The solitary work of a trucker entails long hours, poor pay and dangerous conditions. One trade union is attempting to organize drivers in a sector which is crucial to the Israeli economy. By Alon Aviram Haifa - At the largest of Israel’s seaports, heavy haulage trucks operate day and night, continuously working to transport imports and exports across the country. A stench of diesel fumes hangs in the port, and the sounds of shifting gears and screeching brakes are constant. Over 10,000 heavy vehicle drivers are employed in haulage in Israel. Unionization is scarce, and work conditions are grizzly. Long…

In its refusal to make compromises on zoning restrictions for an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Galilee, Israel demonstrates that its preferred demographic balance is higher on the list of state priorities than the protection of the welfare of its citizens. By Paul Karolyi In the early 1950s, a Bedouin Arab named Atif Mohammad Sawa’ed (Abu Walid) bought a parcel of land from the Shafa ‘Amr municipality, 25 kilometers east of Haifa, hoping to build a home for his new wife and his family. The land he bought in Umm al-Sahali lies on a hilltop, no more than two kilometers…

Ascribing a pro-Assad position to large swaths of the Arab population in Israel, and presenting 'Arab parties' as one unified block, ignores a far more complex political discourse taking place within Palestinian civil society. A response to Yossi Gurvitz. By Muhammad Jabali I wish that I could write about this subject without so much personal involvement, and without having to explain so many details. But most of the debate I am about to enter into happens in Arabic and among Arabs, and here I’m writing about it in a different language, for a different audience. The issue addressed in Yossi…

<< The Christmas Journey Home Tel-Aviv - Haifa - Afula, twixt two bearded men. I brought Ruthie a couple of small treats from Ramallah. One of them is a chocolate Santa, which looks entirely out of place in Tel Aviv's surroundings. As I headed out this morning, I kept thinking of how foreign this holiday is to us Jewish Israelis, and yet how much more familiar it has become in recent decades. Christmas is a stranger in our culture, but one who appears at our door newly each year. Have we come to accept him? Should we come to accept…

On Friday, December 9, 2011, Israelis gathered for the 3rd annual human rights march, held this year in both Tel Aviv and Haifa. Joining the marches were a range of human rights, democracy, and anti-occupation groups, as well as rightist counter demonstrators. View photos from the Tel Aviv march taken by +972 contributors: (Click 'Show Info' for translations of Hebrew signs)

The revolutionary social struggle taking place in Israel today is nearing a critical juncture: either it crumbles under the boot of "security needs" and racial segregation, or breaks free from all previous dogmas and reboots our political system. Perhaps it is due time to say these words out loud: friends, partners, comrades – we on the left have been fighting for a lost cause. For ages now we've been fighting against occupation, apartheid, Zionist racism and the likes, with very little to show for it. In recent decades, Israel's rule over the Palestinian Occupied Territories has become ever-more sophisticated, more…

“Nakba Harta?” Historical facts are a stubborn thing, not as malleable as the right-wing propagandists would like Well, at least one good thing came out of Im Tirzu’s latest propaganda pamphlet, written by convicted explosives thief Erez Tadmor and Arel Segal: A re-examination of the flight of Palestinians from Haifa, which the two pointed to as a proof of Jewish purity of arms. An excellent Haaretz article (Hebrew) makes it clear the flight began after the Hagana shelled, on April 22, 1948, Haifa’s market square, after the Palestinians asked for a ceasefire. The shelling killed at least 10 Palestinians -…

10 percent of the Palestinian-Israelis live in what we like to call mixed cities. What do we know about their reality and how is it different, if at all, from the reality of the Palestinian-Israeli villages and cities? By Issa Edward Boursheh The Central Bureau of Statistics defines the following cities as mixed cities in Israel: Acre (27.2% Palestinian-Israelis), Lid/Lod (24.4%), Ramleh/Ramla (22.5%), Haifa (10%), Jaffa (31.2%), Nazareth-Illit/Upper Nazareth (14.5%) and Ma’alot-Tarshiha (22.1%). Aside from Nazareth-Illit and Tarshiha-Ma’alot, the current reality in these cities is the direct outcome of the 1948 war and the collapse of the urban life of…

The best news of the day is that a huge entertainment group is coming to town With all due respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Shashinsky committee (the panel which yesterday hiked up taxes on Israel's gas reservoirs), the biggest news item of the day (in my humble opinion) was buried somewhere in the back pages of the local media. As a native of Haifa (and as one with relatives in Orange County CA, where it all started), I was overcome with pride and joy yesterday when I saw that Disney - yes folks, Disney! - is coming to…

I’m traveling all over the country these days for a project, and I mean all over. I’m visiting every town large enough to possess a central bus terminal. The article deals with these terminals and their general state of neglect. I vowed to visit them all. Yes, these places are in suffering from disrepair, but something else that becomes apparent to a traveler in Israel today is the state of disrepair of the nation’s psyche. To put it bluntly, you cannot even fathom how much racism and ethnic prejudice I encounter every day. I wouldn’t have imagined if someone told…

The deeper you dig, the closer you come to the bone. Cities will teach you that. Haifa is a three tiered one: Atop Mt. Carmel are the posh quarters, complete with pretty parks and a cinematheque. Halfway down is Haddar, the city's first "modern hub", mixing urban grit with pleasent residential streets. All the way down is the "Lower City", and that's where the heart is, the rugged, blue collar heart. Each time I visit this neglected bit of cityscape, I go through something dramatic. My first true venture here was for an article in the Hebrew edition of National…