New Issue: Changing Portrayals of Palestine and Israel

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The May issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs is now available. Digital subscribers can read the entire issue online.

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For Jewish Americans, the Idea of Israel as a Liberal Democracy Is Rapidly Fading

Allan C. Brownfeld highlights the collapsing support for the Israeli government. "Even the strongest Jewish supporters of Israel in the U.S. are doing their best to separate themselves from what they call that country’s retreat from democracy," he writes.

“Truth, No Matter What”: Why Watering Down Palestinian Reality Is a Crime

Ramzy Baroud notes that even supporters of Palestine tend to water down the truth about Israel due to fear of pushback. If the West is to change its policies toward Israel, citizens and policymakers alike must stop dancing around the truth, he argues. "The truth, in its simplest and most innate form, is the only objective we should continue to relentlessly pursue until Palestine and her people are finally free."

Baroud, El-Kurd Call for Authentic Portrayals of Palestinians

At a recent forum in Australia, Ramzy Baroud and Mohammed El-Kurd argued that sterilizing Palestinians as docile occupied subjects does not advance their liberation. “This whole idea of trying to beautify ourselves and humanize ourselves and make ourselves more accessible—it does not work,” Baroud emphasized. “I want to ask you to not burden yourselves with the obligation of assigning sainthood to Palestinians or to any oppressed people," El-Kurd added.

Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire

In Legacy of Violence, Caroline Elkins, professor of history and of African and African American studies at Harvard University, examines how Britain used violence to maintain its global empire while attempting to sustain a self-image as a liberal country, extending its benevolent rule over so-called “lesser races.”

As Elkins writes of the 1936-39 Arab Revolt: “Its three years had witnessed the efflorescence of legalized lawlessness and the consolidation of norms and logics that various British actors had honed elsewhere in the empire, whether in the air, on unconventional battlefields and interrogation sites, in domestic spheres, or on the floor of Parliament and in the cabinet’s smoke-filled rooms.” Elkins concludes that the revolt was a “crucial turning point in imperial convergences.”

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