Salman Masalha
The Jews' election
The Arab MKs merely serve as a fig leaf that covers Israel's systematic racism. Arab citizens, boycott the elections.
Salman Masalha ||
Israeli Arabs, don't give the Jewish State your vote
Turning Jerusalem into Tehran
The racist downpours that have fallen on Israel lately are only the first rains of a long winter of racism, one that will flood Israel for years to come.
Salman Masalha ||
Netanyahu is turning Jerusalem into the new Tehran
Rights and responsibilities of Israel's Arab citizens
The Israeli Arab leadership’s positions on belonging to the state and its institutions are full of contradictions, and the time has come to resolve them.
Salman Masalha ||
Rights and responsibilities of Israel's Arab citizens
Salman Masalha ||
Rights and responsibilities of Israel's Arab citizens
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| Police clash with protesters in the Arab town of Kafr Kana, November 11, 2014. (Photo by Gil Eliyahu) |
B. Michael || The right to resist oppression and tyranny
Once upon a time, a time we knew better days, had loftier values, and even had more enlightened elected officials.
B. Michael ||
The right to resist oppression and tyranny
Apartheid city
New Arab city will perpetuate inequality
We should oppose the construction of a new Arab city on principle. From here it’s a short distance to pushing Arab citizens out of so-called 'Jewish' cities.
Salman Masalha || Apartheid city
The international occupation of Palestine
The world is a partner:
The time has come to call a spade a spade: The occupation in Palestine isn’t just Israeli – it’s a Western occupation.
Salman Masalha ||
The international occupation of Palestine
Vivian Eden || Fading faces in the rain
Vivian Eden ||
Fading faces in the rain
Of ink and identity: The late Samih al-Qasim on the ephemeral nature of the printed word as it encounters the elements.
For the glory of the Middle East
Salman Masalha ||
For the glory of the Middle East
People love to worry about the sociocultural fabric. But as it turns out, concern over this fabric – on the part of both the government and the public – goes in one direction and relates to one ethnicity.
For the glory of the Middle East
People love to worry about the sociocultural fabric. But as it turns out, concern over this fabric – on the part of both the government and the public – goes in one direction and relates to one ethnicity.
Homeland Hymn
Salman Masalha ||
Homeland Hymn
On the mountain that kisses a star, the winds
flail and wail. This is not a wind that blew in
from the west, it is a wind that sighs:
Who lifts up his eyes on high
to the bereft land, which God has left
to its own devices, filthy with hate, imprisoned
in plaints and the flame of the sword?
Homeland Hymn
On the mountain that kisses a star, the winds
flail and wail. This is not a wind that blew in
from the west, it is a wind that sighs:
Who lifts up his eyes on high
to the bereft land, which God has left
to its own devices, filthy with hate, imprisoned
in plaints and the flame of the sword?
Arab, speak Arabic
Salman Masalha ||
Arab, speak Arabic
Israel's Arab MKs can look to Jabotinsky for inspiration about how to achieve real equality between Arabic and Hebrew.
Arab, speak Arabic
Israel's Arab MKs can look to Jabotinsky for inspiration about how to achieve real equality between Arabic and Hebrew.
Looking only backwards
This entire region is comprised of artificial states that have never managed to create cross-tribal or cross-ethnic national unity, and have always been ruled in the shadow of the bloody, torn past.
Salman Masalha ||
Looking only backwards:
Looking only backwards:
Nothing new in the Middle East
Israeli apartheid exposed at the airport
Despite new x-ray machines, the brutal treatment of Arab citizens at Ben-Gurion Airport continues in keeping with Zionist ideology.
Salman Masalha ||
Israeli apartheid exposed at the airport
Salman Masalha ||
Israeli apartheid exposed at the airport
It’s time for the Palestinians to reshuffle the deck
The Palestinian Authority could either dissolve itself and shoot for a
one-state solution, or immediately call new elections and get rid of the
corrupt old guard.
Salman Masalha ||
It’s time for the Palestinians to reshuffle the deck
It’s time for the Palestinians to reshuffle the deck
Why the Arabs' test grades are lower
Were I a fan of conspiracy theories, I would accuse Bill Gates of purposely trying to trip up the Arab test takers.
Why the Arabs' test grades are lower
The whole tragedy in a nutshell
Salman Masalha ||
The whole tragedy in a nutshell
Ever since the two peoples, the Jews and the Palestinians, met in conflict on this small land they have been constantly plagued by the attempt to clarify the meaning of the concept “homeland.” It seems that this term is one of the most explosive in the discourse of both sides.
However, the root of the problem lies in clashing interpretations of the concept itself. This clash is inevitable and insoluble at this time. It can be summed up by saying that in this homeland there is too much Jewish homeland and nation and too little Palestinian homeland and nation. For the individual, the Jewish perception expands the concept and the homeland, whereas the Arab and Palestinian perception narrows them.
