George Yancy: If the State of the World Makes You Want to Scream, You’re Not Alone
We must face the weight of such social evils and be prepared to also face the ways in which we are complicit with them, especially when we are often indifferent.
Haya El-Refai: Laya’s first Eid
When war comes, it steals everything: souls, memories, homes, happiness, love and safety. Instead, it brings fear, blood, death, darkness and terror.
Naomi Shihab Nye, Michael Simms & Friends: Poets for the People of Gaza
Naomi Shihab Nye, the current Young People’s Poet Laureate, and poet Michael Simms gather international poets to share works that navigate themes of identity, displacement, and home in Gaza.
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.
Abby Zimet: Israeli Soldiers Kill Autistic Man For No Discernible Reason
Israeli soldiers shot and killed at point-blank range Iyad Khairi Halak, a severely autistic, 32-year-old Palestinian man as he cowered on the ground, bleeding, terrified and uncomprehending, behind garbage cans.
Philip Terman: Darwish and Amichai Share Poems in Heaven
the breath of their words
shaping the winds
across the deserts
of their homeland,
which is the same homeland
Kathleen O’Toole: Starlings (corrected version)
My mind suddenly shifts
to tally one week’s arithmetic of grief:
eighty children among the hundreds killed
in a fine-tuned cone of shrapnel
George Yancy: Dear God, Are You There?
We are in a deep spiritual crisis that can’t be relieved by politics, or philosophy.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Trees Gossip with the Birds
When the orange sun sinks over the AZIZI sign I feel
the darkening world soaking up all the extra noise
James J. Zogby: Most Democratic Candidates Still Afraid To Criticize Israel’s Violations Of Palestinian Rights
Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies are viewed negatively by most Democrats. This shift in opinion has placed many Democratic presidential candidates in a bind.
Abby Zimet: We Know What Hate Looks Like — Standing With Ilhan
Amidst the ongoing, breathtaking hypocrisy of rabid charges of anti-Semitism – aka daring to criticize America’s toxic complicity with Israeli war crimes – heedlessly leveled against her, often from down-and-dirty bigots, Ilhan Omar is all done apologizing.
Abby Zimet: They Took My House, They Took My Life, They Took Everything.
Israeli police forcibly expelled a Palestinian family from their home in the occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday and promptly turned it over to right-wing Jewish settlers, who raised the Israeli flag over it as family members wept.
Stephen Zunes: ‘More AIPAC Than J Street’ — Kamala Harris Runs to the Right on Foreign Policy
Harris is being embraced by many progressive Democrats, and she’s branding herself as a progressive. Yet in the course of her little more than two years in the U.S. Senate, she’s taken some foreign policy positions that should give pause to supporters of human rights and international law.
Vox Populi 