The role of writers isn’t to prop up unsavoury regimes or refuse to speak out when occupation is occuring down the road. Take a bow for failure, Ms Atwood: Margaret Atwood peeks at the busy schedule for her first visit to Israel: She’s set to receive a prestigious prize, meet with Israeli and Palestinian bird…
Showing all posts tagged Judaism
Isolation is Israel’s new middle name
Hagai El-Ad, an Israeli human rights activist and executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), writes in Foreign Policy (under the headline: To Be Or Not To Be A Pariah State) that the Jewish nation has a choice and it seems to have made it already: [Benjamin] Netanyahu confuses (perhaps intentionally)…
CNN shows Palestinians as human beings
The kind of story that all-too-rarely appears in the Western press, humanising Palestinians as not just terrorists. And dying to leave, albeit briefly, their West Bank prison. Well done, CNN:
Is there any way to get rid of these pesky Israeli Arabs?
Gideon Levy in Haaretz on what most Israeli Jews would like to happen to the Arab minority: The truth is, more than anything, we would like them to disappear, though not their hummus restaurants. A second choice would be to have them all crowd into their cities and villages – not to say their ghettos.…
What will Israel do when Dersh passes on?
Rabbi Brant Rosen is a sane American who knows exactly where the Jewish state is going (namely off a cliff with its eyes open). He tackles one of Israel’s leading global backers, Alan Dershowitz, a man the Zionist Diaspora seems to love because he’s so strongly “pro-Israel” but they really would defend this? Back to…
As long as Israel remains an American obsession, things will decline badly
Josh Landis @ Foreign Policy thinks that Russia is looking at the Middle East with added interest and I wonder why: So long as America’s No. 1 foreign-policy goal in the region is to hurt Iran and help Israel, Russia will be drawn back into the region and a new Cold War will take shape.…
It’s the racism, stupid
A necessary history lesson for anybody who wants to forget the reasons South Africa and Israel were once good friends: In October 1985, as it happens, the editor of [Israel’s biggest newspaper] Yediot Ahronoth’s weekend magazine, Aharon Shamir, came to South Africa to meet with a mid-level Foreign Ministry functionary. When the bureaucrat complained that…
What will Jews try to ban next? An anti-Zionist Jesus?
In 2009 some Jewish Australian Zionist organisations complained and demanded action over a performance of the play Seven Jewish Children claiming it was anti-Semitic and should not happen. Thankfully they were ignored and the performance went ahead to great success. It’s called freedom of expression in a democracy. One year later, I’ve now been informed…
Interview with the New Zealand Listener
New Zealand’s Listener magazine is that country’s only national current affairs magazine. I am interviewed in the latest edition, in preparation for my upcoming appearance at the Auckland Writer’s Festival and a national tour, on speaking truths over Israel/Palestine, West Bank and Gaza occupation, the role of journalism and shit-stirring: Loewenstein Listener May 15 (PDF)