Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Asa Winstanley
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What are the Americans really up to in Syria?
The war in Syria rages on. Hundreds of thousands have lost their lives and millions are displaced. Although we might think that the situation could not get any worse, it can; some people have advocated recently for greater US and British involvement in the war in the form of...
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Yes, of course the word ‘Zionist’ is an accusation
A report by a House of Commons select committee published last weekend contained an unprecedented attack on freedom of speech in Britain. Despite this, the media simply used the report as fodder in its ongoing and obsessive campaign against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. The most deeply troubling aspect...
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What are the Jewish Labour Movement’s links to Israel?
For more than a year, leftist Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been the target of an extreme media campaign of vilification and smears. His socialist politics and his traditional anti-imperialist approach to international affairs are anathema to the political and media establishment. At the forefront of this campaign...
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A Sword of Damocles hangs over the PA
The US government has essentially bailed out the Palestinian Authority. In a recent story for The Electronic Intifada, my colleague Charlotte Silver detailed the case here. A US “federal court of appeals threw out a verdict by a New York jury that found the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine...
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Has the Tory government authorised Israeli ‘black-ops’ in Britain?
Israel is stepping up its war against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The BDS campaign is seen as a “strategic threat of the first order” against Israel, now replacing even Iran in the demonology of Israeli propaganda. A recent committee hearing in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, revealed the...
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Israel and the Western alliance with Al-Qaeda in Syria
Earlier this year, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy granted a telling interview to Al-Jazeera’s Mehdi Hassan. In it, he confirmed much of what I have been reporting in this column for years: Israel has been in a tactical alliance with Al-Qaeda in Syria. Halevy made some quite frank and...
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Why the Chakrabarti report is being attacked
In early August, Shami Chakrabarti and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn were accused by anti-Palestinian campaigners of causing a “whitewash for peerages” scandal. The charge came from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is an organisation which campaigns along reactionary “Israel, right or wrong” lines. Corbyn had...
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So-called Islamic State “a useful tool” says Israeli think tank
The director of a right-wing think tank at an Israeli university has spoken out against declared US intentions to destroy the so-called “Islamic State” group. Professor Efraim Inbar argued in an article that Islamic State “can be a useful tool in undermining” Iran. Inbar is director of the Begin-Sadat...
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Israel’s ‘civil eliminations’ campaign spreads to Europe
As I outlined in a recent column, this year Israel declared the newest phase in its “war” against pro-Palestinian human rights groups and organisations. They have named their new tactic: “targeted civil eliminations”. By inserting the word “civil” into their usual euphemism for cold-blooded assassination, Israeli officials are very...
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Olympic-sized Israeli lies
Israel rarely fails to take opportunities in international fora to present itself as a “normal” state just like any other. “Brand Israel” propaganda regularly indulges in such distractions in order to distract the world media from the realities of its crimes. Since these are legion, great effort must be...
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Israel’s ‘civil eliminations’ campaign branches out to charities
At the end of March, an Israeli government minister threatened “targeted civil eliminations” of the leaders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. This violent-sounding language was deliberately calculated to intimidate Palestine solidarity activists. The phrase “targeted eliminations” is a common Israeli government euphemism for assassinations of Palestinian...
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Faked Labour antisemitism crisis was a stalking horse
There’s a continuity in what is happening right now in the internal Labour Party attacks on left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn. For much of 2016, the prime vector of attack in the right-wing campaign against Corbyn has been false and weaponised allegations of anti-Semitism. Corbyn has decades of experience in...
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Another summer of Corbyn
It was only one year ago that we were in the same situation. Back when he was a seemingly marginal left-wing campaigning MP, Jeremy Corbyn once called for Labour Party leaders to be subjected to annual re-election contests. Now it seems like he is getting his wish, as previously-unheard...
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Fabricated Labour antisemitism crisis dies down…for now
Last week the hotly-anticipated Chakrabarti Inquiry released its report into antisemitism and other forms of racism within the Labour Party. Its main finding is that “the Labour Party is not overrun by antisemitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism”. It did however say that there was evidence of “minority...
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Tony Blair must now face war crimes charges
The Chilcot inquiry into the British decision to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003 was established by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It is only now, two elections later, that it is reporting. Seven years and 2.6 million words later, the inquiry’s report was finally published on...
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Lawfare on the run again
Israel’s strategy of “lawfare” has once again hit the rocks. This strategy is the attempt to use courts and spurious legal actions around the world to attack, sabotage and distract Palestine solidarity activists, and make it sure they cannot carry out their campaigns. Unlike the Israel lobby, pro-Palestinian campaigners...
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After Brexit vote, don’t forget Jo Cox murder
With the debris from the Brexit fallout still causing political chaos in the country, it may be too easy to forget that less than two weeks ago a Labour MP was shot dead in broad daylight in the streets of a northern town by a man allegedly shouting “Britain...
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Israeli calls for ethnic cleansing grow louder
Israel is a state that owes its very existence to ethnic cleansing, massacres and seemingly perpetual wars. The events of 1947-48 when the state was founded are known as the Catastrophe (Nakba) by Arabs. This is because of the simple fact that 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by...
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Israel fires opening salvoes of cyberwar against BDS
At a cyberwar forum in Tel Aviv in January, Israeli officials threatened to use the country’s spy agencies to attack the BDS movement, the Palestinian-led global campaign to boycott, divestment from and sanction Israel for its mistreatment of the Palestinians. The Associated Press (eventually) published a report on these...
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The growing influence of Israel’s most hard line settlers
With the assent of Israel’s hard-right new defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, the man he replaced warned of the direction Israeli political life is now taking. “Extremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement,” Moshe Yaalon said gravely. Of course Yaalon himself could rightly be considered...
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Israel cosies up to Austria’s Nazis
The Austrian presidential elections made headlines this week. Norbert Hofer, the candidate of the far-right Freedom Party, almost won the election. Thankfully, he was edged out by his rival, former Green party leader Alexander Van der Bellen. But it was a close-run thing, with only about 30,000 votes in...
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Why B’Tselem’s latest report is ground breaking
B’Tselem is probably the most influential Israeli human rights group there is. The group was founded during the first Palestinian intifada, and thus has been working on compiling evidence of violations of Palestinian human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for more the 25 years. While...
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The Palestinians imprisoned by Israel for their Facebook posts
The propaganda goes that Israel is the “only democracy in the Middle East”. But for anyone familiar with the realities that Israel imposes on the Palestinians and on its neighbours, this has always been a cruel joke. The West Bank, occupied in violation of international law by Israel since...
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The rise of fascism in Israel
He’s back again. Ultra-rightist Avigdor Lieberman is all set to be sworn in as Israel’s next defence minister on Monday. For years he was foreign minister under various coalition governments with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right Likud party. Before that happened, liberal Zionists had tried to portray him an...