By Jeff Gates *
Israeli officials are right to worry. Gazans too. Yet Americans should worry even more.
Israel's "legitimacy" will not last. Of course, that assumes its legitimacy was deserved. That issue also is now called into question in light of the consistency of Israeli behavior over the past six decades. The emerging issues are these:
When [...]
By Emily Ratner *
On 13 October, Tulane University, an elite university in the southern United States, hosted former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a featured speaker. Forced from office due to corruption charges and under indictment in his own country, Olmert's speaking engagements at respected American universities should at the very least raise questions [...]
By Alan Hart *
A nuclear armed Iran? No.
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that some in Iran's current leadership do want their country to possess nuclear weapons and that they do succeed in developing them. What then?
Is it conceivable that Iran would launch a first strike on Israel?
The [...]
By Alan Hart*
On Monday 12 October, Prime Minister Netanyahu opened the Knesset's winter session by blasting the Goldstone Report that accuses Israel of committing war crimes and vowing that he would never allow Israelis be tried for them. But that was not his main message. It was an appeal, delivered I thought with a measure [...]
By Dr. Alan Sabrosky*
There is always something compelling about a "David and Goliath" confrontation. Most of us prefer winners to losers, and almost everyone feels a thrill when the underdog takes a stand and prevails.
This is the surprising situation now unfolding in the rising drama of the Goldstone Report on Gaza. Goliath — in [...]
Democrats are eager to show they are as murderous as Republicans on any issue related to national security, especially during an election campaign. Obama, however, seems sincerely committed to his policy. “The right war, the right time. It is not a war of choice but of necessity.” So goes the rhetoric. What president ever says a war he supports is the wrong war fought at the wrong time and is not necessary? And of course the war in Afghanistan remains a politically cheap way to establish Obama’s national security credentials. How many Americans object to the killing of Muslims, so long as any connection, however tenuous, can be made with terrorism, however ill defined? Given the interconnectedness of political issues, Obama cannot afford to lose any domestic support. Muslims will thus continue to provide the pound of flesh demanded by the Shylocks of national security.
AN INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR ESSAYS and the first essays by MARY RIZZO, AYMAN EL KAYMAN AND SANTIAGO ALBA RICO (Spanish and French translations below. Translations to English, Spanish and French by Manuel Talens, Machetera and Fausto Giudice)
Reclaiming Significance: Palestine Think Tank and Tlaxcala declare the First Word War
WRITTEN BY MARY RIZZO
There are some words that are used as emotional [...]
WRITTEN BY PETER CHAMBERLIN
The war against our minds has many dark levels, all of which attempt to hide truth which is not sanctioned by the police state, replacing it with a new fabricated “official version” of events. The state/corporate controlled media informs us of what we are to think, while multiple forms of coercion, bribery [...]
The result which the American envoy George Mitchell in the Middle East has come with was not unexpected by most Arab observers. In the view of the Arab thinker Klofis Maksoud the real aim of Netanyahu is to freeze peace and not settlements. The Israeli rejecting of a temporary freezing of settlements means one thing [...]
WRITTEN BY ROGER TUCKER
There are many people, "progressive" Zionists included, who loudly object to the Occupation in the Palestinian territories, but see no problem with the continued existence of an Israel that privileges Jews over all others who happen to live there, particularly the Muslim, Christian and other non-Jewish "citizens." These people are referred to [...]
