Israeli occupation
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Ameinu forces us to confront the realities of occupation
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Ameinu is showing clips from a video documentary that got a lot of attention in Israel in 2005 and deserves to get even more attention now. For two years, Haim Yavin, the venerable Israeli anchor for the government-run Channel 1 TV, roamed the territories with a simple video camera, talked to Jewish settlers, soldiers, Palestinians, […]
Will the next generation figure out how to deal with the “Right of Return?”
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008Last Monday evening, I decided not to give up hope for peace in the Middle East. Every honest person involved in this issue needs to consciously make that decision from time to time, even when there is almost no rational basis for hope. The Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci, famously wrote of “pessimism of the spirit; […]
Israel, human rights and the silence of [most] American Jews
Friday, March 28th, 2008Those who empathize with the plight of Palestinians under occupation are often puzzled by American Jews’ silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, especially when the suffering results from Israeli actions that much of the world deems to be human rights abuses. A whole industry exists to monitor and refute human rights NGOs whenever they […]
Revisiting a checkpoint, and an unexpected message
Monday, March 17th, 2008The Jerusalem Post notes that Ala Abu Dhaim, the gunman who shot up the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem:
…did not meet the typical profile of Palestinian attackers, police said. “He is not known to the security forces,” Jerusalem Police Chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco told Channel 2. “He was a normal man … who was going […]
Aaron David Miller: The pro-Israel community has won, so stop “geshraying” already
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008Aaron David Miller has a stirring piece in the LA Times that deserves to be quoted in full.
A note on my headline:”geshray” is Yiddish for “wail.” Other than that, believe it or not (is everyone sitting down? Get ready…), I have nothing to add! Nothing more needs to be said, as far as I’m […]
One man’s fantasies about “unruly Palestinians”
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008Epraim Inbar of Bar-Ilan University has published a piece that disproves the notion that everything that can be said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already said. He harbors the fantasy that somehow the chaos in Gaza and the disarray in the West Bank will turn out well for Israel because….eventually Egypt and Jordan will […]
AB Yehoshua wants U.S. pressure and denounces the Israel lobby: Anything new here?
Monday, January 21st, 2008Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam notes that Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua called for removing the U.S. ambassador to Israel and attacked America’s Israel lobby. But he missed a few nuances. I might be the only one in the universe who cares about these nuances, as they touch upon some of the work I’ve tried to […]
Read it and weep: The Peel Commission Report
Thursday, January 17th, 2008Bitter Lemons offers the original summary of the Peel Commission Report from 1937, along with commentary from two Israelis and two Palestinians.
Everything that needs to be said about this conflict has already been said many times, during the last 100 years (including the preceding sentence, of course). Note the authors’ struggle to balance […]
On Howard Dean and the third rail of American politics
Thursday, January 10th, 2008Justin Elliot, in Mother Jones, searched the transcripts of the past 11 presidential debates to see how often the situation in Gaza or the larger issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came up. (Hat tip to Phil Weiss for noticing this one). The skinny:
In nine of the 11 debates, the terms Israel, Palestinians, […]
Suddenly, the two-state chorus grows louder, more diverse
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007Something seems to be brewing out there, something new. I’ve been doing Middle East peace work, on and off, since the mid-1980s. I have never heard so many people from so many different corners of America defying right-wingers (and ultra-left-wingers) on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and saying the same things at the same time.
What do a […]