West Bank colonies face a necessary obstacle

The Washington Post reports (perhaps a little optimistically) about Israel’s Supreme Court increasingly coming down against illegal West Bank settlements: It has been nearly a decade since the Jewish settlement of Migron appeared on the hilltop opposite this Palestinian village, beginning with a communications tower and followed by a cluster of homes and a fence…

What we don’t hear in Palestine

Checkpoint 303 is found music, fragments, reflections and beats from the Palestinian occupied territories: The electronic experiment kicked off in 2004 when tunisian sound cutter SC MoCha teamed up with Bethlehem based palestinian sound catcher SC Yosh to form Checkpoint 303. The idea was to cut, track, fragment and reconstruct the audio soundscape from daily…

The true barrier to peace is here

The New York Times reports on the crazy, West Bank settler movement: At the Neria outpost celebration, Noam Rein, a father of 10, looked out across the hills at Ramallah and called its presence “temporary.” He added: “The Torah says the land of Israel is for the Jewish people. This is just the beginning. We…

When Zionist self-reflection is essential

The following posters by Peace Now are popping up around Jerusalem at the moment: Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three things – idolatry, incest and bloodshed. Why was the Second Temple destroyed? Because there was unfounded hatred. And what, heaven forbid, will lead to the destruction of the Third Temple? The settlements,…

When the West Bank becomes the Wild West

My friend Joseph Dana, based in Jerusalem, on yet another week of IDF and settler lawlessness in the West Bank: Saturday was a burning hot day in the West Bank. Combatants for Peace, a group made up of Israeli ex-combat soldiers and Palestinian ex-fighters, planned a protest at an illegal outpost adjacent to Shufa, a…

Gaza: flattened, occupied, sick and rootless

My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: During a conversation last night in Gaza with a group of 20-something male students, the issue of homosexuality came up. These were university-educated, Muslim men with relatively liberal attitudes but accepting a gay lifestyle was a complete anathema to them. “It’s disgusting,” one said, a Fatah…

Jews like to expand themselves illegally

An Israeli paper is reporting that the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank is now over 300,000. The daily Haaretz says the number of West Bank settlers is 304,569 – a 2.3 percent increase since January. It’s quoting statistics compiled by the military. The number of Israeli settlers has more than doubled since…

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