Middle East
Mideast Youth Committed to Fighting Extremism
Published March 06, 2009 @ 04:26AM PT
Last week we asked our readers you to help find pro-peace websites. And you responded! One of the entries is www.mideastyouth.com. This is an exceptional site for a number of reasons, and we're happy to let more people read about them.
10 Reasons Why Boycotting Israeli Products Won't Work
Published March 05, 2009 @ 04:43AM PT
Boycotts have a long history. Union members refuse to purchase Hormell products. Jews avoid buying German cars. Homophobes say no to visiting Disney. The boycott is widely understood to be a form of economic pressure that forces the target to change behavior or suffer pain.
Of course, some things never get boycotted. For example, the environmental movement hasn't called on anyone to boycott coal power. Peta doesn't go after products from country X because they harm animals. (France - geese, Spain - bulls, etc.) For a boycott to be effective, the sponsor of the boycott needs a constituency large enough to make an impact, and be able to do so. When it comes to boycotting Israel though - the logic seems to fail. Here are ten concise reasons why boycotting Israel won't work.
John Kerry Against the Israel Lobby
Published March 04, 2009 @ 07:47PM PT
For most of Israel's existence, it has rejected the idea of 'regionalization' or 'internationalization' of the conflict or the diplomatic process. As an alternative, it demanded bilateral negotiations without preconditions. This was in contrast to the PLO, the Arab world, and the USSR who thought it would be more productive to have all the parties to the conflict discuss a way out together.
March of the Living vs. Durban II
Published March 04, 2009 @ 04:44AM PT
The March of the Living is a hybrid educational event. Each year, thousands of Jewish teenagers visit Poland to learn about the Holocaust. The end reaches an emotional peak with a march of young Jews to a former concentration camp. The vitality of self-confident and powerful young Jews is contrasted with the Nazi effort to exterminate. The 'hybrid' part is where politics intrudes. Rather that make it exclusively about Holocaust education, the youngsters are given Israeli flags and a healthy dose of Zionist brainwashing as well. The theme is 'from Shoah to Tkumah' (Holocaust to Revival) with the birth of the State of Israel linked to the mass murder of 6 million Jews.
This linkage bothered me since 8th grade, when I got into a fight with my history teacher. I asked her in class why she kept on using the figure of 6 million, when the number of innocent people killed in Europe was so much larger. I had read on my own that many Russians, Poles, Gypsies, Communists and others were killed in large numbers, and couldn't understand why that was being treated as a minor detail in a Jewish saga. (I went to school in Tel-Aviv. And my sources did not mention homosexuals.)
Israel Attacks Nonviolent Resistance in the West Bank
Published March 03, 2009 @ 07:09PM PT
Every so often, some folks ask the question: why aren't the Palestinians using nonviolent resistance to defeat the occupation? Why always with the terror? One answer is: they are. Another is: the Israeli occupation is serious business run by professionals. To succeed over time, it must defeat both the violent resistance AND the nonviolent resistance.
Two weeks ago the Guardian ran a story about how the mess in Gaza was providing cover for serious repression of nonviolent activists in the West Bank, specifically in the villages resisting the path of the separation barrier cutting off access to agricultural land.
Israel's Death Squads
Published March 03, 2009 @ 05:03AM PT
The Israeli organization Break the Silence ("Shovrim Shtika") has brought forward the testimony of one of Israel's highly trained assassins.
As the critical moment approached, the sharpshooter said he began to shake from the waist down. "What happens now is I'm waiting for the car to come and I am losing control of my legs. I have an M16 with digicom [special sharpshooter sights]. It was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. I felt completely concentrated. So the seconds are counted down, then we started seeing the cars, and we see that two cars are coming, not one. There was a first car very close to the following one and when the truck came in, it came in a bit early, and both cars were stopped.Everything stopped. They gave us two seconds and they said, 'Shoot. Fire.'" Who gave the order, and to whom? "The unit commander ... to everybody. Everybody heard 'Fire'."
Interesting Take on Durban II: Obama's Choice
Published March 01, 2009 @ 07:10PM PT
We've written before about the upcoming sequel to the ill-reputed anti-racism conference held in 2001 at Durban under UN auspices. The basic opposition is between two powerful forces. In one corner, we have human rights and civil society groups looking forward to advancing the stated goals of the conference - moving forward with a global consensus against racism and for human rights. In the other, Israel, her supporters, and especially the United States, who see Durban I as an antisemitic hate-fest, and that's all.
