kristofer j. petersen-overton
- The Only Democracy in the Middle East
Thus, Nawi’s conviction points to a relatively recent development regarding the restriction of resistance, to extremely passive modes of protest. And, in some cases, even these kinds of protests are prohibited, as in Sheikh Jarrah where activists are repeatedly arrested simply for demonstrating against the seizure of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. (full article…)
- Couldn’t Have Said It Better
Let’s start with the most obvious. This is a cynical ploy by the Israeli government to divert attention from the findings of the UN report. Government officials have almost said as much. A foreign ministry official described the investigation by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth as “explosive PR material”. Hasson claims: “Had [the Israeli foreign [...]
- The IOF’s specialty: shooting unarmed demonstrators.
A Palestinian protester was wounded by IDF fire in the northern Gaza Strip after he and 10 of his colleagues refused to abide by IDF orders given on the site not to approach to border fence. The Palestinian group refused to heed the warnings given by the IDF when they fired shots into the air. [...]
- Your Tax Dollars at Work
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping Israel to construct an apartheid road infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian West Bank by financing nearly a quarter of the segregated road system primarily for the benefit of Israeli settlers. USAID’s figures state that the agency has financed 235 km of roads in the West [...]
- Apartheid Regimes Heart Apartheid Regimes
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons. The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the [...]
- This is Zionism.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian books destroyed after Israel’s establishment, Ben-Gurion University researcher says (full article…)
- Jeremy Scahill’s Recent Short Documentary
Blackwater’s Youngest Victim: Father of 9 Year-Old Killed in Nisour Square Gives Most Detailed Account of Massacre to Date (full article…)
- Are They Going to Gaza Now?
[Israeli] operations at Port-au-Prince field hospital concluded with military ceremony. Col. Itzik Kreis thanks team and civilians treated on spot. ‘There are no other nations with strength, willingness, dedication, determination to help in this way. (full article…)
- What If There Are Settlers Among Them?
A senior American diplomat recently told representatives of the Israeli Defense and Foreign ministries, “I don’t want your security officers to check our cars. What if there are settlers among them? I will not have my people end up like (slain Prime Minister Yitzhak) Rabin.” (full article…)
- It All Makes So Much Sense Now
The New York Times has all but confirmed to The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the son of its Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was recently inducted into the Israeli army. Over the weekend, EI received a tip suggesting this had been the case and wrote to Bronner to ask him to confirm or deny the [...]
- This is Zionism
Israel-Arab claims she was humiliated by two security guards who ordered her off bus after hearing her speak Arabic on cell phone. College: First such incident in 15 years (full article…)
- Iraq War
The invasion of Iraq was illegal, a senior government lawyer told the Chilcot inquiry into the war today. (full article…)
- Farewell, For Some Time
As many of you know, my life has again lurched towards serious academic studies… Unfortunately, this change demands a level of commitment I did not completely foresee. In short, I simply have no time to run this website. But I’ll leave you with a text from which I draw continual inspiration, Noam Chomsky’s classic essay [...]
- Noam Chomsky: The Responsibility of Intellectuals
TWENTY-YEARS AGO, Dwight Macdonald published a series of articles in Politics on the responsibility of peoples and, specifically, the responsibility of intellectuals. I read them as an undergraduate, in the years just after the war, and had occasion to read them again a few months ago. They seem to me to have lost none of [...]
- Moral Narcissism
Such a remarkable story could only happen in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A young gay Palestinian man, who is in grave, life-threatening danger and cannot return to his home with his Israeli partner, was saved by a stranger who came to his aid – a religious West Bank settler. (full article…) Look at [...]
