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Apr 11th, 2009 by ravi
Israel, Iran and Obama »

Perhaps Thomas Friedman has fallen off the flat earth because recently there have been some rather sensible mutterings over at the New York Times. Such as this one:

Op-Ed Columnist – From Tehran to Tel Aviv – NYTimes.com

Still, this much is clear to me: Obama’s new Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.

[ Link ]

 
Oct 1st, 2008 by ravi
Olmert: Israel withdrawal needed »

BBC NEWS | Olmert: Israel withdrawal needed

Outgoing PM Ehud Olmert says Israel must withdraw from almost all the land it occupied in 1967 if it wants peace with Syria and the Palestinians.

He said this would include parts of East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.

Mr Olmert also said any peace deal with Syria would require an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

He gave few further details, but said he was prepared to go beyond previous Israeli leaders to achieve peace.

“We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories,” Mr Olmert said.

“We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace,” he added.
He said the withdrawals would include Jerusalem, the eastern part of which Israel occupied and annexed after the 1967 war, but which it has long proclaimed as its “eternal, undivided capital”.

[ Link ]

 
Jan 25th, 2008 by ravi
Shopping spree! »

That (the subject of this post) is the New York Times’ characterisation of desperate Palestinians, under a new burst of Israeli terrorism, attempting to obtain basics from Egypt:

Palestinians used a bulldozer to knock down another portion of the wall, originally built by Israel just inside Gaza, to continue their shopping spree.

At this point, I think we can safely take all the Holocaust literature and replace Jews with Palestinians, to obtain the narrative, of future historians and generations, wondering what went wrong… how did we permit such horror?

[ Link ]

 
Mar 2nd, 2007 by ravi
Saving the children »

Without any hint of irony, Daniel Mendelsohn writes an Op-Ed in the NYT about the recent discovery of letters from Otto Frank:

A Family History Like Too Many Others – New York Times

Above all, such letters demonstrate movingly the overriding preoccupation that nothing was as important as saving the children. “It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for,” Otto Frank wrote. “If only the world were open and I’d been able to send a child to America or Palestine, it would be easier,” my great-uncle mourned as he started losing hope.

[...]

[T]he fact that this latest and unexpected addition to the Frank file was casually found in a relatively neglected American archive reminds us, too, that there are many thousands of similar stories on this side of the Atlantic still waiting to surface, if only we bothered — or knew — to look for them[.]

We would not need to look much farther than the very Palestine that remains closed today, to its own inhabitants.

 
Jan 25th, 2007 by ravi
Hagelian synthesis »

Crooks and Liars has video of Chuck Hagel (R-NE) laying it out to the Senate on Iraq and the [non-binding] Hagel, Biden, Snowe, Levin resolution against escalation. I guess it takes a Republican to say the things he does, such as point out that the reputation of the U.S is shot in the Middle East. Here is a rough transcript (by me) of a part that I found particularly surprising:

When people have no hope, when there is despair, little else matters. And this is not about terrorists don’t like freedom. Tell that to the Palestinian people who have been chained down for many, many years.

Will someone notify Dershowitz, please?

 
Aug 23rd, 2006 by ravi
Israeli buffoonery continues »

How do you get from the image of the most advanced and successful fighting force in the world to a pathetic joke, in the period of one month?

Israel holds Nasrallah
Publication time: Today at 12:26 Djokhar time

Unfortunately for the embarrassed Israelis, he was the local green grocer – not the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
Leah Tzemel, the Israeli lawyer who obtained their release on Monday, said Israel had snatched the four Nasrallahs and their neighbour on August 1 in a commando raid in the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek in northeastern Lebanon.

It would all be hilarious if the IDF silliness did not involve the death of others (15 people in this case).

 
Aug 15th, 2006 by ravi
More on Hezbollah »

Writing on AlterNet, Stephen Zunes traces the history and evolution of Hezbollah and questions the motivation behind the U.S congressional attitude towards the organisation:

Was Hezbollah a Legitimate Target?

The Bush administration and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress have gone on record defending Israel’s assault on Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure as a means of attacking Hezbollah “terrorists.” Unlike the major Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah forces haven’t killed any Israeli civilians for more than a decade. Indeed, a 2002 Congressional Research Service report noted, in its analysis of Hezbollah, that “no major terrorist attacks have been attributed to it since 1994.” The most recent State Department report on international terrorism also fails to note any acts of terrorism by Hezbollah since that time except for unsubstantiated claims that a Hezbollah member was a participant in a June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force dormitory at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

On Hezbollah action outside Lebanon:

In reality, other than a number of assassinations of political opponents in Europe during the 1980s and 1990s, it is highly debatable whether Hezbollah has ever launched a terrorist attack outside of Lebanon. The United States alleges as one of its stronger cases that Hezbollah was involved in two major bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina: the Israeli embassy in 1993 and a Jewish community center in 1994, both resulting in scores of fatalities. Despite longstanding investigations by Argentine officials, including testimony by hundreds of eyewitnesses and two lengthy trials, no convincing evidence emerged that implicated Hezbollah. The more likely suspects are extreme right-wing elements of the Argentine military, which has a notorious history of anti-Semitism.

