A conference last week, sponsored by Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, raises questions about the Initiative’s commitment to fighting all forms of bigotry. Instead of connecting the threads between different kinds of hatred, the conference provided a platform for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim speakers. For a center created to promote the critical study of one form of racism, it is unconscionable that it would indulge speakers who spread another. Yaman Salahi comments. Read more about Yale lending name to racist conference
Public servant Bassem Mohammed al-Tamimi is from al-Nabi Saleh, a small village about 20 kilometers northwest of Ramallah. As coordinator of the local Popular Committee, Tamimi has played a leading role in al-Nabi Saleh’s demonstrations against the nearby illegal Israeli settlement and military base of Halamish. Jody McIntyre interviewed al-Tamimi for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about "We need to nationalize the resistance"
Firas al-Maraghi from the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East Jerusalem has been on hunger strike outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin since 26 July. Al-Maraghi is striking in protest of the Israeli Ministry of Interior’s refusal to include his German-born daughter and wife on his Jerusalem residency permit. Bridget Chappell interviews al-Maraghi for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about "Bureaucratic weapons worse than bombs"
Nuri al-Uqbi’s small cinderblock home in a ramshackle neighborhood of Hura, a Bedouin town in Israel’s Negev desert, hardly looks like the epicenter of a legal struggle that some observers say threatens Israel’s Jewish character. Read more about Bedouin's legal fight threatens Jewish state
And just as Israel has gradually increased restrictions of where we can go, the boundaries of what is permissible to do as a Palestinian have narrowed markedly. We have reached a point where peaceful protest is unacceptable to the Israeli state and military legislation has been constructed to criminalize and throw in jail anyone who dares to publicly voice dissent. Mohammed Khatib comments. Read more about Why Israel imprisoned my best friend
The BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights recently published Rights in Principle — Rights in Practice, which examines a rights-based approach to crafting durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. The Electronic Intifada contributor Adri Nieuwhof interviews BADIL director Ingrid Jaradat Gassner on the organization’s work and the new book. Read more about "Solidarity with the entire Palestinian people"
There are few villages in historic Palestine which invoke the memories of the Nakba (the 1948 dispossession of the Palestinian people) as does Lifta. However, Lifta’s architectural legacy is under threat as Israel moves to Judaize the formerly pluralistic Palestinian village. Read more about Lifta's legacy under threat
Israel began constructing the wall in June 2002 following its invasion of cities in the West Bank, which it dubbed “Operation Defensive Shield.” The immense scale of the 2002 invasion — characterized by the destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure, mass arrests, assassinations and massacres — ensured that the construction of the wall would commence with as little resistance as possible. Jamal Juma’ comments. Read more about What the wall has done
London-based journalist and photographer William Parry’s Against the Wall serves as both a political and aesthetic document, perhaps exemplifying the German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s famous thesis that “[t]here is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Read more about Art as resistance: "Against the Wall" reviewed
“My human dignity, basic human rights and constitutional rights are suffering from basic violations. I still have no permit to meet my lawyers without being recorded.” The Electronic Intifada publishes an edited excerpt from a 7 August 2010 letter written by Ameer Makhoul from Israeli prison. Read more about "Solidarity tastes different inside prison"
