Guest contribution by Farah Erzouki

This Thursday, January 26, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) at the University of Michigan — Ann Arbor will be bringing renown author, journalist, and commentator Ali Abunimah for a groundbreaking lecture discussing, “Colonial Reality: Dismantling the Myths of Israeli Democracy. Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, will address the campus community on the reality of Israel’s claim as the region’s only beacon of light, a terms it regularly assigns to itself. (Editor’s note: Event information can be found at the end of this post.)

Rhetoric surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict has continuously revolved around the argument that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Such claims are not only false and biased, but have harsh implications in terms of the public opinion regarding the question of Palestine. These falsehoods propagated by the media and other outlets have lead to the pardoning of Israel for their blatant racist, discriminatory and colonizing practices and have characterized the Israeli government as the only nation in the Middle East that has any promising future because of its democratic ideals. These falsehoods lead to the Israeli exceptionalism that we see so often. Forgetting about the war crimes, violations of international law, illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of a people, we see figures of power praising Israel for democratic traits they do not truly possess. We hope that this event will shine light on the realities of the that most college-age students at a public university may never hear. This topic is crucial because it will, as the title suggests, dismantle the myths that have been propagating popular opinion. [Read more...]