MER Article "Transfer" and the Discourse of Racism Saturday night I decided to go to a campaign meeting of the Moledet Party in Kfar Shalem, a rough neighborhood in the south of Tel Aviv. In the past, houses there were periodically served with demolition orders by the Tel Aviv municipality; in 1982 one inhabitant pulled a gun on demolition crews who Ken Brown • 6 min read
MER Article The Great Divide One of the most intriguing questions after a year of the intifada is the paucity of Israeli opposition to the government’s “iron fist” policy. True, dozens of small groups demonstrate against the occupation, the atrocities, the deportations, the mass arrests. There have been many calls for “better I Emmanuel Farjoun • 13 min read
MER Article Israel Faces the Uprising The Palestinian uprising has stripped away Israel’s externally oriented masks (propaganda) and its internally oriented masks (defense mechanisms), as political rationality has steadily retreated before the state’s frantic response. Israel’s confrontation with the colonial reality of the occupied ter Azmi Bishara • 22 min read
MER Article From the Editors (March-April 1989) For well over a year now, the Israeli state has confronted the Palestinian uprising with what Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin calls “the iron fist.” The army’s goal is to restore order, Deputy Chief-of-Staff Ehud Barak said recently, “so that the Israeli government can pursue political initiatives fr The Editors • 2 min read
MER Article From the Editors (January/February 1989) As President-elect George Bush sits down to lunch with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in early December 1988 to discuss the modalities of Detente II, we wonder what the prospects are for any similar sort of US rapprochement with the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It took 16 years, from The Editors • 4 min read
MER Article Nightline in the Holy Land “This Week in The Holy Land,” ABC Nightline’ week-long series of broadcasts from Jerusalem between April 25 and April 29, 1988, was a major television event. The length of the series (seven hours of air time), its form and content, and its impact across a wide range of opinion in the United States, David Koff, Musindo Mwinyipembe • 15 min read
MER Article Organizing Around the Uprising The Palestinian uprising has put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict onto the agendas of progressive organizations nationwide. It has ignited a broad range of activities, including coalition-building, referendums, conferences and teach-ins, demonstrations, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, lobbying Lisa Hajjar • 6 min read
MER Article Jesse and the Jews Throughout the first half of 1988, at every level of the political process in the United States, the longstanding consensus governing policy towards Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict was in flux. The explosion of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and Israeli repressio Micah Sifry • 22 min read
MER Article From the Editors (November/December 1988) “The wars are winding down. The streets are heating up.” This was how Baltimore radio commentator Sean Connolly led off his “minimalist news” broadcast one day in mid-September. It is hard to find a more succinct way to describe the state of the world, the Middle East included, on the cusp of transi The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Palestine for Beginners After World War I, the League of Nations (controlled by the leading colonial powers of the time, Britain and France) carved up the territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The territory now made up of Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan was granted to Great Britain as a Mandate (a qu Lisa Hajjar, Joel Beinin • 8 min read
MER Article Points of Stress Eight months into the intifada, Israel’s occupation appears as unyielding as the rocky hills of Palestine. Bolstered by arms and funds from the United States and supported by a rightward-leaning public, the Israeli political establishment stands utterly intransigent, opposed to any political comprom James Paul • 14 min read
