WATCH: Israeli Journalist Amira Hass on Palestinian Resistance, the Role of the US, and What the “Peace Process” Has Wrought 

This is an un-aired, part 2 interview by Democracy Now! with Amira Hass, a Jewish-Israeli correspondent for Haaretz, who sparked fury in her country as a result of her recent article “The Inner Syntax of Palestinian Stone-Throwing.” Here she says Palestinian schools should teach resistance and indicts Israeli policies which, she believes, undermine the possibility of peace.

Guy Davidi, the Academy Award-nominated co-director of 5 Broken Cameras, challenges us (the “global left”) to disrupt the political symbols and discourses that filter us from the truth. He writes:

Political language alone can’t advance this discussion beyond certain loops. What happens when political symbols face the test of a complex reality? Or when your relationship to a work of art, and to the world, is diminished in order to maintain a certain idealized image? The stereotypes that conservative circles cultivate are under constant criticism by the left, but who will challenge the “anti-stereotypes” the global left creates in response? We’ve been stuck in this cyclical discourse for decades, and these kind of political correct filters stifle our ability to communicate.

In this maze of constant restereotyping, everything that does not fit the political language is dismissed, so I find myself left with many questions: What is the role of the ego in political relations? What is the true function of anger and its capacity for change? Can social and political responsibility grow from guilt? How does suffering become a political currency? Can an emphasis on struggle and resistance distract us from new inventive approaches to change? 

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Links to cables between the U.S. and various countries:

TURKEY

RWANDA

INDONESIA

CHINA

LIBYA

TAIWAN

FRANCE

AFGHANISTAN

IRAN

VENEZUELA

RUSSIA

ISRAEL

[via:reinventionoftheprintingpress]

(via reinventionoftheprintingpress-d)

WATCH: Disappearance, then discovery leads to ‘honor killing’ outrage

CNN reports on Ayah Baradiyya, a young Palestinian women in the West Bank, murdered by her uncle and whose killing has incited a call to the Palestinian Authority to change the penal code that barely punishes those who slaughter for “honor.”

Humiliating Israeli Video Condemned

A video of a male Israeli soldier bellydancing around a bound and blindfolded female prisoner has been received with disgust among Palestinians and in the Middle East.

The video provoked an angry response from the Palestinians on Tuesday.

The clip, which came to light after it was screened on Israel’s private Channel 10 television late on Monday, shows a soldier gyrating to rhythmic drumbeat of an Arabic track as the woman, who is wearing a headscarf, huddles against a wall, her hands bound in front of her and her eyes bound with a white cloth.

The soldier, who is wearing sunglasses and smiling broadly, repeatedly brushes up close to the woman who has a Hebrew speech bubble coming out of her mouth reading “Allahu Akbar” - Arabic for  “God is greatest”.

Crudely captioned “Israeli soldier catch Arab terrorist (he dance on her) funny”, the clip lasts just over a minute.

The video was immediately condemned by the Palestinian Authority (PA) as “deeply offensive to the dignity of women”.

“This is a disgusting illustration of the sick mentality of the occupier. This is not an isolated incident,” a statement from the office of Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, said.

[via:newsflick]

(Source: newsflick)

Senior Fellow at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs Alon Ben-Meir’s balanced piece on two fundamental issues that condition Israeli-Palestinian talks cuts through the process noise and supposed dramas between Netanyahu and Obama being echoed back and forth between US and Israeli media and zeroes in a bottom line, if not the bottom line. Ben-Meir writes:

The Palestinians, including Hamas, must accept the fact that the prospect of establishing a state of their own is intertwined with Israel’s national security. Meanwhile, Israel must drop the illusion that it can insure its national security while maintaining even a semblance of the occupation. Neither side can realize what they want unless they accept this basic bitter-sweet reality.

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Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American political scientist and author, specializing in Jewish-related issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was invited to give a speech at the University of Waterloo in which a Jewish girl threw the Holocaust card to silence criticisms of the Israeli government’s crimes against the Palestinian people. 

And here is what Dr. Finkelstein had to say in response.

[via:bradicalmang]

Women Celebrate Ramadan 2010

A series of images of women and girls celebrating Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month.

1. Muslim girls offer prayers before having their Iftar (fast-breaking) meal during the holy month of Ramadan at a madrasa on the outskirts of Jammu on August 21, 2010. (REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta)
2. Indonesian women pray during the first night of Ramadan in Jakarta on August 10, 2010. (ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images)
3. With the Dome of the Rock Mosque seen in the background, a Palestinian Muslim worshiper prays during the third Friday prayers of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City on Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
4. A Palestinian woman’s shadow is seen on a wall as she waits while attempting to cross the Kalandia checkpoint in order to go pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the third Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. Israel loosened some restrictions on Palestinian movement between the West Bank and Israel during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. (AP Photo/Tara Todras-Whitehill)
5. A Palestinian Muslim worshiper walks in an alley of Jerusalem’s Old City, on her way to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the third Friday of Ramadan on Aug. 27, 2010. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

[source]

Is Israel an Apartheid State?

An interesting segment from The Real News that features an Israeli human rights lawyer who shows how their are two different applications of justice and law - one for Israeli Jews and one for Palestinians. He doesn’t go so far has saying that Israel is an apartheid system, but that indeed apartheid is being practiced in the West Bank.

[via:palestinetoday]