I have no special skills when it comes to predicting the future but I thought I might as well title this post as I have when it occurred to me that many, cough, anti-Zionists, would see three posts in four days about Iran as being a sure sign that something is up. After all, this blog is sponsored by the AJC and hey, come on, we all know what that means….
Archive for the 'Afghanistan' Category
Aisha is an 18-year-old Afghan woman whose nose and ears were cut off by a Taliban butcher for the “crime” of running away from the beatings she routinely suffered at the hands of her husband’s family. Aisha’s picture appears on the cover of Time magazine this week, provoking controversy.
So begins a characteristically brilliant piece by Terry Glavin in which he subjects the Wikigeeks at Wikileaks to a blistering critique. Read it in its entirety here.
Jeffrey Goldberg has a revealing interview with Marcy Winograd, who is challenging Jane Harman in California’s Democratic primary on June 8th.
Here’s a collection of Winograd’s thoughts as shared with Goldberg:
- Why the US brought 9/11 on itself: “Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and were angry at the proliferation of U.S. bases and forces in Saudi Arabia, so I think there’s a great degree of pushback over the presence of U.S. troops all over the world.”
- In answer to the question, “if we left Afghanistan, wouldn’t the Taliban shut down these women-led NGOs?” “Well, that would be the whole point in investing in women-led NGOS, to make them stronger and to help women emerge in leadership positions politically. Under the Soviet-influenced government in Afghanistan, women had far more freedom than they do today, after how many years of American occupation?”
- Why Jews are to blame for antisemitism. “Zionism categorizes Jews as a race, which makes it easier for Jews to be targeted.”
- Why a ‘one-state’ solution doesn’t apparently involve killing most of the Jews currently living in Israel in order to be workable. “I’m a believer in equality, one voice, one vote, Israelis and Palestinians, one voice, one vote, that’s my personal position.”
- And the customary “as-a-Jew” narcissism. “I’ve labeled myself as a Jewish woman of conscience who is compelled to speak out because of the suffering in the world.”
Awful. Just awful.
But here’s a question for J-Street. According to this puff piece about Winograd, one of her enthusiastic backers is Lila Garrett, a J-Street Board Member. Is supporting a candidate who, in her own words, reveals herself to be a Soviet apologist, an advocate of Israel’s elimination, a believer in the thesis that the US brought 9/11 on itself, a supporter of the equation of Zionism with racism, and an optimist on the Taliban’s attitude toward the rights of women compatible with the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” branding?
El Páis of Madrid is a wonderful newspaper. In the lead editorial of today’s edition it fearlessly condemns the supposed assassination by Israel of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
As well as being legally reprehensible and morally unacceptable the policy of selective assassination, or to put it another way, the dirty war only contributes to the illusion that there are alternative solutions to the one that Israel will sooner or later have to face: an end to the occupation and the opening of talks with the Palestinians on the basis of a two state solution.
As readers of this blog know, Roger Cohen is not a wise man. His latest column in the New York Times gives further evidence of this.
Domestic U.S. politics constrain innovative thought - even open debate - on the process without end that is the peace search.
Continue reading ‘Roger Cohen And Wishful Thinking, Part 974′
1.
As readers of this blog will be well aware, Juan Miguel Muñoz, is a man of constant sorrow. He’s the Jerusalem correspondent of El País and over the last couple of years it has fallen to him to report on the daily outrages against the conscience of humanity committed by Israel.
However, in this piece in today’s edition of Spain’s most popular serious newspaper he seems a bit more cheerful. The world, as he sees it, is finally waking up to the reality of the many evils that allowing the Jews to govern themselves has brought upon the world. His analysis, however, doesn’t resist serious consideration.
“If western feminists who have staked out a ‘troops out’ position remembered to ask Afghan women their views, they would find that rather than bristling at ‘masculine militarization,’ ‘cultural imperialism,’ or any other in-vogue sin found on the placards waved at rallies, many Afghan women are haunted by the memory of the Taliban’s public stoning to death of women,” write Wazhma Frogh and Lauryn Oates in a superb piece for The Calgary Herald. Read it in full here. Via Terry Glavin, whose commitment to the principles of genuine solidarity and internationalism never wavers.
You remember all the fuss at the start of the year about Israel’s supposedly disproportionate use of force in Gaza, no? Well, unless you are a close student of Afghan affairs it may have escaped your attention that last Thursday Spanish forces killed 13 members of the Taliban without suffering so much as a scratch on their own side.
Terry Glavin relates that when writer Michael Weiss “went looking for a welcoming home for his excellent inquiry into the toxicity of Afghanistan’s corruption - and its implications for capital investment, the rule of law, and the development of democratic institutions - he found it not in Harper’s Magazine, or The Atlantic, but rather in New Majority, a project aimed at breathing life back into America’s intellectually and morally exhausted Republican Party.” It is an indeed an excellent enquiry - read it and ponder why those publications which should have grabbed it didn’t.
Writing in The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier asks of Pakistan, “how much peril, and for how long, will this tormented place inflict upon the world?” In an article for Democratiya, Terry Glavin, on a visit to neighbouring Afghanistan, relays numerous conversations which shared a common conclusion: “On the question of troop withdrawal, their views were varied and nuanced, but their answer was ultimately the same: Stay.”
