The message delivered to Condoleezza Rice this week by Israeli officials is that the humanitarian and economic disaster befalling Gaza has a single, reversible cause: the capture by Palestinian fighters of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in late June from a perimeter artillery position that had been shelling Gaza. When Shalit is returned, negotiations can start, or so Rice was told by Israel’s defence minister, Amir Peretz. If Peretz and others are to be believed, the gunmen could have done themselves and the 1.4 million people of Gaza a favour and simply executed Shalit weeks ago. Read more about The struggle for Palestine's soul
For over a decade now, since the Oslo Agreement signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, the Palestinians, along with much of the world, have been laboring under a couple of misapprehensions. One is that, with Oslo, Israel had at long last recognized their aspirations, even if only partially. The other is that their leaders, as embodied by the presidency and the government that arose, had the wherewithal to move them towards a full-fledged Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in the face of Israel’s grand plans and intentions in the region. It’s the classic syndrome of desperate people believing what they want to believe. Read more about Paralysis of the Palestinian 'Authority': What's to be done?
Despite an almost obvious and persistent need to promote creativity, imagination and freedom of expression as crucial ingredients in cultural development, dance as a form of spiritual and cultural education as well as a useful medium in education has been virtually non-existent in the formal education system in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Music, drama and plastic arts may have fared relatively better, but not by much. It is high time to challenge this deficiency head-on, both from a cultural and a political perspective, particularly since its causes are self-inflicted, to a large extent. Read more about Palestinian Dance Education under Occupation: Need or Frill?
A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap. Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the Israeli air force of Gaza’s power plant in late June. Jonathan Cook comments. Read more about Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine
Watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach’s new feature film set mainly during the Irish Civil War in the early 1920’s, it is impossible not to make comparisons with contemporary events. Indeed Loach, whose film won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, has been quite explicit about his own view that the film is not merely an examination of the past, but a comment on the times we live in. Loach also recently announced his support for the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and others to boycott state sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and acknowledged that “Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after forty years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians.” Read more about Echoes of Ireland in Palestine: a review of Ken Loach's new film
Sydney-based journalist and author Antony Loewenstein is used to controversy. On many occasions he has told of how his critical assessment of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a Jew has left him a pariah in family and social circles. This is unlikely to change anytime soon given that he spent the last couple of years penning the newly released My Israel Question, a self-critical consideration of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a particularly Australian context. Loewenstein comes from “a liberal Jewish family” with parents he describes as once having been “unthinking Zionists”, who he later realised were simply uninformed because of their reliance on Jewish and mainstream press for their understanding of the conflict. Read more about Australian journalist's new book takes heat for posing "My Israel Question"
The Quartet (along with the international community generally) has failed to enable the Palestinian president to act credibly towards the goal of making “progress towards a two-state solution through dialogue and parallel implementation of obligations.”Anyone following the news from the occupied Palestinian territory would think that it is the Hamas-led government that is preventing the Palestinian president from achieving “credible” progress towards a two-state solution. In the present charged political divisions among Palestinians, even a large percentage of the economically deprived and hounded population is being persuaded to clutch at this straw. Read more about Seeing the forest for the trees
The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002. At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a “new anti-Semitism”, a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US. Read more about How Israel's 'new anti-Semitism' is encouraging nuclear Holocaust
Guess whose words these are: “Starting this war was a scandal…It was possible to solve the problem of the missiles in South Lebanon by diplomatic means…The offensive of the last two days of the war, in which 33 soldiers were killed after the cease-fire resolution had already been accepted, was a spin of the Prime Minister The Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and the Chief-of-Staff must resign…” Right, it was Gush Shalom. But that’s not new. What is new is that yesterday, the former Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, repeated these statements, almost word for word. Read more about Israeli government fears peace initiatives
Getting the word out has always been difficult for Palestinians. The major reason for this is that Israel often succeeds in framing the issues from its point of view, and the mainstream media in the West goes along with it. A favorite gambit that Israel uses to cloak its outrageous policies towards the Palestinian population is to cry “security”, which then pretty much allows it to do anything. When “security” is too conspicuously untrue, it justifies itself by referring to its own policy. This can be questioned only through its own legal system, which is not exactly designed to safeguard Palestinian rights. It sets up the equation of “lawful” Israelis and “unlawful” or criminal Palestinians. Read more about Getting the word out on NPR
