A reader emphatically recommends this piece by Marty Peretz in The New Republic. In a few short paragraphs, three grand themes emerge; the enormity of the genocide in Darfur, which is being documented as it happens; the minor importance, by comparison, of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the unctuous discourse of Arab leaders who wax lyrical about Palestine while backing up the genocidaires of Khartoum.
In this piece in the Guardian Richard Silverstein comes to a conclusion I agree with; the Gaza Fulbright scholars should be allowed to study in the USA. However, he says some rather peculiar things along the way.
Look at this leaflet and see if you can work out the omission.
Some scholars and activists are making the case that the “mingong” - migrant workers who gravitate to the wealthy cities from poor inland provinces - are subjected to a form of apartheid in the People’s Republic of China enabled by the hukou system.
In 1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the leading postwar film directors and writers in Germany, wrote a play entitled “Garbage, the City and Death.” Set in a desolate urban landscape of prostitutes and seedy nightclubs, the play cemented Fassbinder’s infamy largely because of the inclusion of a character named “The Rich Jew.”
Saeb Erekat, the PA’s chief negotiator, is interviewed here by Laura L. Caro, the Jerusalem correspondent of ABC, the Spanish conservative daily newspaper. The gist of his remarks is that the supposed Israeli offer to cede 93% of the West Bank to the Palestinians, much talked about in the press in recent days, does not reflect what is actually being discussed in the negotiations and was really just an Israeli media ploy to pin the blame on the Palestinian side for a breakdown in negotiations.
There’s a long interview with Sari Nusseibeh in Ha’aretz. He says he still supports the two-state solution, but time is running out:
Continue reading ‘Nusseibeh: Time is Running Out for the Two-State Solution’
Female passengers aboard the two ships travelling to “break the siege of Gaza,” be warned: should you get there, showing any flesh will be frowned upon by the Hamas masters of the territory.
There is probably more fashionable nonsense talked about Israel and Gaza than any other aspect of the conflict. If you look here you’ll find some aspects of this nonsense very ably dissected by Seán Gannon. My only quibble is that he says that Israel controls Gaza’s borders when in fact it is Israel and Egypt who border Gaza.
Eamonn was saying in an earlier post that he hadn’t seen any left-wing demonstrations outside the Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires protesting events in Georgia. It’s a safe bet that there’s the same degree of invisibility in other metropolises.
This is a guest post by Contentious Centrist
The reactions to the death of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, as always when a controversial figure passes away, can be arranged along a continuum, from the most rhapsodic to the most satirical.
It looks like the fighting in the Caucasus is over, at least for the moment. It’s hard to know how many people have been killed or driven from their homes in recent days but the figure must run to thousands in the former category and tens of thousands in the latter. Let me mention a few of the things I haven’t seen in Buenos Aires in the last seven days.
Continue reading ‘Six Things I Haven’t Seen In The Last Week’
“While current hostility to Jews in the UK is frequently packaged as ‘progressive’ political comment, its origins are in traditional social attitudes that have been integral to Britain’s history for centuries.” So concludes Shalom Lappin in a new paper entitled “This Green and Pleasant Land: Britain and the Jews.”
Howard Rotberg is a Canadian novelist. I have to confess that I’m not familiar with his work, but this extraordinary story brings to mind one of the great novels of the twentieth century.
Just occasionally, the good guys win. On the 14th of November last year in Buenos Aires, a bus driver shouted racial insults at the son of a rabbi who wanted to board his vehicle then physically attacked him, smashing his glasses, before kicking him back on to the street. The youth found a policeman and told him what had happened and the policeman managed to stop the bus and arrest the driver.
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