Paula Schmitt

American Sniper poster. (Miztixdotcom/CC BY-SA 4.0)

‘American Sniper’: A film of love and ignorance

Some people have said American Sniper is racist, a piece of propaganda, a movie full of hatred. But if you squint and tilt your head, you will see that it is actually a movie full of love and ignorance. By Paula Schmitt While most critics of “American Sniper” are on the right side of issues,…

By +972 Magazine March 21, 2015

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears on state-owned television station Russia Today. (Photo by The Kremlin)

Why I quit ‘Russia Today,’ and why it remains necessary

Working for Russia’s state-owned media was supposed to be an opportunity to tell the ‘other side’ of the story. But it turns out that the U.S. and Russia — along with their mainstream media ecosystems — are equally horrendous. The inside story of nepotism, click-bait and propaganda at Ruptly. By Paula Schmitt The first thing I…

By +972 Magazine December 23, 2014

Leila Khaled in Beirut, January 18, 2009. (Photo by Sebastian Baryli/CC by 2.0)

Interview with Leila Khaled: ‘BDS is effective, but it doesn’t liberate land’

PFLP hijacker Leila Khaled talks about the acts that made her a household name, the current states of resistance, feminism and religious coercion in Palestinian society, and gives a new take on long-buried tales of assassinations and betrayal within the ranks of the PFLP. By Paula Schmitt By the time she was 28, Leila Khaled…

By +972 Magazine May 17, 2014

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Sweatshop. (illustrative photo: marissaorton/CC BY-SA 2.0)

A proposal: A simple, effective mechanism to improve the world, one penny at a time

Corporations run the world. It’s time we run the corporations. By Paula Schmitt There’s a passage in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs that is emblematic of the darkness faced by consumers with any social concern. Apple is being visited by Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the then French president, and while Jobs keeps force-feeding…

By +972 Magazine March 29, 2014

Nakba Day protest, May 15, 2012. (Activestills.org)

Rewriting injustices: A response to Danny Orbach on Palestinian refugees

An in-depth article on Palestinian refugees and their attitudes toward return and peace had some in the liberal Zionist camp up in arms. In a response published last week, Danny Orbach accused Paula Schmitt of doing a disservice to the refugees by nurturing their ‘disastrous, futile fantasies’ and distorting the events of 1948. Now, Schmitt…

By +972 Magazine February 18, 2014

Palestinian refugees, 1948. (photo: www.palestineremembered.com)

Sentenced to life at birth: What do Palestinian refugees want?

For more than 66 years, Palestinian refugees have been languishing in squalid conditions across camps in the Middle East. But do all of them agree that a return to Palestine is necessarily the best solution? Through her extensive research, Paula Schmitt finds that while different refugees may have different desires, hopelessness remains everyone’s worst enemy. …

By +972 Magazine February 8, 2014

Panelists at the World Summit on Counter Terrorism in Herzelia, September 2013 (photo: Paula Schmitt)

109 definitions of ‘terrorism’

The World Summit on Counter Terrorism in Herzliya, through the eyes of the only person in the room who has sat down with the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah. By Paula Schmitt One type of person you can be sure to find at a conference on counter-terrorism is terrorists. I just attended a four-day long counter-terrorism masturbathon in…

By +972 Magazine September 18, 2013