- Pursuing Justice
The residents of Gaza are not waiting on the Goldstone Report to take action. The Defense Ministry and the Tel Aviv Prosecution have reportedly received some 1,500 notices of future civil lawsuits against the IDF over damage caused during Operation Cast Lead. (full article…)
- Benefits of Occupation
Human rights group Amnesty International said in a report published Tuesday that Israeli restrictions prevented Palestinians from receiving enough water in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The report said Israel’s daily water consumption per capita was four times higher than that in the Palestinian territories. (full article…)
- This is Zionism
Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian homes near east Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring international concern about the practice. (full article…)
- “Academic Freedom” in Israel
Israeli academics are being watched. Vigilantes check what they say or write – and, if they are judged “anti-Israel,” incite donors to the universities and colleges where they teach to act against them. Students are encouraged to spy on their teachers and to report what they say. Academics on the left are the targets. They [...]
- Imagine How This Would Be Reported If They Were Muslims
Jerusalem’s “chastity squad” is branching out and has recently begun operating in the capital’s Beit Israel neighborhood. According to local residents, several of the neighborhood’s inhabitants have been violently attacked by members of the “modesty guard”. (full article…)
- “Took”
The Temple Mount, revered by Jews as the site of two ancient temples and by Muslims as the site of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque, has been the focus of simmering unrest recently. The compound sits in contested territory that Israel took from Jordan in the 1967 war. (full article…) “Took” [...]
- Nick Griffin
One-fifth of Britain would vote for ‘racist’ Nick Griffin (full article…) I watched the BBC appearance – it was quite boring and silly. Besides the ridiculous posturing over who Winston Churchill “belongs to”, the mainstream politicians were unable to convincingly reject a moron like Griffin. Jack Straw especially bumbled his part… dodging criticism of the [...]
- And You’re “Unfairly Portrayed” As a Dove
President Shimon Peres tells Washington Post prime minister’s agreement to two-state solution, freezing of settlements connotes shift from right-wing ideology; adds that Netanyahu is unfairly portrayed as an extremist in US (full article…)
- That Oil is Ours Dammit!
Oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens told Congress on Wednesday that U.S. energy companies are “entitled” to some of Iraq’s crude because of the large number of American troops that lost their lives fighting in the country and the U.S. taxpayer money spent in Iraq. (full article…)
- This is Zionism
With the 2009-2010 academic year under way, 838 Palestinian university students are still waiting for the authorization that will enable them to leave the Gaza Strip in favor of overseas universities. (full article…)
- Amira Hass on Israeli “Democracy”
I mean, I read the article [by HRW founder Richard Bernstein]. The word “occupation” does not appear there even one time. He says that Israel is a democracy of seven-million-point-something Israeli citizens. He forgets four million Palestinians, who have to be registered in the Israeli population registry in order to exist. All the Palestinians are [...]
- The Palestinian Tragedy
The fact that the divided Palestinian political leadership is silent about the mistreatment of the refugees by Arab states does not make such behaviour any less reprehensible – or less dangerous. Some 250,000 Palestinians were chased out of Kuwait and other Gulf States to punish the Palestinian political leadership for supporting Saddam Hussein. Tens of [...]
- Zionist Courts
Court orders IDF to reopen road closed for Palestinian use (full article…) Any time I see a story like this I can’t help laughing… So the court rules that this single road cannot be part of the apartheid structure? Big deal. What about the hundreds of others illegally constructed roads in the West Bank that [...]
- This is Zionism
During a previous harvest she had to be taken to hospital after she was hit over the head with an iron bar by an Israeli security guard from one of the nearby settlements. On another occasion settlers threw stones and human excreta at her and other volunteers, while shooting into the air. (full article…)
- More Human Rights Abusers Terrified of any Precedent
China will oppose discussing the Goldstone report at the United Nations Security Council, Chinese members of parliament told a delegation of visiting Israeli officials in Beijing on Wednesday. (full article…)
- Zionist Justice
The State Prosecutor’s Office has decided to close a criminal investigation against Border Guard officers documented beating Palestinians. (full article…)
- Zionist PR
While the IDF has expressed objection to the formation of an external inquiry committee to probe Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, a top General Staff official told Ynet on Wednesday that more could be done on the PR front. (full article…)
- Republican anti-Semitism
“There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves,” according to the piece published Sunday in The Times and Democrat of Orangeburg. (full article…) As is customary, I’m sure these “good old [...]
