Tag: Comment Is Free
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Israel’s laws of persecution
Nimer Sultany | The Guardian 8 September 2009 Two cases brought before Israeli courts last week revealed the attitude of the establishment towards Palestinian Arab citizens of the state. One shows how Palestinian citizens are treated as victims of police brutality, and the second shows how they are regularly victimised because of their opposition to…
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Quiet slicing of the West Bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene
Slavoj Zizek | The Guardian 18 August 2009 On 2 August 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families (more than 50 people) from their homes; Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the…
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Taking over Jerusalem
Matt Kennard | The Guardian 5 August 2009 A couple of months ago I spent a fortnight in Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement – activists who help Palestinians non-violently resist Israeli oppression. The most pressing of many issues during my stay was the attempts by an Israeli settler company, Nahalat Shimon, backed by the…
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The blue velvet hills of my youth have been destroyed
Raja Shehadeh | The Guardian 5 July 2009 I can remember the appearance of the hills around Ramallah in 1979, before any Jewish settlement came to be established there. In the spring of that year I walked north from Ramallah, where I live, to the nearby village of A’yn Qenya and up the pine-forested hill.…
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Israel pushes out its own people
Dimi Reider | The Guardian 10 June 2009 Whenever Barack Obama speaks of the Middle East these days, there’s one thing that worries “senior Israeli officials” most. “He didn’t say ‘Jewish state’,” they mutter to reporters. “He had all the time to say these two words, and didn’t. Why didn’t he?” Binyamin Netanyahu himself utters…