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Total number of comments: 70 (since 2010-01-15 11:29:43)

Eleanor

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  • Bob Simon misses the story on Tel Aviv
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 24, 2012 at 7:43 pm

      Bob Simon:

      "Why is Tel Aviv so fun and bubbly like lego land and why is the beach so sandy, and the Israeli bikini women so tan and hot and fashionably cutting edge, and the trendy bars so cosmopolitan, and the gay, white Jewish military so amusingly camp? Because Jewish mothers try to keep their children safe from brown terrorist bombers with lots of nagging and food so they can make billion-dollar start-ups, and go to sandy, gay military play centres shielded from Muslim Hezbollah missiles. This is great, and Levy is a killjoy!

      "OK, have I sucked up to the colonial, racist, criminal, manipulative bas**** Israeli lobby enough now, so that I can go back to the grown-up reporting I was hired to do?"

  • Video: Israeli mob demands all African refugees be deported from the country (and anyone who disagrees deserves to be raped)
  • Aharon Appelfeld's rage at the German language (and Arendt's need for it)
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 21, 2012 at 6:17 am

      My comment above was addressed to another commentator (deleted) pointing out Hölderlin's line should be: 'Last von Scheitern ist'

    • Eleanor Kilroy May 20, 2012 at 5:47 pm with 91 replies

      George Steiner, in Language and Silence, considered the German language “being used to run hell, getting the habits of hell into its syntax”:

      "Languages have great reserves of life. They can absorb masses of hysteria, illiteracy, and cheapness . . . But there comes a breaking point. Use a language to conceive, organize, and justify Belsen; use it to make out specifications for gas ovens; use it to dehumanize man during twelve years of calculated bestiality. Something will happen to it. . . . Something of the lies and sadism will settle in the marrow of the language. Imperceptibly at first, like the poisons of radiation sifting silently into the bone. But the cancer will begin, and the deep-set destruction. The language will no longer grow and freshen. It will no longer perform, quite as well as it used to, its two principal functions: the conveyance of humane order which we call law, and the communication of the quick of the human spirit which we call grace."

      As MichaelSmith has reminded us above, Paul Celan was a poet and his language was German. He needed to write so he wrote in his language, even though it had been horribly deformed by Nazism - but not irreparably so.

    • Eleanor Kilroy May 20, 2012 at 3:45 pm with 1 replies

      You're right, thank you - my typo

  • Pinkwashing and lifestyle liberalism
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 20, 2012 at 5:34 am

      Australians for Palestine has a post about the ban that was eventually overturned: http://www.australiansforpalestine.net/63046

      'The NSW Police have taken the organizers of the Nakba commemoration march in Sydney to the Supreme Court demanding that the rally should be moved to a different location and the march to be cancelled. The protesters have decided to assert their rights, saying that they will contest any attempt to prohibit the march.

      “In the same way that 3 Israeli activists were arrested for trying to commemorate Al-Nakba, the Victorian police charged 19 BDS protesters in Melbourne, (they are now in court), now the NSW Police are showing their true colours by trying to silence free speech and political protest in support of the Palestinians.'

  • U. of Haifa stops Nakba commemoration, as prof writes hate post calling for 'Many Nakbas'
  • In '92, AIPAC president raised $1 million for Bill Clinton -- and he supported the settlements
  • Nobel Prize laureate J. M. Coetzee appears to boycott International Writers Festival in Jerusalem
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 16, 2012 at 9:55 am

      The article quotes Dromi as saying Tom Rob Smith was 'attacked' on his Facebook page. In fact Smith, writing for Israel Hayom, is clear that the boycott campaign was 'intense' but never aggressive. Israel Hayom was launched in 2007 by the billionaire Sheldon Adelson, of whom one prominent Israeli journalist said "When it comes to his views on the Palestinian Israel conflict he is a right-wing extremist", and it is referred to by Israelis as the “Bibiton,” or Bibi’s mouthpiece. Not only did Tom Rob Smith agree to write for Sheldon Adelson's paper, but he exhibited his ignorance of the purpose and objectives of the cultural boycott of Israel. He writes in Israel Hayom:

      "One of the points presented to me by those advocating a cultural boycott of Israel was that the festival explicitly states that its purpose is to bring writers together from around the world and have them share a stage with Israeli writers. Those demanding a boycott presented this as a negative when it is, surely, the only reason for any literature festival to exist. What other purpose could it serve?... I fear the magic dies as soon as we begin to draw lines around people, grouping readers into categories of those we will and won’t listen to."

      No one has asked the British author not to share a stage with Israeli writers or not to interact with his readers. We have asked him to consider who provides that stage and frames that cultural exchange, and why.

