FOR DECADES ISRAEL has justified the unequal status of its Arab citizens, who now compose 19% of the population (1.4 million), by pointing out that they do not serve in the army. This claim is easily dispelled. Many Bedouin do…
Article Author: Agbarieh-Zahalka, Asma
Bil’in: (Partial) Triumph in a Political Vacuum
While the Israeli Occupation hardens and the Fatah/Hamas split deepens, a remote little village near Ramallah has celebrated a victory. This is Bil’in. It went to the Israeli High Court and won a change in the route of the Separation…
Wisconsin II: Cosmetic Changes but still No Jobs
IN JULY 2007, the Knesset gave final approval to a law that will replace the Wisconsin pilot, which was called Mehalev (“From the Heart,” an acronym based on a Hebrew phrase meaning, “From Income Maintenance to Becoming Part of the…
“Future Vision”: Israel’s Arab Elite and Reality
TOWARD THE END of 2006 several Arab groups in Israel published documents seeking to redefine their people’s status and calling for an egalitarian (instead of a Jewish) state. Mossawa put out An Egalitarian Constitution for All. Adalah published The Democratic Constitution. The…
The Prison Within
AS THE CAMERA stalks Hebron in search of a story about the Occupation, it encounters oppression of another kind. New levels are discovered, things not foreseen. The film is Asurot (officially and badly translated as “Detained”; the single Hebrew word, with rich…
The Cultural Boycott: Punishing the Wrong Side
AT THE HEIGHT of the second Lebanon War, on August 4, 2006, 123 Palestinian filmmakers and artists, joined by 349 others, called on their colleagues “around the world to cancel all exhibitions and other cultural events that are scheduled to…
The Wisconsin Bluff
Since August 2005, the Wisconsin Plan has been implemented on a trial basis in Israel. It is known here as Mehalev: “From the Heart.” The idea is to shift the unemployed from welfare to “workfare” by means of private placement…
Flamenco in Ladino: Interview with Yasmin Levy
Please tell me about yourself. How did you come to music? I grew up in a house of singers. My father, may his memory be for a blessing, was Yitzhak Levy, a musician, composer, poet and singer. His family is…
Israel’s Communist Party and Hezbollah
HEZBOLLAH’S STAYING POWER in the face of Israel’s military superiority has proved to be a magnet not only for the masses in the Arab and Islamic worlds, but also for some on the Left – above all, the Communist Party…
From Welfare to Nowhere
In August 2005, steps were taken to implement the Wisconsin Plan in Israel – known here as Mehalev: “From the Heart.” Applied in the American state of Wisconsin in the 1990’s, it signals a new phase in the privatization of social…