AUGUST 26, 2014 EUGENE WOLTERS In 1979, Edward Said was invited by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to France for a conference on Middle East peace. It was in the wake of the Camp David Accords that ended the war between Egypt and Israel, that the author of “Orientalism” and ardent supporter of the Palestinian people, was invited to contribute with other prominent thinkers.
Said offered effusive praise for Sartre when recounting his adventure, writing for the London Review of Books:
by SHLOMO SAND AUGUST 28, 2014 When the muses thunder, the guns stay silent. The adage, habitually inverted, is inaccurate. The propaganda sirens are never as loud as when the cannons, the planes and helicopters buzz and spit their fire. The television chains, in Israel and elsewhere, with their journalists, commentators and special correspondents have, between the advertising, presided over the spilled blood which few amongst them appear to attach much importance.
July 12, 2014 – Israeli residents, mostly from Sderot, sit on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch Israeli bombardment of Gaza. (By Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images) When Akkas Al-Ali's Israeli friend accused him of "siding with terrorists" in Gaza, he decided to write the following letter in response. Wednesday, August 27, 2014 By Akkas Al-Ali By now, I expect you are fully aware of the apocalyptic scenes that have been coming out of Gaza over the past few weeks.
Nazmi Al-Masri
August 25, 2014
This day is carved in my memory.
As all academics in Gaza, I had given much thought to my students who were suffering all sorts of agonies and worries caused by Israel’s aggression. After 40 days of atrocities caused by heavy bombardment and random artillery shelling, which destroyed thousands of houses and devastated countless families, the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) did everything it could to make use of the three-day temporary ceasefire, which was extended for five days and then for another 24-hour period before it ended at midnight on August 19th, 2014.
Gaza and Palestine, by Ema Abu Shtayyeh Antoun Issa Posted: 08/25/2014 The resumption of fighting between Israel and Hamas can be largely attributed to Egypt's failure to broker a fair, enduring cease-fire. Egypt's cease-fire proposal, as outlined in 11 points, was effectively a call for a return to the status quo: a besieged Gaza Strip with token, unspecified assistance to help it rebuild - the third reconstruction Gaza will have to undergo in less than seven years.
ARGUMENT As Israel and the Palestinians struggle to reach yet another cease-fire, the mediators in Cairo are making the conflict worse -- and empowering radicals in the process. BY MICHELE DUNNE , NATHAN J. BROWN AUGUST 18, 2014 As negotiations on a lasting cease-fire in Gaza grind on in Cairo, it's not only the animosity between Israel and Hamas that is complicating the talks -- it's also Egypt's role as mediator.
by Basem L. Ra'ad Behind the blinding media rhetoric and deceptive narratives and justifications, and digressions from root issues, the latest attacks on Gaza are part of a larger plan. Christian Palestinians voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in 2006. I was in the Jerusalem area, and in Ramallah and Bethlehem, and witnessed this unusual turn. It wasn’t the decisive factor in the crushing win by Hamas over the Authority led by Fatah, but it carried much meaning.
Israel's latest war brought its increasingly fascist politics before a global audience. By Scott McConnell • August 6, 2014 Throughout the 1950s and 1960s and continuing through the present, the central issue in the study of European history was the rise of Nazism. Not the documenting of the facts of the long descent to the Holocaust, though this was essential to the enterprise. But the trying to understand how a country that was in many ways the most advanced in Europe could descend so far so fast.
The Islamic University of Gaza bombed by Israeli F16 warplanes, August 02, 2014. (Photo: Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Nazmi Al-Masri on August 12, 2014 Over the one-year period from July 2013 to July 2014, I was supposed to participate in six international academic conferences and meetings as a partner in four international projects: three EU-funded projects (two from Erasmus-Mundus, one Tempus) and one BritishArts and Humanities Research Council-funded project. Because of the siege and the current war, I could not participate in any of these academic gatherings, which were held in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Jordan, and Cyprus.
By Jordan Skinner / 08 August 2014 In 1982, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze interviewed the Palestinian author Elias Sanbar, founder of the Journal of Palestine Studies (La Revue d'Études Palestiniennes). They examine the importance of the journal and the existence of the people and land of Palestine. Disgracefully, over 30 years later, these discussions are still despairingly relevant to today's climate. We have waited a long time for an Arab journal in French, but instead of coming from North Africa, it's being done by the Palestinians.
