Geography Archives: Israel

Things in Berlin are all really up in the air!  No, cancel that!  Just the opposite; they are grounded — indefinitely!  That giant new hub airport for Berlin, named after Willy Brandt, was due to be opened last June after weeks and months of ballyhoo.  But it wasn’t.  Something was not quite OK with the […]

Madleen Kulab, December 19th, 2012.  Photo by Maher Alaa. “The problems started for me at eighteen,” Madleen Kulab said quietly, sitting just meters from the shore of the Mediterranean.  “The police and port authorities did not want me to sail as a woman.”  Though Madleen has emerged from this recent challenge, receiving a permanent permission […]

Gaza City, December 15th, 2012 Yesterday in al-Faraheen, Gaza, Israeli Occupation Forces shot and wounded an unarmed 22-year-old farmer, Mohammed Qdeih, from behind.  Mohamed and nine others went out to their fields in the early afternoon, walking approximately 250 meters from the Israeli border.  Within minutes, two heavily armed Israeli military jeeps rushed to the […]

We, the undersigned, who are part of an international civil society increasingly worried about the awful bloodshed of the Syrian people, are supporting a political initiative based on the results of a fact-finding mission which some of our colleagues undertook to Beirut and Damascus in September 2012.  This initiative consists in calling for a delegation […]

With over 100 now reported killed by Israeli airstrikes, and a further 700 injured, the attack on Gaza is already starting to resemble the 2008-9 ‘Operation Cast Lead’ massacre.  A ground invasion is feared, and Israeli politicians are again trotting out the usual Zionist crowd-pleasers about the need to “bomb Gaza back to the Middle […]

  Salem Waqef (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Haneen Tafesh (Photo: Gisela Schmidt-Martin) Ahmed Durghmush (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Basma Mahmoud el Tourouq (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Mohammed Abu Amsha (Photo: Gisela Schmidt-Martin) Zuhdiye Samour (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Duaa Hejazi (Photo: Lydia De Leeuw) Gaza City, 16 November 2012 The Israeli attacks across the Gaza […]

NYPD to Racially Profile White Males New York, NY — Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced today in a joint press conference that, following a recent study on race and “going-postal” homicides, the New York City Police Department will revamp its Stop and Frisk crime prevention policy by instructing officers to stop […]

Decent news to begin with: Near Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate a memorial was finally unveiled to mark the murder of approximately 500,000 Roma people (often called Gypsies) in Nazi death camps.  The decision to erect it was made in 1992, the year a pogrom in the East German city of Rostock was unleashed when Roma refugees […]

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist.  Cf. Raphael Ahren, “Morsi’s Warm Letter to Peres Sparks Anger and Denial in Egypt” (Times of Israel, 18 October 2012); “‘I came with a message of peace and I came to confirm that we are working for mutual trust and transparency and we are committed to all the agreements […]

The recent Stanford University report on drone strikes in Pakistan, Living Under Drones, raises the possibility that the US is intentionally using drones, not merely as hi-tech assassination devices, but also as weapons of state terror intended to subdue unruly regions and populations.  The appalling reality of drone warfare along the Afghanistan border closely resembles […]

With signs of a global economic downturn mounting, US aggression across the Middle East and North Africa ratchets up.  Once again, US imperialism stands poised to open the gates of Hell. According to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook report released last week, the “risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high.”  The report projects […]

It has recently come to our attention that the Creative Time Summit has listed the Israeli Center for Digital Art (ICDA) as a major partner for this year’s summit.  After discovering this, we cannot in good faith participate in the 2012 Creative Time Summit in adherence to the call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) […]

Dr Issa Chaer is a member of the Syrian Social Club (based in England). Carlos Martinez: Thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed.  You have been very active in spreading information about the Syria conflict.  Can you explain why you have chosen to give so much time and energy to this cause? Issa Chaer: […]

I sent the following note to Amnesty on June 16 after it put out a detailed report on the conflict in Syria: Dear Amnesty In your most recent report on Syria you ask the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government.  You ask for no such arms embargo on the […]

The electoral victory of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the Salafists in Egypt (January 2012) is hardly surprising.  The decline brought about by the current globalization of capitalism has produced an extraordinary increase in the so-called “informal” activities that provide the livelihoods of more than half of the Egyptian population (statistics give a figure of […]

Ammar Waqqaf is an independent Syrian political analyst based in England. Q: Why do you think the western powers are so keen to see regime change in Syria? A: Western powers would be fools not to exploit such an opportunity to turn a key regional player from an opposing side into an allied one.  Achieving […]

I met Matan Kaminer in Tel Aviv in January 2012, and we agreed to do an extended interview about the state of the left in Israeli society after the controversial J14 social justice protests. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?  How did you get involved in political activity? I was […]

  Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment — and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO — derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, […]

On the eve of Independence Day, police imposed lockdown on the office of Zochrot (Hebrew for “remembering”), an Israeli activist organization dedicated to raising public awareness of the Nakba, the catastrophe of displacement and dispossession inflicted on Palestinians. Just as Zochrot activists tried to leave their office last night, around 10:30 PM, for a symbolic […]

To the Editor of the New York Times, Your editorial “Speculators and the Gas Pump” urging tighter regulation of the oil market is a fool’s errand in these days of legislative gridlock.  But contrary to your assertion, there is an “easy fix” available to President Obama, although not the Republican prescription of “more drilling or […]