Palestinian feminist Asma Al-Ghoul pushes for secularism in Islamic Gaza. It’s vital that growing Islamisation under Hamas is challenged: Recently Asma garnered media attention for two incidents with the Hamas police. In the summer of 2009, she walked on a public Gaza beach with a mixed gender group, and visited a former male colleague and…
Showing all posts tagged Hamas
There ain’t no Islamic state in Gaza
Dr. Ahmed Yousef is Deputy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza and the Former Senior Political Adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. I interviewed him last year in Gaza City and he was a pretty Westernised man. His latest piece challenges the impression that “Talibanisation” has arrived in Gaza under…
Read this for possible Middle East near future (and it ain’t pretty)
This email was forwarded by Harvard Middle East expert Sara Roy. No real comment required: I pass this along without making any claims to verify its accuracy.… From a NYC-based Israeli source, who just returned from Tel Aviv, where he met with senior IDF and Likud figures, including Netanyahu.… He is one of the Likud…
Australian unions, Paul Howes, BDS and loving Israel
My following investigation appears in today’s edition of Crikey: The Middle East “quagmire” is largely “the fault of Israel”, according to Paul Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers Union (AWU). In an interview with Crikey, the author of Confessions of a Faceless Man said that he was a “critical friend of Israel” and the…
The English Defence League and Zionism; friends forever?
The increasing ties between the hard-right and Zionism is clear. Israel has few friends in the world and the far-right loves the Jewish state for its abusive treatment of Arabs and Palestinian. Witness the upcoming visit to Israel by Dutch politician Geert Wilders to speak about creating a Palestinian state in Jordan. My friend and…
Hamas is flailing on all fronts
Haidar Eid is a writer and activist based in Gaza. I met him there last year and his determination and passion was striking. He’s one of the key leaders behind the BDS movement. His latest piece damns Hamas for failing, in his view, to prepare for a democratic future in Palestine: Despite its somewhat fiery…
Wolfensohn: “no-one particularly likes the Jews, no-one particularly likes the Palestinians”
James Wolfensohn, former World Bank President and former head of the Middle East Quartet, was on Australian TV last night talking about Israel/Palestine and the message was clear; America is Israel’s lawyer: Jim Wolfensohn, I’d like to focus mainly on your personal experience as George W. Bush’s handpicked choice as special enjoy of quartet to…
Israel has problems but hey Hamas is nearby (relevance, Zionists?)
Following my article yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald on Israel/Palestine, the following letters appear in today’s edition: For an alternative to Antony Loewenstein’s polemic against Israel (“Western politicians prefer to ignore Israel’s inherent racism”, October 28) I refer readers to Freedom in the World: Israel 2010 by Freedom House, a venerable and widely respected…
Western politicians prefer to ignore Israel’s inherent racism
My following article appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Imagine a mainstream Australian politician saying that Aborigines should be banned from leading tourists around Uluru because they might “present anti-Australian positions” to visitors. The outcry would be furious. But a bill is currently before the Israeli Knesset, led by a parliamentarian from the “moderate” Kadima…
Let’s not starve them in Gaza but getting close would be fun
What kind of democratic state would do this? That’s right, Israel isn’t a democracy for Arabs, so this kind of blatant racism is just another day at the office: In the three years since Hamas took control of Gaza, Israeli officials have employed mathematical formulas to monitor foodstuffs and other basic goods entering the Strip…