Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“According to media reports, since 7 October, hundreds, and potentially thousands of British citizens have left the UK to fight for the Israeli Defense Forces in Israel’s war on Gaza. Many of these Britons may already be complicit in potential war crimes and crimes against humanity, and could face future prosecution should these matters go to trial.  ICJP has urgently asked the government to clarify its position on the legality of British citizens going to fight in Israel or Gaza, noting the difference with its policy on Ukraine.” ***** In a panel discussion in London ,  emeritus professor Avi Shlaim, lecturer of International Relations at the University of Oxford  spoke about how Palestinian resistance has been “decontextualised” and that Palestinians are engaged in a decolonial struggle. During the panel discussion, Wadah Khanfar spoke about a “shameless, explicit hypocrisy” from Western politicians. “Every kind of mask has dropped. And we see the faces of these leaders in front of

“By the time we arrived in Israel in the early 1950s, the Arabs were the enemy, and Arabic was considered the language of the enemy. I was hugely embarrassed when my father spoke to me in Arabic in the street in front of my friends because I internalized the values of my new society. Everything Arab was considered hostile, foreign, alien, and primitive. What I didn’t understand at the time is that we don’t choose our identity for ourselves. I had a clear identity when I arrived in Israel at age five: I was an Arab Jew. But our identities aren’t informed just by us or by forces that are benign, but sometimes by other forces that are not so benign, as in this case, Zionism. Zionism is about erasing my Arab Jewish identity and giving me a new identity as a new Israeli, with which I’ve never felt really comfortable with. At school, I learned a lot about Jewish history in Europe and about the Holocaust, but I was never told anything about the history of the Jews in the Arab lands. The Ameri