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 'Palestinians' Category
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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”’
Over at Normblog you’ll find the latest installment of Sam Fleischacker’s series “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict” here. You’ll find my comments on previous installments behind these numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. On this occasion Fleischacker deals with questions relating to the idea of collective ownership of particular territories.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 6”’
In what Yediot Ahronot has billed as a “legacy interview” on the occasion of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has - as he himself says - expressed ideas unheard from any previous Israeli leader.
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 follows my response to certain matters raised in the third post, titled “Racism and Anti-Semitism”, in a series by Samuel Fleischacker - hereinafter referred to as SF - about the Israel-Palestinian conflict, currently appearing over at Normblog. My responses to the two previous posts can be found here and here.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 3”’
Reviewing Bernard-Henri Lévy’s new book about the crisis of the left, Christopher Hitchens says,
He [Lévy] is much readier to defend Israel as a democratic cause than are most leftists and many Jews, but he was early in saying that a Palestinian state was a good idea, not because it would appease Arab and Muslim grievances but for its own sake. (This distinction strikes me as both morally and politically important.)
When it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, perhaps the most complicated variable is the land itself. That’s why a peace proposal which would allow Gaza to triple in size is worthy of a second look.
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.
There follow some comments on Samuel Fleischacker’s second post in a series on the Israel-Palestine conflict which is appearing over at Normblog. You’ll find my response to his first post here.
Continue reading ‘A Response To “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict 2”’
