Yaman Salahi

A conference last week, sponsored by Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, raises questions about the Initiative’s commitment to fighting all forms of bigotry. Instead of connecting the threads between different kinds of hatred, the conference provided a platform for anti-Arab and anti-Muslim speakers. For a center created to promote the critical study of one form of racism, it is unconscionable that it would indulge speakers who spread another. Yaman Salahi comments.

A coalition of nearly 20 Jewish groups, ranging from the right-wing David Project and the Jewish National Fund to the liberal J Street, is distributing a misleading statement condemning a Student Senate bill calling for divestment from the Israeli occupation at the University of California, Berkeley. They refer to the bill as “dishonest” and “misleading” and “based on contested allegations.” Yet it is their letter that is both dishonest and misleading. Sydney Levy and Yaman Salahi comment.

Soliciting the support of people in the US-based Palestine solidarity movement, Palestine Note recently launched a new website that aspires to become the online hub for all things Palestine. While the website announces its dedication to “news, stories and views about Palestine and Palestinians,” and its aspiration to become a “cultivator of community,” The Electronic Intifada contributor Yaman Salahi finds there is more behind the enterprise than meets the eye.

It may be too early to determine what truly lies behind the secret Syria-Israel “peace talks.” With Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert positioned to leave office under a cloud of scandal and after a rash of policy failures across the Middle East, the Bush Administration is now counting its last days in power. Thus, it appears that the Syrian government has chosen an opportune time to attempt to usher in a new positive period for itself. Whatever the intentions of the parties involved in these negotiations, at least one thing can be said that makes them irrelevant. Yaman Salahi comments for EI.

Ishmael Khaldi has been all the rage amongst Israel advocacy groups in the United States, especially in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. An Arab Bedouin who embraces his Israeli citizenship and has worked for the Israeli police as well as Israel’s occupying army, he was a dream come true for the Israeli consulate, which decided to hire him as Deputy Consul to San Francisco in December 2006. Yaman Salahi reports on Khaldi’s private talk to a group of University of California, Berkeley students organizing “Israeli Apartheid Week.”