Bringing Back the Palestinian Pound

The idea of a Palestinian currency is a powerful symbol, but like the two-state solution is a shell game that only defers further Palestinian suffering.

Israeli State Violence and the Value of Palestinian Life

by Elia Zureik

Disregard for Palestinian life has characterized the attitudes of Israeli authorities towards its Arab citizens since the establishment of the state. The Palestinians constitute what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls homo sacer, according to which the laws of humanity do not apply to them. For Israel, the Palestinians exist in conditions of “bare life”. Their minimal existence is tolerated but not enhanced. Invariably, the law is suspended when it comes to rectifying Palestinian grievances. Israel is usually quick to cite “national security” as justification for its lethal actions.

Life for Palestinian citizens of the state is in a perpetual state of emergency where exception to the universal application of the law is the rule. As a colonial state, life in Israel is best viewed from a racialized prism where ethnicity and race govern the treatment of its citizens. As in all colonial regimes, territory and population are the two central elements which occupy the colonizer, and Israel is no exception. Both of these components provide the cornerstone of modern Zionism.

The Israeli Inquisitions II

More evidence of Israel flying off the handle… Knesset, Apartheid’s Legislative Body, lifted Member Hanin Zuabi’s parliamentary immunity after she sailed on the humanitarian aid ship Mavi Marmara towards Gaza. Just another step in the witch hunt towards her and other Palestinian-Israeli leaders that have been challenging the Apartheid rule.

The Whistling of Places: A Short Text by Raji Bathish

Raji Bathish is a (relatively) young experimental Palestinian author from Nazareth who writes texts that blur the boundary between poetry and prose, and shake the Arab reader out of a naive, stereotypically heroic image of the Palestinian living in occupied Palestine.

Israel: The Land of Milk and Racism

Taken word-for-word from FoxNews.com:

Israeli Minister Apologizes for Ethnic Slur Against Arabs

JERUSALEM — Israel’s public security minister has apologized after making a perceived racist slur to an undercover police officer.

Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch’s office said the minister was accompanying police officers on a tour of a run-down Tel Aviv neighborhood Tuesday when he was approached by what appeared to be two Arab drug addicts in dirty clothes.

DAM Concert: An Educational Experience

How do you critically engage a portion of a concert-going audience who do not speak or understand Arabic when the rest of the audience does AND you, as a performance group, raps and conducts interlude commentary in Arabic? You teach them Arabic—-as Lyd-natives DAM did with laminated cardboard signs and a freestyle flow at the [...]

Mada al-Carmel Issues the Second Issue of Jadal

In February, I used Kabobfest to advertise the issuing of Jadal’s first issue. I will repeat my shameless exploitation of my posting privileges now that the second issue is out. Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, a unique research center that is attempting to create the first intellectual institution run [...]

Jerusalem’s Bully

Have you ever seen a bully steal something and, feeling guilty about the theft, intimidate the victim into remaining passive? That is how Israel behaves in general towards the Palestinians, but the most glaring examples of such bullying can be seen almost on a daily basis in Jerusalem. Since the beginning of this year, Israel [...]

Professor Abdallah Haj Yahya of Taybeh Passes Away at the Peak of his Scholarly Output

Translated from Arabs48.com *He published 45 books in the fields of medicine and pharmacology and edited more than fifteen patents all for new medicines * *He was not pushed up by anyone, nor did circumstances help him. He was not rewarded by anyone for his excellence, not even by a pat on the back. Arabs48 [...]

New Bi-Monthly Electronic Magazine from Haifa

Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, a unique research center that is attempting to create the first intellectual institution run by and for Palestinians inside Israel and give ’48 Palestinian academics a platform and home outside Israeli universities, has just released the first issue of its online magazine, Jadal (meaning [...]