Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Asa Winstanley
-
Israel’s characteristic Beirut hypocrisy
The massive explosion which devastated Beirut earlier this month was nothing short of a catastrophe. Some 220 people lost their lives and, according to the BBC, as many as 300,000 people are now homeless as a result. This is a devastating blow from which it will take Lebanon’s capital...
-
Iran and the new reality in the Gulf after UAE-Israel normalisation
After the UAE officially announced normalising relations with Israel and entering into a new phase of bilateral relations, and in light of regional developments over the past decade, we can clearly envision the new reality of the Middle East in general and the Gulf region in particular. Those observing...
-
Why besieged Gaza is a ticking time bomb
Gaza’s two million residents have become accustomed for the past 20 years to Israeli air strikes, ground incursions and naval attacks. In fact, the besieged coastal enclave has become an experimental field where Israel’s latest technology and military arsenal including deadly drones are used. Fear and panic have become the...
-
The UAE’s perfidious normalisation plan with Israel
One year ago I predicted in this column that a Saudi embassy to Israel in Jerusalem was coming soon. With last week’s news about the United Arab Emirates, it looks as if we are moving closer towards such a tragic eventuality. US President Donald Trump formally announced that the UAE and Israel had...
-
Palestine: UAE-Israel normalisation deal, a stab in the back and a betrayal to Jerusalem
The tripartite US-brokered Israel-United Arab Emirates (UAE) deal on the announcement of full normalisation of relations between Israel and the UAE came as a surprise. But, in reality, it was not that shocking, as both countries had secret relations for years. The deal will include areas of security, tourism,...
-
Israelis do not support Palestinian equality
It is a common platitude amongst some of the weaker parts of the Palestine solidarity movement that “Israelis want peace” and do not support their government’s policies of oppression against the Palestinians and other Arabs peoples. But the facts simply don’t bear this out. Let’s take a cursory examination...
-
Free Mahmoud Nawajaa!
A nine-year-old boy shouts: “Leave dad alone. Get out. Your dog doesn’t scare me!” The boy’s home has just been invaded in the middle of the night by a score of soldiers in full battle-dress, armed to the teeth. Accompanying them is a vicious, trained military hound. The boy...
-
Israel’s global cybercrime racket
Earlier this month an Israeli court ruled that notorious cyberwarfare spyware firm NSO Group would retain its export licence. The ruling came despite the fact that lawyers for Amnesty International presented what the human rights group described as “mountains of evidence” concerning NSO’s crimes. NSO is responsible for Pegasus,...
-
The pro-Israel lobby is smearing Black Lives Matter as a ‘terrorist’ movement
The global Black Lives Matter movement has become a major strategic threat to Israel. At least, that’s how the pro-Israel lobby increasingly views it. One obscure lobby group recently ratcheted up its anti-BLM rhetoric a notch. Something calling itself the “Zachor Legal Institute” has started to attack BLM online...
-
Another Palestinian political prisoner dies in Israeli prison due to deliberate medical negligence
Yet another Palestinian political prisoner has died in an Israeli prison due to the medical negligence of the Israeli prison administration. 75-year-old Saadi Al-Gharably was the latest victim in a series of similar cases, bringing the total number of victims to 233 since 1967. The Waed Society for Palestinian...
-
Fifteen years of BDS has united all Palestinians and their supporters
Today marks 15 years since the official foundation of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Palestine. The movement against Israeli apartheid has a long history and deep roots, but it was on 9 July 2005 that it was established formally with the publication of the “Palestinian Civil...
-
Johnson’s diplomatic advice to Netanyahu and the UK’s stance on Hong Kong and Palestine
The Israeli annexation of parts of the Palestinian West Bank – a territory already occupied since 1967 – did not take place, just as Johnson and others hoped. As a “passionate defender of Israel” the British prime minister’s plea to his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu not to implement the...
-
The Black Lives Matter movement’s stand with Palestinians has a history
It is common to think of Black Lives Matter as a single group when it isn’t; it is a movement. Indeed, it is a movement for Black liberation which first erupted in response to police brutality in 2014, following the killing of two African Americans: Mike Brown in Ferguson,...
-
Time to disband the Palestinian Authority
Since 1993, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has policed Palestinians in the West Bank and, until 2007, the Gaza Strip. Under Israel’s apartheid regime, the PA has no authority to police the Israeli settlers who illegally occupy the West Bank – quite the opposite. In fact, the PA protects them....
-
Churchill was an anti-Semite who embraced Zionism as a colonial tool
Recent Black Lives Matter protests in Britain have thrown a light on the country’s history of colonialism, racism and slavery. Throughout the 17th century, and much of the 18th, the British Empire was a leading force in the transatlantic slave trade. The trade was imposed by Europe on Africa,...
-
Legal blow for pro-Israel lobby as BDS continues its long advance
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) had a landmark legal victory against Israel last week. The European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously against the convictions of Palestinian-rights campaigners by French courts for BDS protests they staged more than a decade ago. In September 2009 and May 2010,...
-
Will Israel’s annexation plan undermine Arab-Israeli normalisation?
The position adopted by Arab states over Israel’s plan to annex swathes of the occupied West Bank from next month, including the Jordan Valley, can be split broadly into three categories: those like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco and Egypt which give explicit support...
-
The world continues to watch as Israel disregards human rights, justice
As the date for Israel’s planned annexation of Palestinian lands draws closer, Israeli circles have expressed growing concern about the consequences of the move. The concerns do not stem from the fact annexation violates international law or that it overturns the obligations of an occupying power and violates the...
-
Is the PA serious about cutting all ties with Israel?
Two weeks have passed since Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced that ties with Israel were being cut. It was an impossible thing to suggest, as such a move would have serious implications for the existence of PA institutions, including the security services whose main role is to protect...
-
The Palestinians have an opportunity for strategic changes in the current crises
With the Covid-19 pandemic causing health, political, social and economic crises around the world leading to a new “normal” way of doing things, in occupied Palestine there’s no change. Israeli colonialism continues apace. Israel knows well what it means to be in crisis: it has had three General Elections...
-
Palestine activists have 2 billion opportunities to pressure for divestment
Local government pension schemes hold direct investments worth more than £2.3 billion in companies involved in Israeli war crimes and apartheid, it was revealed this week. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) on Friday published a new database documenting the many ways that local government employees’ pension contributions are being...
-
The Silicon Valley cyber-monopolies are a threat to free speech
Of the articles I have written so far this year, one of the most popular has been a piece I wrote in January for The Electronic Intifada, about an Israeli lobby operative’s bizarre video claiming to have “slaughtered” Jeremy Corbyn in the election. During the winter holiday season, Joe...
-
Sarraj and Malta’s prime minister sign memorandum of understanding
The Head of the Libyan Government’s Presidential Council Fayez Al-Sarraj and the Prime Minister of Malta Robert Abela on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding in the field of combating irregular migration and strengthening relations between the two countries. This came during the Maltese prime minister’s conclusion of an...
-
Israel is a safe haven for criminals and terrorists
David Sheen, a friend of mine and a fellow journalist, published a great investigative story the other month. It tells a tale of murder, racism, duplicity, and justice denied. In October 1985, Palestinian-American civil rights activist Alex Odeh was murdered by Zionist fanatics in California. Odeh was blown to...