Lila Abu-Lughod, the Palestinian-American professor of anthropology at Columbia whose graceful and perfect telling of her father’s exile and return I found so stunning the other night, amended her comment to me that her book Nakba has not been reviewed….
David Remnick has a pretty-damn-good piece in the New Yorker on Benny Morris’s new book, concluding, “Next month, the Israelis mark the sixtieth anniversary of their independence, the Palestinians the sixtieth anniversary of al-nakba, the catastrophe.” So Nakba recognition has…
Israel/Palestine discussions are marked by conflict and ferocity. No big surprise. Rarely do you come on gentleness and dignity. In that spirit, I offer the following. Two nights ago at Columbia they held a panel on the Nakba. There were…
I’m still thinking about the Nakba panel at Columbia last night. Christopher Varley tells me of a tee shirt he once saw a young Arab wearing in Jerusalem: “So how far east do you want me to move?” The Palestinian…
It’s late, I just got home from a Nakba commemoration at Columbia University, a panel of four professors in a classroom with about 250 people in it. It seems important to relate the following before I go to bed. I…
This morning students at Columbia put up 1000 posters, each bearing the name of one of 418 villages wiped out in the Nakba. Says Saif Ammous: “It is vital to inform our fellow students of the roots of today’s conflict,…
Today’s Independent in England features an opinion piece on the Nakba that uses the word “sh-t” three times in describing the repulsive practice of Israeli colonies, pumping their raw sewage on to Palestinian land. Then Johann Hari brings the Nakba…
Arab students at Columbia University in New York will be staging a number of Nakba-related events this week, beginning with a faculty panel tomorrow night at 7 p.m. (Details below) “These will really be the biggest Palestine events in Columbia…
The world is changing. The Associated Press has a wonderful story on the Nakba. Israel’s joy over independence after two millennia of Jewish exile has been the Palestinians’ “naqba” — their catastrophe. The state they were to have in a…