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Ed Webb

The Associated Press: Israel turning rightward going into Tuesday ballot - 0 views

  • But the war in Gaza, a looming recession and a pervasive belief that giving up land only draws more attacks have boosted Netanyahu and other hard-line candidates
    • Ed Webb
       
      Guess that didn't work out quite the way Livni & Barak hoped.
  • we tried to be nice to the Arabs
  • Even with a late victory, however, Livni would not be able to form a government without bringing hawks on board. That would put her in the same position she was in three months ago, when she failed to put together a coalition and triggered the current election by refusing to cave in to the right's demands
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  • His Yisrael Beitenu Party now appears to be vying with Barak's Labor to be Israel's third largest party.
    • Ed Webb
       
      That is HUGE.
  • one of the campaign's most colorful TV ads, courtesy of the dovish Meretz Party: "If you liked Mussolini, if you were missing Stalin, you'll love Lieberman."
  • he would allow existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank to expand.
  • if the Obama administration lends its support to an idea gaining currency in international circles of trying to pull the Islamic militants of Hamas out of Iran's orbit by offering incentives.
  • Netanyahu seems the most likely to carry out a military strike on Iran, which Israel sees as its top threat.
  • Israeli hawks have carried out their nation's most important territorial concessions, most notably Menachem Begin's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982 and Ariel Sharon's 2005 evacuation of Gaza.
    • Ed Webb
       
      I'm glad they pointed this out. Only Nixon could go to China.
  • With Arabs soon to outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will have a hard time remaining a Jewish state if it holds on to all the land it now controls.
Ed Webb

BBC News - Israel 'using Facebook to recruit Gaza collaborators' - 0 views

  • Facebook "is a big, big thing that the Israelis use", says Ehab al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry. "Many people don't have security sense. They go on the internet and talk about all their personal problems such as with their wives or girlfriends," he says. Israel's intelligence services can then contact people by telephone, e-mail or using existing Israeli agents in Gaza, and use the information to pressure people to become spies.
  • the intelligence community's current thinking is that using personal information gleaned from the internet to pressure or even blackmail potential informants is not considered effective in recruiting long-term informants
  • Even Mr Hussein admits he has a Facebook page, "but I'm careful about the information I put on," he says. "I only say I am a Hamas spokesman."
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  • "They say that they know everything about you, but actually it's information you have already published on Facebook," he says. "It's not safe to publish such information - I believe it allows Israel to keep watching our movements."
Ed Webb

Britain Cuts Some Arms Exports to Israel Over Conduct in Gaza War - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

  • Britain has revoked five licenses for arms exports to Israel after reviewing how British-provided equipment was used during Israel's three-week war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, officials from both nations said Monday. It marks the only such action to date by a foreign government against Israel over the country's incursion into Gaza in December and January
  • The British Embassy statement said "a small number" of export licenses had been suspended under rules forbidding arms exports "where there is a clear risk that arms will be used for external aggression or internal repression." It did not detail the types of equipment affected by the license revocations, and an embassy spokeswoman said that information could not be released.
Michael Fisher

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Gaza conflict map - 0 views

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    Map and timeline of the Gaza crisis that ended in January 2009.
Ed Webb

Translation project offers Israelis look into Palestinian literature - 0 views

  • Only 0.4% of Israeli Jews under the age of 70 can read the stories in the original Arabic language, he says. He also points to the fact that according to Israel’s National Library, less than 1% of all literature translated into Hebrew was written in Arabic, and 90% of the translators were Jews
  • The stories of “Amputated Tongue," which all deal in various ways with language deprivation, is written by 57 Palestinian writers from Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and abroad. The impressive compilation of contemporary Palestinian prose was translated into Hebrew according to a unique model by 36 translators, where one Arab and one Jewish translator collaborated. One-third of them were Palestinians. The short stories by some of the best Palestinian writers provide Israeli readers with more than a glimpse of entire lives lived in this land, and of this land.
  • The project lasted three years. Its goal was to give a voice to Palestinian Arabic society in the hostile climate created by Israel’s right-wing regime that views Arabic as an enemy language — as made abundantly clear in the 2018 Nationality Law, which downgraded the status of Arabic as an official language. The anthology targeted those few Israelis who want to know more about Palestinians but have had little exposure to them until now.
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  • The first story in the compilation is by Gaza resident Sama Hassan, titled “No." It tells the story of a woman whose husband repeatedly rapes her, sometimes until she is bleeding, but she cannot utter the word “No." “… Over and over he cut into her flesh, which grew increasingly tough until she emitted a groan of pain. … You are nothing but the family’s property, was the first grating thought. Hands and womb, hands and womb." I told Burbara that the story had shocked me. I put the book aside and could not continue reading for a few days. “We put ‘No’ first on purpose,” she explained. “We wanted readers to feel and tell themselves, ‘Wow, what is she telling us? How will we learn more about the women in Gaza who are not heard.’”
  • Given the nationalistic climate in Israel, with a prime minister who incites hatred of Arabs, I asked Burbara how many Jewish Israelis she thought would read the book. “That is the million-dollar question,” she answered. “But I believe that if you start to drip water on a stone, it digs into its surface and leaves a mark. 'Amputated Tongue' is the first rain that will drip onto the Israeli stone and dig into it deeper and deeper.”
Ed Webb