  • Liberal Zionists are afraid their parents will reject them if they come out
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 12, 2012 at 4:02 am with 1 replies

      She comes from a Jewish Texan family, and yet she says 'we' the Israelis. Therein lies the problem, quite apart from the odious blindness and racism of this statement:

      'I cant help but notice, we’re retracting, that we’ve taken the unprecedented step of trading one soldier for thousands of Palestinians, emboldening Hamas, and undercutting Fatah.'

      No matter how much I identify with Palestinians and their righteous cause, i might say 'we, the solidarity movement' but never 'we the Palestinians' as a non-Palestinian.

      Hogue knows she has the 'right of return' as a Jew, and above all wants to hold on to and exercise that entitlement in a 'secure' Israel for the next generation of American Jews. That is her principal concern.

  • Rejecting boycott, Tom Rob Smith and Tracy Chevalier prepare for Jerusalem International Writers Festival
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 11, 2012 at 7:37 am

      Soon to be published in English, this is from a statement, in Arabic, by the General Union of Palestinian Writers (the largest, most established union representing Palestinian writers) calling for a full boycott of the Israeli writers festival, and urging Palestinian writers not to meet with any international writer who insists on participating in the Mishkenot Sha'ananim festival, sponsored by Israeli government ministries, the Municipality of Jerusalem and settler organizations, thus violating the guidelines of the Palestinian cultural boycott of Israel.

      -------------------------GUPW Statement Excerpts----------------------

      "Not only are some of these writers -- violators of the boycott and dancers on Palestinian wounds ... -- participating [in the Mishkenot Sha'ananim festival] despite calls for boycott; they have even asked the director of the Festival, Uri Dromi, to arrange for them to meet with 'local' Palestinian writers in Ramallah, and to tour 'East' Jerusalem to see the Palestinians. This Orientalist tendency to get acquainted with "the locals" as objects of colonial voyeurism, and through colonial intermediaries, should be met with condemnation and strict boycott; they should have chosen between standing with the occupation or with freedom, as there is no middle ground between the two."

      "The General Union of Palestinian Writers, which is commemorating the Nakba with the rest of the Palestinian people, ... highly lauds the response of international writers who boycotted, for the most part, [the Mishkenot Sha'ananim] festival, and condemns in the strongest terms the participation of writers whose names were announced by the [Israeli] festival management on its website and in media publications. The Union calls on Palestinian intellectuals and cultural workers, writers, novelists, academics and journalists, to boycott the festival, and not to meet with its participants .. who are not welcome [among us] as they have shamed themselves."

      "The General Union of Palestinian Writers, as a member of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), takes this opportunity to call on free and conscientious writers of the world to respect the boycott criteria set by the BNC and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)."

  • Beinart warns Jews that not talking to Palestinians and anti-Zionists 'makes us stupid'
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 3, 2012 at 6:57 pm

      This is a horror show. Gordis is not just ignorant, he is grotesque. Far more frightening than this freak is the thought that much of the audience is drinking up his racist rant without question.

      I feel rather sorry for Beinart - he appeals to 'his people's' feelings of racial superiority and desire for racial exclusivity and privilege and 'right' to keep land from which Palestinians were violently driven, then pleads that they do not follow this through to its natural conclusion: apartheid, the completion of the Zionist project to ethnically cleanse Palestine and the spread of a vile, ignorant racism among the majority of Israelis and American Zionists.

      Sad, pathetic.

  • 'Shame on You': Why I interrupted Obama counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 2, 2012 at 4:24 pm with 1 replies

      No one stood up in her defence. No one exhibited shock at the way she was silenced and aggressively hauled out. No one applauded her.

      I don't understand. Maybe I understand too well.

      Medea, you're amazing. Thank you

  • Jerusalem writers fest requires speakers to submit speeches for review in effort to avoid criticism of Israel
    • Eleanor Kilroy May 2, 2012 at 4:15 pm

      And here is a new English translation of his entire 2010 speech:

      To talk about ourselves

      Nir Baram
      Haokets 1 May 2012

      Original Hebrew: link to haokets.org

      In 1907 two of the greatest Jewish writers of the 20th century met in London. One was Yosef Haim Brenner, and the other was his friend from youth, the writer Uri Nissan Gnessin. Brenner waited for Gnessin like “a lover awaiting his heart’s desire”, and hoped that he would bring “light into the darkness of his life.”

