Middle East Archives - Public Seminar

Colonization

A House in the Middle of the Road

The cannibal colonization of homes and roads during Palestine’s Great Revolt

March 2, 2026 • by Chris Harding

I spent the summer of 2025 in Bayt Lahm (Bethlehem), conducting archival research in the Jacir family’s historic dar, a beautiful two-story home built in the nineteenth century from Jerusalem stone. Taking a break one afternoon, I watched a short film, Mehdi Amel:The Colonial Mode of Production (2024), by the ...

History

Judah Magnes: Binationalism as Political Theology

A reminder of a sacred myth

October 7, 2025 • by Manousha Dhiwaghar

Judah Magnes, rabbi, orator, pacifist, and founding Chancellor of the Hebrew University, has long haunted the political margins of Israeli and Palestinian history. Too Zionist for the anti-statist left, too pacifist for the militarizing Yishuv, and too binational for a nation determined to consolidate, Magnes occupies a strange position in ...

Judah Magnes: Binationalism as Political Theology

Middle East & North Africa

Losing a Country, Losing a Father

An excerpt from We Could Have Been Friends My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir

January 22, 2024 • by Raja Shehadeh

My father never showed me this booklet. Nonetheless, it was the precursor to similar ones that I would write years later with the same objective, except that in my case it was to help the world better understand the nature of the Israeli occupation of the rest of Palestine....

Imaginal Politics

The Peace that Kills

Notes from the launch of the Trump & Netanyahu ‘peace plan’

February 13, 2020 • by Antti Tarvainen

If they can afford it, the Palestinians won't have to pretend to be working with the US anymore. Perhaps the security and economic deals related to the Oslo Accords framework can now be abandoned and this, yet another-peace-that-kills, rejected. It is a fool’s hope, but there might thus be a ...

Past Present

U.S. Embassy Attack in Baghdad

Past Present Podcast, Episode 210

January 7, 2020 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Iraqi militants stormed the American embassy in Baghdad last week. Neil referenced the recently leaked cable communications between Iran and Iraq. Natalia referred to this Middle East Eye essay on the historical significance of attacks on American embassies and to this Guardian piece on the history of U.S. embassies. In our ...

Democracy

Why Did Trump Let Erdogan Go?

The Turkish Invasion of Syria and the Global Alliance among Authoritarian Leaders

October 18, 2019 • by Utku Balaban

Trump imposed sanctions on Turkey, which is likely Trump’s way of both appeasing the opposition in the GOP and indirectly supporting Erdogan, as, in their current scope, the sanctions were not an effective instrument to deter Erdogan from going further. Furthermore, Trump accused Kurds of releasing the ISIS-related prisoners, while there is strong evidence ...

Democracy

Democracy in Israel/Palestine Today

Ethnic Democracy or Ethnocracy?

February 27, 2019 • by Shaul Magid and Yehuda Magid

During a roundtable debate on Israeli television in the last election cycle, the major candidates, excluding the two major parties Likud and Labor (as is the custom), offered final word after a vigorous exchange of ideas. Centrist Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”) party began his ...

Feature

50 Years of Occupation

When will the Israel-Palestine conflict end?

July 25, 2018 • by David J. Lobina

It is now over 50 years since Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank during the war of June 1967, with no end in sight for the military occupation and colonization enforced upon the Palestinians since then. At the same time, it has been some four years since Mahmoud Abbas, ...

Feature

The Quest for an Honest Broker

Are we nearing the end of the US-led peace process as we know it?

June 7, 2018 • by Lior Lehrs

Much has been said and written on President Donald Trump’s controversial statement on Jerusalem on December 6, 2017. But there was one sentence in the speech that everyone -- the conflicting parties and the international community -- could agree on: “It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact ...

Feature

Film review: Champ of the Camp

The first ever feature-length documentary filmed in the UAE’s controversial labor camps

January 1, 2018 • by Elena Gagovska

Mahmoud Kaabour’s film Champ of the Camp (2014) opens with the song by a South Asian man set against the backdrop of a modernistic building covered in glass windows. The song is called “Long Separation” and the setting is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Such juxtaposition runs throughout the movie: the poor ...

Education

The Clash of Civilizations

From Myth to Reality?

July 31, 2017 • by Nardine Luca

Recently, an Egyptian friend of mine posted on Facebook that an Egyptian friend of his tried to apply for an internship in France. The reply he got was shockingly disappointing and not expected at all. Without mentioning the company’s name, it said: “Thanks for your interest in an internship… I ...

Feature

In this Uncontainable Night

Notes from Jerusalem and the Occupied West Bank

June 27, 2017 • by Judy Roth

This is the beginning of my tenth year thinking about and witnessing the impact of occupation on Israeli and Palestinian families and, to some extent, on those of us living further away. And a question hovers that I cannot avoid: What lingers? What lingers are the “uncontainable nights”[1] of incursion and ...