Off the beaten track tours • Visit sites • Meet locals • Discuss Human Rights & Politics
By Miri – There is a common saying that Arab people by definition cannot be perpetrators of anti-Semitism for they are Semites themselves. If we look at the etymology of the word this is obviously true, as the term “Semitic” actually only refers to a language group, that includes among others also Arabic. If we […]
By Miri – In light of unhalted settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank and Jerusalem, by now housing almost 5% of the overall Israeli population, the two state solution has increasingly been declared as dead. As a consequence voices advocating a binational state as the only viable alternative are getting louder. This does […]
By Miri – According to Aziz Abu Sarah “there are as many definitions [of normalization] as there are Palestinians themselves”. Normalization, according to him, developed into a catch-all argument against any cooperative effort with Israel, ranging from the relations between Arab states and Israel, to having any contact whatsoever with Israelis, or even Jews on […]
By Miri – Strolling down some of the busier streets that run parallel to the sea shore in Tel Aviv’s bourgeois North one easily finds a number of small businesses, hairdressers, cosmeticians and so on displaying signs in their windows saying “Nous parlons Francais”. Similarly, passing coffee shops and restaurants in that same area one […]
By Miri – Like Palestinian artistic and cultural forms of expression in general, Palestinian cinema is “structurally exilic”, meaning its actors are spread across different places, with limited means of communication and collaboration. As such the cinematic approaches of Palestinian film makers, just like their backgrounds, differ considerably, yet writer Nana Asfour asserts that “[w]hat […]
By Miri – As a child I was fascinated by Greek mythology; the stories about fighting and raging goddesses appealed to me much more than those about the one and only (male) god commanding a guard of mainly male prophets. At the time, I was not familiar with the predecessors of the monotheistic system, that, […]
By Miri – The past few years have seen the ascent of the most right wing governments in Israel’s history. While there seems to be a widespread sense of political apathy and electoral participation in Israel is declining in general, critics often suggest that the relative powerlessness of the Palestinian community in Israel stems from […]
By Miri – I ran away from Eritrea seven months ago to avoid the army service. I intended to find refuge in Sudan, but when I arrived in Sudan, crossing the border by foot, with several other Eritreans, some Bedouins arrived with a vehicle and kidnapped us. Some of us succeeded in running away but […]
By Miri – Jerusalem’s streets during Ovadia’s funeral Last week an estimated 800,000 people gathered in Jerusalem to mourn the death of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Sephardic community, turning the event into the largest funeral in Israeli history. Ovadia is considered to be one of the greatest rabbinical scholars in recent […]
By Miri – “There’s nothing the Arab respects more than a strong steady white hand drawing arbitrary lines betwixt their ridiculous tribal allegiances” Sir Archibald Mapsalot III It is widely accepted that the geography of today’s Middle East was carved out by Britain and France with no consideration of the thoughts of the people actually […]
By Miri – India’s historic Jewish communities are usually subdivided into the Cochinis, the Baghdadis, and the Bené Israel, the latter of which constitutes by far the biggest of the three groups. Bené Israel in India While there is no historic documentation of their origin, it is widely believed that the Bené Israel have descended […]
By Miri – Edward and his sister Rosemarie, 1940 It has been ten years since the passing of Edward Said. He was a cultural critic, an academic, a writer, an intellectual, a musician and probably one of the most powerful voices of the Palestinian cause. Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 to a prosperous […]
