Ben Gerstein

Targeting Printing and Publishing Houses in Gaza: A Cultural Violation and a Memoricide Palestine Square, فلسطين الميدان

"Wars do not target bodies alone—they also seek to assassinate memory." www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1657...

‘Alligator Alcatraz' detainees on hunger strike for 10th day, protesting conditions One of the detainees, Pedro Hernández, was hospitalized during the strike but continued to refuse food, he said on Thursday.

A hunger strike at a South Florida immigration detention center state officials have named “Alligator Alcatraz” enters its tenth day, as detainees protest what they call inhumane and dangerous living conditions.

Great point @purplechrain.bsky.social and something I think David Schraub captures well in his work. On issues of abortion rights and immigration, an attempted revocation of valid and permissible Jewishness has been consistently leveraged.

In agreeing to this, Brown embraces the project of defining the Jewish community by adherence to Zionism. And even more nefariously, the institution disavows DEI while providing special measures for the ideological subset of the Jewish community the Trump administration deems valid.

This is how the Jewish right manages to convince themselves that they are actually a majority in the US - by defining most of us out of Jewishness. They would rather rule over a tiny community than have to actually work to convince people in a larger one.

UCLA to pay $6.45 million to settle suit by Jewish students over pro-Palestinian protests UCLA agreed to settle a lawsuit by Jewish students who alleged the university aided a 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment, which the lawsuit alleged illegally discriminated against Jewish people.

1/ I represent 5 anti-zionist students and faculty challenging the outrageous claim that the Palestine Solidarity Encampment was a "Jew exclusion zone". UCLA refused to defend. Today they agreed to pay millions instead. I can't overstate how dangerous this is. 🧵

www.latimes.com/california/s...

As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel’s atrocities | Open letter Within weeks, 400 colleagues joined our organization. We say: it is not too late to save lives. End the genocide now

Taner Akçam, Marianne Hirsch, and I introduce the Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network and call for immediate concrete measures to prevent further atrocity crimes and to protect civilians in Gaza.

As scholars of genocide, we demand an end to Israel’s atrocities | Open letter Within weeks, 400 colleagues joined our organization. We say: it is not too late to save lives. End the genocide now

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Gaza has reached IPC Phase 5, which is the worst level of food insecurity & is associated with high amounts of death & permanent disability. For people experiencing this level of malnutrition, even if it ended today, many of the consequences (eg personal outcomes like disabilities) are irreversible.

South Gaza: Tents, Food & Water **With Famine on the rise, we will significantly lower tent purchases and focus on food (rice and bread) and water over the next couple of weeks**

Inseparable from the discussion of the weaponization of Jewishness is Israel’s brutal starvation of Gaza, which continues unabated and worsens by the hour. If you are able, please consider supporting the Sameer Project: chuffed.org/project/1132....

Relatedly, this interesting post just landed in my inbox from the LPE blog

lpeproject.org/blog/how-the...

Thank you to @jamesbrandt.bsky.social y.social for thoughtful edits, as well as Noah Zatz, @arielagross.bsky.social and, @jpygold.bsky.social for their feedback.

Paging Larry Summers.

South Gaza: Tents, Food & Water **With Famine on the rise, we will significantly lower tent purchases and focus on food (rice and bread) and water over the next couple of weeks**

Inseparable from the discussion of the weaponization of Jewishness is Israel’s brutal starvation of Gaza, which continues unabated and worsens by the hour. If you are able, please consider supporting the Sameer Project: chuffed.org/project/1132....

Excited to share my piece in @lpeblog.bsky.social, which discusses the Trump administration's construction of Jewishness and weaponization of antisemitism. Trump has always claimed the power to define "good" and "bad" Jews, but lately, institutions are being pressured to adhere to this framework.

We are starving My body is breaking down. My mother is collapsing from exhaustion. My cousin cheats death every day for a morsel of aid.

“We rarely leave the house anymore, afraid our legs might give out. While searching on the streets for something, anything, to feed her children, my sister suddenly collapsed to the ground. Her body didn’t even have the strength to stay upright.”

www.972mag.com/hunger-gaza-...

Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’ Defence minister orders IDF to ready ‘emigration plan’ for all Palestinians in Gaza in what legal expert calls blueprint for a crime against humanity Israel’s defence minister has laid out plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah, in a scheme which legal experts and academics described as a blueprint for crimes against humanity. Israel Katz said he has ordered Israel’s military to prepare for establishing a camp, which he called a “humanitarian city”, on the ruins of the city of Rafah, Haaretz newspaper reported. Continue reading...

Israeli plan for forced transfer of Gaza’s population ‘a blueprint for crimes against humanity’

Jews are merely a convenient tool to Trump and the Christian right--at once useful pretext and a blameworthy and nefarious other. It is endemically frustrating that major institutions in our community continue to shirk acting on this threat, and calling it out directly, in service of Zionism.

The Grand Opening of an American Concentration Camp The Republicans are proudly calling it “Alligator Alcatraz.” Let’s call it what it is.

I wrote about the day the president attended the opening of an American concentration camp:

One attorney, Lizbeth Mateo, said ICE officials slated several of her clients for check-ins at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A. but when they showed up on Tuesday, they were detained and immediately escorted to the basement. Mateo said a couple and their two children, one of whom is a U.S. citizen, spent the night in a room with no beds and limited access to food and water. Mateo said the father had previously been issued a stay of removal, barring him from deportation but he and his family were detained anyway. His wife was released Wednesday evening along with their children since she needed medical attention due to a high-risk pregnancy. He was still being detained early Friday, Mateo said.

🚨NEW: @cbsnews.com reports ICE is arresting people who can't even legally be deported and holding them without enough food or water in a federal building BASEMENT in Los Angeles.

Families dutifully attending check-ins with ICE are being arrested and held for days, forced to sleep on the floor.

Engineers of Calamity - Boston Review Famine denial’s past and present, from Ukraine to Gaza.

“Hunger makes a norm of abnormality and the sacrilege becomes a tolerable and admissible act. Since this ‘sacrilege’ would prevent satisfaction of hunger, starvation mercilessly rips off the ‘social’ garments from man and shows him as a naked animal, on the naked earth.”

Rethinking Holocaust Memory after October 7 - Public Books Why continue to teach the Holocaust? Why continue to build and visit Holocaust memorials and museums?

Brilliant from Marianne Hirsch: www.publicbooks.org/rethinking-h...

Opinion | The Jewish Students Caught Up in Trump’s Antisemitism Crackdown (Gift Article) Going after antisemitism on campus has swept up Jewish students protesting the war in Gaza.

So important that this column from @peterbeinart.bsky.social appeared in the NYT.

The column describes the reality on my campus. Many progressive Jewish students have faced harassment, physical beatings, and arrest for peaceful, often religious protests that have been slandered as antisemitic.

COMPSEES 73/1 out now For the first time in its history, the journal has launched an Annual Theme. Its occasion is the 30th anniversary of Srebrenica and the Dayton Accords: "The Yugoslav Wars and the Year 1995: Reflection...

#COMPSEES 73/1 is out now. For the first time, our journal has launched an Annual Theme. Its occasion is the 30th anniversary of #Srebrenica and the #DaytonAccords: "The #YugoslavWars and the Year 1995: Reflections. Resilience. Reverberations". @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

#OpenAccess ⬇️

Opinion | Mahmoud Khalil: What does my detention by ICE say about America? A democracy for some is no democracy at all.

"I write this letter as the sun rises, hoping that the suspension of my rights will raise alarm bells that yours are already in jeopardy."

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

The United Nations General Assembly Resolution on Srebrenica and the Struggle Against Genocide Denial The adoption of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/78/282, designating 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, embodies a si...

Thrilled to share my first published work, in Compar. Southeast European Studies, w/ Hikmet Karčić. The piece uses the backlash to the UNGA's 2024 resolution on Srebrenica to analyze the geopolitical and ideological underpinnings of genocide denial. Read here: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...