North America

NOVANEWS There must be something about the air in Massachusetts these days. They’ve just gone and elected a Republican Senator in a State where a donkey could get elected if it wore the Democratic colours (some say it has already!). Now it’s flagship University, Harvard, seems intent on defending a foreign affairs policy wonk, Martin Kramer, who’s long established a reputation as a hard-line Zionist. Harvard is, of course, the almer mata of another serial racist and by all accounts wife batterer, one Professor Alan Dershowitz whose book The Case for Israel plagiarised a book, Joan Peter’s From Time Immemorial, that was itself guilty of plagiarism and large-scale falsehoods.  Kramer however, who was been involved in the McCarthyite Campus Watch (like the Nazis, he doesn’t like dissident aca...

NOVANEWS Joe Biden visits Israel. Israel announces new settlement construction in East Jerusalem. Even the New York Times acknowledges that despite Israel's inclusion of East Jerusalem as "part of its united capital," the "rest of the world rejects" this position, while Israel makes this political position a fact-on-the-ground through ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. Danny Ayalon, in full, glorious meshugana mode, defends the settlement construction in East Jerusalem: "There is no doubt that the Palestinians will try to use this to either stop the upcoming indirect peace talks, or to extort more concessions from us, and I have explained to U.S. government officials that there will be no more concessions." East Jerusalem, off the table. Palestinian state, off the table. Understandably, th...

  NOVANEWS  One of my themes on this site is that Israel is experiencing a dark night of the soul due to the racism that pervades that society, but that Americans are still in the dark about this reality because of our media, which refuses to do the story. And so while Haaretz does the story every other day, and Andrew Sullivan says that Israel’s soul is at risk, establishment institutions like the New York Times and the New Yorker (and the Columbia Journalism School, junketing to Yad Vashem) turn a blind eye to this dark reality.  In the Times case, the problem surely reflects the fact that its two Jerusalem reporters are Jews who are deeply invested in Israeli society. One of them, Ethan Bronner, has a son in the Israeli military. The other, Isabel Kershner, is an Israeli who’s married ...

NOVANEWS  Left – Leon Trotsky’s protege Mark Potok fearmongers over the Tea Party and Patriot movements. Jewish Attack Groups Threaten Tea Party ‘Jewish supremacists fear Tea Party patriots because they could vote out the Democrat majority at midterms and end easy victories for ADL’s pro-homosexual legislation’  By Rev. Ted Pike — MP3 Last November, the Anti-Defamation League vilified millions of anti-Obama and Tea Party protestors as “conspirators”—part of an unruly, violence-prone movement paranoid about government. The Southern Poverty Law Center, like the Anti-Defamation League, is a 100% Jewish “civil liberties” group dedicated to crushing any sign of Christian, conservative renewal. A year ago, these groups tried to convince Missouri state police to profile patriotic Ame...

NOVANEWS Actually the US had already approved the construction in Jerusalem Here's another Ha'aretznik's take on the Netanyahu/Biden spit, woops, I mean spat. This is from Gideon Levy: The scoundrel appeared in the midst of the smile- and hug-fest with the vice president of the United States and disrupted the celebration. Joe Biden's white-toothed smiles froze abruptly, the great friendship was about to disintegrate, and even the dinner with the prime minister and his wife was almost canceled, along with the entire "peace process." And all because of Yishai. Well, the interior minister does deserve our modest thanks. The move was perfect. The timing, which everyone is complaining about, was brilliant. It was exactly the time to call a spade a spade. As always, we need Yishai (and occasio...

NOVANEWS The following article effectively shows the grip of AIPAC on American politics and the rush toward a catastrophic war with Iran. Such a war would inevitably cause a huge spike in oil prices and unleash hatred and terrorism across the Mideast and the world. Oil at $200 dollars a barrel or more would absolutely crush the already vulnerable economy of the United States, Europe and the world. Even the highest intelligence echelon of the United States recently stated again that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb. Zionist regime in 'Israel' is the one in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Iran is a signatory and allows inspections. Israel allows no inspections in this nations active nuclear, chemical and biological weapons development. As t...

      NOVANEWS Rami Khouri, Lebanese editor, speaking on NPR, and Michael Steinhardt, the funder of several neoconservative outlets, writing in the Wall Street Journal, say that the big issue is not borders, it’s refugees. I can’t get the Steinhardt because it’s behind a fire wall, but it begins, "settlements are no longer the real issue that separates Israel and the Palestinians. The real issue is refugees." And Khouri says: The land issue is not the point. The land issue is one element of a comprehensive piece that should not be made the only element, as your Israeli guest said, because the crux of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is over the refugeehood of the Palestinians from our side, the exile, displacement and refugeehood, and from the Israeli side, it’s the acceptance by the ...

NOVANEWS  Yossi Verter in today’s Ha’aretz relates some chilling words from the father of Prime Minster Netanyahu at a celebration for the the elder’s 100th birthday. One hopes that the Obama Administration knows what they are dealing with when it comes to the Israeli Prime Minister. Verter writes that a person who had attended the event remarked: "Knowing the relationship between Bibi and his father, knowing the influence the father has on the son, and after having heard the prime minister’s emotional words about his father’s ability to foresee the future – I felt as though I was listening to an operational order from Benzion. As though the die had already been cast, at least within the Netanyahu family." Under the title, "The father, the son and the threat," Verter reported on the speec...

NOVANEWS Take news from the Middle East in the last 24 hours. Despairing, infuriating and tragic. This: The Palestinians pulled out of a new round of indirect peace talks last night, even before they had begun, as a protest at Israel’s decision to announce approval for hundreds of new homes in a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. The decision to pull out, announced in Cairo by Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League, represents a major setback to months of diplomacy by the US administration and comes after the US vice-president, Joe Biden, delivered an unusually strong rebuke to Israel. And this: Some 50,000 new housing units in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line are in various stages of planning and approval, planning officials told Haaretz. They said Jerusalem’s constructi...

NOVANEWS US approves settlement construction in East Jerusalem Haaretz Eldar's take on the Netanyahu Biden spat: The statement issued by Netanyahu's bureau said that in light of the ongoing dispute between Israel and the United States over construction in East Jerusalem, the plans for new housing in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood should not have been approved this particular week. It also said the premier had ordered Yishai to draft procedures that would prevent a recurrence. In other words, Yishai is welcome to submit more plans for Jewish construction in East Jerusalem next week, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will no longer be here. Based on Biden's reaction, it seems that he (and, presumably, his boss) has decided that it is better to leave with a few sour grapes than to quarrel ...