Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
There have been a couple excellent op-eds in the Israeli press recently, which examine the social psychological structures that allow Israelis to accept their little apartheid regime. Here I want to summarize one of them, by the journalist Yitzhak Laor in Ha’aretz. First, he describes Israeli reactions to the recent High Court injunction to desegregate [...]
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Meet Mohammed, a twelve-year old Palestinian boy struggling to cope with his fears imprinted during last year’s Israel assault on Gaza. It will require exactly four minutes of your time. Child's Eye: One year on with the children of Gaza From The Guardian (UK). Related Posts:Goldstone and the power of moral authorityReconsidering Goldstone’s reconsiderationNew Israeli [...]
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When the pimply-faced Israeli teenager is staring at the computer screens linked to the drones’ cameras, it is far too easy to forget what are the colored pixels on the screen. We must never allow ourselves to disconnect ourselves from the human tragedies associated with the policies we advocate. Hammad, 24, recalls the day two [...]
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“Palestinians are blurry figures,” writes Aluf Benn in a recent Ha’aretz column. “Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh speak, women covered from head to toe mourn in a tent, men run with a stretcher after an ambulance, men concealing their faces fire Qassam rockets. Israelis have no interest in knowing anything further.” Israeli psychology is an [...]
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Apartheid is finally get the attention is deserves. Joining the longstanding arguments posed by Palestinians, prominent Jews (e.g. retired Judge Boaz Okon) and Israeli politicians (e.g. former PM Olmert) have begun to use the term to describe the system of institutionalized discrimination that exists in Israel/Palestine. This is a welcome development in the battle for [...]
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Imagine if the US caught wind of a poll being run in, say, Yemen by that country’s biggest news network, their equivalent of a CNN or MSNBC. The poll asks the following question: “Given the recent attempted terrorist attack on the US and the United States’ threatening statements in response, what do you think is [...]
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When Israel was destroying Gaza in December 2008, Obama was preparing to take office as president. Progressives around the world turned to him to use his surging diplomatic power to pressure Israel to end the massacre. He stayed silent, for days and weeks, the negative space created by his newfound lack of words filled with [...]
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Whereas socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.” — George Orwell, New English Weekly, 21 March 1940 Although the [...]
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For decades, the idea that a resolution to the Israel/Palestine conflict ought to be imposed was considered taboo, or at least politically fanciful due to the United States’ ever-ready UN Security Council veto. This diplomatic impediment has protected Israel from the need to accept, for example, a multinational peacekeeping force to prevent suicide attacks and/or [...]
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Prejudice against Muslims is one of the few remaining “legitimate” forms of racism in the sense it is widely accepted in public in the western world. To cite just one example, GOP Congresspeople can call for all Muslim visa holders in the US to be deported without even sparking a substantive conversation on the racism [...]
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