Author Archives: Michael Ratner

Sundance doc’y on Paul Simon playing South Africa undercuts power of cultural boycott

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Michael Ratner

Paul Simon seeks, and fails, to justify playing South Africa 25 years ago when boycotters were trying to end apartheid

Posted in Activism, BDS, Israel/Palestine | Tagged | 11 Comments

Israeli judges are the confessors in savage new doc’y on legitimizing the occupation

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Michael Ratner

Sundance festival documentary shows Israeli judges convincing themselves of the legitimacy of a five-decade-long system of repression

Posted in Media, Occupation, US Politics | 10 Comments

Anwar al-Awlaki’s extrajudicial murder

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Michael Ratner

This article originally appeared in The Guardian: Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 108 Comments

The murder of Arna’s child

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Michael Ratner

Juliano Mer-Khamis made the movie Arna’s Children about his mother’s Jenin theatre company, the children he taught there when young, and what became of them. When I told my 21-year-old daughter Ana about Juliano’s death she could just not figure … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 11 Comments

Lawrence Wright boldly challenges NY audience with Israelcentric view of Gaza

Posted on March 22, 2010 by Michael Ratner

If you want to know anything about what is really going on between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere, do not go to Lawrence Wright’s new play, “The Human Scale.” Like Wright’s New Yorker pieces, it is bookended … Continue reading →

Posted in Beyondoweiss, Gaza | 12 Comments

From Hebron to Yad Vashem: Jewish Sorrow Justifying the Sorrow of Others

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Michael Ratner

We were at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem. The “we” were my wife, Karen, and my two children, ages 19 and 21. We had decided to make the pilgrimage on our last day in Israel, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 77 Comments

History and Hebron

Posted on January 9, 2010 by Michael Ratner

Of course in Germany the stars were placed to discourage if not end commerce to a Jewish shop; in Hebron they are placed to assert the closing of a Palestinian store and its “ownership” by the Jews of Hebron. In … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 286 Comments

Ma’ale Adumim: Annexation and the Architecture of Apartheid

Posted on January 3, 2010 by Michael Ratner

Today we came away stunned, shocked and almost numb from our trip to East Jerusalem with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. And when I say we, I mean my family—my wife and two children, 19 and … Continue reading →

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 61 Comments

Why I Am Going To Gaza for New Year’s

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Michael Ratner

Almost a year ago, on the celebration of Martin Luther King’s birth and just as the Israeli military assault on Gaza was coming to a close, I wrote a piece titled, Israel in Gaza: A Time Comes When Silence is … Continue reading →

Posted in Gaza | 63 Comments

Let Goldstone testify in Congress before you rush to judgment

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Michael Ratner

On Tuesday, November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the “President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on … Continue reading →

Posted in Gaza | 27 Comments