SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
Understanding Hamas
RON JACOBS welcomes the reissue of a rare history of Hamas that offers insights into the organisation’s structure and strength
MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
ANA ISABEL NUNES points to the empowering legacy of Augusto Boal’s Theatre Of The Oppressed
CARLOS MARTINEZ welcomes the publication of the writings of the great Palestinian author, political theorist and spokesman for the PFLP
Hamas: From Resistance to Regime
Paolo Caridi, Seven Stories Press, £15.99
HAMAS has been the bogeyman in establishment circles of the global North for more than two decades. Hamas has also been one of the more successful manifestations of the movement against Israel’s occupation and siege of Palestine in the history of that resistance.
Each of these sentences explains the other. It doesn’t matter whether one supports Hamas or its actions; their truth lies in the history of Hamas and its ongoing importance in the history of the Palestinians and the world. Given the vitriolic hatred of Hamas (and, arguably, the Palestinian resistance) in many of the governments in the global North — and the repetition of that vitriol in the media that props up those governments — it has never been easy to get an honest picture of the organisation.
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RON JACOBS welcomes a Palestinian account of being subject to a brutal occupation supported by the most powerful governments in the world
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RON JACOBS has some painful memories triggered by Robert McNamara son’s memoir of the fraught relationship he had with his father, a key architect of the US war on Vietnam
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The first task of the resistance is to prevent the attack on Rafah and end the genocide. However, soon thereafter, the political malaise that has befallen the Palestinian people must be overcome, writes VIJAY PRASHAD