Most gyms have a code of etiquette these days which users encounter through strategically-placed signs: don’t hog the cardiovascular equipment, don’t use more towels than you need, wipe down machines after use, put the free weights back in their holders and so forth. They may now need to add antisemitic outbursts to the list of do nots.
In the wake of the conflict in Gaza, David Stavrou, a freelance Israeli journalist based in Sweden, has written a piece which shows how current Swedish antisemitism - driven by the left but also embedded in the mainstream, and dominated by demands for solidarity with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah - replicates what we are seeing in many other countries.
This is a guest post by Kenneth Bandler, Director of Communications for the American Jewish Committee.
One of the first Israeli casualties in the recent war with Hamas was an Arab construction worker, felled by a missile fired from Gaza into Ashkelon. In an instant, Hamas made clear it does not distinguish its victims. All Israelis are fair game.
Juan Gelman is a distinguished Argentine poet. In 2007 he was awarded the Premio Cervantes, the most important prize awarded for literature in the Spanish language. Gelman devoted a good part of his youth and middle age to participation various revolutionary Peronist organizations and was obliged to flee the country during the 1976 - 1983 military dictatorship. In recent years, as well as his work as a poet, he has devoted himself to fulminating in the press against what he regards as the two principle founts of evil in the world: the United States of America and Israel.
Ibsen Martínez is a Venezuelan journalist and writer and there follows my - slightly shortened - translation of a recent op-ed piece by him in El País of Madrid.
Continue reading ‘Chávez: “Showgirl of the Oliver Stone Left”’
Horacio González is a sociologist by profession and is currently director of Argentina’s National Library. He has never been slow to get involved in public debate on matters of controversy and Página/12 here devotes a full page to an essay of his bearing the title “Philosophy and Army”. As far as I can tell, the essay constitutes an intervention in the debate about recent events in Gaza.
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
In the winter of 1077, Emperor Henry IV journeyed to Canossa near Reggio nell’Emilia as a simple penitent. On January 28, after waiting for three days, he received absolution from Pope Gregory VII. The name Canossa thus became associated with submission to the church.
Twice in three days now, Hamas thugs have stolen humanitarian aid transported into the Gaza Strip by UNRWA, the UN agency which caters to Palestinian refugees, via the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel.
Enrique Krauze is a Mexican writer and, among other roles, the editor of Letras Libres. The following is my translation of part of an op-ed piece by him that appeared this week in El País.
Globes, the Israeli business daily, reports that the Histadrut trade union intends to ask the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) for assistance with the planned boycott of Israeli ships by dockers in South Africa. “The union in South Africa is against anything connected to Israel, and in the past even objected to a cooperation agreement we signed with the Palestinian transport workers union,” the paper quotes Transport Workers Union chairman Avi Edri as saying.
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
According to the Budapest daily Népszabadság, the Budapest district attorney’s office has decided that the Nazi propaganda film Jud Süss can be used for incitement, but only if shown to a sympathetic audience. There will therefore be no prosecution of the Neo-Nazi group which showed the film last July to a paying audience. The liberal party (SZDSZ) is protesting and is ready to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
This article by Z Word contributor Michelle Sieff originally appeared in the Ugandan newspaper, The Independent.
In response to Israel’s war in Gaza, Uganda’s Muslim associations have lambasted Israel for “war crimes” and called on the government to sever its diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. In other African countries with sizeable Muslim populations-Mali, Niger, South Africa, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan, to name a few– Muslim and Palestinian solidarity groups have organised protests where Israel is regularly accused of “genocide” and “war crimes”. The response on the African street is similar to the response on the Arab and European street. Hundreds are turning up at protests to vilify Israel and call for its diplomatic and economic isolation.
Continue reading ‘Africa: Loud on Israel, Quiet on Zimbabwe’
On Jewcy, Daniel Debow asks whether, in the aftermath of last week’s desecration of a Caracas synagogue, Jews are becoming the new scapegoat in revolutionary Venezuela.
Überblogger Norman Geras has a long and brilliant post on reactions to the recent fighting in Gaza here. It’s essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict and its international repercussions. I offer the following quote as a mere taster for an argument that has to be engaged with in its entirety in order to be properly understood.
This week marks the seventh anniversary of the brutal kidnapping and murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In the gruesome video which culminated in Pearl’s beheading by a gang of Islamist terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan, he was heard saying, “My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish.”
Continue reading ‘Daniel Pearl and the Normalization of Evil’
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