      Although the two men were close friends with similar life experiences, each one of them took his creation in a fundamentally different direction. Brenner strove for a Hebrew literature which from the distress of the individual would deal with the current conflicts that preoccupied the Jews, whereas Gnessin wrote personal, convoluted and impressionistic literature. Brenner, as the editor of the journal Hameorer, shouted in the language of “we”, whereas Gnessin whispered in the language of “I”. And the two were opposite in all aspects of their characters, as Asher Beilin, one of their close friends, put it: Brenner was “a roaring raging sea”, whereas Gnessin was “a melancholy pond that weeps in a whisper”.

      Those two writers, among the most wonderful known to modern Hebrew literature, did not succeed in bridging the differences between them at that meeting in London. Nor did they pretend that it was possible. A literary, ideological and personal abyss yawned between them, and they were both too honest to cover up the differences with words of courtesy or flattery.

      It could be said that the meeting ended in failure. The ill Gnessin left London and they did not see each other again.

      This raises an interesting question about meetings between writers: when is such a meeting a failure? When they do not conceal their differences, when they scratch the wounds, when they express resentment, when they tell the truth, can that be called a failure?

      As a young writer who has attended few literary festivals, I sometimes wonder whether the rituals of the festival, the cocktail parties, the rules of courtesy and the ceremony, the respect for the hosts, the need to entertain the audience, do not mask the differences and convert the whole event into an excessively cultivated one. Do the unwritten rules of the festival not sterilize the event of the volatile and unsettling potential of literary dialogue? Indeed Kafka claimed, in one of his best-known articles, that a book – like a literary dialogue, incidentally – should be an axe that cleaves the frozen sea within us.

      And maybe today too there are too many things we do not talk about?

      True, a literary festival is measured by its literary content, but is it even possible to speak just of “literature” – just of literary and aesthetic values – without touching on the social and political conditions within which that literature is written?

      Having seen in the twentieth century how various regimes use “culture” and to what ends, it is no longer possible to speak of art that is not political. Creation, and it does not matter what kind, is a product of the era in which it takes place. Whether it wants to or not, it is interpreted in the spirit of the time. “We are children of the era”, wrote Szymborska, and the era is always political.

      I was born and grew up in Jerusalem, and there is not one story in my family that does not begin or end in this city. But today, a few kilometres from to the east of here, we can see the separation wall that the State of Israel has built as a part of the Israelis’ clear vision to separate their state from the Arab world. This development, which speaks to the hearts of the Jews who are worried about the future of their state, reflects the paralyzing power of exclusive, introverted Jewish ethnicism, which does not even bother to pretend to protect the rights of those of different ethnic or religious backgrounds, be they Palestinians, migrant workers from Colombia or refugees from Darfur.

      Under the cloak of victimhood that has indeed been sewn for us, the Jews, by history, we are witness to systematic violation of the rights of non-Jews within the State of Israel and the Occupied Territories.

      Modern Hebrew literature, in contrast to other national literatures, sprouted within a foreign geographical, social, cultural and linguistic area. It emerged mainly in Eastern Europe as well as the Arab countries, through an unending dialogue with other cultures in a multi-lingual and diverse environment. And indeed the literature that was written by writers like Mendele Mocher Sforim, Brenner, Gnessin, Bialik, Fogel and others does not descend from the peaks of European modernism.

      Perhaps in the Israeli imagination it seems to us that in those days the Jews were locked up in small enclosed towns and today we are part of the big world. But to my dismay, particularly in the past decade, it is we who are enclosed behind walls; we who strive to construct surroundings for Jews only and denounce and even expel the strangers in our midst; it is we who alienate ourselves from the geopolitical region in which we live. And if the young generation of Israelis has one mission, at which we have so far failed in every sense, it is to knock down those walls.

      Dear guests, I want to welcome you to the festival. It features wonderful writers who have influenced Hebrew literature in general as well as me as a writer. And I want to say to you that sometimes it seems to me that we no longer know how to talk about ourselves, and even when it seems to us that we have formulated a new idea, the familiar Jewish-Israeli story speaks from within our throats, cunningly navigating the world of our imaginations.

      Maybe we need are in particular need, these days, and also at this festival, of a penetrating and honest dialogue. Maybe that sympathetic but also critical look from outside can illuminate the spaces that are concealed from our eyes. As has already been said: when you live by the sea, you gradually stop hearing the rustle of the waves.

      Translated from Hebrew by George Malent

  • Harvard Israel conference presents 'innovation' to hide occupation
    • Eleanor Kilroy April 23, 2012 at 7:41 am

      All power to you.

      The counter conference campaign poster is excellent: "Since occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, we have explored diverse and exciting new ways to start wars against our neighbors. Indeed, Israel is forever optimistic about its ability to never be held accountable for its crimes under international law! "

      Love it.

