The National, January 16, 2010 Banners strung from lampposts across Jerusalem welcome the winter participants of Birthright, a programme that brings college-aged Jews, most of whom are American, to Israel for a free 10-day tour. Funded by wealthy Jewish philanthropists and the Israeli government, the trip takes participants to sites that have historical importance to …
The Huffington Post, January 14, 2010 Jared Malsin, the editor of the English edition of Maan News Agency, has been detained by Israeli authorities. Malsin, a Jewish-American who lives and works in the West Bank, was picked up on Tuesday at Ben Gurion International Airport, as he and his partner returned from vacation in the Czech …
The Huffington Post, January 9, 2010 Anat Hoffman spent 14 years on the Jerusalem city council. But last week, she sat on a different side of the law, as Israeli police interrogated and fingerprinted this former politician turned prominent social activist. Hoffman is the chairwoman of Women of the Wall (WOW), a group that advocates …
Mondoweiss, December 31, 2009 This is the final installment of a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details. Gilad Zwick, 25, is on his way to mandatory reserve duty. For two weeks, he will cease to be a journalist and student, donning instead an olive green uniform and keeping watch over a settlement. While Zwick has …
Public Art Review, Issue 41, Fall-Winter 2009 On a side street deep in the center of Tel Aviv—a city known to Israelis as the bubble—a young Muslim girl confronts passersby. Her face is framed by a hijab. Her hands clutch a book bearing a stylized Islamic star and crescent to her chest. And she stares. …
Mondoweiss, January 3, 2010 This is the sixth installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details. When Tania Hary was 15, she found her father’s birth certificate. It read Palestine. “It was a shock,” Hary, now 29, recalls. “I couldn’t assess the full ramifications.” Though Israeli-born Hary was raised in Los Angeles, she knew …
Mondoweiss, January 2, 2010 This is the fifth installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details. Judith, a character in Dvir Tzur’s novel Inverted Letters, lives alone on a cliff high above the sea. Judith was a settler, but her children live in the Diaspora. Gazing towards unseen lands beyond the water, Judith is …
Mondoweiss, January 1, 2010 This is the fourth installation in a seven-part series. See Mondoweiss for details. As an attorney for a NGO that advocates for workers’ rights, Hanny Ben Israel, 29, sees the many faces of Israel’s problems on a daily basis. Though some of the complainants she sees are Israeli and Palestinian, most …
The National, January 2, 2010 “The moment I found these, my life changed,” says Sharif Sharif-Safadi, archaeologist and expert on the cultural heritage of Nazareth. It was 1986. Dr. Sharif-Safadi had just returned from Italy. He’d studied archaeology in Perugia and worked on the conservation of historic items in Rome. And then, one afternoon in …
Maan News Agency, December 31, 2009 Construction on the Al-Bireh stadium resumed last week, a month after the Israeli forces shut-down the project. But Palestinian officials are not celebrating – the mood is tense, and the building feverish, as the fate of the stadium remains uncertain. Work on the stadium began in October 2008, after …