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Analysis
3 May 2013
Yousef Munayyer: Most observers agree that if the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is still alive it is on life support with the plug half hanging out of the socket. Last year’s vote at the United Nations, when most of the world opposed the United States’ position and voted for Palestinian statehood, was an international referendum on U.S. mediation. It is undeniable, more than two decades after the Oslo accords, that new thinking is urgently needed.
Op-Ed
"What Responses To Different Tragedies Teach Us About Ourselves: Profiling is Not the Answer"
26 April 2013
26 April 2013
Yousef Munayyer: Something about the third week of April brings tragedy and bloodshed into American history: Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, Virginia Tech. Now Boston and West, Texas, are added to the list. The United States has too many memorials to remember in this short span. But the 2013 version of this week will prove important to reflect upon. Between the news of Boston and Texas came news out of Washington: the Senate failed to pass legislation that would expand background checks for...
Op-Ed
"The Tour Hagel Should've Taken To Better Understand The Mideast Conflict"
23 April 2013
23 April 2013
Yousef Munayyer: This is how an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, entitled "Chuck Hagel visits Israel, gets geography lesson," began. Hagel, the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Defense, was taken on a helicopter tour by his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon. The helicopter of course, like so much Israeli military equipment, was U.S. made. But what kind of tour would Hagel really get from the Israeli military? I doubt they would take the time to point out the...
Op-Ed
"Mr. President, Don’t Forget The Nakba"
19 March 2013
19 March 2013
Yousef Munayyer: Unbeknownst to most observers, President Barack Obama is actually traveling to the region on the anniversary of a pivotal day in the history of Palestine. Sixty-five years ago, in a township called Lake Success, NY, a chain of events would be set into motion that would lead to disaster for Palestinians.
Op-Ed
"What Roger Cohen Gets Wrong"
5 March 2013
5 March 2013
Yousef Munayyer: Liberal Zionism seems capable of nothing but hopelessness. Few things portray that as clearly and as succinctly as Roger Cohen’s most recent column for the New York Times, “Zero Dark Zero.” To give credit where credit is due, Cohen does accurately identify some important and relevant points. He argues that “Israelis for the most part are comfortable enough to ignore their neighbors.” He’s right. Israelis, as many analysts have come to conclude in reading the results of the...
Op-Ed
"How Intifada Fears Show Only Israeli Security Matters"
27 February 2013
27 February 2013
Yousef Munayyer: It’s happening again. Talk of the possibility of a third Intifada is on the rise as increased Palestinian protests are recurring in the West Bank. Many are on edge waiting for the spark. What will it be?
Op-Ed
"What Israel's Election Outcome Means--And Doesn't Mean"
23 January 2013
23 January 2013
Yousef Munayyer: The ballots have been cast and counted and the Israeli election is now over. Post-election reporting and analysis have been rife with speculation and misinformation. Here is what the outcome of this election actually means and doesn't mean.
Op-Ed
"So What If Hagel's Not Pro-Israel?"
8 January 2013
8 January 2013
Yousef Munayyer: Yesterday President Obama nominated the former Republican senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, to be his next Secretary of Defense. Rumors of Hagel’s nomination starting last year triggered a debate that is likely to continue into and through the nominee’s confirmation process. However, this debate really tells us more important things about America, and our role in the Middle East, than it does about Chuck Hagel.
Op-Ed
"What Peace Process Polling Doesn't Tell You"
31 December 2012
31 December 2012
Yousef Munayyer: We've seen it time and again. Pollsters frequently query Palestinians and Israelis asking them about their views, priorities and ambitions and then present their responses as a sort of map of the political landscape that shows which path to peace is possible.
Op-Ed
"If You Will It, It Is No Nightmare"
10 December 2012
10 December 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Jeffery Goldberg is clearly irked by the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to defend Zionism in mainstream American discourse today. He seems to take it personally, as if that’s his job or something.
Op-Ed
"Why the Peace Process Failed"
3 December 2012
3 December 2012
Yousef Munayyer: It’s unclear when it died, but it’s most definitely dead. The Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" was born with a fatal flaw, and its defects have been on full display in recent weeks as Israel conducted yet another war on Gaza, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sought - and won - upgraded status at the United Nations last week against the will of the United States and Israel.
Op-Ed
"America's Failed Palestinian Policy"
23 November 2012
23 November 2012
Yousef Munayyer: More than 160 Palestinians and 5 Israelis are dead, and as the smoke clears over Gaza, the Israelis will not be more secure and Palestinians’ hopes for self-determination remain dashed. It is time for a significant re-evaluation of the American policies that have contributed to this morass.
Op-Ed
"When the Smoke Clears in Gaza"
19 November 2012
19 November 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, the all-too-familiar scenes of violence in the Gaza Strip - the sight, on Sunday, of children’s bodies being pulled from a flattened house; the rocket launches - will temporarily stop. As after every round that preceded this, a ceasefire will eventually be reached. The question is what we will have learned.
Op-Ed
"Bodies for Ballots"
15 November 2012
15 November 2012
Yousef Munayyer: They say when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But when you are a politician and all you have is a hammer, you must convince voters every problem looks like a nail. This is the only thinking that can explain Israel’s behavior in escalating bombardment of Gaza.
Op-Ed
"Apartheid Ambiguity"
5 November 2012
5 November 2012
Yousef Munayyer: When an Israeli newspaper recently ran a front page article entitled "Most Israelis support an apartheid regime in Israel," it was not surprising that it drew considerable criticism from Zionists. But one does not need a poll to directly ask about it to determine that most Israeli Jews support Apartheid. Apartheid is a system of policies already practiced by successive Israeli governments.
Op-Ed
"Losing Hearts, Minds and Credibility"
17 October 2012
17 October 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Why is the "peace process," which so many American Presidents have invested time in, dead? Answers to this question could fill volumes of history books but a recent episode from this week serves as a perfectly illustrative microcosm of the larger problem.
Op-Ed
"Wiping Palestinians Off the Agenda"
4 October 2012
4 October 2012
Yousef Munayyer: At the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) last week the Israeli Prime Minister succeeded and failed simultaneously. With a cartoonish display, Benjamin Netanyahu managed to become the laughing stock of the internet as parodied images of his bomb chart filled blogs and websites.
Op-Ed
"Ten years on: The question of Israel and Palestine"
24 September 2012
24 September 2012
Yousef Munayyer: How will the Israeli/Palestinian question evolve over the next ten years? It is hard, actually impossible, to predict the future. However, it is possible and important to analyse trends and extrapolate trajectories given well-established facts.
Op-Ed
"Stability Over Freedom"
20 September 2012
20 September 2012
Yousef Munayyer: As protests rocked U.S. embassies in various Arab and Muslim capitals in recent weeks, a familiar question once again reverberated through American media: why do they hate us?
Op-Ed
"What Recognizing Undivided Jerusalem is Really About"
12 September 2012
12 September 2012
Yousef Munayyer: At the recent Democratic National Convention, the party platform being adopted was slightly different from the 2008 version when it came to Israel and Palestine. A sentence, with boilerplate language on the status of Jerusalem, had disappeared. Then hilarity ensued.
Op-Ed
"Lynching "Demographic Threats""
23 August 2012
23 August 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Last week I wrote about the racism involved in Zionism's constant planning of demographic engineering in Israel and how common such a racist principle is in the mainstream discourse. Three hours after the piece was posted, a lynch mob in Jerusalem ganged up on three Palestinian Arabs and beat Jamal Julani within an inch of his life. Police said it was a miracle he didn't die.
Op-Ed
"An illusion of security"
17 August 2012
17 August 2012
Yousef Munayyer: In seven days this month, at least eight places of worship associated with Middle Easterners or South Asians have been targeted in the United States. A Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., was the site of a massacre where six people were murdered. Later that evening a mosque in Joplin, Mo., was burned to the ground. In the following days, mosques were targeted in Rhode Island, Southern California, Oklahoma City and at two sites in Illinois. In Dearborn, Mich., an Arab-American...
Op-Ed
"How Many Is Too Many?"
16 August 2012
16 August 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Demographic engineering is central to Zionism and has been through every stage of Zionist history. I suppose when a political movement seeks to transplant millions of non-natives into a land of indigenous Arabs, to borrow "father of Zionism" Theodore Herzl's phraseology, demography must become a central obsession.
Op-Ed
"Pandermonium"
1 August 2012
1 August 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Yes, Mitt Romney’s 'analysis' of the economic disparities between Israelis and Palestinians was racist on multiple levels. ''There is just something about those Jews; they are so good at making money.'' Most people in the modern world would dismiss such a statement as anti-Semitic. But when the presumptive Republican candidate for president insinuates the same in the pursuit of pandering for pro-Zionist support it seems excusable.
Op-Ed
"Levy is Right"
13 July 2012
13 July 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Levy is right, this isn’t occupation. Well, not JUST occupation. When an Israeli panel appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu to investigate the question of outposts issued its findings (that there was no occupation and the settlements were legal), most sensible people responded with contempt.
Op-Ed
"The Ghost of Yasser Arafat"
12 July 2012
12 July 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Al Jazeera dropped a bombshell last week when it revealed the results of a 9-month investigation suggesting the late Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasser Arafat, could have been poisoned with a radioactive isotope, Polonium-210.
Op-Ed
"Expendable Lives"
29 June 2012
29 June 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Last week, after a period of relatively negligible rocket fire from Gaza, Israel struck Gaza in response to attacks from Sinai (that’s Egypt). Provoked, militants in Gaza responded with rockets.
Op-Ed
"Why won't Israel prevent settler violence?"
22 June 2012
22 June 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Removing settlers from illegally constructed housing inevitably leads to attacks against nearby Palestinian villages but Israel does nothing to stop them.
Op-Ed
"Netanyahu Makes the Case for BDS"
13 June 2012
13 June 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Last week the Israeli prime minister, with the help of Washington, made one of the strongest cases for the need for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in the wake of an Israeli court decision regarding an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. By demonstrating that twenty years of ‘peace process’ policies have yielded an Israeli government drunk on settlements, Netanyahu’s statement and the United States’ reaction should convince any remaining doubters...
Op-Ed
"Blaming the Victim"
1 June 2012
1 June 2012
Yousef Munayyer: In the wake of the commemoration of the Nakba this month, several Zionist commentaries appearing in both several Israeli publications and American publications have highlighted a similar and disturbing trend; they blame the victims of the Nakba for their fate.
Op-Ed
"Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal"
24 May 2012
24 May 2012
Yousef Munayyer: I’m a Palestinian who was born in the Israeli town of Lod, and thus I am an Israeli citizen. My wife is not; she is a Palestinian from Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Despite our towns being just 30 miles apart, we met almost 6,000 miles away in Massachusetts, where we attended neighboring colleges.
Op-Ed
"The Taste of Freedom"
17 May 2012
17 May 2012
Yousef Munayyer: To understand why the mass Palestinian hunger strike is so important, it helps to remember the first moments of the Arab Spring.
Op-Ed
"'It is beautiful... not a single Arab to be seen'"
15 May 2012
15 May 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Israel is isolating its Arab citizens, despite its claims to democracy.
Op-Ed
"First Step to Peace: Conquering Nakba Denial"
3 May 2012
3 May 2012
Yousef Munayyer: Last week in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Nakba activists group Zochrot (“Remembering” in Hebrew) attempted to recite the names of depopulated Palestinian towns at Israel’s Independence Day celebration. They were repressed.
Op-Ed
"Wilf's Colonialism Denial"
20 April 2012
20 April 2012
Yousef Munayyer: In her piece "Zionism Denial," Member of Knesset Einat Wilf rightly argues that Zionism, and not the Holocaust, led to the creation of the modern state of Israel. But in the process of making her argument she significantly distorts the history of Zionism.
Op-Ed
"Why BDS doesn't come with a map"
19 April 2012
19 April 2012
Yousef Munayyer: In recent reactions to the BDS movement, writers like Peter Beinart, Daniel Levy and Thomas Friedman have offered criticism. This criticism, however, which views the question of Palestine through the prism of Zionism, is incapable of grappling with a movement that views the same question through a humanist perspective of rights.
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