Samer Badawi

Samer Badawi

Samer Badawi has been a contributor to +972 Magazine since 2014.

Recent Articles
Palestinian activists around a bonfire in Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank January 31, 2014.
Ceding the Palestinian narrative to … Palestinians
Marcello Di Cintio’s book, ‘Pay No Heed to the Rockets,’ ends up revealing something discomforting about us: our notions of Palestinian life may have little to do with how Palestinians experience themselves. Pay No Heed to the Rockets,” Marcello Di Cintio, Counterpoint, 2018. Marcello Di Cintio’s Pay No Heed to the Rockets borrows its title…
By Samer Badawi September 6, 2018
Palestinian men try to pass through the Qalandiya checkpoint on the last Friday of Ramadan, September 3, 2010. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Fortress Israel and the quiet dignity of Palestinian resistance
Peter Beinart’s interrogation at Ben Gurion Airport made headlines not because of his clout as a public intellectual, but thanks to the quiet dignity of Palestinian children, women and men who have endured Fortress Israel for years. I first lost my father in the heat of a Jericho summer, 20 years ago this week. He disappeared, or so it…
By Samer Badawi August 21, 2018
Palestinian refugee Laila Abdel Meguid Tafesh 78 years old, from the Rafah refugee camp, holds up a key she says is from her house in Jaffa. (Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90)
Lessons from my Palestinian mother about Jerusalem — and resistance
For 70 years, Israel has tried to erase Palestinian history. And for 70 years, Palestinians have resisted erasure. My mother helped me understand how.  In her expansive history of Jerusalem, British author Karen Armstrong describes a peculiar pastime of Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general who, in 1967, captured the city’s eastern half. Dayan, it turns…
By Samer Badawi May 15, 2018
Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah receive monthly food rations from an UNRWA distribution center, January 23, 2017. (Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90)
‘UNRWA shouldn’t be held hostage to politics’
As the U.S. slashes the Palestinian refugee agency’s budget, Netanyahu is urging it be abolished altogether. Some believe that shuttering UNRWA would somehow make the Palestinian refugee problem extinct. ‘Not true,’ says the agency’s director in Washington. The Trump administration announced this week that it had cut by more than half its contribution to the…
By Samer Badawi January 18, 2018
Boys line up in the morning to practice daily exercises an UNRWA school in Shujayea neighborhood, Gaza City, September 15, 2014. The school year has started with a three-week delay, due to the latest Israeli offensive during which 29 schools have been totally destroyed, and around 190 damaged. The first weeks are dedicated to recreational activities to help children to overcome the trauma due the the seven-week Israeli military offensive. 2,131 Palestinians were killed, including 501 children, and an estimated 18,000 housing units have been either destroyed or severely damaged, leaving more than 108,000 people homeless.
Our pledge to the next generation of Palestinians and Israelis
What actual change will look like is not for journalists to decide. What we can do, however, is invite those who care about this land and its people to reckon with the inconvenient questions before us. The night before I traveled to Gaza to cover the 2014 war for +972 Magazine, I received a call…
By Samer Badawi December 28, 2017
Palestinian mourners carry the body of 30-year-old Mahmoud al-Masri who died yesterday during clashes with Israeli security forces on the Israeli-Gaza border, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, on December 9, 2017. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
The limits of the Palestinian struggle in Gaza
Gaza-based journalist Saud Abu Ramadan talks to +972 about the limits that Palestinian protesters face in Gaza and asks, how, under the existing conditions, the residents of Gaza are supposed to resist. Saud Abu Ramadan is a Palestinian journalist based in Gaza. On July 30, 2014, his office on the eighth floor of the Al Basha…
By Samer Badawi December 10, 2017
Palestinians shout slogans during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, following Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa compound in Jerusalem's Old City, December 8, 2017. (Sliman Khader/Flash90)
Is Jerusalem forcing a new direction for the Palestinian struggle?
‘This is the least expensive occupation in history,’ says one Palestinian resident. What he wants in return are equal rights in a democratic state. Could this be the future of the Palestinian national movement?    When I first met Osama Essawi in the summer of 2014, Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” had claimed its 500th Palestinian…
By Samer Badawi December 8, 2017
U.S. President Donald Trump gives a speech in Jerusalem, May 23, 2017. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Absent in the clamor about Jerusalem are the Palestinians of Jerusalem
In Arab capitals speculation turns to panic about Trump’s expected reversal of policy on Jerusalem. Meanwhile, nobody seems to be talking about — or to — the Palestinians of Jerusalem, whose daily reality of occupation will remain irrespective of what comes next. Speculation was rife on Tuesday that the U.S. president would soon break with…
By Samer Badawi December 5, 2017
Illustrative photo of Israeli Border Police officers frogmarching a Palestinian detainee in East Jerusalem during the tension surrounding Al-Aqsa Mosque, July 21, 2017, East Jerusalem. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Palestinian rights make a rare appearance in Congress
A first-of-its-kind bill introduced this week focusing on the rights of Palestinian children could pave the way for greater transparency and accountability in America’s dealings with Israel.    Members of Congress on Tuesday introduced a bill requiring the U.S. Secretary of State to certify that funds bound for Israel “do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or…
By Samer Badawi November 15, 2017
Palestine solidarity protesters supporting the BDS movement, 2010. (Photo by Stephanie Law/CC, cropped)
ACLU launches first major challenge of anti-BDS legislation
The lawsuit offers the most stark example yet of how anti-BDS legislation threatens Americans’ First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union announced Wednesday that it had filed suit on behalf of a Kansas public school educator who was asked to disavow a boycott of Israel as a condition for payment. The case comes amid growing concerns that…
By Samer Badawi October 11, 2017
Most Read
  1. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
  2. Iran is acting more rationally than Israel — for now
  3. ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
  4. Six months after October 7, a lament for the paths not chosen
  5. Netanyahu isn't the only one interested in prolonging the war
  1. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
  2. Netanyahu isn't the only one interested in prolonging the war
  3. ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
  4. Iran is acting more rationally than Israel — for now
  5. ‘The colors and joy have disappeared’: Gazans return to decimated Khan Younis
  1. ‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza
  2. ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
  3. The spiraling absurdity of Germany's pro-Israel fanaticism
  4. Even without a UN veto, Gaza remains hostage to American power
  5. Why do Israelis feel so threatened by a ceasefire?