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Following an interview earlier this year, Khalil Bendib once again speaks with Tel Aviv University historian Dr. Shlomo Sand about his brand-new book, The Invention of the Jewish People. The book has become a best seller both in Israel and in France: Did the world’s Jewry truly originate in Palestine, and if not, why does that myth persist to this day?
Sand is currently touring the US: see also an interesting review of Shlomo Sand’s recent NYU lecture by Philip Weiss here.
John Mearsheimer, during his 2008 visit to Israel, interviewed on Arutz Sheva‘s Israel National Radio show.
John does a great job arguing for his positions yet his extremist pro-settlement hosts seem determined to paint him as an anti-Semite. All Mearsheimer really argues is that he wants it to be possible to criticise Israel’s bad policies in the United States – it’s difficult to see why any sensible person could have a problem with this.
Toward the end, after they’ve ditched John, they even claim the next Holocaust will be in America and that it’s being brought about by a new sophisticated anti-Semitism, contained in Mearsheimers & Walt’s book The Israel Lobby, and this new anti-Semitism is the “most dangerous thing on the market today.”
Mearsheimer on Israel National Radio (48:31) | MP3
Continue reading “John Mearsheimer on Israel National Radio”
Pilger on Flashpoints: MP3
David “I am a Zionist” Cameron, leader of the opposition, said recently, at the Conservative Friends of Israel (CfI) annual business lunch, that his belief in Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself was “indestructible”. No surprises there. He did however refer to old supporters giving a special thank you to some of the party’s biggest donors and, more importantly, he welcomed new arrivals such as Victor Blank. Victor, former chairman of Llyods Banking Group and one of Gordon Brown’s favourite businessmen, is more commonly associated with Labour Friends of Israel (LfI) and this switching of sides seems to have prompted the Guardian podcast show Sounds Jewish to ask “are British Jews ending their affair with New Labour and returning to the Tories?”
Stuart Polak, director of Conservative Friends of Israel (13:35): MP3
Continue reading “Are British Jews ending their affair with Labour?”
Naomi Klein, interviewed by Bob McChesney, on her book the Shock Doctrine with respect to the financial crisis. Klein goes on to explain her current project, writing a piece on America’s boycott of the UN Durban II review conference on racism, and is critical of the US anti-war movement for ignoring the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Naomi Klein on the Shock Doctrine (52:45): MP3
Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio interviews Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation on the Iranian election.
MP3 here. (17:52)
Patrick Doherty, Deputy Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, discusses the Iranian government crackdown that reinforces the perception of electoral fraud, the popular Iranian discontent with autocracy, the dearth of legitimate polling in Iran that increases uncertainty and how Ahmedinejad’s tough negotiating with the U.S. is seen by some as the Persian equivalent of Nixon going to China.
This week from CounterSpin – “Barack Obama has either been currying favor with Muslims or extending an olive branch in the Middle East depending on which media you consume. We’ll talk with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies about Obama’s major speech in Cairo, and the size of the gap between words and actions.”
Phyllis Bennis on CounterSpin (9:46): MP3
Mahmood Mamdani is a renowned African scholar (of Indian origin) who was ranked by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the world’s 100 leading public intellectuals. Earlier this week he delivered the following lecture at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) to promote his new book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror.
Saviors and Survivors (31:39): MP3 | Torrent
Questions and Answers (50:23): MP3
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Suheir Hammad is one of the Palfest participants who deserves a post to herself. A Palestinian-American, Suheir was born to refugee parents in Amman. She spent her first years in civil war Beirut before moving to Brooklyn, where drugs and gang wars raged. She is a poet, prosewriter and actress. Her poetry erases any distance between the personal and political, and is humane, passionate and particular. Greatly influenced in its rhythm, diction and pacing by New York hip hop, it fits snugly into the tradition of Palestinian oral delivery exemplified by the late poet Mahmoud Darwish.
Suheir stars in the film Salt of this Sea, but it is surely time someone directed her in a poetry performance DVD. You have to hear her read to really appreciate what she does. A good place to start is the poem First Writing Since, which concerns 9/11. Here is We Spend the Fourth of July in Bed. And one for Rachel Corrie. Here is part one and part two of an al-Jazeera International interview, and here she is reading for Palfest in Ramallah. I hope the Palfest film-makers have more to come. The most powerful part of her reading in Ramallah – powerful enough to bring the audience to tears – was her series of poems for Gaza:
Jeremy Harding describes Suheir as “a younger, image-conscious, thoughtful militant for Palestine, one of a new generation who do the writing, while the Israelis oblige by extending the wall.”
Found below is Nora Barrows-Friedman interview with Diana Buttu on Flashpoints Radio. They examine the recent killing of Hamas activists in the West Bank while providing the context absent from mainstream media such as the BBC – that the PA works for Israel in crushing resistance to the occupation.
Six Palestinians dead in armed clashes between a Hamas resistance group and US-trained Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank, former PLO advisor Diana Buttu talks about how the PA is subcontracting the Israeli occupation and turning against its own people.
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