From CodePink’s press release on a street theater action planned for the front of the White House tomorrow: A Peace Charade – A Theatre Parody of the Peace Talks:
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Monthly Archives: August 2010
Meshal: Most Palestinians, from elites to regular people, reject the talks
From Huffpo, a piece saying that the peace process under Obama is risking greater violence. Interview by Shamine Narwani of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus: KM: These negotiations are taking place for American and Israeli considerations, calculations and interests only. There are no interests at all for us as Palestinians or Arabs. That’s why […]
Smear campaign targets pro-Palestinian Brooklyn College professor; alum suspends ‘significant bequest’
A campaign reminiscent of past academic battles over Israel is afoot, this time targeting Brooklyn College professor Moustafa Bayoumi, who edited the newly released book titled Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How it Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict. Critics of Bayoumi say it is inappropriate […]
Unchallenged violence and intimidation, coming soon to a mosque near you
Reading accounts of the far-right English Defense League’s (EDL) recent anti-Muslim rally in Bradford, England is disturbing. EDL members, shouting slogans that state that Allah is a “pedophile” and that they “love the floods” currently devastating Pakistan, clashed with riot police during a rally held last Saturday in a city with a significant Muslim presence. […]
Signed sealed delivered I’m yours
What’s she running for? Sarah Palin celebrated Shabbat in Pennsylvania last Friday night with many Jews, before her appearance at that Glenn Beck rally. From Benyamin Korn of Jews for Sarah: my organization, Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, set up a Shabbaton — a Sabbath gathering for meals, songs, prayers, and conversation — with the […]
Some diasporas from persecution have honor
Janet Maslin in the Times on Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, The Warmth of Other Suns, which documents the ways that blacks sought to flee the Jim Crow south. She has documented the sweeping 55-year-long migration of black Americans across their own country…. Ms. Wilkerson makes a case that people who left the South only to […]
‘How to kill goyim and influence people’
Weiss: Earlier today I complained that Americans are not getting the news about what Israel is becoming. My endless complaint. Here is someone who can cut the corridor, as they say: Max Blumenthal, whose message from Jerusalem a year ago was killed and killed and killed but still it lived, and who is now exploring […]
Now Israeli academics sign on to occupation-boycott, citing disaster for Jewish state
Another shoe drops on boycott. Here are Israeli academics, many of them obviously Zionist, saying that they will not go into the territories. Their petition helps to dispel the big clouds surrounding academic boycott here in the U.S. Yes these Israelis are leaders; because as Omar Barghouthi has said, If you will boycott just an […]
Advocates for 3 U.S. hikers captured by Iran spotlight their leftwing activism
Here is a great piece by Stephen Zunes on Huffpo about the three American hikers captured by Iran a year ago, evidently when they were on Iraqi soil, visiting a famous water fall. Zunes situates the travelers’ experience in leftwing activism. They had worked in a Palestinian refugee camp. They had visited their hospitalized friend […]
3-year-old in Hebron has cerebral atrophy, but Israel won’t let her mother in Gaza come back to her
and other news from Today in Palestine:
CAMERA doth protest too much re its role in Boston anti-mosque campaign
Yesterday CAMERA’s Dexter van Zile responded to a post by Jeff Klein critiquing the Israel lobby organization. Klein now responds: CAMERA apparently didn’t like being mentioned in my piece on the anti-Mosque campaign in Boston. However, their complaint is a good example of their regular method of obfuscation and misdirection. CAMERA responds to something I […]
PLO urges Yale president to speak out on ‘anti-Arab hate-mongering’ conference
Last week we reported on a disgraceful 3-day conference at Yale that described criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. Today Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO Representative to the United States, sent a letter to Yale President Richard C. Levin, objecting to the conference. It follows: August 30, 2010 Dear President Levin, I write to express my […]
Rocket Redux, the Israeli fiction
A few months ago, I authored a post on the fiction that when Israel withdrew from two decades of military occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah responded with thousands of rockets rained down on Israeli communities. At the time, I cited false statements to that effect made by Michael Oren in a NY Times […]
Writers Oz, Yehoshua, Grossman back artists’ boycott of Ariel settlement
Where are the liberal American Zionists on this one? What will J Street do? Important news: Ynet learned on Monday that prominent Israeli authors A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, David Grossman and Sami Michael are supporting a long line of actors, playwrights and artists who announced they would refuse to perform in the new culture […]
Stuck inside of Cairo with the Gaza blues again
Susan Johnson is a Doylestown, Pa., grandmother with two volunteer gigs in Gaza waiting for her. She’s written about her big trip earlier this summer. And here I sit in Cairo, exhausted and disappointed. I have been denied entrance to Gaza twice! I’m amazed I’m not angry and ready to give up, even though I’m […]
40 percent of Palestinian prisoners from Jenin are denied family visits–
and other news from Today in Palestine:
NYT Op-Ed offers tiresome dichotomy of good Zionists vs bad religious settlers
Gadi Taub’s NYT oped on the coming negotiations is so problematic, ahistorical, Israeli-centric, and rife with elisions, it reads like… well… a lot of other stuff cluttering the pages and electrons of said publication. It leads off with the rhetorical question, "Will Israel remain a Zionist state?" – as if this is the most important […]
What Lebanon can teach the U.S. about religious tolerance
In Beirut, a recent event, under-reported in the United States, provides a dramatic contrast with the New York controversy over Park51, an Islamic cultural center planned for lower Manhattan. According to Ha’aretz, Lebanon’s largest Jewish synagogue has been saved from the wrecking ball and beautifully restored to its past glory. The Magen Avraham synagogue had […]
Back on TV due to popular demand…. ‘The Peace Industry’
A Happy Moment on the Set with Ban Ki-moon and Tony Blair The Nobel Prize award winning show, "The Peace Industry" comes back for its 19th season on September 2nd, after an almost 2 year hiatus. It is one of the longest running and most popular shows in TV history. The pilot episode of the series premiered way […]
More on the ‘Firedoglake’ controversy
A few more thoughts on the Firedoglake controversy I initiated. First the mea culpas. My post on Saturday lacked context. I should have mentioned Siun’s fine work on Israel/Palestine, including the Al-Arakib demolition. I should have mentioned Spencer Ackerman’s tough columns on Israel’s behavior. Both these writers have prominence on FDL. And as Philip Munger […]
Handicapping Islamophobia
All of sudden two of the usually completely distinct spheres of my life are on the same highway, merging into the same lane. Two days ago my new golf friend Stephanie Wei posted this on her golf blog, calling out a woman golf luminary for posting Islamophobic comments on her facebook page. As I know […]
Bloomberg went to Israel once in his first 60 years. And then he ran for office….
Here’s an excellent report in the WSJ by Michael Howard Saul on Mike Bloomberg’s Jewish identity that makes it clear that he is an integrationist Jew, like myself. Jewishness is important to him but he let much of it "dribble away" when he came to the big city, as Kafka said of his father’s religiosity, […]
A response from CAMERA
Dexter Van Zile, a staff person with CAMERA, sent the following letter after Jeff Klein’s August 23 post Pro-Israel extremists have campaigned against an Islamic cultural center before. We have invited Klein to post a response. Contrary to Jeff Klein’s reporting, CAMERA had no involvement with any mosque-related protests. Like many other organizations and individuals, […]
Martin Indyk on the peace process: hoping against hope
A commenter on my blog asked me what I thought of Martin Indyk’s recent NY Times op-ed, in which he expresses a powerful optimism about the upcoming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington. My answer? Indyk’s article represents a picture-perfect example of the inherent inequity of the peace process as it is currently defined. In his […]
Siun and Philip Munger say FDL has offered a platform for criticism of Israel
My post yesterday on Firedoglake suppressing criticism of Israel has hit a nerve; even neocon Eli Lake has commented on it. I’m going to respond later but in the meantime, I wanted to post two sharply-critical comments that we’ve received from two longtime contributors to FDL, the blogger Siun and the composer Philip Munger. Their […]