Middle East

NOVANEWS Dear Friends, This evening’s 8 items are a mixed bag—some good some bad, mostly the latter.  Actually only items 1 and 8 can be classified as positive, 8 being a request.  The worst for today is item 7 which relates that 4 Israelis were killed by a drive-by gunner or gunners.  Hamas has taken the credit.  The event is not good—not for the 4 Israelis who were killed, not for Palestinians, surely not for those Palestinians who believe in non-violent opposition, some of whom have paid with their lives. This event won’t make any difference in the ‘talks.’  Few people believe that they will succeed anyhow.  But Palestinian villages in the area of the shootings will undoubtedly witness IOF nightly invasions until the IOF believes that it has found the perpetrators.  Many innocent people...

NOVANEWS Everyone, except for the people running our most important paper, agrees that failure is inevitable in the current round of peace talks [and see this excellent post for a sum-up]. Here's a conservative Haaretz columnist: Therefore, there are good reasons to believe that detailed proposals published this year by the hawkish Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs more or less reflect Netanyahu’s position, particularly because the center is associated with Moshe Ya'alon, Netanyahu's Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, and Uzi Arad, his security advisor. Their claims are as follows: the international assertion that any future peace agreement must be based on 1967 borders is unacceptable, because it fails to address Israel’s security needs. Hence Israel must to return t...

NOVANEWS Haneen Zoabi: IDF boarded Gaza flotilla ships with intent to kill Posted by admin on Aug 31st, 2010 and filed under FEATURED NEWS STORIES, IDF/War Crimes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. By Haaretz – 31 Aug 2010 www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/arab-mk-zuabi-idf-boarded-gaza-flotilla-ships-with-intent-to-kill-1.311287 Zuabi testified before UN panel probing Israeli naval commando raid that left nine Turkish citizens dead on May 31.  Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi testified before a United Nations panel probing Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May, telling the panel that commandos who boarded the ships intended to kill, Army Radio reported on Tuesday. Haneen Zoabi at a Nazareth ...

NOVANEWS Are Israel’s policies and military acts shooting Israel in the foot?  Henry Siegman says it all in the final paragraph of his essay (item 4): “Israel's problem is not the Palestinian or Arab refusal to recognize it as a Jewish state. It is, rather, the increasing difficulty of Jews familiar with Jewish values to recognize it as a Jewish state.” Less than half the Jews of the world live in Israel.  If only half of those who live abroad disassociate themselves from Israel, there will be no use for a Jewish state.  I’m occasionally asked if I think that Israel has the right to exist.  That’s a non-question.  So many states exist on the bones of their former indigenous populations.  Do the United States, Canada, South America, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, etc etc etc have the right...

NOVANEWS New Israel Fund, itself a victim, considers some muzzling of its own More Recent Articles Search MuzzleWatch New Israel Fund, itself a victim, considers some muzzling of its own I don’t have a lot to add to Richard Silverstein’s sobering post on the New Israel Fund’s proposal to denying grants to groups that do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Forward brings distressing news that the New Israel Fund has prepared draft funding guidelines that would bar any Israeli NGO which did not endorse Israel as a Jewish state. I have, throughout the Im Tirzu attacks, stood by NIF and championed its cause.  But if it follows through on such guidelines it will have succumbed to the venom spewed by Im Tirzu.  It will have caved to pressure from the Israeli right to conform its ...

NOVANEWS In This Issue... Songs by Ikhlas (“Yasmin”) Jebara from Salem – Part I More Recent Articles Search The Only Democracy?   Villages Group friend Ikhlas Jebara from Salem near Nablus, had been mentioned here before under her nickname “Yasmin”. Her father Sa’el was murdered in 2004 by a settler as he was performing his daily work as a van driver (the settler was convicted but escaped justice).  Ever since then, we have been in touch with Muna, the widow, and her children. Ikhlas, the second of six Jebara children, is blind from birth and has last year graduated college with an English literature major. She also writes poetry in English. Following is a first sampling of her poems; a second group will be posted later. Feel free to contact Ikhlas directly at ikhlas_soh@ho...

NOVANEWS  08/30/2010: Martin Indyk on the peace process: hoping against hope Siun and Philip Munger say FDL has offered a platform for criticism of Israel Photos of expulsion plastered to Jewish Nat’l Fund wall reveal a society in crisis ‘Times’ grants Abunimah a platform: Include Hamas Slater: Goldberg’s argument is slippery Martin Indyk on the peace process: hoping against hope Aug 29, 2010  Rabbi Brant Rosen A commenter on my blog asked me what I thought of Martin Indyk's recent NY Times op-ed, in which he expresses a powerful optimism about the upcoming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington. My answer? Indyk's article represents a picture-perfect example of the inherent inequity of the peace process as it is currently defined. In his op-ed, Indyk lists four factors that ...

NOVANEWS Daddy, how much money have we wasted in Iraq? Better Tweeting ain’t gonna solve Israel’s massive image problem British aid must now help those noble foreign policy goals The Right wakes to the Afghan fiasco Beck on his Christian, God-fearing America Washington doesn’t understand that the Middle East has changed Daddy, how much money have we wasted in Iraq?  30 Aug 2010 Seven years in Iraq. One million deaths. Mass destruction. US liberation: The shell of a prison that will never be used rises from the desert on the edge of this dusty town north of Baghdad, a hulking monument to the wasted promise of America’s massive, $53-billion reconstruction effort in Iraq. Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into ...

NOVANEWS   Nora Barrows-Friedman, The Electronic Intifada,  30 August 2010 Diana Buttu As US officials arrived in Jerusalem last week to meet with Palestinian Authority and Israeli government officials, Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed Ramallah-based lawyer and former PLO advisor Diana Buttu about this week's US-brokered direct talks between the two parties for The Electronic Intifada. Nora Barrows-Friedman: What are the realistic expectations for an outcome of the direct talks, as Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian land and expand illegal settlements, and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces that it is the Palestinian preconditions that threaten to sabotage the talks? Diana Buttu: The funny thing about Netanyahu's statement on preconditions is ...

NOVANEWS 08/29/2010 ‘Firedoglake’ is progressive– just don’t talk about Palestine ‘Weekly Standard’ publishes call for ethnic cleansing 72 virgins… 39 lashes Mike Bloomberg, Ron Paul, and the moral imagination ‘Firedoglake’ is progressive– just don’t talk about Palestine Aug 28, 2010 Philip Weiss ‘Weekly Standard’ publishes call for ethnic cleansing Aug 28, 2010 Philip Weiss Apparently Fred Barnes has a piece in the Weekly Standard saying that Jews have a right to all of historical Palestine because of the red heifer, or some such logic. Matt Duss explodes the piece at ThinkProgress: Things take a darker turn, however, when [Barnes quotes] settler spokesman Dani Dayyan, commenting on the prospect of a Palestinian state, “raises the long-discarded idea that Jordan might become tha...