Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, compares Palestinian knife attacks to the Islamic jihadists who killed fusilier Lee Rigby on the London streets in 2013, nearly beheading him. A morally bankrupt analogy.
In light of recent headlines filmmaker Udi Aloni reflects on violence in Israel/Palestine: “As an individual sovereign human being I oppose all violence. This is the reason why I’ve supported BDS, and I’ll never collaborate with violence, but when I think with the aid of Walter Benjamin I can say that the violence of the Israeli Jews is institutional violence that represents the Israeli will for hegemony and oppression, while the violence of the Palestinian Jerusalemites and citizens of the state is the violence of oppressed subterranean streams seeking a place to erupt and to utter a strong outcry against injustice and for justice.”
The Australian reporter Antony Loewenstein publishes more excellent first-hand reporting from around the world, in a new book titled Disaster Capitalism.
In Jeff Halper’s view, the elephant in the room of Israel’s immunity from criticism is the military-security connection. There’s no Jewish lobby in India or China, nor is Christian fundamentalist Zionism a political force in Thailand or Colombia. And what explains Saudi Arabia’s willingness to do business with Israel despite its long-standing criticism of the Jewish State?
The New York Times bows to pressure from Jewish press by making a crucial edit and “correction” of an article about the presence of Jewish temples on the present site of the al Aqsa plaza.
In The New Atheist Threat: The Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremism, author C J Werleman argues that an atheism that does battle only with imaginary spirits and ghosts to the neglect of pressing international issues of war and peace cheapens the legacy of the old free thinkers.
The international community has been acting over the last twenty years as though there is a genuine peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis while Israel furthered its interests by continuing to expand its colonial settlements and to deepen its security ties with PA security apparatuses to meet its own security needs. It is now time to declare the two-state solution well and truly dead.
The Saudi-led, US-backed coalition killed 131 civilians, including at least 80 women, after bombing a wedding in Yemen on September 28. A representative of Doctors Without Borders said there was no military presence near the wedding. This attack marks the deadliest day in the war in Yemen, which has now gone on for over half a year.
The crisis in Syria is still in full throttle. President Obama pretends to be a powerless…
An ad from a conservative group targeting Colorado Senator Michael Bennet for his vote in favor of Iran Deal features children who are targets of a nuclear strike. Bennet is up in 2016 and won by just two points in 2010.