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The Manichean Middle East of Mark MacKinnon

Stefan Christoff and Dru Oja Jay 2 January 2007


When newspapers send correspondents afield to report on world events, the position is fraught with opportunity and responsibility. Opportunity to share meaningful insight into current events, and responsibility to accurately report on them. In many cases, unfortunately, other motivations prevail. For the owners and editors of the few papers that shell out for foreign correspondents, the opportunity to shape public opinion seems too tempting to pass up, even if it comes at the expense of insight and accuracy. The Globe and Mail’s Middle East correspondent Mark MacKinnon has been publishing dispatches on the ongoing political crisis in Lebanon regularly from Beirut. 

With the New Year, will Ha'aretz's op-ed page be any different?

Zachary Wales 3 January 2007


On New Year’s Day, notions of resolve, reform, or reflection come as no surprise on newspaper editorial pages. Similarly unsurprising are the op-eders that carry on with business as usual. Things were no different on Ha’aretz’s opinion page, which kept an even keel of New Yearisms. Rather untypical, however, was the limited role that honesty played in the mix. The most curious example was the lead editorial, — often viewed as any paper’s mouthpiece — entitled, “Our obligation to refugees, as refugees.” 

Truth at last, while breaking a U.S. taboo of criticizing Israel

George Bisharat 2 January 2007


Americans owe a debt to former President Jimmy Carter for speaking long hidden but vital truths. His book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid breaks the taboo barring criticism in the United States of Israel’s discriminatory treatment of Palestinians. Our government’s tacit acceptance of Israel’s unfair policies causes global hostility against us. Israel’s friends have attacked Carter, a Nobel laureate who has worked tirelessly for Middle East peace, even raising the specter of anti-Semitism. 

The Christmas Gate

Toine van Teeffelen Bethlehem, Palestine 2 January 2007


Looking back at Christmas in Bethlehem, I found there were too many absurdities to compensate for the familiar gay scenes of drum bands and parents with kids on their shoulders characteristic for the entry of the Patriarch and next day’s festivities around Nativity Square. Imagine, the Patriarch entering Bethlehem through the old Jerusalem-Hebron road, passing through a city quarter deadened by so many circling Walls that a talented photographer can make a surrealistic exhibition out of it. There is a legal term for what is happening to Bethlehem and several other Palestinian cities: urbicide, the killing of a city. 

Illegal Settlements and Constructive Naturalization

Louis Frankenthaler 2 January 2007


Approaching forty years, the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territory has become an indelible stain, creating conditions for violence and significantly reducing the credibility of Israeli assertions of democracy. Recently, former United States President Jimmy Carter was has been widely chastised by so-called “friends of Israel” for associating the word apartheid with Israel’s Occupation regime in the Palestinian Territory (the West Bank and Gaza). The underlying and long term effects…of the Occupation have been to separate Palestinians from their homeland and to divide them internally while disinvesting them of any and all political and cultural rights. 

Agence France-Presse photographer kidnapped in Gaza City

2 January 2007


Every effort must be made to obtain the rapid release of Agence France-Presse photographer Jaime Razuri, a Peruvian national, who was kidnapped in Gaza City on 1 January 2007, RSF said, condemning a lack of political will on the part of the Palestinian authorities to put an end once and for all to the wave of criminal kidnappings of journalists in the Gaza Strip. “We realise that the chaotic situation prevailing in the Gaza Strip hampers law enforcement, but it is unacceptable that the government and the president do not take action to stop these kidnappings and punish those responsible, especially as the authorities are aware of their identities in most cases,” the press freedom organisation said. 

Fear Is a Powerful Stimulant (Part 3)

Bill Dienst Gaza, Palestine 31 December 2006


Our mobile health van drives just north of Beit Lahiya where we see a large crowd of people fleeing from the attack. We drive further north toward the village of Um Nasser, located right on the border with Israel, and right underneath the attack helicopters which are hovering about 1000 meters above us. We arrive at the village clinic. Because of the attack helicopters, patients are not showing up to be seen today. I am not as scared as I was on the first night at Hotel Al Deira, though we are in a more dangerous spot. I am strangely getting used to this. 

TV reporter, cameraman and driver held in connection with Hariri murder coverage

28 December 2006


Reporters Without Borders has condemned the continuing detention of New TV reporter Firas Hatoum, cameraman Abdel-Azim Khayat and driver Mohammed Barbar, who were arrested on 19 December 2006 for entering the apartment of a key prosecution witness in the February 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. New TV is a satellite news station based in Beirut. “These three New TV employees pose absolutely no threat and should not have to remain in prison while awaiting the trial,” the press freedom organisation said. 

Lebanon Destroyed, Destabilised, Desperate for Change

Dahr Jamail 31 December 2006


The 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah has left Lebanon heavily damaged and politically destabilised, with hopes for a better future only dimming as the New Year approaches. Before Jul. 12 this year when the war broke out, many people in this nation of four million situated north of Israel believed they were finally shaking away the last of the dust from the 15-year civil war 1975-90 which decimated the country. That civil war was fought between extreme Muslim and Christian groups. Lebanon is now believed to be about 60 percent Muslim. 

EI 2006: Year in Review

30 December 2006


It was the year of the first Palestinian parliamentary elections in a decade, humanitarian crisis, on top of an aid boycott, large scale military attacks on civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon and, of course, the occupation. A year of often forgotten but unforgiving places like Beit Hanoun, Nablus, Rafah, Jenin and Qana, and those buzzowords “retaliation”, “ceasefire”, and “recognition”. Above all, it was three-hundred-and-sixty-five days on which every one of us will look back in our own special way. Remembering the highlights and low points of our own personal 2006, while perhaps pondering for a few minutes at least to consider the troubled world and times we live in.