South Tel Aviv land grab

Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2, 2012 It was a winter morning in 1982. Shimon Yehoshua, 21, had finished three years’ mandatory military service a week before. He’d arrived at his home—two rooms shared with his parents and nine brothers and sisters—in time to catch the last flames of Hanukkah. Shimon lived in the Kfar Shalem …

House evictions forge new alliances in Israel

Al Jazeera English, March 11, 2011 Yafit Cohen is a wife and mother of four – her youngest child is just a few months old. Cohen makes her way up the stairs, slowly, easing her baby carriage around a gaping hole. “Watch out,” she says to me. I look down. I can easily imagine her …

Tel Aviv’s Egyptian grandmother

The Jerusalem Post, January 15, 2010 The first time I visited Julie, I felt transported. I’d turned onto Shabazi Street in Neve Tzedek and, somehow, left Tel Aviv. I’d stepped into one of those classic Egyptian eateries—a humble kitchen turned bustling restaurant, tucked away on a nameless alley. I stood at the counter before a …

The Missing Mizrahim

   The Missing Mizrahim: review of Rachel Shabi’s Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands, and Q & A with the author Zeek, August 31, 2009 Some critics have faulted Rachel Shabi’s Not the Enemy: Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands as one-sided. Shabi neglects the animosity that existed between Jews and Muslims long before …