A tale of blind doctors and good illnesses
By Mariam Barghouti
As you walk in the streets of Ramallah, with its aesthetically appealing buildings and the chaos of shoppers and street vendors the silence here is deafening.
We continue to protract this bubble deeper into the echelons of denial and complacency. The ululations in the summer for Gaza, and the metamorphosis into a population of cheerleaders continues to etch its indentation. We offered blistered tongues and Gaza offered its soul.
AntiNote: The following is an extended excerpt of a radio interview, edited for readability. We strongly encourage you to listen to the full interview (here); we regretfully removed large sections, containing important information, due to space concerns.
On 3 May 2014 Chuck Mertz of This is Hell! Radio (Chicago) talked to author, scholar and activist Ali Abunimah about a way forward in Palestine. This week, Abunimah and Max Blumenthal brought their joint speaking event, The Future of Palestine, to the Chicago Cultural Center. Like many of our readers, no Antidote writers were able to attend due to a large ocean in the way—but we hope this conversation provides a tantalizing taste of the issues and perspectives that were discussed there. If you went, we’d love to hear what you took away from it.
Abunimah brings rare optimism and fresh thinking to the debate around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But at the same time he hints strongly at a much darker future for Palestinians—as well as everyone else. He reveals new, hidden facets of the emerging global, militarized, security-obsessed neoliberal regime that Naomi Klein described more broadly in The Shock Doctrine. This system’s literal conduits are already being established, and it is these international connections Abunimah makes that we find the most chilling, the most sensitizing, and the most potentially solidarity-inspiring. The Palestinians’ plight, in increasingly direct ways, is all of ours. Read on.
“The same companies profiting from mass incarceration of people of color in the United States are profiting from Israeli occupation.”
by Tamim Al-Barghouti
The Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in Damascus has been under siege for months, exposed to ground and air strikes, causing several of the refugees to die of starvation and resort to eating leaves and cacti, as well as the spread of intestinal and skin diseases due to the lack of clean water.
This has also resulted in the death of new-borns, their mothers, the elderly, the ill and the wounded because of the shortage of medicine. Anyone trying to leave the camp is killed and the camp has been bombed numerous times.
by Lina Alaafsin
By Budour Hassan
The appearance of the Egyptian Black Bloc in Cairo’s streets in January 2013 triggered gullible excitement in Western anarchist circles. Little thought was given to the Egyptian Black Bloc’s political vision – or lack thereof – tactics, or social and economic positions. For most Western anarchists, it was enough that they looked and dressed like anarchists to warrant uncritical admiration. Facebook pages of Israeli anarchists were swamped with pictures of Egyptian Black Bloc activists; skimming through the US anarchist blogosphere during that period would have given one the impression that the Black Bloc was Egypt’s first-ever encounter with anarchism and anti-authoritarianism. But as American writer Joshua Stephens notes, the jubilant reaction many Western anarchists have towards the Black Bloc raises unflattering questions concerning their obsession with form and representation, rather than content and actions.Continue Reading
Our anonymous interlocutor traces the prehistory and development of contemporary Israeli anarchism, touching on the origins of punk and the animal rights movement in Israel and presenting a critical analysis of the trajectory of Anarchists Against the Wall. He concludes by reflecting on the function of nonviolence rhetoric in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. We strongly recommend this interview to anyone interested in the Israel/Palestine conflict or, for that matter, in the strategic challenges of formulating an anarchist opposition in adverse conditions.Continue Reading
Gaza Youth to Planet Earth! Anyone out there? “Gaza what?”
The previous manifesto seems to have grown bigger than expected; many supported us, many others stood firmly against us, and very few stayed indifferent. Everyone had an opinion, yet rarely did they listen to others’ and in the middle of that mess, our own voice remained unheard.
