There’s much to recommend in this review by Christopher Hitchens of Globalising Hatred, Denis MacShane’s new book on antisemitism.
Author Archive for Eamonn McDonagh
Daniel Levy works for a think tank. This is a little odd because, judging by some of the things he says here, thinking does not appear be his forte.
Writing in El Mundo’s Middle East blog, Sal Emergui works himself into something of a lather about the 21 days in prison recently dished out by the Israeli Air Force to one of its members who had allowed himself the luxury of an unsmothered yawn during a speech being delivered by the commanding officer of the Ramat David air force base, on the occasion of a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Over at Open Democracy there’s a good piece by John C. Hulsman recommending some practical steps Barack Obama could take to bring about a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. The gist of his argument is that the sort of negotiations that have been dragging on between the parties since Oslo are unlikely to get anywhere and that what are required now are fairly rapid and largely secret negotiations aimed at producing a deal that takes care of all the crunch issues in one go.
There’s an excellent article by Alejandro Baer in today’s El País about the contrasting treatment given to the news of Kristallnacht on the Francoist and Republican sides during the Spanish Civil War. Baer, a social anthropologist at Madrid’s Complutense University, sets out in detail the approval and indeed glee with which the news was greeted on the Francoist side and compares this with the condemnations expressed by the media on the Republican side, as well as noting the solidarity expressed with the victims by Spain’s legitimate government and the support offered to them, even as the Republic’s own death agony approached.
Over at Normblog you’ll find the tenth and final post in Sam Fleischacker’s brilliant “Cool Hour” analysis of the competing claims to justice in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It has offered new and stimulating arguments on questions that sometimes seem to have been argued to death. That’s not a small achievement.
Writing in Haaretz yesterday Gideon Levy bemoans what he sees as the excessive indulgence shown to Israel by the Bush administration and expresses the hope that Obama will do things differently.
The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff hasn’t taken long to bring the creepy crawlies of racial hatred out from under the nearest rock. An Argentine national newspaper has today headlined a piece about him with the words “The ‘Jewish Rahmbo’ brings more war.”
Juan Miguel Muñoz, El País’s correspondent in Jerusalem, has never gone to any great trouble to disguise his loathing for Israel and in this report in today’s edition of the paper he really lets his prejudices show.
If you look here you’ll find an interesting letter in today’s Guardian. It’s from Professor Shindler of the School of Oreiental and African Studies of the University of London and succintly deals with certain aspects of the relationship between some Palestinian nationalists and Nazi Germany.
Sam Fleischacker here examines the case for a Jewish state in Israel/Palestine in the latest post in his “Cool Hour” series over at Normblog. Readers won’t be surprised to learn that I am in agreement with the overall thrust of Sam’s arguments.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 9″’
Look here if you want to see Victoria Brittain, a former associate foreign editor of ‘The Guardian’ newspaper, exclude herself from all serious discussion of both Middle Eastern and African affairs.
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There is an article here in the New Statesman by Edward Platt in which he describes some of the efforts of Israel and the PA to shut down organizations on the West Bank they believe to be channeling funds to Hamas.
Over at Normblog you’ll find the latest installment of Sam Fleischacker’s series “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict”. On this occasion Fleischacker deals with “Self-Determination: The Case for Arab Sovereignty over All of Palestine.” I think that though Sam makes many telling points along the way, the overall conclusion he draws is not correct and in the following remarks I will try to show why.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 8″’
I’ve followed, from a distance, the debate in the UK on a possible academic boycott of Israel and no other country pretty much from the start. I’ve paid as much attention to it as I could, I believe in the vital importance of trade unions and if I didn’t have some faith in the power of argument I wouldn’t be writing here.
