NEWS/CITYDESK worlds that are not your world and make you feel like it is yours.” And what about that fatwa in 1989— when Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie’s execution? “As for Khomeini and me,” Rushdie said, “one of us is dead.” —Michael Ames
A SURVIVOR’S STORY In May, a flotilla carrying aid volunteers, medical supplies, prefabricated homes and food to Gaza was fired on by squadrons of Israeli navy soldiers in light watercraft and helicopters as the flotilla attempted to break a blockade. The attack left nine volunteers dead and several dozen more seriously wounded. At the time, the Israeli military admitted no wrongdoing, citing “resistance” from the people on board the multiple crafts. They claimed that they were met with physical force from the unarmed aid workers. Fatima Mohammadi, who lives in Chicago, is originally from Boise and did her undergraduate studies at Boise State. She was one of the more than 800 volunteers present in the flotilla. Also attacked were numerous women, some children, as well as a Jewish holocaust survivor, something the media called a lot of attention to. Earlier this week, Mohammadi spoke twice in Boise about her experience. “The smaller boats ... they were boarded ver y easily, they were brutally taken over, and the people were treated awfully ... They were beaten, they had bags put over their heads ... The leader of the IHH [a Turkey-based NGO] jumped off the raft and was severely beaten by the Israelis ... If you stuck out at all, you were beaten,” recounted Mohammadi. During her Monday night talk, Mohammadi showed a video made the morning of the attack. While almost all other footage taken that day was confiscated by the militar y, a cameraman smuggled this footage out in his under wear, Mohammadi said. Mohammadi confirms—and the video appears to show—that the volunteers in the flotilla were unarmed, and that the militar y was unprovoked. “This largest boat was the only one that was brutally taken over,” said Mohammadi. “Violence was used before they had even boarded the ship. The crew was taken at gunpoint.” She maintains that while the aid workers were on the top deck of the ship, unarmed, they were fired upon by the soldiers. “None of them were holding guns ... they were holding pamphlets, they were holding cameras,” said Mohammadi. The video was difficult to watch. At one point, numerous people dragged the lifeless body of a Turkish news worker who had been shot between the eyes; his blood stained a stretcher. Another scene showed a man dying from a severed artery, praying to Allah as medics raced to administer aid with the very supplies they were taking to the Gaza strip. To Mohammadi, the people of Gaza deserve the praise. “They would tell us, ‘Nobody knows what we’re going through, so we understand that you can’t really do anything for us,’ Mohammadi said. But to them, we were the heroes ... they are the true heroes.” —Andrew Crisp
10 | SEPTEMBER 15–21, 2010 | BOISEweekly
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THE ONLY WAY I C AN GET PUB LIS HED I N THE PA P E R IS IF I MAK E B OOR IS H, I NSE NSI TI V E REMAR K S . THEN THEY PUT ME ON THE F RONT PAGE.” —Sun Valley Mayor, Wayne Willich
Some were poorly attended, and at least one event planned last year, the Winter SOLfest, didn’t happen at all. To the chamber’s detractors, the relentless planning of festival upon festival lacked strategy and, at times, seemed desperate. Behind the shrill noise and jangled nerves of the marketing overhaul, a not-so-figurative clock has been ticking toward a more urgent problem: How to celebrate Sun Valley’s 75th anniversary season this winter? Area newspapers and magazines plan to commemorate the milestone. Before her unceremonious departure, Waller was meeting with the Sun Valley Company to organize complementary celebrations in Ketchum. With Waller gone, and her chamber gutted, plans to mark the 75th are uncertain. Willich is “praying that the [Sun Valley] Company has got stuff to unravel that is absolutely wonderful.” No one can claim that the anniversary caught them unaware, Willich said. “Five years ago, at the 70th anniversary, we all knew this was coming.” In all of this anniversary talk, there is one confusing factor: Sun Valley opened for business 74 years ago this winter, not 75. “This December we will enter into our 75th season,” said Jack Sibbach, director of marketing for Sun Valley Company. A recent company press release noted that, “As fall approaches, Sun Valley Resort prepares for its landmark 75th winter season celebration.” So what does the fuzzy math mean for next year, the actual anniversary? “Next year?” Sibbach said. “That just might be a birthday party.”
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n June, the Mountain Express ran three editorials devoted to the “smashup” at the chamber. “Don’t scapegoat the chamber,” one editorial said, noting that, “Remodeling a house usually doesn’t start with the destruction of the house.” At the time of this finger-wagging, Willich was on a roll. He had the backing of his own city council as well as the mayor and council in Ketchum, which was poised to cut its own $400,000 of chamber funds. The funds would be pooled and redirected to the new committee, which by this point even had a name: Sun Valley Resort Area Marketing Inc. As for the editorials, Willich was not averse to the fight. “The only way I can get published in the paper is if I make boorish, insensitive remarks. Then they put me on the front page,” he said,
referencing the July 30 front-page story in which he made a doozer: “The bottom line is we got the dough, and we’re going to make the rules,” he said. “My advice to them [the chamber] is to play along and play nicely. And we’ll all come out of this.” Several local business owners were not encouraged by the prospect of so much change happening so fast in uncertain times. In the same story, the Express quoted a dissatisfied Bob Rosso, owner of the Elephant’s Perch outdoor shop. The chamber, Rosso told the Express, had been labeled as “an evil empire.” Two weeks later, Willich hit a snag. Jim Knight, the acting chair of SVRAMI, resigned, citing the burdensome time-commitment. Willich found a replacement and moved quickly to fill the remaining posts with representatives from both towns and the Sun Valley Company. Tim Silva, the widely admired new general manager at the resort, filled the Sun Valley Company seat. The final at-large seat was filled by Zach Crist, a former X-Games Champion who, at age 37, brought some youthful street cred. Crist said that SVRAMI’s objectives are: “More people, spending more days here, spending more money.” But before they are ready to start wooing the tourists with the dollars, SVRAMI still needs a CEO, a salaried position that Willich hopes to fill within 60 to 90 days. “We could have hired three months ago, but we had nothing in place. Now we’re ready,” he said. Willich is still confident, but after recent road bumps, he struck a more modest tone. His bold actions had produced a situation admittedly “a little worse than the status quo,” he said. “There’s never a good time to do a big move like this, ever. It’s always a bad time. You just do what you can.” A couple of days later, Willich was in the Sun Valley-Ketchum visitors’ center. A man and his wife were looking at the map of the United States on the wall. Willich introduced himself and asked where the couple was from. “We are from Liepzig, in Germany,” the man replied in hesitant English. The couple was on a driving tour from Seattle to Denver. They saw that Sun Valley was here, so they stopped to see the town where Hemingway once lived. At the visitors’ center they asked how to find the famous author’s house. “I’m sorry,” the woman working at the chamber that morning told them. “That house is closed to the public.” WWW. B O I S E WE E KLY. C O M