If conditions do not change quickly by the time of the U.S.-promised veto of Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly on September 20, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could explode into a new uprising with hundreds of deaths. The recent attack of Palestinian extremists on a bus in the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat and the eager over-reaction of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu is a harbinger of what is to come.
By attacking targets on the Israeli-Egyptian border, the Elait insurgents may hope to win accolades for so brazenly “sticking it” to the two main regional powers. Like a judo master, the attackers are compensating for their small frame by using their opponent’s own power and momentum against him. Israel, though refuses to consider this, responding reflexively by attacking the alleged perpetrators.
Nearly 20 percent of the constituents of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) live under the poverty line, and nearly 15 percent are unemployed. During this August congressional recess, Rep. Jackson, Jr. should be at home, meeting with constituents and proposing to them how he will help them cope with their difficult circumstances. Instead, the politician is proudly gallivanting around Israel, in one of three separate congressional delegations heading there this month on all-expense-paid junkets organized by the American Israel Education Foundation.
At a certain point, the issue of Israeli government support of settlers to the exclusion of the average Israeli will rear its ugly head in Israel’s protests.
Something tender about skin
and muscle framed by ancient stone.
The pyramids behind us in silhouette,
solid, rooted, entirely diagonal.
The night deepened,
the city’s glimmer distant.
Fadi drew on his smoke.
Do you support Israel?
Though Freedom Flotilla II was intercepted, it vows to regroup and fulfill its obligations to the besieged people of Gaza and to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people around the world who funded and organized this act of solidarity.
One the bills that Israel’s right-wing parties seeks to pass proposes the creation of a “commission of inquiry” to investigate outspoken human rights groups like B’Tselem.
President Obama sketched a peace plan in May. The entire international community supports it, as well as the Israeli opposition parties and the Palestinian governing party. But peace remains elusive because the international community clings to the myth that there is no alternative to a bilateral negotiated solution.
The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla carrying peace and human rights activists — including a vessel with 50 Americans on board — bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would “provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.”
Capital is a fickle lover. Recently, a growing number of corporate leaders are getting second thoughts about the “Chinese Model” that has been so central in the globalization of production and markets over the last three decades.