Between Dome of the Rock and a Hard Place
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Concerned citizens from around the world will begin observance this week of Israeli Apartheid Week. This is an excellent opportunity to spend some time thinking about the system of institutionalized and violent discrimination in place in Israel/Palestine, about your personal role in the conflict (we are almost all parties to Palestinian oppression either through [...]
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Ha’aretz runs today a stunning and thoughtful article about how Israel must learn the language of human rights. Written by a media consultant and former adviser to the Interior Ministry, Gilad Heimann, the article manages to cut through Israeli social psychology and government hasbara efforts with admirable efficiency.
The core argument is this: [...]
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This news story will not be news to anyone bothering to read the Israeli papers as Israel was attacking Gaza last winter. IDF spokespeople made it very clear Israel was going to privilege Jewish soldiers’ lives over any concerns about war crimes. This argument is, in fact, part of the Goldstone report’s case [...]
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After months of dawdling, Israel finally completed its UN assignment right at the deadline. Well, not really. As the UN mandated timeframe for investigating IDF crimes in Gaza was coming to a close, the Israeli government handed over a partially finished document that summarized the homework already done and the homework it intends [...]
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Its a news day full of tension and contradictions. First, the good—and most important—news. The Israeli army is preparing to move the route of the segregation wall in Bil’in village, where it had annexed Palestinian land and sparked weekly, mostly nonviolent protests against the land grab, according to an IDF officer’s pledge disclosed [...]
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Ehud Barak is one the last Labor people standing. He sold out what were the purported values of Israel’s center-left Labor party in order to gain a seat (defense minister) in the most right-wing government Israel has ever had (the current one). By doing so, he helped facilitate the unprecedented collapse of one [...]
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From a few thousand miles away, or even from the relative safety of a television image in Tel Aviv living room, it can seem as though the spiral of violence in the Middle East spins ruthlessly with no end and no beginning. In this confusing situation, people then insert their own ideological perspectives: each [...]
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In today’s Ha’aretz, Bradley Burnston writes an op-ed in which he fulminates against the critics of Israel’s current mission in Haiti. He starts by saying “thank you” to the IDF medical team, continues by saying “That’s it”, suggesting that’s all he wants to say, and then launches into a tirade against “Israel bashers.” [...]
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You can argue for the merits of Israeli democracy, of which there are a few, but you cannot do so without taking account of the fact of the institutionalized system of segregation, the differentiated structure of civil and political rights, including state-sponsored discrimination against non-Orthodox Jews, and the fact that Israel has ruled over millions [...]
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File this under profiles in Israeli racism, part 279.
The Israeli women’s organization, Women to Women, published a report in December 2008 about the widespread use of Depo Provera in the Ethiopian community. Ethiopians comprise just two percent of Israel’s population, yet account for 57% of users of the birth control drug. [...]
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