Regular readers will need no introduction to Luis D’Elía. The renowned social activist and prominent supporter of the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner shares his thoughts with the world on Twitter and a few minutes ago he posted this:
Continue reading ‘Argentine Jews: Someone’s Keeping An Eye On You’
El País today runs yet another of its habitual anti-Israel opinion pieces. Today’s example of the genre is by Javier Valenzuela, who says that:
In the 1948 Israel was founded in more than three quarters of what had been that [British] mandate…
In the Huffington Post, Hagai El-Ad has this to say:
What a long way has Israel traveled in just over six decades: from being founded on the very same year as the Declaration of Human Rights, as some form of a response to one of the most horrible crimes in human history - to becoming a state referred to by one of the Declaration’s drafters as having a “criminal government” deserving of BDS. How much goodwill, hope and optimism were destroyed along this journey, how much human suffering caused - and how difficult it will be to change course. The path leading beyond the cliff’s edge is clear and Israel’s government is propelling the country forward with eyes wide open.
7. Conclusion
There are far more similarities than differences in the two papers coverage of the crisis. Both see Israel as entirely at fault, whether through malevolence or incompetence, and both would probably like the crisis to get worse and for the Israelis to get their comeuppance from Washington, but neither can quite bring itself to believe this might be possible. Both share a view of the Palestinians as generally passive, with Israel bearing practically the whole responsibility for the absence of a Palestinian state, almost as if it was something it possessed and perversely refused to hand over, as if the only obstacle to the creation of a state was Israel’s refusal to allow it. Their view of the conflict is an Israel-obsessed one and it sees the Palestinians as having, at best, a partial political subjectivity, waiting for others, principally Israel but also the Americans, to do the right thing and vindicate their rights for them. They both see Israel, in both its existence and its actions as the sole motor of history in the conflict and have a very thin view of the history of the conflict. Despite their evident sympathy for the Palestinians neither paper treats them with the seriousness it treats the Israelis.
Continue reading ‘Biden’s Visit in The Guardian and El País V’
5. El País (i)
The March 14th editorial in El Páis dealing with fallout from Biden’s visit is titled “Dark Horizon”, and starts like this,
The U.S. Vice President, Joseph Biden, arrived in Tel Aviv last week with the intention of promoting a rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians, but he was received by the Netanyahu Government with the announcement of new settlement projects: 112 housing units in the West Bank and 1,600 in East Jerusalem.
Continue reading ‘Biden’s Visit in The Guardian and El País III’
3. The Facts
The controversy arose from the fact that during a visit in early March from Vice President Biden, Israel announced its intention to build 1600 new housing units in a part of the city of Jerusalem captured from the Kingdom of Jordan during the Six Day War. Given that Biden was in the country to make encouraging noises to both sides in the then approaching proximity peace talks, the timing of the announcement was unfortunate to say the very least. Biden himself immediately condemned the move while Secretary of State Hilary Clinton described it as “deeply negative” and David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, described it both as an “affront” and an “insult”. Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Sates, is alleged to have said that the row amounted to the worst crisis in US-Israeli relations in 35 years, though he later claimed to have been misquoted. Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed that he was unaware that the announcement was to be made during Biden’s visit, expressed regret about its timing and set up a committee to ensure that such a decision would not be made public without his approval in the future. The Palestinian side reacted by threatening not to participate in the proximity talks.
Continue reading ‘Biden’s Visit in The Guardian and El País II’
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.
There’s an editorial in today’s El País about Gaza and Israel’s policy towards it that offers a nice mix of rank prejudice and preconceptions masquerading as analysis.
Earlier today, the unctuous Ben White attempted to leave a comment on Jonathan Hoffman’s piece below. Now, as some of the anti-Zionist nonsense underneath Jonathan’s piece attests, we try to allow a range of comments on this blog. But Ben White? No. While you’ve got to grin at his sheer chutzpah, White needs to understand that the ban on Jonathan Hoffman attending the launch of his ridiculous excuse for a book means that he is, as a direct consequence, not welcome here.
I have already written here and here about a violent attack on a street celebration in the city of Buenos Aires of the 61st anniversary of the foundation of Israel and later about the petition signed by various pillars of the Argentine human rights movement calling for the attackers to be released forthwith. On Wednesday last there appeared in Pagina /12 a lengthy article by Osvaldo Bayer justifying his support for the petition and today in the same paper there’s a brief reply from Daniel Goldman.
Continue reading ‘Antisemitism, Human Rights and Acceptable Jews in Buenos Aires’
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, holder of the Nobel Peace Prize, Federico Shuster, Dean of the Social Sciences Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires and Osvaldo Bayer, a writer regarded as something of a guru on human rights, are just three of the pillars of Argentine progressive and left option who have signed a petition calling for the release of detainees being held in connect with an attack on Jews and others celebrating the 61st anniversary of Israel’s independence in Buenos Aires on May 17th.
Continue reading ‘Argentine Left Calls for Open Season on Misbehaving Jews’
In an excellent post which we have already linked to here, Eve Garrard looks at the rise of the new, cool, politically-correct antisemitism and some possible ways of dealing with it.
Continue reading ‘The New Antisemitism: Sharpening the Debate’
A street event jointly organized by the government of the city of Buenos Aires and the Israeli embassy to celebrate the 61st anniversary of Israel’s foundation was yesterday disrupted by a gang of 15 or 20 people who emerged from a nearby subway station and laid into members of the public with clubs, chains and nunchakus.
Having made no effort to rein in those of its own supporters who fomented recent antisemitic episodes in Argentina, the government decided to win some cheap brownie points for itself by expelling the Holocaust denier Lefebvrist bishop Richard Williamson from the country.
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