The Wonk Room reports: Reporting that the Israeli government “has decided to take a much more aggressive stance” toward human rights NGOs, the Jerusalem Post quotes Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev attacking Human Rights Watch for raising raising funds from private Saudi individuals. Regev told the Post that “A human rights organization raising money in Saudi…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Let voices in Palestine be heard
A shameful decision that should be reversed. Such moves show a disturbing tendency in the Palestinian elite to not tolerate dissent: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the Palestinian Authority’s decision today to suspend the operations of Al-Jazeera in the West Bank after the satellite channel aired a controversial… interview on Tuesday. The suspension, according to…
Russian freedom of speech in dire shape
I’ve long held an interest in human rights in Russia (or the recent lack thereof.) The late, murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya remains a hero of mine. Tragically, Russian bloggers document the killing of yet another activist, Natalya Estemirova.
The Palestinian experience
An interesting new film about the Middle East conflict but from a very different perspective: A woman from Gaza stands at an Israeli check-point. We can only see her back but it is clear that in shame she opens her top to a female Israeli soldier to show that her breasts have been removed in…
Violence that was even illegal under Iranian law
The Guardian pieces together information about the brutality of Iranian officials in the wake of post-election action: They came in the small hours, just as the dormitories were settling down for the night. Outside, Tehran was still in ferment, a city gripped by fury two days after a “stolen election”. Inside the dorms on Amirabad…
Checkpoints are still there
Another day in the life of the West Bank settlement project. A wonderful blog, Israel’s Back Yard, documents what most Israelis and Jews don’t want to see or hear.
Stop the rot right now
If true, an encouraging start, as settlements are the cancer in the Middle East: The United States has given Israel a six-month deadline to accede to its demand to freeze all construction in West Bank settlements, France’s foreign minister told his Lebanese interlocutors during an official visit to Beirut.
Why Australia should do the right thing in the Middle East
Jake Lynch, director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, writes in the Sydney Morning Herald about Israeli criminality: Days after the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was greeted in Israel and thanked for having been “alone in sticking by us” during Operation Cast Lead, the attack on the…
Arabs live there, too
A small piece of good news from Israel. Anti-Arab hatred is resisted by at least some citizens: Their operation, which has taken place four times since May, is aimed at countering ultra-nationalist vandals who had defaced the Arabic lettering on Jerusalem’s street signs. Over that vandalism, the new vigilantes, with a more pluralist vision of…
The silent Sri Lankan tragedy
Sri Lanka cannot endure much more erosion of its media system before it becomes a genuine totalitarian state, writes Uvindu Kurukulasuriya.