Blog and website by Ronit Lentin, a political sociologist, writer and an antiracist activist.
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Dead babies and zones of exception
CONTINUE READING: Dead babies and zones of exceptionJust a day after the revelations about what Israeli soldiers really did in Gaza came the story about the Jaffa T shirt factory, where 500 T shirts per month with dead babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and a bombed-out mosque accompanies with slogans such as ‘better use…
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The war after
CONTINUE READING: The war afterThe elections in Israel make us certain of the victory of the Israeli racial state. Livni, Netanyahu or Lieberman – the result is the same even though one speaks about ‘dialogue’ towards a ‘two state solution’, one speaks of ‘no dialogue’ and one speaks of conditioning citizenship on an oath of loyalty… In a sense,…
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The end of (Irish) migration studies?
CONTINUE READING: The end of (Irish) migration studies?Translocations – the Irish inter-university ejournal for migration, race and social change – is in danger of closing. In NUI Cork, migration studies is threatened with closure. and what about Ireland’s other migration studies projects? No one has heard from the Minister of Integration Conor Lenihan for weeks – once his budget was cut by…
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New year, new war
CONTINUE READING: New year, new warTo be published in Metro Eireann, 15 January 2009. (PHOTOS: http://gaza.haimbresheeth.com/gaza-carnage-archive/gaza-photos) What a start for the new year!! On 27 December, the Israeli Defence Forces launched an attack of unprecedented scale on the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli government, the attack was in response to unyielding Palestinian rocket and mortar fire into Israel since…
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Gaza Rage
CONTINUE READING: Gaza RageThe war in Gaza is entering its seventh day with the Israeli ground surge in force as I write. I feel entirely helpless and nearly immobilised by rage. But reading Ilan Pappe’s ‘Israel’s righteous fury and its victims in Gaza’ in Electronic Intifada helps to make sense of the murderous attack. My work on the…
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Equality aftermath
CONTINUE READING: Equality aftermathIn the aftermath of the resignation of Niall Crowley, Chief Executive of the Equality Authority, the Minister for Justice made ‘no apologies’ for cutting the Equality Authority’s budget, privileging instead police spending. This is in line with seeing equality work as defending Irish society’s problematic marginal populations, rather than maintaining equality for all, which was…
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Hidden Ireland … once again
CONTINUE READING: Hidden Ireland … once againAt the AkiDwA (African Women’s Network) AGM on 22 November 2008, African asylum seekers living in direct provision hostels – AKA Ireland’s holding camps – spoke about the real cost of the recent budget cuts, as their children are prevented from attending school regularly because the school bus has been discontinued. The women, who live…
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Let Obama not be a ‘friend of Israel’
CONTINUE READING: Let Obama not be a ‘friend of Israel’Just read Gideon Levy’s article ‘Let Obama not be a friend of Israel’ in Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1035415.html His main argument is that what Israel needs is a US president who encourages Israel to end the occupation, not bolster it, who remembers that Palestinians, not only African Americans, have human rights, who stops funding Israeli re-arming, who…
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Palestinian Nakba project
CONTINUE READING: Palestinian Nakba projectI saw a marvellous exhibition at the Patriothall Gallery in Edinburgh created by the Scottish artist Jane Frere, titled ‘Return of the soul: The Nakbah project’. Frere, who was inspired by visits in the Nazi concentration camps, deciedd to create a project on the plight of the Palestinians, dispossessed by the Zionists during and after…