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The peace-process masquerade falls apart

March 11, 2010

It turns out that at least when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration is this: team Bush had better choreography.
The Guardian now reports:
The US vice-president, Joe Biden, today attempted to salvage the Middle East peace talks after the Palestinians announced they were pulling out of [...]

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East Jerusalem in a Jewish stranglehold

March 11, 2010

Isn’t it time that the “two-state solution” be regarded as an object of the imagination no more real than the Tibetan kingdom of Shambala?
At the heart of this Middle Eastern fable is another Shangri-La: Jerusalem, capital of the Jewish state and a Palestinian state.
In reality, Jews in an unremitting march of expansion are taking over [...]

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Jewish lobbying fails to stop EU support for Goldstone report

March 10, 2010

On Tuesday, a headline for Haaretz declared:
Jewish lobbying sways EU against support of Goldstone Gaza report
The article said:
Members of the European Parliament have backtracked from their plan to pass a resolution demanding implementation of the Goldstone report, in response to pressure from European Jewish leaders, Haaretz has learned.
After leaders of all the major EP [...]

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Biden late for dinner

March 10, 2010

The Associated Press reports that after the Israeli government humiliated the US Vice President Joe Biden, the minister responsible says he’s sorry:
Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose office announced the latest construction plans in east Jerusalem, apologized Wednesday for disrupting Biden’s visit. But he said the problem was merely about timing, not substance.
“We had no [...]

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What the Dubai assassination reveals

March 9, 2010

Robert Baer considers some of the wider implications of the assassination of the Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai in January:
If Mossad was indeed responsible, it means that blame for Mabhouh’s assassination can be put at the doorstep of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel’s Prime Minister has historically approved hits staged in countries with which [...]

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The Marjah mirage

March 9, 2010

Gareth Porter writes:
For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a “city of 80,000 people” as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that [...]

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Israel’s game of bluff

March 8, 2010

Didi Remez has translated parts of a column by Nahum Barnea that appeared in Hebrew in Yediot’s Friday political supplement. Barnea considers the assessments by Dr. Moshe Vered who published a study last year on possible scenarios that would result from an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Barnea goes on to say:
The game is [...]

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Does Obama have a vision?

March 8, 2010

At Time, Mark Halperin writes:
Who would have thought that one of Barack Obama’s biggest missteps as president would be repeating some of the bad habits of George W. Bush? No single factor was more instrumental in Obama’s 2008 victory than his pledge to completely reverse the nation’s course once in the White House. Instead, over [...]

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Tzipi Livni won’t be visiting the UK any time soon

March 4, 2010

To hear it from the Israeli press you’d think that the British government can now make changes to the law simply by having the prime minister write an op-ed.
Last December an arrest warrant was issued for former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, when she was expected to arrive in Britain. According to Haaretz she no [...]

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The impossibility of a two-state solution and the reality of the Israeli apartheid state

March 3, 2010

Just over a year ago, Bob Simon at CBS’s 60 Minutes did a piece that implicitly challenged the credibility of President Obama’s early push to revive the Middle East peace process. Simon noted the swiftness with which the new president had taken up the issue, but then went on to show the stark realities of [...]

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Mossad returns to its ‘glory days’

February 28, 2010

The Times reports:
Would you be prepared to cross-dress? And kill a guest in an adjacent hotel room? If the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”, and you can also act, enjoy luxury international travel with a twist and can carry off a convincing Irish or Australian accent, then the job could be yours.
The [...]

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Is Israel really prepared to go it alone?

February 28, 2010

Reuters reports:
Israel’s perspective on Iran’s nuclear program differs from that of the United States, and the two may part ways on what action to take, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.
Washington’s clout over its Middle East ally is under scrutiny after Israel’s veiled threats to attack Iran preemptively if international diplomacy fails to [...]

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Are we living in the post-moral age?

February 20, 2010

Rafi Eitan, an Israeli elder statesman and former intelligence officer is perhaps best known for having led the Mossad operation that captured Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Holocaust, and brought him back to face trial and execution in Israel in 1962.
In an interview with Haaretz this week, Eitan summed up the Zeitgeist in which we [...]

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