John Salisbury reports from Dr. Marcelo Svirsky’s epic walk from Sydney to Canberra. Svirsky covered the distance of 287 kilometers (just over 178 miles) in 10 days to garner support for a petition to present to the Australian Federal Parliament promoting discussion of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.
Academe is, in many ways, today a locus of the struggle against Israeli apartheid—just as it was for the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the quite recent past.
Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of the NYT, says that the NYT should disclose the fact that neoconservative columnist David Brooks’s son joined the Israeli army because he’s involved “in a serious international conflict.” Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor, says the Times doesn’t need to disclose the fact.
Martin Indyk says Democratic politicians are having less to do with Israel because the party base doesn’t support the country, and Obama’s recent indifference to Israel suggests he wants nothing to do with the country. He told Israel what it had to do years ago and Israelis ignored him.
The rhetoric used by Obama to defend yet another illegal and ill-conceived American air campaign in the Middle East is well-worn. The very same word salad, notably the “language of force” line, has been routinely served up to justify lethal action against a seemingly intractable foe and it puts the onus on the target of that aggression for bringing such violence upon itself: if they weren’t such barbarians, we too wouldn’t have to resort to barbarism.
Why is the Meltzer group, a US life insurance company, underwriting a talk by an Israeli reserve colonel defending Israel’s conduct in the Gaza slaughter of last summer? At a Washington synagogue.
The debate triggered by Bill Maher’s comments about Islam on his HBO show Friday night,…
SodaStream makes its seltzer devices under apartheid conditions in the occupied territories and has been the target of international boycott efforts. No wonder its stock, once at $64 is now at $22 and going nowhere fast.
Hundreds of people demonstrated outside Senators Schumer and Gillibrand’s offices in New York yesterday over eight hours, calling on them to enforce the Leahy Law and cut off aid to Israel because of human rights violations. Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews Say No co-sponsored.
Liberal Zionism is in crisis, because its answers have proved to be helpless against the occupation. Still some hang on, using slogans. Todd Gitlin says that pogroms are “raging” in Europe and people who support boycott of Israel are “tribalists.” Susan Talve, St. Louis progressive rabbi, suggests that the three Israeli teens killed in occupied territories were kin to American martyrs Schwerner Chaney and Goodman.