Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Samah Jabr
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Professional Solidarity with Palestine: A Mental Health Imperative
In the field of medicine, we often speak of the social determinants of health. In Palestine, not only social, but political determinants of health have a grave impact on the wellbeing and mental health of our community. I am not just talking about the political blackmail through recent blatant...
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A betrayed generation in Palestine reveals post-Oslo nihilism and cynicism
More than 55 per cent of Palestinians living in the occupied territories were born after the signing of the Oslo Accords 25 years ago. What is life like for this generation, now that their hopeful dreams of independence and prosperity have been reduced to a nightmare by the ongoing...
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Talking through our fears: Resisting the Palestinian complacency of silence
On a few occasions, my mother has awakened me anxiously to let me know who is the latest to be arrested for a Facebook statement, and to warn me from posting my views on my page. And when I tell her goodbye before my trips abroad, she responds with...
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Our history haunts our future
A French colleague once asked me, “Why are the Palestinians stuck in the Nakba? They commemorate villages no longer present on any map and bequeath to their children the keys to homes that have been long abandoned. Why don’t they leave it all behind, and look to the future?”...
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A monologue with the ‘Other’: the inauthenticity of discourse under occupation
The occupation of Palestine has fallen into universal oblivion. In the face of this void, however, there are still Palestinians who attempt to affirm their selfhood through challenging the occupation creatively; by refusing, for example, to submit to it with either helplessness or nihilism. Personally, I found an occasion...
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The salt will never lose its taste
The latest religious and racial slurs embodied in the Trump administration’s decision to transfer the US Embassy to Jerusalem has rubbed salt into the ever-open wound of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This move is yet further evidence of the absence of any moral, social and lawful legitimacy of America’s...
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The innocence of those who fear and the guilt of those who hate
In our stressful state of occupation, there is, among other ills, an essentialist view of Israeli and Palestinian characteristics. In the many public talks that I have given to Westerners about the violation of the rights of Palestinians, one question almost invariably comes up: “What about the fears of...
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The call of the sky: Transcending the borders of the occupation
In a psychotic state, a 16 year old young woman patient from the West Bank went beyond the confines of her own boundaries: “I saw the sky turned red in colour and I perceived a calling… I looked into people’s eyes to see that they too were excited and...
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More royal than the king: An encounter with French Zionism
From those who are willing to legitimise killing and torture in support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the fabrication of lies and false accusations to intimidate their opponents is only to be expected. Opinon: BDS is the French exception to international boycotts My latest encounter with international Zionism...
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When Israel and Britain celebrate the historical trauma of Palestinians
After 100 years, Britain seems to be at the same moral stage as it was when UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to a leader of the British Jewish community, Baron Rothschild, promising the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. Instead of making redress...
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Humiliation: The hammer crushing Palestinian society
While the exercise of military control over an occupied country may be expected to inflict inevitable pain and trauma on the citizens of that country, the history of Israeli policy has far exceeded any “pragmatic” needs of an occupier to dominate and subdue a local population. The Israeli humiliation...
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When medicine is polluted by Israel’s occupation
When Hillary Clinton wrote a letter to the Israeli-American donor Haim Saban against the popular and peaceful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, she described “the Jewish state” as a “vibrant democracy in a region dominated by autocracy… a modern day miracle — a vibrant bloom in the middle...