Feel the fear in Israel and America. The Arab world is rising up. Decades of dictatorships are under threat. Tel Aviv and Washington have created a nexus of bigotry to support their goals. And now what do they have? Mass anger. Nice work. US Vice President Joe Biden talks about Mubarak being “moderate” and a…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Goldstone was right; “cleansing” Gaza was IDF goal
Israeli tank-commander speaking to Britain’s Channel 4: We needed to cleanse the neighbourhoods, the buildings, the area. It sounds really terrible to say “cleanse”, but those were the orders….I don’t want to make a mistake with the words. It gets worse.
This is the only logical outcome of us backing Mubarak for so long
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian writer and dissident: It’s too early to say how they will go. It’s a miracle how they continued past midnight yesterday in the face of fear and repression. But having said that, the situation has reached a level that everyone is fed up, seriously fed up. And even if security forces manage…
No democracy for Middle East, says Zionist politician
As if confirmation was needed that the Zionist state loves dictatorships in the Middle East. Jewish desire for freedom (and occupation) are clearly more important than the democratic aspirations of millions of Arabs. Arrogance has rarely been so clear, as well as the bankruptcy of the Jewish “democratic” state: The fall of Tunisia’s regime headed…
What foreign writers should not be doing in the Zionist state
The kind of moral pressure that is clearly needed: As Israeli citizens who support the boycott, divestment and sanctions call on Israel, we believe that if Ian McEwan accepts the Jerusalem prize next month in Jerusalem (Letters, 26 January), it will make him a collaborator with Israel‘s worst human rights offenders and its “business as…
New York Times pledges to be on right side in “clash of values”
How very revealing. Here’s New York Times editor Bill Keller in a long essay for a forthcoming Times book, “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Expanded Coverage from The New York Times“, talking about his paper’s view on Wikileaks. Apart from the almost obligatory slamming of founder Julian Assange, Keller explains the…
Galle Lit Fest has form on social exclusion
Following the ever-growing traction of the recent Reporters Without Borders statement outlining the human rights abuses in Sri Lanka and the Galle Literary Festival’s response to it, journalist Eric Ellis sent me two of his articles (one from 2005 and the other from 2006) that show how the organisers have a history of courting the…
McEwan should consider what he’s really backing in the Jewish state
It’s healthy that a major literary figure is made to consider his involvement in an Israeli event. Visiting the Zionist state isn’t simply just another place; it’s a nation that is institutionally desperate not to talk about its occupation: Ian McEwan has replied to pro-Palestinian writers who have accused him of accepting the “corrupt and…
Israeli oranges aren’t from Australia
The fact that this story appears in Australia’s leading Murdoch broadsheet is encouraging. Anything from Israel must be clearly marked as such. Why shouldn’t it be? Consumers should know that Israeli products face a global boycott campaign. The NSW government has warned Coles to stop labelling imported fruit as Australian produce, amid suggestions the food…