Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ibrahim Hewitt
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Israel is a rogue state; here’s why
By any reasonable assessment, any state which treats international laws and conventions with contempt, flouts them with increasing regularity and maintains a brutal military occupation into the bargain has to fit into the rogue category. Israel is one such state. Even before it declared its “independence” in 1948, the militias...
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America and Russia could end the war in Syria tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath
While the Guardian’s Simon Jenkins decries the West’s “meddling” in Syria – and suggests that “We must step back” – his humane cri de coeur touches fleetingly on the real problem. “Reality in this part of the world,” writes Jenkins, “is that order and power seem invariably to trump...
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Britain’s exit from the EU should ring alarm bells in Palestine
The news that a majority of voters in Britain have opted to leave the European Union has produced a lot of surprise, shock and anger, and that’s just within the UK itself. The result has given a major boost to far-right extremists who see it as a mandate for...
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Partisan comments from pro-Israel MPs shouldn’t trump expert advice in aid review
Earlier this week we read about Israel being nominated to chair a UN committee which is the “primary forum for the consideration of legal questions in the General Assembly”. As my colleague Ramona Wadi pointed out, this move comes a couple of years after the world’s last colonial state...
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Everything Israel does is part of a plan, not a forced ‘response’ to ‘terrorism’
On the 68th anniversary of the Nakba (Catastrophe), when the Zionist State of Israel was created on Palestinian land, it is worth reflecting on the propaganda that the world has been fed ever since. Arguably the most pervasive is the perennial claim that Israel only ever “responds” to Palestinian...
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Clinton or Trump, it will be a sad day for the future of occupied Palestine
US presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton has made her extreme pro-Israel credentials clearer than ever as she seeks campaign donations and votes from lobbyists in America. According to a report in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, she has said that America and Israel “must be closer than ever and stronger than ever…...
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How many more Israeli myths will be peddled to justify the killing of children?
The state of Israel has been built upon myths which distort reality in order to develop some sense of legitimacy within the state and in the international community. Ardent non-Israeli Zionists, such as successive British prime ministers and US presidents, buy into these myths despite overwhelming evidence that they...
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The Times is immoral and deluded too
It is a waste of time for any supporter of justice in Palestine to write a letter to the editor of the Times; it won’t get printed, for that newspaper wears its support for Israel on its sleeve. This was very evident in a Leader column under the heading...
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Should we take Mahmoud Abbas’s threats seriously?
Reports in the media claim that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ready to “dismantle” the authority which gives him control over the occupied West Bank. Given all that has happened since Abbas signed the Oslo Accords on behalf of the Palestinians more than 20 years ago, how seriously...
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Forget idealism, undemocratic democracy rules, OK?
Jeremy Corbyn has, we are told, “shaken up politics” with his surprise campaign for the Labour Party leadership. Unwittingly, perhaps, he has done much more than that. His campaign and its popularity has demonstrated more than anything else that there are far too many politicians who pay lip-service to...
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Cameron back in No 10 looks like bad news for Middle East peace
The closest fought UK General Election for many years has produced an unexpected victory for David Cameron and the Conservative Party. With predictions of a hung parliament built around Westminster fears of a tartan invasion by Scottish National Party MPs, the result of a clearly failing first-past-the-post electoral system...
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What legitimacy does Israel have to be de-legitimised?
Southampton University is hosting a conference next month which has stirred a whole raft of Zionist anger. “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism” is, say its detractors, “anti-Semitic” and will, according to one British MP, “de-legitimise the existence of a democratic state”. Ah, is...
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Israel latches onto the War on Terror to hide its own terrorism
Ever since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, Israel has been able to convince the West, America and Europe in particular, that its brutal “self-defence” is part of the global “War on Terror”. An active lobby promising votes and electoral finance has played its part well. In November...
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Will the real David Cameron please stand up?
In March this year, EU leaders met to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. In a media statement, British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned Russia and said that the “territorial integrity of an independent nation has been violated” by Moscow’s action. “The aspirations of the Ukrainian people… are being crushed,”...
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Humanitarian aid is still a target for the Israeli occupation
I have been the chair of trustees for 17 of Interpal’s 20 years as a British charity helping Palestinians in desperate need; it is a privilege to be in such a position. Being a trustee has enabled me to meet and work with some wonderful people, including our incredible...
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Almost thirty years on, there's still blood on the Holy Land
“What we have seen within the past week can only be described as racist, state-controlled terrorism and military anarchy. There is no less than an apartheid system existing to differentiate between Israeli Jews, Arabs of the originally occupied territories, now called Israel, and Arabs of the territories occupied during...
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Exclusive Interview with Khaled Meshaal, the Head of the Hamas Political Bureau
‘It is the occupation, not Hamas recognition of Israel, which is the core problem’ It is rather unnerving to come face to face with a man regarded by many people in the West as the leader of a terrorist organisation, and by possibly more people elsewhere in the world...
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US exceptionalism makes it a poor choice as world leader
With a growing list of US military interventions around the world, and their accompanying human rights abuses including the ongoing shame of Guantanamo Bay in the background, it is difficult to imagine a more unsuitable candidate as the leader of the free world than the American president. Indeed, as...
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Is it time to bypass governments in the search for justice?
One of the conundrums about Israel is that the country’s media often carries far more robust stories about the state than the many pro-Israel media outlets in the West. Discussions take place within Israel that are blocked or stifled by lobbyists in Europe and Americas; its activists appear to...
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'Victory' in Gaza is illusory
How much longer is the farce of the Palestinian Authority going to continue? I ask because it has been obvious over the past few months that the PA, under President Mahmoud Abbas, is there more for Israel’s benefit than that of the people it is meant to serve, the...
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Make Israel a pariah state through BDS, Pappé tells Joburg audience
As the Israelis and Palestinians try to agree on ceasefire terms in Cairo, public disgust at Israel’s savage military assault on the civilians of Gaza is growing. Such public disquiet is a worldwide phenomenon. At the University of Johannesburg on Wednesday evening, Professor Ilan Pappé told a packed auditorium...
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Netanyahu should look at his own record, the schmuck
Standing in front of a map of what both no doubt hope will one day be Greater Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu and Tony Blair have today given a practical demonstration of chutzpah. Translated roughly as “audacity” (but could also mean “insolence”), the two men with blood on their hands tried...
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Remember the USS Liberty? The US and Israel wish you didn't
It is often assumed that Israel was on the defensive in the Six-Day War of June 1967. That is testimony to the success of its propaganda, because the reality was very different. “From the very beginning,” wrote James Bamford in Body of Secrets (2001), “an essential element in the...
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Israel's timeline of terror
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making familiar noises about Hamas and “terrorism” in the wake of the announcement of the Palestinian unity government. “I call on all responsible elements in the international community not to rush to recognise a Palestinian government which has Hamas as part of it...