Palestine

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• 11/6/2022
  

  From Torch to Tunis to El Alamein: Events 80 Years Ago Made the Modern Middle East

  by Robert Satloff

  80 years ago Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, opened a second front against Nazi Germany. Today, it has proven equally important for establishing models for America's relationship to the Middle East. 

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• SOURCE: Jerusalem Post
  9/13/2022
  

  Ken Burns's Holocaust History Has a Palestine Problem

  by Rafael Medoff and Monty Noam Penkower

  Although there was no sovereign government in Palestine between 1933 and 1945, British authorities there admitted a quarter million Jewish refugees. The filmmaker's focus on "sovereign" countries' record admitting refugees burnishes the Roosevelt administration's record. 

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• SOURCE: National Interest
  9/5/2022
  

  Walter Russell Mead's Contrary View of the Roots of the US-Israel Alliance

  In Mead's account, American Christians, with an affinity for viewing the Old Testament as part of the nation's heritage, not the machinations of modern Jewish organizations, brought American policy to support a Jewish state. 

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• 4/17/2022
  

  Does Israel's Right Cultivate a Permanent Enemy to Justify a Permanent Occupation?

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  The vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians have been born since the occupation began. The current Israeli government seems content to exploit violent outbreaks like those of recent weeks to ensure that no one seriously imagines alternatives.

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• SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Education
  3/4/2022
  

  When University Marketing Suppresses Academic Freedom

  by Silke-Maria Weineck

  For 31 years, the University of Michigan has sponsored an academic freedom lecture named for three professors suspended for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. This year, its marketing team did everything it could to conceal the identity of the lecturer: a lawyer who fights the silencing of pro-Palestinian activists.

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/10/2022
  

  Hunger Strikes are Powerful Stands Against Injustice

  by Nayan Shah

  The hunger strike is a potent tool of resistance when the balance of formal power is highly unequal. 

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• SOURCE: Forward
  1/22/2022
  

  Israeli Documentary Works to Break Silence over 1948 Israeli-Arab Violence

  Director Alon Schwartz examines the events in the town of Tantura, where an Israeli militia is alleged to have killed 200 Arab residents. Oral history interviews with surviving members of the militia are key, but controversial, pieces of evidence.

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• SOURCE: Haaretz
  12/12/2021
  

  Haaretz Editorial: Israel Must Acknowledge War Crimes in 1948 Fight for Independence

  "It is time to acknowledge the truth, and first to publish the report by the first attorney general, Yaakov-Shimshon Shapira, on the massacres of the dark autumn of 1948... and to hold a penetrating public discussion of their implications today."

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• SOURCE: TIME
  11/3/2021
  

  How Christian Archaeologists Fed Today's Strife in Jerusalem

  by Andrew Lawler

  The incursions of 19th century Christian archaeologists onto Jerusalem's historic acropolis created a sense of seige on the part of Palestinian Muslims, which is echoed today in ongoing conflict over the city's religious sites. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  6/14/2021
  

  Opinion: The Palestinian Political Class has Become a Heavy Burden on the People

  Two observers of the Palestinian political scene argue that the leading factions of Hamas and Fatah are more motivated to maintain their own power than to support a growing, youth-led Palestinian movement for justice. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  6/12/2021
  

  The Complicated History Behind BLM's Solidarity With The Pro-Palestinian Movement

  "We need to understand that Black identification with Zionism predates the formation of Israel as a modern state," says Robin D. G. Kelley, a historian at the University of California, Los Angeles who studies social movements.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  6/8/2021
  

  UK Education System Struggles to Prepare for Exams as Israel-Palestine Conflict Scares Publishers

  Publishers have withdrawn materials needed for prep for the British exams in middle east history because of political complaints of bias both against Israel and the Palestinians. 

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• SOURCE: Times of Israel
  6/3/2021
  

  Solomon's Peace Accord

  by David Marks

  Can Israelis and Palestinians imagine and implement a Solomonic peace? 

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• SOURCE: Eurozine
  6/3/2021
  

  The Unbearable Easiness of Killing

  by Arie M. Dubnov

  "As a colleague justly commented, it is only helpful to call a situation ‘complicated’ if one is committed to unfolding the package, willing to examine its contents and prepared to be surprised by what one finds hidden inside."

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• SOURCE: Contingent
  5/28/2021
  

  Because of Palestine

  by N.A. Mansour

  "It is because I am Palestinian that I can tell you that objectivity—in history-writing, in the archives, in museums—does not exist."

• 
• 5/30/2021
  

  The Settler Colonialist Frame Helps Clarify What's at Stake in the Middle East for Israelis, Palestinians, and Peace

  by Jeff Kolnick

  Looking at the recent resurgence of armed conflict between Israel and Hamas as part of a project of settler colonialism clarifies the nature of the conflict, and suggests that the immediate cessation of eviction of Palestinians is essential for peace. 

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• 5/23/2021
  

  For Israel and the Palestinians, Reconciliation Must Precede a Peace Process

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  If the recent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas holds, many may be tempted to push for renewing a negotiated peace process. This is skipping the vital and difficult work of reconciliation that is necessary to a just peace.

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• 5/23/2021
  

  Jerusalem: A Divided and Invented City

  by James A.S. Sunderland

  Both Hamas and the Israeli right base their claims to Jerusalem on understandings of the city as shaped by the orientalist and segregationist values of British governors during the Mandate period, and not on the city's longer heterogenous and multicultural history. Peace activists look to that history as an example of coexistence. 

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• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  5/20/2021
  

  In Israel, the Violent Legacy of 1948

  by Benny Morris

  "The chaos in the towns of Lydda, Ramle, Haifa, Umm al-Fahm and Acre is a dim echo of the civil war between Palestine’s Jewish and Arab communities that engulfed the country during the first months of the 1948 war."

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  5/18/2021
  

  This is a War Israel Can’t Win

  by Max Boot

  Post columnist Max Boot argues that the current cycle of attacks and reprisals are symbolic political gestures, and that Israel should declare that it's made its point and resume the work of political normalization with its Arab neighbors and political concessions with the Palestinian Authority that marginalize Hamas.