Welcome to The Mideast Peace Pulse - a new blog from the Israel Policy Forum. Their roster includes Tom Dine, Ghassan Khatib, MJ Rosenberg, Alon Ben Meir, Nimrod Novik and others. Sometimes you’ll agree, sometimes you won’t. But enough clichés from me - go and read it for yourselves.
This much we know. On February 7, Hampshire College, a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts, divested from a mutual fund which owned equity in companies that do business with Israel. What we don’t know is whether the decision to divest was specifically triggered by Israel-related concerns, or whether it was the consequence of general guidelines on ethical investment. A Palestine advocacy group on the Hampshire campus says, emphatically, that it was the former; in that, and in nothing else, they are in agreement with Alan Dershowitz. The college authorities, however, are insisting upon the latter interpretation.
Continue reading ‘Did Hampshire College Divest from Israel?’
It is possible to be very critical of Israel and its actions without being antisemitic; the Spanish writer Jordi Soler proves it in this op-ed published in El País, part of which I translate below. You could argue with some of his points and not everything is phrased in the most judicious manner. Nevertheless, the attempt to offer a harsh critique of the actions of the Israel while simultaneously separating himself from the mile-wide streak of antisemitism in many similar critiques is as noteworthy as it is laudable.
Via Johnny Guitar, I’ve come across this recording, which I believe is from 2006, of Christopher Hitchens giving a talk on the question of free speech. Very interesting it is too, especially the part where he talks about David Irving, the notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier.
Continue reading ‘Christopher Hitchens on David Irving and Free Speech’
Asked at a major press conference earlier this week about the prospects for talks with Iran, President Obama highlighted two issues which could likely derail any meaningful exchange. First, Iran’s nuclear program, and specifically the fear that it could trigger a regional nuclear arms race. Second, Iran’s funding of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Continue reading ‘Iran’s Nuclear Program: Don’t Forget the Arabs’
The boycotters are proffering advice on the upcoming elections to the national Executive of the Universities and College Union in the UK. Read David Hirsh’s take here.
When all the horse-trading and deal making that Israeli politicians have just plunged into is over, what will remain are the security threats both near and far - and most immediately, the Hamas regime in Gaza.
Every so often, you get a glimpse of what evil really is. There are few regimes on this earth as brutal and cruel as that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Yet the hordes of demonstrators who poured into the streets to protest Israel’s Gaza operation are not perturbed by Mugabe; many of them would probably hail this vicious dictator as a courageous anti-imperialist.
Now the work of building a coalition begins. The Jerusalem Post has an interesting article here which examines voting patterns in different Israeli locales.
Patricia McKeown, the President of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, has been “quoting” Nelson Mandela. “Nelson Mandela described this,” she said, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “as the most important problem on this planet.”
Hugo Chavez’s explanation of the circumstances of the attack on the Tifereth Israel synagogue in Caracas hasn’t impressed everybody.
The exit polls show Kadima ahead by the narrowest of margins. The New York Times sounds a warning: “But even if the official results reflect those exit polls, it is unclear if Kadima can muster enough partners for a stable coalition, leaving open the question of whether she (Livni) or Mr. Netanyahu would form the next government. Commentators were calling the initial results a recipe for political chaos in the coming weeks.”
This is a guest post by David Adler.
I take no pleasure from the fact that right-wing pundits are lashing Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, over her two-part question to President Barack Obama last night. And yet Thomas deserves to be upbraided. The fact that she’s held up by liberals as a paragon of courage is an embarrassment. Drifting further toward the fringe every day, she certainly doesn’t speak for me.
“The dominating emotion of this most undecided of elections has been anguish. Normally reserved for the most troubling of love affairs, this anguish has seized my nights and conquered my days; the scenarios all laid out, the permutations thoroughly hypothesised.”
Read Alex Stein on his journey to the ballot box here.
I say, “There’s a severe drought in Argentina.” You respond with “That’s too bad because there’s a worse one in China, there are disastrous bush fires in Australia and, anyway, some of the leaders of the farm sector in Argentina are rather unsavory characters who are using the drought as a stick to beat the government.”
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