NOVANEWS
- Reflections on the value of respect
- Israeli activists to J Street: ’stop trying to gain political capital at the expense of dedicated peace activists’
- Suddenly in vogue, book banning spreads to Canada
- Cohen on Poland
- Neocons need not apply
- Kafka’s Apartheid
- Your chance to see and hear Eyad al-Sarraj
- ‘This is a racist state in which savages do what they want’
- 91 Democratic congresspeople need a little space on the special relationship
- Weighing Obama, ‘FP’ allows the Israel lobby to put its thumb on the scale
Reflections on the value of respect
Four years ago, Rory Stewart wrote:
Underneath the lack of trust that Stewart correctly identified, is a more fundamental issue: the hubris of power. |
The following form letter has been circulating on an Israeli activist listserv criticizing J Street’s leadership for their stance on the Berkeley divestment bill:
I contacted the organizers of the letter to get the story of why they felt it was necessary. I heard back from Ofer Neiman who lives in Jerusalem and is coeditor of Occupation Magazine, an Israeli website about the occupation run by volunteer activists. Neiman wrote:
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Suddenly in vogue, book banning spreads to Canada
Earlier today, Phil posted on a leading Israeli book chain that has removed a book critical of the settler movement. Seems the trend is spreading. Tablet reports on an effort by the Canadian Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to ban the book The Shepherd’s Granddaughter from a program run by the Ontario Library Association for 7th and 8th graders:
To its credit Tablet quotes the Goodreads review at length showing that the author in fact does not want to kill Israelis, and says that Henry is being intentionally “disingenuous and hyperbolically alarmist.” Unfortunately that doesn’t mean he won’t be successful. |
Roger Cohen, who was so stirred by Tehran, is now moved by Polish history to imagine a different Middle East. His teaching re victimhood is aimed at those of us who harp about “justice” in Palestine. And I think it’s a good teaching, poetical, but it would be more meaningful if Cohen would go to Palestine and observe those conditions and explain who is responsible for them.
Agency in history is a difficult issue; but the creation of Jim Crow in Palestine is Israel’s achievement, with the active complicity of the American Jewish leadership. (Also, when all was said and done, Poland got Poland back…) Cohen:
Thanks to Irek. |
Below, an event at Tufts last week that will give heartburn to neocons. Notice: no one from Brandeis is participating. The neocon pursuit of corridor, their modus operandi (avoid direct sunlight – why, look at Rob’t Satloff’s dishonest interaction with Stephen Walt and MJ Rosenberg’s honest rejoinder) means there are openings in academe.
One Harvard math friend was discussing taboos with me. He said, “you mean criticizing Israel,” and I smiled, for being Muslim the only taboos that I had experience with were all sexual. I said as much to him and he said that for him criticizing Israel could cause grief. He and his girlfriend attended the Finkelstein event a while ago. The Tufts Event: [sorry for lack of paragraphs below; webmaster is lazy] LOOKING PAST, LOOKING FORWARD: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT APRIL 8-9, 2010 Cabot Intercultural Center 160 Packard Avenue Tufts University Medford/Somerville, Massachusetts A CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY THE FLETCHER SCHOOL OF LAW AND DIPLOMACY, AND THE UCLA CENTER FOR JEWISH STUDIES CONFERENCE CONVENERS Nadim N. Rouhana, David N. Myers * _*Conference Schedule*_ Thursday, April 8 WELCOMING REMARKS 5:15 PM – 5:30 PM Stephen Bosworth, Dean, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University David N. Myers, Professor of Jewish History, UCLA Nadim N. Rouhana, Professor of International Negotiation and Conflict Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University SESSION I: LOOKING PAST, LOOKING FORWARD: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM Chair: Peter Uvin, Academic Dean and The Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Speakers: Henry Siegman, President of the U.S./Middle East Project Rami Khouri, Director, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut and Editor-at-large, The Daily Star (Beirut); Fares Center Visiting Scholar Spring 2010, Tufts University _*Friday, April 9*_ 8:30 AM – 9:00 AM – REGISTRATION SESSION II: HISTORICAL ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN JEWS AND ARABS IN PALESTINE 9:00 AM – 10:45 AM Chair: Leila Fawaz, Issam M. Fares Professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Founding Director of Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Tufts University. Speakers: Lital Levy, Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University Arab Jewish Writers and the Question of Palestine, 1903-1948 Salim Tamari, Senior Fellow, Institute for Palestine Studies, editor of The Jerusalem Quarterly, Visiting Professor, Georgetown