A majority of Israeli Jews - 63.7 percent - believes the Israeli government should encourage Palestinians to leave the country. These are the results of a poll recently released by the Haifa University. The poll comes at a time when Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister is working on his unilateral “disengagement plan” and while various governments are trying to influence the process. However, the longer it takes them to realize the facts on the ground and the sense of urgency, the more Palestinians will lose their faith in a two-state solution. The longer it takes to Israel to discover the mess it has worked itself in, the sooner the day on which a Palestinian majority will start calling for “one-man-one-vote”. Read more about Catch 22: The end of the two-state solution
Lately, Senator John Kerry has been reassuring voters that he will be as pro-Israel as President Bush. He has expressed his support for Sharon’s policy of unilateral disengagement, building of the so-called security barrier and the political isolation of Yasser Arafat. The candidate’s present position toward Middle East peace contradicts his past support of the Oslo peace process and provides a surprising contrast to his views when he was a young anti-war leader in the early ’70s. Ira Glunts looks at the record of Kerry’s position. Read more about Kerry Indicates He Would Continue Bush's Pro-Sharon Policy
House Resolution 3077 passed last fall. It included a provision to establish an advisory board to monitor campus international studies centers in order to ensure that they advance the national interest. While the law would apply to all federally funded institutes with an international focus, the target is clearly the nation’s 17 centers for Middle East studies. The driving force behind this provision is the same group of conservative ideologues who have long promoted the war on Iraq and who support the extreme right-wing politics of the Sharon government in Israel. Their aim is to defend the foreign policy of this administration by stifling critical and informed discussion on U.S. campuses. Professor Beshara Doumani reports. Read more about Be careful what you say on campus
An extensive discussion has already taken place in Israel regarding the cost-benefit ratio of Yassin’s assassination. But the question of justice has hardly been raised. International conventions are one of the means people have developed for self-preservation. Without them, there is a danger that the human race would annihilate itself - first the strong would wipe out the weak, and then each other. Palestinian farmers whose land is being robbed sit on the ground in front of the bulldozers, accompanied by the Israeli opponents of the wall - the veterans of the Mas’ha camp. What could be more nonviolent than this? But the Israeli army shoots at sitting demonstrators, like in Tiennamen Square. Israeli academic Tanya Reinhart comments. Read more about As in Tiennamen Square
In a 17 March 2004 article, “Politics by Other Means”, Benny Morris offered a “review” of Ilan Pappe’s new book, A History of Modern Palestine; one land, two peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2003), which tells the history of Palestine from the point of view of its workers, peasants, children, women and all the subaltern groups that make the society and not its political elite. Morris’ “review” consisted of a series of ad hominem attacks and outright factual distortions. Ilan Pappe sent the following reply to the New Republic, who refused to publish it. Read more about Response to Benny Morris' "Politics by other means" in the New Republic
On 30 March 1976, thousands of people belonging to the Palestinian minority in Israel gathered to protest Israeli government plans to expropriate 60,000 dunams of Arab-owned land in the Galilee. In the resulting confrontations with Israeli police, six Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded, and hundreds jailed. In the intervening years, those events have become consecrated in the Palestinian memory as Land Day. Read more about What is it that Palestinians commemorate on Land Day?
In his week-old book Against All Enemies that is currently climbing the best-sellers lists, Richard A. Clarke provocatively reveals the Bush administration’s obsession with invading Iraq following the September 11 attacks, and their failure to heed Clarke’s repeated warnings of an impending attack by al-Qaeda previous to that devastating day. However, Clarke fails to give proper weight to one of the most effectively popular platforms of al Qaeda’s terrorism: the U.S.’s funding of Israel while Israel continues its 37 year occupation of Palestinian land. Read more about Richard Clarke fails to address the U.S.-Israel alliance's relationship to terrorism in "Against All Enemies"
I’m sure newspaper editors everywhere fantasize the day when they don’t receive a single letter charging their publication with “bias.” This notion of bias is quite vague — it can mean that a publication presents a story as too sympathetic with one side of an issue (be it abortion, affirmative action, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) or that a news source doesn’t present one side of the story at all. And because the word bias is thrown around so often, like the word “terrorism,” the meaning of the term has been pretty much diluted due to over/misuse. Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, a new documentary from the Media Education Foundation, goes beyond charging the media with bias, and takes a close look at how news coverage is shaped. Read more about New documentary takes Israeli-Palestinian conflict coverage to task
Following expert-level talks held since the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and seven other civilians in Gaza yesterday, the Security Council is meeting in closed-door consultations today to discuss the situation in the Middle East. Earlier today, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, expressed her “deepest concerns over the use of brute force which will only lead to escalating violence.” This afternoon the Commission on Human Rights decided that a special sitting will take place to consider the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories. Read more about UN holds consultations following assassination of Sheikh Yassin
Hours after an Israeli attack helicopter launched three missiles at the paralyzed and wheelchairbound leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, killing him and seven other Palestinians, Britain’s Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that Israel “is not entitled to carry out unlawful killings.” Ariel Sharon, who ordered the extrajudicial execution said that he believed that Israel delivered “a very important message to all of those who are responsible with terrorist attacks.” That Israel has legitimate security concerns is not denied by many of the world’s leaders, but was Jack Straw right in calling the assassination “unlawful”? Read more about Assassination is indeed an unlawful act
