In the aftermath of events in Israel and Gaza following October 7, 2023, the entire world, includ... more In the aftermath of events in Israel and Gaza following October 7, 2023, the entire world, including the U.S., has witnessed a wave of protests unlike anything since the summer of 2020 after George Floyd was killed by police. Photo images of these recent protests have appeared in the major media but are even more pervasive in the various platforms of social media, notably Instagram, X (Twitter), and Facebook. Although such images are routinely included in the reportage about these events, protest as a genre of photography seems to be a neglected area of discussion among photographers and scholars of visual culture. 1
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2010
When in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and South African apartheid soon followed, it appeared even to... more When in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and South African apartheid soon followed, it appeared even to political realists of the period that such systems, with their landscapes of walls and practices of separation, would rapidly be consigned to historical memory. In one of the great ironies of recent history, however, a new generation of such landscapes is proliferating in the wake of 1989, used by practitioners of power to promote systems of segregation and control movements of groups designated as threats by virtue of their representation as “other.” Reflecting collective psychologies of fear, these environments range from urban-based gated communities, where class prejudices against the poor and apprehension about crime coalesce in “fortified enclaves” withinCities of Walls, to borderlands between nation–states where hostility to immigrants and prejudices against ethnic others converge in creating what scholars describe asThe Wall Around the West. Despite differences, these landscapes...
Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his fie... more Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his field of computer engineering, despite a master's degree in computer science from Birzeit University, and as a result, he relies on the tourist industry to earn a living, drawing on his fluent English and knowledge of the fraught politics of the region. In the aftermath of October 7 th he was working in Ramallah at the same hotel where, by fate, I found myself as the only guest on a sabbatical that began October 6th. Over coffee, he recounted to me an experience leading a group of German tourists to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. As a West Bank Palestinian, Mohammed would normally be barred from entry to the Israeli capital, but because of his role on this occasion in shepherding a German tour group through the Holy Land, he was able to obtain the mandatory permit from Israeli authorities to enter the Holy City. While at Yad Vashem, the group had a tour from one of the Museum docents who explained in detail the suffering endured by Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his fie... more Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his field of computer engineering, despite a master's degree in computer science from Birzeit University, and as a result, he relies on the tourist industry to earn a living, drawing on his fluent English and knowledge of the fraught politics of the region. In the aftermath of October 7 th he was working in Ramallah at the same hotel where, by fate, I found myself as the only guest on a sabbatical that began October 6th. Over coffee, he recounted to me an experience leading a group of German tourists to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. As a West Bank Palestinian, Mohammed would normally be barred from entry to the Israeli capital, but because of his role on this occasion in shepherding a German tour group through the Holy Land, he was able to obtain the mandatory permit from Israeli authorities to enter the Holy City. While at Yad Vashem, the group had a tour from one of the Museum docents who explained in detail the suffering endured by Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
Blacks in America and Palestinians under the control of Israel share a similar fate at the hands ... more Blacks in America and Palestinians under the control of Israel share a similar fate at the hands of police in both countries. American police and Israeli police are among the most violent in the world, killing Blacks and Palestinians respectively, at staggering rates. In 2019, American police forces killed over 1,000 people, a disproportionate number being African Americans. In England for the same year, the total number of individuals killed by police was 3. Since 2018, the Israeli military and police have killed more than 270 Gazan protesters at the border fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip. For the 2-year period from 2018-19, Israeli security forces killed 423 Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Gaza is often decried as a uniquely brutal open-air prison, but is the carceral condition imposed... more Gaza is often decried as a uniquely brutal open-air prison, but is the carceral condition imposed on the Gaza Strip part of a broader historical lineage of confinement landscapes? The argument in this essay is that Gaza belongs to a historically longstanding lineage of places and people subjected to practices of incarceration imposed on landscapes, and that the system of confinement in the Gaza Strip has escaped systematic comparison to these other confined spaces. To support this contention, the essay compares the prison-like conditions of Gaza to three examples of carceral environments: the early-modern, plague-stricken European town; the carceral landscape of the “cotton kingdom” in the antebellum American South; and the French system of confinement in the pacification of Algeria. Using both text and photographic images, this article also speculates that situating Gaza within this comparative frame at this moment offers new opportunities for changing the discourse about Gaza to a world seemingly indifferent to the injustices suffered by the Palestinians of Gaza.
This paper is for a special issue of the ARAB WORLD GEOGRAPHER on ethnographic research in the Ar... more This paper is for a special issue of the ARAB WORLD GEOGRAPHER on ethnographic research in the Arab and Muslim World and details the author's experience in the Palestinian village of Jayyous.
