MER Article The Ghetto vs. the Gun Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood (trans. Chaya Galai) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Shira Robinson • 7 min read
MER Article Not All Black and White In photography books, Palestine is a schizophrenic place. In certain books it is primarily funerals, masked militants with guns and crumbling buildings, while other Michelle Woodward • 5 min read
MER Article Documents: Statement by Workers in the Public Cultural Sphere in Lebanon The month-long war in Lebanon elicited diverse reactions from the Lebanese left. We reproduce here two examples. The first statement, distributed on July 25, 2006, was signed by Ibrahim al-Amin and Joseph Samaha of the new al-Akhbar newspaper, leftist intellectuals Fawwaz Trabulsi and Samah Idriss, al-Safir editor Talal Salman, filmmakers (Author not identified) • 7 min read
MER Article Palestinian Women in the Israeli Knesset On March 28, 2006, Nadia Hilou from the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa became only the second Palestinian woman to be elected to the Knesset since 1949, the year of Israel’s first national elections. Hilou’s sole predecessor was Husniyya Jabara, who made history in 1999 when she won a seat in the I Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud • 17 min read
MER Article The Only Place Where There's Hope Beginning in December 2004, and then every Friday since February 2005, Palestinians, Israelis and internationals have converged on the West Bank village of Bil‘in to demonstrate against the barrier that Israel is building there, as part of the chain of walls and fences (the Wall) that the Israeli go Robert Blecher • 15 min read
MER Article Bilateralism on Trial During my short flight from Amman to Beirut on July 3, the flight attendant was distributing copies of Jordan’s state-owned newspapers. They are all worthless, I told him. He replied: “Sir, the only page that contains truth is the obituary page.” The steward’s remark succinctly captures the Arab pub Nubar Hovsepian • 4 min read
MER Article Siege Notes Rasha Salti moved back to Beirut from New York on July 11, 2006, the day before Hizballah’s cross-border raid and Israel’s month-long war on Lebanon. We publish here excerpts from several entries in a diary she kept during the war. Her “Siege Notes” can be read in full at www.electroniclebanon.net [ Rasha Salti • 16 min read
MER Article From the Editor (Fall 2006) First drafts of history make strange bedfellows. Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hizballah, claimed a “strategic, historic victory” when UN Security Council Resolution 1701 ushered in a very belated “cessation of hostilities” in Lebanon and Israel on August 14. Indeed, grumbled the Israeli right and its backers in Washington, Israel The Editors • 5 min read
MER Article Editor's Picks (Summer 2006) Aarts, Paul and Gerd Nonneman, eds. Saudi Arabia in the Balance: Political Economy, Society, Foreign Affairs (New York: New York University Press, 2005). Abdul-Ahad, Ghaith, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner. Unembedded: Four Independent Photographers on the War in Iraq (White River Ju The Editors • 1 min read
MER Article Turkey's Tug of War To what extent should national security trump democracy? Since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, this question has been pertinent everywhere, but it is especially pressing in Turkey. Marcie J Patton • 18 min read
MER Article Storming the Fences "'Black locusts' are taking over Morocco!" So ran the September 12, 2005 headline of al-Shamal, an Arabic-language Tangier newspaper, describing the forays of masses of in-transit sub-Saharan Africans trying to scale the security fences separating Morocco from the Spanish-ruled enclaves of Ceuta and Elie Goldschmidt • 17 min read
MER Article The Whole Range of Saddam Hussein's War Crimes On October 19, 2005, in a former presidential palace that had been hastily refurbished to resemble a respectable courtroom, Saddam Hussein went on trial. Arshin Adib-Moghaddam • 15 min read
