False Dichotomies

Juan Cole refers to his excellent blog on Iraq as a form of gardening. With his knowledge of the subject, he is able to take a look through each morning’s media, and provide guidance for readers on the material, cutting through the weeds, if you will. What’s called gardening in cyberspace, however, is called analysis on the television. After watching Arsenal’s sublime demolition of Juventus last night, I switched over to the various news networks’ coverage of the Israeli election. They wheeled out analyst after analyst, who each offered the same sweep of banalities. Nothing wrong with that of course, but the word ‘analyst’ often has the effect of promoting what is nothing but speculation into orthodoxy. Gardening is surely the more appropriate metaphor for trying to work out the impact of an election. Any reasonably informed guess is as good as another. This has partly been the driving ethos behind my website: why should we only take our information from the official media? Surely it would be better if we cut out the middlemen by writing our own analysis, disseminating it free of charge to whoever’s interested? Continue Reading »

This piece has been inspired by a week-long trip to Israel/Palestine, taken by 37 students from Cambridge University, as well as my mother. It is in three sections: the first comments on some of the highlights of the trip. The second provides a reading for why the conflict persists. And the third is a personal note. It is all deliberately fragmentary, avoiding conclusions, preferring to throw out a few suggestions which might stimulate debate. Continue Reading »

Watching events from the Middle East unfold today, my mind took me to The Proposition, a movie which opened last week. In part, it is a meditation on lawlessness; on what transpires when standards are not applied equally and those who are meant to stand up for justice transgress the law as much as the criminals. Unfortunately, this seems to be as common a theme between the river and the sea as it was in the Australian Wild West. Our tale begins on October 17, 2001. That day, Rehavam Zeevi, the Israeli tourism minister, was assassinated by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist terrorist group. Zeevi, nicknamed ‘Gandhi’ for his spindly appearance, may have been tourism minister, but his views were not exactly conducive to attracting visitors to the country. He was a racist and an open advocate of forcibly ‘transferring’ the Palestinian population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to neighbouring Arab countries. Continue Reading »

Sometimes it’s the timing that makes us suspicious. This week, the New Statesman front cover screamed out “Our Dirty Secret: How Britain gave Israel the bomb.” Once I had roused myself to read the allegations more closely, I discovered that, amidst the detail, was a non-story. Some civil servants had colluded to transfer heavy water, plutonium and U235, all important materials in the process of constructing nuclear weapons, to Israel. It is clear that Israel would have obtained the materials it needed soon enough anyway – in this sense Britain’s assistance was less than decisive – but, at a time when the stand-off with Iran begins to escalate, the insinuation of the piece was clear. Continue Reading »

I want to talk about Raed and Ala Al-Batch, because their names will soon be forgotten. We are told that they were killed to make people safe. “The war on terror will be conducted in full strength as it is being conducted, in every corner, in every place in the Gaza Strip and everywhere else,” Ehud Olmert announced following the assassination of Islamic Jihad figure Munir Suqar, who was involved in launching Qassam rocket attacks on Israel, and dispatching a suicide-bomber that failed to reach his destination. How the score has been evened, and then some: an eight year old and a fifteen year old, two brothers in the wrong place at the wrong time, as well as Ahmed Sousi, aged 24. But at least we got another Islamic Jihad member – 26 year old Ashraf Shalouf. How strong we must feel. Continue Reading »

Last summer, we saw how Israel agonised over its disengagement from Gaza. At the time there were those who feared civil war. Nevertheless, as the result of careful planning, the operation was a success. This was primarily the result of deep sensitivity combined with the decision not to be heavy-handed, even in the face of awful provocation. Continue Reading »