Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ibrahim Hewitt
-
Are human rights negotiable?
The current rise in tension – or breakdown of the close relationship, take your pick – between the US and Israel is taking up a lot of news space, and rightly so. As a nuclear state, Israel’s behaviour is of crucial interest not only to its near neighbours but also…
-
Being pro-humanity is not anti-Semitic
The importance of the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot be stressed enough. The high profile the issue has across the world illustrates its key status in world affairs. All the more reason, therefore, that debate surrounding it is not clouded by accusations of racism in place of open discussion. The New York…
-
Suddenly, “lift the siege” becomes “ease the siege”
In the wake of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, the international community called for the siege of Gaza to be lifted. US President Obama called it “unsustainable” while others have been more forthright. A spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Christopher Gunness speaking on the…
-
Israel, all or nothing
Israel, we are told frequently, is “the only democracy in the Middle East”. This is the “Get out of Jail” card used against critics whenever the argument is swinging towards Israel’s opponents; it is as if being a democracy implies that the state is incapable of doing the things it…
-
Gaza reflections
I popped over to Gaza last weekend to see how things are, only it wasn’t that simple. Nobody can just “pop over” to Gaza these days; it requires a great deal of negotiation and planning, and a lot of goodwill from a lot of people, many of them across the…
-
“We focus on doing things right, instead of doing the right things”
This quote from an international aid worker in Jerusalem prefaces a new briefing paper from Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. Written by Dr. Jason Hart and Claudia Lo Forte, “Protecting Palestinian children from political violence – the role of the international community” provides some interesting reading. It highlights the fear…
-
The art of black propaganda
Reports that the headquarters of the Palestinian Journalists Union in Gaza have been shut down by Hamas security forces should concern everyone with an interest in hearing the truth of what takes place in that troubled area. According to the Guardian newspaper, the PJU is “dominated by the secular Fatah…
-
Are we equipping the Palestinians to tolerate the intolerable?
A conference in Beirut last week focussed on the shift of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from “Relief and Works to Human Development: UNRWA and the Palestinian Refugees after 60 years”. Held at the American University of Beirut, the event attracted…
-
Conference debates Euro position on Palestinian issue
A conference in Beirut focussing on “European Foreign Policy towards the Palestinian issue” has attracted participants and speakers from across the Middle East and Europe. Organised by Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, the event on 3-4 November had 130 delegates from 20 countries. The tone for the conference was…
-
Conference debates Euro position on Palestinian issue
A conference in Beirut focussing on “European Foreign Policy towards the Palestinian issue” has attracted participants and speakers from across the Middle East and Europe. Organised by Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations, the event on 3-4 November had 130 delegates from 20 countries. The tone for the conference was…
-
Why must someone’s “Jewishness” depend on how much they support Israel?
At a fund-raising event raising money for the Palestine Legal Aid Fund, I was greeted very warmly by a friend who told me excitedly that she had just returned “from Palestine” and how pleased she was to see me. Actually, Linda Ramsden was one of many people I knew at…
-
Israel makes too many mistakes for them to be mistakes
The brutal killing of an unarmed Palestinian as he lay asleep in his own bed has been “regretted” by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). I am sure that the IDF’s statement gives the victim’s widow and family some consolation in their period of mourning. At least it would if such…
-
The peace process may be dead, but the piece process rumbles on
As the people of Palestine come to terms with the apparent betrayal of their rights by the people appointed to negotiate with the Israelis on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, a number of commentators are declaring the “peace process” to be dead and buried. With all due respect to them,…
-
Whose national interests are paramount?
As events in the Middle East unfold, one interesting aspect of the people-power discussion is the reticence of western pro-democracy governments in the face of real democracy on the streets of Arab cities. European politicians, who have kowtowed before the likes of Hosni Mubarak for years, now find themselves having…
-
While the world looks away, the occupation of Palestine goes on
For anyone relying on the mainstream media for information about the rest of the world, the knowledge they receive builds up into a flavour-of-the-month approach to history. Correspondents flock to the latest flash point and, augmented by older, more experienced hacks now more used to reporting from the comfort of…
-
Israel has lost touch with reality
We will probably never really know if, as Israel’s Prime Minister claimed, Iran and Syria orchestrated the Nakba demonstrations which led to the deaths of at least 12 Palestinians over the weekend. Accusations and counter-accusations will fill the media for a few days and then life will carry on as…
-
How much longer will the West allow this inhuman, illegal and immoral siege to continue?
The sun is shining, the beach is filling up and the squeal of car tyres and screech of car horns is pervasive. I could be in Beirut or any one of a number of Levantine Mediterranean coastal cities, but I’m in Gaza City and this is not a normal seaside…
-
Israel’s fifth columnists silence Sheikh Raed Salah
Thousands of words have been written about the scandalous arrest of Sheikh Raed Salah by the British government in what is being seen as an attempt to silence him at the insistence of the pro-Israel Lobby. Supporters of the Sheikh from all sides of the political and religious divide in…
-
Breaking the siege of Gaza the approved way
The ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza has prompted much media focus on the flotilla and “flytilla” attempts to break the blockade over the past week or so. The Israelis demonstrated their considerable political influence around the world in persuading the Greek government not to let the ships of Freedom Flotilla…
-
Haven’t the post-Oslo years taught Mahmoud Abbas anything?
The Jewish Chronicle’s Martin Bright has revealed details of “a secret meeting between Israeli President Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority” alleged to have taken place in London earlier this year. Alarmingly, given the history of the end-result of such discussions between Israelis and Palestinians,…
-
Israel doesn’t respond to violence, it foments violence
Yet more tragic loss of life, this time in Eilat and Gaza, and yet again Israel “responds” with “full force”; the bombs dropped on overcrowded Gaza City, and the resultant deaths, are testimony to that. However, this is nothing new for the Palestinians. The violence being unleashed on them by…
-
Is Israel now the unofficial 51st State of the United States of America?
President Barack Obama has done us all a favour with his speech to the United Nations; rarely, if ever, has a US president made it so obvious what many of us started to believe years ago, namely that Israel is now the unofficial 51st State of the USA. So now…
-
What is the UN there for?
Article 1, paragraph 1 of the Charter of the United Nations says that the purpose of the organisation is “to maintain international peace and security”. On that level, the UN has to be an abject failure, although that’s very unfair of me; the UN is only as good as the…
-
Syria, Assad and the right-wing connection
Since the very beginning of the Arab uprisings earlier this year, the leaders of dictatorial governments at the centre of the storms across the region have raised the spectre of “Islamists” in the struggle to stay in power. “We’re the best you’re going to get,” is the message. Initially, this…