Barak Hussein Obama: anti-Semitic Jew Hater. Some 130 protesters gathered in front of the American Consulate in Jerusalem Wednesday afternoon to rally against U.S. President Barack Obama, who had just launched his Middle East tour, during which he is expected to reach out in friendship to the Muslim world. [...] As more than a dozen local and international journalists looked on, the protesters chanted "No, You Can't" and waved posters saying "20 new 'settlements' by 2010 - Yes We Can!" [more inside]
posted by ornate insect on Jun 3, 2009 - 259 comments

Crescendo in the West Bank : NYT video on the rise of classical music programs in The West Bank.
posted by grapefruitmoon on Jun 3, 2009 - 1 comment

For €30, a Palestinian artist will tag the West Bank wall for you.
posted by Fiasco da Gama on Feb 25, 2009 - 36 comments

Did Hampshire College Become the First to Divest from Israel? It is being reported that Hampshire has divested from 6 corporations that provide Israel with military equipment and services in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Students for Justice in Palestine claim success. But the University claims that the decision had "nothing to do with Israel." This move is being hailed as a landmark victory by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign which calls on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era."
posted by lunit on Feb 17, 2009 - 45 comments

this body is a prison (google video link)
Go behind the scenes of media coverage of the West Bank and enter a world where terror is a daily reality. Against the backdrop of this politically tumultuous environment there emerges a deeply layered story of a nation fractured by walls both physical and internalized.

Professor of Psychology Khalil Issa discusses the existential dilemmas faced by Palestinian youth as they attempt to develop a sense of self in a land carved by war.
posted by Tryptophan-5ht on Nov 30, 2006 - 2 comments

Disengagement: The Game The debate in Israel over the withdrawal from Gaza has found its way into, of all things, dueling cartoony Flash games. The first, the Wild West Bank, by proponents of withdrawal, has you removing settlers from the West Bank before they can establish settlements. The second, the "Disengagement Game" (click the square yellow button beside the picture), has you take the role of Ariel Sharon, whose political nickname is the "Bulldozer," as he uses his namesake (plus a club and a gaggle of pigs) to remove children protesting his policies. According to the creators of each, the first is supposed to be enlightening, the second purely entertaining. [Instructions inside]
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 10, 2005 - 4 comments

B'Tselem's Map of Jewish Settlements in the West Bank is an incredible graphic. It'sa 612 KB jpeg but the PDF, which is 1,609 KB has even more amazing detail. Here is the directory for all their images and maps. As you can see, it is quite comprehensive. Here is the Full Fence Mag in English, for instance. Again, the PDF is even more detailed. Here is the summary of B'Tselem's May 2002 report Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank. The report is to the summary as the PDF is to the jpeg.
B'Tselem is The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.   Warning: While the pages linked are in English, the site itself is bi-lingual, so expect many a prompt for a Hebrew text download.
posted by y2karl on Sep 3, 2004 - 20 comments

Israel calls it a Separation Fence. Others refer to it as the Apartheid Wall. Whatever one calls it, and however one justifies it, there is no doubt that this barrier swoops many kilometers into the West Bank, claiming valuable water sources and arable land for Israeli settlers, destroying Palestinian homes and communities in the process.
posted by Ty Webb on Jun 24, 2003 - 18 comments

Israel weighs response to attacks after the strike on the hamas leader and the collateral damage caused in that attack - a friend of mine and i discussed that it seemed like the people who should be most upset were the relatives and friends of the as of yet undead/injured in the next retaliatory attack... when is the senselessness of the cycle of violence going become clear?
posted by specialk420 on Aug 4, 2002 - 20 comments

"When the Israeli army was asked to comment on the footage, it refused."
posted by donkeyschlong on Jul 5, 2002 - 54 comments

The far right's success in setting the national agenda is provoking an identity crisis for Israel. Radical settlers are effectively in the driver's seat and are redefining Zionism in terms that threaten the future of a Jewish state. Meanwhile, demographics is a hotter issue than ever in Israel, as Israelis on the right and left struggle with the questions "Can Israel be a Jewish and democratic state? Is there any such animal?" [More inside.]
posted by Zurishaddai on Jun 28, 2002 - 20 comments

Non-religious Israeli settlers are financially trapped, argues a sympathetic Tel Aviv University professor. He slams Ha'aretz Daily for constantly urging Jewish settlers to just move out, "as if people who somehow managed to buy a cheap housing unit in a settlement could simply leave it behind and buy another house somewhere else." Seems that for a lot of settlers, financial benefits like reduced income taxes and generous loans are more important enticements than appeals to biblical righteousness. Too bad the "doubly cheated" and heavily villified settlers can't get any financial help when they decide to move back. The solution? "Jews in America and world-wide should therefore use their money to support settlers who wish to leave the occupied territories and return to Israel."
posted by mediareport on Jun 25, 2002 - 11 comments

