This rich and magisterial work traces Palestine's millennia-old heritage, uncovering cultures and societies of astounding depth and complexity that stretch back to the very beginnings of recorded history.
Starting with the earliest references in Egyptian and Assyrian texts, Nur Masalha explores how Palestine and its Palestinian identity have evolved over thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the present day.
Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Why has peace in the Middle East remained so elusive?
With incisive and provocative analysis, Jeremy R. Hammond provides a meticulously documented account that explodes popular myths and deconstructs standard narratives about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In this uplifting and practical book, written in collaboration with his biographer, Austen Ivereigh, Pope Francis explains why we must—and how we can—make the world safer, fairer, and healthier for all people now.
In case you have the appetite for really depressing pearls of wisdom from #Netanyahu and #Begin's ideological master Jabotinsky... in the 1920's Revisionist Zionism pronounced what #Zionism didn't dare to speak (in public). It also set the foundations for #Israel's security doctrine ever since.
"[...] There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs. Not now, nor in the prospective future. I say this with such conviction, not because I want to hurt the moderate Zionists. I do not believe that they will be hurt. Except for those who were born blind, they realized long ago that it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority."
"[...] But the only way to obtain such an agreement, is the Iron Wall, which is to say a strong power in #Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure. In other words, the only way to reach an agreement in the future is to abandon all idea of seeking an agreement at present."
--- The Iron Wall... translated to English from the original Russian, Razsviet, 4.11.1923.
This is a tool for anonymizing photographs taken at protests.
It will remove identifying metadata (Exif data) from photographs, and also allow you to selectively blur parts of the image to cover faces and other identifiable information.
Can you punish a person for a crime not yet committed? Israel's new #FutureCrime law passed 2nd and 3rd readings.
The Constitution Committee approved for second and third readings the bill that establishes one year imprisonment for a person who systematically consumes publications by #Hamas and #ISIS, which include words of praise, solidarity or encouragement for acts of terror. However, consumption of publications done sporadically, in good faith or for a legitimate purpose will not be prohibited consumption. During the discussions, the committee added to the test of systematic and ongoing consumption, a circumstance indicating identification with the terror organization.
It's sad to say, but the media of the "only Democracy in the Middle East" is fully mobilized. Except for #Haaretz, which operates outside the consensus, Israel's news sites and daily newspapers highlight #IDF heroism, while concealing the kidnapped and ignoring or downplaying the killing of thousands of Gazan children.
Israeli readers are getting a daily diet consisting of every food fight on #socialmedia between celebs pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, truly bizarre opinion columns written by an Israeli Palestinian, glorifying #Zionism and admiring Jews, or simplistic and obnoxious opinion pieces like "Gaza minus Israelis = Auschwitz".
From "The massacre brought Jews back to the beginnings of Zionism", penned by Mahmud Abu Raj'ab:
"[...] And before they [the Jews] forget the spirit inspired them when they established the state [of Israel], and before they reach the stage where "blindness blinds their eyes", someone comes who wakes them up from their deep slumber and brings them back to the ground of reality. So do not be frightened or dismayed."
(last expression taken from Joshua, 10:25)
The text on Ynet (which never publishes anything in Arabic) is available in both Hebrew and Arabic, "بعد المذبحة: عودة الى البدايات دولة اليهود لا تزال في صعود."
"Arab 48" (عرب48) is an Arabic-language news site, considered a platform for national Palestinian intellectuals in #Israel -- often those identified with the "Balad" political party, which supports a two-state solution and advocates a more Democratic and inclusive Israel and equal rights for its Palestinian citizens.
Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora
What does it means to be Palestinian in the diaspora?This collection of 100 personal reflections on being Palestinian is the first book of its kind. Reflecting on Palestinian identity as it is experienced at the individual level, issues of identity, exile, refugee status, nostalgia, belonging and alienation are at the heart of the book.
Israel's Military Operations in Gaza provides an ideological critique of the legal, military, and social media texts that have been used to legitimate historical incursions into the Gaza, with special focus on Operation Protective Edge.
Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile, a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions.
On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological. Senior Israeli politicians have not discouraged such perceptions, indeed they have actively encouraged them @bookstodon @palestine#Israel
Lev Greenberg and Daniel de Malach. "Settlement and Resistance in Israel/Palestine: Selected Issues and Historical Events from a Long-Term Perspective" (2023)
The original sin that led to the current systemic collapse was the unilateral withdrawal from #Gaza, misleadingly called "disengagement." The retreat was planned with the goal of foiling the establishment of a #Palestinian state, knowing that the severing from the West Bank and Israel and the siege would lead to a severe crisis in Gaza, resulting in violence against #Israel. Israeli policy since has been based on repeated violent reactions to attacks from the Strip, dubbed "mowing the grass," acquiescing to rocket fire that abandons the residents of southern Israel, and trying to force #Egypt to "take responsibility" for Gaza's residents.
[...] In the current circumstances, an opportunity has arisen to become disillusioned with the narrow military strategic concept of "mowing the grass" and the illusion of "decisiveness," and to recognize that Palestinians too want to live, just like us.
[...] Palestinian citizens of Israel are shocked by the murder of children and women by #Hamas and not only by the killing of their own people in the Strip, and this is a political foothold: top priority must be given to the sanctity of human life, meaning releasing the captives and stopping the firing.
[...] We need a timeout to rethink political alternatives to unilateral steps, to "disengagement" and the endless cycle of violence. The way to weaken the fanatical Islamist leadership that has taken control over two million Palestinians in the Strip is not through continuing the violent confrontation that benefits it. Political thinking in the current crisis must be based on the aspiration to give both Israelis and Palestinians hope for a future based on living together in peace.
Lev Greenberg is an Israeli sociologist and political scientist.
Daniel de Malach is an Israeli journalist and activist
“This is what genocide looks like. These are the 2913 Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military this month, as of Thursday, October 26, 2023.” - Jewish Voice For Pease organization
Massoud Hayoun’s “When We Were Arabs” (2019) is described as “A vivid account of Massoud Hayoun's grandparents' lives in #Egypt, #Tunisia, France, #Palestine, and Los Angeles, in which he reclaims his family's Jewish Arab identity".
#SBL Council Statement Concerning the Ongoing Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza And Israel
The Society of Biblical Literature’s Council is saddened and horrified by the ongoing humanitarian crisis and human rights violations unfolding in #Israel and Gaza. Of particular concern are the ongoing violence, loss of innocent life, and deprivation of basic shelter, safety, food, water, electricity, medical supplies and other life essentials currently experienced by innocent victims in #Gaza.
This humanist expression of concern (and responsibility) by the SBL is not going down very well in academic circles in #Israel.
Vered Noam [professor of Talmud at Tel Aviv University [who used to live in Kfar Adumim, in the occupied West Bank] said in respect to a petition she signed with 400 other scholars:
"The SBL statement creates an outrageous equivalence between barbarism and civilization; between a society that cherishes life and a culture that sanctifies death; between vile murderers and rapists and defenders of their people and country; between a state that nurtures thriving settlements, scientific research, medicine and technology and a regime that produces only oppression, destruction, terror and bereavement... The SBL has failed to distinguish between good and evil."
A unique coming-of-age story from the lost world of #ArabJews
Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad and grew up in Israel. He is a Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include the critically acclaimed The Iron Wall and he writes regularly for the Guardian, Middle East Eye and other outlets.
In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing from their beloved Iraq into the new state of Israel. Now the rump of a once flourishing community of over 150,000, dating back 2,600 years, has dwindled to single figures.
For many, this tells the story of the timeless clash of the Arab and Jewish civilizations, the heroic mission of Zionism to rescue Eastern Jews from their backwards nations, and unceasing persecution as the fate and history of the Jewish people. Avi Shlaim tears up this script. His mother had many Muslim friends in Baghdad, but no Zionist ones.
The Iraqi Jewish community, once celebrated for its ancient heritage and rich culture, was sprayed with DDT upon arrival in #Israel. As anti-Semitism gathered pace in #Iraq, the Zionist underground may have inflamed it – deliberately.
This memoir celebrates the disappearing heritage of Arab-Jews – caught in the crossfire of secular ideologies.
In this introductory lecture “Memoirs, Memories & Personal Histories” at a #SOAS conference about the Jewish community of #Iraq, the two aspects come together.
He briefly touches on what he calls “cruel Zionism” — that is, Israel’s activities to co-opt and conscript Jews from around the world into a project they never wished to be part of, and the price paid by both Palestinians and Jews as a result.
Random talkback on Israeli news sites in response to current events.
This one in response to Foreign Minister Eli Cohen attack in UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres after his remark, in a speech to the UN Security Council, saying Hamas' attack did not happen in a vacuum.
“If our public face, advocacy and status rests on one sentence replete with historical truths and one sentence said by a redeemed female captive whose unhealthy husband and hundreds more are still held in Gaza - then we are the opposite of a wonderful nation. This is a weak, miserable, pathetic nation, managed by a gang of fascist garbage, that is more excited about volunteers feeding soldiers hamburgers than about human blood flowing like water with no hope.”
Israelis respond to Gilad Erdan's ( Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations) shamless, tone-deaf display of self-pity at the UN, while #Israel is standing accused of killing more than 8000 civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Listen carefully, you "cutting board" who mistakenly advanced to become Israel's ambassador to the UN: we are not in the #Holocaust. You are an ambassador of the sovereign state of #Israel, a country that according to foreign publications can wipe out the entire Middle East with the push of a button on the nuclear weapon. We have our own army and our own air force and nuclear submarines. Remember that for next time https://nitter.net/MatanAlcalay/status/1719225102875738192
No one does more to trivialize the holocaust than the governments of Israel for generations. And even in Erdan's tiny brain, the thought can be inserted: if so many things are "like the Holocaust", maybe the Holocaust is not so terrible. https://nitter.net/idanlandau/status/1719227634486256071#m
Zertal, Idith. "Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood" (2005)
A book talk with the author in which she reflects on some of the issues around the use of the #Holocaust in political discourse in Israel, and the insistence of some on seeing the victimizers as victims.