With news that Barack Obama, Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu will meet this week in the US for a completely empty photo-call, this comment on Friday from Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri at a rally in Gaza’s Beit Lahia is ominous: The choice of negotiations has proven a failure, and it’s time that Palestinian negotiators abandon…
Showing all posts tagged United States
How much does modern Jewry need anti-Semitism?
Joseph Dana, an American Jew with whom I spent considerable time recently in Israel and the West Bank, is currently living in Europe. He struggles, like many Jews, with the appalling use of violence meted out by Israel to the Palestinians. His latest essay is an interesting examination of the desperate need for contemporary Judaism…
The mainstream price for questioning Zionism
Following this month’s release of the film about leading US Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein, American Radical, it’s worth recalling how he made his name. Below is taken from Noam Chomsky’s 2002 book, Understanding Power: How many of you know about Joan Peters, the book by Joan Peters? There was this best-seller a few years ago…
America likes to bathe with Israeli missiles
The Obama administration comes down on the side of war criminals over its role in the Gaza war. When will more people start to realise that Washington is not an honest broker in the Middle East? The Obama administration sharply criticized a UN report Friday alleging that Israel committed multiple war crimes in its Gaza…
We broke Iraq
The Iraqi shoe thrower, Muntazer al-Zaidi, eloquently explains why he committed the act: I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the…
When the wind is behind the BDS movement
The US Jewish newspaper Forward publishes a piece about the growing boycott movement against Israel under the headline, “Palestinian-Led Movement To Boycott Israel Is Gaining Support“: As Omar Barghouti, one of the Palestinian leaders of the BDS movement, told the Forward, “Our South Africa moment has finally arrived.” Some major Jewish groups acknowledge BDS as…
Welcome to your fundamentalist future, America
Max Blumenthal, whose book Republican Gomorrah has debuted at number 15 on the New York Times best-seller chart, tells Harpers: Followers of the Christian right openly admit that they have no capacity to restrain themselves from total depravity without constant, stern commandments from an angry God.
America says it is good and true and the globe laughs
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald on the inherent delusions of the American corporate media and posits: the world looks at us with contempt and slams the exceptionalist mindset: I’m asking this sincerely, not rhetorically:… is there anything other than extreme self-delusion, grounded in blinding self-regard… (i.e., self-decreed exceptionalism), that can explain this?… … The Washington Post Editorial Page today is…
Peace and justice won’t come to Palestine by simply wishing it
Following my article in last week’s Canberra Times, I’m informed by reliable sources at the paper that Jewish academic Dvir Abramovich demanded a right of reply because I had “unfairly libeled… Israelis as extremists.” Yesterday his piece was published and it’s a masterful piece of saying nothing in 800 words. Empty words and slogans, two equal…
Jews who refuse to abuse Arabs under occupation
I wrote in December last year about the Shministim, Israeli high school students who have been imprisoned for refusing to serve in an army that occupies the Palestinian Territories. I met some of these brave men and women during my recent visit to Israel. Now, they’re taking this message to key ground, the US: Two…