyll. All my unloveable urges are intellectualized and subsumed to a pleasure in the creative… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 29, 2009 at 4:43pm — No Comments

The Real Iraq War: Michael Anthony’s Writing Life

By now it’s no secret that the Iraq War has been a disillusioning experience for many of the U.S. servicemen sent there. The literature on the war has, so far, been mostly written by journalists. There’s plenty of it, and like most journalism it runs pretty mainstream and inoffensive, no matter how bloody the scenes depicted. But… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 28, 2009 at 8:01pm — No Comments

That's my boy

I started to feel recently that my bio on www.mattbeynonrees.com was a bit over-serious. First of all, it was in the third person. I honestly never refer to myself in the third person (except when I'm shopping and I ask my wife "Would Matt Beynon Rees wear a shirt in this shade of pink?") Then I saw that the bio took my writing and -- worse still -- me, rather seriously. I prefer to make it clear that I can laugh at myself. So I changed the whole bio,… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 27, 2009 at 9:42pm — 1 Comment

All rise for the Palestinian anthem

A parody of a nationalistic Palestinian song ridicules the intractable dispute between Hamas and Fatah leaders. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Last week, Hamas and Fatah were on the verge of an agreement to end more than two years of civil strife. Then Hamas tore it up, and both sides went back to tearing… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 24, 2009 at 12:17am — No Comments

“ME” doesn’t stand for Middle East

One of the advantages of being an author in an “exotic” locale is that people visit and want to hear from you as someone who knows the place well. It’s also one of the disadvantages.

Last Friday night, I drove out to Ein Kerem to meet one such group of visitors from Reboot, a U.S. organization that brings together mostly liberal – and certainly not conventional-thinking – Jews to discuss issues related to Judaism and Israel. It turned out to be… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 22, 2009 at 5:48pm — 3 Comments

Affable and trim

The last couple of articles about me and my books focus on the fact that I'm rather happy. In this month's Hadassah Magazine, I'm "affable and trim." High school friends reading this on Facebook may wonder where the affability was back then...

Profile: Hadassah Magazine October 2009 Matt Beynon Rees By Leora Eren Frucht…

Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 16, 2009 at 6:18pm — 1 Comment

US unhappy over Hamas-Fatah deal

The planned agreement goes some way toward validating Hamas control of the Gaza Strip. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Warring Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah have drafted an agreement to end their two-year civil war. But U.S. diplomats oppose the deal. Here’s why.

The planned… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 15, 2009 at 6:21pm — No Comments

Those disorganized Swiss

You know the reputation. "Swiss" isn't a nationality. It's really an adjective meaning highly organized and perhaps even a little too punctilious.

That's a myth. The place is just like the Middle East... (Look, I write fiction, but I may be onto something. Read on.)

On my recent reading tour, I stopped in Basel as a guest of the superb Literaturhaus Basel. Everyone told me to go the city's main art museum for an exhibition of… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 15, 2009 at 12:00am — 6 Comments

Let's do the time warp again

A brouhaha over who can pray at the Temple Mount recalls a similar disagreement ... that became known as the second intifada. by Matt Beynon Rees on GlobalPost

JERUSALEM — I just returned to Jerusalem after a month away. Or at least I thought I did.

I suspect I entered a cosmic wormhole that popped me out in the right place — the Israeli capital — only nine years… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 9, 2009 at 11:47pm — No Comments

Neon pee on the Reeperbahn, and other travels

The whole point of travel is to see Red Light districts around the world. That’s what I assume my German publisher C.H. Beck thinks. Or maybe that's what they think I'll like. Anyway, they keep sending me to Hamburg, which has one of the most famous naughty neighborhoods in the world.

At the invitation of the extremely professional Harbour Front… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on October 3, 2009 at 1:08am — No Comments

'Smart People Recommend'...Me

On The Daily Beast's Buzz Board, under the headline "Smart People Recommend", Charles M. Sennott, head honcho of the innovative international news site Global Post, plugs THE SAMARITAN'S SECRET: "Matt Beynon Rees’s Palestinian detective novels reveal more truths about the 'Holy Land,' and I use that term loosely, than any straight journalism I’ve… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on September 30, 2009 at 12:36am — No Comments

Scared away

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

I keep finding new reasons why I write my novels about the Palestinians. Usually these reasons have nothing to do with the Palestinians.

Here’s the one that may be the deepest, the one I’ve known about for a while, but have only recently been able to face up to: it’s because I’m scared of home.

Not so long ago, I read the 1992… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on September 10, 2009 at 7:02pm — No Comments

Suffering 101

Palestinians and Israelis take an eternal debate into the classroom, leaving the UN stuck in the middle. By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

JERUSALEM — In the Book of Lamentations, the people of Jerusalem cry out against the destruction of the city: “Is any suffering like my suffering?”

The answer, of course, is: No. Ever since, Jeremiah’s phrase… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on September 5, 2009 at 1:25am — No Comments

Oldest Bible? Tell it to the Samaritans

UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph reports the discovery of a portion of a Bible from 350 AD in the library of the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai. The Codex Sinaiticus is written in Greek on animal skin and the newspaper calls it "a fragment of the world's oldest bible." Well, I hate to disappoint the good Fathers in the Sinai, not to mention the… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on September 4, 2009 at 4:50pm — No Comments

THE FOURTH ASSASSIN on video

To introduce the next of my Palestinian crime novels, THE FOURTH ASSASSIN, my friend videographer David Blumenfeld filmed in New York (where the book takes place). His montages are mainly from Brooklyn's Bay Ridge and Coney Island sections. He then recorded me, looking sweaty and frankly a bit doped up, in my favorite seedy cafe in Jerusalem's Muslim Quarter.

You can view it… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 28, 2009 at 4:44pm — No Comments

Can Palestinians step up to self-government?

Tax breaks, smaller government, a rationalized legal system? No, this is a long way from New Jersey. By Matt Beynon Rees, Global Post

RAMALLAH — More than two decades after declaring an independent state, the Palestinians now say they may be able to run one.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 28, 2009 at 1:17am — 12 Comments

My bogus bio

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

Since you’re reading this, you don’t care who I am. So I can be anyone I like. At least, that’s what somebody wrote here recently.

I posted on this blog a couple of weeks ago about Dashiell Hammett. I noted that, while a university literature student, I grew tired of all the post- structuralist and deconstructionist and Marxist esoterica I… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 27, 2009 at 4:13pm — 4 Comments

Israel grapples with a new kind of violence

Good, old-fashioned murder catches off-guard a country always prepared for war

By Matt Beynon Rees - GlobalPost

TEL BARUCH, Israel — It may surprise you to learn that many Israelis are only now realizing they live in a violent place. And they’re freaking out.

Not the terrorist violence for which Israel is something of a byword.… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 21, 2009 at 10:42pm — No Comments

My latest culture clash

Here's my latest post on the International Crime Authors Reality Check blog:

The Austrian Hospice of the Holy Family is a beautiful sandstone building on the corner where the Via Dolorosa turns briefly onto the main alley of the Muslim Quarter’s souq. Buzz at the main gate, climb up two flights of enclosed steps, and you’re in a palm-shaded garden fronting a broad, four-story façade. Nearly 150 years old, it was built for… Continue

Added by Matt Rees on August 21, 2009 at 1:44am — No Comments