Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ben White
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Beyond Brooklyn College: how and why Israel advocates are fighting BDS
The Palestinians’ Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign is making headlines, thanks to pro-Israel advocates’ attack on an event scheduled for tonight at Brooklyn College in New York. In a blow to the likes of Alan Dershowitz, the decision by the college’s political science department to co-sponsor the discussion on...
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Court denial of Israeli nationality reinforces discrimination
Last week, in response to a long-running legal challenge, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of the status quo whereby the country’s population registry does not allow “Israeli” as a permitted nationality. What at first glance appears confusing sheds light on a little known aspect of Israel’s discriminatory ethnocracy. In...
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Pro-Israel propaganda cloaked with 'progressive' values at Britain's universities
As students begin a new academic year, there are signs that pro-Israel propaganda initiatives at Britain’s universities are being given a boost. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has established a new role within the organisation of “Israel Engagement Officer”, a post being taken up by Canadian Beca Bookman....
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Britain re-writes diplomatic protocol to protect Israeli officials
In recent weeks the UK government has once again shown itself to be entirely unwilling to hold Israeli war crimes suspects to account, to the extent that the Foreign Office is leaving its procedures open to ridicule. At the end of last month, IDF Major General (res.) Doron Almog was...
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Michael Oren justifies institutionalized racism on CNN
Two weeks ago, Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the US Michael Oren was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on CNN. In the context of discussing renewed negotiations, Zakaria asked Oren about the demand that Palestinians recognize “Israel as a Jewish state”. Oren’s response is instructive and goes to the heart of...
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The meaning of a two-state solution
Discussion about a one state solution in Palestine/Israel is moving into the mainstream. As its advocates gain a platform for their views, defenders of ethnic separation are increasingly falling back on crude arguments about birth-rates and how ‘Jews’ would be treated in an ‘Arab state’. But a smarter, seemingly...
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21st century colonialism: Israeli policies in the Negev and Galilee
In December 2000, the first Herzliya Conference took place, a now annual event and regular fixture in the diaries of politicians, military officials and defense industry figures from Israel and around the world. The report produced after that first gathering included a section on Israel’s “geodemographic aspect”, and noted...
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Bantustan Borders: Israel's Colonisation of the Jordan Valley and the security myth
At the regular cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli PM Netanyahu repeated a demand that as part of any future agreement with the Palestinians, Israel would maintain a “security border” in the Jordan Valley. The same day, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu has ordered the construction of a security barrier...
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Reagan revived as US delegation defends Al-Sisi
In late September, retired senior U.S. military officials were part of a delegation that went to Egypt on a visit organized by Virginia-based think tank the Westminster Institute (WI), returning to D.C. to hail the Egyptian military’s intervention and deny there had been a coup. Delegates, many linked to...
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On Palestine, BDS and solidarity in a time of political crisis
At a recent conference on Palestine in Doha, organised by Azmi Bishara’s Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies, there was one thing that everyone agreed on: the Palestinian national movement is in a state of crisis with regards to leadership, representation and strategies. How this predicament came about,...
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Bethlehem Bantustan 2013: Have Yourself an Apartheid Christmas
The tourists heading to Bethlehem this festive season will come from far and wide – but all of them will enjoy more freedom of movement than the city’s residents do, Muslim and Christian alike, in their own land. Such is life under Israeli apartheid, and the historical town has not...
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Under pressure: UNRWA facing serious challenges in 2014
At the end of 2013 came a shocking update from Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus – at least 15 Palestinians had died of hunger since September. The grim news was shared by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose spokesperson Chris Gunness told French news agency AFP that...
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Lieberman's swap proposal exposes Israeli democracy deficit
Earlier this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared in a high profile speech that “he would not support any peace agreement that does not include the exchange of Israeli Arab land and population”. Calling it a “basic condition”, the Yisrael Beiteinu leader said that “the border will move”...
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Israel's Negev 'frontier'
On this year’s Land Day, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in Sakhnin, an Israeli city in the Lower Galilee, to protest against past and present systematic discrimination. But with the focus on Israel’s policies of land confiscation, there was significance in a second protest that...
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The Board of Deputies' disingenuous discourse on "divisive" BDS
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has made a bizarre attack on students at Middlesex University for displaying a plaque that marks a twinning arrangement between the students’ union and their counterparts at Al Quds University in Palestine. Middlesex University’s students’ union actually passed the twinning motion in 2011,...
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Palestinians Unite to Rage Against Prawer Plan
This Saturday, November 30, Palestinian activists will rally against plans for the ethnic cleansing of the Naqab/Negev in an internationally-observed ‘Day of Rage’. The third such day in a year, there are planned demonstrations across Palestine as well as in cities around the world, in a show of global...
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Dutch pension giant boycotts Israeli banks, G4S faces OECD investigation
Dutch pension fund giant PGGM has withdrawn all its investments from Israel’s five largest banks because of their complicity in West Bank settlements. The report in Israeli newspaper Haaretz was apparently confirmed by PGGM this morning. The Israeli banks targeted are Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot, the First International...
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Did NYT's Jodi Rudoren write her worst piece ever?
Even by the standards of The New York Times’ news coverage, a recent Jodi Rudoren piece on “incitement” by Palestinians was abysmal. Based on the article’s word count, an estimated 70% of Rudoren’s piece is dedicated to putting forward the Israeli case about Palestinian ‘incitement’, with a mere 20%...
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Liberals eulogize Ariel Sharon the war criminal
Ariel Sharon, after fighting with the Haganah during the Nakba, went on to head up Unit 101, forces whose activities, in the words of Eyal Weizman, “mostly constituted the slaughter of unarmed Palestinian civilians in villages and refugee camps”. On one occasion, they expelled Bedouin in the Negev by...
