Internet & Technology

Mohandas Gandhi once said that: “We must become the change that we seek in the world.” In Palestine, the change that people of conscience seek is the elevation of justice to the condition of reality. With the rise of the Internet and modern information technology more generally, fewer and fewer individuals, particularly in post-industrial societies, can credibly claim ignorance about the plight of suffering human beings all across this planet. AAPER’s George Naggiar examines the spirit of Rachel Corrie and the call to not just seek, but to become justice.

In a presentation on the Jewish Agency for Israel’s website, entitled “The Security Fence - Hopes and Fears: A Drama in Six Episodes”, the report’s author, Steven Klein, conducted a Google survey into the frequency of terminology used to describe Israel’s Wall, typing in different terms and logging the number of Google hits returned for each. Klein’s stated methodology for discovering “the most deserving term” for Israel’s Wall is which term “enjoys the most common use” as evidenced by Google. EI’s Nigel Parry explores Wall semantics on the Internet.

Since we launched The Electronic Intifada in February 2001, millions of people all over the world have used our site as a resource for the latest news and in-depth analysis about Palestine and the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. We are thrilled today, on International Human Rights Day, to launch Version 3.0 of the The Electronic Intifada, a major upgrade of The Electronic Intifada website. The changes you will see on the site take nothing away from all you have come to know and trust about EI, but add some fantastic new features to address the needs of the site as it has grown.

When I think of Palestinian American academic and writer Edward Said, one phrase he penned comes to the fore. It was the title of a piece he wrote for The London Review of Books in February 1984, “Permission to Narrate”. These three words described what Said felt was most denied to the Palestinians by the international media, the power to communicate their own history to a world hypnotised by a mythological Zionist narrative of an empty Palestine that would serve as a convenient homeland for Jews around the world. EI’s Nigel Parry narrates.

The Electronic Intifada has been busy behind the scenes for the last month, working on a third major redesign of our site. EI co-founder Nigel Parry and former MSNBC.com multimedia specialist and EI team member Ken Harper are currently working together with the rest of the EI team to implement EI 3.0 for a September/October 2003 relaunch. For visitors who have grown used to our site, do not fear — the coming EI 3.0 will not see the removal of any features you currently enjoy, nor will it radically change our basic look.