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…
Showing all posts tagged Hamas
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…
Knowing your enemy too well
Israel and Hamas, like two peas in a pod (courtesy of Haaretz’s Gideon Levy.)
What is there to be proud of?
As Israel’s 60th anniversary approaches, the country’s creeping apartheid continues: Among the many tools used in the battle between Israel’s Arabs and Jews, you can add a new one: gentrification. The Arab Association for Human Rights alleges that Arab residents in a seaside neighborhood of Jaffa are being driven out so that the area can…
Zionists admire the blue sky
The Middle East is on fire. Israel is killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza. But the Australian Jewish News decides to feature on the front page of its website the following “story“: Israeli Ambassador Yuval Rotem and his family visited Dreamworld and WhiteWater World on the Gold Coast this week for some holiday thrills. Rotem tried…
The Israeli Diaspora soul-searching
My following article appears in today’s Online Opinion: During Israel’s recent bombardment of Gaza, the Australian Jewish establishment reacted with unreserved support. Israel’s leading human rights organisation B’Tselem reported that the majority of Palestinian victims of the onslaught were civilians. David Knoll, from the New South Wales Board of Deputies, wrote that, “Israel is using…
The essential reality
Jimmy Carter speaks the truth about resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict: There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbours, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process.
How to talk to “terrorists”
Once were terrorists: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has asked for “embarrassing” travel restrictions on Nelson Mandela and South African leaders to be lifted. A bill has been introduced in the US Congress to remove from databases any reference to South Africa’s governing party and its leaders as terrorists. The African National Congress (ANC)…