Stuart Appelbaum, of the Jewish Labor Committee, has a piece in The Forward that is really worth reading, so I’m plugging it again.
Archive for March, 2008
Good old school eyewitness journalism isn’t exactly everywhere these days. So allow me to plug a superb piece by my good friend and AJC colleague, Kenneth Bandler, on the situation in the Israeli town of Sderot.
There is much anger today among our friends in the blogosphere today, and justifiably so. Never has it been more clear that those behind the academic boycott of Israelis are a motley crew of villains and rogues.
Take a moment or two to tell us what you think of Z Word.
March 27 Update: The BBC reports that Geert Wilders has now posted fitna on a website. Interestingly, they don’t provide a link.
Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on controversy in Holland over the documentary film, “Fitna.”
Geert Wilders, Dutch parliamentarian and leader of the far-right Freedom Party (PVV), has triggered a furious row in The Netherlands over the issue of Islamophobia with his new documentary film, Fitna - the Arabic title is translated as “civil war.”
No surprise, I suppose, but the leadership of Britain’s academic union - known as the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the University and College Union (UCU) - are pushing, for the fourth year running, an academic boycott of Israelis. Just Israelis.
More on Russian antisemitism from Simply Jews: this time, it’s a movie.
The blood libel is back. Read Simply Jews, here.
Counterpunch, the online journal which recently coined the term “Neo-Jew” - arguably the most significant development in the etymology of Jew-hating since Wilhelm Marr popularized the term “anti-Semite” - is at it again.
Continue reading ‘Force, Violence and the “One-State” Formula’
Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on recent debates over Muslim integration in Germany.
In late 2006, Wolfgang Schauble, the German interior minister, set up a body called the “Islam Conference” with the aim of encouraging dialogue between the state and the representatives of Germany’s Muslim communities. This was followed up, last year, with the creation of the Muslim Coordinating Committee, composed of the four biggest Islamic federations in Germany. Thus did Germany address a major policy question which has cropped up in other western European countries: how to find a bona-fide Muslim interlocutor?
Solomonia in conversation with attorney David Strachman, who has represented victims of terror against the PLO, Iran and others. Listen to it here.
Zev Krengel, Chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, offers a forthright response to criticism of the Jewish communal leadership levelled in Z Word’s recently published essay, “Franchising ‘Apartheid’: Why South Africans Push the Analogy.”
Continue reading ‘Defending Israel in South Africa: SA Jewish Leader Responds to Criticism’
Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, on the continuing furore in the French press over the Paris and Turin book fairs.
Furious debates continue to rage around the Paris book fair, which has just begun and goes until 19 March, and the Turin book fair, scheduled for May, following the decision of both fairs to highlight Israel’s literary achievements in a year marking the 60th anniversary of the State’s creation.
Spreading like wildfire across the web…a video made by a group of Saudi women activists in recognition of International Women’s Day, showing a woman engaged in an act banned in the Kingdom, but unremarkable elsewhere in the world.
Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European Press Reviewer, summarizes a vexed debate in France.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent announcement that, from the beginning of the next school year, all ten year old children will be “entrusted” with the memory of one of the 11,000 French Jewish children murdered during the Holocaust, has provoked a firestorm of debate in the French press. One of the key controversies concerns what some commentators have described as “victim competition” - in other words, that commemorating only the Jewish victims somehow lessens the worth of non-Jewish ones.
