My following letter appear in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Criticising Israel is a risky business. Robert Goot and David Knoll (Letters, March 12) round on Alan Ramsey for suggesting that Palestinians will not be celebrating Kevin Rudd’s parliamentary motion on the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state. They use the armoury of Israeli Foreign Ministry…
Showing all posts tagged settlements
An improper motion
Blindly praising Israel has its limits: A bipartisan motion congratulating Israel on 60 years of statehood has provoked division in federal Labor, with one government MP threatening to boycott the vote and union heavyweights accusing the Jewish state of racism and ethnic cleansing. The parliamentary motion is due to be passed by MPs today, commemorating…
There’s so much more bombing to do
What does a Jewish, neo-conservative, former Bush administration official do after he leaves office? Advocate war against Iran.
Jewish abuses exposed
Need more evidence that the Zionist lobby doesn’t want honesty, merely blind adulation of the Jewish state? The ongoing controversy fueled by the opening of an Israeli soldiers’ photo exhibit last week at Harvard Hillel has prompted attention from national Jewish organizations beyond Harvard’s Jewish community. Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America,…
The gift of extremism
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, March 9: It is still unclear whether the terrorist who entered the Mercaz Harav yeshiva on Thursday night and killed eight of its students knew exactly what place he was entering. But the thousands of people who walked behind the coffins on Friday knew very well. “The flagship of religious Zionism” was…
Let the countdown begin
Tick, tock (courtesy of Forward): Israel is in a diplomatic and military jam that keeps getting worse, but has no obvious solution. It is rapidly approaching the demographic tipping point, when Palestinian Arabs outnumber Israeli Jews in the land now under Israeli control. When that happens, Israel will find that it has become a minority-rule…
This is Israel
A Haaretz editorial like no other: Last night, the investigative television program “Fact” broadcast pictures of our own Abu Ghraib affair. It is doubtful whether a country that has grown used to 40 years of occupation, and the stories that accompany it, will be shocked. We have become accustomed to treating the Palestinians as inferior…
A small opening
Barack Obama, Cleveland, February: I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. Nobody should be under any illusion about Obama’s ability or interest to seriously shift America’s role…
Why discourse matters
Leading Jewish blogger Phil Weiss kindly adds to the international debate started by my recent article in Haaretz: …Where is Loewenstein’s argument appearing? In Haaretz, of course. Israel can hear these opinions. They are marginalized in my country, as the voices of Arabists, terrorist-sympathizers, appeasers. We are all morally inscribed and reinscribed in the Shoah…