The following article appears in today’s Sydney Morning Herald: Several Labor MPs have expressed concerns about Julia Gillard’s upcoming trip to Israel, where the Deputy Prime Minister will lead a delegation to hold a dialogue with Israeli leaders. The MP for Fowler, Julia Irwin, an executive member of the Australian Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group,…
Showing all posts tagged Lebanon
Lower expectations, don’t buy the spin
Jennifer Loewenstein (no relation) writes in Counterpunch that we shouldn’t expect too much from Obama when it comes to the Middle East: Obama’s brilliance in embracing the self-same rejectionist stance of his predecessors, by employing the language of the two-state solution, is equaled only by Netanyahu’s honesty in rejecting any such reality. For Obama, the…
If they renounce violence, when will you?
Interesting analysis from the MEC Analytical Group about Britain, Hamas and Hizbollah: There are indications of some flexibility in British policy towards Hamas and Hizbullah. On 21 May the Foreign Secretary David Miliband made a speech at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (text here) in which he called for “a coalition of consent” between…
The Zionist kiss of death
Foreign Policy blog The Cable details: Israeli media are reporting that a small and unconventional Iran office in the Israeli Ministry of Defense will be shut down. The 30-year-old office has been headed by 83-year-old Uri Lubrani, who was de facto Israeli ambassador to Iran in the 1970s and famously predicted the fall of the…
What the hell happened to the Jewish mind?
Tony Karon in Rootless Cosmopolitan on the Israeli government’s seeming descent into madness: Haaretz’s Aluf Benn today reinforces the case I made earlier for Obama to keep Netanyahu on a tight leash concerning Iran. First, he reports, Netanyahu continues to talk up a frenzy of public expectation in Israel that leads only to military action.…
Who is bombing whom here?
The Angry Arab: So Zionist and Saudi media are insisting that people of the world should feel threatened by the Iranian missile test. Saudi media (echoing as usual the Zionist handlers) are citing “experts” (typically in Zionist bastions in the West) to the effect that the missile test is a threat “not only to Israel.”…
So what do we call Israeli terrorism?
An editorial in Lebanon’s Daily Star that should be read in full and without comment: While it remains to be seen whether Israel’s handing over maps of cluster bomb locations in southern Lebanon will put a definitive end to this bleeding wound of an issue, it’s not exactly the kind of move that inspires hope…
What would peace truly look like these days?
This could be a major development in the Middle East…or just one more bogus attempt to resolve a conflict that Israel has no interest to truly change: America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and…
Just try saying no for once
Following the recent criticism of the local Zionist lobby sending journalists and politicians on free trips to Israel, today’s Canberra Times features an interesting piece by Joe Wakim, founder of the Australian Arabic Council and a former multicultural affairs commissioner: If we are going to blow the whistle on undeclared overseas junkets by our MPs,…
The growth of the non-state actor
Hezbollah’s No. 2, cleric Naim Qassem, speaks to the Los Angeles Times: The more we clarify our image to the people of the West, the more pressure they will put on their governments to stop supporting Israel… In recent years, the Western perception of Hezbollah has changed. Even governments have started to look for reasons…