Letters to EI

In his article “USAID funding Israel’s apartheid road construction” (17 May 2010) Jonathan Cook levels a number of serious accusations against the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). While his disdain for Israel’s occupation is to be applauded, his criticisms of the PNA ignore some fundamental facts with regards to road construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

PACBI’s recent statement entitled “Intellectual Responsibility and the Voice of the Colonized,” which criticizes the research project that led to the publication of the book, The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has stirred a healthy debate and mostly constructive discussion among various scholars.

Desmond Travers, member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict led by Judge Richard Goldstone, responds to the description of an attack on an ambulance by means of a “dart bomb” to The Electronic Intifada.

Although I appreciate Asa Winstanley’s warm review of To Gaza with Love (4 January 2010), he left out every woman involved in the organization and founding of the Free Gaza Movement. I’m dismayed that the review shows yet another attempt to turn the story into a “good-old boy tale” instead of what was a primarily a female initiative.

I felt the need to point out a rather significant confusion of terms to be found in Joseph Shahadi’s review of Steven Salaita’s The Uncultured Wars: Arabs, Muslims and the Poverty of Liberal Thought, published by The Electronic Intifada on 15 October: that of conflating liberalism with leftism.

Thanks to Nada Elia for her article “A Turning Point in the US Solidarity Movement” (16 September 2009) and for her important role in cogently laying out the rationale for engaging in cultural and academic boycotts of Israeli institutions during the 8th Annual National Organizers’ Conference of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. We broke new ground at this conference by voting to expand the scope of our boycott, divestment and sanctions work to encompass both cultural and academic boycotts of Israeli institutions and campaigns against Israeli corporations profiting from occupation and apartheid.

The following statement was sent to The Electronic Intifada in response to the 12 February 2009 press release issued by Students for Justice in Palestine at Hampshire College that claimed Hampshire College divested from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

As regular readers and supporters of The Electronic Intifada and in concert with much of the positions articulated by writers and contributers to EI, we have a question related to the 1 May Adalah-NY press release “Dubai begins to comply with calls to boycott settlement financier,” published in EI’s Activism news section and which seems to call for an absolute boycott of Israelis in Dubai.

Dear Ali Abunimah: I have long been and continue to be an ardent admirer of your work, particularly your forceful, unflinching regard for truth and justice, no matter who agrees or disagrees. Based on that virtue of yours, I trust you will take my concern over your characterization of the Serbia/Kosovo question with proportionate seriousness. You respond to the Haaretz columns about whether Kosovo is Palestine or Israel by engaging in their debate which is, literally, nonsense. That is, Kosovo is Kosovo and Serbia is Serbia.