El-Farra: Palestinians must have hope to move forward
Sanctions imposed after the election of Hamas made hard lives harder, but we must not forget that even under the "moderate" leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas we did not control trade in and out of Gaza. "There is a seeming reflex," United Nations peace envoy Alvaro de Soto said in a report, "in any given situation where the UN is to take a position, to ask first how Israel or Washington will react rather than what is the right position to take."

The hidden cost of free congressional trips to Israel
In my own experience as a US senator in the 1970s, I saw how the lobby tries to humiliate or embarrass members who do not toe the line.

Challenging the New Apartheid: Reflections on Palestine Solidarity
Poster from a solidarity event in Vancouver, Canada By Rafeef Ziadah, Adam Hanieh, Hazem Jamjoum The Palestinian solidarity movement has made significant gains since the onset of the Second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000. Over the last five years,...

The Hamas Victory: Nightmare or the End of Terrorism?
The Hamas victory, forces us all to confront the reality of democracy. Do we respect the will of a people or do we add to their cynicism about democracy as a system tolerated only if it serves the interests of the US and its allies.

Life in Tel Rumeida
Nearly every tactic used by Israel to create its merciless occupation is employed in Tel Rumeida

Palestine, My Left
My left hand is where I am Palestinian, my West Bank when I face Mecca.

Palestine Is Not a Muslim Issue
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a Muslim issue. It is a dispute over land, it is about an occupation that must end and it is about a people who deserve a state. But it is not a religious dispute.

With Hand on Heart, Democratic Leader Pelosi Admits Israel Comes First
Pelosi, like so many other Democrats and Republicans in DC, does not appreciate the asymmetry of the conflict. She cannot understand that Palestinians are faced with violence every day as their livelihoods and homes are uprooted to make way for new Israeli settlements.

Looking for the Good Jew
Piece of cake, let’s go find those non-Zionist and non-pro-Zionist Jews.

Action Needed to Bolster Abbas
It would be reassuring to see if the two sides would move forward and tackle the thorny issues of peace-making, including the borders of a future Palestinian state, Israeli security, Jewish settlements, the status of east Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Speaking Out About Israel to Save the Jewish Soul
Remaining silent is no longer an option. We can no longer let our trauma, our deep fear of anti-Jewish hatred implanted in us through generations of persecution, make us remain quiet at the expense of truth.

Remembering Auschwitz: Comparing Palestinians' Unique Suffering with Holocaust Leads Nowhere
Whose suffering is greater? Which wound is more painful? When is a killing by one brutal occupier less painful than the killing by another brutal occupier? Comparisons and more senseless comparisons lead nowhere.

Yasser Arafat's Passing and the Future of Palestine
We must recognize that, regardless of his failure to create a functioning democratic government, Yasser Arafat internationalized the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Meeting with Maysoon: America's First Muslim Female Comic Discusses Palestine, the Good Side of Ashcroft, and Why an ABC Reporter Thought She Needed Therapy
Thanks, Mr. Ashcroft, for getting together all the Arab men under 35 in one place for my viewing pleasure.

Changing My Curriculum
One of the first things that most children learn in school is that most formal education is a fraud. What children are learning (and not learning) everywhere is a big scandal. Yet the curriculum wars are not about improving schools all over the world. They are about forcing one party’s myths as the official dogma

Israel Builds Another Wall
There is a terrible irony in the chorus of loud Zionist condemnations that have greeted the ICJ’s ruling.

A Visit to Shatila
There are close to 400,000 registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon living in 13 camps ranging in size from 1,000 to 45,000. They are carefully (and deliberately, according to some refugees) distributed throughout the country but well away from the border with Palestine.

Norman Finkelstein: 'Opening the Heart to the Suffering of Others'
The fact that he’s “withdrawing from Gaza” is utterly meaningless. The Palestinians will get nothing out of it. Either the jailers will be on the outside or the inside, but it’s going to be a concentration camp.

The Psychology of Palestinian Suicide Bombers and Israeli Paranoia
Post-9/11, Muslim organizations have spent a lot of effort distancing themselves from the image of the Islamic suicide bomber, proclaiming “the true Islam” to be a peaceful and non-violent religion. But is this the best way to talk about terrorism and extremism to non-Muslims?

Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers
I decided to burn my military deferral papers, the closest equivalent I have to a draft card, to protest the policies of the government of Israel and to declare my intention never to serve in an army of occupation and oppression.

