October 2010

The conflict that could tear the Jewish people apart

by Paul Woodward 10.31.2010

“Affirmation of Israel’s Jewishness… is the very foundation of peace, its DNA,” claims Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. Well, if that’s really true then one can only conclude that Israel will never exist in peace — not because it will fail in getting the affirmation it demands from its Palestinian neighbors but [...]

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Sunshine in America – a tea party with scones

by Paul Woodward 10.31.2010

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

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The wisdom of insecurity

by Paul Woodward 10.30.2010

If Barack Obama came into office with a secret ambition, it was quite likely a desire to succeed where George Bush failed: to kill Osama bin Laden — preferably in the run-up to the 2012 election. Obama’s drone war in Pakistan now appears to make that prospect less unlikely. According to Noman Benotman — the [...]

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How the US is being outmaneuvered by Iran and Saudi Arabia

by News Sources 10.30.2010

Zvi Bar’el writes: “Iran is not the enemy, Israel is the enemy,” the head of the Center for Strategic Studies in Saudi Arabia declared in an interview with Al Jazeera. This was his response to a question on whether the $60 billion arms deal between Riyadh and Washington was meant to deter Iran. The American [...]

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The worst-kept secret: Israel’s bargain with the bomb

by News Sources 10.30.2010

Noam Sheizaf writes: “Ambiguity,” the key word used in describing Israel’s relationship vis-a-vis nuclear weapons, existed from the start. “There was a secret even before there was anything to hide,” states Avner Cohen, an Israeli-born philosopher and historical researcher who is an expert in Israel’s nuclear policy, in his new book. “During the early 1950s, [...]

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Israel wants to expel thousands of African refugees

by News Sources 10.30.2010

Haaretz reports: Jerusalem is ready to renew its offer to pay millions of dollars to any African or Western country willing to absorb the influx of migrants attempting to infiltrate Israel, a senior official said on Wednesday. During deliberations with his political-security cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Foreign Ministry to renew its contacts [...]

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Did the Palestinian Authority kill the Goldstone report?

by News Sources 10.30.2010

Jared Malsin writes: Israeli soldiers shot a mentally ill Palestinian man in the leg when he ventured near the Erez crossing, in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Last Wednesday, a 65-year-old man was shot in the neck in the same area. A week earlier the soldiers shot a 17-year-old, who entered the 300 to [...]

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Israeli secret police out in force in Arab-Israeli town

by Paul Woodward 10.29.2010

As President Obama’s Middle East peace initiative appears destined for failure, there is increasing speculation that a third intifada may follow, but whereas the first two Palestinian uprisings took place primarily inside the occupied territories, the third uprising may well start inside Israel. The Israeli-Arab town of Umm al Fahm is now a tinder box. [...]

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Leasehold settlements?

by Paul Woodward 10.29.2010

Haaretz reports: Israel is conducting secret negotiations with the U.S. on establishing the future borders of a Palestinian state, the London-based Arabic language daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Friday. According to the report, Palestinian sources confirmed that the two sides discussed an option wherein Israel may lease lands in East Jerusalem from the Palestinians in [...]

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Only the end of the West can save the West

by Paul Woodward 10.28.2010

The West is dead. Long live Turkey. No, that isn’t meant to be some prophetic statement about the Islamization of Europe and the collapse of Western civilization. It’s simply a way of saying that what the West needs more than anything else is to find a way of redefining itself. None is more obvious than [...]

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Israeli Tea Party aims destroy the peace process.

by News Sources 10.28.2010

It’s hard to kill something that’s already dead, but the formation of an Israeli Tea Party will have one predictable effect: give Benjamin Netanyahu yet another reason to disregard Washington’s desperate appeals for concessions. Haaretz reports: Likud activists who oppose the settlement freeze have set up a protest movement against the peace process and the [...]

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Wall Street’s best friend: The Tea Party

by News Sources 10.28.2010

In Salon, Andrew Leonard writes: Call it the amazing bank bailout boomerang. Even though few things enrage Tea Party rebels more than government checks made out to Wall Street financial companies, the reverse dynamic does not seem to be a problem. The top 12 Senatorial candidates most favored by Tea Partiers have already hauled in [...]