'Cambridge Students Beaten by Israeli Army' Three of my fellow students spent their Easter vacation on the West Bank as unofficial international observers. In the course of accompanying Palestinian medics to a refugee camp, with medical supplies and food, they were allegedly stopped and beaten by Israeli troops.
While their actions are undoubtedly noble and brave ("we are doing the job the UN should be doing"), the Israeli embassy suggests that "whilst the intentions were geniune, (their) actions have been misguided."
I can't decide what to think. (more inside)
posted by chrismear on Apr 27, 2002 - 25 comments

Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage Among Palestinians, it has become normal--noble, even--for promising men and women to slaughter themselves in pursuit of revenge and the dignity it is thought to bring. "What was once more of an individual decision by a small group is becoming much more mainstream," says Jerrold Post, an American psychiatrist who has studied suicide bombings in the West Bank. The suicide-homicides have come to be seen by most Palestinians as their last, best hope.
posted by Rastafari on Apr 9, 2002 - 47 comments

"We're press! Don't shoot!" Isn't PRESS on a flak jacket like painting bullseyes on your butt? The Israel Defense Forces have declared Bethlehem, Qalqiliya and Ramallah officially off-limits, and journalists will either be forcibly removed or in some cases shot on sight. The Committee to Protect Journalists is just one of many organizations speaking out against the unethical treatment of First Ammendment fighters throughout the world. Like this is gonna help. Should enemies of freedom be expected to 'play fair' or should we just accept that some journalists are going to die? Is it possible to investigate the truth right now in the West Bank, or are journalists needlessly putting their lives on the line for nothing?
posted by ZachsMind on Apr 3, 2002 - 37 comments

A Good Summary, albeit in the form of a NYPost Editorial, as to why Israel should ignore 95% of the criticism it gets regarding it's current policy towards negotiating withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. President Bush: are you listening?
posted by ParisParamus on Mar 18, 2002 - 33 comments

What now? Fashion profiling? (NYT) For the third time in 48 hours, an alert Israeli foiled an attempted suicide bombing on Tuesday. Near the West Bank settlement of Mehola in the Jordan Valley, a bus driver, Shalom Drei, thought a man climbing onto the second step of the bus looked suspicious. "He wore an aviator's jacket, zipped all the way up," Mr. Drei told Israeli television. "It looked strange to me." Mr. Drei pushed the stranger back off the bus, then, as the bus pulled away, the man exploded.
posted by semmi on Feb 20, 2002 - 39 comments

The US dedication to blocking peace. “It was the second time in less than a year that the United States had used its veto power to effectively kill a resolution that would create a monitoring mechanism for the protection of Palestinian civilians.”
posted by raaka on Dec 15, 2001 - 31 comments

A 10-year-old Palestinian girl was killed when Israel tanks fired at a school during a raid on the West Bank town of Jenin. ??? Wtf? Ok, so its the usual retaliatory attacks for the killing discussed yesterday, but this is just nasty, schools, hospitals, red cross compounds, things like those shouldn't be fired at.
posted by Mossy on Oct 18, 2001 - 18 comments

"Peace? Peace? We don' need no steenken' peace!" Israel rejects freeze on continued building of illegal settlements in West Bank and Gaza; Apocalypse at eleven...
posted by m.polo on May 14, 2001 - 57 comments

Email romance led Israeli teenager to his death? A classic honey-trap given a modern twist. Awful, just awful.
posted by holgate on Jan 18, 2001 - 4 comments

When headlines go bad : Missiles Hit West Bank Towns (Reuters) - Israel launched overnight missile strikes on five West Bank towns, killing a German resident, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
posted by tiaka on Nov 16, 2000 - 2 comments

Occupied territories no longer "occupied" on TV news The turmoil in the Middle East has been a top international story on television news since fighting broke out in the West Bank and Gaza. But amid the constant flow of footage showing violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, a central fact of the conflict has been missing from almost all network TV coverage: The West Bank and Gaza are occupied territories. The right to use force to resist foreign occupation is universally recognized and enshrined in international law. via thewebtoday
posted by lagado on Nov 14, 2000 - 0 comments

On October 15thThe Guardian had for its editorial "If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-dministered 'bantustans', with 'whites' monopolising the supply of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships, so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly discriminating against them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as scandalous too.

Expanding on this description, Noam Chomsky gives an account of Israel's shift from coercive diplomacy to using direct force in implementing its "final status map". That is, the cantonization, containment and control of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
posted by lagado on Oct 29, 2000 - 23 comments