While Middle Eastern countries resist US and Israeli suggestions to isolate and punish the Palestinian people and Iran offers a hand of friendship to Hamas, Israel has acquired some new friends: A new group in the United States, Christians United for Israel, will serve as an umbrella organization for Christian congregations that support Israel, and…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Not our problem
Rachard Itani, Counterpunch, February 20: I was startled to hear Prime Minister John Howard of Australia exclaim in a BBC interview last night that he could not understand why pictures of starving Jewish interns of Bergen Belsen, Dachau, and Auschwitz had been aired, yet again, by an Australian TV station a few days ago. “I…
Land grab
So much for Israel’s “security” fence being about security: The main consideration behind the route for “numerous segments” of the separation fence was settlement expansion, according to a report published Tuesday by the human rights groups B’Tselem and Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights.… The report also concludes that in most of the cases in…
This position suits
While Amira Hass rightly says the Palestinians are being robbed by Israel, Haaretz offers some perspective on the Jewish state’s current stance: It is not realistic to think about separating Hamas rule from the Palestinian people, or about starving government institutions while sending humanitarian assistance directly to the population. The Palestinians chose their leadership democratically,…
One rule for all?
The imprisoning in Austria of Holocaust-denier David Irving – while his Australian equivalent is just as delusional – poses some fundamental questions about free speech. Perhaps surprisingly, the Australian media has offered any number of opinions today about the verdict (here, here and here.) I have always felt distinctly uncomfortable about Irving’s association with neo-Nazis,…
Looking from the inside
Anna Politkovskaya is arguably Russia’s finest journalist, a woman unafraid to document her country’s excesses, not least the ongoing chaos in Chechnya. Hew new book on Putin – already questioned by a Russian blogger – is reviewed here by the Moscow Times. She charts a moral and spiritual degradation not unfamiliar to many old Communist…
That damn “democracy”
While the Bush administration, thankfully, calls for greater international intervention in Darfur – despite CIA dealings with the odious Sudanese regime – The American Prospect discovers a problem: But before we heap hosannas on the Bush administration for its newfound resolve, let’s wait until the Security Council comes out with a list of Sudanese individuals…
Finding a media strategy
Ramzy Baroud [Palestinian-American journalist], Al-Ahram Weekly, February 16-22: It’s tempting to declare that the Prophet Mohamed cartoon travesty “exposed” the bias of the mainstream Western media, but I will refrain, for only a naïve would doubt such a fact in the first place. Late intellectual Edward Said’s Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts…