Palestine – Features

A tale of two city newspapers

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Ghulam Muhammed

As it is, to judge the pulse of the people is a hazardous venture, even with all the high degree of sophistication sold to the gullible by the discredited polling peddlers, the state of editorial confusion in the writers of Mumbai’s two main opinion maker English media, The Times of India and The Indian Express, shows how media uses its power in questionable arbitrary manner, when it comes to Muslim mind. The anniversary of December 6, which is marked by Indian Muslim all over the country as a Black Day; a day when India’s most celebrated secular Constitution was systematically subverted by the two main political parties, joining hands in collusion to demolish the 400 year old historic Babri Masjid at Ayodhya.

Israel america foolish tricks

by MRN
January 1, 2013January 6, 2014

(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.

Academic scholarship a missing link at university of pretoria?

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Quraysha Ismail Sooliman

Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Since 2007, Hussein Solomon, a lecturer at the University of Pretoria, has presented papers on Global Jihad and Terrorism in Africa: Sub-Saharan Africa, Islamic Fundamentalist Ideologies in Africa and most recently, Global Jihad: The South African Front on various academic platforms.

Although at pains to stress that the views represented in the papers are his and not that of the university or the Department of Political Sciences, Solomon enjoys the use and protection of an academic platform under the guise of ‘academic freedom’ to express opinions which are unsubstantiated. What is more troublesome is that he continues to promote spurious opinions under the guise of ‘academic research’ thus giving the impression that UP lacks credible standards for academic research.

Israel implicated in hariri murder

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

(source: Voice of the Cape Online / Al Jazeera)

Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has implicated Israel for the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq al-Hariri.In a video address to journalists from an undisclosed location on Monday, Nasrallah said he had evidence to prove Israel’s complicity in al-Hariri’s assassination in a bomb explosion in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

"He has not provided undisputed, solid proof that implicates Israel," Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin reporting from Beirut said.The Hezbollah leader, however, said that "there is enough evidence pointing to Israel," our correspondent said.

Al-Hariri and 22 others were killed on the Beirut seafront on February 14, 2005.The assassination sparked an international outcry and led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.The murder has been widely blamed on Syria, but Damascus has routinely denied involvement.

Blaming Israel

Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East analyst, told Al Jazeera that Nasrallah "talked about who has the most to benefit from the assassination … [by trying to] provide a very complex case by drawing a historical link between Israel" and the killing.

Nasrallah said Israel used spying and covert operations to attempt to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government.Among the material presented was what he described as Israeli reconaissance footage intercepted by Hezbollah of areas frequented by al-Hariri.Aaron Klein, a political commentator in Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera that the contents of Nasrallah’s rare speech were not surprising.

"This is exactly what everybody in Israel was expecting, which was to use the Jewish state as a scapegoat because he is up against a rock and a hard place," Klein said.

UN probe

A UN court probing the assassination of al-Haririis planning to charge Hezbollah members in the killing, Nasrallah said in July.Nasrallah criticised the UN investigation because it "does not look into the possibility that Israel is implicated, we believe it is biased".

Our correspondent said that Hezbollah considers the tribunal "an Israeli project to create strife in Lebanon".Impending charges from the international body had pushed Lebanon into a "very sensitive phase", Klein said. Hezbollah fought a devestating war with Israel in 2006.

Klein said that a UN verdict against Hezbollah would be "devastating for them in terms of the internal politics" as it could spark anger among other sectors of Lebanese society.Rula Amin said that "Hezbollah is trying to dismiss the findings of international investigations. They want to discredit the basic information that investigators had depended on in making their conclusions".

"He is trying to say that the findings are not credible and politically motivated … he is trying to do is build a case in which he says Israel is a legitimate suspect," our correspondent said.