- The Yes Men Strike Again!
The Yes Men group issued a press release and held a news conference at the National Press Club, purporting that the business group had decided to support climate change legislation currently before the U.S. Congress. A spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce broke into the news conference, alerting media to the hoax, but Reuters and [...]
- The Only Democracy in the Middle East
Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s military offensive against the Gaza Strip, had an impact on the press. As regards its internal situation, Israel sank 47 places in the index to 93rd position. This nose-dive means it has lost its place at the head of the Middle Eastern countries, falling behind Kuwait (60th), United Arab Emirates (86th) [...]
- I Think Israel’s Actual Atrocities Suffice For That
Among the atrocities committed by IDF troops on the show are the murder of an infant, beatings of innocent Palestinians, and death by firing squad. “This is without a doubt an expression of a calculating will to consciously encourage hostility and anger towards Israel and the Jews,” the letter says. (full article…)
- Goldstone on Lieberman
“What peace process are they talking about? There isn’t one. The Israeli foreign minister doesn’t want one at all.” (full article…)
- The US/Israeli Proxy Force in Palestine
But in Israel, the force is seen as an expedient for countering Hamas and other militant groups – a vehicle to enable the Palestinian Authority to fight terror within its own cities so that Israel doesn’t have to. (full article…)
- Richard Goldstone: My Mission – and Motivation
I sincerely believed that because of my own record and the terms of the mission’s mandate we would receive the cooperation of the Israeli government. Its refusal to cooperate was a grave error. My plea for cooperation was repeated before and during the investigation and it sits, plain as day, in the appendices of the [...]
- What the US Media Chooses to Ignore
The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These [...]
- Israeli Aggression, By Remote Control
A U.N. investigation into explosions in south Lebanon indicated on Sunday that Israel had planted spy devices on Lebanese land in what a senior U.N. official said would be a violation of a ceasefire agreement. The UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon said its preliminary probe into two explosions in the south showed they had been [...]
- Washington’s Record
My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being [...]
- Glenn Greenwald on American Hypocrisy
One of the taboo topics in the American media is how the U.S. Government routinely violates the principles we espouse for, and try to impose on, the rest of the world. We systematically torture Muslims and then cover it up and protect our torturers while preaching accountability and the rule of law; we condemn deprivations [...]
- Editorializing in the NYT
The council has a long history of focusing on Israel, while ignoring human rights abuses in other member states like China and Saudi Arabia. (full article…)
- Rape and the GOP
First, you are required to get over your initial disgust that such legislation is even necessary, that such clauses even exist and that the Pentagon is already doing business with such contractors (hi, Halliburton/KBR!), and that there has already been a truly horrible case validating it, wherein a 20-year-old female employee was allegedly gang-raped by [...]
- Obama’s Bombs
An Afghan woman and a child were killed in a joint NATO-Afghan operation against insurgents in Afghanistan on Friday, sparking a protest by a group of angry villagers. (full article…)
- This is Zionism
A Palestinian taken by ambulance to a Jerusalem hospital was denied entry by hospital security, which may have been a factor in his death, according to a suit filed last week in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court. (full article…)
- Oil Corruption
In 2003, U.S. diplomatist Peter Galbraith resigned at the end of a distinguished, 24-year government career. Over the years that followed, he worked as a contract-based adviser to leaders in Iraq’s Kurdish community, while also arguing passionately in public media that Iraq’s Kurds should be given maximum independence from Baghdad – including full control over [...]
- The Difference
The only difference between AIPAC and J-Street, is that J-Street thinks apartheid is bad for Israel. That is the only debate among Zionist when it comes to Palestine… Killing Palestinians is fine, but if we want to preserve our racially exceptionalist entity, then apartheid makes that just too darn difficult.
