Inter Press Service (IPS)
January 7, 2009

BRUSSELS -- In carefully crafted official statements, diplomats have portrayed the European Union as something of an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yet even though almost all of the people killed over the past fortnight have been Palestinians, some top-ranking leaders in the 27-country bloc have tacitly offered their support for Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza.

Inter Press Service (IPS)
January 6, 2009

CAIRO -- With the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip now in its second week -- and as the Palestinian death toll approaches 600 -- U.S. president-elect Barack Obama has continued to remain silent. Obama's reticence, say Egyptian commentators, indicates that he will be no more even-handed on the issue of Palestine than preceding U.S. administrations.

"Obama's silence shows he is just as biased towards Israel as outgoing U.S. President George Bush," Ibrahim Mansour, political analyst and managing editor-in-chief of independent daily Al-Dustour told IPS. "Like Bush, Obama's only role in the region will be to implement Israeli directives."

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
January 1, 2009

By Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative

The Israeli campaign of "death from above" began around 11am on Saturday morning and continues as I write these words.

The bloodiest single day in Palestine since the war of 1967 is far from over following Israel's promise that this is "only the beginning" of their campaign of state terror. Approximately 400 people have been murdered thus far, but the body count continues to rise at a dramatic pace as more mutilated bodies are pulled from the rubble, prior victims succumb to their wounds, and new casualties are created by the minute.

What is occurring is nothing short of a war crime, yet the Israeli public relations machine is in full swing, churning out lies by the minute.

Jewcy.com
December 5, 2008

What a medieval "anti-Semitic myth" has in common with HBO's vampire series

All of a sudden, and quite out of the blue, life expectancy has lengthened -- to forever. Vampires are everywhere again, from the high-haired matinee idols driving tween box office in the form of Twilight -- a film written by a Mormon who thinks the beautiful are the damned, and forbidden love can wait -- to the HBO series True Blood, which tries to reconcile a fabled genus of social outcasts with a very real one. In executive producer Alan Ball's rendering, vampires are like gays (some of them even are gay), who have "come out of the coffin" to declare themselves your friendly neighborhood nightstalkers, thanks to a synthetic Japanese-manufactured blood cocktail that sustains them in lieu of the warm, vein-delivered stuff. It's a clever political trope, even if flagrantly pilfered from the X-Men series. Though who among us would argue with Anna Paquin's ability to finally get laid?

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
December 3, 2008

While Arab activists and intellectuals rally to the cause of Palestinian refugees, officialdom in Ramallah denounces their efforts, reports Khaled Amayreh

The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) has strongly denounced a recent conference on the plight of Palestinian refugees held in the Syrian capital, Damascus, organized by a coalition of factions and figures dedicated to the right of return, which according to organizers -- amongst them Hamas -- is the heart and soul of the Palestinian problem.

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
November 27, 2008

Unconcerned about arrest by the police or prosecution by the Israeli justice system, fanatical Jewish settlers in the Palestinian town of Hebron (Al-Khalil) have been attacking Palestinians, damaging and ransacking their property, exactly like Nazi thugs did to Jewish-owned property in Germany 80 years ago.

The settlers, who claim to be acting in the name of true Judaism, espouse a messianic doctrine advocating violence and terror against non-Jews in Israel-Palestine for the purpose of creating a pure Jewish kingdom that would be ruled by Halacha, or Jewish religious law.

The settlers, who represent the core of religious Zionism, believe that the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in the Holy Land will eventually usher in the messianic age and accelerate the appearance of the Jewish Messiah, or Redeemer, who would bring about redemption for Jews and rule the entire world from Jerusalem.

The Jewish Daily Forward
November 26, 2008

CHICAGO -- On a recent Sunday afternoon at a historic Chicago synagogue, the sanctuary was packed but the mood was restrained: A longtime congregant had died, and about 300 people had turned out for his funeral service. But amid the solemnity, the occasional mourner discreetly pulled loved ones out to the synagogue’s front steps to snap cell phone pictures of a large brick house, mostly obscured by shrubs, across the street.

Such scenes have become commonplace in recent months at KAM-Isaiah Israel, a Reform congregation in the Hyde Park neighborhood. The dome of the historic Byzantine-style synagogue looms over the red-brick house where Barack Obama has lived for the past three years, and from which he made the short trip across the street to deliver an early political speech to a Jewish crowd.

Celebrated American journalist I.F. Stone, who died in 1989, is best remembered for his “‘journalistic integrity” and supposed willingness to speak truth to power. Yet few of his readers ever realized he was a committed Zionist Jew -- real name Isador Feinstein -- as can be seen in this 2006 book review by Christopher Hitchens.

“Because so many bonds attach me to Israel, I am ready to condone preventive war; I rejoiced when my side won,” the talentless Hitchens quotes Stone as saying about Israel’s martial victories.

The phenomenon of crypto-Judaism, by which Jews adopt gentile names and downplay their origins, is hardly new. But in the case of Stone -- or Feinstein, rather -- one has to ask: what do these people -- so often prominent journalists and influential opinion-makers -- have to hide?

The Canadian Press
November 24, 2008

SASKATOON -- A second hate crime trial is underway for former aboriginal leader David Ahenakew.

The 75-year-old sat quietly in Saskatoon court as the Crown began presenting evidence he wilfully promoted hatred in 2002 by telling a newspaper reporter Jews were a "disease" and caused the Second World War.

StreetInsider.com
November 14, 2008

A majority of the American people believes that religious values are "under attack," and that the people who run the television networks and major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans, according to a survey from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued today.

”American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood,” a national poll of 1,000 American adults conducted in October 2008 by The Marttila Communications Group, found that 61 percent of the American people continue to believe that religious values in this country are "under attack." The poll also found that 59 percent of Americans agree that "the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans."

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
November 20, 2008

With Israel's breach of the ceasefire in Gaza, Saleh Al-Naami laments yet another example of Israeli-PA collusion which victimises Hamas

Hassan Karim, 34, has been making the rounds of real estate offices in the hope of finding an apartment to rent in the western part of Gaza city. He is doing all in his power to move out of the Shajaiya neighbourhood in the eastern part of the city where he and his family currently live. It has become too risky to stay there now that the Israelis have reverted to attacking border areas of Gaza adjacent to Israel. "It took a full year for my daughters to recover from the trauma they experienced from the quaking of our house during the last wave of Israeli bombardments," he told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that one of his daughters feared that if they remained where they lived under those conditions she would suffer a nervous breakdown.

Al-Ahram Weekly (Egypt)
November 20, 2008

With Israeli Jewish society drifting towards right-wing extremism, especially with regard to the Palestinian issue, Israeli political parties contesting the upcoming elections, slated to take place on 10 February, are radicalising the tone of their public discourse in the hope of wooing as many potential voters as possible to their respective agendas.

The Kadima and Labour parties, erstwhile coalition partners, are escalating their rhetoric against the Palestinians, with ministers and former ministers calling for the resumption of assassinations of Palestinians.

Haaretz (Israel)
November 13, 2008

Quite a few of Barack Obama's "friends from the past" have popped up recently. It's doubtful whether he even knows their names, but in the Chicago Jewish community many people really are long-time friends of the president-elect.

Some of the older people in the community say that they "raised him," while others half-jokingly call Obama "the first Jewish president."