Palestine – Features

"Mitchell is in a precarious position. He knows that his boss, President Obama, will not put enough pressure on Israel, that Netanyahu will run the show as a public relations campaign without committing himself to real peace with the Palestinians and that Abbas, who faces a geographically and politically divided Palestinian scene, cannot move forward without internal Palestinian reconciliation, which is ultimately in the best interests of all parties."

As US special envoy to Northern Ireland, George Mitchell, the former US senator, was successful in closing the chapter on sectarian violence. The Good Friday peace treaty, as it became known, still holds after more than ten years. Mitchell’s obvious skills should have been more than enough to mediate a similar conflict and were the reason he was sent here. But it is not at all clear that the Israeli occupation resembles any other colonial project in modern human history.

Read More »This is not northern ireland

By Iqbal Jassat – Chairperson: Media Review Network

Soccer’s premier international event has ensured that South Africa is in international news media’s constant spotlight. Whether the stories revolve on President Zuma’s polygamous lifestyle or on-going labour related strikes, as citizens of this country we have learnt to expect that our country will attract disproportionate media attention.

The presence of most international media houses in bureaus across many cities in South Africa has been reinforced in anticipation of being stretched resource-wise during the 2010 soccer festival. Their challenge will be to provide their respective audiences with on-the-spot commentaries as well as analysis.

Read More »2010 fifa world cup faces propaganda threat from foreign hacks

By Dr. Ahmed Yousef

(source: Union Emirates newspaper)

A lot of attention was given in the media to the recent statement by the Quartet which condemned Israel’s illegal settlement activities. Not so much time was given to a serious analysis of this and previous Quarter statements to evaluate what the latest actually means. Interpretations poured in of what effects this "unprecedented" statement might have inside Israel. Some analysts believed that this would have a negative effect on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position, as if we had not experienced a similar situation during his first term of office in 1996.

The Quartet was formed after the George W Bush administration proposed the "road map" towards peace in 2002; it reflected Bush’s success in making the world powers accept his view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Representatives from the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations make up the Quartet, whose "peace envoy" is Britain’s Tony Blair, who many anti-war activists and lawyers believe should be indicted for war crimes. The group’s record shows no real achievements, which raises doubts about its role and performance.

Read More »Whats new under the quartets sun?

By Tariq Ali

(source: London Review of Books)

A Kashmiri lawyer rang me last week in an agitated state. Had I heard about the latest tragedies in Kashmir? I had not. He was stunned. So was I when he told me in detail what had been taking place there over the last three weeks. As far as I could see, none of the British daily papers or TV news bulletins had covered the story; after I met him I rescued two emails from Kashmir informing me of the horrors from my spam box. I was truly shamed. The next day I scoured the press again. Nothing. The only story in the Guardian from the paper’s Delhi correspondent – a full half-page – was headlined: ‘Model’s death brings new claims of dark side to India’s fashion industry’. Accompanying the story was a fetching photograph of the ill-fated woman. The deaths of (at that point) 11 young men between the ages of 15 and 27, shot by Indian security forces in Kashmir, weren’t mentioned.

Later I discovered that a short report had appeared in the New York Times on 28 June and one the day after in the Guardian; there has been no substantial follow-up. When it comes to reporting crimes committed by states considered friendly to the West, atrocity fatigue rapidly kicks in. A few facts have begun to percolate through, but they are likely to be read in Europe and the US as just another example of Muslims causing trouble, with the Indian security forces merely doing their duty, if in a high-handed fashion. The failure to report on the deaths in Kashmir contrasts strangely with the overheated coverage of even the most minor unrest in Tibet, leave alone Tehran. Read More »Not crushed merely ignored