Very few people understand the reality of life under Israeli occupation. Father Peter Bray, the Vice Chancellor of Bethlehem University, has regularly written missives about what it really means. This is his Easter message: Easter Sunday 8 April 2012 Greetings from this holy city of Jerusalem where again I have had the opportunity to gather…
Showing all posts tagged Zionism
Teaching Israel a necessary and non-violent lesson
Just another average day in occupied Palestine (via Haaretz): The state has confirmed that, acting without a court order, the army has barred Palestinian villagers from freely accessing their farmland for two years. The admission was made in the state’s response to a High Court petition filed last year by Beit Furik residents. The plots…
What needs to be said about Gunter Grass and THAT poem on Israel
Tariq Ali nails it: The German writer Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum) had already predicted the response to his poem in SdZ. There is no reason to be surprised, but there is every reason to be disgusted. Within Germany both the elite and a layer of the population by their words and actions appear to…
Shhh, don’t mention the occupation in Ramallah
Let’s not be under any illusion. Israel bans a famous German, Gunter Grass, because it doesn’t like a poem he wrote. Seriously. Meanwhile, in Ramallah, a city far too many Westerners believe represents Palestine, which it does not, the illusion of peace is out in full force. Amira Hass in Haaretz explains: Billboards declaring “She…
When America trains a terrorist organisation and Israel joins in
How Washington supports and trains an organisation that kills civilians and the Zionist state is along for the ride. There’s a word for this; terrorism. Cracking Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker: From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain…
What privatisation does to the prisoner’s soul
The rise of privatised detention centres and prisons globally is an issue that receives far too little scrutiny in the media (yesterday’s Al Jazeera’s The Stream was a notable exception). The profit motive inevitably skews priorities. Here’s a great piece from this week’s New York Times by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen that asks the necessary questions: Immigration… control…
How one-state solution is inevitable now
Gideon Levy in Haaretz on how the two-state solution in Israel/Palestine is long dead – thank you America, settlers, the Israeli government and the Zionist Diaspora – and there’s only one outcome now: Even a dead body can sometimes twitch reflexively. Here we go again: The settlers have occupied another building. Their lawyer isn’t ashamed…
What hardline Zionists don’t want young American Jews to think
The American Jewish community is slowly but surely becoming more willing to critically debate Israel’s brutal policies towards Palestinians. Norman Finkelstein, here interviewed by Haaretz, says occupying Israel has a problem on its hands: “Nobody really defends Israel anymore,” he said in an interview. “If you go on college campuses, there are some Hillel faithfuls…
My lecture at Sydney’s Israeli Apartheid Week 2012
I gave the following talk at the University of Sydney on 15 March: