My earlier post about Avraham Burg has generated some sharp exchanges in the comments. One contributor feels that I unfairly compared Burg with Norman Finkelstein. But I stand by that comparison and I will now make one more.
Archive for the 'Israel' Category
There’s a certain irony about the title of Avraham Burg’s forthcoming book, “The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes.” Those very same words could be the motto of the State of Israel itself, given its emergence just three years after the defeat of Nazism.
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.
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.
It was an astounding night in America and around the world. Even so, reality is quickly intruding into the jumble of elation, incredulity and anticipation which greeted Barack Obama’s election as the 44th President of the United States. Several news outlets report that Obama is not resting, but is solidly focused on his transition team - and, by extension, the issues they will face.
1.
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.
Back in August, I wrote extensively about an organization which bills itself as the “Free Gaza” movement (see here, here and here.) The aim of this organization is to break what it bills as the “Israeli siege” of Gaza. To this end, it has organized two boat trips of activists to the Strip. Each time, the activists have issued hysterical predictions about being blocked by the Israeli Navy. And each time, they have been permitted to dock without so much as a warning shot fired in their direction.
Juan Miguel Muñoz of El País writes here about Tzipi Livni getting the thumbs down, at least for now, from Shas in her attempts to form a government in Israel. There isn’t a particular quote I could translate that would serve as a good example, but Muñoz’s article is suffused with disgust at the influence Rabbi Ovadia Yosef exercises over Shas in particular and in Israeli politics in general.
Writing in Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper, leading Palestinian intellectual and Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh runs through the reasons why the “one-state solution” is enjoying a revival. Nusseibeh, however, is emphatic in his rejection of a unitary state between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
Continue reading ‘Sari Nusseibeh Rejects the “One-State Solution”’
Is the recent agreement between North Korea and the United States, whereby the latter took the former off its list of countries that support terrorism in exchange for the former reopening access to its nuclear facilities, a model for a future settlement of the nuclear standoff between Iran and those countries who don’t want it to develop nuclear weapons? The answer is no, because the two countries are very different from each other and they have very different aims in their negotiations with the outside world.
David Owen is a former foreign minister of the UK and there is an article of quite astonishing stupidity by him in today’s Times. It’s about the possibility that Israel might choose to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions by means of an air attack. What follows is just a sample of the delights it contains.
