Following my article in yesterday’s Crikey about Saree Makdisi’s recent visit to Australia, the following letter is published today: Josh Landis writes: I don’t get it. What does Crikey see in Antony Loewenstein and why are his rants continually published? The latest offering says almost nothing. Summary: 200 people including about five Jews turned up…
Showing all posts tagged Zionism
How spiritual is your Judaism?
Jews at the famous Burning Man festival? Jewish identity manifests itself in the strangest of places and yet it makes perfect sense. How we define ourselves in the 21st century is up for grabs. Oddly fascinating (though I can’t help but wonder whether the Middle East was never discussed):
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…
Murdering Arabs is actually a problem
If the US fails to hold Israel to account, those with international law on their mind may: A senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday that he is considering opening an investigation into whether Lt. Col. David Benjamin, an Israel Defense Forces reserve officer, allowed war crimes to be committed…
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…
Palestinian history threatens nobody except the weak
The fact that this is a serious story simply suggests how threatening the Palestinian narrative remains for the Jewish state: The Education Ministry will be reexamining a new Hebrew-language history textbook published by the Zalman Shazar Center that was approved for 11th- and 12th-grade classes. The textbook gives expression to the Palestinian perspective on the…
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…
When apartheid grows, Israel has a little problem
Ambassador Edward S. Walker, Jr, former assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, former Ambassador to Israel, Egypt, and the U.A.E., and Deputy Permanent Representative of the U.S. to the U.N. with Ambassadorial Rank, writes about this week’s futile Obama/Netanyahu/Abbas meeting and ends with a question that nobody wants to seriously consider: Perhaps President…