Saket Vora

It has now been one year since Hamas, the Sunni ‘Islamic Resistance Movement’, swept into power within Palestine. Last February, I attempted to explain why the Palestinian people voted Hamas into power and discussed the looming financial problem it would soon face. The state of Palestine relies on more than a billion dollars in international aid and Israeli-collected tax revenues to run its fledging public services. However, the not-so-subtle militant wing of Hamas has led to Israeli, the European Union, and the United States to label it a terrorist organization. Thus, all financial aid was and continues to be withheld. If this obstacle was not enough, the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya has had to contend with the Fatah President Mahmoud Abbas, who still remains in power. It proved to be a wretched year for the Palestinians. With no government funding, hundreds of thousands of people were not paid, many hospitals and social services all but practically shut down, and the power struggles between Hamas and Fatah led to factional in-fighting. Last June, emboldened Hamas militants captured Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier near the Gaza Strip border. Israel responded with a military response that was seen as unusually forceful by many Western governments (except the US). Soon after, Shia militants of Hezbollah in Lebanon killed several Israeli soldiers and captured two of them in a daring cross border raid. Some believe Hezbollah timed the operation to re-direct pressure off the Palestinians. The month long disastrous war between Hezbollah and Israel that followed claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, over 40 Israeli civilians, displaced over 1 million Lebanese and Israeli citizens in the cross fire, and resulted in billions of dollars in infrastructure damage. Israeli cluster bombs, the extensive use of which in the last three days before the cease-fire has raised several eyebrows, are still scattered across much of southern Lebanon.

The Hamas government has faced mounting criticism from the Palestinian people. Bickering between Prime Minister Haniya and President Abbas late last year grew worse, and at one point the creation of an interim government led by non-partisan technocrats was proposed in order for the international aid to resume. The Gaza Strip fell into chaos, with the West Bank following the same path. When Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew Israeli citizens from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and handed control over the Palestinians, it was a small opportunity to demonstrate the viability of a stable Palestinian state. The past year has quite frankly seen the Palestinian government fall flat on its face.

Unfortunately, the past year has also proved troubling for Israeli government as well. There is a heated public debate within Israel over the nature of Israel’s actions that is rarely seen in the American media. I fully predicted then watched the strong knee-jerk reaction against President Jimmy Carter’s recent book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. The 2006 Israeli-Lebanon war has been widely criticized by the Israeli public, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz bearing the brunt of it. The army chief of staff resigned over that war. Olmert is currently under investigation for suspicious property trading, and the current Israeli President is on a leave of absence for allegations of rape. Internationally, Israel has had to deal with intense criticism concerning its war against Hezbollah (except from the US), and the disturbing ascendancy of the increasingly contentious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current President of Iran, who has denied the Holocaust and has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

So, it is naïve to express any hope for another year? Maybe, maybe not. Just recently, Hamas and Fatah have agreed to form a new unity government. Early signs from some Western countries indicate this isn’t enough to open the checkbooks; an explicit recognition of Israel is still needed. Time will tell if the new government is ready to take that step. Within Israel, an Arab Israeli citizen has made history as the first time a Muslim has been approved into the cabinet. Ahmadinejad suffered a small defeat in the last elections though he remains dangerous. Iraq still looms large in the Middle East, but no real peace between the oft clichéd ‘clash of civilizations’ can occur without first addressing the Arab-Israeli dispute.

This column was submitted to the Technician student newspaper late in February 2007.

Congratulations to my sister, Sapana, who was accepted today into the University of Chicago for a Ph.D program in cancer biology. The University of Chicago, a private university right in downtown Chicago, IL. is a prestigious university with a premier program in cancer biology. Still waiting to hear from other colleges though, but she’s still pretty excited about this opportunity.

Stay tuned for more!

Got back to Raleigh this morning at 8:30am. The red-eye flight was alright, just didn’t get much sleep. Mom picked me up and after a shower and a bite to eat at home, I made it to my psychology class.

Got a lot to work on now to get caught up. I have photos from Stanford and San Francisco, so please check them out. San Francisco is a very photogenic city.

