United, Jewish and strong was the narrative projected on the May 8th Independence Day celebrations, where massive military pageants in Tel Aviv had an unfortunate interactive element, as a falling paratrooper missed his mark, injuring onlookers at the city's waterfront. However, the sensitivity of the rhetoric and the strong hand needed to maintain it was clear the next day as Tel Aviv police confiscated and then dissected a giant pink penis featured in a demonstration that mockingly celebrated 60 years of militarism.

Dubbed a "salute to the national erection," 150 queer and anarchist Israelis gathered on Tel Aviv's swanky Rothschild street to confront the city's mainstream about the memory of Nakba - Israel's 1948 creation of over 750 000 Palestinian refugees. With chants like "I don't shoot, I don't give birth, I'm a traitor to the national erection," "Homophobia and racism, thank you Zionism" and "Penis yalla, yalla, get out of Ramallah," the activists tied what they see as the current face of Israeli apartheid to a history of expulsion.

Leftist demonstrators mocked old Zionist songs and slogans, creating new verses that reflected the daily violence of Israel's military in the occupied territories. True to contemporary Israeli left form, the chants connected heterosexism and Zionism, and tied present inequalities of rights between Arabs and Jews to their origins in the Nakba, and the Jewish settlement of Palestine.

Linking the present situation to 1948 comes at a pivotal time, as the power of such displays challenge's the further entrenchment of...

Over the past few weeks Israel has become a sea of emblems to mark the 60th anniversary of its creation, with blue and white flags cloaking the state's cities, towns and settlements. The celebrations are patriotic bravado, making America's fourth of July celebrations seem like a few weenies snugly subdued in their buns, but it's the insecurity behind them that's clearly exposed.

Ceremonies commemorating the 1948 war not only intend to reassure Israeli Jews that the land they've taken is firmly in their control, but also convince Palestinians of the unshakable authority of the self-proclaimed Jewish state. It is Israel's front lines - whether they be the West Bank settlements, Jerusalem or Palestinian Israeli centers - that have become most visibly consumed by the Magen David.

On April 24, as part of the build-up of events to Israel's independence celebrations, Jaffa's old port area appeared more visually Israeli than Tel Aviv's King George Street , with flags clinging to every lamppost and street corner. Veterans of the Irgun in collaboration with the Irgun Memorial museum in Mansheeah held walking tours and commemoration ceremonies for the "liberation of Jaffa." During the 1948 war, the Zionist militia founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who looked to Italian fascism as a model for a Jewish state, conquered the city, forcing most of its over 70,000 Palestinian residents to flea on boats to Gaza. The museum is located in the former house of Mansheeah's sheik, and was the only building left standing in the town after...

Barreling towards the desert from Ramallah at 10p.m is not the traditional way that Jews commemorate their biblical freedom from bondage on Passover seder night. However, the full moon lighting over the Negev crater, Maktesh Ramon, and my hazy state of recovery from the previous night's festivities on my rooftop, celebrating my attorney's forty years of service to liberation, made the adventure irresistible.

Starting to burn out and crash at 8:00 p.m., after a post-festivity legal consultation with ‘Burney, my attorney and his partner Sabina, I got a text messaged by Mailyse, suggesting a road trip. Most of the ragtag bunch of Israelis from the party having shamelessly departed for their matzah ball soup and brisket hours before, my attorney and Sabina closed the case and left just as Mailyse arrived to divulge a strategy for marking 40 years of bitterness.

"It's a gorgeous night, How about we go to the coast near the Lebanon border." I said somewhat seriously. "I know some great caves around there."
But my eyes were already being pulled south on the Lonely Planet map of historic Palestinian hotspots, towards the desert. "It's a full moon and apparently Maktesh Ramon looks like the moon. Why don't we go there?" I suggested to Mailyse as Burney frantically searched for his passport. "Sure," she said not lifting an eyebrow.

Twenty-five minutes later we were passing though the Hizma settler checkpoint, hoping to avoid the hassles of Qalandia during a full West Bank closure. The army routinely imposes...

Keeping it real with ‘my attorney' during twilight hours in Ramallah last week, watching Youtube clips of Britpop icons on Top of the Pops, I got buzzed by an old Montreal homie, now living in the midst of the Palestinian national liberation movement. Oldskool allies in Palestinian solidarity from Uni, we always laughed at how, despite being a Palestinian-Canadian, she actually had Zionists in her posse, and how I didn't.

Amidst the Pulp music video chorus, "you wanna live like common people," my friend told me that a mutual buddy, originally from her North American social circle, now beach parked in Tel Aviv, was coming to visit. Evidently I was "Janice's" culturally sensitive tour guide of choice, and being a freelancer on the edge of developing a new batch of stories, I was also the most available option.

There are some unspoken rules about the obligations of internationals living in Ramallah who seek to show their understanding of the place and commitment to "the struggle."

First off, when a curious, non-political western Jew comes to town, you have an obligation to introduce them to the Occupation. Secondly, while you only show them the international community and bar scene, you and your friends must compensate by spending all your time illustrating the inescapable visibility of apartheid. Finally, as you reinforce the recent calm of ‘normalcy' in Ramallah, you must intersperse it with explanations of the various markers to Palestinian resistance fighters on Ramallah's main streets, where Israel gunned them down.

Rising...

As a wave of settlement expansion continues to wash over the Occupied Territories, the increasingly militant Palestinian-Israeli counter-response was evident at this year's week of Land Day demonstrations.

Identifying gentrification as a form of slow-motion ethnic cleansing, demonstrations in Jaffa targeted the 497 demolition notices issued against Palestinian homes. According to the Jaffa Popular Committee Against House Demolitions, the families evicted in this process will make room for upper class Jewish ones. It may have been no coincidence that in the same week, both Palestinian and Israeli activists took action against the mushrooming settlement and outpost boom.

Land Day commemorates the killing of six Palestinian-Israeli's during a general strike and mass protest against Israeli seizure of Arab land in the Galilee on March 30, 1976. Since the ‘October events' at the start of the Second Intifada when 13 Arabs were killed by Israeli forces in the area around Um al-Fahem, the traditionally Palestinian-Israeli event also taken root in the West Bank and Gaza. It marks both resistance to occupation and a shift in attitude towards Arabs who live on Israeli territory. In the years after 1948, Palestinian-Israelis were often viewed ambivalently by Palestinians across the green Line, while being distrusted by Israelis.

Yet both suffered from similar processes of ghettoisation and clearance. Since the large scale ethnic cleansing of 1948, Jaffa's Palestinian-Israelis have faced house demolitions, municipal discrimination and - since the 1970s - an express attempt to ‘Judaize' their neighbourhood. In the name of creating a ‘mixed city', Tel...