I spent time in Gaza with Palestinian hip-hoppers Darg Team, an energetic group desperate to rap their stories to the world. The art is only growing: In a backstreet open-air cafe in Gaza late at night, Khaled Harara from the Black Unit Band starts to talk about rap. A phone call interrupts him. “Oh my…
Showing all posts tagged Gaza
Zionist impunity may be coming to an end
What was once on the fringes is now gaining serious momentum: British union leaders were locked in talks last night over whether to recommend to their delegates a boycott of all consumer goods produced in Israel. Members of the TUC have condemned Israel’s military strikes on Gaza in January, which left 1,450 Palestinians dead and…
Justified pressure on Israel grows by the day
History is turning: This weekend at the eighth annual US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation national organizers’ conference held in Chicago, delegates from the approximately 300 member groups that make up the US Campaign voted in favor of an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The vote came on the heels of a presentation…
Israel murders Arabs in Gaza and then asks for a cuddle
The UN report on Israeli massacres in Gaza has received the predictable Israeli response. Victimhood, victimhood and victimhood. Over 1400 Palestinian civilians were murdered but we’re supposed to feel deep empathy for the Israelis. Nice try. Perhaps the most priceless comments were from President Shimon Peres: The report in practice grants legitimacy to terrorism, premeditated…
American Radical; a key film about Jewish questioning
American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein has just been screened in the US for the first time: The film-makers have given me a preview screening of the film. It’s a powerful work, revealing the history of Finkelstein himself and his leading critics. In many ways, I feel deep sympathy for Finkelstein, a man who…
Abuses in the name of Zionist security
Yet more evidence that the recent Gaza war was a travesty: A United Nations fact-finding mission investigating the three-week war in Gaza issued a lengthy, scathing report on Tuesday that concluded that both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity. The four-member mission, led…
Hold Israel to fair standards or pay the price
The justified outrage over the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) spotlighting Tel Aviv (and ignoring Israel’s occupation and abuses in the West Bank and Gaza) is rightly causing waves. Naomi Klein explains that critics who accuse us of demonising Israel are deliberately missing the point: Imagine that this year the Toronto International Film Festival had…
Talking to Hamas is the only way
If true, very good news indeed. A Middle East policy that deals with reality, not Zionist wishing thinking: High-ranking officials from European countries hold talks with Hamas on a weekly basis despite an EU ban on diplomatic contact, a spokesman for the group has told EUobserver. “We meet a lot of them from France, from…
A politician’s desire to shut down Israel debate
The Australian newspaper ran an extract of Michael Danby MP’s attack on Independent Australian Jewish Voices blogger Michael Brull and yours truly on the weekend (more about the news here). Below is our unpublished response: MP Michael Danby’s outrageous attack on us (Cut and Paste,12/9) is motivated by one wish: to prevent anyone from challenging…
How much of an internal threat are Israel’s home-grown enemies?
The New York Times investigates the Jewish settler movement and argues that removing them from illegal colonies will be less of a problem than is generally assumed: Of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, those who live in unauthorized hilltop outposts like this one, a hardscrabble unpaved collection of 20…