Hatim Kanaaneh was grateful to see the New Yorker publish big pieces on Palestinian Israelis Ayman Odeh and Sayed Kashua, but the pieces left a bitter aftertaste. Authors David Remnick and Ruth Margalit seize on their subjects as evidence of a democratic and inclusive Israel
Palestinian doctor Hatim Kanaaneh could be friends with Israeli veteran Dov Yermiya because Yermiya turned against Zionism and acknowledged the discrimination against Palestinians. But Yermiya drew the line at 1948, a war he participated in. “We won.”
While in Hawaii, Hatim Kanaaneh uses the local homelessness crisis to explain Middle East politics.
Hatim Kanaaneh responds to a news report showing Israeli settlers celebrating the death of the Dawabshe family: “The report is about real madness; vicious, murderous and ultimately state-sponsored collective insanity.”
Hatim Kanaaneh writes: Today we woke up to a sandstorm blanketing the entire country. In Arrabeh it is so thick streetlights are on at noon. It is obvious that somebody up there is upset with someone down here. So, who is doing this to whom? I’ll leave figuring out the angry party to others and invest some thought in figuring out who angered Him or Her. Since this all is happening in Israel and Palestine, let me try and guess who is to blame.
Hatim Kanaaneh reflects on the recent news that the Israeli Supreme Court will permit the “legal seizure” of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem by remembering a story from his youth of trying to pick the delicious, and dangerous, prickly pear.
Hatim Kanaaneh reflects on the recent Israeli election and strains to find optimism in what he sees as a rising tide of fascism in the country: “It is my belief that the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel has a mission it cannot shirk: forcing true democracy on the Jewish majority that continues to slide down the slippery slope of racism. It is our ordained destiny, it seems, to save Israel from its the-whole-world-is-against-us paranoia. It is our role to coax Israel back from its Masada Complex stand. We have little choice but to fulfill this impossible mission; the alternative is too bleak to contemplate.”
Deaths of Palestinian infants due to cold have occurred not just recently in Gaza but for years in the Galilee. The answer from the Israeli Health Ministry was to blame the victim by saying the problem could only be addressed by community development, Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh reports
“Chief Complaint,” Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh’s portrait of a Galilee village Arrabeh will be published by Just World Books next week. Here is an exclusive excerpt from the book, a portrait of a legendary elder, Uncle Ibrahim, and how he tried to save village lands from being taken by the Israeli land authority
Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh visits the former Palestinian village of Lubya in the Galilee. Its residents were forced to flee Israel’s creation; and the village is covered over with pine trees and its land taken by Lavie, an Israeli town