What emerges from the litany of Wikileaks cables is the ineptitude of American foreign policy, either jumping at shadows or trying to impose its bullying ways on the world, often unsuccessfully. One: Saudi Arabia proposed creating an Arab force backed by US and Nato air and sea power to intervene in Lebanon two years ago…
Showing all posts tagged Hizbollah
This is how Australia is seen; vassals used by Washington over Wikileaks
Wikileaks news is coming thick and fast. Some “highlights” over the last 24 hours. One: [Israeli] Defense Minister Ehud Barak Tuesday told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that a deal was never reached with the United States on a renewed settlement freeze because the US is preoccupied with the mass of documents being…
Why not bomb Syria?
This is mainstream media reporting. Anonymous voices advocating war and chaos in the Middle East, courtesy of Israel and the US: Syria’s fresh interference in Lebanon and its increasingly sophisticated weapons shipments to Hezbollah have alarmed American officials and prompted Israel’s military to consider a strike against a Syrian weapons depot that supplies the Lebanese…
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…
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…
If the Taliban can be engaged, why not the other “terrorists”?
So Richard Barrett, the coordinator of the United Nations Al Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team, thinks it’s time to “talk to the Taliban.” Guess the next major piece in the New York Times will be that Israel should talk to Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran.
Resistance vs terrorism is a complex beast; enter the Tamil Tigers
Post 9/11, finding nuance in the state view towards “terrorism” was rare, indeed. But here is a challenging example, questioning the idea that every form of resistance is somehow connected to al-Qaeda: More than three years after federal agents locked up a Sri Lankan immigrant they say was the top U.S. representative of the Tamil…
How Lebanon could teach Americans a thing or two about acceptance
The story of Lebanon’s oldest synagogue restored to its former glory, including with the backing of Hizbollah.