Basil Farraj, Author at Al-Shabaka

Basil Farraj

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Basil Farraj is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute, Geneva and a research assistant for the VIPRE Initiative. Basil’s work focuses on political prisoners, violence directed against them, and ways in which they resist the incarcerating regimes. His work reaches for the intersections of memory, resistance and art by prisoners and others at the receiving end of violence. Basil has previously conducted fieldwork in a number of countries including Chile and Colombia.

Commentary Politics

How Palestinian Hunger Strikes Counter Israel’s Monopoly on Violence

May 12, 2016

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strikes exert violence against their bodies yet win back the capacity for independent action that Israel seeks to deny them. Al-Shabaka Policy Member Basil Farraj situates the current hunger strikes in Palestinian and world history, as well as Israel’s use of prison to control the population, having imprisoned nearly 40% of Palestinian males since 1967.