Palestine From Different Eyes

Therefore, it is only logical to claim that if an Israeli is guilty of mass murder, then so is a Palestinian, and the variation between the damage inflicted is related to the variation in armament.

I.e. were the Palestinians to have an army like Israel, the Palestinians would have killed just as many Israelis!

Occupation of Kashmir – A Deteriorating Condition

To give you a bit of a background, on June 11th, the Indian occupying
forces (referred also as the army in this email) killed a young
17-year-old boy, named Tufail, who was walking home amidst a routine
protest in downtown Kashmir.

No Way Through

No Way Through is a short film aiming to bring the daily reality of the West Bank to London. In particular, it focuses on the hurdles created by the occupation and presence of checkpoints to obtaining access to medical attention, often ending in fatal consequences. The film succeeds in shocking and gaining empathy. It becomes incomprehensible to the viewer that such a reality could ever subsist in our society; incomprehensible that people

“But Abba, I Love Him!”

An article I read today made me ask the question: Why is it always the Israeli guy who gets the Palestinian girl?

These past few years, several film directors have focused on such a forbidden love relationship between an Israeli guy and a Palestinian girl to serve as the main story of their sometimes funny and dramatic cinematic productions.

Some of these award winning films include West Bank Story where an IDF soldier falls in love with the beautiful Hummus Hut cashier; Strangers, where an normal Israeli guy and a typical Palestinian girl from Ramallah meet onboard a train on their way to 2006 World Cup, only to be separated and driven apart as the 2006 Hezbollah war breaks out and the guy returns home as a Reserve in the IDF; and the most recent production, David and Fatima where yet another IDF soldier meets and falls in love with a local Palestinian girl.

Friedmanism

I have to give credit to Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist.

He manages to take very complicated matters and stuff them nice and neatly into one tiny, simple packaged metaphor. His series of columns on the Middle East could very easily be the text of a “for Dummies” book.

Of course, the credit he gets is limited. His oversimplifications are enabled by ideological blindspots, such as the few so apparent in today’s column, ‘Green Shoots in Palestine’:

Fuzzy Math: Israel’s Dead Soldiers Numbers Don’t Add Up

This coffin apparently also contained the 120 other fallen soldiers. Israel’s deranged war on Gaza earlier this year was one of the most painful episodes in recent Palestinian history, in which one of the world’s most advanced armies devastated the towns and refugee camps they had caused decades earlier with the most brutal weaponry. Although [...]

On Pirates and Pacification

As the US military’s disastrous planning for their occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan has been reveled many people have tried to figure out where to look for inspiration. Vietnam? Not so much. Since the US was “never a colonial power” strategists started looking at other colonial histories. Out of this effort has come the lionization [...]

Thug Rule

Israeli military patrols storm Tulkarem ‘to buy a hookah’Tulkarem – Ma’an – Israeli soldiers stormed the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem in three vehicles on Sunday, firing gunshots and tear gas before they besieged a café and forced everybody inside to lie on the ground. The soldiers’ mission, according to witnesses, was to buy [...]

One State Solution

The Lede Blog on the New York Times published a post titled “Could There Be a One State Solution?” It was quickly taken off the New York Times homepage. I wrote the following comment in response. The one state solution has been gaining credence among intellectuals and the general populations in Israel/Palestine (especially Palestinians) because [...]

Hamas – What’s the Problem?

It’s little wonder that we spend so much of our time criticizing Israel while the US media remains focused on Hamas. For a while, I’ve felt compelled to join their conversation, and this is as good a time as any to do so, not because Hamas is to blame for what’s happening now, but because [...]