Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Asa Winstanley
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Is a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap deal imminent?
Fears over Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails contracting COVID-19 have triggered Egyptian-mediated discussions to secure a prisoner swap deal between Israel and Hamas-ruled Gaza. The continuing mobilisation and efforts to resume talks on this file emerged last April following media reports that some Israeli prison guards, as well...
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Israel: 72 years of catastrophe
Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militias and the newly-formed Israeli army expelled more than half of the indigenous population of Palestine. Some 800,000 Palestinians were either forced out literally at the barrel of a gun, or fled in fear of being massacred by the Zionist forces. This is commemorated...
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Israeli spy firm uses coronavirus cover to impose global mass surveillance
NSO Group has become one of Israel’s most notorious mercenary private spy agencies. For an eye-wateringly high fee, the firm flogs a malware suite called Pegasus in order to allow some of the world’s worst dictatorships to spy on its enemies. Once infiltrated onto a target’s phone, Pegasus can...
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Annexation of occupied territory is a crime
Israel is about to annex large swathes of the occupied West Bank, making the territory formally part of the Zionist state according to Israeli law. The millions of Palestinians living in the West Bank will continue to be denied the vote and even the most basic of human rights...
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Has the FBI been spying on US citizens at Israel’s behest?
US Federal Bureau of Investigation documents obtained by The Intercept and published at the start of April made for fascinating reading. They showed that federal officers conducted a 2004-2006 “terrorism” investigation into the International Solidarity Movement, a non-violent Palestine solidarity group. The investigation proved only that the ISM was...
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Palestine is still my cause, but is it yours?
Arguments have erupted on social media between Saudi and Palestinian activists over a TV programme on Saudi-run MBC. Palestinians are outraged that some Saudi activists have said that they are the enemy, not Israel. The issue arose after an episode of a comedy show, Makhraj 7. In the scene...
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Jeremy Corbyn was defeated because he refused to defend himself against the Israel lobby
So that’s it. Jeremy Corbyn is out. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With the media’s attention rightly focused on the coronavirus pandemic, coverage of Corbyn’s departure as Labour leader last weekend was muted. In truth, the die had already been cast the moment Corbyn announced, after...
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Um Ibrahim: ‘My son should be playing with his friends, not in an Egyptian prison’
When Ibrahim was arrested it was a summer’s day in Arish, the capital of North Sinai, and he was wearing a light t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Two winters on his mother is worrying if he has enough warm clothes to wear. On 25 July 2018 security forces...
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What going home and staying there means for the Palestinians
“Stay at home” is the global command to curb the spread of the coronavirus Covid-19. It has a very different meaning for the people of occupied Palestine. How, for example, can self-isolation and social distancing work in the Palestinian refugee camps that are crowded with people who are deprived...
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Israel needs the Arab world to be ruled by dictators
In February, the chief of the Mossad, Israel’s global death squad, visited Doha, the capital of Qatar; Yossi Cohen was accompanied by Major General Herzi Halevi, the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command. They went at the invitation of Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani and met with national...
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Israel under cover of the coronavirus crisis
The populations of many countries the world over are right now living under unprecedented quarantine measures and restrictions on movement. The threat of the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic has changed the world for the foreseeable future. It is true that most people who contract COVID-19 (the disease caused by...
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Where did Israel’s Mossad get 100,000 coronavirus testing kits from?
Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has caused an unprecedented global pandemic. This has spread fear, suffering and needless death around much of the world. Due to the genuine and serious threat to public safety, governments are taking steps usually only witnessed in wartime to curb freedom...
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Palestinians’ names often reflect their heritage and challenge the occupation
Colonial powers subjugated other nations and imposed their own language and culture upon the indigenous people. Ever since Israel was established at the expense of the inhabitants of Palestine and uprooted three-quarters of a million of them in 1948, successive Israeli governments have changed the Arabic names of cities,...
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Refusing to take yes for an answer
Some of Israel’s most successful strategies are simply its intransigence and extremism. Even those of us opposed to Israeli war crimes – apartheid and occupation – should be honest enough to recognise the strengths of the enemy. It is only by knowing your enemy that you can work to...
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How will the Palestinians be affected by the Israeli election result?
Voters in Israel have gone to the polls for the third time in less than twelve months to elect the 23rd Knesset (parliament) in the country’s history. They have suffered from political stalemate for the past year and more. Caretaker Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unable to form a...
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The Palestinian artist jailed by Israel for the ‘crime’ of inspiring his people
Today he may be sitting and rotting in an Israeli cell, but in 2012 Palestinian graphic designer Hafez Omar’s posters were setting the internet alight. On Facebook in particular, his simple, iconic, anonymous brown avatars in support of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel spread like wildfire. People all over...
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Listing companies to boycott over Israeli war crimes is a start…
The UN finally published its database this month listing companies which profit from Israel’s brutal military occupation of the West Bank. This move was only made after years of unexplained delays. Rather helpfully, though, the Zionist Federation – an anti-Palestine, pro-Israel lobby group in Britain — admitted that, “The...
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Israel has no moral high ground after violating a Palestinian corpse in Gaza
Restoring its lost “power of deterrence” has been always Israel’s pretext for using excessive force against Palestinians, especially in the besieged Gaza Strip. “Changing the rules of engagement” is another term that we hear from Israeli officials when it comes to dealing with the legitimate resistance factions. However, what...
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The decline and fall of Labor Zionism
Britain’s Labour leadership hustings held last week by the party’s internal pro-Israel lobby were a bizarre sight to behold. Organised jointly by the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel, the event put all the candidates to replace Jeremy Corbyn as party leader through a grilling based almost...
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The Israel lobby is mobilising to stop Bernie Sanders
In September 2016, the Jewish Labour Movement in Britain held a small barbecue to establish a new youth wing. Thanks to the fact that an undercover journalist from Al Jazeera was among the tiny handful of attendees, we know in quite some detail what was said at the event....
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Labour is rigged against Palestine solidarity
It is often said that journalists should not become part of the stories that they cover. But in some of the best stories ever written, the journalist themselves do indeed end up entering the tale. As a prime example, I can think of Gary Webb. Webb was a campaigning...
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Naming companies profiting from Israel’s occupation boosts Palestinians in this asymmetric struggle
An overdue report has finally been published by the UN Human Rights office which lists 112 companies benefiting from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Almost 100 of the companies are based in Israel, while the rest are from 18 other countries including the...
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Labour’s fabricated anti-Semitism crisis is being replicated in America
As far as Zionist lobby groups are concerned, the verdict has finally sunk in: they defeated Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. According to one of them at least; the hard-right, anti-Palestinian group misnamed the “Campaign Against Antisemitism” . Last month one of the group’s leaders posted an utterly bizarre...
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Trump’s plan is the logical conclusion of the ‘two-state’ delusion – Part 2
Click here to read Part One. The project to create a Jewish state in Palestine has always been a fundamentally racist one – and will always be so as long as the project lasts. Until Zionist militias violently expelled half of the indigenous population in 1948, Palestine was always...