The following email was just sent to the list of Independent Australian Jewish Voices: Dear friends, After a brutal civil war that massacred tens of thousands in Sri Lanka, many Tamils are seeking to rebuild their lives in Australia and beyond. We have not only a moral responsibility to listen to their pleas as refugees,…
Showing all posts tagged Hamas
US tells Israel that they’re just tops but people aren’t convinced
The US Ambassador to Israel, James B. Cunningham, spoke a few days ago at Tel Aviv University. Promised Land blog reports on proceedings and it’s an utterly depressing affair: Ambassador Cunningham read a prepared lecture for 30 minutes, and than took questions for an additional half hour. I will report here some of the things…
Israel is falling apart; most Jews don’t want to know
Finally, the Americans are starting to tire of the Middle East conflict (even if they blame both sides for the impasse, oblivious to the clear power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians). Here’s Thomas Friedman in the New York Times: Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything…
Carter urges justice over Gaza
Jimmy Carter in the New York Times writes on the Goldstone report: The Goldstone committee examined closely the cause of deaths of the 1,387 Palestinians who perished, and the degree of damage to the various areas. The conclusion was that the civilian areas were targeted and the devastation was deliberate. Again, the criticism of Israel…
Reporting Gaza, says al-Jazeera, must rely on new media
This week in Sydney the Media140 conference took place. One of the sessions was a presentation by Riyaad Minty, head of social media at al-Jazeera. Here’s a blog report about the event by Paul Farrell: Riyaad Minty, Head of Social Media at Al Jazeera was the next keynote speaker, and delivered a case study about…
It’s the US and Israel that remain isolated, not us
As the UN voted today to endorse the Goldstone report on Gaza – note the countries that sided with Israel, the US and Australia: how many client states can you count? – William Blum in his regular Killing Hope newsletter reminds us how isolated the US and Israel remain on another key human rights issue:…
The New Yorker on Gaza and yet…
Finally, the New Yorker tackles the Gaza war: Gaza is a place that Israel wishes it could ignore: the territory has long had the highest concentration of poverty, extremism, and hopelessness in the region. Gaza makes a mess of the idealized two-state solution because it is separated from the West Bank, the much larger Palestinian…
When Operation Cast Lead just wasn’t enough
We have been warned. Over to you Haaretz headline: Israel preparing public for a new war in Gaza
Will Hamas struggle to maintain Gaza?
Kabobfest looks at the political situation for Hamas in Gaza and finds a less than rosy reality: Observers of the political scene in Palestine are carefully monitoring the situation on the ground as President Abbas just issued the much anticipated Presidential Decree to recommend holding the both the Presidential and Legislative elections on January 24th…
The only moral and Jewish response to Goldstone
One of America’s leading Jewish writers, Tony Judt – who tragically is suffering from a great physical affliction – writes on the importance of the UN Goldstone report: We Jews should be very proud of Richard Goldstone. In an ancient tradition of Jewish self-questioning and uncomfortable truth-telling, the author of the recent report from the…