Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Ramzy Baroud
-
The Last Lifeline: The real reason behind Abbas' call for elections
The call by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for elections in the Occupied Territories is a political ploy. There will be no true, democratic elections under Abbas’ leadership. The real question is: why did he make the call in the first place? On September 26, Abbas took on the world’s...
-
The way to truly defeat Apartheid: A conversation with Na’eem Jeenah and Salim Vally
“Perhaps the time has come for Palestinians and justice-loving Israelis to imagine a new future,” wrote South African intellectuals and academics, Na’eem Jeenah and Salim Vally, in their essay, “Beyond Ethnic Nationalism: Lessons from South Africa”. This “new future”, according to Jeenah and Vally, “will begin to be built when...
-
Administrative Torture: Free Heba al-Labadi, a Jordanian Citizen in Israeli Prison
On August 20, Heba Ahmed al-Labadi fell into the dark hole of the Israeli legal system, joining 413 Palestinian prisoners who are currently held in so-called administrative detention. On September 26, Heba and seven other prisoners declared a hunger strike to protest their unlawful detention and horrific conditions in Israeli...
-
On Racism and ‘Wild Beasts’: Why Israel besieges Palestinians
The Israeli Apartheid Wall, which is being built largely on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, once more underscores the ugliness of military occupation. As such, it truly epitomises the nature of Israeli apartheid and also delineates the siege-driven, isolationist mentality that dominates the ruling-class...
-
The Africa-Palestine Conference: Why South Africa Must Lead the Way
On September 16, I visited South Africa, a country where many Palestinians have always felt welcomed, if not overwhelmed by the degree of genuine and meaningful solidarity. While having the honor to address many audiences in six, major cities, I have also learned a great deal. An important and sobering...
-
Netanyahu on Steroids: What a Gantz-led Government Means for Palestine
Experience has taught Palestinians not to pay heed to Israeli elections. But to every rule there is an exception. Although it is still true that no Israeli Zionist leader has ever been kind to the Palestinian people, the dynamics of the latest Israeli elections on September 17 are likely to...
-
Bassam al-Sayeh, Faris Baroud and the Slow Murder of Palestinian Prisoners
Bassam al-Sayeh was the latest victim of medical negligence in Israeli prisons. The 47-year-old Palestinian from Nablus died on September 8. The last of such tragic cases is that of Faris Baroud who passed away in Nafha prison on February 6. In 2011, al-Sayeh was diagnosed with bone and blood cancer,...
-
Apartheid made official: Deal of the Century is a ploy and annexation is the new reality
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving quickly to alter the political reality in Palestine, and facing little or no resistance. On September 10, Netanyahu declared his intentions to annex swathes of Palestinian land adjacent to the Jordan River, an area that covers 2,400 square kilometres, or nearly a third...
-
‘Justice is Indivisible’: Screams of Israa Ghrayeb Should Be Our Wake-up Call
The death of Israa Ghrayeb has ignited furious reactions regarding the so-called ‘honor-killings’ in Palestine and throughout the Arab world. It also wrought confusion with respect to the jurisprudential foundation of such crimes, which are often committed in the name of protecting the honor of the family. Israa, a 21-year-old makeup...
-
Israeli Folly: How Netanyahu Cemented the Hezbollah-Hamas-Iran Alliance
To serve his limited political agenda, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have unwittingly unified various resistance groups in the Middle East after years of separation and discord. On August 24-25, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli army to strike several targets of parties he perceives to be allies of Iran in...
-
The War Ahead: Netanyahu’s Elections Gamble Will be Costly for Israel
On September 1, the Lebanese group Hezbollah struck an Israeli military base near the border town of Avivim. The Lebanese attack came as an inevitable response to a series of Israeli strikes that targeted four different Arab countries in two days. The Lebanese response, accompanied by jubilation throughout Lebanon, shows...
-
A Century-Old War: Palestine’s Class Struggle and the ‘Three Separate Enemies’
At the heart of the Palestinian struggle for basic human rights is the enduring fight of Palestinian workers. While they currently find themselves at the forefront of several battles, extending from Israel to the Occupied Territories and Lebanon, the roots of this war, one that aims at breaking the...
