Young Jews disrupted Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the General Assembly of Jewish Federations.
Also see this interview with the protestors, Matan Cohen, Matthew Taylor, Emily Ratner, Eitan Issacson and Antonia House.
For more, visit: YoungJewishProud.org
Intelligent activism by Jewish Canadians who advocate against the fictional notion of a “new anti-semitism” which is used as a pressure tactic by the likes of the Anti-Defamation League and Harvard’s McCarthyite-in-Chief Alan Dershowitz against anyone who criticizes Israeli policies. Video by Independent Jewish Voices.
David Cronin’s important new book Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occuption (Pluto Press) is
now available, filling a key void in the growing body of literature on the role of the Israel lobby. Cronin is one of the very few journalists who regularly exposes the pernicious role of the Israel lobby in Brussels and the long-standing hypocrisies of the European Union. (See some of Cronin’s articles published on PULSE in the past, here and here).
In carefully crafted official statements, the European Union presents itself as an honest broker in the Middle East. In reality, however, the EU’s 27 governments have been engaged in a long process of accommodating Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Journalist David Cronin interrogates the relationship and its outcomes. A recent agreement for ‘more intense, more fruitful, more influential co-operation’ between the EU and Israel has meant that Israel has become a member state of the Union in all but name. Cronin shows that rather than using this relationship to encourage Israeli restraint, the EU has legitimised actions such as the ill-treatment of prisoners and the Gaza invasion.
Concluding his account, Cronin calls for a continuation and deepening of international activism and protest to halt the EU’s slide into complicity.
Continue reading “Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the Occupation”
Al Jazeera – Ali, a Palestinian veteran of the intifada, went to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment after an Israeli settler shot him in the leg.
While there, he learned that his younger brother Yusef had been killed by an Israeli soldier.
Ali had spent years in Israeli prisons for actions like demonstrating against the occupation, throwing stones, and being a member of a political party.
Our dear and respected friend Tariq Ali on the Riz Khan Show.
“We do not fit the general pattern of humanity…”
David Ben-Gurion
“…only God could have created a people so special as the Jewish people.”
Gideon Levy
The fecundity of the Zionist project in producing claims of exceptionalism is not in doubt. Anyone who scans the voluminous Zionist literature will be suitably impressed by its repeated resort to claims of Jewish and Israeli exceptionalism. There is scarcely any aspect of Israeli or Jewish history that has not been embellished with some claim to uniqueness.
Israeli exceptionalism has many uses. It defends, obscures, explains away the ‘abnormal’ character of the Zionist nationalist project. When the Irish sought national liberation, their goal was straightforward. They wanted to regain national control over their lives and their country from a foreign power. No one had to convince the Irish that they are descended from the gods; that they possessed a unique essence which set them apart from all other peoples; or that their history, religion, race, language, morality or culture set them above their colonial masters. Occasionally, driven by exuberance or hubris, nationalists have advanced exceptionalist claims, but the success of their movement has not depended on their acceptance. The Irish claimed sovereignty because they knew that they are a nation with their own territory. In order to create their own state, they did not have to establish that they are exceptional.
The Zionists confronted two handicaps that Irish nationalists did not face. The diverse and scattered Jewish communities of Europe – and even more so, the world – did not constitute a single people. Instead, the Jews of the world were loosely united by their religious heritage, but they shared their languages, cultures and genes with their neighboring communities. Moreover, no Jewish community had its own country, a substantial and contiguous territory where it formed a majority of the population. Despite these twin Jewish deficits – the absence of a nation and a national territory – the Zionists were determined to ‘liberate’ the Jews of Europe and endow them with their own state.
The Zionists would remedy the first deficit by denying its existence. They knew that the Jews were not a nation, but it would be unwise to begin their ‘nationalist’ movement with the admission that a Jewish nation did not yet exist. They also did not think that this deficit was a serious hindrance to their movement. With help from anti-Semites, whose attacks had been growing in recent decades, the Zionists were convinced that they could quickly convince enough frightened Jews that they are a nation. Instead of constructing a nationalism based on a common religion, however, the Zionists chose to cultivate a racial basis for Jewish nationalism. They embraced the anti-Semitic accusation that Jews of Europe are an alien race, not Germans or Russians, descended from the ancient Hebrews.
According to a new report by Who Profits, a research project that exposes Israeli and international corporate involvement in the occupation:
“The banks are well aware of the activities carried out with their financial assistance.”
by Larbi Sadiki — An Al Jazeera Excerpt
Excluding Hamas from current and future Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations is an exercise in futility.
Sidelining Hamas in any process to craft genuine peace between Israelis and Palestinians is a glaring omission tantamount to ignoring an elephant in the room. Whether it is Obama’s or the UN’s negotiating room, pretending something of that size absent is an exercise in futility. Hamas is definitely an elephant with many tales. Telling some of these tales recounts the Islamist movement’s rise to power against all odds.
A movement under ‘siege’
Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas exists in a world that does not want it and in which it is ‘wanted’, a world some might argue it does not also want. It is lumped with the bogeymen and ‘demons’ of world politics on whom are blamed ‘terror’ and the state of ‘structured chaos’ in the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, amongst other hotspots. Hamas is no angel and there are no angels in politics. Indeed, part of the problem lies not only in the political strategies Hamas occasionally deploys, but also in the excessive secrecy surrounding most of the movement’s activities.
Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa, whose debut novel, Mornings in Jenin, is an international sensation, confronts Zionist bully Alan Dershowitz, known for fictions of a different variety, at the Boston Book Festival. The discussion is moderated by Director of the Harvard Negotiation project, James Sebenius and sponsored by the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston.
Israel’s Channel 10 shows excerpts from Hagai Levi’s documentary about the wonderful folks behind Breaking the Silence.
P U L S E 