  • Israeli celebrity says she enjoyed video of IDF attacking Danish activist because he looked like a Nazi
    • Eleanor Kilroy April 18, 2012 at 11:17 am

      Israel really doesn't want any friends...except for in US congress.

      The woman is a nasty, ignorant racist, yet I permit myself to feel outrage on behalf of my late Danish grandmother who lived through Nazi Germany's occupation of her homeland and left for England with her British Navy husband who had fought Nazi Germany. It was, furthermore, the Danish resistance movement, supported by ordinary Danish citizens, that undertook one of the biggest acts of resistance under Nazi occupation, evacuating about 8,000 Danish Jews to safety in Sweden.

  • 'The War Around Us': New film on the journalists who covered 'Cast Lead'
    • Eleanor Kilroy April 17, 2012 at 12:17 pm

      A confession: I am reminded of the Hunger Games trilogy when watching this clip - or rather, when I am reading Suzanne Collins' futuristic dystopia written for young adults, in which the totalitarian Capitol of the fictional nation Panem, with its brutal force of 'peacekeepers', exacts revenge on the rebellious, impoverished and isolated districts from which no civilian can escape or seek help, I could not stop thinking of besieged Gaza. Laugh at me if you must ;)

  • The rifle-butting video is following a different narrative
  • P.A. has lost all its meaning -- Abbas
    • Eleanor Kilroy April 16, 2012 at 2:22 pm with 3 replies

      "Should the Government of Israel refuse to honor these above-referenced obligations, we will seek the full and complete implementation of international law as it pertains to the powers and responsibilities of Israel as occupying power in all of the occupied Palestinian territory."

      What is he waiting for?

  • Responses to Toulouse murders from Palestinian orgs and Jerusalem mourners
    • Eleanor Kilroy March 21, 2012 at 3:49 pm with 3 replies

      More images of the march here: Photos : marche à Paris en hommage aux victimes de Toulouse

      "Le cortège, composé de nombreux jeunes qui brandissent drapeaux français et israéliens, se met en branle. Direction la place de la Bastille.... Après quelques mètres parcourus, le cortège stoppe net et voit plusieurs dizaines de jeunes de la Ligue de défense juive passer devant l'Union des étudiants juifs de France, qui menait jusqu'alors le cortège. La marche silencieuse se transforme alors en course bruyante et en démonstration de force de la part du mouvement extrémiste, formant un cordon en tête du défilé, coudes serrés les uns aux autres. A mi-chemin, le calme revient et les marcheurs poursuivent leur avancée vers la place de la Bastille qui porte encore les marques rouges du grand rassemblement du Front de Gauche."

    • Eleanor Kilroy March 21, 2012 at 3:35 pm with 2 replies

      Elliot, you make a valid point. However, the presence of Israeli flags at such a march and in this political climate can take on a greater significance, so it is worthy of remark. The same could be said for stars and stripes in a particular context.

      The march seems to have been organised on the initiative of l'Union des étudiants juifs de France (UEJF) and, inevitably attracted a crowd of the Ligue de défense juive (LDJ). According to this write-up "Les drapeaux français côtoyaient les drapeaux israéliens", which suggests there was more than one family holding a couple of blue and white flags. (Une marche silencieuse). All that said, it does seem to have been a very dignified, moving occasion.

    • Eleanor Kilroy March 21, 2012 at 11:47 am with 9 replies

      dimadok, this post is about political points being scored on the back of an inhuman, criminal act. I cannot even begin to comprehend the anguish of the parents of these children. What we cannot do is fall for evidently dangerous and false propaganda along the lines that 'the Jewish people will only be safe in a Jewish homeland, protected from the Muslim/Arab menace at any cost'.

  • Coalition of Syrian artists: Resistance liberates the imagination from slavery
    • Eleanor Kilroy February 9, 2012 at 10:01 am

      Yes, at least some of these Syrian artists are known to friends here in London.

      See also this recent statement from Palestinian intellectuals:

      Palestinian Intellectuals to Syrian Regime: Not in Our Name!

      ...We have recently heard a representative of the Syrian regime at the UN Security Council use the Palestinian cause and its painful and honorable course as cover for its terrifying crimes in Syria. We say to the Syrian regime and its representatives: not in our name, not in Palestine’s name will these crimes be committed in our beloved Syria, oh killers. Do not make our just cause a mask for your inhumane crimes against our Syrian brothers and sisters. It is the Syrian people who have historically adopted our cause, and sacrificed martyrs for its sake, not your regime, of which we have painful memories. We will never forget its role in the massacre of Tel Az-Zaatar in 1976, nor in the terrible assault on the Nahr al Bared camp near Tripoli in 1983, nor the siege of the camps in Beirut in 1985,  nor any of the other acts which have bitterly weakened Palestinian national unity. Do not use Palestine’s name, for it is no longer your winning card...

