RACISM & NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS | NEWS/COMMENTARY


Israel’s right to defend itself – Joseph Massad

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20 January 2009

Source: Electronic Intifada

Common Western political wisdom has it that when Western countries support Israeli military action against Arab countries or the Palestinian people, they do so because they support Israel’s right to defend itself against its enemies.

This has always been established wisdom in Israel itself, even before the colonial settlement was established, wherein its predatory army is ironically named the Israel Defense Forces, not unlike the South African apartheid army, which was also known as the South African Defense Forces. This defensive nomenclature is hardly exclusive to Israel and South Africa, as many countries rushed after World War II to rename their Ministries of “War” as Ministries of “Defense.” Still, Israel’s allegedly defensive actions define every single war the colonial settlement has ever engaged in, even and especially when it starts these wars, which it has done in all cases except in 1973.

Thus the war of 1948 which Zionist militias started against the Palestinian people on 30 November 1947, a day after a Western-controlled United Nations General Assembly issued the Partition Plan, is presented as “defensive,” as was its (more…)

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Egypt Government Feels Its People’s Ire – Per Bjoerklund

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5 January 2009

Source: Electronic Intifada

Thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest the continuing Israeli aggression against Gaza and the participation of the Egyptian regime in the isolation of its population. Last Wednesday, the state responded with a major crackdown in which tens of protestors and journalists were assaulted and arrested.

Around the Arab world, the Egyptian regime has been a target of severe criticism for its continuing role in the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip and its silence in the face of intense Israeli bombardment of the enclave. Last Tuesday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak responded to the criticism by announcing in a televised speech that the Rafah border crossing will remain closed until the Palestinian Authority led by president Mahmoud Abbas regains control of the Gaza strip — a statement that only strengthened the impression that Mubarak approves of the (more…)

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From The Ashes Of Gaza – Tariq Ali

Source: Guardian

( 31 December, 2008 ) — The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.

Washington, as is its wont, blames the (more…)

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Israel, Gaza, and the Logic of Colonial Power – Nir Rosen

gazastrip

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31 December 2008

Source: Guardian – Comment Is Free

I have spent most of the Bush administration’s tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush’s final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with (more…)

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