The role of mainstream media in the West to shield the public from the realities of Israeli occupation is legendary. Occasionally there is a breakthrough, such as this 2010 piece on American 60 Minutes on East Jerusalem. Yesterday the same program and the same reporter, Bob Simon, returned to the subject and covered Christians leaving…
Showing all posts tagged settlements
Palestinian Christians treated like second class citizens by Jewish state
Very few people understand the reality of life under Israeli occupation. Father Peter Bray, the Vice Chancellor of Bethlehem University, has regularly written missives about what it really means. This is his Easter message: Easter Sunday 8 April 2012 Greetings from this holy city of Jerusalem where again I have had the opportunity to gather…
Teaching Israel a necessary and non-violent lesson
Just another average day in occupied Palestine (via Haaretz): The state has confirmed that, acting without a court order, the army has barred Palestinian villagers from freely accessing their farmland for two years. The admission was made in the state’s response to a High Court petition filed last year by Beit Furik residents. The plots…
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…
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…
Leading American Zionist calls for “Zionist BDS”
Something is stirring in the American, Jewish, liberal, Zionist heartland. Peter Beinart, former supporter of the Iraq war and tough Zionist, has become a very vocal and very public critic of occupying Israel. His “dream” is still to maintain so-called democratic Israel, an inherently undemocratic outcome for the countless Palestinians inside Israel, but this is…
Israel and America are both in an abusive relationship (and they rather love it)
This really a remarkable piece in The Economist that requires no explanation: News flash: Israel is not master of its fate. It’s not terribly surprising that a country with less than 8m inhabitants is not master of its fate. Switzerland, Sweden, Serbia and Portugal are not masters of their fates. These days, many countries with…