IMEU Institute for Middle East Understanding
The American writer Ayelet Waldman was on a tour near the Hamra checkpoint, deep inside the Palestinian West Bank, when a silver car with Israeli plates pulled over. The driver, an Israeli Jew, got out and began taking photos of Waldman’s tour group, which included the Austrian author Eva Menasse and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks, as well as a bevy of photographers and anti-occupation activists.
on April 18, 2016
In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, 2016 has begun much as 2015 ended — with unacceptable levels of violence and a polarized public discourse. That polarization showed itself in the halls of the United Nations last week when I pointed out a simple truth: History proves that people will always resist occupation.
on January 31, 2016
As a Palestinian member of Parliament in Israel, I represent almost a third of Israel’s population, the descendants of those who were not expelled during the Nakba, or exodus, of 1948. We are not immigrants who moved into Israel. Rather, Israel came to us. Nevertheless, we continue to be treated as strangers in our own land.
on January 31, 2016
So now incitement on Facebook leads Palestinians to attack Israelis? For two decades Israeli politicians have trotted out an “incitement” red herring — along with false claims that Palestinian Authority textbooks lead their children to throw stones. Israel’s response is little more than misdirection and public relations.
on November 9, 2015
Last month, I wandered the former ghettos of Warsaw and Bialystok and visited the haunting memorials of Treblinka, all places where my family members lived their last moments. I clutched in my hands copies of one of the desperate letters from my great grandmother, hand-redacted and stamped with swastikas; lists of the dead; and smiling photos of my dad’s aunts, uncles and cousins, on a busy downtown street, blissfully unaware of the tidal wave of destruction coming their way.
on October 27, 2015
Fact Sheets
The IMEU offers select quotes from senior Israeli officials expressing extremism and incitement to racial hatred towards Palestinians, migrants, and other citizens and residents of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
on October 23, 2015
Since the latest wave of violence began there has been a sharp rise in the number of statements inciting to violence against Arabs, and in the number of Facebook pages expressing extremist right-wing positions receiving ‘likes,’ according to experts on monitoring Internet discourse. Hateful expressions appearing recently on the Web include calls for death to Arabs and terrorists, and calls for a second Nakba (“catastrophe”), referring to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Palestine in 1948.
on October 13, 2015
"Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. ... They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised here." This noxious and racist quote from Ayelet Shaked, the current Israeli justice minister, failed to make the cut in a resolution — H.Res. 293 — marked up and passed by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs' Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee in a voice vote earlier this month.
on September 30, 2015
Fact Sheets
Since three Israeli teenagers went missing in the occupied West Bank on June 12, Israeli society has witnessed a sharp increase in racially-motivated incitement and violent attacks against Palestinians, including Palestinian citizens of the state, who make up about 20% of Israel’s population. Fanned and exploited by Israeli politicians and religious leaders, many observers say they’ve never seen such a poisonous atmosphere in Israel.
on August 6, 2014