PALESTINE - ISRAEL - JORDAN - SINAI

Off the beaten track tours • Visit sites • Meet locals • Discuss Human Rights & Politics

Crossing the Wall – Palestinian Workers in Israel

By Miri – Following Eid al-Fitr, Israeli as well as international media was full of pictures and articles about West Bank Palestinians enjoying and celebrating Ramadan on Tel Aviv’s and Jaffa’s beaches. Israeli authorities had granted more than 200,000 permits to Palestinian West Bank residents for the high Muslim holiday. A view at Tel Aviv […]

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Everybody Is Equal, but Some Are More Equal

By Marianna Hillmer-Wiechmann – Marianna Hillmer-Wiechmann went on our Hebron Tour, and managed to capture some of her impressions of the horrific reality there in word and image (for the original article in German, see here). A few thousand soldiers are based in Hebron in order to protect a few hundred residents – that’s the […]

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A Community of Its Own? Russian Speaking Jews in Israel

By Miri –  Russian speaking Jews constitute about 20% of Israel’s total population today. Notwithstanding their large numbers, the fact that they have been calling Israel their home for quite a few decades by now, and that especially many of the younger generations perceive of themselves as Israelis, the veteran Israeli population still refers to […]

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The Role of Zionist Terrorism in the Foundation of the State of Israel – the Case of the Irgun Zvai Leumi

By Miri –  During the years between World War II and the establishment of Israel in 1948, three Jewish para-military organisations were operating in Palestine. The first one to emerge was the “Jewish Defense Organisation”, the Haganah, which was founded when the tensions between the Palestinian and the Jewish population started rising. Until 1929, the […]

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The Manifold Burdens of Palestinian Female Prisoners

By Miri –  During Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2008 and 2009 a large group of Israeli activists was arrested for blocking the entrance to a military airport north of Tel Aviv. I was one of them. At the end of our first court hearing the judge decided to send us to jail for a […]

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Land First – Earth Second? Environmentalism in Israel and Palestine

By Miri – Growing up in a middle class home in Germany in the 1980s and 1990s, I was privileged enough to learn quite a bit and grow aware of environmental problems. I remember having to drink UHT milk and my father trying to explain me what had happened in Chernobyl, which immediately turned me […]

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Rising from the Margins: Musika Mizrahit

By Miri – In a previous article on this blog we already outlined the historical roots of the socio-economic marginalisation of the Mizrahi (lit. “Eastern” Jews, stemming from Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus) communities by the dominant Ashkenazi (usually understood as European Jews) elite. The subordination of the Mizrahim also included the forced erasure […]

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Jerusalem YMCA

By Fred Schlomka –  Green Olive Tours selected the location of the International YMCA of Jerusalem as a convenient central departure point for most of our tours. However our affiliation with the organization goes much deeper and reflects our endorsement of YMCA’s philosophy of inclusiveness in this divided city. Every morning, while waiting for their […]

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On the Bedouin Serving in the Israeli Army

By Miri –  The other day I randomly got into a conversation with two guys. It turned out that they were Bedouin, working for the Ministry of Defense  and living in Tel Aviv. Soon our discussion turned political when I referred to Israel’s Arab population as Palestinians. “They are living in Israel, why do you […]

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A View at the Recent History of the City of Nazareth

By Miri – The city of Nazareth hardly needs much of an introduction. According to the New Testament it is the site of the Annunciation, i.e. the place where the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus Christ, the son of god, and it is thus […]

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On the Economic Situation of Palestinians with Israeli Citizenship

By Miri – A common image of South Tel Aviv Israel and its supporters were shocked by a recent report which qualified the Jewish state as the one with the highest poverty rate among all OECD nations. Poverty in Israel is however not a shared reality for all, instead it is very much concentrated in […]

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Strategic Alliance – Israel and Turkey

By Miri – Throughout the last weeks, I’ve been finding it very hard to not get distracted by all the good news coming in from Turkey, and to focus instead on the as usual not too positive updates from Palestine and Israel. I therefore decided to write about the rather complex relationship between Turkey and […]

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