Current Analysis A Guide for the Perplexed You have reached the village of Kafr Bir‘im. Enjoy the clean air of the Upper Galilee. Listen to the mountain silence. Observe the elegance of the stone construction in front of you; it is left standing after the 1948 occupation of the village and its consequent destruction. And realize as well that Samera Esmeir • 18 min read
Current Analysis The Battle for Nazareth By order of the Israeli Supreme Court [http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.573700], Nazareth will reconduct its mayoral election on March 11. The city is once again the site of an acrimonious political battle. Municipal elections were held in Nazareth, along with the rest of the country, on Octo Leena Dallasheh • 3 min read
Current Analysis Analyze This In her column on the Haaretz website yesterday, Carleton University political scientist Mira Sucharov bemoaned the tendency [http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/the-fifth-question/.premium-1.577688 ] of “some of the cleverest minds on Israel and Palestine” to “devolve” into Manichean thinking about Israel Shira Robinson • 2 min read
Current Analysis Our Primer on Israel-Palestine Some 43 years ago, a group of activists in the movement to end the war in Vietnam founded the Middle East Research and Information Project. The impetus was that the American public, including the anti-war left, was poorly informed about the Middle East and the US role [https://www.jacobinmag.com/20 The Editors • 2 min read
Current Analysis The Ongoing Fantasy of Israeli Democracy Before 1967 The past week has a witnessed a flurry of debate in the American and Israeli media over the growing call [http://www.bdsmovement.net/] to boycott companies and institutions that profit from or are otherwise complicit in the ongoing 47-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shira Robinson • 3 min read
MER Article Settlement Secularism Scan the headlines for news about Israeli settlers, and you are likely to be overwhelmed by stories of a radical and violent religious nationalism: extremists marching on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, guarded by Israeli soldiers, to pray atop the Temple Mount; West Bank colonists torching olive t Callie Maidhof • 13 min read
Current Analysis What Comes Next Whatever comes next [http://mondoweiss.net/2013/10/israelpalestine-recognized-comprehensive.html] in the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, the State of Israel is here to stay. To acknowledge this fact is not to nod to Israel’s “right to exist” -- people have rights, states are supposed Chris Toensing • 4 min read
MER Article Nazareth Dispatch They are Israel’s Siamese twin cities, forced into an uncomfortable pairing more than half a century ago. Nazareth and Natzrat Illit, or Upper Nazareth in English, almost share a name. Although formally separated by a ring road, Israel has tied their fates together. Each is engaged in a battle with Jonathan Cook • 10 min read
Current Analysis Futile Military Financing One of the more regrettable things that Uncle Sam does with your tax dollars is sending $3.1 billion in military aid to Israel every year. He’ll be doing that until 2018 -- and probably after, unless Americans decide enough is enough. When President Barack Obama traveled to Israel in March, he was Chris Toensing • 2 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf Although the Congressional investigating committee did everything in its power to minimize Israel’s role in the Iran-Contra scandal, the hearings and their fallout did suggest that Israel played a major, and very likely initiating, role in the sordid affair. This and other matters skirted by both th (Author not identified) • 4 min read
Current Analysis Viral Occupation When Israeli security forces arrived in the middle of the night at the Tamimi house in Nabi Salih, the occupied West Bank, the family was already in bed. The raid was not unexpected, as news had traveled around the village on that day in January 2011: Soldiers were coming to houses at night, demandi Rebecca L. Stein • 13 min read
Current Analysis Do We Know Enough? In January 2007, amid the furor over Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, former President Jimmy Carter made his first major public appearance about the book at Brandeis University, which defines itself as “the only non-sectarian Jewish-sponsored college or university” in the United States. He received a Stephen R. Shalom • 20 min read