MER Article Women, War and Exile Miriam Cooke, War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War (Syracuse University Press, 1996). May Ghousoub, Leaving Beirut (London: Saqi Books, 1998). Emily Nasrallah, Flight Against Time (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). Anita Vitullo Khoury • 5 min read
MER Article Growing Up In Jerusalem: A Conversation with Majda Batsh Majda Batsh is a 34-year-old journalist who studied cinematography in the Soviet Union. She grew up a hasan sabi [tomboy], “in the streets,” her mother says, of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, playing football on rooftops or in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and hopscotch Anita Vitullo Khoury • 5 min read
MER Article Growing Up In Jerusalem Jamila Freij (Umm Sam‘an) was born in 1930 in “new” Jerusalem, what is now called West Jerusalem. Her family had lived in Jerusalem’s Old City for 15 generations until 1925 when her father and his brother built houses in Bak‘a (which means “beautiful area”), then an unpopulated land outside the Old Anita Vitullo Khoury • 6 min read
MER Article Yitzhak Rabin and Israel's Death Squads Now that the abrasive and pugnacious Yitzhak Shamir has been replaced by the gravel-toned, pragmatic Yitzhak Rabin as Israel’s prime minister, should we anticipate a change for the better in Israel’s human rights record? Rabin cleverly campaigned for his June victory at the polls by ambiguously criticizing Likud’ Anita Vitullo Khoury • 7 min read
MER Article Erasing Arab Jerusalem Palestinian geographer Khaili Tufukji walks the streets of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem every day, carefully noting the dizzying Israeli construction. He documents cases of demolished and seized houses, follows up on land confiscations, studies new archaeological and historical claims, and tries to decipher the meaning and extent of Israeli government plans Anita Vitullo Khoury • 8 min read
MER Article Uprising in Gaza One year before the Palestinian mass uprising began, the writing was on the grey cement walls of refugee camp houses in Gaza, where you could read the anguish of Gaza camp residents at the spectacle of the Amal militia bombarding Palestinians in the camps in Lebanon. These attacks forged a real unit Anita Vitullo Khoury • 11 min read
MER Article West Bank Journal Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank (London: Quartet Books, 1982). My problem with the newspapers is that I can’t settle on the right time to read them. In the morning they darken the day, at noon they kill my appetite, after lunch they make me sick, and in the evening Anita Vitullo Khoury • 3 min read
