JPS “Hidden Gems” and “Greatest Hits”: Repression and Dissent; Contentious Politics in Palestine
Keywords: 
dissent
repression
resistance
nonviolence
politics of contentiousness
Full text: 

In this essay, Yousef Munayyer reflects on the politics of contentiousness through the lens of dissent and repression. He singles out Naseer Aruri’s “Resistance and Repression: Political Prisoners in Israeli Occupied Territories” (1979) as a JPS “hidden gem” and Gene Sharp’s “Intifadah and Nonviolent Struggle” (1989) as a “greatest hit.” Aruri’s piece, which has not garnered as much visibility as Sharp’s, pinpoints the ways in which political imprisonment, torture, and the weaponization of the law, as well as extraterritorial jurisdiction, are wielded by Israel as instruments of political repression. The “greatest hit,” by the late contemporary theorist of nonviolence Gene Sharp examines the Palestinian national movement’s resistance strategy eighteen months into the First Intifada.

Author biography: 

Yousef Munayyer is an independent scholar and nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC.