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Canada's neoconservative turn


Conservatives have launched a more extreme phase of Israel advocacy. Groups in any way associated with the Palestinian cause have been openly attacked and Ottawa has taken a more belligerent tone towards Iran. In the beginning of February, Ottawa delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money has been reallocated to Palestinian Authority judicial and security reforms in the West Bank. At the same time, Canada doubled the number of troops involved in US Lt. General Keith Dayton’s mission to train a Palestinian force to strengthen Fatah against Hamas and to serve as an arm of Israel’s occupation. Yves Engler comments. 

"The ground is shifting": An interview with comedian Ivor Dembina


Ivor Dembina’s one-man show This is Not a Subject for Comedy has been running, growing and developing for more than five year, dealing with Dembina’s upbringing in a 1960s “mainstream Jewish household” broadly supporting the Zionist cause. Set to perform before the British House of Commons, Dembina was recently interviewed by The Electronic Intifada contributor Sarah Irving. 

The Mossad hit and Israel's path of self-destruction


The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas official in Dubai, almost certainly by a death squad dispatched by Israel’s Mossad, is by no means the first such aggression against the sovereignty of another state. While Israel has literally gotten away with murder thousands of times, was this one killing too far? Hasan Abu Nimah comments. 

Egyptian opposition grows against government's Gaza barrier


CAIRO (IPS) - Activists and opposition groups are stepping up pressure on the Egyptian government to stop constructing a barrier along the border with the Gaza Strip. Officials say the barrier will prevent cross-border smuggling, but critics say it will seal the fate of the people on the Gaza Strip. On 13 February, hundreds of activists from across the political spectrum convened in downtown Cairo to protest construction of the barrier. 

Harvard center condemns, then defends, fellow's pro-genocide statements


Leaders of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University have condemned and then defended statements by Martin Kramer, one of the center’s fellows, which endorsed a cut off of UN food and other humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugee children besieged in the Gaza Strip as a means to reduce the Palestinian birthrate and thus the Palestinian population. 

Four decades of occupation in Hebron


I have been to Hebron three times, but each visit was like entering a different city. In May of 1967, the entire West Bank including Hebron was under Jordanian rule. On the occasion of the anniversary of the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, Iris Keltz recalls her three visits to Hebron since the days before Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967. 

Up against the wall: challenging Israel's impunity


Neither foreign governments nor the UN have joined the Palestinian communities who have been destroyed by Israel’s wall in their efforts to dismantle it. Still, Palestinian villages show incredible perseverance and creativity in protesting the theft of their land and tearing down pieces of the cement blocks or iron fencing. They do so in the face of overwhelming repression. Jamal Juma’ comments for The Electronic Intifada. 

Book review: Joe Sacco draws life into history's "footnotes"


In his new book-length work of serial art journalism, Footnotes in Gaza, Joe Sacco seeks out the recollections of the remaining Palestinian witnesses and survivors of the November 1956 massacres at the Gaza refugee camps of Rafah and Khan Younis. The result is a powerful oral history — his research as detailed and meticulous as his crosshatched drawings, its 386 pages of sequential comic strip-style narration emotionally devastating. Maureen Clare Murphy reviews for The Electronic Intifada.