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NOVANEWS Ambushing the ambiguity Like the gleeful sound one makes upon hearing that a particularly obnoxious and troublesome relative will not be attending a family gathering, Washington officials probably issued a collective sigh of relief when hearing the news that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has cancelled his visit to Washington planned for next week. The Israeli Prime Minister has caused enough diplomatic problems for the Obama government recently and his appearance at an international summit on the spread of nuclear weapons could have further embarrassed both Israel and the United States. Netanyahu will not attend the weapons conference because he is afraid to confront a group of representatives of Muslim and Arab nations who plan to bring up the issue of Israel’s non-p...

NOVANEWS The Cooper Union question: Was Arab anti-Semitism the same as Nazi anti-Semitism? Last night at Cooper Union, George Packer sought to expose some possibly embarrassing sources of Tariq Ramadan's political commitments by reading a quotation from Ramadan's grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Packer asked Ramadan why he had failed to address the import of such anti-Semitic utterances; he implied that the failure might indicate a less than candid approach, by Ramadan, to Islamic anti-Semitism generally. Ramadan said that the quotation seemed to him likely to have been taken out of context. Packer insisted that the only relevant context was what it must have meant to ally oneself with an ally of Hitler. Packer incidentally acknowledged that he had draw...

NOVANEWS Neocon offers disinformation about Occupation in ‘LA Times’ Anonymous writes: I think you've followed Robert Pape's work quite closely. It is very important. Neocon  Max Boot has now taken it up in the LA Times: Yet by 2004 the intifada was over. Suicide bombings have not been a serious threat to Israel since. This is because of the effectiveness of countermeasures such as erecting a security barrier along the West Bank and searching just about everyone entering a public premise in Israel, combined with targeted operations to arrest or kill militant leaders. His error here has to do with his misrepresentation of the barrier as being "along the West Bank" when everybody paying attention should know that the vast majority of it is inside the West Bank. To say "along" without also s...

NOVANEWS The lobby squirts squid-ink at Steve Walt This is a good fight. Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy adopts an Alfred-E-Newman like cluelessness in saying, What possible attachments to foreign countries can Steve Walt be talking about--Morocco? Jordan? Turkey?--when he criticizes the Washington Institute and Dennis Ross, who once worked there before going to the Obama administration. As if Satloff does not care about Israel in the morning and in the afternoon and at night too.   Walt responds calmly that he is talking of course about attachments to Israel, but that he doesn't use the word "dual loyalty" because we all have multiple identities in this modern age (well some of us). He says it's a straightforward question of conflict of interest and descri...

NOVANEWS A ‘constellation of Jewish groups’ (J Street to David Project) seeks to block any accountability for cruel occupation The battle is joined inside the Jewish community over boycott/divestment/sanctions, specifically the Berkeley student bill calling for divestment from two companies. Below Sydney Levy and Yaman Salahi, on behalf of Jewish Voice for Peace, ask, "Why are American Jewish groups so intent on defending illegal Israeli settlements and other human rights violations?" A coalition of nearly 20 Jewish groups, ranging from the right-wing David Project and the Jewish National Fund to the liberal J Street, is distributing a misleading statement condemning a Student Senate bill at UC Berkeley. The ground-breaking bill calls for divestment from companies that profit from the per...

NOVANEWS Is the US getting ready to push Israel to declare its nuclear status? Whatever else can be said about the strained relationship between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, one thing is clear: Obama seems intent on keeping Netanyahu off balance. On Tuesday, Netanyahu announced he would be returning to Washington next week to attend Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit. Just days later, he had changed his mind, ostensibly because of “fears that a group of Muslim states, led by Egypt and Turkey, would demand that Israel sign up to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT,” Haaretz reported. An earlier report in the Jerusalem Post, however, had raised that specific issue and said this would not deter the Israeli prime minister from attending the summit: [O]ne main argum...

NOVANEWS Brave Palestinian journalist arrested for filming protests The latest news from Bil’in: Haitham Al Khatib was arrested while filming at today’s demonstration, held on the anniversary of the Deir Yassin massacre. Details below. I’m reminded of the story Haitham told me when I asked about the deep scar between his eyebrows. The thing to keep in mind is that all of the soldiers know Haitham and Hamde Abo, the Bil’in photographer: they are the dynamic duo that arrives on scene to document each and every night raid. It’s the same soldiers day in and day out, so Haitham and Hamde can recognize familiar eyes and mouths beneath the masks. (This is how Hamde describes the faces of the IDF: "I know the soldiers like my brother.") So one day Haitham was taking photographs at the weekly demo...

NOVANEWS Blau-Kamm case exposes the dark underbelly of Israel’s security state What is misleadingly being called in Israel the “Anat Kamm espionage affair” is quickly revealing the dark underbelly of a nation that has worshipped for decades at the altar of a security state. Next week 23-year-old Kamm is due to stand trial for her life -- or rather the state’s demand that she serve a life sentence for passing secret documents to an Israeli reporter, Uri Blau, of the liberal Haaretz daily. She is charged with spying. Blau himself is in hiding in London, facing, if not a Mossad hit squad, at least the stringent efforts of Israel’s security services to get him back to Israel over the opposition of his editors, who fear he will be put away too. This episode has been dragging on behind the scene...

NOVANEWS and here's the link: http://www.lightstalkers.org:80/galleries/slideshow/25356       From: Tamar Golan <tamargolan@lhv. org.il> Date: 2010/4/9 Subject: FW: ISRAEL-THE PROMISED LAND: 2009-10 My Dear Friends, In Israel and Abroad! Allow me, please, to share with you these incredible photos taken by Amnon, a young member of our Kibbutz. For long months, during the days and in the long nights, he lived with the illegal Palestinian workers and followed them smuggling their way into Israel, near our Kibbutz, in search for a hard day's work. You may want to share these photos with your friends. They speak for themselves. Follow the link below, pls. Tamar From: amnon gutman [mailto:amnon23@gmail. com] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 1:41 PM To: amnon gutman Subject: ISRAEL-THE PROMISED...

NOVANEWS Brad Johnson at ThinkProgress and at Grist has posted a little technocratic note discussing how a carbon cap could cut down on Iran's income from hydro-carbons, effectively a nifty sort of indirect sanction that would have the positive effect of weakening Iranian National Socialism. Put aside the wonk-ish thought-experiment—sanctions never seem to be effective, except at killing brown people—and look at the flow of Johnson's argument: A strong cap on carbon would significantly cut the flow of petrodollars to Iran’s hostile regime, a Wonk Room analysis shows. The economic and political strength of Iran’s dictatorship is a threat to the national security of the United States and the world, and its nuclear ambitions threaten to destabilize the Middle East. Yesterday, diplomats fro...