Great piece of investigative reporting by Nadia Hijab and Jesse Rosenfeld in the Nation showing that many new Palestinian roads in the West Bank paid for by our government (U.S. that is) and other international donors are only serving Israeli settlement expansion by consolidating an Israeli plan for separate roadways. Emphasis mine: As public works […]
A couple of news items relating to the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby J Street over the past few weeks have shown that it’s siding with the wrong people if it is honestly interested in a just and lasting solution to the situation in Israel/Palestine. On one hand, you have Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of […]
The other day Stephen Maher published a piece on Electronic Intifada saying that American thirst for hegemony in the region, and not the Israel lobby, is the prime motivator of US policy in Israel and Palestine. What follows is an excerpt of a private email exchange responding to Maher’s post, reprinted by permission of the […]
Writer Peter Beinart worked for AIPAC during the last presidential cycle, doing private events AIPAC refused to allow me to attend. Well he was on Hardball tonight taking the side of Mexican-Americans in Arizona. They are, he said, emblematic of "politically vulnerable minorities historically in our country who get roughed up by abusive government." Later […]
Someone passed me an email from the Brookings Institution in Doha, Qatar, hiring for two jobs: Salaam all, Brookings-Doha, where I’m deputy director, is hiring for two positions, Research Assistant and Communications and Program Assistant. The job descriptions are below. Please pass along to anyone you know who might be interested. The research job and […]
The pursuit of Joseph Massad at Columbia continues. Here’s an excerpt from an investigation by Jared Malsin at Electronic Intifada. [A] student group at Columbia called Campus Media Watch (CMW), backed by the pro-Israeli media monitor the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), recently violated university regulations while urging students to […]
Pictures are frrom Hamde Abu’s photostream. On facebook, Hamde reports that CRH refers to an Irish cement company. Four people were arrested today, including a female journalist and an international activist. Prior to the demonstration, two Israeli activists broached the Wall and attempted to post flyers calling for the arrest of the soldier who shot […]
I always miss the best lines. A friend, Ilene Cohen, spotted the best line in Henry Siegman’s takedown of Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s the last one, below: Forty plus years into this conflict and into the creeping Israeli annexation of territory in the 22 percent of Palestine left the […]
From Haaretz, on the Israel lobby, its sociological roots. Why doesn’t this stuff ever get exhumed here? Note the reference to money. The Washington Post has said 60 percent of Democratic giving. I guess that’s not a story; and Jews and money is an antisemitic, pogrom-producing canard. Until the midterm elections in November, U.S. President […]
My quotation of the day. Well, call it an excerpt. From Jacqueline Rose, The Question of Zion (2005): This book arises for me out of an anguished curiosity. Appalled by what the Israeli state perpetrates on a daily basis in the name of the Jewish people, committed to Palestinian self-determination, or to full political and […]
Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new order allows enforcement officials to stop anyone who “looks illegal” (read: has brown skin) and demand that they produce documents proving their right to be in a place they call home. Failure to produce such documents can lead to fines, jail time, or deportation. Widely seen as […]
John Mearsheimer gave a splendid lecture today at the Palestine Center in D.C. titled "The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners" in which he stated that the two-state-solution is over ("most Israelis are opposed to making the sacrifices that would be necessary to create a viable Palestinian state, and there is little […]
Were you scared by the recent poll finding that the majority of Israeli Jews have profoundly anti-democratic attitudes and support restricting human rights groups, punishing Israeli citizens who call for boycotting the country, and punishing journalists who expose news that expose immoral actions by the military? Well then get all the way underneath your covers. […]
Henry Siegman, at Foreign Policy, imagines the inevitable result of the current policies in Israel that Obama has done little to buck– apartheid– and wonders what a president would do then: Most of the political parties that comprise Netanyahu’s government, including Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu’s Foreign Minister, and Shas, have left no […]
The patent absurdity of much of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict begs for a satirical treatment. On Wednesday night at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, Professor Joseph Massad answered the call with an incisive and funny lecture on "the language of Zionism." No one will be be surprised by the overarching theme of his talk […]
Haaretz publishes Berkeley student Matthew Taylor on the late divestment effort at the school: [I]f history is any guide, Berkeley’s divestment measure could have a positive impact. In the 1980s, Berkeley’s student government was one of the first at any U.S. institution of higher learning to vote to recommend divestment from South Africa’s apartheid regime. […]
The New York Times TV Watch covers Oprah’s interview with John Edwards’s former mistress, Rielle Hunter, and says that Hunter is a tougher interview than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and runs with the point: Ms. Hunter and the Iranian president have a disconcerting way of saying preposterous things in a calm, complacent tone; both are serenely impervious […]
Amazing. My heart is leaping. Once again, the Israeli press and the Israeli discourse is way ahead of the American one, where the belief in a thriving "Jewish democracy" stops all free thinking. Here is the speaker of the Knesset, Reuven Rivlin, saying that Palestinians are a part of Israel, we ate the West Bank […]
It’s evident from the thrilling twitter feed in Adam’s post below, but that’s the news. The Berkeley student senate voted 13-5 to override the student government president’s veto, at 4 a.m. California time. They needed 14 votes. Note that the measure urged the university to divest from two companies doing business in the Occupied Territories.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb–"one of the first eight women to serve as rabbi"–will be speaking in Brooklyn tonight on Why divestment? 7 o’clock. Here’s Brooklyn for Peace announcement. Co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Say No!
Ali Abunimah, writing from South Africa, publishes a piece in The Hill criticizing the Zbig Brzezinski-Stephen Solarz plan for a two-state-solution: Even more devastating to Palestinian rights, Brzezinski and Solarz float "a solution to the refugee problem involving compensation and resettlement in the Palestinian state but not in Israel." This they call "a bitter pill" […]
Meron Benvenisti in the New York Times– oh wait, sorry, in the Guardian. The Times won’t cover this! Note that on the same day as this sympathetic coverage of Benvenisti’s ideas, Steve Walt challenges American leadership: if the peace process is dead, as it seems to be, what have liberal policymakers come up with to […]
Important piece by Noam Chomsky, from a forthcoming book, that mourns the late great peace process for producing a fair deal that the US and Israel rejected and that sees a material motive in the continued control of Gaza. At the bottom of the excerpt, I’ve included Chomsky’s arrow at Obama. Well-feathered. It cannot be […]
of Arizona, that is, for its immigration law. Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney on the ethics of boycott: The question isn’t whether to start an economic boycott to pressure Arizona to repeal its new immigration law. For me, that’s a given. The question is which products and services to blacklist to get results fastest, while […]
Simon Schama in the Financial Times disputes Shlomo Sand re Jewish identity and says we’re connected to Palestine. Typical of Sand’s reviewers, Schama accuses him of having a political value system (yes, he’s an anti-nationalist) but fails to interrogate his own, more-traditional political attachment: the legitimacy of Israel both within and without the country depends […]