OAKLAND, California (IPS) - Over the past 20 years, the U.S. Christian right has evolved into one of the most powerful grassroots organising forces within the Republican Party, and a host of Christian Zionists have taken a well-earned seat at the foreign policy table. At the same time, their support for Israel is not only growing — it is also becoming an influential political factor. Several prominent Christian right and conservative Jewish leaders have teamed up to found organisations that have provided millions of dollars to Israeli charities, lobbied in support of policies advanced by right wing leaders in Israel, opposed President George W. Bush’s so-called “Road Map” to peace in the Middle East, and have helped defray the costs of the immigration of Russian Jews to Israel, among other activities. Read more about Holy Warriors Set Sights on Iran
Palestinians don’t want fresh elections in the occupied territories, but a free vote for a truly national ruling body. The elections that all Palestinians are demanding today (the millions under occupation and the millions in the refugee camps outside) are for the Palestine National Council, the parliament in exile, which is the national body that represents all Palestinians. The Palestinian people have indeed already spoken: for elections to the Palestine National Council, for lifting the economic boycott of a democratically elected authority; for liberty and to independence. Read more about Under an iron fist
“For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you,” Time’s Lev Grossman wrote in the December 25, 2006 issue. Time magazine realizes sites like The Electronic Intifada, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon are among a new generation of people changing the landscape of journalism and the open debate of ideas. Read more about Among TIME's Person of the Year
Yasmina Khadra is the pseudonym for Mohamed Moulessehoul, a former Algerian army officer who decided to write under his wife’s name to avoid army censorship. He was in Sydney last year for the Writers’ Festival, at which he spoke about his novel The Swallows of Kabul. It was set in Afghanistan, but he confessed that he had never been there before, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he described the land and the atmosphere of oppression. Reading The Attack, I wondered the same thing. While there is little description of surroundings, and Khadra is a very capable writer, I doubted he had ever been there. This doesn’t weaken the book so much as emphasise that his narration is an outsider’s voice. Read more about Book review: "The Attack: A Novel"
Tadamon! Montreal has launched two Weblogs focused on Israeli violations of the U.N. ceasefire and incidents involving cluster bombs, as a contribution to the growing international challenge to Israeli’s ability to defy international law with impunity. In the media-induced amnesia that defines North American political culture, these virtual memories will help track important historical facts, even as political leaders manipulate the public’s weak grasp of history in pursuit of their political agendas. Read more about Weblogs on Current Effects of Israeli Military on Lebanon
Palestinians of all factions have so far, to their credit, withstood Israeli oppression. They have not given in, nor have they accepted to negotiate Palestinian rights away (“sumood” in Arabic), including the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Their violent outbursts, even those against one another other, have managed to make clear to both the US and Israel that basic Palestinian rights and basic territorial needs will not be cavalierly waived away. The uprising is meant to stand up to the power of Israel to dictate to the Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children are dead or in prison for this cause. Read more about Palestinians standing tall
The international community inflicted new suffering on the Palestinians this week. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu commented on the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza just days before the international community sank to new depths in efforts that seemingly seek to ensure further wretchedness in Gaza. His economic concerns were expressed while noting that Israeli officials have foiled the entry of the fact-finding mission he was leading on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council (a story ignored by both The New York Times and the Washington Post) into the 8 November deaths of 19 Palestinian civilians in Beit Hanoun. Read more about Palestinian civil war or renewed national aspirations?
In analyzing Palestinian behavior, analysts often slip into what sociologists call “a person-centered” analysis, which attributes most behavior change to personal pathologies or virtues. But to understand why Palestinians behave as they do, what is necessary is a situation-centered approach, one that focuses on external factors. This is because the Palestinian situation is as close to a controlled social experiment as anyone is likely to find in the wild. When US social scientists conducted the by-now classic prison experiment to test the power of the social situation to determine behavior, values and attitudes, they were surprised by the results. Read more about Fundamental attribution error
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