  • Protesters interrupted Passacaglia w/ Beethoven (more on Israel Philharmonic protest in London)
    • Eleanor Kilroy September 2, 2011 at 7:32 pm with 1 replies

      Miranda of British Artists for Palestine did a really professional job (so it took a little longer to put together) and the effect is very powerful, not least the dedication at the end of the video 'to the music students, musicians and orchestras of Palestine'.

    • Eleanor Kilroy September 2, 2011 at 7:06 pm with 1 replies

      The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, writing in the Telegraph culture section today, has compared boycott activists to Nazi blackshirts: 'When the Israel Philharmonic played on Thursday evening, a band of around 30 thugs – none was wearing jackboots, but they should have been – launched into chanting and mock singing, disrupting the concert.... There is a chilling air to the so-called protests: an air of Weimar Germany, and the way Nazi party members broke up meetings'. The J14 protest movement, however, is acceptable to Pollard because its grievances are with Israel's economic not apartheid policies or for its ongoing occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land:

      'It shouldn’t need saying that protesting against the actions of the Israeli government is not the same as being anti-Semitic. Clearly not: this month, 250,000 Israelis joined rallies against their government’s economic policies. They could hardly be driven by anti-Semitism.'

      No less clear to the reader is the purpose of Pollard's inverted commas when referring to human rights norms: 'As the IPO began Webern’s Passacaglia, a dozen people unfurled a banner reading “Free Palestine” and started to sing about “Israeli apartheid” and “violations of international law and human rights”. As the orchestra played over the disruption, the hooligans were removed by security guards.'

      If we can dismiss them with epithets of scorn - as worthless hooligans, racists, bleeding heart liberals - then we have no need to listen to them, just shut them down.

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/8737692/A-Proms-protest-with-a-whiff-of-Weimar-about-it.html

    • Eleanor Kilroy September 2, 2011 at 11:19 am

      Did someone say 'ghettoise'?

      A Torygraph tosser entitles his ignorant screed, There is something very ugly about this attempt to ghettoise Israeli musicians

  • British gov't minister says 'wall is a land grab'-- and is censored by UK Israel lobby
    • Eleanor Kilroy August 30, 2011 at 6:46 pm

      Although video was removed from DfiD website and YouTube, I found it embedded on this Israel apologist site: http://jacobklamer.com/pages/videos/israel/vid-israel-palestine-alan_duncan.html

      If you ignore the fact he is peddling the Quartet's line on the PA/Salam Fayyad, the mistake Alan Duncan made was to speak from the heart. A good man.

    • Eleanor Kilroy August 30, 2011 at 10:14 am

      Martin Bright is the current JC editor, former New Statesman editor, and a so-called 'muscular liberal' (Israel apologist and Islamophobe, with the likes of Nick Cohen and the Harry's Place bully-boys). He has made it clear in a 25 August leader that he wants Duncan to go:

      'The problem was that the language he used was straight from the lexicon of Palestinian resistance.... At last year's Conservative Party conference Mr Duncan, who is known for his pro-Palestinian views, raised eyebrows by speaking at a pro-Palestinian event hosted by the New Statesman magazine and expressing his frustration that ministers could not speak to Hamas.
      Alan Duncan's position has been seriously undermined by the incident and it is uncertain whether he will be able to survive in this highly sensitive post. His ministerial colleagues and British diplomats in the region will not easily forgive him for making their already difficult jobs a whole lot harder.'

      http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/53622/it-was-a-palestinian-narrative

  • 'JPost' fires Derfner for writing that Palestinians have the 'right' to use terrorism, notwithstanding his apology
    • Eleanor Kilroy August 29, 2011 at 10:47 am with 11 replies

      I cannot summon much sympathy for Derfner because his underlying assumptions are so repugnant. Derfner warns his reader that 'we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us'. In his apology he writes, 'I would do whatever was necessary to stop a Palestinian, oppressed or not, from killing one of my countrymen'

      'Terror' means attacks on civilians, which is illegal under international humanitarian law, and can never be justified, although in contexts of the extreme oppression of the perpetrator and his/her community, it can sometimes be understood. Palestinian civilians are daily victims of Israeli terror - in all its forms - so they know how unjustified it is, and never cease to call on the 'international community' to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law. The vast majority of Palestinians try to use their rights to freedom of expression, to peaceful protest, etc, to obtain freedom from Israeli terror and these non-violent tactics are brutally crushed. They are left angry, desperate, more determined than ever, but with no interest in the spilling of Jewish, Israeli blood.

