Majid Naficy: The Engraver
You put on your eyeglasses
And read me your daughter’s will
Word by word.
Rebecca Gordon: Social Security Versus National Security
The U.S. “national security” budget is still the third rail of politics in this country.
Daniel Burston: An Open Letter to Steve Kowit on his poem “Intifada”
Right now, civil conversation on these subjects is difficult to impossible to sustain because both the Zionist and the Palestinian narratives have been carefully curated to highlight the harms that each side inflicted on the other, and to minimize or ignore the harms that they inflicted on their adversaries.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: When I Shut the Door
The news arrived by e-mail — a scribble of a long, single sentence, broken up, like little chunks of wood, the way a year is broken up into months and weeks, days, hours.
Steve Kowit: Intifada
bekippad Sabras dance thru the Tel Aviv streets chanting
gleefully: No school tomorrow in Gaza; all of their children are dead.
Andrew J. Bacevich: My Son Was Killed in Iraq 14 Years Ago—Who’s Responsible?
The Islamic Republic? George W. Bush? Both answers feel like evasions.
Richard Levine: Disturbing the Peace
“Do you want to know what war is about?”
Jake asked the talkative one.
“Don’t say it, Jake,” I said.
Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan: Ending food insecurity in Native communities means restoring land rights, handing back control
To end reliance on government-provided foods, many Native communities are seeking a different approach: a return to traditional foods and practices that are healthy and culturally centered.
Alessia Carneval: The history of protest songs in Tunisia and their link to popular culture
In Tunisia, the protest song is called al-ughniya al-multazima in Arabic, or chanson engagée in French. Both literally mean “committed song” and put an emphasis on the political and social aim of this genre.
Video: My Brother’s Keeper
A former Guantánamo Bay prisoner and his guard reunite as equals 13 years later.
Tracey L. Rogers: Palestinian Lives Matter | We Must Reject Crimes Against Humanity
Just as Black Lives Matter, so do Palestinian Lives Matter. We cannot campaign for racial healing and justice on stolen land in our own country while simultaneously backing a campaign to occupy and displace people abroad.
Amira Hass: Israel Is Wiping Out Entire Palestinian Families on Purpose
The numerous incidents of killing entire families in Israeli bombings in Gaza—Parents and children, babies, grandparents, siblings—attest that these were not mistakes. The bombings follow a decision from higher up, backed by the approval of military jurists.
Patrick Gathara: Colonial Powers Have Long Demanded the ‘Right to Self-Defense’ Against the People They Have Colonized
Colonial occupiers have long claimed a “right” to defend themselves from the resistance of native communities, including by committing mass murder.
James L. Gelvin: As the Palestinian minority takes to the streets, Israel is having its own Black Lives Matter moment
As in the United States, a brutalized minority group, facing systemic racism and discriminatory acts has taken to the streets. And, as in the United States, the only way out starts with serious soul searching on the part of the majority.
