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Ed Webb

Nabi Saleh is where I lost my Zionism | +972 Magazine - 0 views

  • the Achilles heel of the Israeli media — i.e., its willingness to report communiqués issued by the army as straight news, without any fact checking. Even though the Israeli security establishment has been caught lying on countless occasions, journalists who report for mainstream media outlets continue to accept without question the information they are given about events they neither witnessed nor verified independently
  • I’ve seen soldiers grab crying children and shoving them into military vehicles, pushing aside their screaming mothers. I’ve seen soldiers grab a young woman by her arms and drag her like a sack of potatoes for several meters along an asphalt road so hot that it melted the rubber soles of my running shoes, before tossing her into a military vehicle and driving away. I’ve had my ankles singed black when a security officer looked me straight in the eyes and threw a stun grenade at my legs. Israeli army sharp-shooters regularly shoot unarmed demonstrators in Nabi Saleh with both rubber-coated steel bullets and live ammunition. They break into houses and drag people out, arresting them on the claim that they allowed demonstrators to hide in their garden. And then I would go back to Tel Aviv and be told by my friends that I could not have seen what I saw, because “our soldiers” do not behave that way. Soon, I had to distance myself from those friends in order to keep my own emotions in check.
  • By the time I began going to Nabi Saleh, I had spent about four years reporting on what I saw in Gaza and the West Bank, and watching detachedly as my politics moved ever leftward from the liberal place in which they started, as a consequence of what I saw on the ground. But it was in Nabi Saleh that I lost the last remnants of what I would call — for lack of a word to describe my nostalgia for the idea of a state for the Jews — my Zionism. My radicalization was not only a consequence of witnessing brutal violence perpetrated right in front of my eyes, by soldiers of the army that was supposed to protect me. It was also a result of my seeing the Tamimi family endure that violence week after week, seeing their relatives injured, arrested and killed, and still not coming to the conclusion that the price of resistance is too high. They simply refuse to submit.
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  • The Tamimis clearly understand the power of social media. But they don’t manufacture those confrontations. In fact, I have never seen a video that comes remotely close to conveying the true brutality I saw in Nabi Saleh. Maybe you need to smell the tear gas and feel the smallness of the place to see how outrageous it is for soldiers to act as they do there: to, with a sense of entitlement, enter a village and break up a gathering of unarmed demonstrators; to kick open the doors of homes and drag off to jail unarmed people who pose no threat; to break into a house at 4 a.m., to roust a teenage girl from her bed and drag her off to jail, denying her even the right to be accompanied by a guardian.
  • Is Israel, with all the money and manpower it pours into sophisticated advocacy campaigns via social media, really in a position to criticize the Tamimis for understanding how to publicize their own cause? As Jonathan Pollak says to Yaron London, the reason those Nabi Saleh videos make Israel look bad is because Israel is doing bad things.
Ed Webb

Will Tunisia, Algeria relations recover through land border reopening? - Al-Monitor: In... - 0 views

  • Tebboune announced that land borders between the two countries would reopen July 15. The announcement represented a breakthrough in the silent crisis between the two countries as the closure of the land borders has heavily affected Tunisia in particular.
  • disputes between the two countries have pushed Algeria to pressure Tunisia on several issues, including in delaying the reopening of the border.  Among the files that may have contributed to the silent tensions is Tunisia's position on the Western Sahara dispute pitting Morocco against the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.
  • Tunisia has in the past tried to distance itself from the Western Sahara conflict, amid reports of Algeria’s attempts, in vain, to lure Tunisia to its side.
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  • on May 26 Tebboune stated from the Italian capital, Rome, that Tunisia is facing a political impasse and needs support in reinstating democracy
  • Tunisia has valid concerns about Algeria raising gas prices in light of the global energy crisis.
  • Algeria sells gas to Tunisia at preferential prices, and the latter earns a right of passage of 5.25% on the total of Algeria gas transported through Tunisian territory to Italy.
  • Algeria has expressed concerns over potential Tunisian normalization with Israel despite the fact that Saied had stated during his electoral campaign in 2019 that “normalization with Israel is tantamount to treason.”
  • Taboubi leads the UGTT, a historically strong and popular union in Tunisia with more than 1 million workers. In an explicit reference to Morocco's normalization with Israel, Taboubi said in his June statements that a campaign to push Arab normalization with Israel aims to pressure Algeria, which leads a campaign to boycott Tel Aviv in the North African region.
  • Although the opening of the land borders appears to be an indication of the beginning of the recovery of Tunisian-Algerian relations, other measures will need to be in place to guarantee this recovery
Ed Webb

Deep Dive: Houthis effectively declare war on Israel after drone, missile barrage | Amw... - 0 views

  • Observers have also highlighted internal reasons for entering a conflict with Israel. Ibrahim Jalal, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, has argued that the Houthis have “four primary motives”: deflecting rising discontent with its governance, rallying support at home, boosting morale among its fighters, and to “increase leverage” in the ongoing peace talks with Saudi Arabia.
  • “From a political and strategic point of view, Yemen is fantastic [for the ‘Axis of Resistance’] as there is no risk of a [resulting] cataclysmic war as is the case in Lebanon.” Addressing the prospect of Israeli or US retaliatory airstrikes, he charged that such actions are not likely to deter the Houthis or Iran, saying, “They are used to that, as horrible as that sounds.”
  • Observers view the rhetoric against “normalizers” as chiefly targeted at the UAE. When Abu Dhabi formalized relations with Tel Aviv under the 2020 Abraham Accords, the Houthis slammed the move as an attempt by Israel to “spy on Iran and establish a foothold near the Strait of Hormuz.” The UAE has also been in the crosshairs over its previous involvement in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Those tensions remain for a variety of reasons, including Abu Dhabi’s influence over the Southern Transitional Council (STC) and the Giants Brigades.
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