-
Humanity Denied: What Is Missing from the Omar, Tlaib Story
Israel’s decision to bar two United States Democratic Representatives, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from entering Israel and visiting Palestine has further exposed the belligerent, racist nature of the Israeli government. But our understanding of the Israeli decision and the massive controversy and discussion it generated should not stop there....
-
How Israel’s Labor Engineered the Illegal Jewish Colonies in Palestine
Following the Israeli victory in the 1967 war, it became impossible for Zionist ideologues to mask the true nature of their state – an unwavering colonial regime with an expansionist agenda. While Zionism was undoubtedly a colonial enterprise from the onset, many Zionists refused to perceive themselves as colonists. “Cultural...
-
Jewish settlers rule the roost in Israel, but at what cost?
Jewish Israeli settlers are on a roll as they rampage across the occupied Palestinian West Bank. While settler violence is part of the daily routine in Palestine, the violence of recent weeks is linked directly to the General Election in Israel, scheduled to be held on 17 September. The previous...
-
We must boycott Israeli sports as we did with Apartheid South Africa
The Palestinian Football Association is struggling to survive. Combined US-Israeli pressure on Palestinian organisations that provide aid and support to the Palestinian people is now felt in the field of sports as well. In recent months, the association’s budget has been slashed by more than half, and the new...
-
Manifestos of Hate: What White Terrorists Have in Common
Writing under the title of “If the El Paso shooter had been Muslim”, Moustafa Bayoumi stated the obvious. “If the El Paso shooter had been a Muslim,” Bayoumi wrote in the British Guardian newspaper on August 6, US President Donald Trump “would be lobbing accusations such as ‘Islam hates us’...
-
Israel’s war on innocence: Palestinian children in Israeli military courts
On 29 July, 4-year-old Muhammad Rabi’ Elayyan was reportedly summoned for interrogation by the Israeli police in occupied Jerusalem. The news, originally reported by the official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, was later denied by the Israeli police, more than likely in an attempt to lessen the impact of the...
-
Abbas’s la-la land and the evolution of the American love affair with Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ready to “go to the White House and continue what started with Donald Trump.” With this and other confusing statements, Abbas tried to articulate the new Palestinian political agenda to foreign reporters in Ramallah last month. According to Abbas, the PA...
-
Palestinian mayor, arrested by PA, one of dying breed of revolutionaries
It would be unfair to claim that Palestine has not produced great leaders. It has, and Bassam Shakaa, the former Mayor of Nablus, who passed away on 22 July at the age of 89, was living proof of this. The supposed deficit in good Palestinian leadership can be attributed to...
-
Killing Tariq: Why We Must Rethink the Roots of Jewish Settlers Violence
Seven-year-old Tariq Zabania from Al-Khalil (Hebron) was killed on the spot when an Israeli Jewish settler ran his car over him on July 15. Little Tariq’s photograph, lying face down on the road, was circulated on social media. His untimely death is heartbreaking. Tariq’s innocent blood must not go in...
-
‘Clear and Decisive Win’: Why Netanyahu Needs a War on Gaza More Than Ever Before
Media reports of an impending Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip are now a regular occurrence. The frequency of these reports fluctuates based on Israel’s own political landscape. Empirical experience has taught us that when Israeli leaders are in trouble, they wage a war on Gaza. Now that Israeli...
-
Who Killed Oscar and Valeria: The Inconvenient History of the Refugee Crisis
History never truly retires. Every event of the past, however inconsequential, reverberates throughout and, to an extent, shapes our present, and our future as well The haunting image of the bodies of Salvadoran father, Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter, Valeria, who were washed ashore at a riverbank on...
-
Israel’s Latest ‘Security Problem’: Who's to Blame for Gaza’s Environmental Crisis
Writing in The Jewish Journal under the title, “A Spillover Crisis: How Gaza’s Water Shortage Affects Israel”, Dominik Doehler explains the direct link between Gaza’s water problems and Israel. Doehler offered a scientific explanation behind the besieged Strip’s water crisis, but when it was time to assign responsibility, something went...