Last year I wrote a chapter on the far right and Israel in an ebook, On Utoya, on the massacre in Norway committed by Andres Breivik. With the verdict now in, one of the book’s co-editors, Tad Tietze, has written a piece in the Guardian that provides the necessary political context: There are many reasons…
Showing all posts tagged Islam
On tour: imagining “After Zionism” in Israel and Palestine
My following essay appears on the American website Mondoweiss today: The drive from East Jerusalem to Tel Aviv takes around one hour. It’s a stinking hot day and I’ve come from Ramallah in mid-August 2012. Despite flying into Ben Gurion airport in the morning I am stopped and initially refused entry by the Israeli border…
Feigning care for human rights while condemning Wikileaks and Ecuador
The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald nails it: Readers of the American and British press over the past month have been inundated with righteous condemnations of Ecuador‘s poor record on press freedoms. Is this because western media outlets have suddenly developed a new-found devotion to defending civil liberties in Latin America? Please. To pose the question is…
Recipient of Israel lobby hospitality, from Murdoch press, calls on military strike against Iran
The Zionist establishment must be rubbing its hands with glee. Another media figure, who has enjoyed those glorious trips to Israel to savour some Israeli apartheid, demands the West take action against Iran. Alan Howe, from Melbourne’s Herald Sun, has form. Here’s some of his latest bile: Islamists differ from the rest of us; we…
America Jew tells world that IDF doesn’t torture Palestinians (he’s really, really, really sure)
Here’s a curious line in a New York Times piece about this week’s arrival from America of young Jews who’ll be joining the IDF to, well, defend Israel from the evils of (insert Muslim threat here). But doesn’t this seemingly unprovoked quote seem to suggest that this man is trying to challenge the correct notion…
White people commit terrorism, too
The kind of commentary that any sensible writer would make but alas they don’t. The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf explains: Observing that the Sunday attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin hasn’t attracted nearly as much attention as other shooting sprees, including last week’s rampage at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, Robert Wright… wonders… if the disparity is…
Don’t think for a second that a militarised US empire is going away
Nick Turse in TomDispatch provides a terrifying overview of what Barack Obama has merely accelerated in the last four years: In the 1980s, the U.S. government began funneling aid to mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan as part of an American… proxy war… against the Soviet Union. It was, in the minds of America’s Cold War leaders, a rare…
“After Zionism” events hit London
I’ll soon be speaking at two major events in London for my just released book, After Zionism. 21 August at the Frontline Club: With a new coalition formed in Israel, a prospective reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and a new leader in Egypt it could be said the century-long Israeli–Palestinian conflict is entering a new…
Finally, maybe, siege on Gaza coming to an end?
Ma’an reports: Egypt will follow a new policy on the Rafah crossing between it and the Gaza Strip, and the people of Gaza will experience changes in travel procedures and times, says prime minister of the Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip Ismail Haniyeh. Speaking to the Gaza-based Hamas-affiliated Palestine newspaper following a meeting with…
Islamic nations rightly shun American ambitions
So much for the Muslim’s world love of America and Barack Obama. Why the hell would they? (via IPS): Despite continuous assurances that the United States favours democratic rule during the 18-month-old “Arab Spring”, majorities or pluralities in six predominantly Muslim countries see Washington as an obstacle to their democratic aspirations, according to a new…