Place: Israel/Palestine

Review of Palestine, A Socialist Introduction

Palestine is one of the most controversial issues among liberals and even among some socialists. In the U.S., politicians and university administrators war against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, also labeling it as anti-semitic.

Isn’t it Time for the Truth about Feivel Polkes and His Haganah Chiefs?

It’s time that the Zionists and the Israeli state (whose military developed from the Haganah) explain in full this incident, something that to all appearances looks like collaboration with German Nazis.

When NYC Jewish Organizations Enthusiastically Supported Boycotts

The Jewish establishment has condemned the NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for asking candidates if they would forgo plans to take trips to Israel as an act of solidarity with Palestinians. Of course it’s a croc. It’s also hypocrisy.

Men in the (Indian) Sun

On 1 May 2020, which was International Worker’s Day, 18 Indian migrant workers boarded and hid in a cement mixer which was carrying them from Mumbai to Uttar Pradesh.

A Zionist State at Any Cost

The foundation of Israel is tied up with David Ben-Gurion, its first prime minister. Through examining his life, we see how Israel’s creation was from its beginnings doomed to create an apartheid-like state maintained by an oppressor nation.

Unity in Israel Means New Low for Palestinians

Any hope of a far-off, mythical two-state solution is scheduled to vanish on July 1st with the annexation of an unspecified amount of settled Palestinian land. When that happens, the terms that have defined the last 50 years of negotiations in Israel/Palestine will have been officially overturned.

Review: Zionist Betrayal of Jews, From Herzl to Netanyahu

Stanley Heller’s new book may reveal no surprises to a few well-read scholars of the history of the Middle East. Many readers, however, who believe they know modern history will be surprised and disconcerted. To put it simply, Heller contends . . .

Read more ›

Enough!

Somewhere,
somewhere perhaps
in the desert of Iraq,
or perhaps in Palestine
or the Afghan hills,
amidst the cacophony of shells,
the reek of boiled-off flesh,
somewhere,
a voice awakens,
Read more ›

Palestinians in Israel at the Polls

Who could have missed Ayman Odeh’s eloquent op-ed piece in the New York Times, where he rightly asserted that “Arab-Palestinian citizens have chosen to reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his politics of fear and hate, and the inequality and division . . .

Read more ›

Palestinian Youth: The Next Stage of Resistance

In the face of faltering confidence in the prospects of a two-state solution, Palestinians find themselves once again in a state of limbo, bound by a peace process that has not only failed to award them independence, but has only . . .

Read more ›

To give up on Arab-Jewish partnership is to give up hope

Most of the people in Israel are victims of the Netanyahu government. Partnership between them is the only way to fight its various forms of oppression — including the occupation.

Who’s for a Palestinian State?

Labor Party leader Avi Gabai is right when he says: “The peace process vis-à-vis the Palestinians is interesting only for people over 50.” “Do you think,” he told his supporters, “that people care about a Palestinian state when [President Mahmoud] . . .

Read more ›

The #MeToo Movement in the Middle East

The #MeToo movement against sexual assault and rape has animated women throughout the world.  In the Middle East too, despite the wars led by authoritarian states, various imperialist powers,  and extremist religious fundamentalist forces, a #MeToo movement is rising. How . . .

Read more ›

Palestine on a Precipice

The rise and expansion of right-wing populism and the dramatic unfolding of global politics in the Trump era have had significant and alarming implications for the Palestinian people, leadership, and question overall.

letter

Bizarre Assertions

I read New Politics because it provides an in depth socialist perspective on politics available nowhere else, but some of your contributors make bizarre assertions.

Hard Questions in Israel-Palestine

ImageJamie Stern-Weiner, ed. Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine's Tought Questions. OR Books, 2018. 518 pp. 

The fact that, after fifty years of Palestinian support efforts, the Israeli occupation is more entrenched than ever should inspire some intellectual humility among those hawking solutions to the conflict, notes Jamie Stern-Weiner in the introduction to his edited collection Moment of Truth: Tackling Israel-Palestine’s Toughest Questions. It is humbling as well to read through the volume, with more than seventy essays and rejoinders by more than fifty different authors, from almost every one of which something new can be learned.

Life of a Salesman

Image

Marine Le Pen’s partner had just left the country. A Jew of Algerian background, Louis Aliot had been dispatched to Israel to raise funds for the Front National (FN).

Siege and Resistance in Gaza: An Interview with Toufic Haddad

Image

For more than 10 weeks, Palestinians have gathered in protest every Friday at the Israeli-Gaza Strip buffer zone, located in the perimeter of the 1949 armistice lines. Called by organisers the Great March of Return, the mobilisations have demanded an end to the crippling Western state-Israeli economic and political blockade of the Gaza Strip and that families expelled for generations from their homelands be allowed to return.

An Israeli twist on homophobia and racism

Image

At the mass rally held by the LGBT movement at Rabin Square on July 22, 2018, protesters not only demanded to be accepted as different, but also called for full equality. They cried out against the injustice caused by a government that excludes homosexual men from having children through a surrogate mother.

Recent Events Leave Brave Gaza Flotilla in More Danger

Image

Right now four small boats are on their way to Palermo, Italy, to dare a crossing to besieged Gaza. Because of the rockets from Gaza on July 13 (whatever the true story behind their launch) the Gaza Flotilla 2018 is in even more peril from a cruel IDF puffed up on its own righteousness.  In 2010 the Israelis killed ten on the Mavi Marmara and have often been brutal in captures since.

One Massacre, Many Partners in Crime

ImageOne hundred and seven Palestinians have been killed and more than 10,000 wounded by Israeli troops over the past seven weeks along the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The Palestinians stormed the fence and Israeli soldiers responded with live fire. On the bloodiest day, May 14, when the new American embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated, 61 demonstrators were slain. This massacre was not necessary: the IDF did not need to employ snipers to cut down young people who galloped toward the bullets, and Hamas could have prevented those youngsters from approaching the fence. A quiet protest would have been no less effective.

Top