Talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over the past fortnight have unleashed a flood of media interest in the settlements Israel has been constructing on Palestinian territory for more than four decades. The US president’s message is unambiguous: the continuing growth of the settlements makes impossible the establishment of a Palestinian […]
Geography Archives: Middle East
Second Issue of Jafa Now Available!
Labour for Palestine is pleased to announce the second issue of Jafa – Labour Bulletin in Solidarity with Palestine. This second issue has a special focus on Israel’s war on Gaza. We publish here a range of solidarity resolutions that were passed by unions around the world, analysis of the aftermath, and discussion around […]
Samieh Jabbarin Still under House Arrest
Dear friends, The solidarity struggle with Palestinian theatre-artist and activist Samieh Jabbarin, who is still under house arrest in Um Al Fahm, has gained significant resonance in the past two weeks thanks to the publication of journalist Aviva Lori’s extensive coverage of the affair in Haaretz weekend supplement in Hebrew (22.5.09) and English (28.5.09). […]
Mr. Abbas Goes to Washington
May 28, 2009 If the Oval Office guest list is an indicator, President Obama is making good on his commitment to try to revive the long-dead Arab-Israeli peace process. On May 18 President Obama received Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; today he met with Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. As […]
Parsa
Here is Parsa. He is ten months old. He is my nephew and I love him with all my heart and soul. Parsa was born just eight days after the second sanction resolution against Iran. Parsa has learned a few things since he was born ten months ago. He points to everything that seems […]
Lessons in Imperialism from Iraq’s Past
Peter Sluglett. Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 318 pp. $24.50 (paper), ISBN 978-0-231-14201-4. The current war in Iraq has had many ironic consequences, the least sordid being perhaps the belated interest in Iraq’s history. As Peter Sluglett confesses in the opening pages of the reissue […]
The Many Faces of Humanitarianism
Humanism and Human Rights Who or what is the ‘human’ of human rights and the ‘humanity’ of humanitarianism? The question sounds naïve, silly even. Yet, important philosophical and ontological questions are involved. If rights are given to beings on account of their humanity, ‘human’ nature with its needs, characteristics and desires is the normative […]
Interview with Farian Sabahi
Here we publish an interview with Farian Sabahi, an Italian-Iranian professor at Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Turin. A professional journalist, Sabahi has been writing for Corriere della Sera for several months. She was a guest of LibrInTerra on the 26th of March, presenting her two books Storia dell’Iran [A History […]
Catch Dat Beat
Catch Dat Beat, a unique, only-in-New-Orleans theatrical event, played for one weekend last month at Ashe Cultural Arts Center. It sold out its several hundred seats every night and will re-open in June at a bigger venue, a 900-plus seat auditorium at Walter L. Cohen High School. The play, directed by music producer Lucky Johnson, […]
Worth 1,000 Words after Memorial Day
On Memorial Day this year, many veterans marched in local parades and remembered what it was like to be in the military. A number of Veterans For Peace members saw this picture in the May 24 edition of the Juneau Empire and made the comments that follow it. Alaska Army National Guard Staff Sergeant Michael […]
Israeli Cabinet Wants to Ban Nakba Commemoration
The Israeli cabinet has voted yesterday (Sunday, May 24, 2009) in favor of a racist proposal to ban Nakba commemorations. Many Arab-Palestinians commemorate the proclamation of the state of Israel as Nakba, the Arabic word for disaster. In the proposal, anyone participating in the commemoration of 15 May 1948 could face a three-year prison sentence. […]
Israel: Democratic Rights in Peril
The Israeli government took this week a new measure in its attempt to suppress democratic rights in Israel. The government has approved a bill banning all commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, under penalty of Imprisonment. The bill is yet to pass in the Israeli parliament, subject, for now, to heavy criticism from many […]
Netanyahu Chooses Warehousing
Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words “two states” after his meeting with President Obama? All Israel held its breath. (He didn’t). The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however. Obama, I believe, sincerely — perhaps urgently — seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a […]
The Final Match
Saman Salour was born in Boroujerd, Iran in 1976. His last feature film Lonely Tune of Tehran was screened during the Directors’ Fortnight a the Cannes Film Festival last year. “The Final Match” was made as part of Art for the World’s “Stories on Human Rights” on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of […]
Let CodePink Visit Gaza
Hello, friends — I’m writing you on behalf of Felice Gelman, who is now in Cairo. She is leading a group of 14 people who will try to get into Gaza. The group will arrive in Cairo on Sunday and then, hopefully, will get to the border of Egypt and Gaza at Al Arish […]
Freedom of Expression and Palestine Advocacy
Enormous resources have been marshaled by conservative and Zionist organizations in an attempt to silence criticism of the Canadian government’s unwavering support for Israel. The first few months of 2009 have seen a concerted campaign to shut down Palestine advocacy in Canada. Such examples include: cutting funding to the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) due […]
Judith Butler — Ungrievable Lives
A discussion with Judith Butler on public mourning: Antigone, grieving, victimization, the production of certain populations as “ungrievable”, and the politics of public mourning as the expansion of our ideas of what constitutes a livable life, the expansion of our recognition of those lives that are worth protecting, worth valuing. Nelly Kambouri: In your […]
Interview with Nadine Rosa-Rosso: Debating the Question of Removing Hamas from the List of Terrorist Organizations
Elkalam.com talks with Nadine Rosa-Rosso, former secretary general of the Parti du Travail (Workers’ Party) of Belgium, who has launched a Europe-wide campaign to remove Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations. She explains the reasons for this initiative today. Why did you decide to launch an appeal for the removal of Hamas from […]
Intimidation
My computer, today, is still at Tel Aviv police headquarters where it stayed after my two-hour interrogation last week. I am not given, I believe, to conspiracy thinking but the thought crossed my mind, comically rather, whether I’d ever written anything unkind about my neighbor or his family. This morning, when I brought my […]
Jasad, the Body Unveiled
“Fetishism: the Key to Sensuality”; “Is Cannibalism a New Religion?”; “Syrian Lingerie”; “I Am Gay, Therefore I Do Not Exist.” . . . With such a table of contents, Jasad (“body” in Arabic), a Lebanese, Arabic-language, cultural quarterly “specializing in the art, literature, and science of the body,” might be mistaken for an unidentified […]