      If you read this as solidarity with Palestinians, you're missing the patronising, Orientalist thrust of his argument. Palestinians are the Other and need to live apart, incapable of being one of his 'countrymen' (a country that belongs to this American only because he is a Jew) - they are prone to violence and the desire to kill Israeli Jews, so let's not provoke them - as if Palestinians are sleeping lions being prodded with a stick.

      The only thing he successfully does is expose the severe political limitations - and racist assumptions - of Zionist ideology and its incompatibility with international law.

  • Bad interventions, and a few good ones-- which was Libya?
  • Another congressperson writes home from the Jewish State, surrounded by madness she compares to Nazism
    • Eleanor Kilroy August 26, 2011 at 5:52 am with 1 replies

      Republican Congressman Allen West who represents Florida's 22nd district tweeted, on Tuesday: "Israel day 3:Visit Yad Vashem, firmed commitment to not allow mad ideology of Islamic totalitarianism to bring forth 21st century holocaust"

      In 140 characters he offers a holocaust sandwich with a filling of fanatical Islam - choke on that
      http://twitter.com/#!/AllenWest

  • 'J Street' smears good Richard Silverstein...
    • Eleanor Kilroy August 25, 2011 at 7:30 am with 1 replies

      If J Street is recommending a writer (Holland) that cross-posts on the insidious, profoundly Islamophobic site, Harry's Place*, which has made an art out of being an apologist for Israel's crimes through the use of pseudo-journalistic 'exposés' of any public figure sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, complete with torturous logic and based on so many false assumptions, the whole tour de force of hateful bile comes crashing to the ground under any real scrutiny, then J Street is OVER, if it ever got going.

      *http://hurryupharry.org/

  • The empty pieties of David Grossman
  • 104 young Americans reported to go join Israeli army
  • Anti-boycott law scores own goal: int'l LGBT youth group takes its gen'l assembly out of Israel
    • Eleanor Kilroy July 30, 2011 at 6:46 am

      Hamishe, hope you took the time to read the PQBDS statement in full (linked above). This is a crucial bit: "Israeli policies and occupation do not distinguish between queer and straight. All Palestinians—queer and straight— must deal with the effects of Israel’s apartheid system, illegal wall and colonial settlements, and military occupation. Furthermore, Palestinians in Gaza live under medieval and illegal siege, and the largest open-air prison in the world. Like all Palestinian citizens of Israel, queers are subject to institutionalized discrimination in all walks of life, and Palestinian refugees are denied their basic, UN-sanctioned right of return." Palestinian queers are united in ending the occupation & apartheid and fighting cultural prejudice in their own communities. Is that so hard to understand?

  • Curb your racism
    • Eleanor Kilroy July 30, 2011 at 7:21 am

      This has been a fascinating thread, thanks everyone. I've reflected on my response to the video and my post, and realised I made one initial error, which is that whilst I linked to the Haaretz article in final paragraph that goes into more detail about the episode, I didn't refer to the problematic sex scene, etc. Also, I should have speculated that the language and cultural assumptions were all the more shocking to me because I'm not American and in the UK I think I can say that it's a different cultural scene, and the portrayal of American-Jewish paranoia, racism, whatever you say it is, and of American Palestinians was alien and uncomfortable (other Brits may disagree!). And yes, I get it that Larry David's whole thing is to make us uncomfortable, but usually isn't it just him saying ignorant, racist and offensive things, and here 'decent bloke' Jeff leads the charge? Do Americans really think Palestinians and Arabs identify American Jews first and foremost as Jewish and as indistinguishable from Israelis and occupiers and Zionists, and hate symbols of Jewishness, like the skull-cap, and this is a fear that is being satirised here rather than propagated? Boy, things really are bad. Whichever way you look at it, it's rather nasty and disturbing and didn't make me laugh!

    • Eleanor Kilroy July 29, 2011 at 11:14 am with 5 replies

      Maybe they didn't quite get the satire of hasbara either. This is a clip of Larry having sex with Shara: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TDIhrpf104&feature=youtu.be

    • Eleanor Kilroy July 29, 2011 at 10:48 am with 2 replies

      In general, me too annie - I'm a big fan, but this was just off for me - maybe this joke is too American/foreign for me...

    • Eleanor Kilroy July 29, 2011 at 10:12 am with 3 replies

      I found it distasteful, and perhaps my sense of humour failed me, but I really find something about Larry's taking this subject on (and parodying - if he is - American Jewish paranoia) in the privileged LA setting rather grotesque. But look, if most viewers see it as him exposing hasbara, great, fine!

