Middle East & North Africa Archives - Page 4 of 6

Activism

Scholars Call for an End to the Violence in Israel and Palestine

This war must end now!

December 11, 2023 • by Public Seminar

We write as scholars and educators in the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, for the immediate lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and for the immediate release of all hostages. This war must ...

Scholars Call for an End to the Violence in Israel and Palestine

Activism

Questioning Art in a Time of War

How the fabric of my sensory experience was transformed by Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitvah

December 6, 2023 • by Abby Merrick

Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah is nominally addressed to Jewish teens in the United States who are preparing for their B’nai Mitzvahs (a gender-neutral rendering of Bat or Bar Mitzvah). It was published in an edition of 3,000 by Wendy’s Subway, an independent Brooklyn publisher, with support from ...

Activism

A Pioneering Palestinian Film Offers a Quantum of Solace

For those who question the capacity of rap to deliver powerful positive messages of social change, Slingshot Hip Hop supplies an answer

November 29, 2023 • by Zenzelé Soa-Clarke

Slingshot Hip Hop ends with a pan-Palestinian concert in the West Bank—minus the one rap group Israeli officers wouldn’t let exit Gaza. Even in their absence, the other groups maintain optimism: a belief that things can change, including people's minds. ...

A Pioneering Palestinian Film Offers a Quantum of Solace

Activism

A Response to “Principles of Solidarity. A Statement”

Human dignity for all

November 22, 2023 • by Public Seminar

Solidarity means that the principle of human dignity must apply to all people. This requires us to recognize and address the suffering of all those affected by an armed conflict....

Middle East & North Africa

The War Between Israel and Hamas Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game

We need to acknowledge the universal experience of shared human suffering

October 25, 2023 • by Ilan Zvi Baron

Exploring the zero-sum game of rhetoric surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its dire consequences. Amid the polarizing narratives, a call for acknowledging shared human suffering and rethinking the discourse to avoid a path that exults in death. ...

The War Between Israel and Hamas Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game

Middle East & North Africa

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

What we can learn from scholars of anti-Black racism

October 18, 2023 • by Magda Teter

For almost a century, most of us have focused on dissecting anti-Semitic ideas and ideologies. But—with the very important exception of those studying the Holocaust—we have not paid enough attention to the impact these ideas, images, and actions have on Jews as human beings....

Have We Scholars of Anti-Semitism Failed to Facilitate Empathy for Its Victims?

Middle East & North Africa

Darkness Falls on Gaza

In an excerpt from Shell-Shocked, a journalist reports on life in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge

October 18, 2023 • by Mohammed Omer

Here in Gaza City, the electricity was gone; it was dark everywhere. The water supply was foul, food was rancid, and fear permeated the summer night. ...

Middle East & North Africa

Sleepwalkers

We are once again proving ourselves to be the dupes of violence

October 18, 2023 • by James Dodd

My deepest fear—and not only for Israel and Palestine, but for many other parts of the world where political responsibility is being undermined by the narcotics of outrage and resentment—is that our political life is currently locked in a downward spiral thanks to which options appear to be more and ...

Activism

Reflections on the War between Israel and Hamas

Voices of sanity are in danger of being drowned out by the rhetoricians of all-out war

October 16, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

For a long time many civilians, Israeli and Palestinian, have suffered, as their leaders have failed to bring about a civil, peaceful, and at least modestly just end to a long and violent conflict. I feel for them all, and particularly for the children who have grown up knowing nothing ...

Reflections on the War between Israel and Hamas

Democracy

Is Masih Alinejad Really the Voice of the Iranian Women’s Movement?

Or is the women’s rights activist the new face of the U.S. war machine?

September 13, 2023 • by Setareh Shohadaei

Who is Masih Alinejad, and how did she rise to such a position of power and influence in the United States?...

Is Masih Alinejad Really the Voice of the Iranian Women’s Movement?

Democracy

The Women’s Movement in Iran One Year after the Death of Mahsa Amini

A fragile triumph

September 12, 2023 • by Kian Tajbakhsh

As we approach the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in September 2022, what can we expect for the future of Iranian women’s civil rights?...

The Women’s Movement in Iran One Year after the Death of Mahsa Amini

Middle East & North Africa

Iran’s First Feminist Uprising

Woman! Life! Freedom!

September 28, 2022 • by Kian Tajbakhsh

This is the stirring slogan of the protests that have erupted across Iran, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish Iranian woman who was visiting Tehran with her family when Iran’s morality police detained her on September 16 for showing too much hair under her hijab ...