And it is this disproportionate response — typical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — that has people around the world up in arms. This war will only result in Palestinian cassualties, and many of these will be children and unarmed civilians — young and old. The propaganda from the Israeli government will be, as it has always been, that Hamas is ‘hiding behind human shields,’ but the sorry reality is that in such an overcrowded urban environment non-combatants have nowhere else to go.
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Man behind Donald Trump
When it comes to the grey eminence behind Trump we have to pay closer attention to the vision of Trumpism. By its nature real hegemonic power looks to the future; it never stops strategising its own preservation, and it does this primarily in the construction of a narrative of threat in which only the powerholder can offer salvation.
Little England Just Keeps Getting Smaller
Theresa May has decided to pick a fight with the United States, Westminster’s last and best chance of something approaching stability after its messy divorce from Europe.
Israel’s Claim on Jewish People
Jewish nationalism qua Zionism was already fully developed, albeit appealing to a minority of Jews at the turn of the twentieth century, before the Nazi genocide and the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel.
Our Christmas Present from the United Nations
In the real world – a place both Netanyahu and Danon are ill at ease – we have to deal with real people and their real rights and claims. In the real world gods don’t act as guarantors. Laws do. In this case we have the current position of international law and the reality of Palestine and Israel as real and existing states with rights.
What’s with all the Hasbarartists?
Israel is the world’s leading producer of laser-guided airstrike drones responsible for the deaths of countless civilians in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. Palestine produces olive oil.
Death of a War Criminal
It’s amazing what death can do for a man. Artists find that death adds value to the work everyone thought was garbage when they were alive, and Israeli war criminals find themselves being considered for sainthood.
We are not Overly Shaken by Children Burning
Most scholars, most priests, most Jews, most Arabs, while they would prefer some less horrendous sight than the burning flesh of children, are not seriously shaken in their style of mind, their taxpaying, their consumerism, their spiritual, economic, or political complicity, by such “incidents.”