MER Article "Creeping Apartheid" in Israel-Palestine On July 5, 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said something that had many rubbing their eyes in disbelief. Reviewing his government’s first 100 days, he pronounced, “We have managed to create a national agreement about the concept of ‘two states for two peoples.’” Can it be that the Oren Yiftachel • 20 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Winter 2009) Some words cannot escape the horrors of the human past. When, in September 2001, President George W. Bush proclaimed a “crusade” against terrorism, he evoked in Muslim minds the indiscriminate slaughters by knights seeking to reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom. People have been lynched in many times and places, The Editors • 3 min read
Current Analysis Israel’s Religious Right and the Peace Process It would be easy to describe the residents of the outpost of Amona as radicals. In February 2006 they led protests of 4,000 settler activists, some of them armed, against 3,000 Israeli police who were amassed to make sure that nine unauthorized structures in the West Bank were bulldozed as ordered. Nicolas Pelham • 17 min read
Current Analysis Rachel Corrie in Palestine…and in San Francisco The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the oldest such festival in the United States, was founded in rebellion against received wisdom. Since 1980, the festival has promoted independent Jewish films that contest the conventional Hollywood depiction of Jewish life, particularly its lachrymose over-c Joel Beinin • 16 min read
MER Article Heard on the Hill of Shame It was early afternoon, a bright, crisp Friday in mid-January on the hilltop that lies between Route 34 and the Gaza border, maybe half a mile from Sderot. At the base of the hill lounged journalists and TV crews in foldout chairs, taking advantage of a midday lull in the bombardment. Pop music soun Peter Lagerquist • 5 min read
Current Analysis Shooting Film and Crying Waltz with Bashir (2008) opens with a strange and powerful image: a pack of ferocious dogs running headlong through the streets of Tel Aviv, overturning tables and terrifying pedestrians, converging beneath a building’s window to growl at a man standing there. It turns out that this man, Boaz, is an Ursula Lindsey • 12 min read
Current Analysis Human Rights Watch Goes to War The Middle East has always been a difficult challenge for Western human rights organizations, particularly those seeking influence or funding in the United States. The pressure to go soft on US allies is in some respects reminiscent of Washington’s special pleading for Latin American terror regimes Mouin Rabbani • 16 min read
Current Analysis The Horrors of Israel's Peace Three weeks after the war on Gaza, Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire but refused to terminate its so-called defensive operations. In response, Hamas declared a ceasefire for one week, until the withdrawal of Israeli troops has been completed. For many in the West, the ceasefire might seem like Samera Esmeir • 5 min read
Current Analysis Cast Lead in the Foundry A stopped clock, the saying goes, is right twice a day. The “senior Bush administration official” who chatted with the Washington Post on December 28 was right that Israel is “not trying to take over the Gaza Strip” with the massive assault launched the previous day, and correct that the Israelis ar The Editors • 10 min read
MER Article Khazzoom, Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel Aziza Khazzoom, Shifting Ethnic Boundaries and Inequality in Israel: Or, How the Polish Peddler Became a German Intellectual (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). The ethnic divide among Jewish Israelis is an elusive concept and a rarely acknowledged reality. There are no discriminatory Tamir Sorek • 4 min read
Current Analysis Gaza, the 21st Century Ghetto In the first attempt by a foreign country to break the blockade of Gaza, a Libyan freighter carrying 3,000 tons of essential humanitarian aid set sail for the impoverished coastal strip. On the shore Gazans assembled to welcome its arrival, a much needed gesture of hope and relief for Gaza’s 1.5 mil Bayann Hamid • 2 min read
Current Analysis Recipe for a Riot On October 8, 48-year old Tawfiq Jamal got into his car with his 18-year old son and a friend, and set out for the house of his relatives, the Shaaban family, who lived as of then in a new, predominantly Jewish neighborhood on the eastern edges of Acre. A walled city on the sea, mainly famed in the Peter Lagerquist • 31 min read