    • Eleanor Kilroy July 29, 2011 at 9:52 am with 1 replies

      I hope you're right, and by the way, I'm a liberal Brit prude ;)

    • Eleanor Kilroy July 29, 2011 at 9:04 am

      Irony always appreciated, but in this context it really doesn't come across for me, sorry. Something about the air of privilege sticks in my throat...

  • Israeli Foreign Ministry launches social media hasbara campaign featuring cute yellow puppet called 'Hans von Puppet'
  • Right wing seeks to paint Breivik as neo-Nazi so as to disguise the truth, of shared beliefs
    • Eleanor Kilroy July 26, 2011 at 10:57 am with 1 replies

      He is a fascist and a Zionist - and is clearly angry Hitler didn't get Nazism quite right, but the flippant labelling of him as a (neo-)'Nazi' enables right-wing, pro-Israel and anti-Muslim commentators to historically and politically dissociate themselves from the dangerous ideology he subscribed to...

  • My account of July 22nd and its aftermath in Norway
    • Eleanor Kilroy July 26, 2011 at 6:59 am

      Takk Tord - there is so much humanity, humility and grace in your account. Ta vare på

  • Normalizing Israeli apartheid through international sporting events
    • Eleanor Kilroy July 21, 2011 at 2:42 am with 1 replies

      Merlot, just to be ABSOLUTELY clear, I am not accusing PACES of involvement in normalization projects at all. The reason I included this reference was to expose the way the author of 'Serious Play' in the Huffington Post juxtaposes a very selective quote from PACES with what appears to be another solution to Palestinian 'extremism', i.e., the Peres Centre for Peace, which is one of the major targets of this article.

  • Jeffrey Goldberg vs. The Truth
    • Eleanor Kilroy July 18, 2011 at 3:49 pm with 1 replies

      Ok, beyond the weirdness of the sentiment (an elected government official not getting shot in a country's parliament for opposing occupation, ethnic cleansing, and discrimination is cause for celebration?!)

      Brilliant. Goldberg has some peculiarly low standards for Israel - any behaviour above consistently murderous is evidence of a healthy democracy

  • Knesset passes anti-boycott bill, even as London Lit Fest approves
  • Do you deny Israel's right to exist in a lowcut red dress?
  • 'Peace Now' calls on Israel to end blockade but says flotilla is playing 'dangerous game'
  • UK government Facebook page shows solidarity with Gilad Shalit
    • Eleanor Kilroy June 28, 2011 at 1:27 pm

      The Council for Arab-British Understanding have since brought out a statement:

      Caabu has called upon the British government to urgently raise the issue of Palestinian prisoners with the Israeli authorities.

      The demand comes after the UK embassy in Tel Aviv incorporated an image of Gilad Shalit into its Facebook logo, and Alistair Burt MP, Minister responsible for the Middle East, recorded a personal appeal for the release of the Israeli soldier who has been held in Gaza for four years.

      At present however around 680 Palestinians are currently denied family visits by the Israeli government, whilst over 250 are currently held in detention without trial. Graham Bambrough, Parliamentary Officer at Caabu, said that their plight was being ignored by the UK.

      “To view the actions of the British government one would assume that Gilad Shalit was the only individual in the region currently being held away from his family. Of course he should be released, but at present almost 700 Palestinians from Gaza are being denied visits by the Israeli authorities, whilst over 250 people are being held in detention without trial. These anonymous men and women are not the subject of personal video appeals by British Ministers, nor are their images incorporated into our embassy’s logo.”

      Bambrough added that that the issue of child detentions was also being grossly ignored:

      “Caabu urges the British government to look urgently at the issue of Palestinian child prisoners. Some 211 children are being held by Israel, the majority on spurious charges and all of them are subject to sham trials in kangaroo military courts. I hope that the British government will urgently examine their cases and speak up publically and forcefully in their defence.”

      Caabu has recently taken four parliamentary delegations to visit Israel’s military courts and witness trials of minors. Some 700 Palestinian children are prosecuted by the courts each year, the majority on charges of stone throwing. Israel's actions in relation to the treatment of minors represent serious breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the UN Convention against Torture and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

      Ends

      Notes:

      Amnesty International reports that around 680 prisoners are being denied family visits – some for over three years: link to amnesty.org

      DCI-Palestine report that 211 children are currently in Israeli jails. A child recently held without trial or charge, has only recently been released: link to dci-palestine.org

