Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Asa Winstanley
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Fascism, the Nazis and Israel
Are there valid comparisons to be made between Israel and Nazi Germany, or with other examples of fascist states in history? Just asking this question could get you into trouble as a British Labour Party member. The party’s ruling national executive decided recently to do a U-turn on its...
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It’s official; Israel has armed extremists in Syria to extend its control of occupied Golan
The Jerusalem Post briefly published an article earlier this month stating that the Israeli army has now admitted “that it provided large amounts of cash, weapons, and ammunition to Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights.” I say “briefly” because it was not long before the article was summarily deleted...
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Chomsky and the dishonesty of the two-state ‘solution’ in Palestine
I first visited Palestine at the end of 2004. As well as being much younger then, my views were quite different in some respects to what they are today. Then in my mid-twenties, and still something of a minor activist in the anti-war movement, a lot of my thinking...
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Israel’s smear campaign will not stop until Jeremy Corbyn fights back
I am one of very few journalists on the left to have covered the Labour Party’s supposed “anti-Semitism crisis” from its beginning three years ago, if not the the only one. I am also one of a handful of people who have even questioned the dominant media narrative of...
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Israel wants to act with even more impunity by banning the filming of its murderous soldiers
One of the most notorious Israeli criminals of recent times has to be Elor Azaria. In 2016, the Israeli soldier murdered a wounded Palestinian youth as the young man lay badly wounded and bleeding on the ground in Hebron. Abd Al-Fattah Yusri Al-Sharif had already been shot after being...
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The pro-Israel Lobby’s pressure against Al Jazeera’s exposé should be ignored
Under pressure from abroad, the government of Qatar has shelved an important Al Jazeera film. The TV network’s investigative unit went undercover for months in the US to expose the pro-Israel Lobby. My colleagues and I at the Electronic Intifada have just released the very first clips from the film. Despite...
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Israel takes out ‘BDS insurance’ to protect Eurovision
There’s perhaps no greater barometer to measure the lengths to which Israel will go to defame, attack and sabotage the global movement for Palestinian rights than its attitude towards BDS. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, remember, is nothing more than an attempt to told Israel accountable under concepts...
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The Arab people will never accept Israel
“Israel was imposed on us” – those are the words of a Jordanian activist who filmed a recent video showing construction of the Israel-Jordan gas pipeline. The video, posted to social media recently, shows the demolition of what the videographer says are olive trees that had been more than...
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Silicon Valley’s war against Palestine
The tech giants in Silicon Valley are no friends to democracy. Knowledge of this basic fact is necessary to understand the modern world. The social media and other internet monopolies which dominate their respective sectors have immense, unaccountable power, with next to nothing in the way of rules or...
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The Saudi-Qatari media war
For such a small country, the Gulf emirate of Qatar has had a large influence over Arabic media. Beginning back in 1996, the renowned 24/7 satellite TV channel Al Jazeera began to carve out a unique and influential place for itself among Arab viewers. For the first time, the...
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Zionist extremists are now the mainstream in Israel
The Zionist movement has always been a schizophrenic one. The mainstream ruling factions of the movement, and later of the state of Israel, once claimed to be “socialist” in character. But in fact, the “labour Zionist” tradition that included figures such as first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, war...
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How Israel armed the drugs cartels – part 2
Read part 1 here The Medellin Cartel’s military leader was Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, who set up “self-defence” squadrons to protect his “ranchers” from left-wing guerrillas like the FARC, which had been taxing their cocaine exports. Rodriguez Gacha and his affiliated far-right death squads were responsible for some of the...
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How Israel armed the drugs cartels – part 1
When I lived in the West Bank a decade ago, I heard from Palestinians in both Hebron and Jerusalem more than once that the Israeli occupation forces tolerate or even encourage the sale of hard drugs among the Palestinian population that they control. The theory was that it was...
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Israeli innovation is based on theft
Israel is a settler-colonial state. Maintaining its status as the “Jewish state” in a land whose population is mostly non-Jewish requires a regime of complete and utter brutality. It requires the denial of basic human rights to the Palestinian people. First among those rights to be denied is the...
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The Palestinian village where Israel forbids everything
The Gaza Strip is often described as the world’s largest open-air prison. Although Israel evacuated its settlements and military bases (which were all illegal) inside Gaza in 2005, the territory remains occupied under international law because Israel maintains strict control of its borders, air space and territorial waters, apart...
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How Israel helped Latin America’s death squads – part 2
Read part 1 here When the PLO sailed out of Beirut and into a second exile in Tunisia, its fighters left most of their weapons behind. Israel managed to capture most of these arms, and reportedly sold them to the Contras death squads in their war against the left-wing...
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How Israel helped Latin America’s death squads – part 1
The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, announced on Wednesday that the country was pulling out of the UN Human Rights Council. Trump-appointee Haley accused the council of being “a cesspool of political bias” and of having an “unending hostility towards Israel.” She also slammed the UNHRC for...
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Macron’s embrace of Israel is a throwback to France’s imperial past
The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, has, to an extent, changed his country’s foreign policy towards Israel, making it more favourable. This is part and parcel of Macron’s neoliberal, pro-American, Atlanticist bent, a tendency which has even seen him snuggle up to hard-right US President Donald Trump. Macron’s embrace...
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Is Israel now seeking US recognition of its occupation of Syria’s Golan?
After Donald Trump’s recognition of the illegal Israeli annexation of Jerusalem by moving his country’s embassy to the city, the next prize that some in American and Israeli political echelons want him to hand to Israel seems to be a chunk of Syria. Senator Ted Cruz – the religious...
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The Christian Zionist narrative helping to boost Trump
When you think of US President Donald Trump, the last thing that probably comes to mind is the image of a religious man. Unlike some previous presidents, Trump clearly does not practice Christianity, and shows no interest whatsoever in leading a religious life. America is a fairly religious country,...
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The Islamophobia industry and the Israel lobby
A recent documentary by Al Jazeera Investigations lifted the lid on the power and influence of what is often termed the Islamophobia industry. A well-funded network of organisations and groups which work in loose association are funding some of the worst hate and incitement against Muslims in the West....
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The ongoing Nakba and its forthcoming defeat
Tuesday, 15 May, marked the 70th anniversary of what the Palestinian people term Youm al-Nakba, or the Day of Catastrophe. The Nakba is the defining event that formed and solidified the Palestinian liberation struggle. Between 1947 and 1948, more than 750,000 Palestinians – about half of the Arab population...
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Abbas’ speech was only the latest example of anti-Semitism by Israel’s supporters
Too many people within the Labour Party, and even some within Britain’s Palestine solidarity movement, either fundamentally misunderstand or refuse to see the true nature of the Palestinian Authority. The PA is not the “Palestinian government” and neither is it the leader of the Palestinian struggle. Indeed, the “authority”...
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The Saudi-Israeli embrace will doom both regimes
Last month The Intercept came out with an interesting report which suggested that US presidential advisor (and son-in-law) Jared Kushner was even closer to the ruling elite in Saudi Arabia than previously thought. According to the website’s sources, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman boasted that Kushner was “in his...