Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, targets Israeli media cheer-leaders of wars against “enemies”: And what of the cheerleaders who sat on the sidelines of this hellish nightmare? Perhaps we should at least hold them accountable? They sat in their television studios and at their newspaper desks. Oh, how the commentators were excited and stirred excitement.…
Showing all posts tagged Haaretz
Academic’s visit divides Jewish groups
The following story by Andrew West appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: A leading Jewish publication stands accused of censorship after cancelling an advertisement for a series of lectures to be delivered by a visiting Israeli human rights campaigner. The publisher of The Australian Jewish News, Robert Magid, confirmed that he had pulled an ad…
Stay home Hillary, if that’s all you got
My latest New Matilda column is about the Obama administration’s first foray into the Middle East: On Palestine it’s hard to tell the difference between Obama and Bush. But while the US and Israel block progress, there are small signs of movement, writes Antony Loewenstein The number of people who believe in the two-state solution…
Protest the criminals
MJ Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum: This is interesting. Ha’aretz reports that students at Tel Aviv University are protesting the appointment to a lecturer position of an IDF colonel involved in approving strikes against civilians in Gaza. I had wondered what happened to Israel’s usually vigorous anti-war movement which has come out in force…
Learning nothing at all
Amira Hass, Haaretz, March 4: The hundreds of millions of euros that have been donated or pledged to help Gaza, as though it were beset by natural disasters, are overshadowing the trade ties between Europe and Israel. The Western countries concerned about humanitarian aid for the Palestinians also buy from Israel arms and defense knowledge…
Trying to mask the reality
Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz: As the war in Gaza raged, Israel Defense Forces reservists apparently thought anything was permissible: It was possible, maybe even necessary, to kill innocents, in the West Bank, too. Under cover of war, they thought, they could also kill a handcuffed Palestinian. It may not receive much international media coverage,…
A state with shameless censorship
On 11 January 2009, the English-language website of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published an article by Amira Hass, entitled “Gaza residents: IDF troops posing as Hamas men.” The article was removed from the website hours after publication. Haaretz told Arab Media Watch via email that the reason for its removal was that “the IDF censor had…
If any other country did this…
Terrorism, pure and simple: Israel Defense Forces investigations into last month’s offensive in the Gaza Strip indicate the army could face significant difficulties justifying the scale of destruction of civilian homes during the fighting. A military source involved in the investigation told Haaretz, “It’s clear to us that in a small portion of the combat…
Is this the ideology that makes Jews proud?
Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz about the failures of Zionism (and the Israeli left): And what is Zionism nowadays? An archaic and outdated concept born in a different reality, a vague and delusive concept marking the difference between the permitted and the proscribed. Does Zionism mean settlement in the territories? Occupation? The legitimization of every…
Migration leads to this?
Haaretz’s Lily Galili, talking to Israeli author Bernard Avishai, on the Russian Jewish population of Israel and its profound issues with reality: This is very Russian, the idea that ”˜liberalism’ is holy and yet something for Jewish suckers, which is why they have such common language with American neo-conservatives.… Natan Sharansky is in many ways…