Palestine Think Tank

Arabs — both Muslims and Christians — have been the target of a ferocious propaganda campaign in this country. Responding to this onslaught is more than enough to keep them busy without having to contend with a contingent of self-hating Arabs and religious agitators in their midst. As an Arab who happened to be born into a Christian family, I cannot remain silent as individuals on the margins of the Arab American community are enlisted in this demonization campaign as representatives of Christian Arabs. For Christian Arabs their Christianity is an indigenous religion, and Islam is their indigenous civilization.

The Palestine Strategy Study Group strongly urges fellow Palestinians to seize their destiny in their own hands by refusing even to enter these other discourses until it is appropriate to do so and to focus all their energies on explaining and promoting the prior Palestinian discourse. The appropriate discourse uses the language, not of peacemaking or statebuilding, but of national self-determination, of liberation, of emancipation from occupation, of individual and collective rights, of international law. This must be the primary discourse. Only when the priorities defined within the primary Palestinian discourse of emancipation are recognised can the hitherto rightly subordinated discourses of peacemaking and statebuilding move properly into the foreground.

It is essential in strategic thinking to take constant account of how the chessboard
looks from the perspective of the opponent. This is fundamental. A player who does not do this – who only looks at the board from its own perspective – will never be a grandmaster. Such a player will lose. The strategic purpose is to exert mounting pressure on the opponent to act as we want. This can only be done if we understand what the opponent desires and fears, and the sources and limits of the opponent’s power. The same applies to inducing third parties to behave in the ways we want them to.

A contribution to Palestine Think Tank's and Tlaxcala's First Word War
Numerous books and articles have been written, guided by the main thesis that the reason for the prolonged and intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine, and which is constantly at an impasse, is that there are two “contested” histories (of Jews and Arabs in Palestine!), [...]

A Palestine Think Tank Editorial
WRITTEN BY  Yousef Abudayyeh, Mohamed Khodr, Mary Rizzo, Haitham Sabbah and Saja 
Activism and activists for Palestine have been getting some media attention recently. This is absolutely great news. It is an opportunity that we need to take advantage of, especially since Palestinians themselves are denied space in almost all mainstream mass [...]

First, we as Minorities must imbibe and fully understand the historic revolutionary opportunity for all Americans to reach a more perfect union by 2050 when we become the majority in our democracy. The white man has failed in his quest to understand and establish a nation where all men are created equal, that we all are born with inalienable rights, that man is born free from birth and to enslave and deprive man from that freedom is a violation of all divine edicts.

Who better to establish justice than those who’ve experienced injustice. Who better to understand deprivation, torture, hunger, chains and loss of life and land, than those who’ve suffered such. Who better to understand the loss of basic human rights than those who’ve been cleansed from such rights. Who better to understand the yearning for freedom for all men than those who’ve never possessed it. Who better to understand what racist regimes can inflict on humanity than those who’ve lived under such racist colonial regimes.

WRITTEN BY STEVE AMSEL
January 14, 2010

The above photo (part of an ad campaign) is being circulated throughout the Israeli press. The organisation that sponsored the ad operates (for hungry Jews only) soup kitchens in every major Israeli city. Below is the ad in question….

Feeding the poor is a wonderful deed…..asking for contributions to continue this [...]

We just finished a 10-day tour in Italy where I gave six talks. I am now in Jordan where I will give a talk Friday  (6 PM, Al-Balad Theater, near First Circle, Jabal Amman). Here I am hosted by my generous Zoologist friend Prof. Zuhair Amr and we take time out to relax and watch [...]

 WRITTEN BY: Grupo Antimilitarista Tortuga (Alicante, Spain)
Translated by Ana Atienza, Revised by David Brookbank (Tlaxcala) 
If we paid attention to the terminology used by the mass media to refer to certain issues, perhaps we would learn more than a few lessons about the interests behind those media and the subterfuges they use to present the news [...]

Your government appointees at work: Cass Sunstein seeks "cognitive" provocateurs.
WRITTEN By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2010
Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the [...]

WRITTEN BY Anait Brutian  
                    
What is Anti-Semitism?  Before attempting to answer the question, we must first define the word “Anti-Semite.”   A dictionary definition describes Anti-Semitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group”   (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-semite).  Also known as Judeophobia, the term is used to describe “prejudice against or hostility towards Jews, [...]