Israel, not before time, is switching from the cheap and nasty imported cluster munitions which have caused such problems for civilians in south Lebanon, to domestically produced alternatives which come closer to working as they are supposed to.
Archive for September, 2008
In what Yediot Ahronot has billed as a “legacy interview” on the occasion of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has - as he himself says - expressed ideas unheard from any previous Israeli leader.
I have already commented on the first three posts of a series by Samuel Fleischacker on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute currently appearing over at Normblog here, here, and here. The fourth in the series appeared yesterday and I don’t really have any comments to make on this occasion because I agree with practically all of it.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 4”’
There’s an excellent paper here by Stephen Biddle and Jeffrey A. Friedman about the military performance of Hezbollah in its 2006 conflict with Israel. Its main focus is on the extent to which this performance represented a shift on the part of the Shiite militia from the sort of irregular warfare long practised by terrorists and guerillas, to a more conventional form of fighting, such as that which has usually been been the preserve of the armies of nation states.
According to this story, Israel has just received an advanced, early warning radar system, as well the crew to operate it, from the United States. This represents a major step forward for American-Israeli defense integration and will greatly improve Israel’s ability to deal with ballistic missile threats.
Further to Eamonn’s last post, over on the main Z Word site we’ve assembled some of our key blog posts on the “one state solution.” This is the first in an occasional series entitled Arguments, in which we examine specific areas of contention concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its wider ramifications.
Luz Gómez García takes the one state solution out for a spin here in today’s El País. Channeling the sainted Edward Said as an authority, she quotes him as believing the one state solution, in the form of a single bi-national state, to be both desirable and inevitable for the following unconvincing reasons,
Paul Newman “personified cool” says the AP obituary of a fine actor who passed away today. We remember him for many great films - among them “Hud,” “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Sting” and (of course) “Exodus,” in which he played Haganah fighter Ari Ben Canaan.
Among American Jews, those who identify as liberals outnumber conservatives by more than two to one. When it comes to the Presidential campaign, it is the issues of concern to all Americans - especially the nosediving economy and health care - which guide voting intentions. When it comes to the Middle East, the overwhelming majority feels a sense of closeness towards Israel - but there is general pessimism over the prospects for peace in the region as well as significant doubt over the rectitude of a military assault upon Iran’s nuclear installations.
One of Israel’s leading academics, Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, is lying in Jerusalem’s Sha’are Tzedek hospital after being lightly wounded by a pipe bomb allegedly planted by right-wing extremists. Reports the Jerusalem Post:
Here in New York, the Ahmadinejad show continues. Yesterday, the Iranian President met with a delegation from Neturei Karta, the haredi Jewish sect whose theology makes submission the ultimate virtue (the State of Israel is an abomination, Jews should be the meek, loyal subjects of whomever happens to be ruling them.) Tonight, he will sit down for an iftar dinner sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), aka The Quakers.
In two earlier posts, here and here, we reported on the fallout from Tikkun’s decision to publish on its website an article by an antisemitic writer who uses the name “Israel Shamir.” The article has now been removed from the website. Nonetheless, Karl Pfeifer, a Holocaust survivor and veteran anti-fascist based in Vienna, persisted in asking Tikkun to establish the facts of what happened. Karl’s last email to Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, is republished below, as is Michael Lerner’s response.
UPDATE: The text of Ahmadinejad’s address to the UN, in which he claimed that “Zionists…have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries,” can be read here.
Perched in a suite at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in town for the UN General Assembly, has been making nice with the press.
There follows my response to certain matters raised in the third post, titled “Racism and Anti-Semitism”, in a series by Samuel Fleischacker - hereinafter referred to as SF - about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, currently appearing over at Normblog. My responses to the two previous posts can be found here and here.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 3”’
Reviewing Bernard-Henri Lévy’s new book about the crisis of the left, Christopher Hitchens says,
He [Lévy] is much readier to defend Israel as a democratic cause than are most leftists and many Jews, but he was early in saying that a Palestinian state was a good idea, not because it would appease Arab and Muslim grievances but for its own sake. (This distinction strikes me as both morally and politically important.)
