Free Radikal

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A was born shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family. He was an independent child who rebelled against authority – school and exam regimes were not for him. Like most Jewish (but also Palestinian-Bedouin and Palestinian-Druze) men, he joined the IDF, but once his military service was over, realizing he would not get a university place in Israel, his independence of spirit moved him to study engineering in a small US town. Since graduation he has worked on and off in a variety of managerial jobs in the armaments and construction industries. His American-born children were settled in the US so A and his wife, after one inconclusive attempt to return, and despite the longing for home, did what most migrants do and became settled in America, but socialized mostly with other Israelis.

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Part 1: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKvc2P9nPcE

Part 2: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sCPAR26bio

Part 3: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyGgPaiJu3E

Part 4: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVyIZjRTPuo

Part 5: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIIme0rT_nM

Part 6: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo0bMm2zAec

Part 7: Ilan Pappé & Ronit Lentin. Trinity College Dublin. 17-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQeBoLMS7HM

On September 9 the European parliament passed a resolution calling on Paris to ‘immediately suspend all expulsions of Roma’, saying the policy ‘amounted to discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity’. French Gendarmes were accused of compiling secret illegal lists of Roma and other travelling minorities in violation of French laws on ethnic profiling. In 2010 France deported 5,000 Romanians and Bulgarians (10,000 in 2009), and vows to continue deporting Roma, all EU citizens, even though the expulsions are against the constitution and break international human rights laws on discrimination and despite the European Commission’s announcement on 1 October that it would initiate legal action against France. Indeed France began fingerprinting departing Roma to prevent their return, proving the futility of invoking human rights law (Crumley, 2010). Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone who saw the brutal treatment of the passengers of the freedom flotilla attempting to break the blockade of Gaza, and heard the Israeli propaganda machine claiming this was done in ‘self defence’ should understand that this self justification has a long history.

As an Israeli child, I grew up on myths of ‘self defence’ and of ‘the few against the many’, which were the building blocks of Israeli state and society from its very inception. Israeli literary scholar Nurit Gertz identifies three ‘ideological narratives’ aimed at conserving the hegemonic power relations. The first myth is the ‘few against the many’ narrative, according to which a Jewish ‘David’ was attacked by an Arab ‘Goliath’, the second is the struggle between the enlightened (Jewish) Europeans and the backwards (Arab) Orientals and the ensuing myth about Palestine being a ‘desert’ which the Zionists made ‘bloom’, and the third is the struggle between the isolated Jewish nation and an uncaring world, a narrative strengthened by the indifference of the world in face of the Nazi genocide. A fourth myth is that of Israel as European, and a fifth – perhaps the strongest myth – was the belief that all Israel’s wars and brutalities are fought in self defence. Read the rest of this entry »

Copy of a letter I sent to the Irish Times:

Ronit Lentin
Department of Sociology
TCD

Madam,

The shortsightedness of the government’s plans to subsume community development projects in area partnerships (Letters, 25 November) was eloquently articulated by four community activists on Vincent Browne’s TV3 show on the same day. Cathleen O’Neill of Kilbarrack CDP, Rita Fagan of St Michael’s Family Resource Centre, Bronagh O’Neill of the Canal Equality Campaign and Margaret O’Shea of the Kerry Network for People with Disabilities highlighted the services CDPs provide, often by volunteers, to their communities, and the loss to theses communities of taking the projects away from the people they are serving. The transfer to area partnerships has been decided upon without consultation and it is evident that now more than ever CDPs are both ‘good value’ and essential in providing services such as childcare, after school care, programmes for women and disabled people, not provided by the state and local authorities. Read the rest of this entry »