Israeli army rabbis were condemned during the Gaza war for encouraging soldiers to kill Palestinians with impunity. They’re only Arabs, right lads? This story is therefore amusing, but hardly deals with the key issues at hand, namely the infiltration of religious fundamentalists in the IDF: The Israeli military has issued new regulations that impose greater…
Showing all posts tagged Zionism
The crazies inside government
The London Independent reports that Israel ain’t serious about peace and will continue this charade for as long as possible: The Israeli Defence Minister yesterday issued one of the government’s bluntest warnings against linkage between its stance on a two-state solution with the Palestinians and efforts to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power. In what…
Talking may go on and on
MJ Rosenberg reminds us why the world should be highly skeptical of the Israeli government. History is a guide: You want to know what Prime Minister Netanyahu is up to? Here it is, from the New York Times on June 27, 1992. The Likud prime minister then was Yitzhak Shamir who had just been defeated…
What, you missed the peaceful attempt to just stage a play?
An interesting letter in today’s Melbourne Age about Monday’s staging of Seven Jewish Children: The saga over the play Seven Jewish Children again highlights the poor quality of debate on issues of anti-Semitism and the Middle East. After several days of intensive media scrutiny, and the usual acrimony between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, I am…
When they take their rightful place
And the idea of so-called Jewish majority in Israel fades away: Jerusalem will lose its Jewish majority by 2035, when the number of Jews and Arabs in the city will reach parity, the director general of the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies said yesterday.
Oh really?
Australia’s major Zionist lobby AIJAC in today’s Crikey: Netanyahu is putting the building blocks in place so a viable Palestinian state can one day emerge. When it finally does, history will likely judge Netanyahu’s second term as a key part of that journey. Clearly telling the truth isn’t a prerequisite for working at AIJAC.
A land of historical amnesia
George Friedman writes in Strafor about the skewed worldview of the Israelis: There are many in Israel, particularly among Netanyahu’s supporters, who believe Israel is a great power. It isn’t. It is a nation that is strong partly because it lives in a pretty weak neighborhood, and partly because it has very strong friends. Many…
Get ready, Adolf is coming back
After the anger over the Melbourne reading last night of the play Seven Jewish Children, the most absurd comment came on ABC TV Lateline from Danny Lamm of the Zionist Council of Victoria: It’s the entire opposite of the truth. It’s Goebbels returning in 2009. Australia is 1933 Germany? I guess using the Nazis to…
Is our only role to kill supposed enemies?
Tony Karon, writing in Rootless Cosmopolitan, challenges the delusions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief American stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg: Netanyahu, and Goldberg, are products of an apocalyptic Jewish nationalism whose toxic effects are brilliantly critiqued by Avraham Burg who calls it “a fearful Judaism, a paranoid Zionism”. Burg makes clear in his book that evoking…
We have a duty to learn
What would happen if more Jews actually wanted to know about Palestinian history and understand its trauma? Somewhere outside Tel Aviv yesterday two busloads of Israelis were taken on a tour of their history. It is a history many of them will have heard a version of before, but few will have heard the one…