Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on coverage in the French press of President Sarkozy’s visit to Israel.
In recent years, the debate over French policy towards Israel has been complicated by two factors: firstly, a perception among Israelis that France is tilted towards the Arab side in the conflict, secondly, the issue of antisemitism.
Continue reading ‘Sarkozy in Israel: A View from the French Press’
JTA reports that French comic Dieudonne has been fined “nearly $11,000 for referring to Holocaust remembrance as ‘memorial pornography’ at a news conference following a performance in Algeria in February 2005.” The report also notes some of his more choice sayings - “Zionism is the AIDS of Judaism,” along with a variation of this old favorite: “Those Jews who criticize me are all former slave merchants who now control the media and the banks.”
Consider the following scenario:
An international mining conglomerate is poised to honor a $400m deal which will bolster an African dictator currently visiting murderous violence upon his people. Said dictator is following through with a sham election which the opposition, as a result of grotesque intimidation, has been forced to pull out of. The conglomerate is headquartered in a democratic country governed by a party affiliated with the Socialist International; said government has urged companies not to conduct business with the dictator. But the mining conglomerate is defending its position by pointing to the economic benefits of the deal, neglecting to mention that, as a result of the dictator’s abuses, inflation is so off the charts that not even the IMF can track it anymore.
When kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was eleven years old, he wrote a short story entitled “When The Shark and The Fish First Met.” As we mark two years of his captivity, watch this video.
For decades, media coverage of the refugee issue in the Middle East has focused almost exclusively on the plight of the Palestinians, so today represents something of a milestone: a report on Jewish refugees from Arab countries on the BBC website, pegged to the conference currently taking place in London organized by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC).
Observers of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are accustomed to constant appeals to “international law.” International law, the wisdom instructs us, is not something you want to be on the wrong side of.
That’s the upshot of this excellent piece by Mira Vogel on Engage. A member of the UCU, Mira despairs at the absence of any guidance over the appropriateness of a boycott - though I am less surprised, given that the boycott policy has been pushed through by the misfits of the Socialist Workers party, who think such things are a trifle.
News is coming in of a brutal attack on a Jewish teenager in Paris last night.
The latest edition of CQ Global Researcher, published by the Congressional Quarterly, is devoted to the question of antisemitism in Europe. It contains a debate between myself and Antony Lerman - director of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research - on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Continue reading ‘Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Ben Cohen Debates Antony Lerman’
Writing in Foreign Policy, Steven A. Cook argues that the commonly-held assumption that the best way to confront Islamism is through cultivating moderate Muslims is fatally flawed.
Well, the Governors of St. Peter’s College Oxford think so, anyway. They just passed the following resolution:
On Engage, Eric Lee expresses concern about this weekend’s international conference of the South-Eastern region of the UK’s umbrella Trades Union Congress (SERTUC).
The BBC has a revealing story about what - if we’re being generous - might be considered a gaffe just before a football match between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. It’s pretty clear that the Lebanese players were none too pleased at hearing not their own anthem, but that of the country which has tormented them for decades.
Pace Marx and Engels, a spectre is haunting the next President of the United States. The spectre is shaped like a missile, tipped with a nuclear warhead and is Iranian in origin. More than that, if the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is correct, the next President will be dealing with the fallout of the military action against Iran which the current one is about to assent to.
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