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Ann Jones: the vote we’re fighting for

by TomDispatch 10.28.2010

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com The other day, on the front page of my hometown newspaper was a shocking tale of Iranian perfidy in Afghanistan headlined “Iran Is Said to Give Top Karzai Aide Cash by the Bagful.”  The mounds of euros reportedly being passed to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff Umar Daudzai were a [...]

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Poverty, religion, desolation and nationalism, has turned the beautiful city of Safed into Israel’s ugliest

by News Sources 10.28.2010

Gideon Levy writes: Think of a town in Austria. Or perhaps France. A mountainous, ancient major district town, with a college situated in the middle of it, whose students include quite a few Jews. The town priest calls an “emergency meeting,” funded by the government and held in the municipal cultural center, attended by 400 [...]

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The latest display of Israeli contempt for non-Jews

by Paul Woodward 10.27.2010

Imagine this: You want to move to a new town but before you can do so, you’ll have to submit an application to a committee that has to approve admission of new residents. And not just that — you can be excluded for the simple reason that in the committee’s opinion, you wouldn’t fit in. [...]

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Taliban say “end is near” as they anticipate US withdrawal from Afghanistan

by News Sources 10.27.2010

The Pentagon won’t admit it, but it becomes increasingly clear that the US and the Taliban are now — by differing means — pursuing the same objective: finding a way to get American troops out of Afghanistan. The Washington Post reports: Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has touted the success [...]

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The challenge of religious pluralism in America

by Paul Woodward 10.27.2010

Legal scholar, Stanley Fish, writes: The conflict between religious imperatives and the legal obligations one has as a citizen of a secular state — a state that does not take into account the religious affiliations of its citizens when crafting laws — is an old one…; but in recent years it has been felt with [...]

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Tom Engelhardt: placing your global bets

by TomDispatch 10.26.2010

Handicapping the global midterms By Tom Engelhardt You can’t turn on the TV news or pick up a paper these days without stumbling across the latest political poll and the pros explaining how to parse it, or some set of commentators, pundits, and reporters placing their bets on the midterm elections.  The media, of course, [...]

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Israel’s vain quest for sovereignty

by Paul Woodward 10.26.2010

Why is it that a country that defines itself in terms of existential threats and the need to provide a safe refuge for the Jewish people, nevertheless seems strangely remiss in securing its own autonomy? Even if Israel stands out as the preeminent military power in the Middle East, it has only been able to [...]

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Lieberman orders a “day after” plan for dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran

by Paul Woodward 10.25.2010

Reuters reports: Hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has commissioned a report on how to prepare for a nuclear-armed Iran as doubt mounts about the efficacy of preventive action, an Israeli source said on Monday. Publicly, Israel has pledged to deny the Iranians the means to make a bomb but its previous, centrist government also [...]

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Rebecca Solnit: invasion of the democracy crushers

by TomDispatch 10.25.2010

Reprinted with permission of TomDispatch.com In fiction, these have been the modernizing years for vampires.  Following the path blazed by novelist Anne Rice, in text and on screen they have become more complex, more human, and increasingly (dare I use the word) heartthrobs.  Think “True Blood,” the Twilight series, and “The Vampire Diaries.”  In the all-too-real and bizarre [...]

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Why the threat of cyber-warfare is being exaggerated

by Paul Woodward 10.25.2010

In an assessment of the dangers posed by cyber-warfare and while noting that the threats posed by cyber-warfare and cyber-espionage are repeatedly being conflated, Seymour Hersh points out that the interests of the National Security Agency and those of hackers coincide: both want communications networks that remain open to interception. But John Arquilla, who has [...]

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Not getting to the promised land

by Paul Woodward 10.24.2010

“I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” Dr Martin Luther [...]

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Archbishop: Palestine is not Israel’s ‘promised land’

by News Sources 10.24.2010

Sapa/AFP report: Israel cannot claim Palestinian territory as its promised land citing the Bible to justify its occupation and the expulsion of Palestinians, a Catholic archbishop said. Cyril Salim Bustros, head of the Greek Melkite Church in the United States, made his comments after the Middle East synod of Catholic bishops called on the United [...]

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