NOVANEW
- 16-Year Old Arrested, Fined After Being Shot By Settler
- Wash. Post column suggests that discovering the ‘Israel lobby’ now helps careers, doesn’t hurt em
- Thaddeus Russell defends his piece on Israel’s dangerousness
- Today in Palestine: Only democracy in Middle East will finally allow…. newspapers into Gaza
- ‘Times’ prints call for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians
16-Year Old Arrested, Fined After Being Shot By SettlerPosted: 08 Jul 2010And more news from Today in Palestine:
Land theft and destruction/Ethnic cleansingStop work orders handed down in Nablus village
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Wash. Post column suggests that discovering the ‘Israel lobby’ now helps careers, doesn’t hurt emPosted: 07 Jul 2010The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has a splendid/witty column on the Obama-Netanyahu meeting characterizing it as a “surrender” by Obama, pointing out that a reporter had to bring up settlements, Obama didn’t. And this:
This is significant. A few years back Milbank disgraced himself by attacking Walt and Mearsheimer as whiteknuckled Teutons, code for Nazis. Now he’s making the Israel lobby–correctly–the villain of the piece. It shows: a, how the conventional wisdom has changed in D.C., b, how ambitious journalists now regard the Israel lobby as a subject on which careers are made not lost, c, how desperate liberal Zionists, which is the rough camp I would put Milbank in off the cuff (he worked for the New Republic, he’s Jewish), are to see real pressure to save the Jewish state from the crazies, d, how competitive writers are with Peter Beinart, e, all the above. Of course there’s only one way this sort of inquiry goes: it brings you inevitably to the amount of Jewish money in the political process and the pro-Israel identity construction of American Jews. Why is Obama so scared? And can Milbank give him base? |
Thaddeus Russell defends his piece on Israel’s dangerousnessPosted: 07 Jul 2010Yesterday we posted twice on Thaddeus Russell’s groundbreaking and hugely popular piece on Daily Beast saying that Israel has proved to be a dangerous creation. Russell has gotten a ton of flak on the piece, and he offered us his response “to the criticisms I’ve received — from The Israel Project, Ronald Radosh, pro-Israel bloggers, and dozens of anonymous email correspondents.” Herewith:The major criticisms are:
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Today in Palestine: Only democracy in Middle East will finally allow…. newspapers into GazaPosted: 07 Jul 2010 08:10 PM PDTAnd other news from Today in Palestine
Land theft and destruction/Ethnic cleansingIsrael to demolish 3 houses in Nablus
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‘Times’ prints call for ethnic cleansing of PalestiniansPosted: 07 Jul 2010Can we agree that calls for a government to violate international law are not a helpful contribution to the public debate? That’s what the New York Times offered when it published a call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in a letter from Richard Gertler of Teaneck, New Jersey.
Gertler argues against the “two-state solution” because it would lead to “the dissolution of Jewish sovereignty” and would amount to the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews living in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. He concludes by saying: “If the creation of a Palestinian state necessitates transfer of Jews from [the settlement of] Har Bracha in the West Bank, then the creation of the redefined Israel ought to necessitate the transfer of its Arab minority as well.”Israeli settlements in the West Bank, though, are built illegally on Palestinian land and violate the Fourth Geneva Conventions, which prohibit countries from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies.” On the other hand, Palestinian officials have indicated that Israeli settlers living on land that became a Palestinian state would be offered Palestinian citizenship if they were to stay there.Gertler’s letter is nothing less than a call to kick out Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20 percent of the total population there. Palestinian citizens of Israel are the remnants of the indigenous Palestinian population that at one point were the overwhelming majority in historic Palestine until the 1947-49 wars that lead to the creation of Israel and resulted in the expulsion and flight of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land.Gertler’s notion of a “two-state solution” is straight from the playbook of the far-right Foreign Minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, who has in the past called for “loyalty” oaths that would strip Palestinians of their Israeli citizenship if they didn’t pledge allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state.Regard for free expression does not require the Times to publish calls for nations to commit war crimes, anymore than the paper is obligated to provide a platform for those who see lynching or assassination as solutions to domestic problems. But when the proposed victims are Palestinian, corporate media seem to have a different standard.This post originally appeared at the national media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s blog. |