By Ali Abunimah (source: Electronic Intifada) The relentless drumbeat for war against Iran got a little bit louder last night… Read More »Is Iran really ‘one year away from a bomb’ or did Obama defense secretary just cave in further to is
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(source: The Badger Herald)
Israel is a criminal nation. This statement has been a verifiable fact for many decades and continues to gain support with each new violation of international law Israel commits. Most recently, a U.N. report authored by Richard Goldstone — a South African judge and self-proclaimed Zionist — found that Israel (and Hamas) committed war crimes and (quite possibly) crimes against humanity earlier this year during the Israeli invasion of Gaza. During that war the Israeli army killed more than 1,300 Gazans including 437 under 18.
They also wounded nearly 2,000 Gaza children. In contrast, the Israel Defense Forces suffered 13 causalities, nearly half victims of friendly fire. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were left homeless in the war’s aftermath. Even before the war, figures as diverse as President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu had compared the conditions of Palestinians in the occupied territories to those of blacks in South Africa under apartheid.
If this seems like the complete antithesis of a “campus issue,” you might be surprised how far reaching the conflict really is. Allow me to explain how this tragic story actually does affect students at this university and what genuine opportunities we have to seek justice for the Palestinians, safety for the Israelis and perhaps even the beginnings of a resolution to one of the most obdurate conflicts in modern history.
By Seumas Milne
(source: Guardian)
The media may revel in a Mossad hit, yet Britain’s response to a plot that could threaten its own citizens has been craven
Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost unversally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or stolen passports of citizens of four European states, including Britain, with dual Iranian nationality.
You can be sure it would have triggered a major international storm, stentorian declarations about the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and perhaps a debate at the UN security council, with demands for harsher sanctions against an increasingly dangerous Islamic republic.
Read More »This is no ripping yarn but a murder to fan more conflict
(source: The Guardian UK)
Politics is ultimately about interests. Morals and highfalutin principles have their place, but a more reliable truth is that governments and countries usually act in their own self-interest. Usually. The way Israel greeted the visiting US vice-president, Joe Biden, this week offers an intriguing exception to the rule, a rare instance of a state acting in a way that brings itself almost no benefit and delivers a huge amount of self-inflicted harm.
Instead of embracing Mr Biden, Israel showed him the finger, choosing the very day of his visit to announce the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. That counts as an in-your-face insult to a US administration that has demanded Israel freeze all settlement activity in the territories conquered in 1967, which include East Jerusalem. Little wonder that President Obama was said to be "incandescent with anger", spending 90 minutes on the phone to his deputy drafting a statement of condemnation rare for its ferocity.