Noam Sheizaf is an independent journalist and editor. He was the founding executive director and editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine. Prior to joining +972, he worked for Tel Aviv’s Ha-ir local paper, Ynet, and the Maariv daily, where his last position was deputy editor of the weekend magazine. He is currently working on a number of documentary films.
Palestinian activists destroy part of the separation wall in the West Bank village of Bir Nabala, near Ramallah, Nov. 15, 2013. (Activestills)
The world is a very different place from when +972 Magazine began as a blog in 2010. Benjamin Netanyahu’s now record-breaking stint in power was barely a year old; there was no coronavirus pandemic or reality TV star-turned-autocrat in the White House; and social media was not the fake news factory it has become today.
Yet for all that is unrecognizable about the world now, there are also many things that are all too familiar, not least in Israel-Palestine: the ongoing theft and settling of Palestinian land; a military occupation that has lasted over half a century; a choking siege on Gaza; racism against African asylum seekers and Ethiopian Israelis; and an abiding refusal by the Israeli state and large segments of its society to face head-on the legacy of the country’s founding, to name but a few.