On the validity of congressional resolutions:

In March of last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution by an overwhelming 380-3 margin condemning “the continuous terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hezbollah.” Despite contacting scores of Congressional offices asking them to cite any examples of terrorist attacks by Hezbollah at any time during the past decade, no one on Capitol Hill with whom I have communicated has been able to cite any.

On the history of U.S involvement in Lebanon and the creation of Hezbollah:

Hezbollah did not exist until four years after Israel first invaded and occupied southern Lebanon in 1978. The movement grew dramatically following Israel’s more extensive U.S.-backed invasion and occupation of the central part of the country in 1982 and the subsequent intervention by U.S. Marines to prop up a weak Israeli-installed government. In forcing the departure of the armed forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization and destroying the broad, left-leaning, secular Lebanese National Movement, the U.S. and Israeli interventions created a vacuum in which sectarian groups like Hezbollah could grow.

On Hezbollah attacks:

The Hezbollah also periodically fired shells into Israel proper, some of which killed and injured civilians. Virtually all these attacks, however, were in direct retaliation for large-scale Israeli attacks against Lebanese civilians.

[Link]

(As can be seen above, I have started adding an explicit [Link] to the original/source for quoted material, a la Boing Boing. The heading of the quoted text will continue to be linked to the original, also).

 
Aug 15th, 2006 by ravi
The Nation on AIPAC »

What the AIPAC is and the danger that it represents should be well known by now, given that two of their operatives have been charged with that most unforgivable sin, espionage, but that it is not (so known) is in itself a testament to its strength. Below is an excerpt from a recent Nation article:

AIPAC’s Hold

[...]

AIPAC is the leading player in what is sometimes referred to as “The Israel Lobby”–a coalition that includes major Jewish groups, neoconservative intellectuals and Christian Zionists. With its impressive contacts among Hill staffers, influential grassroots supporters and deep connections to wealthy donors, AIPAC is the lobby’s key emissary to Congress. But in many ways, AIPAC has become greater than just another lobby; its work has made unconditional support for Israel an accepted cost of doing business inside the halls of Congress.

[...]

 
Aug 9th, 2006 by ravi
Billmon on the Israeli Lobby »

Billmon brings up the unmentionable (w.r.t the McKinney primary loss in GA):

Whiskey Bar: But the "Israel Lobby" Doesn't Exist:

Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s primary run-off opponent has tapped into the pro-Israel fundraising network . . . Seven pro-Israel PACs gave to Johnson on Tuesday: MOPAC in Michigan, Washington PAC in D.C., SUNPAC and National Action Committee PAC in Florida, CITYPAC in Chicago, Mid-Manhattan PAC in New York and Louisiana for American Security PAC.

The Hill
McKinney opponent rakes in pro-Israel cash
August 2, 2006

Because, of course, Jewish donors in Michigan, New York, Florida and Chicago are deeply concerned about conditions in Georgia's 4th congressional district.

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Aug 9th, 2006 by ravi
JC on Lieberman’s motives »

There has not been, to my knowledge, a lot of examination of the reason for Lieberman’s semi-suicidal embrace of the right’s Iraq war and that whole narrative (including the “undermining the President” bit). Juan Cole brings it up on his blog:

Lieberman’s Defeat:

[...]

Lieberman had bought into the Rove Master Narrative. Bush went to war electively, thus very conveniently making himself a war president and therefore above criticism. He got a second term that way despite having been among the worst presidents in history. Lieberman ceded to Bush a kind of invulnerability on the most important Republican Party SNAFU since its policies contributed to the onset of the Great Depression. Why would a Democrat do that?

The answer is that on foreign policy issues, Lieberman is a Neoconservative, and supports the Iraq project for the same reasons that Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz (then number 3 and 2 respectively at the Pentagon) did. He tried to put himself in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey, but he was more honest when he also listed Scoop Jackson. Perle and the rest started on Jackson’s staff.

[...]

I would suggest further that the reason Lieberman is a neo-con on foreign policy is Israel.

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