Of Rainbows and Death
How cruel is it that the image of the rainbow and all that it symbolizes are now connected with murder and wanton destruction of the Palestinian people, homes, and lands?

“How are you? Do you have a weapon?”: Dispatches from Israel/Palestine
Occasionally these security guards will stop and ask you a random question. “How are you? Do you have a weapon?” My friend thinks that half the time these guards are calculating your response, while the other half they are just trying to talk to women.

Homes Destroyed, Death Toll Mounts; Where’s Kerry?
Democratic Senator John Kerry has been virtually silent regarding the rising violence in the West Bank, where the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has estimated over 1,100 Palestinians have been left homeless due to Israel’s latest armored rampage.

Driving While Arab and Muslim
I pulled over to the side of the road and was wondering why he was stopping me of all the people that were traveling on the freeway, some going quite a bit faster than I was.

Ten More Trees
By Ayman Nabtiti View full drawing (new window) Ayman's drawing was one of the winning entries in the Palestine Children's Welfare Fund's "Why I Love Palestine" contest for children ages 6 through 14 from the Dhesheh, Rafah and Aida...

Hug Noam Chomsky
The whole question of recognizing the right of a state to exist was invented solely for Israel. People, on the other hand, have a right to exist. So the people who live on the land—Israelis and Palestinians—have a right to live in security and peace.

Can Sharon Win By Force?
For the past decade, political leaders—Israeli, Palestinian, American, European and Arab alike, have had one point of agreement with peace activists around the Israel-Palestine conflict. That was the axiom that “neither side would triumph by force.” But now, the dangerous duo of George Bush in the White House and Ariel Sharon in the Prime Minister’s office has embarked on their attempt to prove this false.

Drawing Caterpillar Out of Its Corporate Cocoon: Company Should Examine Its Role in Mideast Violence
Caterpillar bulldozers are not given to Israel as construction equipment but explicitly as weapons.

Imagine-Life: New Organization to Highlight Israeli Human Rights Violations
A non-profit organization called Imagine-Life has been founded by concerned Americans of different religious and ethnic backgrounds who felt that basic human rights should apply to all individuals without discrimination.

Leading into Darkness: The Unveiling of the Bush Reelection Strategy
A string of disturbing events over the past week may point to the Bush campaign’s real reelection strategy.

Hamas Violence: Not In My Name
After all the outrage, anger and threats, it’s time to take a breather and think things over. Hamas has chosen violence as its ways of resisting Israeli occupation. This choice was not put to a vote by the majority of the Palestinian people; it was imposed on them.

Hellfire Indeed, Mr Sharon
Hellfire indeed, Mr Sharon – for the retribution that is sure to come can only be described in mythic, biblical terms.

Ariel Sharon and the Execution of Sheikh Yassin
The Israeli assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, is designed to escalate the level of violence in Israel/Palestine.

Seventy Two Virgins and a Giant Bag of Lard
So what does the ill fated exploding pig have in common with the 72 nubile virgins, you ask? They are clumsy attempts to slap on a religious dimension to a very political conflict

In Search of Anti-Semitism: The Truth Behind the Wiesenthal Center’s Campaign Against the World Social Forum
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) has cited the WSF as one of the centers of what it and others refer to as the “new anti-Semitism”, and these charges have been picked up by various journalists as evidence of a dangerous new trend on the left.

Desperation and Drastic Measures: The Use and Abuse of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Israel’s Apologists
Dr. King’s expertise as a non-violent civil rights leader and visionary are unparalleled in U.S. history. However, that does not make him an informed commentator on Middle Eastern affairs or on the ideological facets of Zionism. As impressive as the references to his views on Israel may seem, this is a textbook example of Argumentum Ad Verecundiam.

Lerner, Said And The Palestinians
The creation of Israel was a power play. It was born out of the contradictions of the history of European Jews, a contradiction that would be resolved by the convergence of Jewish influence and Western imperial power, combining to serve the interests of both. The cost of this project to Palestinians, to Arabs, to Muslims, was not even an issue in an era dominated by Western racism and bigotry – of the Christian, Jewish and secular variety.

