Palestinians are reeling from a century of systematic destruction of their way of life at every possible level. Instead of pouring gasoline on the fire, as the US-Israel-Fatah coalition has been doing, and instead of debating the price of petrol, as the international community has busied itself with throughout the entire history of this conflict, we need to recognize that events are fast reaching the straw breaking the camel’s back moment. Few seem to grasp that ‘business as usual’ in the Middle East can only be destined to lead to more suffering, death, and loss of hope, and that the time to act was yesterday. Read more about Palestine on the brink of civil war?
MONTREAL: Several Montreal-based organizations are speaking out in defence of the popular protests which have overtaken Lebanon’s capital for more than a week. The groups are concerned with a prevailing bias in Canadian media coverage of the events in Lebanon. This bias misrepresents the purposes of the protests and the dynamics that underlie them. It also fuels a dangerous sectarianism that threatens Lebanon. Read more about Montreal Organizations Call for Fair Coverage of Mass Protests In Lebanon
Scotland is a region which, perhaps more than anywhere else in “the West”, is profoundly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, under the charismatic leadership of Mick Napier, is perhaps the world’s most energetic and fearless such organisation. The Glasgow Media Group has done sterling work in unmasking the sins of commission and omission in British media coverage of the conflict. Prominent politicians like George Galloway or novelists like James Kelman have been unstinting in their support for the Palestinians (although one should also recall the Scottish origins of people like Gordon Brown and John Reid, not to mention Tony Blair!). Read more about Book Review: Incandescent Nation
The house of Munthir Mahmoud Hamad stood alone. Almost perfectly square in shape and made up of gray cement stone - it stood on a tiny hilltop among rubble - what was likely to have been a previously destroyed home. A makeshift water tank sat on the roof and wires led from the rooftop to a generator nearby. From his house you could see the Jewish settlement of Gilo. All settlements in Israel and the Occupied Territories are easy to point out - houses are obtrusively white in color, perfectly aligned next to one another, and built on a hilltop - like a perfect suburbia and another world. Read more about The Village of Al-Wallaja vs. the State of Israel
Israel’s most notorious anti-Arab politician and provocateur, Avigdor Lieberman, spoke at Brookings’ Saban Center Forum in Washington, DC this past weekend. It will probably come as a surprise to most Americans that such a man could rise to the position of Israel’s deputy prime minister and the minister for strategic affairs. He is Israel’s David Duke and yet he was feted in New York and Washington during his visit here. Initial reporting indicated that Henry Kissinger would chair Lieberman’s session. No surprise there. Both men are advocates of a “land swap” between Israelis and Palestinians, a euphemism for the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel. Kissinger’s office, however, claims to have sent its regrets to the exclusive gathering. Read more about MK Avigdor Lieberman's visit to the US
The problem facing the Palestinian leadership, as they strive to bring the millions living in the occupied territories some small relief from their collective suffering, reduces to a matter of a few words. Like a naughty child who has only to say “sorry” to be released from his room, the Hamas government need only say “We recognise Israel” and supposedly aid and international goodwill will wash over the West Bank and Gaza. That, at least, was the gist of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s recent speech during a visit to the Negev, when he suggested that his country’s hand was stretched out across the sands towards the starving masses of Gaza — if only Hamas would repent. “Recognise us and we are ready to talk about peace” was the implication. Read more about The trap of recognising Israel
Stand here on these streets and you will know this is a civil war.” So said CNN’s Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware to the network’s viewers on November 27. To illustrate his point, he read from a diary published on Electronic Iraq. Our award-winning websites, The Electronic Intifada, Electronic Iraq, and Electronic Lebanon bring the voices of those living through the most frightening and brutal events to a worldwide audience. We illuminate the cultural and social creativity and resistance through which people proclaim their dignity and pursue peace with justice. Read more about Where do you go when the news makes you want to throw up your hands?
“Stand here on these streets and you will know this is a civil war.” So said CNN’s Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware to the network’s viewers on November 27. To illustrate his point, he read from a diary published on Electronic Iraq. Our award-winning websites, The Electronic Intifada, Electronic Iraq, and Electronic Lebanon bring the voices of those living through the most frightening and brutal events to a worldwide audience. We illuminate the cultural and social creativity and resistance through which people proclaim their dignity and pursue peace with justice. Read more about Where do you go when the news makes you want to throw up your hands?
On Dec. 7, 2006, CNN journalist Glenn Beck savaged President Jimmy Carter’s important new book, Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, despite clearly not having given it a close read. In the course of his diatribe he referred to President Carter as a “fathead.” Time was that an employee would be fired on the spot for such a transgression. Had my mother or father run CNN and been listening I am quite certain that Beck would have been pulled from the set and a sincere apology offered to viewers within minutes. Clearly, no real standards exist at CNN. Read more about Vile Jibes At President Carter Ignored By Media
“The ideology that Avigdor Lieberman subscribes to that is an ethnic cleansing ideology. Someone who believes that the only way to solving the problems in Israel/Palestine is by expelling the Palestinians from Israel and any territory Israel covets. I think the problem with Avigdor Lieberman is not his own views but the fact that he reflects what most Israeli Jews think, and definitely what most of his colleagues in the Olmert government think but don’t dare to say, or don’t think is desirable to say for tactical reasons. But I do think that we should be worried about Lieberman, not as an extreme fascist but rather as a person who represents the mood of Israel in 2006.” Read more about A rare voice: An interview with author Ilan Pappe
