Regular readers of this blog will be familiar with my views on the London Review of Books so I won’t repeat them. Its current issue leads with yet another badly argued rant against Israel and apologia for Hamas, this time written by someone called Henry Siegman. Judging by the potted biography of him at the bottom of his article, Siegman is a Jew. The editors of the LRB are oh so keen to publish articles by Jews attacking Israel. I wonder why.
Continue reading ‘Bob from Brockley on Ducks, Chickens and Bad Arguments’
Roger Cohen is in a bad way, down in the dumps, ashamed. What about?
I have never previously felt so despondent about Israel, so shamed by its actions, so despairing of any peace that might terminate the dominion of the dead in favor of opportunity for the living.
Continue reading ‘Depression and Shame: Roger Cohen on Gaza’
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
The sensationalist Austrian rag, Neue Kronenzeitung, accounts for 42 per cent of the country’s daily newspaper readership. On weekends, this increases to 65 per cent. The paper is no friend of the Jewish community, however.
Continue reading ‘Antisemitic Tropes in Austria’s Top-Selling Daily’
Last night, I was interviewed on the excellent John Batchelor Show, discussing (in pretty much the same breath) Colonel Qaddafi and John Mearsheimer. You can listen to it here, at 1:02:40 into the broadcast.
The man with his back to the camera is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President. The man warmly hugging him is Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of the UN General Assembly. The occasion for their embrace was Ahmadinejad’s viciously antisemitic speech at the UN last September.
Continue reading ‘Holocaust Memorial Day: Embracing the Devil’
This is the second of three guest posts by Henry McDonald, who has covered Irish politics for the Observer and Guardian newspapers, examining the flaws in the frequently-drawn comparison between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Islamist terror groups like Hamas. The posts are drawn from the final chapter of Henry’s recent book, Gunsmoke and Mirrors - How Sinn Fein Dressed up Defeat as Victory, available here. You can read Henry’s earlier post here.
Irish republicans throughout the generations have never lacked physical courage in pursuit of their goals. They have however been subject to certain boundaries imposed by their own particular background and culture. Throughout the hunger strike the prisoners’ supporters insisted that their fast for political status was not slow drawn out suicide, which for centuries was regarded as a sin in Catholic theology. It seems puzzling none the less that a political movement that produced activists willing to starve themselves to death for a cause would regard still suicide bombing as anathema.
Continue reading ‘The Limits of the Northern Ireland Analogy (2)’
In Basra in 2003 the USA and the UK chose to use extreme force against locations that had been fortified by the Ba’ath Party, in order to spare our troops and the people of Basra the horror of a drawn-out street battle. It appears that the IDF made the same choice in Gaza.
Read the rest.
Thanks to Petra Marquardt-Bigman for directing us to this piece.
Below is the translation of an article by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenbladet on January 23rd. An expert on contemporary antisemitism, Dr. Gerstenfeld is Chairman of the Board of Fellows at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
Last September my new book in English Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews was published. It provides many details of how the Nordic countries’ moral pretenses and supposed concern for humanitarian rights often hide darker attitudes. This is particularly true regarding Norway and Sweden. I also listed some of the book’s key aspects on Norway in the Jerusalem Post last December. This article gave attention as well to new developments including the weak reactions of Norwegian civil society to the anti-Semitic remarks of the comedian Otto Jespersen.
Continue reading ‘Norway, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Israelism’
Over at Apuntes Urbanos, the anonymous blogger has written a brief history of Argentina in the style to which we have become accustomed to seeing applied to Israel. The text below is my - slightly shortened - translation. Readers may wish to to take a look at the history of their own country through a similar lens.
Continue reading ‘Argentina, as if it were Israel’
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
Gerhard Oberkofler, a retired Professor in the Austrian city of Innsbruck and a writer for the Stalinist website Kominform, concerns himself once again with “gangs of Israeli murderers.”
Continue reading ‘Stalinist Smears’
There’s a sullenness about the current cover of The American Conservative. During a week in which the United States has witnessed the inauguration of its first black President, the house journal of reactionary isolationism ignores that milestone and instead rails against what it regards as Israel’s self-defeating iniquities in Gaza. Leading the pack of the disaffected is John Mearsheimer, co-author of “The Israel Lobby.”
Continue reading ‘America First in the Middle East’
Reporting from Gaza, Juan Miguel Muñoz says that that more than a hundred Palestinians suspected of spying for Israel were summarily executed by Hamas during the recent conflict in that territory.
Continue reading ‘Human Rights in Gaza?’
In an article in El País, José R. Ayaso sets out to clarify the use of such terms as “Jew” and “Hebrew ” in Spanish. In principle this is a laudable project, as one often comes across such barbarisms as “the Hebrew army” in Spanish language media.
Continue reading ‘Gaza, Antisemitism And Carelessness With Words’
This is the first in a series of three guest posts by Henry McDonald, who has covered Irish politics for the Observer and Guardian newspapers, examining the flaws in the frequently-drawn comparison between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Islamist terror groups like Hamas. The posts are drawn from the final chapter of Henry’s recent book, Gunsmoke and Mirrors - How Sinn Fein Dressed up Defeat as Victory, available here.
It was arguably the most unlikeliest of places to illuminate the chasm between Irish republican and Islamist terrorism. The ‘Star Letter’ of the January 2008 edition of the British toilet humour magazine/comic ‘Viz’ counterposed the terrorism of the IRA and Al Qaeda.
Continue reading ‘The Limits of the Northern Ireland Analogy (1)’
This is a guest post by Doug Lieb of the American Jewish Committee
Move over Tony Judt. Here comes the Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
Continue reading ‘That Qaddafi Op-Ed…’
