The following interview by Stu Harrison appears in this week’s Green Left Weekly: “The war could have finished the day before I arrived”, independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein told Green Left Weekly of his recent trip to the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza. His trip in July was months after the December-January war, in…
Showing all posts tagged Islam
The nuclear game in the Middle East
Dr. Abdul Khader Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, recently granted an interview to local TV: Iran was interested in obtaining nuclear technology. And because Iran is an important Islamic country, we wanted it to have the technology. The Western countries pressured us on this issue, and it wasn’t fair. If Iran can have…
Please keep changing the topic and don’t talk about Palestine
Following the speech in parliament by Labor MP Michael Danby against the supposed evils of Israel criticism (and Crikey’s Guy Rundle in response), today’s Crikey publishes these letters: Michael Danby, the Federal Member for Melbourne Ports, writes: Re. “Rundle: No wonder Danby is pissed off” (Monday, item 12). Eric Beecher, the owner of Crikey has…
Truth proves elusive in a confusing trouble spot
My following book review appears in this week’s Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum section: Fit to Print: Misrepresenting the Middle East By Joris Luyendijk Scribe, 241pp, $29.95 “A journalist who limits himself to the role of middleman,” writes Dutch reporter Joris Luyendijk, “is actually siding with the team that is best able to influence the news…
What the Muslim world needs from Israel
Saudi Arabia, despotic and a US ally, is a key player in the Middle East, mainly due to its oil reserves. In the New York Times, Prince Turki al-Faisal, former director of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services and ambassador to the United States, writes that until Israel gives up its colonial addiction to land, the Arab…
Living as normal a life in Gaza as possible
Ramadan in Gaza is a celebration (like everywhere in the Muslim world) but even more so in a land blockaded by Israel and Egypt. One blogger has posted some photographs of “normal” life in the Strip:
Just some genocide provided by Jewish settlers
If a Muslim calls for the destruction of Israel or Jews, it is rightly condemned. But how about a radical Jew writing this? For peace and truth to unite and prevail, Israel must first triumph over her enemies, today led by Satanic Iran. Israel is waiting for the moment. She knows that the mullahs of…
Gaza may be becoming a tinder-box
With ongoing reports about extremist activity in the Gaza Strip – and we shouldn’t preclude black-ops by the Israelis to exaggerate the supposed threat – this is unwelcome news: The leader of an al-Qaida-inspired group in the Gaza Strip revealed on Sunday that his men recently tried to assassinate former US president Jimmy Carter and…
Western values are not a danger for Iranian youth
Iran, already undergoing a massive crackdown against anybody not subscribing to the fundamentalist mindset, is seemingly about to take an even darker turn: A hard-line deputy of Iran’s supreme leader announced steps Sunday to purge Iranian universities of Western influences even as the government faced accusations of “fascism and totalitarianism” leveled by the country’s former…
The changing spots of the Gaza Strip under Hamas
During my recent visit to Gaza, I investigated the role of growing Islamisation in the Strip. The New York Times writes today about the story and finds a conflicted territory: Iyad el-Serraj, a psychiatrist and close observer here, said there was little doubt that Gaza, long a religiously and socially conservative place, was increasingly so.…