I’m always fascinated with the birth of a meme. A new one recently surfaced amid the vitriolic rhetoric that gets dished out by the neoconservative punditry of the Internet: “Hezbollywood.” Google it and be in awe of its (as of this writing) 131,000 results. I’m almost surprised that Google even bothers to ask, “Did you mean: Hollywood?” Of course not. Right now, right-wing word herders are singing “Hooray For Hezbollywood!” And why not? In one simple word, they can summarize an entire paranoia. Read more about The creation of "Hezbollywood"
AIRPORT, AMSTERDAM — Today, fifty protesters staged a “die-in” at Schiphol Plaza, the main entrance of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to demand an end to the transit of US arms through the Netherlands to Israel. There have been 76 cases of arms transit via the Netherlands to Israel in 2005 and 23 cases in the period between June and July 2006. The “die-in” symbolized the more than 1,000 casualties of the Israeli war on Lebanon and more than 150 casualties of the Israeli war on Gaza. Read more about Photostory: Protesters challenge US-Israel weapons flights through the Netherlands
As the conflict bore itself out feelings on the streets of the West escalated in response. Anger, frustration and the belief that something must change has brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of Europe. No where has this been more obvious then in Ireland where Trade Unions, NGOs, Solidarity Campaigns and Anti-War groups have been bringing people onto the streets in their thousands. All across Ireland people are out on the streets, cultural institutions are refusing to take sponsorship from the hafrada (apartheid) state and senior members of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) are calling for sanctions against Israel. The Irish Intifada has finally arrived. Read more about Photostory: The Irish Intifada - is Israel's latest war the tipping point?
I grew up Jewish in Beirut. Although I left nearly 40 years ago, my memories of Lebanon — vibrant and multicultural — have stayed with me. And so, my wife and I had started talking about taking a trip there. I would show her the neighborhood where I grew up, the beaches where I swam in the warm Mediterranean waters and the small mountain hotel we loved to stay at in the summer. I would also show her my school, where Jewish, Christian and Muslim children learned and grew together. After the past few weeks, we may never be able to take this trip. Read more about It's time for Jewish dissenters to challenge Israeli policies
On August 11th, 2006, at a little past 1 PM, around 400 people were marching in a peaceful protest towards the wall in Bil’in, the outskirts of Ramallah. International Solidarity Movement activists, Palestinians, and Israeli Anarchist Activists all join together in this weekly march to the wall in Bil’in. Soldiers surprised us by meeting us half way, they were aggressively stationed inside the village, outside Palestinian homes. Read more about Israeli activist wounded at Wall protest
On 7 July 2006, Gulf News reported a claim by Dr. Al Saqqa, Head of the Emergency Unit of El Shifa Hospital, Gaza that the Israeli Occupation Force was using a new ‘chemical’ weapon. He has worked at El Shifa for ten years. He had noted that two hundred and more casualties of Operation Summer Rain (sic) had unusual wounds. These numbers included about fifty children. Later evidence from Dr. Al Saqqa described surface wounds as having the general appearance of those due to ‘shrapnel’ - fragments from shell, missile or bomb casings - but no fragments were to be seen on x-ray. Read more about Are New Weapons Being Used in Gaza and Lebanon?
Now, with the Israel-Hizbollah war a stalemate at best and the Israeli deterrence at a historic nadir, Olmert and Bush know that the Israeli public has lost its nerve and its stomach for a unilateral withdrawal from one inch of the West Bank. Twenty years elapsed between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the first intifada. Eight years elapsed between the start of the Oslo process and the second intifada. The Gaza withdrawal has only exacerbated the Palestinians’ suffering, and without a diplomatic track to speak of, a third intifada is imminent, one that likely will not be constrained by the sham of Palestinian self-governance. Read more about Deepening the fault lines
As Lebanon and Gaza burn and the laws of war are violated with impunity, the terrible erosion of international law represents a critical challenge for the international community. Reflecting on the South African apartheid regime’s efforts to gain supremacy in South Africa and the Southern African region, Jeff Handmaker and Bangani Ngeleza argue it is imperative that we continually raise our voices against Israel’s brazen impunity until a real and lasting ceasefire is in place, war criminals are brought to justice and the Israeli regime is held accountable for decades of repression and regional destabilisation. In doing so, we will surely find a true humanity. Read more about In search of a true humanity
Several Arab officials intimated after the unanimous UN Security Council vote for resolution 1701, intended to stop Israel’s unjust war on Lebanon, that it was time to build on this rare Arab “diplomatic triumph” by reopening the file of the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the question of Palestine. This logic is faulty and imprudent, despite all its luring appearance. Not every old man with a white beard is wise, after all. Most Arabs, Palestinians included, have vied for years to snatch the Palestine question away from U.S.-Israeli clenching claws and return it to where it formally started: the United Nations. Read more about Time to Reopen the Palestine File at the UN? Not Yet!
It occurred to me as I watched the story unfolding on my TV, of a suspected plot by a group of at least 20 British Muslims to blow up planes between the UK and America, that the course of my life and that of the alleged “terrorists” may have run in parallel in more ways than one. Like a number of them, I am originally from High Wycombe, one of the non-descript commuter towns that ring London. As the TV showed aerial shots wheeling above the tiled roof of a semi-detached house there, I briefly thought I was looking at my mother’s home. But, doubtless, my and their lives have diverged in numerous ways. So, even though we may have been neighbours of a sort in High Wycombe, my life and theirs probably had few points of contact. Read more about How I found myself standing with the Islamic fascists
