On why the ongoing Israeli conspiracy to divide and conquer will not win in the long term:
Any talk of “benefits” given to Palestinian Christians by Israel are empty promises at best – beyond the handful of collaborators that Israel has managed to bribe or blackmail into its service (of all religions and political groups it should be noted).
Here is my latest appearance on Analysis, a current affairs programme that airs on the Islam Channel.
Watch part one here (they have disabled embedding so you’ll have to click the link). Here is part two:
Column on Kerry’s sham negotiations:
But the main reason why Kerry’s deal-making is unlikely to lead anywhere is Israeli intransigence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and even Lieberman (currently positioning himself as next prime minister) may be inclined to get behind the deal. But the same cannot be said for their coalition partners, Uri Ariel’s “Jewish Home” party.
What Israel’s apologists still don’t get is that, much like the Palestinian cause itself, BDS is a popular, grass-roots and humanist campaign.
So here is some free advice for them: you can’t make the “BDS threat” go away by throwing money at the problem. Previously the Israeli government seems to have tried ignoring the problem, but that didn’t work, so now they are trying a different tack: freaking out about it.
On rumours of an Egyptian “invasion” of Gaza:
After the Muslim Brotherhood, the spectre of Hamas has been been another primary boogie man for the generals. Pro-regime media outlets have relentlessly harped on with one farcical conspiracy theory after the next about Hamas – including the ridiculous claim that Morsi wanted to hand the Sinai over to Hamas.
With the Brotherhood dealt with, these latest Egyptian army threats do not come as a surprise.
On the shared values of shared colonialisms:
Regev’s reply was stark, but honest: “Yes, as the Americans did to the Indians.”
It was a clear statement of Israel’s really-existing ideology, intentions and practice. It is refreshing in the sense that at least she openly stated her racist animosity to Palestinians. It stands in contrast to liberal Zionism’s smokescreens about “peace,” while at the same time carrying out the same policies.
The only democracy in the universe:
More recently, Israel has hit on a new physiological torture technique on Palestinians – but it is one carried out on entire villages and neighbourhoods. It affects innocent men, women and children, who are not even accused of a crime. Israeli soldiers do this simply because they can.
They are calling them “training exercises” or “mock raids”. Soldiers invade Palestinian homes and make arrests without explaining what is going on. Lovingly-built homes are upended in apparent searches for weapons. Houses are surrounded with armed soldiers. Children are terrified.
On the Israel lobby’s cash-money vs. BDS:
It’s safe to say that only one of these salaries could fund entire pro-Palestinian organisations for several years and yet it is these under-funded groups that are winning more and more significant milestones in the struggle towards building the BDS counter-siege on Israel. No wonder Zionist organizations are worried. The infamous Reut Institute recommendations for Israel to “sabotage” pro-Palestinian justice groups rated BDS as much as a threat to Israel’s apartheid system as armed resistance. Reut dubbed the former a “delegitimisation network” and the latter the “resistance network”.
My latest MEMO column. The permanent counter-revolution continues:
This is the same man who boasts to the western press about Jordan, Palestine and Yemen being “under our hegemony,” with the rule of his chequebook. Put aside that hypocrisy, as well as the open sectarian agitation for the moment and note how brazen this alliance now is.
The Israeli and and Saudi regimes find themselves in the same trench across the region.
The ANC was a national liberation movement. In that era, revolutionary freedom fighters looked not to placating the west, but to each other as they built not only rhetorical, but very real material links.
Mandela visited the revolutionary leaders of Algeria in 1962, he built links with Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
My latest MEMO column on the new Spinwatch report on the Israel lobby:
The Israel lobby often operates in the darkness, making it harder to expose. But this does also make it particularly susceptible to the light of scrutiny – such as the light shed by this report.
Understanding the way the Israel lobby works is most important. Do not be intimidated or despair. They are strong, but not all-pervasive as they would like us to think.
Pro-war Times columnist David Aaronovitch even told the veteran Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan on a BBC News panel discussion this weekend that he was talking “nonsense” to accuse Israel of doing it. And the third panellist dismissed it all as Arab “conspiracy theories.”But when such “evidential certainty” – laid out over a 108-page expert report – is dismissed out of hand as Arab conspiracy theory it’s time to question who are the real “conspiracy theorists”.