Today (25 September 2004) is the first anniversary of Edward Said’s death. Time passes by so quickly and hence it seems as if only yesterday we were all reading those touching and insightful obituaries of the man and his philosophy. From brilliant long expositions to short but genuine eulogies, it seems that everything that could be said was candidly presented to those who knew him and the millions who have only heard of him. Such a litany of words should have enabled us to resign to his death, but his absence seems to me still incomprehensible. What would have happened if we still had Edward with us in this last year? Ilan Pappe ponders the question. Read more about One Year Later: Remembering Edward Said
Israel portrays the children of Palestine as terrorists, faceless stone throwers, but due to Israeli policies, it’s highly complex matrix of control, the health, education and overall well-being of the 1.8 million children of Palestine are at severe risk, Adah Kay, Professor at City University, London stated at the UN Conference on Palestine held in New York City in mid-September. Kay co-authored the book Stolen Youth, with Catherine Cook and Adam Hanieh, former staff and volunteers with Defense for Children International. Published in 2004 and subtitled, “The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children,” Stolen Youth is the first book to explore Israel’s incarceration of Palestinian children based on first-hand information from international human rights groups and NGO workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Read more about The future of Palestine's children and society at risk
As new Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Tories prepare for their party political conferences in Bournemouth and Brighton in the coming weeks, Palestinians from Balata to Beit Jibrin will be locked up in their homes and refugee camps for the fourth consecutive year. Against this background, occasional EI correspondent Victor Kattan interviewed Afif Safieh, the Palestinian General-Delegate to the UK and the Holy See - a sophisticated and suave chain-smoker - who invariably describes himself as a diplomat, a democrat, a political scientist and an observer of the British domestic political scene. Read more about Interview with Afif Safieh, Palestinian General-Delegate to the UK and the Holy See
The recent visit of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, to Palestine has sparked new discussion about the role of nonviolence in the Palestinian struggle for freedom. In a speech before the Palestinian Legislative Council, Gandhi called upon 50,000 Palestinian refugees to march back home en masse from their exile in Jordan, forcing the Israelis to choose between relenting to a wave of people power, or gunning the marchers down in cold blood. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah sorts the genuine efforts to energize the struggle with non-violent tactics from the spurious ones designed to shift the blame from the occupier to the occupied. Read more about The myth of Gandhi and Palestinian reality
The bright red letters stand out starkly against the ugly grey cement. The wall that is slicing through East Jerusalem is some thirty feet high, but casts its shadow for miles. There is little the Palestinians hemmed in on both sides of the wall can do to oppose it. So, the wall is dotted with marks where rocks have been thrown at it in anger, and covered with graffiti. Some graffiti writers ask if the builder of this wall can be a “man of peace”. Some ask how a people whose history is full of ghettos can now be building one. And someone decided to remind us all, in those blood-red letters, that it was “Paid by USA”. Read more about The writing on the wall
Palestinian prisoners in four different Israeli prisons started an open-ended hunger strike on Sunday to press for better living conditions of the nearly 8,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israeli authorities reacted to the strike with disciplinary measures and suspended several of the prisoners’ privileges such as confiscating television sets and radios, suspending newspaper deliveries and stopping visits. Since 1967 to date, Israel has arbitrarily detained over 630,000 Palestinians. In 1989 alone, Israel detained 50,000 Palestinians, representing 16% of the entire male population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip between the ages of 14 and 55. Read more about Imprisoned Decency
The case for Israel’s wall and fence barrier rests an endlessly repeated and passionately defended premise: only such a barrier can provide Israel security from the waves of Palestinian suicide bombers who have brutally maimed and killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in buses and café’s over the past four years. Given the devastating impact of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli society, it’s not hard to see why many have embraced the barrier as a remedy to stop the carnage. Unfortunately, in this case the proposed cure may actually be worse than the malady itself. Steve Niva examines the facts. Read more about Dangerous Illusion: Why Israel's Barrier Will Fail to Provide Security
“Because it represents a failure to be just, fair, forward-looking and charitable, US treatment of the Palestinian people represents a failure to be American. Palestine is not a sideshow in the current frightening uproar of political events in the world. It is the main event for Americans and for America. Palestine can and should be the proving grounds for all the values and principles — freedom, dignity, prosperity, justice, and fairness — that set the United States apart from other countries for decades.” EI co-founder Laurie King-Irani ponders the connections between America and Palestine by remembering the summer of 1964. Read more about "It's a small world after all"
What will happen if Israel carries out its plan to ‘disengage’ from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank? Will the disengagement plan advance a politically-negotiated solution to the conflict? Can Israel really separate from the Palestinians? These questions are posed in Al Majdal’s most recent editorial. While the Sharon government claims that Israel will no longer be responsible or be seen as occupying Gaza after disengagement, a review of the plan leads to the opposite conclusion. The occupation will continue. The prospect of a Palestinian state appears even more distant. Read more about The Threat of Disengagement: Can Israel Separate from the Palestinians?
Father Michael Prior worked tirelessly for over 20 years of his life to expose the racism, false favoritism, deception, and blatantly ‘unJesuslike’ core assumptions of the theology of Christian Zionism. As a Christian theologian and philosopher he felt responsible for confronting the contradictions of the philosophy by weaving tapestries of understanding from the more mainstream pages of the Bible that Christian Zionism had torn out and discarded. EI’s Nigel Parry, who worked with Michael Prior from 1993-1994, remembers his life and work. Read more about Remembering Michael Prior
