Following the Australian’s article on the weekend about the Australian government’s impending trip to Israel, today’s paper publishes the following responses: The anti-Israel bigotry to which you refer in the editorial defending Julia Gillard’s visit to Israel (“A trip worth taking”, 13-14/6) is vividly illustrated in Amnesty International’s recently released annual global report. The survey…
Showing all posts tagged human rights
Please don’t show our bad side, it’s just not fair
When will blind supporters of Israel realise that hiding the inherent racism of the Zionist state (and many of its supporters) merely confirms the suspicions of a growing majority; unyielding Arab-hatred is at the centre of mainstream Zionism: The controversy surrounding journalist Max Blumenthal continues in the wake of the release of his video of…
Trying to erase the hate
This is a moving story about Israelis who dedicate themselves to paint over racist graffiti, a sadly increasingly phenomenon.
The message to the masses
I wrote last night about seeing Noam Chomsky here in New York. The city’s Indypendent newspaper today has a fuller report on the event: Renowned leftist intellectual, linguist and author Noam Chomsky discussed democracy, the economy and global crises June 12 at Riverside Church in Harlem. Over 2,000 people attended the event, which benefited the…
It’s democracy, but not as we know it
Robert Fisk, writing in Iran before the contested election result, on the contradictory nature of life in Tehran.
The tragic Jewish present
Tony Judt, writing about the recently deceased Israeli writer Amos Elon, comments on what Israel has become: What had once been the nationalist ideology of a stateless people has undergone a tragic transition. It has, for a growing number of Israelis, been corrupted into an uncompromising ethno-religious real estate pact with a partisan God, a…
We have been here before, it’s clear
South African anti-apartheid campaigner Ronnie Kasrils speaks at the recent Cape Town conference re-envisioning Israel/Palestine: May I start by quoting a South African who emphatically stated as far back as 1961 that “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel like South Africa, is an…
Utterly missing the point
My following letter appears in today’s Sunday Age newspaper: The new blog the Sensible Jew (“Blog takes on the ‘swill’ who speak for Jews“, 7/6) appears unconcerned with anything other than improving the PR of the Zionist agenda. While a mature debate is raging overseas about war crimes in Gaza, ongoing settlement expansion in the…
Noam Chomsky at the Riverside Church in New York
I first started reading Noam Chomsky at university. His political works were sometimes dense and impenetrable, but his reasoning on Israel/Palestine, written as a Jew, moved me deeply. When I finally met him in 2005 in Boston, during the research of my first book, My Israel Question, his humility and insights caused me to consider…
Pressure on apartheid works
Yet more evidence that pressure on corporates that collude with the illegal occupation in Palestine can be convinced to change their ways: The Belgian-French financial group Dexia announced it will no longer finance Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories through its Israeli branch, Dexia Israel. The announcement was the culmination of a months-long campaign…