Year in review

YEAR IN REVIEW: To beat al Qaeda, look to the east By Scott Atran, New York Times, December 13, 2009 Al Qaeda’s main focus is harming the United States and Europe, but there hasn’t been a successful attack in these places directly commanded by Osama bin Laden and company since 9/11. The American invasion of [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: The European minaret-missile threat By Paul Woodward, War in Context, November 29, 2009 Bigotry is on the rise in “the westerly excrescence of the continent of Asia.” That unpoetic but topographically-precise description of Europe comes from the Oxford archeologist, Barry Cunliffe. Whenever voices declaring that European culture is under threat are at [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: Some victims we are By Larry Derfner, Jerusalem Post, October 28, 2009 The kill ratio was 100-to-1 in our favor. The destruction ratio was much, much greater than that. To this day, thousands of Gazans are living in tents because we won’t let them import cement to rebuild the homes we destroyed. [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: What are the risks of the CIA’s covert drone program? By Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, October 26, 2009 On August 5th, officials at the Central Intelligence Agency, in Langley, Virginia, watched a live video feed relaying closeup footage of one of the most wanted terrorists in Pakistan. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: Goldstone: My mission – and motivation By Richard Goldstone, Jerusalem Post, October 18, 2009 Israel and its courts have always recognized that they are bound by norms of international law that it has formally ratified or that have become binding as customary international law upon all nations. The fact that the United [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: UN: Evidence Israeli ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ a ‘result of deliberate planning and policy decisions’ By Sharon Otterman, New York Times, September 15, 2009 A United Nations fact-finding mission investigating the three-week war in Gaza issued a lengthy, scathing report [PDF] on Tuesday that concluded that both the Israeli military [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: Obama’s America is not delivering the goods By Gideon Levy, Haaretz, August 14, 2009 With great sorrow and deep consternation, we hereby declare the death of the latest hope. Perhaps rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase the famous quote by Mark Twain, but the fears are being validated day [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: The Pope in the Palestinian prison camp By Paul Woodward, War in Context, May 15, 2009 Has this image appeared widely in the media? I don’t honestly know, but I’ll assume it hasn’t. So the next question would be: why not? (Source: The New York Times) The New York Times ran an [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: Uzi Arad: “It is territory we want to preserve, but populations we want to rid ourselves of” By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 18, 2009 When Hillary Clinton met Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem during her recent visit to Israel, her party was dismayed to see Uzi Arad at the next Israeli [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: Viva Palestina shows the power of the people By Paul Woodward, War in Context, March 9, 2009 While governments have repeatedly demonstrated their indifference, incompetence, and apparent impotence when it comes to responding to the plight of the population in Gaza, a bunch of ordinary folk under the banner “Viva Palestina” have [...]

YEAR IN REVIEW: The peace process is irreversibly over By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 26, 2009 If you did not see it already, watch Bob Simon’s report (below), “Is Peace Out Of Reach?” from last night’s edition of 60 Minutes. In the history of American reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, this is an [...]