In the aftermath of events in Israel and Gaza following October 7, 2023, the entire world, includ... more In the aftermath of events in Israel and Gaza following October 7, 2023, the entire world, including the U.S., has witnessed a wave of protests unlike anything since the summer of 2020 after George Floyd was killed by police. Photo images of these recent protests have appeared in the major media but are even more pervasive in the various platforms of social media, notably Instagram, X (Twitter), and Facebook. Although such images are routinely included in the reportage about these events, protest as a genre of photography seems to be a neglected area of discussion among photographers and scholars of visual culture. 1
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2010
When in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and South African apartheid soon followed, it appeared even to... more When in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, and South African apartheid soon followed, it appeared even to political realists of the period that such systems, with their landscapes of walls and practices of separation, would rapidly be consigned to historical memory. In one of the great ironies of recent history, however, a new generation of such landscapes is proliferating in the wake of 1989, used by practitioners of power to promote systems of segregation and control movements of groups designated as threats by virtue of their representation as “other.” Reflecting collective psychologies of fear, these environments range from urban-based gated communities, where class prejudices against the poor and apprehension about crime coalesce in “fortified enclaves” withinCities of Walls, to borderlands between nation–states where hostility to immigrants and prejudices against ethnic others converge in creating what scholars describe asThe Wall Around the West. Despite differences, these landscapes...
Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his fie... more Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his field of computer engineering, despite a master's degree in computer science from Birzeit University, and as a result, he relies on the tourist industry to earn a living, drawing on his fluent English and knowledge of the fraught politics of the region. In the aftermath of October 7 th he was working in Ramallah at the same hotel where, by fate, I found myself as the only guest on a sabbatical that began October 6th. Over coffee, he recounted to me an experience leading a group of German tourists to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. As a West Bank Palestinian, Mohammed would normally be barred from entry to the Israeli capital, but because of his role on this occasion in shepherding a German tour group through the Holy Land, he was able to obtain the mandatory permit from Israeli authorities to enter the Holy City. While at Yad Vashem, the group had a tour from one of the Museum docents who explained in detail the suffering endured by Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his fie... more Like many highly-educated individuals in Palestine today, Mohammed Q. cannot find work in his field of computer engineering, despite a master's degree in computer science from Birzeit University, and as a result, he relies on the tourist industry to earn a living, drawing on his fluent English and knowledge of the fraught politics of the region. In the aftermath of October 7 th he was working in Ramallah at the same hotel where, by fate, I found myself as the only guest on a sabbatical that began October 6th. Over coffee, he recounted to me an experience leading a group of German tourists to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. As a West Bank Palestinian, Mohammed would normally be barred from entry to the Israeli capital, but because of his role on this occasion in shepherding a German tour group through the Holy Land, he was able to obtain the mandatory permit from Israeli authorities to enter the Holy City. While at Yad Vashem, the group had a tour from one of the Museum docents who explained in detail the suffering endured by Jews at the hands of the Nazis.
Blacks in America and Palestinians under the control of Israel share a similar fate at the hands ... more Blacks in America and Palestinians under the control of Israel share a similar fate at the hands of police in both countries. American police and Israeli police are among the most violent in the world, killing Blacks and Palestinians respectively, at staggering rates. In 2019, American police forces killed over 1,000 people, a disproportionate number being African Americans. In England for the same year, the total number of individuals killed by police was 3. Since 2018, the Israeli military and police have killed more than 270 Gazan protesters at the border fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip. For the 2-year period from 2018-19, Israeli security forces killed 423 Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.
Gaza is often decried as a uniquely brutal open-air prison, but is the carceral condition imposed... more Gaza is often decried as a uniquely brutal open-air prison, but is the carceral condition imposed on the Gaza Strip part of a broader historical lineage of confinement landscapes? The argument in this essay is that Gaza belongs to a historically longstanding lineage of places and people subjected to practices of incarceration imposed on landscapes, and that the system of confinement in the Gaza Strip has escaped systematic comparison to these other confined spaces. To support this contention, the essay compares the prison-like conditions of Gaza to three examples of carceral environments: the early-modern, plague-stricken European town; the carceral landscape of the “cotton kingdom” in the antebellum American South; and the French system of confinement in the pacification of Algeria. Using both text and photographic images, this article also speculates that situating Gaza within this comparative frame at this moment offers new opportunities for changing the discourse about Gaza to a world seemingly indifferent to the injustices suffered by the Palestinians of Gaza.
This paper is for a special issue of the ARAB WORLD GEOGRAPHER on ethnographic research in the Ar... more This paper is for a special issue of the ARAB WORLD GEOGRAPHER on ethnographic research in the Arab and Muslim World and details the author's experience in the Palestinian village of Jayyous.
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https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2020.49.3.41
https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2020.49.3.41