Author Archives: Nima Shirazi

About Nima Shirazi

Nima Shirazi is a political commentator from New York City. His analysis of United States foreign policy and Middle East issues is published on his website, WideAsleepInAmerica.com, and can also be found in numerous other online and print publications. Follow him on Twitter @WideAsleepNima.

‘Constructive engagement’ didn’t work in South Africa, so why are liberal Zionists pushing it for Israel?

It is now commonly accepted that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s “constructive engagement” police towards apartheid South Africa was wrong, both morally and strategically. Yet, these exact sentiments are now echoed in the liberal Zionist community with respect to even the most timid and selective application of BDS.

Posted in Activism, American Jewish Community, BDS, Israel/Palestine, US Politics | 47 Comments

The Ironic Lady: Margaret Thatcher, supposed champion of ‘freedom and democracy’, and her dictator friends

Margaret Thatcher died Monday, April 8, 2013, at the age of 87. While there is no dearth of hagiographic profiles of the former British Prime Minister in the mainstream press and scathing vitriol elsewhere, it should be remembered that, throughout her career, Thatcher was a staunch supporter of many of the world’s most brutal regimes, propping up and arming war criminals and dictators in service to Western imperialism, anti-Communism and neoliberal hegemony.

Posted in Middle East | 17 Comments

Argo’s Oscar and the failure of truth

Argo’s Academy Award shows that we have yet again been blinded by the heavy dust of politics and our American mantra of hostility and resentment will continue to inform our decisions, dragging us closer and closer to the abyss.

Posted in Iran, Media, Middle East, US Politics | 42 Comments

Former Israeli Amb to Obama on his visit: ‘You cannot come to an area that exhibits signs of apartheid and ignore them’

Alon Liel, a former Israeli Foreign Ministry Director-General and ex-Ambassador to South Africa, said on February 20, “In the situation that exists today, until a Palestinian state is created, we are actually one state. This joint state — in the hope that the status quo is temporary — is an apartheid state.”

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Occupation, One state/Two states | 35 Comments

Consensus: Right wing govt minister says Israel is not a state of all its citizens; liberal Zionist icon calls for cantons to avoid bi-nationalism

Two recent statements — one from a right wing government minister and the other a liberal Zionist icon — reveal the staggering degree of racism in Israeli political discourse.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, One state/Two states | 9 Comments

The AP’s George Jahn serves up Israeli propaganda on Iran yet again

The Associated Press’ favorite conduit for pathetic Israeli propaganda on the Iranian nuclear program, George Jahn, came out with another doozy on Tuesday. Under a banner touting a “Big Story,” Jahn published an article headlined, “AP Exclusive: Graph suggests Iran working on bomb,” which purported to show proof that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.”

Posted in Iran, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 23 Comments

As the discourse shifts, ‘NYT’ stays rooted in the past (the 1800s to be exact)

While the New Yorker may be changing the mainstream UWS paradigm with its publication of Munayyer’s excellent article, The New York Times remains firmly entrenched in Zionist talking points.

Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | 20 Comments

What We Won’t Hear in Boca: Nine things to remember during the Iran section of the presidential debate tonight

Nima Shirazi presents nine things to keep in mind about Iran during the third presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

Posted in Iran, Israel Lobby, Middle East, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 8 Comments

Goldberg ignores decades of consistent Iranian statements on nuclear weapons for the sake of propaganda

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg recently cataloged four years of statements from Barack Obama to prove the president has consistently committed to using “military force to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.” But if repetition made Goldberg a believer in Obama, why does he ignore the past two decades of statements by senior Iranian officials promising never to obtain nuclear weapons?

Posted in Iran, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 44 Comments

Benjamin Netanyahu: Master of show-and-tell

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (really) likes using visual aids. He has brought to the podium Xeroxed copies of old letters, meeting minutes and, now, a dazzlingly crude drawing of a cartoon bomb to illustrate this fearsome inevitability. Here’s a quick look at years past

Posted in Iran, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government | 5 Comments

Iraq/Iran is ‘feverishly working to develop atomic weapons’ — Netanyahu 2012 echoes Netanyahu 2002

That was then, this is now, the Netanyahu edition: When it comes to trying to bully the United States into setting “red lines” or even perhaps initiating a war of aggression, Benjamin Netanyahu has stuck to the same script for a decade now.