With the world on fire, a cowardly, timid news media is a threat to U.S. democracy - 0 views

  • In one of the most perilous moments of crisis the world has seen in 75 years, and with the basic notions of free speech under assault, most newsrooms aren’t fighting back. They are, instead, pulling their punches in a defensive, “rope-a-dope” crouch, and thus failing to truly inform — when democracy itself is at risk.
  • the push not to offend with Middle East news coverage is emblematic of a bigger trend of newsroom timidity and even rank cowardice that also permeates domestic news coverage, at a moment when right-wing extremists are controlling the U.S. House and are on track to regain the White House and full governmental control in a chaotic election year
  • deference to authority is already bleeding into serious policy coverage. Far too many news outlets uncritically repeated Johnson’s first major pronouncement — that $14 billion for Israel could be paid for by cutting the number of IRS agents (who audit the GOP’s millionaire donors) when even a third-grade math student would know that reducing revenue agents would cost the government money. Getting it right isn’t only important because Johnson is now the most powerful Republican in Washington, but also because he’s a kind of a John the Baptist prophecy of an even more dangerous Trump 47 in 14-plus months
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  • Growing threats to press freedom in America have metastasized in the weeks since Oct. 7, with pressure not to make any controversial comments about Israel or Palestine causing some editors and reporters to get fired or resign, which has a chilling effect on others. And my bigger fear is that this growing climate of fear is bleeding into coverage of the 2024 election and the threat to democracy.
  • The world is staring into an abyss, much as it did in the 1930s. Now, as then, the global rise of right-wing authoritarians like Vladimir Putin in Russia and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel is linked to aggressive militarism that targets civilians and risks a world war. Here at home, the growing sense of chaos abroad and a broken government on Capitol Hill, with Republican Johnson poised to make matters worse, has imperiled the flawed small-d democratic government of President Joe Biden and has primed too many voters to fall into the waiting arms of a wannabe dictator.
  • the institutional caution that frames their work has been getting a lot worse. Some of it is probably business-driven — to avoid offending readers who might cancel a subscription. A lot of it seems to be a desire in newsrooms, after Trump’s whirlwind, lie-filled first term, to return to normalcy and the kind of balance that treats the two parties equally, which means ignoring that one has become an authoritarian cult.
  • things will get worse in less than two years if journalists — as individuals, as newsrooms, and as a profession — can’t stop cowering and won’t adopt a much more aggressive posture in defending democracy, the only political system that makes a functioning news media possible. Some of it is basic stuff — more boldness in calling out a blatant lie, like Johnson’s IRS claim, or making it clear when someone is to blame, like Israel’s killing of journalists.
  • I’m terrified that many angry, apathetic, or ill-informed voters will wake up on Jan. 21, 2025, in a country they no longer recognize ... and didn’t see coming.
Ed Webb

Morsi's Win is Al Jazeera's Loss - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 2 views

  • Al Jazeera Arabic’s pro-Brotherhood methodology is two-pronged. First, it predominantly hosts guests that it can be fairly certain would be gentle in their criticism of the Muslim Brotherhood, and second, its anchors refrain from asking Muslim Brotherhood members and spokesmen embarrassing questions.
  • The alliance between Qatar, the host and backer of Al Jazeera, with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is no secret.
  • Al Jazeera Arabic’s love affair with the Muslim Brotherhood has done damage to more than one country’s revolutionary cause. In Syria, Al Jazeera Arabic’s championing of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated and highly ineffective opposition Syrian National Council has cost the channel much credibility. Al Jazeera Arabic refrains from criticising the group or highlighting its repeated failures. It also instructs its reporters to follow a certain narrative, prompting numerous resignations. 
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  • Based on Al Jazeera Arabic’s online narrative, Morsi is depicted as an Egyptian warrior, born destined to fight the Egyptian army into submission and championed by oppressed Arabs while at once terrifying their archenemy, Israel. The channel, of course, neglects to mention that President Morsi repeatedly vowed to honor international treaties, in reference to the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord, not to mention his repeated praise of the army
  • in Palestine, Al Jazeera Arabic scores major coups in uncovering the rampant corruption of the Palestinian Authority but neglects to mention democratic setbacks in the Hamas Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Gaza strip
  • there is no other single channel to carry the mantle that Al Jazeera Arabic has so readily done away with. The best Arabic-language speakers can do now is to flip between two or more channels that carry a different narrative in order to arrive as close as possible to the truth
  • the same narrative does not plague Al Jazeera’s English-language version of the station
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