Surely a healthy sign of the mainstreaming of Palestine. US chef Anthony Bourdain takes his TV show to Israel and Palestine (including the West Bank and Gaza) and shows humanity in Palestine and crass extremism of Zionist settlers:
Showing all posts tagged Judaism
While Zionist settlers thrive, Netanyahu talks about Arab "threat"
Welcome to “democratic” Israel. Last night here in Sydney distinguished international lawyer and UN expert Richard Falk explained how growing numbers of people globally are recognising the justice of the Palestinian cause and Israel’s continued belligerence. But we still a way away from holding the Jewish state to account. Here are two stories that highlight…
Calling US Middle East "peace process" the farce that it is
Great piece by Bill Van Esveld, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch based in Jerusalem, published in The Hill: Twenty years ago, Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, opening the “peace process” that the US is trying to reinvigorate. Yet the Obama administration has failed to…
Earth to New York Times; you don't have a monopoly on stories
The Guardian recently published a stunning story, via Edward Snowden, of overly close intelligence sharing between America and Israel. The New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan reveals a shocking lack of news judgement by the paper and a sense that unless big stories are found and broken by them, well, don’t bother looking to…
ABC Sunday Nights interview on For God's Sake
My recent book, For God’s Sake, tackles religion, faith and politics. Last Sunday all the contributors were interviewed by ABC Radio’s… Sunday Night: Sunday Nights takes on the world’s biggest religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and, what some refer to as a kind of religion, Atheism. A recent book, For God’s Sake, features representatives from each of…
The eternal paradox at the heart of Zionism
The always insightful Israeli historian Ilan Pappe … (who endorsed my first book, My Israel Question) on where to from here for Israel and Palestine: The recent attempt to revive the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians is not likely to produce more meaningful results than that of any of the previous attempts. It comes…
America happy to share raw intel with fellow occupier Israel
A killer story (and yet more evidence that the revelations from Edward Snowden are undeniably in the public interest). This is by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian: The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data withIsrael… without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens,… a top-secret document provided to…
US and Western hypocrisy over Syria must be remembered
Great column by John Pilger over the selective outrage: On my wall is the front page of Daily Express of September 5, 1945 and the words: “I write this as a warning to the world.” So began Wilfred Burchett’s report from Hiroshima. It was the scoop of the century. For his lone, perilous journey that…
Use and abuse of the Holocaust to defend and support Israel
Interesting and necessary editorial in Haaretz: The flyby over the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by three Israel Air Force planes 10 years ago was a significant event for the service. The air force’s commander, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, still keeps the flight’s documentation close by in his office. Four air force commanders at different times were…
How Israel and the Gulf states maintain repression in the Middle East
The idea that the Western powers want freedom and democracy in the Middle East is a joke that’s not lost on the Arabs living there. Adam Shatz, writing in the London Review of Books, outlines brilliantly today’s messy region: One evening in January at a hotel bar in Manhattan, I tried to ingratiate myself with…