Fadwa Tuqan: In Her Country’s Embrace (1917-2003)
Enough for me to die on her earth be buried in her to melt and vanish into her soil then sprout forth as a flower

Palestinians Do Not Exist
Under a banner that read Never Again A troubled people sought a space An uninhabited desert Rocky soil, hilly terrain Home to no one An empty place

Voiding the Palestinians: An Allegory
Perhaps this single rape-murder is significant. The voiding of a people necessarily involves suffering on a monumental scale. The Zionists built their Jewish state by destroying the lives of millions of Palestinians over three generations. The scale of this suffering has been documented in reports, in statistics of villages destroyed, houses demolished, and men, women and children evicted from their homes, robbed, incarcerated, bombed, shot at, tortured, killed. However, statistics do not tell stories; they will not grip the reader with the pain of the victims. As the Holocaust reveals its hellish intent in images and artifacts, so the narrative of Palestinian voiding must be conveyed in images, metaphors and allegories, each of which contains in miniature, in essence, the great pain that the Palestinians have endured for more than eighty years.

Peace Process: Palestinians Need Security Too
Palestinians too have a need to security. They too will be giving up or sharing land for peace. This lack of symmetry (explicit concern for Israeli but not Arab security, for example) is designed to ensure a nuclear-armed Israel ends up next to a mandatory unarmed Palestine. Palestine will have no way to prevent a massively armed Israel from bullying its way back to the current situation.

Hug Jews for a Free Palestine
We are Bay Area Jews, and we want no more blood and injustice in our name. We are not behind occupation or oppression. I support this cause because I believe in justice. Judaism doesn’t support ethnic cleansing. We want the Palestinians, the people who lived on that land much longer and more recently than us, to have the same right of return that we do.

Israel May Be Our Demise: Why Democrats Are So Far to the Right on Israel
So what Middle-East direction shall the US take if progressives decide to unite and dump Bush? It’s becoming more and more apparent that Democrats won’t endorse any populist platform like that of Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton. If Democratic constituents won’t endorse real progressive candidates, then their party is certainly doomed. Unfortunately, it may signal the demise of our peace and security as well. The largest threats to our security stem from fundamentalism bred in the Middle East; with a direct link to the US backing of Israel.

Mourning What Is Said: Memorable Encounters with a Mensch
“So what religion do you follow, Edward?” I asked unabashedly. “I am secular,” he replied. I remember retorting that he was dodging my question. Then he said something that startled me: “I am Muslim,” he said teasingly. For a moment I thought he was playing me, and perhaps he did, for he knew that Islam was an important aspect of my identity. “You mean Islam culturally, right?” I queried. “I am Arab and I am Muslim. I am also American, Brahim,” Edward replied and then went on to explain his complicated identity. As we talked, I got the sense that for him at least, Islam was not a religion, but that his Arab-Palestinian identity implied that his cultural formation was partly Islamic. Years later, I realize that what Edward said to me was a comment in an unguarded moment. He trusted me not to confuse or make any conclusions about his identity or reach any conclusions about his religiosity or the absence of it. I am glad I did neither. But I know he found Freud’s view of Moses, in Moses and Monotheism, as both insider and outsider, to be an extraordinarily fascinating and challenging idea.

Bulldozing the Roadmap: Caterpillar Sales to Israel Violate Conditions of US Aid
Since 1967, human rights workers estimate that Caterpillar bulldozers have made more than 50,000 Palestinians homeless, destroying homes that pave the way for new settlements and Israel's 400 kilometer long Wall, to which the US government has also expressed opposition. The equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes is not actually purchased by Israel - it's purchased by the US taxpayer and sent to Israel.

Occupied Voices: Excerpts
You should watch Palestinian candid camera. Candid camera is done all over the world, and they did a Palestinian version on Palestinian TV. They want it to be funny, but it is about Palestinians and Israelis. One of the episodes is about a Palestinian guy who is running from the soldiers and he goes from house to house and says, "Can you hide me?" And this is supposed to be funny! The point is that candid camera is supposed to be about day-to-day life, and this is day-to-day life for us.

Letters from Palestine: Cell Phones, Cyber-Dating, and “Explosions of the Heart”
The messages range from sweet and innocent to high tech courting and cajoling. The cell phone has become the messenger of love in a place where occupation and tradition make young people's life, at best, challenging. Boys share their messages with each other; so do girls. Their worlds are separate yet well connected.

Letters from Palestine: Bombs, Curfews, and What’s for Dinner?
People go through it with remarkable regularity and grace. It’s just simply, I repeat, unimaginable. I know there is nothing that can justify this, absolutely nothing, even if only one person is innocent in the entire West Bank. The family of the young bomber has been arrested and relatives are scrambling to empty the content of the house. It will be demolished by dawn tomorrow.

