Declaring in the LA Times that “the problem is Zionism,” novelist Ben Ehrenreich opens his article with a 1944 quote from the then President of the American Council for Judaism describing the goal of a Jewish state as a “Hitlerian concept.” This is yet another display of what is fast becoming a tiresome rhetorical technique; that words uttered against Zionism by a Jew contain intrinsic merit and privileged insight.
This is a guest post by Doug Lieb of the American Jewish Committee
Move over Tony Judt. Here comes the Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
This is a guest post by Michelle Sieff of the American Jewish Committee.
As despair about the possibility of a two-state solution swells, Robert Mackey in the New York Times is contemplating the idea of a one-state solution. As he notes, even as early as 1999, Edward Said called for the abandonment of the two-state solution - embodied in the Oslo peace process - and the embrace of a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state. More recently, Tony Judt echoed these arguments in the New York Review of Books.
Ed Morgan is a Professor of Law at the University of Toronto. In this fascinating column, he relates two recent experiences which persuaded him that rational, informed debate is not always the norm in the ivory tower.
Continue reading ‘Ed Morgan: The “One-State” Crowd Up Close’
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”’
As in the United States, conversation in Europe today will doubtless be dominated by the decision of six central banks, among them the European Central Bank, to cut interest rates by half a point in yet another measure to stem financial chaos. Very few people will be talking about another challenge with potentially far-reaching consequences: whether the Belgian state remains intact.
The Mennonite Central Committee, one of the religious groups which broke bread with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his recent visit to New York, has issued a statement about that encounter.
Further to Eamonn’s last post, over on the main Z Word site we’ve assembled some of our key blog posts on the “one state solution.” This is the first in an occasional series entitled Arguments, in which we examine specific areas of contention concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its wider ramifications.
Luz Gómez García takes the one state solution out for a spin here in today’s El País. Channeling the sainted Edward Said as an authority, she quotes him as believing the one state solution, in the form of a single bi-national state, to be both desirable and inevitable for the following unconvincing reasons,
UPDATE: The text of Ahmadinejad’s address to the UN, in which he claimed that “Zionists…have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries,” can be read here.
Perched in a suite at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in town for the UN General Assembly, has been making nice with the press.
There is a grim irony in the fact that, in a year marking the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s creation, mainstream media interest in the so-called “one state solution” - something that would signal Israel’s demise - has been unprecedented.
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