Shadi sucks on two cigarettes at a time, the twin smoke curling up the side of his right arm like conjoined snakes. The Bethlehem air is crisp and wet; the main street hums with traffic. “Life has a beginning and an end, just like these cigarettes,” he says, pinching them between his calloused fingers. Shadi arches his eyebrow at me, squinting in the muted sunlight streaked across his face. He offers me his L&M pack. I take the last one, and we sit on the curb, silently smoking, watching the three bluish-gray plumes wind themselves up over our heads, dissipating across the concrete rooftops of Dheisheh camp, joining with the hazy fog cover, and settling, invisibly, into the atmosphere, to mingle with the ghosts. Read more about Portraits of Dheisheh 

On May 31, Eitan Bronstein gave a presentation at the Tel Aviv University conference on “Zionism: Ideology versus Reality”. The Zochrot organization is devoted to introducing the Palestinian Nakba into the discourse of Jews in Israel, in order to achieve accountability for the tragedy of 1948. This accountability is a necessary condition of reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Through its activities, Zochrot is trying to create contact, a meeting, between Palestinian internal refugees from a particular village and the Jews who live on the land of the same village. The Palestinian refugee is a threatening figure for the Israeli Jews, since he awakens the demon of the original sin through which the Jewish state was established. Read more about They are afraid: Israeli Jews and Palestinian refugees