Sorting by

×
ePALESTINE NOTES
ePalestine.ps - Sam Bahour

SUBSCRIBE | DONATE | CONTACT

News & opinions from a Palestinian-American
living & working in Ramallah/Al-Bireh, Palestine

Latest News


An American Evangelical Christian Man’s Awakening to Palestine [Book Review]

An American Evangelical Christian Man’s Awakening to Palestine [Book Review]

by | July 6, 2022 | Books, Writings

The author of this memoir, Glory to God in the Lowest: Journey to an Unholy Land, Rev. Don Wagner, is a longtime friend. Back in the day, Rev. Wagner was based in Chicago, Illinois and I was in Youngstown, Ohio. We both were engaged in the same struggle for Palestine. Subsequently, when I relocated to Palestine, I would speak to the various eyewitness delegations he led to the Holy Land, or what he prefers to call the “unholy land” — which, he writes, “serves as a place of injustice that awaits the arc of the moral universe bending to usher in justice, peace, and reconciliation.”


Palestinians never stop conceding, for nothing in return [Book Review]

Palestinians never stop conceding, for nothing in return [Book Review]

by | June 30, 2022 | Books, Writings

Jerome M. Segal’s book has one main goal, which is to highlight the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence as a lost inflection point: a rare, pivotal moment that the US, Israel, and even the Palestinian leadership who issued it, could have seized (but did not) to advance Palestinian statehood and peace between Palestinians and Israelis. “If it seems odd that a Jew should offer his thoughts on how Palestinians can be successful in their struggle, let me only add that the struggle for an independent Palestinian state is also the struggle for a humane and safe Israel, and that there can be no Judaism without a commitment to Justice.”


Israel’s linguistic acrobatics [Book Review]

Israel’s linguistic acrobatics [Book Review]

by | June 28, 2022 | Books, Writings

I am careful about recommending books. Everyone’s time is precious. My commending Alex McDonald’s How I Learned to Speak Israel: An American’s Guide to a Foreign Policy Language, and its sequel, When They Speak Israel: A Guide to Clarity In Conversations About Israel to your attention in a single review, then, means I found them to be beyond impressive. McDonald writes, “Language has consequences.” Then, as Mr. McDonald skillfully dissects the discourse on Israel and Palestine, that statement begins to seem wildly understated. McDonald’s analysis explains in detail how Israel and the West have used language, discourse, and narrative framing to camouflage a never-ending stream of the dispossession of Palestinians, including institutionalized discrimination, human rights abuses, military occupation, and so much more.


“H2: The Occupation Lab” documentary examines Israel’s control of Hebron

“H2: The Occupation Lab” documentary examines Israel’s control of Hebron

by | May 30, 2022 | Documentaries

H2 is the name given to the eastern part of Hebron, the only Palestinian urban area which remains under full Israeli military control, due to the presence of several hundred settlers. Through rare archive footage and interviews with Hebron’s military commanders, “H2: The Occupation Lab” tells the story of a place which is both a microcosm for the entire conflict, and a test lab for methods of control implemented in the West Bank.


“Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story”, an Al-Jazeera documentary

“Palestine 1920: The Other Side of the Palestinian Story”, an Al-Jazeera documentary

by | February 2, 2022 | Documentaries

“A land without a people, and a people without a land” is how the relationship between Palestine and the Jewish people was described by Christian writers in the 1800s. And the 20th-century history of the Middle East has largely been written through these eyes. But this film from Al Jazeera Arabic looks at Palestine from a different angle. It hears from historians and witness accounts, and features archive documents that show Palestine as a thriving province of Greater Syria and the Ottoman Empire at the dawn of the 20th century.


“Tantura” documentary meticulously documents a 1948 Israeli massacre

“Tantura” documentary meticulously documents a 1948 Israeli massacre

by | January 24, 2022 | Documentaries

When Israeli graduate student Teddy Katz meticulously documented a massacre of Palestinian civilians surrounding Israel’s independence, he was initially celebrated for his groundbreaking work. But soon, he was stripped of his degrees and was publicly shamed as a fraudulent traitor. Decades later, incendiary new evidence emerges to corroborate Teddy’s initial findings, not just vindicating him, but raising profound questions about how Israelis — and we all — deal with the darker chapters of history.