Tag: Pulse

Stop Honorary Doctorates for Terrorists

I’ve just received news from the wonderful Mona Baker (Mona has been tirelessly campaigning for the academic boycott of Israel) of a courageous student action in the UK. King’s College students have begun an occupation demanding that the honorary doctorate awarded by the college to Shimon Peres be immediately revoked, in protest at the massacre in Gaza. Birmingham University students have started an occupation in solidarity. These students need our solidarity too. Please send messages of support for King’s occupation to Principal Rick Trainor at principal@kcl.ac.uk Please call the students to congratulate them. Tony Benn already has. Please consider any similar action you could take. The students’ letter is below:
 From: “KCL Occupation” <kcloccupation@googlemail.com
 Subject: King’s College Student Occupation

Dear Sir/Madam
 
I am writing to inform you of the current occupation in Kings university in
order to revoke Shimon Peres’s Honorary Doctorate and to show solidarity
with the people of Gaza.
 

Europe laughs while Palestinians mourn their dead

Robert Fisk in the Independent: “Mahmoud Abbas stepped further into humiliation by saying the only option for Arabs isto make peace with Israel.”

The front page of the Beirut daily As-Safir said it all yesterday. Across the top was a terrible photograph of the bloated body of a Palestinian man newly discovered in the ruins of his home while two male members of his family shrieked and roared their grief. Below, at half the size, was a photograph from Israel of Western leaders joking with Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Olmert was roaring with laughter. Silvio Berlusconi, arms on the back of Olmert’s shoulders, was also joshing and roaring – with laughter, not grief – and on Olmert’s right was Nicolas Sarkozy of France wearing his stupidest of smiles. Only Chancellor Merkel appeared to understand the moral collapse. No smiles from Germany. Continue reading “Europe laughs while Palestinians mourn their dead”

Peace Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Chris Hedges on violence and pacifism. I’d really like to see Hedges’ argument that justifies a statement like this “tell me the moral difference between Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Stern gang and Hamas. I fail to see one.” He might be right, it’s hard for me to tell when he doesn’t explain. I do think there’s a moral difference, on the face of it, between a more powerful group ethnically cleansing a weaker group, such as Chris mentions at Deir Yassin, and a weaker group resisting an oppressor; one has more responsibility than the other, as a resisting force is reacting, rather than creating a problem.

Continue reading “Peace Is in the Eye of the Beholder”

Use of white phosphorus in Gaza is ‘clear and undeniable’

The list of war crimes accusations against Israel continues to mount, as Amnesty International‘s fact-finding team finds “indisputable evidence” of the IDF’s use of white phosphorus.

The Israeli army used white phosphorus, a weapon with a highly incendiary effect, in densely populated civilian residential areas of Gaza City, according to indisputable evidence found an Amnesty International fact-finding team which reached the area last Saturday.

Continue reading “Use of white phosphorus in Gaza is ‘clear and undeniable’”

Rashid Khalidi on Gaza

I’m no big fan of Rashid Khalidi. He is a rather tame academic, not quite the fighter that Edward Said was. When in 2007 the London Review of Books organized a symposium in New York on the Israel Lobby, he, to the bemusement of his own debating partners, spent the better part of his time arguing against his own side. Like many veterans of the PLO, he remains too much of a Fatah man to be a spokesman for all Palestinians. He recently made comments during his trip to Egypt which could have come from Muhammad Dahlan’s script. However, now it appears even he is finding it hard to be a Fatah man. The following is a more nuanced analysis of the Gaza situation than his earlier words in Egypt but he takes a few disingenuous digs at Hamas all the same.

It is commonplace to talk about the ‘fog of war’, but war can also clarify things. The war in Gaza has pointed up the Israeli security establishment’s belief in force as a means of imposing ‘solutions’ which result in massive Arab civilian suffering and solve nothing. It has also laid bare the feebleness of the Arab states, and their inability to protect Palestinian civilians from the Israeli military, to the despair and fury of their citizens. Almost from the moment the war began, America’s Arab allies – above all Egypt – found themselves on the defensive, facing accusations of impotence and even treason in some of the largest demonstrations the region has seen in years. Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hizbullah in Lebanon, reserved some of his harshest criticism for the Mubarak regime; at Hizbullah rallies, protesters chanted ‘Where are you, Nasser?’ – a question that is also being asked by Egyptians.

Continue reading “Rashid Khalidi on Gaza”

New Middle East


Contrary to criminal US-Israeli plans, the new Middle East emerging is one of the triumphs of Arab resistance, writes Ramzy Baroud:

When Israel unleashed its military fury against Lebanon for several weeks in July-August 2006, it had one major objective: to permanently “extract” Hizbullah as a fighting force from South Lebanon and undermine it as a rising political movement capable of disrupting, if not overshadowing, the “friendly” and “moderate” political regime in Beirut.

As Israeli bombs fell, and with them hundreds of Lebanese civilians and much of the country’s infrastructure, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sprung into action. She too had one major objective: to delay a ceasefire, which the rest of the international community, save Britain, desperately demanded. Rice, merely but faithfully reiterating the Bush administration’s policy, hoped that the Israeli bombs would succeed in achieving what her government’s grand policies failed to achieve, namely a “New Middle East”.

Continue reading “New Middle East”

Rumbling from Gaza

The rumbling from Gaza, writes Hassan Nafaa, is the overture to something truly momentous.

The birth of the Arab system is usually associated with the creation of the Arab League (AL), in 1945. But two earlier developments paved the way for the AL’s creation. One was that Egypt, acting as the key country in the region, had a clear vision of what it wanted to do and was ready to act on that vision when regional and international circumstances were right — which is exactly what happened after the end of WWII. The other was that the conflict in Palestine had reached a point where most Arab countries recognised the danger posed by the creation of an independent Jewish state in their midst.

Reeling from the protracted fighting of World War II, Britain gave its endorsement for any scheme promoting unity among the Arabs. The endorsement, which was made public in 1943, was aimed to deter Arab countries from siding with Germany. Egypt, at the time ruled by a Wafd government led by Mustafa El-Nahhas, saw its chance. Soon it opened bilateral and multilateral consultations with Arab countries in an effort to lay down the framework of a regional political structure. The AL came into being as a result. It wasn’t a first step towards federalism as many hoped but a congregation of seven semi-independent countries willing to pass resolutions by consensus, more of a political club than a blueprint for unity.

Continue reading “Rumbling from Gaza”

Galloway on Gaza

George Galloway, the finest speaker in the British Parliament, lambasts the Government for its complicity in the Gaza massacre, suggesting it takes a more active, just, role in resolving the conflict, given its responsibility dates as far back as 1917 when Arthur Balfour promised Zionist colonisers a home in Palestine.

It’s worth remembering Zionist influence is an important factor in Parliament: from Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann who lobbied for a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine to the modern day Friends of Israel groups that organise brainwashing trips for MPs to Sderot (the first stop on these trips is predictably the holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, designed to remind leaders the coloniser is really the eternal “victim”).

Al Jazeera: Robert Fisk on Gaza

Robert Fisk on Al Jazeera maintaining that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 is central to the issue of justice and therefore peace in the region.  Could you imagine such frankness on the BBC?  They’d probably call it the disputed dispossession if they ever mentioned it.

Just as an example lets look at the main article, by Jeremy Bowen, in a section on the BBC website titled Israel at 60.  Discussing 1948, Bowen states:

The reasons why the refugees left their homes are still bitterly contested, by historians as well as by leaders and activists.

Continue reading “Al Jazeera: Robert Fisk on Gaza”