Is Hussein Ibish a level-headed pragmatist key to Palestine’s future, or a Washington socialite unwittingly co-opted by an intellectually bankrupt mainstream? I don’t know…it’s a loaded question, but it got you reading. In any case, he does a impressive job of distinguishing bewteen a one-state ’solution’ (potentially desirable) and one-state ‘outcome’ (unthinkably disastrous). From Jeffrey [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘News’
August 20, 2009
LA Times prints Neve Gordon: “Boycott Israel”
Israeli newspapers this summer are filled with angry articles about the push for an international boycott of Israel. Films have been withdrawn from Israeli film festivals, Leonard Cohen is under fire around the world for his decision to perform in Tel Aviv, and Oxfam has severed ties with a celebrity spokesperson, a British actress who [...]
April 20, 2009
TTBOOK Radio: Iran After the Revolution
A well-assembled podcast on post-Revolutionary Iran.
Juan Cole (of Informed Comment) makes some fairly astute observations, beginning about 42:25 mins in:
Iran After the Revolution (2009-04-17).
March 30, 2009
Cole on Obama’s Af-Pak rhetoric
Obama’s domino theory
The president sounds like he’s channeling Cheney or McCain — or a Cold War hawk afraid of international communism — when he talks about the war in Afghanistan…
March 19, 2009
Ethnocentrism + armed testosterone
This disturbing, if unsurprising, news echoes the efforts first launched by Noam Chayut and his Breaking the Silence project, affording Israeli soldiers both a suitable platform and the requisite anonymity to voice their honest recollections of time spent serving in ‘the territories.’
The organization says it is currently working ‘on a collection of soldiers’ testimonies from [...]
January 12, 2009
Miracle Wonk® on an atomized Hamas
Atomized Hamas via Miracle Wonk
Most commentary on the Israeli-Palestine conflict presupposes that Hamas is a homogenous actor with clear, top-down leadership. Take Eric Trager’s ham-handed attempt to burst the meme that Israeli’s aggression is weakening prospects for a two-state solution:
It’s hard to see how a two-state solution had a better chance of success immediately prior to the [...]
January 12, 2009
No kidding: Gaza Crisis Imperils 2-State Solution — NYT
As Antony Loewenstein notes, “…the New York Times finally gets the press release…”
News Analysis – Gaza Crisis Imperils 2-State Solution – NYTimes.com
At the moment, this only makes me more certain of the seemingly-absurd, yet ultimately most sustainable option of literally internationalizing the ‘Holy’ Land.
January 11, 2009
CNN interviews Syria’s first lady Asma al-Assad on Gaza
I don’t know if CNN has decided to open up the range of dialogue on this issue a) because of the images we’ve been seeing, b) because times are actually changing, or c) merely because they (correctly) assume that more westerners will be interested in listening to an ‘unveiled’ Middle Eastern Princess Di than they [...]
January 6, 2009
Haaretz calls IDF friendly-fire deaths ‘the worst incident’ in Gaza thus far (but only in Hebrew)
A friend of mine who used to work at Haaretz — Israel’s major ‘left-leaning’ paper — recently alerted me to the following excerpt from an article posted on the media outlet’s Hebrew-language website:
שלושת החיילים מגדוד 13 של חטיבת גולני, נהרגו אתמול בתקרית החמורה ביותר ברצועת עזה מאז החל מבצע “עופרת יצוקה” לפני עשרה ימים
…via this [...]
January 4, 2009
Turkey’s Erdogan on Palestine: surprisingly visionary
It may sound like a pipe dream at the moment, but [Erdogan's] is the most visionary-realist plan to come out of the Middle East in recent memory. Whatever domestic elements [he] may be pandering to, his leadership here is remarkable.
