Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ben White
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Could Netanyahu be on the way out?
The morning after Israel’s second election of the year failed to offer clarity about who exactly will form the next government, or whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will remain in office. Israeli media, citing sources within the elections committee, have reported that Likud and main opposition alliance Blue and White (Kahol…
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Explained: The Negev
The Negev. An enchanting, spectacular desert, where visitors find reminders of bygone civilisations, encounter nomadic tribes and sleep under the stars. This, at any rate, is how the Israeli tourism industry likes to promote the Negev. But there is a darker reality to be found, one that undermines not just…
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Shimon Peres: Israeli war criminal whose victims the West ignored
Shimon Peres, who passed away Wednesday aged 93 after suffering a stroke on 13 September, epitomised the disparity between Israel’s image in the West and the reality of its bloody, colonial policies in Palestine and the wider region. Peres was born in modern day Belarus in 1923, and his family…
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Explained: Israeli Settlements
Soon after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in June 1967, Israeli authorities began to establish civilian colonies – settlements – in the newly-occupied territory. Initially small in number, the settlements steadily grew, spreading across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Today, around half a century on, there are well…
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Israel violated agreement at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, says International Crisis Group
A new report by International Crisis Group (ICG) on Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound confirms that the primary trigger for unrest in the city in September 2015 was the Israeli authorities’ violations of an agreement reached with Jordan the previous year. According to ICG, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised King…
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Israeli journalists enlist against BDS
On March 11, I gave a talk on Israel’s apartheid policies at the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus, an event organised by the students’ Friends of Palestine Society. At the end of the event, a member of the audience approached me. The woman, who identified herself as Jewish, began by…
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Renowned international record fair backs cultural boycott of Israel
Independent Label Market (ILM), an international record fair, has refused an offer to take its market to Tel Aviv, citing the cultural boycott of Israel. An Israeli distribution company approached ILM, which has taken place in London (where it began), New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Barcelona, with the offer…
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Shadow Minister: UK abstention on Israeli settlements resolution at UNHRC “hypocritical”
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) been sharply criticised for the behaviour of British diplomats in Geneva last week, who tried to pressure the Palestinians to water down a resolution on Israel’s illegal settlements. On March 24, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted four resolutions pertaining to…
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Report: Palestinian farmers and workers urge support for Israel boycott
A new report examines how “Israeli agricultural export companies are profiting from the Israeli colonisation of Palestinian land” – and how their produce ends up in British supermarkets. ‘Apartheid in the fields: From occupied Palestine to UK Supermarkets’, published by Corporate Watch, combines “interviews with Palestinian agricultural workers and farmers…
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Israel is attacking, and killing, Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip
Six-year-old Israa Abu Khussa and her 10-year-old brother Yassin were still sleeping when the Israel Air Force launched four airstrikes across the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Saturday. Missile fragments tore through their home, only partly rebuilt following the 2014 offensive. Yassin and Israa were rushed to hospital,…
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University College London Union votes to support BDS
University College London Union (UCLU) voted Tuesday night to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, in what campus-based human rights campaigners hailed as a “tremendous victory.” The motion to support BDS was passed by a margin of 14-4, with 3 abstentions, at a meeting of UCLU Council, a…
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In new album, Rafeef Ziadah teaches life and resistance
Palestinian poet and activist Rafeef Ziadah recently launched her new album, ‘We Teach Life’, with an event at Rich Mix in London. The evening was co-organised by anti-poverty charity War on Want, who had a stall for those attending to get campaign materials and resources – but as a review…
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Israel and friends battle the boycott in Britain – part two
This is the second in a two-part report on how Israel and its friends are battling the boycott. The first part was published yesterday and can be read here. While lawfare attacks on BDS by private individuals or groups (albeit sometimes with ties to the Israeli state) have had mixed…
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Israel and friends battle the boycott in Britain
On February 17, British Cabinet Minister Matthew Hancock stood alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and announced the publication of “new guidance” for local authorities concerning procurement. The move was trailed – and presented by the government – as designed to ‘ban’ boycotts of Israeli goods and services…
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Simon Schama’s Nakba denial
British historian Simon Schama has written a comment piece for the Financial Times on “the left’s problem with Jews”, the main purpose of which is to argue that “anti-Israel demonstrations are in danger of morphing into anti-Semitism.” The section I wish to focus on comes near the end, when Schama…
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In Israel’s parliament, even limited Palestinian dissent is under threat
“These people have gone too far…” MK Nissan Slomiansky, February 10, 2016 Many Palestinian citizens of Israel “take their rights too far.” Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin, May 13, 2008 On February 2, Members of Knesset met with the families of Palestinian assailants whose bodies are being withheld by Israel…
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Shin Bet confirms that almost all Palestinian ‘attacks’ occur in occupied territories
87 per cent of stabbings or alleged stabbings carried out by Palestinians from October to January took place within the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), according to Israeli authorities. In their latest monthly summary, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA or Shin Bet) recorded 166 “attacks” by Palestinians in the month of…
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Knesset Speaker, who lives in a West Bank settlement, to address British MPs
Yuli Edelstein, the Speaker of Israel’s Knesset, will address British MPs and Lords on March 2 in Westminster, at an event organised by the British Inter-Parliamentary Union (BGIPU). The meeting will be chaired by Louise Ellman MP, chair of the All-Party Britain-Israel Parliamentary Group. Edelstein, a Likud politician, is a…
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The missing data on the Palestinian revolt
On Wednesday, Palestinian youths from a village in the northern West Bank attacked Israeli Border Police officers outside Damascus Gate, in Occupied East Jerusalem, killing one and wounding another. The three assailants were killed on the spot. With nearly daily bloodshed, most news agencies have been using ‘copy and paste’-style…
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The Apartheid Fear
Apartheid, in the words of the Rome Statute, is when inhumane acts are committed “in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Increasingly, Israel’s “inhumane acts”…
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The ‘moderate’ alternative to Netanyahu is horrifying – and sobering
No Palestinian state for the time being – this is the position of Israel’s opposition Zionist Camp, as expressed this week by its leader and chair of the Labor party, MK Isaac Herzog. Speaking on Tuesday at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Herzog presented a diplomatic plan for…
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New study details sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli authorities
***TRIGGER WARNING*** This article, and pages it links to, contains information about sexual assault and/or violence which may be triggering to survivors. A new academic study in the peer-reviewed medical journal ‘Reproductive Health Matters’ has revealed dozens of cases of “alleged sexual torture or ill-treatment” of Palestinian male prisoners detained…
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Israel debates how to stop BDS even as it continues to lose friends abroad
On Wednesday, a debate was held in the British Parliament on the issue of Palestinian child prisoners detained by Israeli forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). The same day, two thousand miles away, Israel’s Knesset hosted a discussion on how to combat the growing, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)…
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Concern over Israel’s attacks on NGOs betrays anti-Palestinian racism
Two weeks ago, the Israeli cabinet gave its approval to proposed legislation that would “impose new regulations on Israeli non-profit groups that receive funds from foreign governments.” The ‘Transparency Bill’ will compel NGOs that receive more than half of their funding from foreign governments to state so in all official…