      The British Embassy in Tel Aviv’s Facebook page: link to facebook.com

      Alistair Burt calls for release of Gilad Shalit: link to youtube.com

      28 June 2011

  • Peres awaits, Shakira
  • 'The truth is not easy to tell': The story of Palestinian women in Israel
    • Eleanor K June 20, 2011 at 4:58 am with 1 replies

      Shmuel, I do not read Hebrew (yet), but I note that other commentators have picked up on the 'misspelling' of Palestinians: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=8610

      When writing the book review, I checked with an Israeli friend and I was told this was no longer the case for Haaretz, but this is from 2005:
      "If Haaretz is asking for a fresh start, it should start with its own language, and stop immediately the use of the belittling and humiliating term they use in Hebrew for Palestine and the Palestinians. The required and correct name is `Palestine` and the adjective is `Palestinians`- written with the Hebrew `SAMECH` and `TET` and not `SIN and `TAV` – in a manner that looks and sounds of the biblical Philistines. Start using it and getting used to it, it will eventually sink in. Imagine if some newspaper were to decide in an ongoing and obsessive manner to write “fucks` (in Hebrew ZIYUNIM) instead of Zionists, or `Eis’raal` (has the Hebrew word poison in it) instead of Israel. Ha`aretz would print an editorial calling for an immediate stop to this cheap anti-Semitism."

  • Bahraini blogger on State Dep't tour says Hillary Clinton 'betrayed' and 'crushed' Bahrain democracy movement
  • How 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' became a mascot of the liberal west
    • Eleanor K June 15, 2011 at 6:16 pm

      The Jadaliyya article is brilliant, although whatever you say about MacMaster - a vain, Orientalist, insensitive, crazy white man who endangered lives - he put into the mouth of his fictional character, 'Amina', a critique of pinkwashing very much along the lines of 'an ardent cry to LGBT Arabs, women, progressives, and others “to refuse to allow parts of our personhood (sexuality, gender) to be mobilized at the expense of other parts of our personhood (the Palestinian, the Arab, the working class)."' as excerpted above. I don't think his professed politics are at issue here. Rather, it is the fact he was conceited and stupid enough to think he knew the lived reality of a queer woman in an Arab country to the extent he could pretend to be one, and garner support and sympathy from people all over the world. What contempt!

      I'm sorry to say also that the hoaxer did not only fool westerners, although from the infamous post, "My father, the hero", it was clear to most Syrians, at least, that it was fiction.

  • Why I fell so hard for 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' (and why the hoax makes me angry and conservative)
  • 'Gay Girl in Damascus' deceit has damaged the cause
    • Eleanor K June 13, 2011 at 5:21 am with 2 replies

      These responses on Gay Middle East website are worth reading: From Damascus with Love: Blogging in a Totalitarian State

      "You took away my voice, Mr. MacMaster, and the voices of many people who I know. To bring attention to yourself and blog; you managed to bring the LGBT movement in the Middle East years back. You single-handedly managed to bring unwanted attention from authorities to our cause and you will be responsible for any LGBT activist who might be yet another fallen angel during these critical time."

  • 'Gay Girl in Damascus' is a hoax -- Electronic Intifada
    • Eleanor K June 12, 2011 at 5:59 pm with 2 replies

      One striking aspect of Tom MacMaster's blog is 'My Blog List' in the right-hand column: Mondoweiss is third one down, which surely means MacMaster - being an opinionated kind of guy - is a regular commenter on here, but under what name I wonder...

  • Matthew Phillips's memorial service in New York
    • Eleanor K April 11, 2011 at 7:29 pm

      Darkness descends and friends and family try to reassure you there is light, that they love you, and not to give up hope, but the suffering is too much. I am sorry, Louis and Pat and Ian. Matthew had a beautiful face, a brilliant intellect and seemed motivated by love and a keen sense of justice.

  • PEN debates cultural boycott
    • Eleanor K April 4, 2011 at 7:21 am

      Yes, her piece included this now priceless sentence: "Others dismissed my citing of International PEN and its cultural-boycott-precluding efforts to free imprisoned writers as irrelevant twaddle." It certainly is.

  • Let the tribute fit the crime
    • Eleanor K February 23, 2011 at 9:10 am with 1 replies

      Marc Estrin has a good piece, also on Mondoweiss, deconstructing McEwan's speech: 'Speaking half-truths to power'. Check it out, Hostage and fuster, if you haven't already

  • 'Welcome to the lions of Almaza': Neighborhood patrols defend a Cairo in flux
  • Noticing my distress, the other detainee whispered: ‘I’m sorry. This is not Egypt. This is Mubarak’
  • Macy Gray wants to build bridges, can she help tear down an illegal wall?
  • Boycott and I Choke
  • McEwan's antenna tunes in tired song

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