Thinking Citizenship

“States,” by Edward Said is an essay written by a Palestinian man with first-hand accounts of daily life in that region of the Middle-East. Said was renowned in the literary community as one of the most “distinguished literary critics and scholars...” Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Said, at the age of twelve, fled with his family to Cairo during the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. In his essay, Said begins to discuss the state of the Palestinian people. The content of his essay is an explanation and an informative look on the Palestinian people, as well their situation and their identity. In our English Composition class, we have been challenged to look past the aesthetics of “States” and look not at just

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of America.” Without the right that the Constitution brings us, we wouldn’t have rights therefore the United States wouldn’t be a good place to live in. The Constitution brings us the right of freedom of speech (first amendment) , the right to bear arms (second amendment), and the right to protect against unreasonable government actions such as search and seizure of person property (fourth amendment). Being an American citizen means that you have rights that they would like you to fulfil. As an American citizen is it voluntary to vote, but others are required such as obeying the law and paying taxes. The Magna Carta, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and the Petition of Rights explains the rights and the responsibilities of an American citizen.

With the passage at hand, Dr. Ella Shohat discusses about the case of being an Arab Jew, a historical paradox, as one of many social elisions. Unlike the idea of intersectionality, binarism leaves “little place for complex identities” (Shohat, 2). As an American, Jew, and Arab, she speaks of the disparities amidst a war involving all three cultural topographies. Albeit she speaks from a subjective standpoint, she does not mention the issue of racial hygiene, class, geographic divisions, and gender. Passages from Guenter Lewy, Melissa Wright, and Philippe Bourgois will be used to discuss the way in which different positionalities might affect the analysis of “Dislocated Identities.”

Published in 2006, prior to Israel’s intervention in Hezbolla controlled Lebanon, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety offers academics and scholars a window to observe the ever-changing interpretations and practices of one of the largest world religions. Lara Deeb, a cultural anthropologist, seeks to bring to light the ideology and beliefs of a group Shi’i women living in a Beirut community. She reports that their modern approach to Islam allows them to express their individuality and piousness at the same time, without diluting or abandoning the faith which is often looked at as extreme and backwards by the Western World.

I think that a federal court can exercise jurisdiction over the parties based on diversity of citizenship. According to the textbook, "when parties to a lawsuit are from different states, a federal court can exercise diversity jurisdiction if the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000. Total diversity of citizenship must exist, however.” In this case, because Joe and Kay were not from the same state, it is a diversity suit. Moreover, “The statute does not mention the citizenship of partnerships, LLCs, and other unincorporated associations, but the courts have tended to regard these entities as citizens of every state of which their members are citizens.” If Café Ole was a corporation, the state citizenship of the owner would be unimportant.

Global citizenship comes with certain rights and responsibilities that govern being a citizen of a nation and the global entity as a whole. Globalization and the advanced technology have enabled increased connections and integration across the world. As global citizens, the choices and actions that persons undertake have consequences that may impact people and societies on the local level, nationally and internationally.

How would you feel if you or family were considered criminals, just because you wanted the best for them? That is exactly how eleven million people feel every day in the United States, these folks do not know if they are going to come back home with their families, they live frightened, though these individuals intend to do everything right, it seems like everything they do is dishonest, for the reason that, everyone calls them ‘illegals’ and as almost everyone may assume, there cannot be legally in someone illegal. If anybody questions myself, should undocumented immigrant acquire a path to citizenship? My response is yes; these people should be allowed to achieve a path to citizenship. In other words, they are not only hard working individuals, they also pay taxes, and benefit America’s economy.

Coupled with my experiences as an immigrant and after taking “Marginalization in Israel” with Professor Dekel, I became increasingly fascinated by the study of transnationalism, identity, and the privilege of inclusion. Through the class, I

What does citizenship mean to me? By definition a citizen is a native or naturalized member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to that state or nation’s government and is entitled to its protection. In my perspective that is an accurate definition of what the word “citizen” means. But I believe that it is the minimum requirement of being a citizen. It is okay to dislike where you live. You may not like where you live because of the political views of the people in your community, or the geographical location of the place in which you live. This does not make you a bad citizen. Despite how you feel there are ways to get involved in your neighborhood by volunteering at the local library, or food bank. However, the complete opposite may apply to as well , where you could be pure patriot to the area in which you grew up, and

The focus of ethnicity and ethnic issues in the Middle East has been associated with the Arabs in the Palestine and the Jews in Israel. Research carried in the previous researches confirmed that these issues are directly or indirectly affected by the political disputes. In a sample of the students who were involved in the research, 46.9% ranked the religion to be the major factor of the formation of the identity. Some students said that the term Israel was not the appropriate identity and a section about 50% said that Palestine was the right identity. When given six ways of characterising the identities, that is the Arab, Israeli, Israeli Arab, Palestinian Arab, Israeli Palestinian, and Palestinian. Palestinian Arab received the more endorsement by around 34%, followed by the Israeli Arab by 30%, Arab followed by approximately 20%, then Israeli Palestinian by 11.7% and Palestinian 4% the remaining 2.9% characterised themselves as Israelis. The implications of these data are discussed in this work.

Three lines of poetry plot the trajectory of Arab national consciousness. “Awake, O Arabs, and arise!” begins the famous ode of Ibrahim al-Yaziji, penned in 1868 in Lebanon. Around that time, but even today, we saw people who insisted on sovereign 'Arab states "in the Middle East. They thus seem to assume that there is one universal Arab identity, but what does this entail, and can we even speak of an Arab identity, looking at the historical perspective of the region that we call the Middle East? These are questions I will try to address in this paper although this is extra difficult since there is no universal definition of which countries are in the Middle East and which are not (some even include Cyprus). Here, I will only focus on the

I am sitting with my grandparents in the spectators’ section of the echoing auditorium, my baby brother on my lap. I’m not sure what I expected this morning, but thus far it has been an incredibly boring experience. The judge is half an hour late, and to add to that, Graeme, my brother, is tired and fussing, and would evidently much prefer his mother’s lap to mine. Unfortunately for him, my parents and older brother are sitting on the other side of the room with almost 200 others. Thirty-one countries are represented here today.

Israel has become a complex issue for discussion from the moment of its’ establishment after World War II. It is discussed on different levels, starting from conversations over lunch and ending with discussion among heads of states. The right of Jewish population for this land, as well as the militaristic politics of Israel is constantly on the global agenda. At the same time, many people tend to ignore the state of other side in this conflict – the Arab population that remained on the Israeli territory after the formation of a new state. This paper studies the place of Arab minorities in Israel, with a special focus on the rights and position of Arab population during the first stages of the establishment of Israeli state.

This essay will seek to examine the role Identity Politics played in the conflict between Zionism and its Arab neighbors in the Middle East. At the core of Identity Politics, Nationalism is one of the driving forces. The theoretical framework of the concept ‘Nationalism’ is multifaceted and has been ardently debated by scholars. For the sake of brevity and context for this essay, we’ll examine

Gendered Identities in Nations and States, by Inderpal Grewal, a Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of California in Irvine, and Caren Kaplan, an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies, examines the connection between patriarchal nation-states and citizenship in relation to the formation of identity. The formation of an identity is influenced by various factors, such as an individual’s environment, race, sexuality, and religion, however, Grewal and Kaplan note that it is not always a natural process