The founder of Conflicts Forum, a site that discusses Islamism in all its form, is interviewed by Mother Jones. Alastair Crooke is an intriguing fellow: Crooke understands today’s Middle East as similar to Sarajevo in 1914, where a random event could precipitate a cascade that changes the world. Someone will overreach—Israel, Syria, Lebanon…—and then everything…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Iran, Michael Jackson, and Generation X
My following article appears in the Asia-Pacific Magazine The Diplomat: Our writer argues that his young tech-savvy peers, celebrity fixations aside, are increasingly engaged in global issues like this summer’s riots in Tehran. The violent June uprisings in Iran ricocheted around the world. While young, old, conservative and liberal Iranians protested the stolen election win…
Can Fayyad make a difference?
My latest New Matilda column is about the favoured Palestinians in the West: ‘Moderate’ Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad may be popular with western leaders, but under his watch the gulf between rhetoric and reality is growing, writes Antony Loewenstein The Western-backed Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, was… interviewed earlier this month on… ABC Radio National’s… Saturday Extra.…
How to ruin the chances of Middle East peace
Michael Shaik, from Australians for Palestine, writes in Murdoch’s Australian: In 1973, Ariel Sharon announced his intention to make a “pastrami sandwich” of the Palestinians by building strips of settlements across the West Bank, “so that in 25 years’ time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it…
Saree Makdisi: Obama won’t solve the Middle East crisis
My following article appears in today’s Crikey: After… Tuesday night’s Sydney Ideas lecture by Saree Makdisi, professor of English Literature at the University of California and nephew of the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, chief executive of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, asked a question. He wanted to know why Makdisi…
Avoiding Hamas just avoids making peace
Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to Fox News: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would never make peace with Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, a stand that could undermine peace negotiations in the region. In an interview with FOX News, Netanyahu said Gaza can’t be part of a peace deal while Hamas…
America signs yet another deal to kiss Israel
On some days, such as today, I look at the Middle East “peace process” and wonder how any serious journalist can’t write about Israel and Palestine and not simply laugh (or cry). Talks, meeting, summits, statements of intent and yet the occupation only grows. A farce allowed to continue by either blind Zionists or bought…
Do Americans have to speak the language to colonise?
Care to wonder why Washington’s message to the world is often so contradictory, hypocritical and clueless? Look no further: About a third of Foreign Service officers in jobs that require language skills don’t have the proficiency required to do their jobs, hurting America’s ability to advocate its interests around the world, according to a new…
SBS Radio interview on Israeli discrimination in East Jerusalem
SBS News Radio reports today: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas for the first time since taking office in March, in Washington today. U-S President Barack Obama is hosting the talks at the White House. It comes at a time when peace moves are stalled, despite intense U-S efforts. As…
J Street can’t quite bring itself to see Israel for what it is
The supposedly progressive new pro-Israel lobby group J Street is getting heaps of mainstream traction. But post the recent UN report on Gaza, its statement is shamefully weak: J Street has reviewed the Goldstone report in its entirety over the past several days. J Street agrees with Israelis, such as Minister Isaac Herzog, that some…