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Rachel Kushner

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May 20, 2021

In the photograph on the left, several boys and young men stand before a graffitied plywood wall, some leaning against a metal gate. In the photograph on the right, a boy looks directly at the camera as he passes through a turnstile.

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Rachel Kushner

Why Did You Throw Stones?

Palestine Diary 2016

You might be surprised at your own intolerance of the idea of a democracy maintaining an open-air prison for 2.7 million people. Before going there myself, I had heard this phrase, open-air prison, and figured it was not literally a prison. (As someone who spends a fair amount of time in prisons, I’m sensitive to its use as a metaphor.) But everywhere I went I saw guard towers and concrete barriers and razor wire—truly an open-air prison—except where there were settlements, which featured posh, Beverly Hills–style landscaping: little blooming flowers, fragile and bright, the guard towers in the far distance.

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