PRESS ROOM

274 مقال

• Is an Israeli Jewish sense of victimization perpetuating the conflict with Palestinians?

  January 2009, by Akiva Eldar
  A new study of Jewish Israelis shows that most accept the ’official version’ of the history of the conflict with the Palestinians. Is it any wonder, then, that the same public also buys the establishment explanation of the operation in Gaza? A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews’ memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main (…)  continue
  

• The silence of the jurists

  January 2009, by Gideon Levy
  One silence, of all the shameful silences, has thus far roared especially loud - the silence of the jurists. The 41,000 attorneys in the State of Israel are entrusted with protecting its image as a lawful state, and this large and grand army has once again strayed from its function. There is a deep suspicion throughout the world that Israel carried out a series of war crimes, and the jurists of our country are holding their peace. Where, for instance, is Aharon Barak when we really need (…)  continue
  

• President Obama’s Al-Arabiya Interview

  27 January 2009,
  THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the most important thing is for the United States to get engaged right away. And George Mitchell is somebody of enormous stature. He is one of the few people who have international experience brokering peace deals. And so what I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues –and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved. So let’s listen. He’s going to be speaking to (…)  continue
  

• In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

  23 January 2009, by Patrick Cockburn
  I was watching the superb animated documentary Waltz with Bashir about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It culminates in the massacre of some 1,700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in south Beirut by Christian militiamen introduced there by the Israeli army which observed the butchery from close range. In the last few minutes the film switches from animation to graphic news footage showing Palestinian women screaming with grief and horror as they discover the (…)  continue
  

• UN human rights official: Gaza evokes memories of Warsaw Ghetto

  24 January 2009,
  There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence (…)  continue
  

• Yonatan Mendel reacts to events in Ghaza

  15 January 2009, by Yonatan Mendel
  It’s very frustrating to see Israeli society recruited so calmly and easily to war. Hardly anyone has dared to mention the connection between the decision to go to war and the fact that we are only a few weeks away from an election. Kadima (Tzipi Livni’s party) and Labour (Ehud Barak’s) were doing very badly in the polls. Now that they have killed more than 1000 Palestinians (250 on the first day ­ the highest number in 41 years of occupation) they are both doing very well. Barak was (…)  continue
  

• Rashid Khalidi reacts to events in Gaza

  15 January 2009, by Rashid Khalidi
  It is commonplace to talk about the ’fog of war’, but war can also clarify things. The war in Gaza has pointed up the Israeli security establishment’s belief in force as a means of imposing ’solutions’ which result in massive Arab civilian suffering and solve nothing. It has also laid bare the feebleness of the Arab states, and their inability to protect Palestinian civilians from the Israeli military, to the despair and fury of their citizens. Almost from the moment the war began, America’s (…)  continue
  

• Israel’s Lies

  15 January 2009, by Henry Siegman
  Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an (…)  continue
  

• Robert Fisk: So far, Obama’s missed the point on Gaza...

  22 January 2009, by Robert Fisk
  It would have helped if Obama had the courage to talk about what everyone in the Middle East was talking about. No, it wasn’t the US withdrawal from Iraq. They knew about that. They expected the beginning of the end of Guantanamo and the probable appointment of George Mitchell as a Middle East envoy was the least that was expected. Of course, Obama did refer to "slaughtered innocents", but these were not quite the "slaughtered innocents" the Arabs had in mind. There was the phone call (…)  continue
  

• Another War, Another Defeat

  2009, by John Mearsheimer
  Israelis and their American supporters claim that Israel learned its lessons well from the disastrous 2006 Lebanon war and has devised a winning strategy for the present war against Hamas. Of course, when a ceasefire comes, Israel will declare victory. Don’t believe it. Israel has foolishly started another war it cannot win. The campaign in Gaza is said to have two objectives: 1) to put an end to the rockets and mortars that Palestinians have been firing into southern Israel since it (…)  continue