The Jewish individual is less connected to a specific piece of land within the expanse of the homeland. He is connected to what is symbolized by the expanse as a whole. However, the Palestinian individual is excessively connected to the land itself. More precisely, he is connected to a specific piece of land bounded by the borders of the village of his birth, the area where is parents were born and nothing more.
“I learned all the words and I dismantled them, / to build a single word – ‘ homeland,’” wrote the late Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish when he was living in exile in Beirut. However, when in the wake of the Oslo agreements he returned to Palestine with the people of the Palestine Liberation Organization, he discovered that he did not belong to the “Palestine” to which he had returned. It turns out that for him the concept of homeland refers to something entirely different. In interviews he granted after his return here he opened his heart and declared that he felt like a stranger in Gaza. Moreover, he told a reporter for The New York Times that Ramallah is not his homeland. In other words, the “national” poet’s homeland is a small and confined place that is elsewhere.
This clashing perception of the concept is especially obvious with respect to the mobility of Israeli citizens within the country. It is possible to request from the Central Bureau of Statistics reports on relocation by inhabitants from one place to another within the state of Israel and to compare the data for Jews and for Arabs. The result of the comparison is surprising: A Jew can pick himself up one day and relocate with his family in search of earning a living, bettering his housing, improving his quality of life or for any other reason. He can move from Yeruham to Dimona, from Holon to Ashkelon, from Ra’anana to Hadera or Gedera and so on. There, in the new place, he will find neighbors and make friends and no one will see this as odd.
However, an Arab man will not change his address in the country he calls his “homeland.” A male Arab citizen will not move from Taibeh to Tira, from Kalansu to Um al Fahm, from Arrabeh to Sakhnin, from Nazareth to Tamra or from Tamra to I’blin (though a woman who marries will move to her husband’s birthplace). This is connected to the way an Arab perceives the connection to a locale, and the way the inhabitants of a locale perceive it. Arab social structure is based on the cohesion of tribe and creed and not on national cohesion. An Arab from Tira will not move to Um al Fahm, an Arab city where all the inhabitants are Muslims just like he is, because the locals will see him as a foreigner who does not belong there. And if this is the attitude of Muslim Arabs among themselves, it is easy to imagine the extent of the alienation when it comes to a Christian from Fassuta and a Druze from Beit Jann, for example.
Here is another instance indicative of the narrow perception of homeland. Writer and journalist Said Kashua has been living in Jerusalem for many years and has established his family there. Nonetheless, he declares outright that his homeland is elsewhere: “Evidently, I had to leave the village in order to really understand what a dire state it’s in … I swear that my birthplace, the home of my family, is most dear to me” (Haaretz , October 2, 2013).
To demonstrate the depth of the difference between the two perceptions, it is possible to cite the words of the poem “Homeland” by Aharon Shabtai: “In every grain of earth, from Dan to Eilat, the homeland stretches/ and I am found nowhere but in the homeland/ … because Aharon, because Aharon, because Aharon is only in the homeland." (From "Artzenu [Our Land] - Poems, 1987-2002.") Herein lies the huge gap between the two perceptions: the Arab perception that narrows and the Jewish perception that expands.
And this is the whole tragedy in a nutshell.
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For Hebrew, press here
Two states for two languages
Arabic state, Hebrew state -
Discard the false visions of a binational state:
The time has come to speak to the point. Both the Jews and the Arabs aren’t going anywhere. And in the absence of partition, the conflict will not be solved.
Discard the false visions of a binational state:
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| M. Abbas with B. Netanyahu (photo: AP) |
Salman Masalha ||
Two states for two languages
Yahya Hassan || Childhood
Yahya Hassan || Childhood
Five children lined up and a father with a club
Weeping and a pool of piss
In turn we stretch out our hands
For the sake of predictability
The sound when blows rain down
Morani Kornberg-Weiss || Dear Darwish
What happens when a young Israeli-American poet 'speaks' with the late Mahmoud Darwish.
Vivian Eden ||
This conversation could never happen in real life
Vivian Eden ||
This conversation could never happen in real life
Vivian Eden || The truth about immigration
“Rest” exemplifies this. It deals with a common issue in Hebrew poetry: a conflict between a “here” and a “there”, which goes back at least as far as the rivers of Babylon in Psalm 137.
Vivian Eden ||
The truth about immigration
Why PISA leans away from the Arabs
Why is there such a large gap in the digital reading scores between Arabic and Hebrew speakers?
Salman Masalha ||
Why PISA leans away from the Arabs
Salman Masalha ||
Why PISA leans away from the Arabs
The nation marches on its hopes
“Every soldier,” as Napoleon said,” carries a general’s baton in his rucksack.” However, if you put weaponry into the hands of a fool, he is liable to think that the weaponry solves every problem he encounters.
Answering Bibi and Libi
The answer to Netanyahu and Lieberman needs to come in the establishment of a social democratic front of the Israeli left. The ball is sitting in the court of the two Israeli parties Meretz and Hadash.
