Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ben White
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Why is The Guardian excluding Palestinians from its comment pages?
The Guardian, often accused of bias by pro-Israel lobby groups, is excluding Palestinian voices from its comment pages, an examination of two years of coverage has revealed. Out of 138 op-eds on Palestine/Israel published by the paper in its ‘Comment is free’ section from October 2013 to November 2015 (which...
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LSE criticised by students for bowing to pro-Israel 'lobby groups'
The London School of Economics (LSE) has been accused of bowing to external “lobby groups”, following the university’s public criticism of the student Palestine Society. The controversy centres around an exhibition held by the Palestine Society in the SU building on October 22, intended to raise awareness about Israel’s repression...
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Revealed: UK ad watchdog gives green light to Israeli ‘annexation’ of West Bank
The UK advertising watchdog is facing calls for an inquiry after rejecting a complaint about an Israeli government-issued tourism brochure depicting the West Bank as part of Israel. Cross-party MPs and Palestine solidarity campaigners have slammed the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), with the Palestinian ambassador to the...
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New poll by pro-Israel lobby group BICOM evidence of growing anxiety
The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) has published the findings of a new poll it commissioned, conducted by Populus, on British attitudes towards Israel. The main findings, according to BICOM’s press release, are that “more than half of Brits think Israel is the UK’s main ally in the...
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Dialogue vs. BDS? Responding to arguments against an academic boycott of Israel
On Tuesday, October 27, a full-page advertisement appeared in The Guardian, announcing the support of more than 300 UK-based scholars for an academic boycott of Israel. A week on, the list of supporters had grown to some 600. Criticism from the usual suspects was immediate, with condemnation by the Israeli...
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When all was ‘calm’: a typical month for Palestinians under Israeli occupation
When US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the Middle East last week, for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the senior diplomat had one clear stated goal: to restore ‘calm’ after several weeks of violence. Speaking last Thursday, Kerry stressed the need...
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Five Videos Israel Doesn’t Want You To See
Israel works hard to portray its violence against Palestinians as that of self-defence against terrorism; in fact, the primary, ongoing task of the ‘Israel Defense Forces’ is to protect a network of colonies and settlers, and maintain a military regime over millions of non-citizen Palestinians. These videos, all from October,...
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Don’t believe Bibi – Israel has already changed the ‘status quo’ at Al-Aqsa
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that his government has no intention of changing the ‘status quo’ at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and that claims to the contrary by Palestinians are either mistaken, or acts of deliberate deception. Let us put aside for now the fact that the Israeli...
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Five Things That Netanyahu Actually Said
1. “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel them.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prompted outrage and ridicule this week, with his claim that it was the Mufti of Jerusalem who convinced Adolf Hitler to exterminate the Jews. While already debunked by historians,...
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Israeli minister: ‘There never will be a Palestinian state.’ (How’s that for incitement?)
Speaking at a conference in Washington D.C. over the weekend, Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked declared the following to the gathered attendees. “We are against a Palestinian state. There is not and never will be a Palestinian state.” There it is – an Israeli government minister stating, in black and...
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Palestinian youth and the ‘force of disobedience
During the first nine months of 2015, Israel killed 26 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and injured, on average, 45 Palestinians every week. Over the last fortnight, the total Palestinian fatalities for the year have more than doubled, and the number of injuries has jumped off...
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Tory MP to chair Parliament event alongside Eurabia “conspiracy theorist”
Conservative MP Mike Freer is set to chair an event in Parliament alongside a professor who believes “Islam” could “take control of Europe.” The event will examine “BBC Middle East coverage within the framework of Britain’s counter-extremism strategy.” The named panellists are Baroness Deech, Professor Richard Landes, and Hadar Sela,...
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UK government’s attack on BDS part of wider offensive
Among the announcements made by the Conservative party over the course of their annual party conference this week was news of an unprecedented attack on the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The government intends to change pension and procurement rules, in order to prevent local councils from adopting...
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A new intifada? You're asking the wrong question
Over the last few days, one question has been repeated over and over again: are we witnessing the beginning of a new intifada in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)? It is understandable that people are asking this: more than 500 Palestinians were injured in confrontations with Israeli occupation forces in...
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UK government: 700 Israeli attacks on Gaza since 2014 ceasefire
Israel has opened fire on the Gaza Strip on “at least 696 occasions” since the August 2014 ceasefire, the UK government has told Parliament. These incidents are in addition to 29 strikes on Gaza conducted in response to rocket fire. The figures were provided by Tobias Ellwood, Parliamentary Under Secretary of...
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Revealed - the UK charity facilitating donations to Israeli settlements
A UK charity is acting as a conduit for donations to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, it has been revealed, prompting calls for action from the Charity Commission. UK Toremet receives donations on behalf of what it calls ‘recipient agencies’, organisations or charities in Israel and elsewhere, who donors...
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Five Reasons Why Al-Aqsa Mosque Is Under Threat
1. The ‘status quo’ is already changing In 2014, almost 11,000 Jews entered the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. This represented a 28 percent increase from the previous year – and almost double the number of Jewish visitors in 2009. While in 2012, Jewish activists entered the compound on average once every...
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The Dawabsheh family and an arithmetic of apartheid
On June 12, 2014, three Israeli teenagers were abducted and killed by Palestinians in the southern area of the Occupied West Bank, though their bodies were not discovered until June 30. The Israeli military immediately launched ‘Operation Brother’s Keeper’ In just the first week of the operation, Israeli forces arrested...
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A tale of two demonstrations – but only one anti-racist movement
On Wednesday, Palestine solidarity campaigners held a demonstration outside 10 Downing Street to protest the official visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The protesters denounced Bibi as a war criminal, following last year’s Israeli attack on Gaza, which killed some 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children. Israel’s premier is...
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UN: Israel’s “discriminatory policies” blocking Palestinian economic growth
A new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) made headlines last week for its grim forecast that the Gaza Strip could be “uninhabitable” by 2020. It is vital, however, especially for Western policymakers, not to overlook what the report had to say about the West...
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Apartheid & Cultural Boycott: Then and now
The following essay, ‘Apartheid & Cultural Boycott: Then and now’, is based on a lecture of the same name given by Ben White at the Southbank Centre in London on July 18, 2015. The address was part of a programme of events to mark ‘Mandela Weekend’. Ben White is a journalist, writer,...
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The latest attack on Jeremy Corbyn is only half the story
This morning, The Jewish Chronicle published a story with the headline ‘Jeremy Corbyn campaigned for Israeli embassy car bombing pair’, stating that the Labour leadership candidate had been “a leading activist in the campaign for the release of two people who were jailed for their involvement in the bombing...
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Meet Israel’s new chief of police
Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan yesterday unveiled former Israeli army Brigadier General Gal Hirsch as the country’s new chief of police. Hirsch is the founder and chair of Defensive-Shield Holdings Ltd, a “provider of strategic, operational and tactical solutions for the defence, security, and homeland security sectors around the...
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Israeli bulldozers are back in Beit Jala
In 2004, I wrote an article about the story of Nabil Saba, a man from Beit Jala whose family was expelled in the early 1970s to make way for the Israeli settlement of Har Gilo. When I first spoke to him some 11 years ago, confiscation of land for...
