Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
Sisters Reem (15) and Ameera (10) are two of seven children living in a small house close to the Israeli border in northern Gaza. Their mother Naema was five months pregnant with their baby sister Habiba when she had to flee during the Israeli offensive. Her children talk about how the military operation affected them [...]
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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 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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Have you ever heard of a ranking official of a sovereign nation apologize to the official of another country for the perfectly legal machinations of its esteemed and independent judiciary? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Yet this was the treat afforded to global audiences when Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, called up former foreign minister [...]
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We have all heard it a million times: Israel does not target civilians; it only attacks military targets. I can barely count the number of times I have heard this argument from my family and friends. When all evidence of the Israeli destruction of Beirut or Gaza or wherever comes to light, this is the [...]
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Last week I highlighted a recent essay in the New Yorker on Gaza. I had a number of problems with the details of the article, but despite those concerns I considered it one of the deeper analyses I had seen in a mainstream American media outlet. What attracted me to the article? First, the lead [...]
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Yesterday the shambolic US Congress voted 344-36 to denounce the Goldstone report in a non-binding resolution that claims, among other things, the report is “irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy”. As with the rest of the attacks against Goldstone, the House Resolution 867 does not debate any of the facts in the [...]
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(Photo credit: Christian Als / New Yorker) Leave it to the New Yorker to provide such a haunting portrait of Gaza. One aspect of the article that I think is excellent is that because its filled with so much ugly detail about Israeli and Hamas’ actions, it seems to jar deeply and offend every ideologue [...]
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I spend a good deal of time thinking about how to expose contradictions in run-of-the-mill Israeli social psychology. My belief is that in this process I can perhaps persuade a few thinking folks out there that: (1) much of what we thought we knew about our country is wrong, (2) being wrong in this manner [...]
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In the hysterical responses to the Goldstone report, or more generally to any criticism whatsoever of Israel’s military activities, Israelis love to argue that Israel doesn’t target civilians, unlike those immoral terrorists we have to deal with. This argument makes for a great sound bite on the evening news, but its patently false, as shown [...]
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