Posted in Iran, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | Tagged | 21 Comments

Some initial thoughts on the MEK being delisted

If the US doesn’t believe the allegations about Mossad’s backing of the MEK to murder Iranian scientists, that probably means that the US believes (read: knows) that Mossad itself is responsible for the attacks.

Posted in Iran, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 4 Comments

Israel’s lone soldiers: Come for the perks, stay for the war crimes

U.S. and Israeli policies of invasion and occupation rather than religious extremism are the guiding forces behind acts of terrorist violence, but you wouldn’t know it from the New York Times

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 48 Comments

Points of no return, zones of immunity: The constant Israeli hype over Iran

Another election cycle is nearing an end and with it as always comes the same tired fearmongering and war hysteria. Threats and predictions of an unprovoked, illegal Israeli assault on Iran are once again flooding the media with dire warnings of fabricated and meaningless – but sufficiently spooky – phrases such as Iran’s supposedly looming “zone of immunity,” which until recently was ominously dubbed the “point of no return.” We’ve been through this charade for three decades with no end in sight.

Posted in Iran, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government, Media, Neocons, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 5 Comments

StandWithUs’ revisionist history train campaign

Hasbara outfit StandWithUs has placed its own billboards at Metro-North train stations in New York and Connecticut in an attempt to counter a much-discussed awareness campaign depicting the loss of Palestinian land over the past sixty-six years, paid for by Henry Cliffords’ Committee for Peace in Israel/Palestine. StandWithUs’ counter-campaign is aimed at denying the validity of Palestinian ties its own homeland by presenting the Old Testament as a divine land deed.

Posted in Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, US Politics | 26 Comments

It’s a lie that Ahmadinejad took responsibility for Bulgarian attack

Let’s go to the Farsi: Pro-Israel media sources are misquoting a speech by Iranian President Ahmadinejad in an effort to push war with Iran

Posted in Iran, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, US Politics | 66 Comments

Death of a self-avowed terrorist

Yitzhak Shamir justified terrorism proudly in his statements about the Nakba and the independence period

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 9 Comments

The Har Homa Heat?: Meet the settlement-building family that owns the Miami Heat

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The Arison family, one of the wealthiest families in the world, has owned the Miami Heat from its early years in the 1980s (Micky Arison is above, far right). The Arisons also own the Israeli construction company Shikun and Binui, which operates in Israel, Asia, Africa and the occupied territories.

Posted in Israel/Palestine, Settlers/Colonists | Tagged | 7 Comments

I Want My NPT: A weekend review of Iran nuclear program propaganda

Two news reports by major wire services this weekend demonstrate just how pervasive misinformation and propaganda are in the mainstream media when it comes to the Iranian nuclear issue.

Posted in Iran, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East | 14 Comments

Biden gives Israel the green light on Iran in speech to rabbinical convention

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Speaking to an international assembly of 1,600 conservative rabbis in Atlanta today, Joe Biden said that Israel still had time to attack Iran if it so chooses.

Posted in American Jewish Community, Iran, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | Tagged | 42 Comments

To counter the injustice of Israeli impunity, remember the Samouni family

With such impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity a benchmark of the Israeli state, any hope for real justice is futile. Read the story of the Israeli military’s willful murder of the Samouni family’s men, women, and children, as reported in relevant sections of the Goldstone Report.

Posted in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, Israeli Government | 11 Comments

How Zionists implanted their dream in Einstein

The art of inception is planting a dream in someone else so they think they came up with the idea

Posted in Israel/Palestine | 30 Comments

Obama’s selective view of the struggle for human dignity

Obama never mentioned Palestine or Palestinians in his homage to Israel at the Holocaust memorial yesterday

Posted in American Jewish Community, Arab Spring, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, US Policy in the Middle East, US Politics | 26 Comments

Wallace interview with Ahmadinejad was little more than deliberate demonization

Mike Wallace’s August 2006 interview with Iranian President Ahmadinejad made headlines around the world and cemented Ahmadinejad’s reputation as a genocidal threat to Israel and a confrontational denier of the Holocaust in the hearts and minds of Western audiences. But those threats and denials came from Wallace’s voice-over, not Ahmadinejad’s actual words.

Posted in Iran, Israel/Palestine, Media | 35 Comments

NY high school students visit Western Wall, Israel Museum, and AJC, but Foxman blasts them for daring to meet Palestinians

Exclusive school in New York did not get enough hasbara on its trip to Israel and Palestine to meet Abe Foxman’s standards

Posted in Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics | Tagged | 29 Comments