Last night, 22 activists were arrested at Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s speech to the World Affairs Council at the Westin St. Francis Hotel at Union Square in downtown San Francisco. More than 250 individuals were protesting outside the hotel and Nora Barrows-Friedman, senior producer of Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio, was on the scene, interviewing those who had gathered to voice their outrage at Olmert’s presence. Read more about Audio: Interviews with Olmert protesters in San Francisco
If former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had merely been a diplomat or an academic offering a controversial viewpoint, then interrupting his 15 October speech at University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall would certainly have been an attempt to stifle debate. But confronting a political leader suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity cannot be viewed the same way. Ali Abunimah comments for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Why I disrupted Olmert
AWARTA, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Away from the media spotlight that focuses on the widening chasm between Israelis and Palestinians, a group of Israeli humanists is quietly working to break down barriers with their Palestinian neighbors. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Israel’s Rabbis for Human Rights, has been used as a human shield, arrested, and beaten up several times by Israeli security forces while defending Palestinians. Read more about Israeli Jews take on settlers
Few recent books have aroused more interest and been more frequently reviewed in the US and Europe prior to the appearance of an English version as historian Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People. Raymond Deane reviews for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Book review: Shlomo Sand's "The Invention of the Jewish People"
WASHINGTON (IPS) - StandWithUs — an “organization that ensures that Israel’s side of the story is told” — has become increasingly aggressive in challenging the “pro-Israel” credentials of moderate Jewish-American groups, going so far as to suggest that receiving money from Arab donors and supporters of Human Rights Watch undermines a group’s commitment to Israel and peace. Read more about StandWithUs money trail reveals neocon funders
This weekend, J Street, a new Jewish “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” Washington-based public action committee is holding its first national conference. The two of us, along with another artist, were scheduled to perform and read poems at several sessions during the conference. Instead, we have been censored and pushed out of that very debate. Kevin Coval and Josh Healey comment for The Electronic Intifada. Read more about Time for a democratic discourse
Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs. Jonathan Cook reports. Read more about Israeli intelligence pose as Arabs to spy on citizens
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. Read more about Don't conflate liberalism with leftism
It may be too early to hope that the Goldstone report will result directly in Israeli leaders facing trial in international courts; there are still too many opportunities for Israel and its backers to block such action. But Goldstone marks another major breach in the wall of Israeli impunity that is slowly but surely crumbling. Hasan Abu Nimah comments. Read more about Another breach in Israel's wall of impunity
For his continued wars against Pakistanis, Afghans, and Iraqis, his support for the overthrow of democracy in Honduras, his abetting dictatorships across the Arab and Muslim worlds (which his government finances, arms and trains in torture methods), his planning for a possible invasion of Iran, and his enthusiastic support for the racist Israeli settler colony (and its colonial wars and occupations against Palestinians), US President Barack Obama received the Nobel “Peace” Prize. Joseph Massad comments. Read more about Obama's peace
