palestine | ST McNeil

Nine Years of Sumud

30 October 2012 by ST McNeil

This article originally appeared in This Week In Palestine Good news hasn’t come often to the Corrie family since March 15, 2003, when their daughter Rachel was killed by a militarised bulldozer. They have pursued justice and accountability ever since, crossing the globe demanding answers from governments and corporations complicit in her death. When the US court system failed them in 2007 in their claims against the company that built the deadly steel behemoth that crushed Rachel, the Corries sued [...]

Categories: Clips, Middle East, PalestineIsrael • Tags: bulldozer, Caterpillar, Cindy Corrie, Craig Corrie, Gaza, Haifa, Judge Oded Gershon, Nakba, Naksa, palestine, Philadelphi Strip, Rachel Corrie, Sumud

Paradox and Bedrock

11 July 2012 by ST McNeil

“No, wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our live as water and good bread.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968). I was given a dogged-eared and earthy book days before I boarded a flying metal tube. The skymachine left my bags, the book, seven Chico sticks, and me in another damned desert. From one wasteland to another, the Sonoran to the Jordanian, following fortune, chasing a dream, escaping fate in a [...]

Categories: Americas, Book Reviews, Jordan, Mexico, Middle East, PalestineIsrael, USA • Tags: astrophotography, Desert Solitude, Edward Abbey, Grand Canyon, Mormons, palestine, Utah, Wadi Rum, Zionism

Gaza’s River of Excrement

21 October 2011 by ST McNeil

From over-capacity cesspools to a contaminated aquifer, the water and sewage systems of the Gaza Strip are a living nightmare. “Personally I’ve never been so overwhelmed by a smell. You feel that there is something terribly wrong in the air,” said Karl Schembri, communications outreach officer for Oxfam International. There’s something toxic hitting you in the face. There’s no escaping it.” Schembri grimaced with his back to the river of raw sewage otherwise known as Wadi Gaza. “Around 30,000 cubic [...]

Categories: Clips, Middle East, News, PalestineIsrael • Tags: aquifer, Gaza, Gaza tunnels, Hamas, Mediterranean, palestine, Rafah border crossing, waste water, waste water treatment

Palestine’s Coast

11 July 2011 by ST McNeil

Nagoua pulled up in an enormous SUV right at seven am. With reflexes slowed by a night spent drinking Egypt’s finest Stellas in the famous revolutionary hangout Hurreya, or Freedom, I hopped in the back and offered her a croissant. “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” she said, smiling while revving the engine. We drove down the street to pick up her two charges – Dutch filmmakers on their way to work on a documentary about the smuggling tunnels of Gaza. I [...]

Categories: Africa North, PalestineIsrael • Tags: Cairo, Gaza pollution, Gaza tunnels, palestine, Rafah border crossing, Suez Canal

Piss Pride Porcelain

22 June 2011 by ST McNeil

From Seattle to Jerusalem, I’ve pissed in hundreds of urinals. One has time to think in those sixty to six hundred-second leaks: aim, pressure, splash radius, urinal cake odor. If us men are lucky, we get to power-melt leftover ice from the hotel bar. Sometimes these recepticals of our fluid waste are simple troughs of cheap metal. Other times stately affairs of crafted porcelain accomodate our urine streams. On top of most urinals, though, is a clue to American foreign [...]

Categories: Research • Tags: American exceptionalism, American Standard, Cairo, Dahab, Egypt, Gaza, Ideal Standard, Libya, lion fight, palestine, Sinai, toilet philosophy, Tunis, Tunisia, urinals

Stopping the water

14 June 2011 by ST McNeil

ST McNeil reporting for The Palestine Monitor from Beit Sahoor and Bir Al-Eid. At 7:00 am in the morning, the Israelis arrived too late to help a poor farmer. The men with guns were already there, sitting on the farmer’s well. An argument broke out in Hebrew between the settlers and the Israeli human rights group Taayush. Every week, they enter the West Bank to work alongside Palestinians threatened by settlers and soldiers. Both groups broke the rules of Shabat: settlers [...]

Categories: PalestineIsrael • Tags: Beit Sahoor, Bir Al-Eid, farmers, Israeli military, palestine, south Hebron hills, Taayush, water

ST McNeil

Environmental Convergence Journalist

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