Palestine Think Tank

To work strategically on our liberation process, we need to instill an appropriate discourse that embodies our future strategic vision. This discourse should start by purging itself from the language of “two-state solution”, “two states for two people”, “West Bank and Gaza”, “East Jerusalem”, “peacemaking”, “direct or indirect negotiations”, “state building”, “legal or illegal settlements”, etc. Our language should focus on means of resistance to achieve our liberation towards living in a free, non-racist, secular country in the entire land of historical Palestine; on emancipation from occupation and economic dependency; on individual and collective rights; on international law; on responsive and accountable leadership; on self-reliance and productivity; and on the right of all the refugees and displaced persons, who were ethnically cleansed from their homes and country by the Zionist colonial movement, to return to Palestine.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.
Nicolò Machiavelli

WRITTEN BY MARY RIZZO
Obama, before he actually “did” anything, had a reputation. And, indeed, reputation – what others think you are, and not what you actually are – is a crucial factor in a public figure. A political leader, while marketed, literally, in order to [...]

WRITTEN BY  Khalil AlHajal

ARAB AMERICAN NEWS (Dearborn, Michigan)
The University of Michigan—Dearborn's student government body passed a resolution on Tuesday calling for investigation into ethical implications of University investments in companies that do business in Israel.
The measure came after more than a week of events on campus that discussed human rights issues in the occupied Palestinian [...]

Palestinian students are inculcated with the idea that Jews are the original and oldest inhabitants of the land and the most attached to it. Raising Arab-Palestinian students on this idea, while not providing adequate cultural and historical knowledge to challenge it, encourages alienation from their homeland.

Feelings of alienation will later on undermine the capacity of students to tackle oppressive policies, especially in matters of land and social culture, and transform them into easy prey for the dominant Israeli political discourse which can be summarized as follows: this is the land of the Jewish people. We returned to our rightful historic homeland and built it up. You Arab-Palestinians are just passers-by, strangers to this land, and a source of annoyance to our presence. This is the discourse underlying Israeli political demands for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

WRITTEN BY MARY RIZZO
Last week might have been a week when history was made. There would have been a precedent set that would from that point onwards made a change in very many ways, one comparable to fulfilling the request the ANC made in South Africa. At first, the ANC request was seen as merely symbolic, [...]

At the outset of the classes I teach, I always address the question of bias in the social sciences. In one course – on the history of the global economy – this is the central theme. It critiques Eurocentric biases in several leading Western accounts of the rise of the global economy.
This fall, I began [...]

WRITTEN BY Ramzy Baroud 
When the first Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) was published in 2002, a star glistened in a vast, gloomy sky. The fact that a UN-sponsored report, authored by independent Arab scholars would receive so much attention in Arab media, was in itself a promising start. The fact that such terminology as human [...]

It is shocking that the world accepts Israel’s genocides and threats against its neighbors as fait accompli without regard to the never ending suffering of Palestinians under its brutal military occupation. Palestinians and Lebanese die, suffer and endure in silence in a world conditioned to accept Israel’s “right to self defense”, a euphemism for wanton murder. They die in silence, absent from the western conscience due to the blanket support of most western media outlets, none more so than in America, the nation exporting democracy and freedom through smart bombs and biased politicians who if they dare to criticize Israel jeopardize their ambitions and become the recipients of the worst media smears. In the U.S. no debate or action is allowed against Israel either by our own “never challenge Israel” government or by our staunchly Pro-Israel media.

These ideas are not allowed to be expressed in an American University Student Union:
Boycott all Israeli products.
Take that $1 trillion you’re spending to kill Muslims, and spend it instead on re-building Detroit.
Stop 400 years of White Privilege—the University should admit every Black high school graduate. Read about it here.

Loss Of Innocence: Gaza children's artwork, is an exhibition of paintings and drawings done by children in Gaza following the Israeli 22 day assault earlier this year. The exhibition, supported by UNESCO Gaza office, was collated by Rod Cox who went to Gaza early this year with the British overland humanitarian convoy. He stayed through March and April [...]