The dominant narrative of Zionist storm troopers massacring innocent peace activists on the Mavi Marmara is now so well established that no amount of evidence supporting Israel’s version of events is likely to make any difference. Still, it seems to impossible not to comment on this series of photos published by the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet.
I’ve read some suggestions that the Israelis have been manipulating our perception of the events that took place on the “Mavi Marmarma” by only releasing those images that suit their narrative. Let’s assume that’s indeed what’s going on. However, I haven’t seen suggestions that the material released is faked. At worst it would appear to be incomplete. This being so, it seems impossible to deny that some passengers chose to attack the commandos as soon as they set foot on the vessel and reasonable to suppose that this decision bears some relation to the decision taken by the Israelis to fire on them.
I’m just back from seeing Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch and a very interesting film it is too. The reason that I mention it here is that in his review of it Luciano Monteagudo, one of the nation’s best known film critics, describes the character Nassir as being a Palestinian immigrant when there isn’t a scrap of evidence in the picture to suggest he’s anything other than an Algerian, or perhaps the son of Algerians.
6. El País (ii)
Juan Miguel Muñoz is the Jerusalem correspondent for El País and nobody who has followed his coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in recent years can have been left in any doubt as to his views on it. There’s a brio and a frank partisanship in his writing that’s absent from that of his British colleague, Rory McCarthy of The Guardian. Between the 9th and 22nd of March El País ran a story almost every day from Muñoz, devoted either wholly or in part to the developing crisis.
Continue reading ‘Biden’s Visit in The Guardian and El País IV’
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. Introduction
The purpose of this piece is to compare some aspects of the coverage of the recent diplomatic tension between the United States and Israel arising from Israel’s announcement of its intention to build new homes in a disputed part of Jerusalem during the recent visit to Israel of United States Vice President Joe Biden. The Guardian, of London and El País, of Madrid were the newspapers chosen for examination because they are usually regarded as leaders in the advocacy of liberal and progressive politics in their respective countries and progressive and liberal opinion in some democratic nations has in recent years taken a sharp turn against Israel. Putting it very roughly, when Israel was frequently involved in large-scale conventional warfare and expanding the territory under its control it was generally seen in sympathetic terms. Now that it has withdrawn from huge extensions of territory conquered in war, made comprehensive peace deals with two of countries that border it and abandoned fantasies of remaking the map of the Middle East to suit its proposes, it is increasingly seen as a uniquely evil state, illegitimate from birth, perverse in its policies, cruel in its behavior and ruled by a nefarious ideology, Zionism.
Continue reading ‘Biden’s Visit in The Guardian and El País I’
1.
Readers with good memories will recall the appointment of Jorge Palacios, a disgraced former Federal Police officer to head the city of Buenos Aires’s first autonomous police force. To put it mildly, it wasn’t an idea that prospered. Palacios was obliged to resign when indicted on charges of being involved in the cover up of the AMIA massacre and is now in prison while being investigated on charges of organizing illegal wiretaps. Among those who had their phone conversations illicitly listened in on was Sergio Burstein, a well known campaigner for justice for the families of the survivors of the AMIA attack.
Continue reading ‘Israeli Embassy Controls Buenos Aires City Hall’
Israel must negotiate with Hamas and its refusal to engage with these legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people shows that it’s not interested in a settlement of the conflict. So says the chorus of the kind hearted. I’ve argued against this view here and here, among other places. Guess who has now come up with a proposal for Israel to negotiate with one its most determined enemies? Shaul Mofaz, that’s who.
We’re no nearer to seeing any of the Iranian suspects wanted for the AMIA massacre in custody but some progress is being made towards making some of the Argentines responsible for obstructing the original investigation answer for their actions.
The great Norman Geras, says that,
… Arab and Palestinian collaboration with Nazism has no bearing on what the Palestinians lost or what they have suffered because of Israel’s creation. To maintain the contrary is to make every Palestinian responsible for Haj Amin al Husseini. It is also to treat the existence of Israel as a form of punishment - punishment on account of Husseini and other Arabs who were complicit with Nazism.
Daniel Levy has his say on the Goldstone report here. What might the title of the piece mean? It’s got quite a new age ring to it so perhaps we shouldn’t expect too much by way of a specific diagnosis of what’s supposed to be ailing Israel. It does, however, reflect a common way of thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a framework which sees everything through the lens of the doings, plans and - above all - the faults of the Israelis. There may be a lot of dead Palestinians as a result of the Gaza Campaign but, it would appear, the priority is for Israelis to heal themselves. And remember now that Levy is not exactly a Likudnik, he’s as dovish as they come and sees himself as a fierce critic of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.
Lisa Goldman has drawn my attention to a reaction by David Landau to the Goldstone report on Israel’s campaign in Gaza and I take the opportunity to do the same for readers of this blog.
Seth Freedman is a regular in the role of Acceptable Jew at The Guardian’s CiF website. In this piece he looks at the controversy surrounding the allegations of organ harvesting fom dead Palestinians leveled at the IDF in a Swedish newspaper. He concludes that it’s all Israel’s fault, naturally.
Continue reading ‘The Swedish Scandal: Freedman Blames Bad Jews’
Osvaldo Bayer is concerned that the Jews don’t appeared to have learned anything from their history.
But there are also those people who have tragic experience of persecutions, such as the Jews, who have laws that lead to humans being humiliated. It’s well known that the State of Israel doesn’t recognize marriages between Jews and non-Jews. [… ] It has thus become fashionable for Jews who want to marry a non-Jew to go to Cyprus to do it. Quite an industry has built up on the island to allow non-Jews and Jews to get married. According to Jewish law only those born of Jewish mothers are regarded as Jewish.
Last night, I received a phone call informing me that a close and much loved relative is very sick. So I am about to get on a plane and won’t be back for about three weeks. I will try to post when I can, as will Eamonn, but please, dear readers, don’t expect too much from this blog during the month of August. Thanks for your understanding.
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