Gideon Levy, Haaretz, June 15: How pleasant it is to be an official representative of Israel in Europe right now. It hasn’t been so pleasant for a long time. And not just because of the spectacular spring in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, the crowded pubs in Athens or the young people sunbathing nude in…
Showing all posts tagged Gaza
My name is Rachel Corrie
The following program screened last night on Australia’s finest current affairs program, SBS Dateline: (video is here) It’s not often that a 1-woman show ignites worldwide controversy. But a play called ‘My Name is Rachel Corrie’ about a young American protestor killed by an Israeli bulldozer in the Gaza Strip, has done just that. In…
Praying for Obama
At least one Palestinian, living in Gaza, believes that Barack Obama will help solve the Middle East crisis.
The never-ending “peace process”
Amira Hass, Israeli journalist with Haaretz, talks to Salon: “You can’t talk about 60 years of Israel without talking about the naqba, the Palestinian disaster. Neither Israel nor the Palestinian elite, with their vested interests in maintaining the status quo, are interested in peace. One of the Palestinian negotiators has a son whose company supplies…
Slingshot hip-hop
A striking documentary about male and female Palestinian rappers in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper:
The changing of the guard
Robert Fisk in the London Independent on the current crisis in Lebanon: Another American humiliation. The Shia gunmen who drove past my apartment in west Beirut yesterday afternoon were hooting their horns, making V-signs, leaning out of the windows of SUVs with their rifles in the air, proving to the Muslims of the capital that…
A celebration that ignores the plight of Palestine
My following piece in the Melbourne Age, co-written with Michael Shaik, reflects on Israel’s 60th anniversary: “If you will it,” wrote Theodore Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement, in 1902, “it is no dream.” The dream to which he referred was the establishment of a Jewish state in the Arab country of Palestine.…
Israel’s 60th birthday – what the media left out
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Antony Loewenstein, author of My Israel Question and the co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, writes: “I am not a Jew”, said an Arab radio journalist in Jerusalem to the New York Times. “How can I belong to a Jewish state? If they define this as…
Not in our name
A large collection of British Jews published the following letter in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper: In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating.…