Maureen Clare Murphy

In the last several days, Tunisia and Egypt have shown us what is possible when people are no longer afraid of those in power who deny them their rights and rob them of a life of freedom and dignity. But government repression of peoples’ struggles is not endured only in the Middle East.

For decades the United States government has attempted to criminalize work in the Palestinian community in support of their national liberation cause. A special feature by The Electronic Intifada shows that in recent years, this repression has increased dramatically.

Approximately 30 activists — mainly students from area universities — disrupted a lecture given in Chicago by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday which was hosted by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. While Olmert’s speech was disrupted inside the lecture hall, approximately 150 activists protested outside the hall in the freezing rain.

In recent years, a growing number of accounts of the 1948 war have corrected and exposed the founding myths of Israel, including claims by its leaders that the Palestinian people did not exist or were invented. The latest addition is Rosemarie M. Esber’s meticulously documented history Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians. Esber uses British archives and oral testimonies from Palestinian survivors to demonstrate that there was a purposeful, systematic pattern by which Zionist forces depopulated Palestinian cities and villages before the end of the British mandate on 15 May 1948.