Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Rebecca Stead
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The Parisian
“Baris.” He sighed. “It is where my life is.” So Faruq Al-Azmeh, the “one other Arab on board the ship to Marseille”, told an impressionable Midhat Kamal as he embarked on his journey in 1914. En route from Nablus, Palestine, to study medicine at the University of Montpellier – a...
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‘Gazans’ access to medical care is a basic human right’
Cycling4Gaza will travel across four countries to highlight the freedoms enjoyed by many in Europe but denied to Palestinians in the occupied territories In March 2018, Dr Zara Hannoun visited the Gaza Strip. “I can’t even begin to put the experience into words,” she tells MEMO. “From the start, you...
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#MyPalestinianSitty trends after Tlaib refuses to enter Israel
Last week US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib rejected an offer from Israel to visit her grandmother in the West Bank village of Beit Ur Al-Fouqa, after she and fellow Congresswoman Ilhan Omar were banned from taking part in a diplomatic visit. Though Israel said it would allow Tlaib to visit her...
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Remembering Israel’s ‘disengagement’ from Gaza
What: Israel dismantled its illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip, withdrawing all settlers and ground troops from the enclave. Where: The Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine. When: 15 August 2005. What happened? On 15 August 2005, Israel began its disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which it had occupied since the Six Day War of...
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How one German political party is fighting Israel’s BDS crackdown
“The idea of agitating against BDS played a big role here: to defame any kind of criticism of reactionary, imperialist government as anti-Semitic and any kind of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle as ‘terror support’,” Peter Weispfenning told MEMO. Weispfenning is a member of the Marxist-Leninist Party of...
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Israel’s Labour Party just signed its own death warrant
The Israeli Labour Party on Tuesday elected a new leader, Amir Peretz, to lead the faction ahead of Israel’s upcoming general election on 17 September. Faced with a choice between the old guard and two young, dynamic candidates, the party membership opted for the former. In doing so, the ailing...
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‘This is for Palestine’, says mum who gave birth through smuggled sperm
In 2014, Suhad Abu Fayed gave birth to her daughter Huriye, a bright-eyed child with a mop of curly hair. When Suhad took Huriye to see her father, Sameer, for the first time, the Israeli guards at the prison where he is detained looked puzzled. “Who is this girl?”...
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4 things to watch ahead of Israel’s September election
For the second time in a year, Israel is heading to the polls. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who only two months ago was celebrating a historic fifth term in office – now limps, battered and bruised, into his sixth election campaign, his Teflon image and “Bibi-can-fix-it” reputation...
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‘Palestinian politics has collapsed; Arab-Israelis can rebuild it’
“Palestinian citizens of Israel have been ignored by the Palestinian national movement since the Nakba”, Professor As’ad Ghanem explains, “but from my point of view they represent a kind of hope for Palestinian politics”. A professor at the University of Haifa, Ghanem specialises in the history of the Palestinian national...
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Israel’s brutal military occupation continues to crush West Bank Palestinians
During the 1967 Six Day War, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Israel. Fifty-two years later this brutal military occupation remains in place, with the West Bank’s almost three million Palestinian residents subjected to a maze of military checkpoints, attacks by illegal Israeli settlers and a...
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Discrimination, division and demolitions: Life as a Palestinian citizen of Israel
Palestinian citizens of Israel – who number around 1.8 million people and amount to just over 20 per cent of Israel’s population – are often ignored by the broader Palestinian narrative. Although unlike their compatriots in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip, Palestinian citizens of Israel do...
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‘Israel’s system is galloping apartheid,’ says Israel professor
“I have coined quite a few terms,” noted Professor Oren Yiftachel, “but ethnocracy really captures the idea of a regime that creates a state for the benefit of an ethnic project”. In 2006, Professor Yiftachel published his book “Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine”. In coining the phrase “ethnocracy”...
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Meet the Arab-Israeli alliances’ new Knesset members
On 9 April, Israeli citizens went to the polls to elect the country’s 21st Knesset. Though incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out on top, his Likud party winning 36 seats, new faces and veteran politicians alike will soon form a new ruling coalition and opposition. Sitting among the opposition...
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Netanyahu won Israel’s election, but his coalition will be fractious and unstable
This week Benjamin Netanyahu won a spectacular election victory, his fourth in the last decade. Yet though supporters have once again bowed down to King Bibi, his victory parade may not last long. Netanyahu’s new coalition represents little more than a reincarnation of its former self, and its first...
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The Road to Knesset: The Union of Right-Wing Parties #Israelex2019
Michael Ben Ari is an Israeli politician and former member of the Knesset. Born to Mizrahi Jewish parents from Iran and Afghanistan, he co-established the Otzma LeYisrael (Strength for Israel) party, now known as Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) which is running for the 9 April 2019 Israel General Election. Otzma...
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‘We can and must push back against the tide of fascism,’ says Arab-Israeli MK Tibi
Ahmad Tibi is, in many ways, the face of Palestinian politics within Israel. Boasting 20 years’ service as a Knesset Member (MK), he sees no reason why he shouldn’t one day become Israel’s Prime Minister. Yet with only days to go until the General Election, Tibi must battle anti-Palestinian...
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‘Israel’s politicians are chickens. We need to shake up the system,’ says Hadash’s Jewish candidate
Ofer Cassif was, until recently, a relatively unknown figure in Israeli politics. Although he has been active in the country’s Hadash (Al-Jabha) party for decades, by day he is a political science professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. Yet, since he was chosen as Hadash’s only Jewish representative ahead of...
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Remembering the Great March of Return
What: Thousands of Palestinians marched to the fence at the nominal border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, calling for the right to return to their ancestral homes and an end to Israel’s siege of the territory Where: The besieged Gaza Strip When: 30 March 2018 What happened? On 29 March, 150 Palestinians...
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Israel’s courts are under attack from the right-wing
This week, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to ban Michael Ben Ari – the leader of the extreme-right-wing Otzma Yehudit party – from running in the country’s upcoming general election on 9 April. Onlookers breathed a sigh of relief, congratulating the court on making “the right decision” and narrowly avoiding...
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Remembering Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque massacre
What: Extremist Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein attacked Palestinian worshippers at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, killing 29 people and injuring 150 others Where: Hebron, the occupied West Bank When: 25 February 1994 What happened? Believed to be the burial place of the prophets Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque is revered within Islam and...
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In Egypt, ‘political prisoners aren’t even recognised as humans’
Twenty-four-year old Ayatollah Ashraf was arrested from her home in the Qalyubiyah governorate of Egyptian capital Cairo on 3 October 2018. Egyptian security forces broke into the family’s home while Ashraf was sleeping, dragging her from her bed and leaving no time for her to change into outdoor clothes....
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‘The conflict in Palestine has always galvanised people’
“I could not stomach the way the Arabs, who should really own this country, are being treated by not only the UN but by the government in Palestine,” a man who went by the name of Frank told a Chicago Tribune journalist in May 1948. Frank had been stationed...
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‘I wanted to introduce Palestinian culture to the UK’
In a low-lit gallery in central London, Suhad Jarrar-Browne sat on a red embroidered cushion surrounded by a rich array of Palestinian artefacts. Brass coffee pots were lined neatly in a row on a table nearby. Intricately-embroidered dresses hung from the wall behind her, carefully woven with elaborate designs...
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‘There are no human rights in Egypt’
Khaled Hamdy was arrested on the 27 March 2014 from his home in Egypt. He had been working as a production manager for Egypt 25, a TV channel founded by the Muslim Brotherhood to provide live coverage of the 2011 Arab Spring. Hamdy was accused of spying for Qatar,...