University, Washington DC WWI, Ottoman Jerusalem and Zionism David N. Myers, Professor of Jewish History, UCLA Past and Present: Why History Matters 10:45 AM – 11:15 PM – COFFEE BREAK SESSION III: CURRENT ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS 11:15 AM – 1:00 PM Chair: Jeswald W. Salacuse, Henry J. Braker Professor of Law, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Speakers: George Bisharat, Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of the Law “Unchain My Heart:” Overcoming the Tyranny of the “Past” Ian Lustick, Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania We Have Met the Others and They Are Us: Perpetrators and Victims in “Valtz Eem Bashir” Nomi Stolzenberg, Nathan and Lilly Shapell Professor of Law, USC Law School Property and Sovereignty: The Intertwined Fate of Private and Public Land Claims to the Holy Land 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – LUNCH BREAK SESSION IV: THE FUTURE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM Chair: Eileen Babbitt, Professor of International Conflict Management Practice, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Speakers: Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Professor, Department of Jewish History, Ben Gurion University, and Fellow, Center of Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania Binational Thinking: Advantages, Risks, and Problems Leila Farsakh, Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston The One State Option as a Political Project: Palestinian Challenges and Prospects Pnina Lahav, Professor of Law and Law Alumni Scholar, Boston University School of Law Why I Still Believe the Two-State Solution Is Preferable Nadim N. Rouhana, Professor, International Negotiation and Conflict Studies, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Historical Encounters and Visions of the Future in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Asking the Right Questions 4:00 PM – 4:15 PM – COFFEE BREAK SESSION V: 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM – WRAP-UP DISCUSSION WITH PARTICIPANTS. |
Posted: 12 Apr 2010 08:20 AM PDT
My head hurts just reading the convoluted regulations.
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Your chance to see and hear Eyad al-Sarraj Posted: 12 Apr 2010 08:18 AM PDT
This looks good, I hope Sara Roy can get it on-line:
“Voices of Gaza” Videoconference Event Presented by the MIT/Harvard Working Group on Gaza Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, President of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme Rowiya Hamam, Psychiatric nurse in Gaza Omar Shaban, Economist and director of the Gaza-based Palestinian think tank PAL-Think Moderator: Dr. Sara Roy, Senior research scholar at Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies Thursday, April 15, 2010 12:00-2:00 pm Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics Conference Room Littauer Building, Room 166 79 JFK Street, Cambridge |
‘This is a racist state in which savages do what they want’ Who is Israel and what is Israel to you? as the old soul song went. This is another scary post. It is about the McCarthyite culture that has settled over that country. A leading book chain has removed a book that criticizes the settler movement from its shelves after rightwingers complained about the content. This society is in crisis, and who is informing Americans? From Ynet:
Thanks to Marsha Cohen. |
91 Democratic congresspeople need a little space on the special relationship
What the openly pro-Israel Jeff Jacoby describes here (“Support for Israel runs on party lines”) is not a new phenomenon although the gap between registered Democrats and Republicans when it comes to Israel has grown wider. That 91 Democrats refused to sign the recent Hoyer-Cantor letter to Secretary Clinton on the “unbreakable bond’’ and “extraordinary closeness’’ between the United States and Israel may reflect what they have heard from their constituents– whereas the most vocal Republicans are the Christian Zionist evangelicals.
This ultimately presents a problem for a party that has historically been dependent for the bulk of its funds on wealthy Jews and labor unions run by pro-Israel bureacrats. At what point will that funding either switch to Republicans or, what is more likely to happen in the case of those labor bureacrats, they will campaign only half-heartedly or worse for the party, sit on their hands? Jacoby:
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Weighing Obama, ‘FP’ allows the Israel lobby to put its thumb on the scale
Josh Rogin piece at Foreign Policy about where Obama’s advisers stand on Israel (all over the map, he states; I’m not buying) seems to rely on the usual suspects for insight into Obama’s braintrust.
The quotations I bristle at are near the end, from worried outsiders and Israel supporters, and have the effect of making General James Jones look like an Israel-hater because he doesn’t line up behind Netanyahu. Jeez. Where do I live?
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