The structural violence, economic inequalities, and pervasive injustice that characterise Palestinian society under occupation have created a crisis of the spirit.
It seems a hopeless task, as we see President François Hollande slide lower and lower in this slippery slope of unpopularity, now around 13% in opinion polls. But he is not alone.
In corporate jargon, Israel’s assault on Gaza is akin to that of a monopoly which undertakes unfair business practices to crush a small competitor’s attempt to increase its market share.
There is a paradox in Zionism. Zionist Jews show willpower and initiative when it comes to war, but when it comes to reaching a historic compromise, the world appears to them as definite and immobile.
This is multilingualism, not in the sense of everyone speaking the same multiple languages, but the multilingualism of accepting difference and a willingness to listen to many tongues even if we do not fully understand them.
Reforming educational curricula, especially where it pertains to values, is by necessity a matter of process and form as well as content.
Some past models of good practice, especially those which were associated with feminist youth work projects from the mid 1970s, are in fact well worth remembering and even reviving in the Rotherham case in the UK.
If European society at large is applying an exclusionary logic to certain groups, it is only encouraging the retention and expansion of a sedentary identity formation in these groups. A rise in reactionary politics should come as no surprise.
Martin Luther King once said, “sometimes it’s necessary to dramatize an issue”. Struggles within democracies may actually be harder to organize than struggles against highly unpopular and corrupt authoritarian regimes. It helps to get together.
