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Palestine – Breaking News

Quiet slicing of the west bank makes abstract prayers for peace obscene

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By Slavoj Zizek

(source:The Guardian)

On 2 August 2009, after cordoning off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem, Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families (more than 50 people) from their homes; Jewish settlers immediately moved into the emptied houses. Although Israeli police cited a ruling by the country’s supreme court, the evicted Arab families had been living there for more than 50 years. The event – which, rather exceptionally, did attract the attention of the world media – is part of a much larger and mostly ignored ongoing process.

Five months earlier, on 1 March, it had been reported that the Israeli government had drafted plans to build more than 70,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank; if implemented, the plans could increase the number of settlers in the Palestinian territories by about 300,000 Such a move would not only severely undermine the chances of a viable Palestinian state, but also hamper the everyday life of Palestinians.

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Obama and the politics of race and religion in america

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By M. SHAHID ALAM

It is perhaps a bit late in the day, nearly two weeks after November 4, to be writing about Barack Obama’s electoral victory. This want of alacrity, however, is intentional.I thought it would be cruel to write any sooner, when whites and blacks alike were so effusively celebrating Obama’s victory. It would be unseemly to strike a discordant note when a clear majority of Americans was savoring this putative post-racial moment in their history.Did this victory signal a shift in America’s racial tectonic plates?

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The tale of two apartheids

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The Tale of Two Apartheids

February, 07 2009

By Paul D’Amato

IN APRIL 1976, John Vorster, president of the then-racist apartheid regime of South Africa, paid an official state visit to Israel, where he was given the red-carpet treatment.

 Israeli television showed him on his first day, visiting the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. At an official state banquet held for Vorster, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin toasted the "ideals shared by Israel and South Africa."

 Why was an outspoken member of a Nazi militia in South Africa during the Second World War and a leading member of the party that crafted official apartheid policies in South Africa being feted in Israel?

 

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For a few yuan more

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For a few yuan more
 

Lizeka Mda

THE government has offered several reasons for refusing the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a peace conference scheduled for this weekend.

The spokesperson for the department of foreign affairs, Ronnie Mamoepa, told City Press that “the organisers worked with the government on this conference and no invitation was sent to him” even as the organisers confirmed that invitations signed by South Africa’s three Nobel Peace Prize laureates – Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk – had been sent and accepted.

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