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Israel

Israel Palestine Reporting

After police killings, anger simmers in Negev Bedouin villages

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Ma’an News Agency on Feb. 5, 2015. BEERSHEBA (Ma’an) — The killing of two Bedouin youths in southern Israel by police over the last week has shocked the

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Iran Israel Opinion Palestine

The Politics of Boycotting Israel while Fighting Sanctions on Iran

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Jadaliyya on October 3, 2014. By: Alex Shams and Ali Abdi As the bombs rained down on Gaza this summer, we were reminded yet again of the

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Israel Opinion Palestine

Israel and the Palestinian Territories Lonely Planet: Systematic Erasure and Casual Racism

Posted on July 5, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Jadaliyya. Haifa is a picturesque city of hills, gardens, and trendy cafes perched along the slopes of Mount Carmel in northern Israel. If the Lonely Planetguidebook is

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Israel Palestine Reporting

Anti-enlistment performance art turns Israeli cities into battlefields

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on May 23, 2014. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — On Sunday, Israeli soldiers invaded the streets of Haifa’s upmarket German Colony neighborhood, beating Palestinian protesters with

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Israel Palestine Reporting

Retracing the Nakba in West Jerusalem’s al-Malha

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on May 16, 2014. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Towering above the gargantuan Jerusalem Mall and the repetitive, non-descript homes of the Malha (or Manahat) suburb

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Israel Palestine Reporting USA

Interview: Remi Kanazi on BDS and ‘hurt feelings’

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on March 6, 2014. Remi Kanazi is a Palestinian-American poet and activist and a member of the organizing committee of the US Campaign for

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Israel Palestine Reporting

New identity law raises fears of Israeli effort to divide Christians

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published on Ma’an News Agency on Feb. 26, 2014. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A new law to create a separate “Christian” nationality for Palestinian citizens of Israel successfully passed through the

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Israel Palestine Reporting

Interview: Ilan Pappe on academic freedom in Israel and BDS

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on February 21, 2014. Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and political activist. Much of Pappe’s academic work has focused on the 1948 expulsion

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Academic Work Iran Israel Opinion

Next Year in Tehran

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published on The New Inquiry on Feb. 20, 2014. An Iranian intellectual’s trip to Israel in the 1960s revealed the strange appeal of secular republicanism to religious ethno-supremacists In March

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Israel Palestine Reporting

Ariel Sharon dead at 85

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Alex Shams

Originally published by Ma’an News Agency on January 11, 2014. Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon died Saturday after eight years in a coma, leaving behind a bloody and conflicted

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About me

Alex Shams is an Iranian-American writer and a PhD student of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

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Recent posts

  • Looking A Tyrant In the Eye: Iran’s Long Struggle for Freedom and Justice
  • Iran After Khamenei
  • Iran’s Protesters Are Caught Between State Repression and Foreign Intervention
  • Quiet Solidarity: The Underground Networks that Defied Israel’s War on Iran
  • Our Man For Tehran
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About

Born and raised in an Iranian-American family in Los Angeles, Alex Shams has long been fascinated by the stories that places can tell us. Growing up, he learned Persian and Spanish; in college, he learned Arabic and studied abroad at the American University of Cairo before moving to Beirut after graduation. After receiving his master’s in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard, he moved to Bethlehem, Palestine, where he was a journalist at Ma’an News Agency, the largest independent Palestinian news organization. He received his PhD. from the University of Chicago in Sociocultural Anthropology. His dissertation, entitled “Constructing Islamic Modernity: Power, Religion, and Masculinity in Post-Revolutionary Iran,” was based on three years of ethnographic research in Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan as well as archival research in the British Library and Ba’ath Party Archives.

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Popular posts

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