President John F. Kennedy was assassinated sixty years ago. If he had lived and won a second term, the Israeli Palestinian conflict would have evolved differently. Possibly the path toward Israeli apartheid and genocide in Gaza could have been avoided. In his short time in office, Kennedy changed US foreign policy in significant ways. As […]
The bold and suicidal actions by Gaza militants defy reason… to the reasonable. To those frustrated by decades of oppression, with no apparent means to alleviate the suffering, the actions become comprehensible. Looking north from the Gaza border, the Gazan people can reconstruct their ancient village, al-Majdal, now called Ashkelon. The modern Israeli city of […]
Most nations have dealt with their fair share of institutionalized racism and bigotry, and Israel is no exception. However, when it comes to Israel, the volume of racism expressed by prominent political figures is both astounding and concerning.
Prime Minister David Ben Gurion with his chief aide, Shimon Peres. In background: defense minister Moshe Dayan and Ben Gurion aide, Teddy Kollek.
In pondering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in discussions I have had, I have found that very few people actually have a basic understanding of the conflict nor could they provide a definitions of the conflict even in rough approximating terms.
by Jonathan Cook
The Electonic Intifada
A former cabinet minister, an intelligent person (nonetheless) asked me the other day: “Let’s assume that your plan is realized. A Palestinian state will come into being side by side with Israel. Even some kind of federation. Then, in a few years, a violently anti-Israel party will come to power there and annul all the treaties. What then?”
My simple answer was: “Israel will always be powerful enough to forestall any threat.”
That is true, but that is not the real answer. The real answer lies in the lessons of history.
Over many decades, Israel’s self-serving deceptions about the Nakba in 1948 have been exposed for the lies Palestinians already knew them to be.
It was long accepted in the west that, as Israel claimed, Palestinians left their homes because they had been ordered to do so by neighbouring Arab leaders. The lie usefully distracted diplomats and scholars from the much more pertinent question of why Israel had refused to allow 750,000 Palestinian refugees to return to their homes after the war finished, as international law demanded.
(Keynote speech at the Kinneret College conference on “the Rock of our Existence – the connection between Archeology and Ideology”.)
First of all, let me thank you for inviting me to address this important conference. I am neither a professor nor a doctor. Indeed, the highest academic title I ever achieved was SEC (Seventh Elementary Class).
But like many members of my generation, from early youth I took a profound interest in archeology.
I shall try to explain why.
The handling of the tortured and burned Palestinian child shed more light on Israeli racism, but equally important is exposing the complicity of US media as a favourite outlet for unchecked Zionist liying to cover up Israeli crimes.
Peace agreement is an anathema to Israel and contradicts its Zionist goal of a “Greater Israel”. In such a nation there is no room or accommodation for Palestinians and Arabs from the Nile River to the west, to the Lebanese LItani River in the north, and the Euphrates River to the east.
