Middle East & North Africa Archives - Page 2 of 5

History

Israel’s American History

On Israel’s ambivalent relationship with the United States and OZ Frankel’s latest book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973

January 29, 2025 • by Oz Frankel and Claire Potter

Historian Oz Frankel's new book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973 (Stanford University Press, 2024), examines the multifaceted and contradictory presence of the United States in Israel during a short but significant period of history. In a conversation with Claire Potter, Frankel shares the ...

Education

Schools Are for Children, Not Soldiers

Global scholasticide is getting worse

December 3, 2024 • by Charles Bradley

The fact that you can read this article makes it likely that you, like 7.2 billion people worldwide who completed primary education, remember spending much of your childhood at school. Learning is, by definition, challenging, and those of us reminiscing about childhood may also remember the stresses of grappling with math ...

Activism

Voting While Uncommitted

Sustained collective action is not incompatible with the singular act of voting

October 31, 2024 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I have never subscribed to the idea that citizens who refuse to vote for a Democratic candidate in a tight race are somehow morally responsible for the election of a Republican, however bad that Republican might be. If we are serious about liberal democracy, then we must recognize that every citizen ...

Activism

What Democrats Lose in Ignoring the Uncommitted Movement

The party has learned the wrong lessons from 1968

October 24, 2024 • by Abby Lloyd

In anticipation of the Uncommitted National Movement’s arrival at this summer’s Democratic National Convention, press and political commentators made frequent reference to the anti-war protests turned police riots of the 1968 convention. It had been more than 50 years since internal discord among Democrats had been organized into an electoral ...

What Democrats Lose in Ignoring the Uncommitted Movement

Education

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

The discursive stylings of an authoritarian campus administration

October 24, 2024 • by Jessica Storey-Nagy

Instead of grading papers and preparing final exams last April, I was at Dunn Meadow, a public gathering space on Indiana University (IU) Bloomington’s campus. My aim, and that of my colleagues, was to protect student protesters from the violence sanctioned by IU’s top administrators, another possible intrusion by the ...

All IU Faculty, Staff, and Students Are “Safe,” but Some Are Safer Than Others

Film

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest

Mass dehumanization on the other side of the garden wall

September 25, 2024 • by Anonymous

When viewed against the backdrop of what Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the UN has called “the most thoroughly documented genocide in history,” Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s recent film about the genocide of the Jews, takes on a deeper meaning: “The reason I made this film,” Glazer said shortly after ...

Notes on Jonathan Glazer’s <em>Zone of Interest </em>

Middle East & North Africa

On The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy’s journey into his country’s heart of darkness

September 23, 2024 • by Benoit Challand

Gideon Levy, an award-winning journalist for the liberal Israeli English-language daily Haaretz, has been covering the Palestinian occupied territories since the late 1980s. His column, “Twilight Zone,” published during the Oslo process, was famously unsettling to many Israelis because he established, week after week, that the celebrated peace process was ...

On <em>The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe</em>

Literature

A New Media Artist from Tehran at The New School

Her photographs and poetry make the ordinary seem extraordinary

July 3, 2024 • by Alexia Underwood and Zohreh Zadbood

Persian poetry is a treasure. I never thought that I would be interested in poetry in any other language, but when my soul encountered English poetry, I felt a new magic....

A New Media Artist from Tehran at The New School

Middle East & North Africa

Israel Has Weaponized Trauma. Should We Talk About It?

Mourning and motherland

June 20, 2024 • by Jordan Osserman

Within left-leaning circles, any attempt articulate an emotional tie to Israel is fraught—understandably, given the scandalous forms of censorship and repression facing Palestinian perspectives in the mainstream....

Israel Has Weaponized Trauma. Should We Talk About It?

Body & Mind

Slow Torture in Gaza

“We feel well as long as we do not feel our body”

June 18, 2024 • by Austin Tannenbaum

But having been tortured does not justify the torture others, even under the guise of self-protection. Améry said as much....

Middle East & North Africa

Palestine and the Subversion of International Law

How the UNRWA paradox underpins Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing

June 17, 2024 • by Widad Tamimi

For Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, freedom of movement is non-existent. But to flee is to lose one’s right of return. International law underpins Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing....