Israel / Palestine

Max Blumenthal

January 13, 2014
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One of the clearest and bravest voices on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today is that of Max Blumenthal. Whereas many other commentators on this never-ending conflict approach the topic from a moral, political, or historical point of view, Blumenthal’s refreshing perspective is that of a journalist, on assignment, providing an up-close-and-personal account of daily life in Israel and the occupied territories. And unlike other reportage on Israel, Blumenthal speaks frankly without any filters or fears of offending. His most recent book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel has attracted a good deal of attention and deservedly so. This is his…

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Zionist cabal tries to hijack Wikipedia

January 9, 2014
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CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) is the Orwellian name of a pro-Israel media watchdog group that monitors, influences, and seeks to control all mainstream media coverage of issues affecting public opinion on all matters related to Israel. It has some 1000 members and chapters in several major American cities. It’s staffers scour all media coverage of Israel and “engage and directly contact” (some would say “harass”) reporters, editors, producers and publishers concerning what they regard as “distorted or inaccurate coverage” (some would say “the truth”) about Israel. They also offer “factual information” (some would say “propaganda”) to…

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Propaganda (documentary)

July 6, 2013
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The film “Propaganda” purports to be a film smuggled out of North Korea. The narrator claims that she was approached, while on holiday in South Korea, by two alleged North Korean defectors, who presented her with a DVD originating from North Korea, asking her to translate it and upload it to the internet. The film features a surprisingly accurate analysis of contemporary western media and society. It features quotes from many well-respected intellectuals and manages to connect the dots in a very clear fashion. It does not falsify information or statistics or take any text, audio, or video material out of…

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How to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (lecture by Norman Finkelstein)

May 25, 2013
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Norman Finkelstein is one of the clearest, most informed, and most courageous commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has been speaking out and writing about the conflict for most of his adult life and has paid a heavy price for his candor and integrity on the issue. In the lecture below Finkelstein  lays out the reasons why a solution to this conflict is a distinct possibility, dissects some of the propaganda surrounding the issue, and defines the challenges that must be faced in order to achieve a solution. One of the great strengths of this lecture, like most others by…

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Israel is losing the propaganda battle

January 30, 2013
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And the best evidence yet comes from a new documentary film called The Gatekeepers, which features interviews with the six former heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, all of whom speak out on the public record against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Interviews with the director of the film, Dror Moreh, can be found on both Democracy Now and CNN. From these interviews one can clearly see that neither Moreh, nor the Israeli security chiefs featured in the film, approach this subject  from a leftist or ideological perspective. Moreh correctly describes his interviewees as “pragmatists” who are…

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African National Congress endorses Israel boycott

January 15, 2013
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Here’s an interesting experiment: Google the sentence “African National Congress approves Israel boycott.” You’ll see from the results (at least as of January 115, 2013) that the only sources with any information on this story are those related to the BDS movement or a few Israeli news organizations. Here are related pieces from The Jerusalem Post, Jewish News online, and the Jewish Journal.  Remarkably, there is virtually no coverage of this story in the mainstream media in the West.  And yet it is highly significant that the ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, voted in December 2012 to make boycotts, divestment and sanctions…

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Birthright Israel

January 13, 2013
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Following the UN vote to grant Palestinians non-member observer state status at the UN General Assembly, Israel immediately announced plans to construct settlements in the E1 area, which would cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank and effectively destroy all hope for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As this article from Philip Weiss makes clear, talk of a one-state solution is now becoming more common and more frank. The real questions that seem to be emerging from the rubble of this conflict concern the nature and boundaries of the only viable state that will remain in that area.…

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The Israel lobby in the UK

December 14, 2012
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The US and Canada are not the only countries with influential lobby groups working to ensure that the majority of politicians support Israel no matter how illegal or immoral its policies may be. One of these groups in the UK is the Conservative Friends of Israel, which claims on its website to have 2,000 activists and 80% of Tory MPs as its members. It sponsors trips to Israel for these Conservative parliamentarians and candidates and campaigns hard to get them elected in their districts. In this article in the Telegraph, Peter Oborne describes how the CFI has helped to push the…

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The ten myths of Israel

December 11, 2012
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Ilan Pappe, the Jewish historian and professor at Exeter University in the UK has complied an insightful list of the ten dominant myths surrounding Israel, myths that  impede the understanding and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The ten myths are as follows: Myth 1: Palestine was a land without people, waiting for the people without a land Myth 2: Palestinians resorted to acts of terror against Jewish settlers prior to the creation of Israel Myth 3: Myths around the creation of Israel Myth 4: Israel was a benign democratic state prior to 1967 Myth 5: The Palestinian struggle has no…

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Canada’s support for Israel

December 11, 2012
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First the bad news. At the recent vote for an upgrade to the status of the Palestinians (to non-member observer state) at the UN General Assembly, Canada went out of its way to demonstrate that it is as strong (if not stronger) a supporter of Israel and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as is the United States. It also made it clear to the world that the Canadian government could not care less about the morality or legality of the occupation, world public opinion, or Canada’s reputation as a good global citizen. Following the lop-sided vote, in which Canada…

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South Korea’s support for Israel

November 27, 2012
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While diplomatic and trade relations between South Korea and Israel have a somewhat checkered past, the two countries have grown much closer during the current administration of Lee Myun-Bak, which is currently negotiating a free-trade agreement with Israel. And as Israel’s relationships with neighboring countries—especially Turkey—deteriorate, South Korea seems eager to step in and pick up the lost business opportunities, especially in arms sales. According to this article in the Jerusalem Post, South Korea is already conducting arms trades with Israel and Seoul is now planning “to make Israel one of its main arms suppliers alongside the United States.” In…

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Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

November 27, 2012
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What follows are responses to some of the questions that arise in discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some of these questions reflect biases that impede the understanding of the conflict.  1. What is the official position of Hamas regarding a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?  As you can read in this Wall Street Journal article, the official position of Hamas as of 2009 is to accept a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders (roughly 20 % of historic Palestine), which is also the international consensus on how to resolve this conflict. 2. Hamas’ founding charter called for the destruction of…

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How to help the people of Gaza

November 20, 2012
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According to this report, 38 aid agencies are now warning of a humanitarian crisis if the military assault on Gaza is not stopped immediately. And yet according to this Democracy Now interview with the Gazan human rights lawyer Raji Sourani, Israel has just dramatically escalated its bombing campaign on the trapped population in Gaza. Whether or not this escalates into a full-fledged ground invasion remains to be seen (here are Finkelstein’s thoughts on the relevant factors behind’s Israel’s decision-making at the moment). International pressure must obviously be brought to bear on Israel to force it to end this murderous campaign,…

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How to stop Israel

November 19, 2012
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With the latest cycle of violence in Gaza thoughts naturally turn once again to the important question of how to bring an end to Israeli aggression, the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza, and the illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. There is obviously no realistic military solution to this problem, and a diplomatic settlement is virtually impossible given the position of the U.S. government, which would veto any attempt of the UN security council to constrain or even criticize Israel. One alternative approach is for people of conscience from around the world to put pressure on the Israeli government by boycotting…

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Spinning the latest assault on Gaza

November 16, 2012
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As reported in the Guardian’s Middle East blog (a source for updates on the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict), the basic facts of the conflict as of Nov. 14, the first day of the conflict, were as follows: • Israel killed Hamas military leader Ahmed al-Jaabari in an airstrike on his car in Gaza. Israel followed the assassination with sustained air and naval strikes across Gaza, concentrating in the north. Hamas vowed to avenge the act. • Israeli officials said the offensive, called “Pillar of Defense,” was meant to stop the launch of hundreds of rockets on civilian populations in southern Israel in recent months.…

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Canada shames itself once again in support of Israel

October 30, 2012
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First a few background points on the legality of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territories (from Wikipedia):  1. The international community considers the settlements in occupied territory to be illegal. Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and communities in the Golan Heights, areas which have been annexed by Israel, are also considered settlements by the international community, which does not recognise Israel’s annexations of these territories. 2. The United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel’s construction of settlements constitutes violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. International humanitarian law prohibits [an] occupying power [from transferring] citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49). 3. The International Court…

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American Radical: the trials of Norman Finkelstein (documentary)

October 9, 2012
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The official description of this 2009 documentary reads as follows: A devoted son of Holocaust survivors and ardent critic of Israeli foreign policy, the polarizing American political scientist and author Norman Finkelstein has been called a lunatic and self-hating Jew by some, and an inspirational revolutionary by others. Uncompromising even in the face of his denial of tenure at DePaul University, Finkelstein is revealed as a complex, politically isolated figure who puts the pursuit of justice above the security of his academic career. Exploring the difficult and deeply-felt issues at the heart of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, American Radical is the…

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Why the US and Israel are the greatest threats to peace

September 29, 2012
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One of the most remarkable things about Noam Chomsky is his ability to distance himself from conventional assumptions and biases. Throughout his career, not only in his political writings but also his work in linguistics and the philosophy of language, he engages in thought-experiments which ask what conclusions an objective observer, a Martian, for instance, would draw were he to examine the problem at hand without the usual biases and presuppositions. This strategy is on display once again in a characteristically insightful piece by Chomsky recently posted on Alternet entitled “Why the US and Israel are the greatest threats to…

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The Israeli lobby and how it operates

September 27, 2012
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In his blog post entitled “The Israel lobby and how it operates,”  Lawrence Davidson provides a simple, step-by-step account of how the Israel Lobby works its magic on the US Congress. This account provides a clear and compelling answer to a question that perplexes many observers of US foreign policy, the question of exactly why the American political establishment doggedly supports the state of Israel even though Israel is pursuing objectives that run contrary to US national interests. Davidson ends with an apt quote from Cicero: “Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit,” translated as: “No fortification is such that…

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Highs and lows in debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

July 28, 2012
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Two recent debates on Democracy Now (here and here) regarding the BDS movement really stand out as remarkable in the history of debates on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In both of these debates, opposition to the BDS movement comes from Rabbi Arthur Waskow.  While he is opposed to a BDS movement against Israel, he clearly acknowledges Israel’s flagrant violations of international law and insists that the brutal occupation of Palestinian territory must be brought to an end. For him the only question is how best to do it. Because of this common ground, there is a level of civility and mutual respect…

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