Letters from Palestine: Babies and Blockades
Discussions are numerous, fierce, and very funny. Humor peppers all political discussion. However, it seems it is only me who laughs.

Letters from Palestine: A Canadian Comes Home to Hebron
I made it to Palestine on Tuesday, May 28 after a brief but painful stay in Jordan. I was held at the airport for five hours and my passport was taken away. I was given a piece of paper and told to go to a certain government agency within 48 hours to get my passport from there. It was a nightmare.

Apartheid Israel: A South African's Perspective
While in the South African context there existed theses which classified apartheid as ‘internal colonialism’, there never was in South Africa a comparable situation to the colonialism in the West Bank and Gaza. Furthermore, the objective of the Zionist project as far as the Occupied Territory is concerned is the realisation of the Zionist myth that ‘Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land’. Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population of the OPT has always been on the Zionist political agenda.

Howard Dean: Sharon's Man?
Although often portrayed as progressive, former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean falls short on several issues important to progressives, with the Middle East being one of the more glaring.

Rachel Corrie Spotted with Che and Mumia
It came to me as no surprise that a freshly painted Rachel Corrie had joined the ranks of Caesar Chavez and Malcolm X as the young hero of the downtrodden. In this mural she is seen lending her strength and beauty to the struggles of Che Guevara and Mumia Abu Jamal and a host of others.

Road Map to Where?
The recent events in the Middle East are eerily familiar. Palestinians rise up in an Intifada. After some time, a man named “Bush” declares war on the weakened country of Iraq. Subsequently, he declares a victory. Soon thereafter, Palestinians and Israelis are in the midst of “peace accords” that are supported more from exhaustion than from a desire for real peace. We could be talking about the Oslo Accords or the current road map.

The Jewish Bin Ladens?
Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the State of Israel
What Shall I Do With This People? Jews and the Fractious Politics of JudaismBy Milton Viorst, Simon and Schuster, 2002, 287 pp. Review by Pat McDonnell Twair “After 2,000 years of strenuous survival in exile, it would be a...

Divine Intervention: Palestinian Film Satirizes Israeli Occupation
By Pat McDonnell Twair Festering humiliation and rage of oppressed Palestinians is the underlying theme of Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention which opened March 14 in eight California theaters (for national playdates, see distributor Avatar Films' website)....

Hug Joel Beinin
MWU!: What are some of the things that you wish people knew about Zionism?

JB: One. The early Zionists did consider themselves to be promoting a settler colonialism project. They were very clear about it, at a time when it was popular for Europeans to talk of such racism. Two. Before Hitler, Zionism was a very marginal and minority movement. Most Jews had very serious religious or political problems with it. Three. Until 1948, Bi-nationalism (a joint Arab-Jewish state) was considered legitimate, and was supported by a large number of Zionists. Four. Most importantly that Israel was built upon the ruins of Palestinian society. Those are the first four that come to mind.

Hug Jeff Grubler
JG: I wish I was more newsworthy--in that I mean I wish the situation of the Iraqi people was more newsworthy. Since 1991 there's been a blackout in the media. Everyone knows the name of Saddam, but nobody knows the fate of the Iraqi people. So what I try to do is to figure out ways to bring the reality of the Iraqi people to Americans. Iraq is so far away, and we all have our own problems and worries, so Iraqis remain invisible. I have created phony products, organized guerilla theater, and used standup comedy--anything I can to make the Iraqi people less invisible. I try to reach people, and every once in a while, the media gives me attention which I pass on to the cause.

Edward Said Speaks to Overflow Crowd at UCLA, Israel-First Dissenters Attempt to Disrupt Lecture
By Pat McDonnell Twair When Edward Said, the greatest living Palestinian academic, spoke February 20 at UCLA, the venue had to be changed to Royce Hall to accommodate 1,800 students and admirers who called for reservations. About two dozen...

Hug Liat Weingart
MWU!: And who are these progressive Jews? LW: I must tell you that being the child of an Ashkanazi Jewish mother--aka a Yiddish Mama-- makes us behave in certain ways. I have organized workshops on how to use guilt to get what I want. Every other month my colleagues and I gather to evaluate the status of the romantic relationships in our organization, and then we coordinate demonstrations when we don’t approve. I'm only kidding of course.

Why a Hug-a-Jew Column?
In these times of singling out, labeling, and stigmatizing Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians living in the West, there is also much to learn from the Jewish experience in Europe and North America: the countless stories of tragic pain, oppression, resistance, and renewal.