Following Sarah Palin’s recent comments that illegal, Jewish settlements should expand in the West Bank (in a clear reference to the Second Coming), a former Australian Liberal Party MP Ross Cameron today challenges her on this: American policy for the past 40 years has discouraged Israeli settlements in the disputed territories. Palin told Barbara Walters…
Showing all posts tagged West Bank
At what point will J Street realise that Israel isn’t democratic now?
J Street head Jeremy Ben-Ami debated the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee David Harris on CNN earlier this week. They disagreed on some key points (Harris believes Israel can solve the conflict on its own while Ben-Ami believes only Washington can) but this comment by Ben-Ami was the strongest statement: The settlement enterprise…
Jews who want to hug Hamas, get in line, peoples
I missed this news a few weeks ago (thanks to Promised Land for picking it up) that a majority of Israelis favour some kind of negotiation with Hamas: Israelis don’t oppose negotiations in general – but they don’t feel an urgency to negotiate as well. Things are OK right now, so for all they care,…
Obama ignores the hundreds of thousands of illegal colonists
Zvi Bar’el in Haaretz unpacks the lacklustre American efforts to bring “peace” to the Middle East: And let’s say Israel does freeze construction. What is Washington’s policy regarding the 300,000 settlers currently living in the territories, in settlements that no American president was determined enough to stop? If a plan to construct 900 housing units…
God gave us all of it so bugger off, says Zionist
The land of Israel and Palestine is all ours, Jerusalem Post writer Michael Freund argues. Why? Well, he’s given us the best reason imaginable; the dude in the sky: Israel should move ahead with steps to formally and legally incorporate all of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria into the Jewish state. This will…
The shocking human rights carnage in the Middle East
Israeli human rights B’Tselem publishes the facts: Today (Sunday, Nov 22nd), Israeli human rights group B’Tselem commemorates 20 years since its founding with release of data collected by the organization from 1989-2009. This period includes many of the main events of the first Palestinian Intifada, the Oslo period and the Second Intifada, as well as…
How do Palestinians build a state with 500,000 Jews in the way?
Two recent articles in the Israeli press indicate the direction some of the Middle East debate is moving. Praise the “moderate” Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad while ignoring the ever-growing colonies in the West Bank. We should always be suspicious when occupiers praise the occupied: First, David Horowitz in the Jerusalem Post: Steadily and methodically,…
All Arabs are terrorists (say friends of Israel)
GlobalPost interviews some radical, West Bank settlers, supported, funded and protected by the Jewish state: Other than two friendly dogs and some iron bars, the kids on the hill have few weapons. Gottlieb keeps a small can of pepper spray in the pocket of his cargo pants in case of attack by people he calls…
Settlements aren’t really colonies, says the Washington Post
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting on the continuing ability of the US corporate press to evade telling the truth about the Middle East: The big news out of the Middle East yesterday was the Israeli government’s decision to approve an expansion of… the Gilo settlement near Jerusalem. The White House’s muddled position on settlement expansion has…
We support the Palestinian charge for one person, one vote
Saree Makdisi, recent visitor to Australia, speaks to Democracy Now! on a Palestinian threat to unilaterally declare statehood: I think it would be a mistake for the Palestinians to declare statehood, because, first of all, they’ve already done that, and you can’t declare statehood twice. They did it in 1988. And the second thing is…