Winter is coming and Palestinian refugees are especially vulnerable. But the int’l agency that provides for their needs, UNRWA, faces a huge deficit in funding. With so many governments deciding to bomb Syria, who is talking about the “human development” response? Think of helping UNRWA this winter.
When the US bombs Syria it is an act of war that is bound to provoke terrorist acts in the west. Several left and realist writers have been making this obvious point, but the neocon/interventionist political mainstream is resistant to echoing it.
After haunting images of refugee suffering last summer, the U.S. seemed prepared to open its doors to 10,000. Since Paris and San Bernardino, ISIS has what it wants: presidential candidates have turned 180 degrees, calling for a “pause” on refugee resettlement or advocating for a “Christian-refugee-only” policy.
Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler writes, “Who, when and how were Syed Farook and Tasheen Malik and the countless others radicalized? The answer to this question is found in a world that has been ravished by war and greed; in the conditions of despair that has been created; in the powerless feeling pushed around by the powerful; and it is there in refugee camps and at funerals from drone strikes that we will find the agents of anger that breeds radicalization that we claim we do not understand.”
Trump declares war on Muslims. ISIS challenges the West. Obama threatens to invade Syria while France considers shutting down mosques. The news is grim, but not everyone is despairing.
Secretary of State John Kerry angered Israelis by saying that unending Israeli settlement construction and occupation are dashing Palestinian hopes for a state and fostering violence. And the “Arab street” won’t let this stand either, he warned
Marc Ellis says, “I am a political moderate with radical questions.” A supporter of “two real states” in Israel and Palestine, he tells Robert Cohen, “Israel has foreclosed this possibility.”
The media will swarm and exhaustively cover attacks on civilians in the West when Muslims do them. But when the perpetrator is white, the questions become “how are we getting so used to this” and “is it time to talk about gun control.”
The west can’t defeat ISIS without dealing with colonial past. Terror is ugly not only when it reaches Paris, London, and New York, but when it takes the lives of 97 in Istanbul, 40 in a suburb of Beirut, and scores in Palestine too.
Israeli novelist David Grossman is a face of liberal Zionism around the world. Yet his 2008 novel To the End of the Land fails as a love letter to Israel; it is nationalistic and treats Arabs as animalistic