From Ynet:. Kosher certification is from the headline and story: In recent weeks, a large group of Beit Illit [West Bank colony] residents has organized with the support of local rabbis in an effort to expel Arab workers from the town. "They are harmful to the daughters of Israel and create serious spiritual problems in […]
Not all that surprising. And he says that Gilo is in Israel. Now we know who’s drawing the borders, huh?
At the beginning of November Omar Barghouti and George Fletcher debated BDS at Columbia University. The event was moderated by Laura Flanders from GRITtv, who posted this great video of the event. Check it out.
Twice now I have knocked Ethan Bronner of the New York Times for using a horrifying piece of Israeli military jargon, "cutting the grass," to describe nighttime raids on Palestinians in the West Bank. Readers of this site know that I am slow to learn truths; but his casual use of such an ugly statement […]
The following piece concerning the recent censorship at Goucher College is by a sophomore at the school who does not wish to reveal her name because of family and professional concerns. I believe we can learn a lot from viewing the campus as a microcosm of Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians. At my college, Goucher, […]
From Didi Remez’s invaluable website Coteret: The Israeli franchisee of Columbia Sportswear, a large Portland-based manufacturer of outdoor clothing, with an impressive Corporate Social Responsibility portfolio and what appears to be a rather progressive domestic client base, rather the following ad in the November 27 edition of the Jerusalem Post’s Friday Magazine. Note the description at […]
For Thanksgiving my wife and I went to my parents’ place outside Philadelphia. My wife is also from Philly, and on Friday night we went to Chestnut Hill to a relative of hers for post-Thanksgiving dinner. As we were getting ready to go, my father joked that he wasn’t invited "due to anti-semitism." My wife never […]
I’m disturbed by the consensus-building the media are doing ahead of Obama’s Afghanistan speech. It obviously reflects a new conventional wisdom, and good liberals are engaged in the toil. We all watched the same process during the buildup to the Iraq war. And I imagine the same thing happened during Vietnam. A set of beliefs […]
(Captions to photos follow the post) If you have looked at a newspaper article about Haiti over the past 25 years, the chances are excellent that you have seen the work of the photographer Daniel Morel. He is himself Haitian; he has been a witness to much of the turbulence in his country; […]
Another sentence from the Tom Friedman column of November 29: "Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes." But "have no doubt" protests too much. Friedman pretends to know more than the evidence knows about why […]
Annie Robbins is the reader who tipped me off to the attempted boycott of the Coastal Post in Marin County because of its Israel commentary, years before the lobby started targeting the Berkeley Daily Planet. She lives out that way and offered this background to the story. These little papers are not for the most […]
Can you believe Tom Friedman in today’s NYT? "Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated […]
My wife told me about something odd that happened in yoga today. The teacher had them standing on one foot with bent knee and the other leg crooked behind them and their arms going in different directions, also bent, and announced, "This is swastika pose." My wife was uncomfortable about it, especially because she was […]
I’m informed that before the Daily Planet in Berkeley came under boycott pressure for publishing articles critical of Israel, a story picked up in the NYT, the Coastal Post in Bolinas suffered. A free news monthly in Marin County, the Coastal Post regularly criticizes Israel. Almost as much as we do! But the paper’s been […]
All this weekend I’ve thought about Ethan Bronner’s brutalized use of the term "cutting the grass" to describe Israeli raids and "actions" in the West Bank that have reduced violence, Bronner states. It seems to me an important moment: no one can say that this is not an ugly term, which hides a multitude of […]
Larry Derfner has a great column in the Jerusalem Post about the routine practice of young Orthodox Jews spitting on Christians in the Old City of Jerusalem. These Jews regard Christians as idolators and don’t think they should be there. It’s getting worse in recent years because of Jewish control of the Old City. My […]
While it is certain that US critics of the Iraq war welcomed the news that Britain would hold an inquiry into the UK’s decision to join the Bush administration in launching the war on Iraq, the news that two British historians who supported the Iraq war and written favorably of Zionism seems a guarantee that […]
This website wouldn’t be around if foolish statements like this in the New York Times today were not so prevalent. A Times editorial says that Obama backed down to Netanyahu. But when Mr. Netanyahu refused the total freeze, President Obama backed down… All this raises two questions: What has President Obama learned from the experience […]
I’m sorry to go after the Times so much, but I’m at my parents, and I love reading the actual newspaper. Today there’s a long piece in the Times about the Berkeley Daily Planet newspaper being accused of anti-Semitism because of its criticisms of Israel and Jews. The editor of the paper, Becky O’Malley, 69, a veteran journalist, […]
I’m at my parents and they get the Times every day. I got up today and read a news analysis by Ethan Bronner about the latest step in the peace process and it has upset me all day. Bronner presents as equivalent the Israelis’ failure to really halt the colonization process–Netanyahu is still committed to finishing 3000 housing units in […]
The breakdown of the two-state solution– evidenced by Netanyahu’s announcement that some greet as progress but that continues the solidification of Jerusalem as a Jewish settlement– is producing important discussions at the periphery, including efforts by leftish Jewish outlets to imagine a binational future in Israel/Palestine. Importantly, here is Peter Marmorek in Tikkun’s daily blog […]
The spirit of the Hampshire College conference on Boycott Divestment and Sanctions that I attended last weekend is captured by Adam Horowitz’s post of Sunday. There was a stirring sense of youthful leadership, and a sense that the left in America can no longer seek to divorce itself from the cause of Palestinian self-determination. No, […]
People keep sending me this British short about checkpoints and the Palestinian experience reimagined. When people keep sending you something, that means it’s important.
Interesting analysis of the latest statements by Daniel Levy: that a pugnacious Netanyahu has continued to overstep, and that the U.S. may be drawing the line at the ’67 borders: Netanyahu also repeated the totally (meaningless) commitment of no new settlements or land confiscations (meaningless because since 1993, the official policy is no new settlements […]
The highlight of the Hampshire conference on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was a speech by Ali Abunimah on Saturday night. An amazing performance, it begins with a great joke about Prilosec. Very Borscht Belt. Myron Cohen used to do heartburn humor, Abunimah tops him. We’re hoping to get a text transcript of this speech up […]