Tariq Ali nails it: The German writer Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum) had already predicted the response to his poem in SdZ. There is no reason to be surprised, but there is every reason to be disgusted. Within Germany both the elite and a layer of the population by their words and actions appear to…
Showing all posts tagged Palestine
How one-state solution is inevitable now
Gideon Levy in Haaretz on how the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is long dead – thank you America, settlers, the Israeli government and the Zionist Diaspora – and there’s only one outcome now: Even a dead body can sometimes twitch reflexively. Here we go again: The settlers have occupied another building. Their lawyer isn’t ashamed…
What hardline Zionists don’t want young American Jews to think
The American Jewish community is slowly but surely becoming more willing to critically debate Israel’s brutal policies towards Palestinians. Norman Finkelstein, here interviewed by Haaretz, says occupying Israel has a problem on its hands: “Nobody really defends Israel anymore,” he said in an interview. “If you go on college campuses, there are some Hillel faithfuls…
My lecture at Sydney’s Israeli Apartheid Week 2012
I gave the following talk at the University of Sydney on 15 March:
Netanyahu sounding like liberal Zionists
With the delusion of maintaining a Jewish, democratic state – a concept that never existed post 1948 and even less so today with the occupation of millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and discrimination against Arabs in Israel proper – the Israeli leader sounds like any number of liberal Zionists desperate to…
Zionists are Israeli brand managers, no more
Perceptive comments by Bernard Avishai on American Jews (or Jews anywhere, really) who can’t/won’t tolerate criticism of Israel: American Jews who proclaimed their friendship to Israel most noisily could not readily imagine… what… it might be like to live there. So the ways democratic norms fostered tolerance for religious dissent, or contributed to resolving tensions between Arabs…
What has Israel really done to Jewish culture post WWII?
The continuing expanding colonies in the West Bank are a key reason that Israel has a grim future as a Jewish state (rightly pointed out by Andrew Sullivan). But what of the argument, made by many Jews and others, that Israel is a refuge for the Jewish people and has the right to exist on…
Talking Israeli apartheid on The Colbert Report
There are so many problems with this interview – Peter Beinart talking about “democratic” Israel, as if the occupation isn’t fundamentally created and supported in Israel proper – but at least such issues are on mainstream US TV: The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive