Phoning it in Phriday – Must Reads for April 19-26

We got some changes to the format that we’re working on here at HQ. Until those roll out, however, enjoy my top picks from last week:

• It’s off our beat a bit, but this Al Jazeera op-ed that places the mass media’s discussions of Chechnya over the past week in the broader history of attempts to manage whiteness in the U.S. “The Wrong Kind of Caucasian” is definitely worth the read.
• A Knesset member from Yesh Atid decided to visit a friend in Ramallah. She was shocked by what she saw and posted this long, if still somewhat racist, Facebook status explaining her shock at the ways Palestinians are treated. Honestly, it doesn’t even sound like she saw any of the more exceptional forms of violence that characterize daily life in the West Bank: she talks about the Qalandia checkpoint and the daily harassment of the Israeli army. Is it possible that the average Israeli is truly this ignorant of what its government does in the West Bank?
• An op-ed from Haaretz argues that the most recent extension of Israel’s Citizenship Law makes Israel and apartheid state.

[W]e do not need to replicate exactly the characteristics of South African apartheid within discriminatory practices in civil rights in Israel in order to call Israel an apartheid state. The amendment to the Citizenship Law is exactly such a practice, and it is best that we not try to evade the truth: Its existence in our law books turns Israel into an apartheid state.

• Noam Sheizaf also takes up the citizenship law, focusing on the importance of paying attention to the 1 in 4 Israeli citizens who are not Jewish:

Palestinian citizens have many rights in Israel – especially compared with Palestinians under occupation – but they are not equal citizens. Even if Israel is forced to end the occupation, only by removing all discriminatory elements from its legal system and adopting a “state of all its citizens” model can it move toward becoming a truly democratic state, rather than a democracy of racial profiling.

• A group of senior European Union officials released a statement, saying that the Oslo process has nothing more to offer and that by pretending it does, “the Occupation is actually being entrenched by the present Western policy.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry disagrees, saying that the window for a two-state solution will close in 12-18 months. We’re not sure what he’s smoking, but we look forward to the United States endorsing a one-state democratic solution by October 2014. 
• And finally, peaking of interesting U.S. foreign policy, Secretary of State John Kerry said he could understand the anger of those who lost loved ones on the flotilla to Gaza, explicitly comparing what they had been through to the loss experienced by Americans who lost loved ones in the Boston bombings.

Phoning it in Phriday – Saturday Edition: Must Reads for April 13-19

Er…Sorry I’m a bit late on putting this one out. Things have been a bit crazy over at HQ. We got some good stuff coming at you this week, including our second Movie Monday, an analysis of that Blue and White Poll that I mentioned on Wednesday, and all the regular features. In the meantime, here are some of my top picks from last week, including the United Nations at its worst, an incredible new map, :

• Mondoweiss reports on UNICEF’s efforts to censor its own report, detailing the systematic and widespread abuse of Palestinian children by the Israeli army. (+972 mag also has a good writeup.):

The Australian reports on a bizarre press conference that took place in Jerusalem about the findings of UNICEF’s report. The press conference was greeted enthusiastically by journalists but the manner in which it was conducted indicates a fix was on to stifle the truth of the report. Unfortunately, it appears at least some of those engaged in this subterfuge were members of UNICEF, including Anthony Lake, executive director of the agency, and UNICEF’s Jerusalem chief Jean Gough.

• Electronic Intifada has an important write-up about the alleged “Mossad list” that Anonymous hackers have been circulating, harming ordinary Palestinians and Israelis in a misguided attempt at political hacktvism.
• Since I’ve been ragging on the Israeli Left a good bit lately, this +972mag article on the Left’s historical racism regarding the Mizrahi Jewish community caught my eye:

Maki [The Israeli Communist Party], however, was not alone. Ever since, most of the Zionist leftist movements have regarded Mizrahim as unnecessary surplus, lacking the sophistication or modernity to accept the Left’s lofty ideas.

• Yitzhak Laor has an important op-ed in Haaretz, noting the ever-increasing levels of racism against Arabs in Israel today.
  

  This is the real content of the State of Israel: in all fields, including in academia, where the faculty  aren’t as callous as the community leaders of Upper Nazareth. But they also enjoy keeping the pie to themselves; the pleasures of silence suit them well in a liberal context. This is the “Jewish State,” and, consequently, Arab children receive less education and the mortality rate of their babies is higher. Therefore, their villages are continually becoming more crowded and the poverty in their community trebles.

• The Israeli NGO Zochrot has released an incredible new map, for the first time recording all of the documented villages destroyed in the course of the Nakba. A high-quality version of the map together with a detailed explanation can be downloaded here. For more on the organization, The Economist has a great review of their recently published guidebook, Once Upon a Land.  Unfortunately, when activists from the organization attempted to hand out the map on the streets, this happened:

[www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2bJc9pcEnY&yt:cc=on;feature=youtu.be]

• Elisha Bashkin has a great write-up of the Right of Return conference that happened last week at Boston University. I especially enjoyed this point:

Creative Solutions All refugees in the world have the right to return to their homes. This is a granted right that all Palestinians have. It cannot be given or taken. However, Return does not necessarily mean turning back the clock to the eve of 1948. The vast majority of villages no longer exist; others have new towns built on the land while Jewish families occupy whatever houses remain in tact. In some instances the villages can be re-built, in others residents can join existing municipalities and in other cases people might choose to live in different cities than those they came from. The right to choose one’s place of residence is as important as the right to return home. Local mapping and planning done by organizations such as Badil and Zochrot can help further exploring and realizing return in creative ways.

• Mondoweiss profiles South Tel Aviv’s “Red House,” a Palestinian mansion which is one of the last remnants of the four villages that once stood in the area. The home has recently been acquired by the municipality, which could mean its preservation as a historical site or its destruction as part of the ongoing Nakba.