Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
Israel has been arresting systematically the nonviolent leadership of the West Bank. One of these nonviolent activists is Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a high school teacher from Bi’lin village, who was arrested by Israel and charged with arms possession… for collecting the spent tear gas canisters that Israel had fired at his village and putting them [...]
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Blogging will be scarce to nonexistent through January 3rd. I am going to get my New Years wishes in early: Happy new years to all, may you and your loved ones know more justice and freedom in the year to come. Related Posts:Arabs live better in Israel than anywhere else, except not really New Israeli [...]
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A beautiful op-ed by Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian attorney and human rights activist, in the Los Angeles Times. As you read this, ask yourself the question in the title of this post. Put aside tribal affiliations for a moment and let the language of equal rights play in your soul. If you could choose, which [...]
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I am a severe critic of many Israeli policies. But a part of me always held on to those aspects of Israel that remained principled and democratic. Important interventions by Israel’s High Court against the use of human shields, against the early planned routes of the segregation wall, the injunction to desegregate the road in [...]
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Another nonviolent Palestinian activist has joined Mohammed Othman in an Israeli jail for the sole crime of organizing demonstrations against the separation wall. A couple months ago, Abdallah Abu Rahmah of Bi’lin was providing a tour of his village for Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former UN human rights chief Mary Robinson, and several other [...]
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I am not sure why I am thinking this thought now, but perhaps its leftovers from my personal thanksgiving. I am extremely thankful for the fact that when I think and debate about peace and justice in the Middle East, Palestinians and Israelis hold—in the deepest places of my mind and soul—precisely the same rights [...]
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Absolutely not, unless your vision of Israel is inextricably bound with the current system of institutionalized racism, de jure segregation, the slow but daily process of ethnic cleansing, and a 42 year regime of military occupation. For many Jews and Palestinians, however, there exists another vision of Israel/Palestine in which all citizens enjoy the full [...]
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Many Israelis and Americans believe that Palestinian resistance to occupation is synonymous with terrorism. But putting aside the prejudice inherent in marking an entire, heterogeneous population of millions as inherently violent, this belief also happens to be categorically and demonstrably wrong. There has always been—and there continues to be—non-violent Palestinian resistance on a daily basis. [...]
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This story should probably be filed in the category of institutional and individual Israeli racism toward Arabs. But the Shaya family story is so compelling on a variety of levels, including the relationship between Israeli Palestinians, the Nakba, and the neo-fascism of Foreign Minister Lieberman, that its significance rises above the more basic (but still [...]
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Israel’s government has done just about everything it can to undermine the peace negotiations it claims to want so fervently. In desperation Palestinian Authority officials have argued that in the absence of a peace partner, they should take their case directly to the UN. Other Palestinian leaders, such as the currently jailed Marwan Barghouti, have [...]
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