Eldad Yaniv in Haaretz: In the early 1990s, when Judge Richard Goldstone headed a commission of inquiry on the rising violence in South Africa toward the end of apartheid, he garnered the same kind of compliments from the Afrikaners as he has been getting from Israel over the last few weeks. But the “Jew boy”…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Hamas wants to move Gaza in the wrong direction
Everyone knows the greatest threat isn’t Israel but women bearing their dangerous hair, wrists and feet! It began with a rash of unusually assertive police patrols. Armed Hamas officers stopped men from sitting shirtless on the beach, broke up groups of unmarried men and women, and ordered shopkeepers not to display lingerie on mannequins in…
Israel wants to be special (and kill unarmed civilians)
Here’s the message from Israel. Other nations kill civilians, why can’t we? This is what Israel has become: Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday accused the United Nations Human Rights Council of anti-Semitism, after the UN body endorsed a damning report on Israel’s winter Gaza offensive. “This is an anti-Semitic attempt to decide that what…
Choking Gaza to make a perverted political point
A fascinating insight into the realities in Gaza in the London Review of Books. Deprivation, corruption, desperation, an Israeli siege and Egyptian bad behaviour: According to World Bank officials, 80 per cent of Gaza’s imports currently come through the tunnels. Once black-market smuggling had turned into Gaza’s formal trade, Hamas inspectors began to impose controls…
The Tamil youth creating a new future
The crisis in Sri Lanka and the government’s role in causing mass carnage against the Tamils is now well known. Australia is not immune from the crisis. This long Financial Times essay on the Tamil Diaspora in the UK heralds a new generation determined to continue the struggle for an independent Tamil homeland or at…
Jewish graves in Aceh, Indonesia
One of four Jewish graves (note the Hebrew) in a Dutch-era cemetery in Banda Aceh 17 October
Reflections in Aceh
Two leading, Acehnese intellectuals and writers at a popular Banda Aceh cafe 17 October
Australia damns refugees because they’re not white
Australian journalist Laurie Oakes on our government’s stance towards Tamil refugees. We learn nothing from history except that bashing aslyum seekers is allegedly popular with the electorate. The shame: We’ve… heard Kevin Rudd promising tough action to stop asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat. We’ve heard him condemn people smugglers as vermin. What we…
The war on terror isn’t a reason to kill Palestinians
The UN Human Rights Council last week endorsed the Goldstone report over Gaza. Israel may soon have its own Pinochet moment. Leading Jewish American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg is worried, however, and his reasoning is revealing: Tactics deployed to hurt Israel inevitably cause collateral damage. It’s a good thing that the United States, and a handful…