With all the current rhetoric out of Washington regarding an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Joseph Dana, Antony Loewenstein and David Jacobus wanted to gauge public opinion on the streets of Jerusalem on a sunny, Sunday afternoon last weekend. What they found was shocking but unsurprising. The ease with which most Americans and Israelis, young and old, spouted racist and uncompromising comments about Arabs, settlements and Israeli conduct was a raw manifestation of the barriers to the peace process.
The weekly protest in Bil’in shows Cellcom what a soccer match between Palestinians and the Israeli military really looks like: (Thanks to Ayyad Mediqa’ for the video.)
Tema Okun writes: I am a Jew. I am a religious Jew. I am an anti-Zionist Jew. I realize that to make this last claim is to risk that you will stop reading, as often any claim of anti-Zionism brings…
Hannah Mermelstein writes: “The war is with the Arabs.” I saw this sign as I was entering Nablus last week, again on my way to Ramallah, and again near Bethlehem. The phrase is printed in Hebrew, presumably by Israeli settlers,…
Antony Loewenstein writes from East Jerusalem: “Signs of Hope Emerge in the West Bank” was a headline in the New York Times on 16 July. On the same day, the London Guardian headlined a similar story, “Allure of normal life…
We’ve been following the news today that Israel has rejected the Obama’s administration’s demand to halt settlement expansion in East Jerusalem. Although this disagreement is taking place behind closed doors here in the US, in Israel/Palestine it is unfolding in…
Mairav Zonszein, Antony Loewenstein and Joseph Dana write: The occupation can seem predictably mundane from a distance. To most Israelis the settlement project is seen as a problem, but a problem happening “over there” and utterly removed from their lives….
The Breaking the Silence report of Israeli soldier testimonies about the attack on Gaza earlier this year continues to reverberate around the world. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it has yet to be mentioned in the New York…
I have a bit of a different take than Phil on Ehud Olmert’s oped in today’s Washington Post. I don’t see hints at the one state solution, but I do see Olmert trying the resuscitate one of the all-time great…