San Francisco and Palo Alto have been great so far. I’ve been to the IEEE conference for two days so far, and it has been a pretty good experience. I’ve getting exposed to a lot of really interesting ideas and I’m trying to go to different topics instead of just going to analog related ones. This conference is huge…over 4000 people are here. A ton of people from industry are here (this conference is more industry driven than others) and East Asia and Europe (especially Germany and Netherlands) are also well represented.

Nader and I spend most of the day in San Francisco on Sunday. I was expecting rain all day but in fact it turned out to be a beautiful day, as you can see from the pictures here. We walked all around the city, to Union Square, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Huntingon Park, Fisherman’s Wharf, Market St., etc.

I’ll be leaving tomorrow at 8:25pm and take the red-eye back to Raleigh. More later.

In about five hours I’m leaving for a five day trip to San Francisco, CA to attend the International Solid State Circuits Conference sponsored by the IEEE. The conference will be from Monday to Wednesday, 8am to 5pm each day, but I’m going early to spend some time with my buddy Nader. I’m also going to visit Mary and Matt Elting, check out Stanford and San Francisco, etc. The weekend looks like neverending rain, but things should start to clear up later. I’m taking the red eye flight back to Raleigh on Wednesday night-Thursday morning, so I think we’ll have dinner in the city or something before I leave.

This is my first trip to the Bay area and I’m looking forward to it a lot. I think I should get some sleep though!

Yesterday Nicholas D. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and columnist for the New York Times visited NC State and gave a talk titled “The First Genocide of the 21st Century: Report on Darfur.”

The Park Scholarships Speaker Series and the Political Science department co-sponsored this event, and I was the main student coordinator for the event. The whole day I was running around making sure all the rooms were ready, dashing off to Kinkos to get program brochures made, and getting audio/visual equipment ready. I got to meet him before he gave his big talk and was there in the wings to help with the DVD he wanted to show.

The speech was excellent, discussing the Darfur crisis with first hand experiences, providing the history behind it, and showing why we should care about what’s going on. I was telling people earlier that I would rather have to keep the fire marshal out of the room than have any empty seats, but we packed Nelson Auditorium like no other event I’ve seen before. Kristof even asked the people standing in the back and along the sides to come down and sit by the stage. Turn-out was great.After the talk, I joined a few faculty members and other students for a dinner with Kristof. There about 12 of us, eating in the executive board room in Peele Hall. We chatted about the Darfur issue a bit more, then moved on to other topics. It was a nice dinner…Kristof is really an amazing guy. We were all so impressed with how casual, easy-going, and nice he is. And he has so many stories and experiences to tell.

I think the Darfur Awareness Week we put on was a success, and it was a real pleasure to interact with such a famous columnist like Kristof.

What an amazing day. This was one of the best days I’ve ever had in college. Got tickets to the Decemberists in the morning. Went with Ben and Greg to Total Wine and Trader Joe’s. Went to Sammy’s where Donny, Peyton, Emily, and Kristin joined us. Watched the NC STATE WOLFPACK DOMINATE UNC at home, winning for the first time in four years 83-79. Tonight was the first night any of us had witnessed NC State beating UNC. Yeah. The #3 in the country, UNC. The #1 in the ACC, UNC. By us. THE WOLFPACK.

After the win, we ran over to the NC State Belltower, all lit up in red. A mass of close to 150 people gathered, screaming and cheering. Peyton led the pack onto Hillsborough St, where we marched up and down cheering and high-fiving everyone we saw. A grab of bite to eat at Player’s Retreat, then to the Campus Cinema to watch The Departed, by Martin Scorcese. Incredible, amazing film.

What an amazing day shared with my best friends here.

I’m pleased to say that the 3rd Annual Krispy Kreme Challenge was a tremendous success. Over 1500 people showed up to support the benefit race, which raised approximately $10,300 for the North Carolina Children’s Hospital.

I was in charge of operations at the Krispy Kreme store and we didn’t run out of donuts. It was a lot of fun and we attracted considerable press coverage.

I’m definitely coming back next year to see it. Check out http://www.krispykremechallenge.com for more.