Prickly Pears of Palestine

Prickly Pears of Palestine
Author: Hilda Reilly
Publisher: Eye Books (US&CA)
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1908646519

An account providing a human face to the realities of life in Palestine The Palestinian–Israeli conflict is one of the most widely reported and long standing struggles in the world, yet for many, misunderstanding is rife about its most basic issues. Hilda Reilly volunteered to work at An-Najah University in Nablus in order to spend time among many ordinary people, living under extraordinary circumstances. She lives among students, and relates the many conversations she has with a wide range of Palestinians about their thoughts on Hamas and Fatah, Yasser Arafat, bin Laden and Hussein, Blair and Bush, bringing readers an insight to the people behind the politics.

Prickly Pears of Palestine

Prickly Pears of Palestine
Author: Hilda Reilly
Publisher: Eye Classics
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781903070819

An account providing a human face to the realities of life in Palestine The Palestinian?Israeli conflict is one of the most widely reported and long standing struggles in the world, yet for many, misunderstanding is rife about its most basic issues. Hilda Reilly volunteered to work at An-Najah University in Nablus in order to spend time among many ordinary people, living under extraordinary circumstances. She lives among students, and relates the many conversations she has with a wide range of Palestinians about their thoughts on Hamas and Fatah, Yasser Arafat, bin Laden and Hussein, Blair and Bush, bringing readers an insight to the people behind the politics.

Wild Thorns

Wild Thorns
Author: Salar Khalifeh
Publisher: Saqi Books
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0863569471

In this tense modern literary classic, acclaimed Palestinian author Sahar Khalifeh depicts the humiliation, bitter resignation and determined resistance of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation. First published in 1976, Wild Thorns was the first Arab novel to offer a glimpse of everyday life under Israeli occupation. With uncompromising honesty, Khalifeh pleads elegantly for survival in the face of oppression.

Israeli and Palestinian Postcards

Israeli and Palestinian Postcards
Author: Tim Jon Semmerling
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2013-08-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0292749597

Searing images of suicide bombings and retaliatory strikes now define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for many Westerners, but television and print media are not the only visual realms in which the conflict is playing out. Even tourist postcards and greeting cards have been pressed into service as vehicles through which Israelis and Palestinians present competing visions of national selfhood and conflicting claims to their common homeland. In this book, Tim Jon Semmerling explores how Israelis and Palestinians have recently used postcards and greeting cards to present images of the national self, to build national awareness and reinforce nationalist ideologies, and to gain international acceptance. He discusses and displays the works of numerous postcard/greeting card manufacturers, artists, and photographers and identifies the symbolic choices in their postcards, how the choices are arranged into messages, what the messages convey and to whom, and who benefits and loses in these presentations of national self. Semmerling convincingly demonstrates that, far from being ephemeral, Israeli and Palestinian postcards constitute an important arena of struggle over visual signs and the power to produce reality.

The Zionist Bible

The Zionist Bible
Author: Nur Masalha
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 131754465X

Throughout the history of European imperialism the grand narratives of the Bible have been used to justify settler-colonialism. "The Zionist Bible" explores the ways in which modern political Zionism and Israeli militarism have used the Bible - notably the Book of Joshua and its description of the entry of the Israelites into the Promised Land - as an agent of oppression and to support settler-colonialism in Palestine. The rise of messianic Zionism in the late 1960s saw the beginnings of a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the militant land traditions of the Bible and justifying the destruction of the previous inhabitants. "The Zionist Bible" examines how the birth and growth of the State of Israel has been shaped by this Zionist reading of the Bible, how it has refashioned Israeli-Jewish collective memory, erased and renamed Palestinian topography, and how critical responses to this reading have challenged both Jewish and Palestinian nationalism.

Art and Life

Art and Life
Author: Ute Ben Yosef
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2023-10-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1879985470

Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak traces the development of a child prodigy deeply shaped by the catastrophic events of the Shoah, from his early artistic influences to his years in the Vilna Ghetto and Landsberg DP Camp, his formal training in Israel and Paris, and his fruitful art career in Rome, New York, Switzerland, and Boston. Augmenting the rich existing literature on Bak, Art & Life explores—in thoughtful prose and through reproductions of both iconic and rarely seen work created between 1942 and 2022—how he navigated the prevailing art trends of the mid-twentieth century in search of his own pictorial language. It considers the personal, historical, and artistic currents that led Bak, now aged 90, to create an astonishing body of work that bears witness to cataclysmic events, embodies our common humanity of suffering and hope, and poses questions about the repair of the world.

Decolonizing the Study of Palestine

Decolonizing the Study of Palestine
Author: Ahmad H. Sa'di
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2023-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0755648323

Writing about Palestine and the Palestinians continue to be controversial. Until the late 1980s, the question of Palestine was approached through Western social theories that had appeared after World War 2. This endowed European settlers and colonists the mission of guiding the "backward" natives of Palestine to modernity. However, since the work of Palestinian scholar Elia Zureik, the study of Israel, and the "ethnic relations" in Palestine-Israel has been radically shifted. Building on Zureik's work, this book studies the colonial project in Palestine and how it has transformed Palestinians' lives. Zureik had argued that Israel was the product of a colonization process and so should be studied through the same concepts and theorization as South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, and other colonial societies. He also rejected the moral and civilizational superiority of the European settlers. Developing this work, the contributors here argue that colonialism is not only a political-economic system but also a "mode of life" and consciousness, which has far-reaching consequences for both the settlers and the indigenous population. Across 13 chapters (in addition to the introduction and the afterward), the book covers topics such as settler colonialism, dispossession, the separation wall, surveillance technologies, decolonisation methodologies and popular resistance. Composed mostly of Palestinian scholars and scholars of Palestinian heritage, it is the first book in which the indigenous Palestinians not merely "write back", but principally aim to lay the foundations for decolonial social science research on Palestine.

Defining Israel

Defining Israel
Author: Simon Rabinovitch
Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2018-11-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0878201637

Defining Israel: The Jewish State, Democracy, and the Law is the first book in any language devoted to the controversial passage of Israel's nation-state law. Israel has no constitution, and though it calls itself the Jewish state there is no agreement among Israelis on how that fact should be reflected in the government's laws or by its courts. Since the 1990s a number of civil society groups and legislators have drafted constitutions and proposed Basic Laws with constitutional standing that would clarify what it means for Israel to be a "Jewish and democratic state." Are these bills liberal or chauvinist? Are they a defense of the Knesset or an attack on the independence of the courts? Is their intention democratic or anti-democratic? The fight over the nation-state law-whether to have one and what should be in it-toppled the 19th Knesset's governing coalition and, even after its passage on July 29, 2018, remains a point of contention among Israel's lawmakers and increasingly the Israeli public. Defining Israel brings together influential scholars, journalists, and politicians, observers and participants, opponents and proponents, Jews and Arabs, all debating the merits and meaning of Israel's nation-state law. Together with translations of each draft law, the final law, and other key documents, the essays and sources in Defining Israel are essential to understand the ongoing debate over what it means for Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state.