Category Archives: Israel

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Ethics, Israel, Palestine


A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe
by Avi Shlain, The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009

The only way to make sense of Israel’s senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel’s vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration’s complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. Continue reading How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe →

The Siege of Gaza

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Israel, Palestine


A bomb dropped by an Israeli air force F-16 jet exploding in Beit Hanoun, north of the Gaza Strip.

The Siege of Gaza: Barack Obama’s First ‘Test’?
John L. Esposito, Middle East Online, December 31, 2008

Until the Israeli government gets a message that the international community will hold Israel to the same standards as it does other nations and the Palestinians, there can be no hope for peace negotiations to work.

While some had predicted Barack Obama would be “tested” early in his administration by America’s enemy Osama, Obama’s first major foreign policy “test” has instead come from America’s ally, Israel. Continue reading The Siege of Gaza →

David vs Goliath, the IDF vs Hamas

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Israel, Judaism, Lithographs, Palestine


Lithograph letter illustrating The Child’s Bible Illustrated from a 19th century serial publication.

When the once holy land of Biblical proportions is the issue on the front page of every newspaper, politics must make way for metaphor. The Israeli plan to bring down Hamas echoes with Samson bringing down the temple on the Philistines. Lots of Philistines were killed that memorable day, but only with a martyr’s mentality. Plug in “Gazans” or “Israelis” for “Philistines,’ and the martydom makes both scenarios equally mad. Moving forward in Biblical time, the Philistines did not disappear as a thorn in the side of Israel. Today, well beyond the world of the prophets, the jet fighters and tanks of the IDF have replaced David’s sling, but search as the military scanners may there is no Goliath in modern Gaza. Was Sophocles still writing for the stage, the ongoing Israel/Palestine tragedy would make Oedipus Rex look like Twelfth Night. How unbiblical a thought. Continue reading David vs Goliath, the IDF vs Hamas →

Friend of Israel

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Israel, Palestine


Let’s hope Obama won’t be a ‘friend of Israel’
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz,
November 9, 2008

The march of parochialism started right away. The tears of excitement invoked by U.S. president-elect Barack Obama’s wonderful speech had not yet dried, and back here people were already delving into the only real question they could think to ask: Is this good or bad for Israel? One after another, the analysts and politicians got up – all of them representing one single school of thought, of course and began prophesizing.

They spoke with the caution that the situation required, gritting their teeth as though their mouths were full of pebbles, trying to soothe all the fears and concerns. They searched and found signs in Obama: The promising appointment of the Israeli ex-patriots’ son, whose father belonged to the Irgun, and maybe also Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer and Martin Indyk, who may, God willing, be included in the new administration.

But in the background, a dark cloud hovered above. Careful, danger. The black man, who had associated with Palestinian expats, who speaks of human rights, who favors diplomacy over war, who even wants to engage Iran in dialogue, who will allocate more funding for America’s social needs than to weapons exports. He may not be the sort of “friend of Israel” that we have come to love in Washington, the kind of friend we have grown accustomed to. Continue reading Friend of Israel →

Showcasing Palestinian cinema

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Israel, Palestine


Jackie Reem Salloum, the director of Slingshot Hip Hop, wants to encourage Palestinians to tell their stories through artistic expression.

Showcasing Palestinian cinema
By Deena Douara, Al-Jazeera, October 29, 2008

On the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival comes another motion picture fete about a people trying to carve out a state in a war-torn region.

From October 25 to November 1, Toronto will showcase 36 films about the Palestinians as part of year-long commemorations marking the 60th anniversary of the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe.

Kole Kilibarda, one of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) organisers, believes audiences will be surprised by “the amazing cinema produced even under the most difficult of circumstances”.

The TPFF will include Canadian, North American, and world premieres of award-winning documentaries, features and short films.

Palestinian films have gained prominence on the international scene in recent years, beginning with the enigmatic Divine Intervention (2002) and the controversial Oscar-nominated Paradise Now (2005). Continue reading Showcasing Palestinian cinema →

Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Gender and Sexuality, Israel


Mahmoud Abbas and Tzipi Livni, 2006

Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama

By Neri Livneh, Haaretz Correspondent, September 18, 2008

If, as John Lennon and Yoko Ono said, “Woman is the N—-r of the World,” then Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Livni did not exploit the fact that she was a woman in order to get elected. She is also not married to one of the most beloved individuals in the world.

Instead, Livni won the Kadima primary despite being a woman, and despite being married to a private man who prefers to steer clear from the limelight. (Israeli comics – all of them men, of course – are now busy thinking up new puns on the old “Mr. Tzipi Livni and Mrs. President.”)

And all this while Livni is zealously trying to protect the privacy of her family, and is probably the last person anyone would turn to for a Rosh Hashanah cake recipe. Continue reading Tzipi Livni is Israel’s Barack Obama →

Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Election 2008, Film and Video, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Israel, Terrorism Issue


Sally Lopez of Lemoyne, PA displays a copy of the DVD that came in the mail.

by Erik Ose, The Latest Outrage, September 12, 2008

This week, 28 million copies of a right-wing, terror propaganda DVD are being mailed and bundled in newspaper deliveries to voters in swing states. The 60-minute DVDs, titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” are landing on doorsteps in a campaign coinciding with the 7th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Funding is coming from a New York-based group called the Clarion Fund, a shadowy outfit whose financial backers are The program was originally shown on Fox News in the days leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, and right-wing activist David Horowitz toured the country screening the film on college campuses during 2007. Mainstream religious groups have called Obsession biased and divisive. It cuts between scenes of Nazi rallies and footage of Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers. Continue reading Pro-McCain Group Dumping 28 Million Terror Scare DVDs in Swing States →

New Life for the Dead Sea Scrolls

Archaeology and Antiquities, Bible and Holy Land, Israel, Judaism


Book of Enoch, Copied ca. 200-150 B.C.E.


Israel to Display the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet

By ETHAN BRONNER, The New York Times, August 27, 2008

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on a historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet.

Equipped with high-powered cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have significant scholarly impact. Continue reading New Life for the Dead Sea Scrolls →