The accused Wikileaks leader Bradley Manning faces his first day in court today in the US. Expect the prosecution to claim he’s the devil incarnite. In fact, he’s a bloody hero who should be celebrated for bravely speaking out against countless American crimes. And then there’s this slimy guy, Adrian Lamo. Seriously, he sounds like…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Hugging Israel so tight the poor little dear will just need money to fix the problem
While students in Gaza continue being blocked to study outside the Strip simply because they’re students (thank you democratic Israel), now and then the reality of unquestioned Western support for Zionism seeps into the mainstream. Even to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Not that he suggests any serious pressure should be applied on Israel…
Supporting BDS and Palestinian rights as a Jew
An open and frank debate about BDS against Israel in Australia is long overdue. Crikey blog This Blog Harms invited five people to write 1000 words on the issue. This is my contribution: The logic of… boycott, divestment and sanctions… (BDS) didn’t appear to me immediately. When my first book,… My Israel Question, was released in 2006, the…
Inside the Syrian uprisings and why regime change should be challenged
Events in Syria are notoriously murky and these days reliable information is scarce. I’m often asked about my views on the uprisings against President Assad and what kind of Syria I would like to see. My book The Blogging Revolution – just released in an updated format in India – examines the role of the…
What is happening to Israel on a daily basis is extremism with Western support
Gideon Levy in Haaretz: We always knew that a few years without an external threat could strain the delicate seams: When the guns go silent, the demons roar. But no one predicted such an outburst of demons of every kind, all at once. The assault on the existing order is an all-out war, on every…
How the Iraqi government sees “liberating” Washington
“The image of the American soldier is as a killer, not a defender. And how can you give a killer immunity?” said Sami al-Askari, a lawmaker who is also a close aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
America’s Gitmo problem
More than ten years after 9/11, the Obama administration remains determined to maintain flawed military trials for terror suspects but as this New York Times investigation reveals, housing people on the US mainland hasn’t caused the end of America: It is the other… Guantánamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away…
Growing numbers of Jews wake up to reality; Israel isn’t good for us
Philip Weiss explains on Mondoweiss: Israel isn’t good for the Jews anymore. That’s the news from New York. It happened in the last week, or the last two years. A feeling has taken root deep in the American Jewish community that Israel is hurting us, hurting our standing in the world and our future. The…
Fascism in Israel barely registers in Israel (or elsewhere)
Amira Hass in Haaretz: Hillary Clinton had not yet finished voicing her concern about what is happening in Israel before that industrious Knesset member from the Likud, Danny Danon, started rattling off another version of the list of bills about loyalty to the state (which have meanwhile been dropped ): “Every certificate issued by the…
When former IDF prison guards even realise Zionist apartheid is here
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg is a little worried that his beloved Jewish state has an apartheid problem: I think we’re only a few years away, at most, from a total South-Africanization of this issue. And if Israelis believe that the vast majority of American Jews — their most important supporters in the entire world —…