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Plato’s Beard » Palestine

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:

[ Link ]

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:

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 ]

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

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

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:

Will someone notify Dershowitz, please?

Jul 27th, 2006 by ravi

Uniting Islamic radicals?

Juan Cole notes in a blog entry today that:

From Al Jazeera:

Consider also that Nasrullah has extended support to Sunni Palestine. As Juan Cole notes:

Feb 10th, 2006 by ravi

Part 2 of Guardian on Israel and Apartheid

Here is part 2 of the Guardian 3 part series on Israel and apartheid. You can click on the title of the article to view the original piece.

Guardian (UK) is running a three part series on the criticism of Israeli treatment of Palestinians as apartheid, comparing the situation in Palestine/Israel with South Africa. The first part is linked to below. It is fairly meticulous and provides data, anecdotes and quotes to illuminate the issue.

As Noam Chomsky has pointed out multiple times, it is worthwhile to note that criticism of Israel within the country itself is well and alive (as it should be in any nation that claims to be a democracy) in contrast to the blind faith or apologism/defense of all Israeli action within the US, by the administrations and by many Jewish organizations, and even otherwise liberal Jews (multimedia). [Also see: Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah].