How to defy the regional bully

To understand the true signifinance of Israel’s loss to Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war, this recent speech by the group’s leader Sayyid Hassan Nassrallah is essential reading: A lesson has to be internalized from the fact that a 33-day war launched by the most aggressive army in the world and backed by international support…

Vote 1: militant Zionism

My latest New Matilda column is about the political realities in Israel and Palestine: Antony Loewenstein looks behind the pre-election rhetoric in Israel and says the lack of a real difference between the front-runners means deeper trouble ahead for both Israel and Palestine Israel is currently in political limbo. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s leadership of…

Kill the pets

Just another religiously fundamentalist decision by a reliable US ally: Saudi Arabia’s religious police have announced a ban on selling cats and dogs as pets, or walking them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women, an official said on Wednesday.

How to starve the Arabs

The following letter appears in the July 26 edition of the Green Left Weekly: Three weeks after the Australian’s Richard Kerbaj whipped up a storm over humanitarian aid by a Sydney-based charity to the suffering people of Gaza, we find our own federal police jumping at this organisation in what seems to be a co-ordinated…

Jewish self-love revealed

From fundamentalist Jews who fear progress: In unprecedented move, prominent Hasidic community allowed restricted internet use. ‘Internet has become popular but you should know many dangers lurk in it,’ community’s rabbi warns. A first-of-its-kind agreement between Belz Hasidic Court and the internet provider Rimon may soon enable Blez followers to subscribe to the “kosher” internet.…

Target: Islam

Shahid Malik, British minister in the Department for International Development: I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe. I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost – and still…

Drawing a line at hatred?

Being currently in Germany, the issue of hate speech is inevitably a key concern, considering the country’s history. There is always a fine line between legitimate speech and other forms of communication – and who should really decide where that line is, Zionists, for example, who regularly deem any comments against Israel as being anti-Semitic?…

The Muslim mind

Part one of a Robert Fisk documentary from the early 1990s, Beirut to Bosnia, about the attitude of Muslims to the West in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Bosnia. As relevant today as ever:

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