- Israel Objects to “Reality” TV
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official rebuked Turkey’s acting ambassador on Thursday over a Turkish television series that, among other things, appears to depict an Israeli soldier murdering a Palestinian child. (full article…)
- Sumud
The vandals came at night from Adei Ad, a Jewish settlers’ outpost deemed “illegal” even by the Israeli government, near Shvut Rachel, an established West Bank settlement that is judged illegal in international but not Israeli law. Working fast, unnoticed by Palestinian landowners in the nearby Arab village of al-Mughayir, the settlers cut down nearly [...]
- Don’t Worry, We Never Doubted It
American officials say Washington will likely exercise its veto power if report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza is brought to a Security Council vote. (full article…)
- This is Zionism
A wonderful war. (full article…)
- Spies
Republican members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus said the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have tried to plant “spies” within key national-security committees in order to shape legislative policy. (full article…) This is interesting (and shameful)… When an Islamic lobby groups gets interns inside Congress, they’re called spies and House members cite passages from [...]
- Long Live the Tunnels!
Gaza has managed to replenish its fuel supply by using smuggling tunnels from Egypt, and residents of the Strip rejoiced as benzene prices hit a low of just NIS 1.5 (around 40 cents) per liter, after having previously paid up to NIS 7 (around $1.9). (full article…)
- The NYT Always Gives Israel the Final Word
By the Israeli military’s count, 1,166 people were killed in the war: 295 noncombatants, 709 of what it called Hamas terrorist operatives, and 162 men whose affiliations remain undetermined. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza said 1,417 died: 926 civilians, 236 combatants and 255 police officers. Israel says about 400 Gazans die of [...]
- I Believe It
Reports that Italian intelligence officers had been paying Taliban fighters not to attack their troops – and that France’s ignorance of this tactic left it unaware of the true security risk in the Sarobi district of Afghanistan when it took over last summer – were dismissed as “rubbish” by Italy’s defence minister. But the allegation [...]
- He’s Being Generous
No, I’m not really aiming it at creationists. I don’t think they read books anyway, except for one book. (full article…)
- I Forgive All But Japan, Norway and Belgium – What Gives?
The abstaining countries included: Bosnia, Burkina-Faso, Cameron, Gabon, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Belgium, South Korea, Slovenia and Uruguay. (full article…)
- Zionist Outbursts
MK Danny Danon attacked the Goldstone report during a speech in Knesset Wednesday and ripped up a synopsis of it. (full article…)
- When Pro-Life Become Pro-Death
About 70,000 women die every year and many more suffer harm as a result of unsafe abortions in countries with restrictive laws on ending a pregnancy, according to a report. (full article…)
- Please Elaborate
To those who say a Nobel is too much too soon in Obama’s young presidency, “we simply disagree … He got the prize for what he has done”, said the committee chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland. (full article…)
- Zionists are Scared
The political echelon in Jerusalem has decided to use the explosion that occurred at the Hezbollah member’s house in Tyre this week to divert international attention from the Gaza war report to be debated in the UN starting Wednesday. Israel is hoping to put the spotlight on Hezbollah’s violation of Resolution 1701 that ended the [...]
- The Big Question
So are British troops in Afghanistan there to defend the UK from al-Qa’ida attack, as Gordon Brown says? No, we are there because the priority of British foreign policy is to stick close to the Americans. The Americans are still trying to work out why they are there, but President Obama is also citing the [...]
- No Drugs Strong Enough To Dull Israeli Occupation
Abu Ahmed lived through last winter’s Gaza war in a daze. Though the district where he lives was invaded by Israeli ground forces and came under heavy fire, including the use of white phosphorus shells, he felt little fear. For by then, the 45-year-old unemployed father of 10 was popping tablets of the painkiller Tramadol [...]
- Coverup
The British military’s chain of command has instructed the country’s top investigators not to examine hundreds of incidents involving Iraqi deaths and serious injury, a former British military police officer told the BBC Sunday. (full article…)
- Obama’s (Really Forgotten) War
Heavily armed Ethiopian troops crossed over into some villages in Somalia’s central border town of Beledweyne and arrested some villagers they suspected of being Islamist sympathizers, witnesses said on Sunday. (full article…)
- This is Zionism
Throughout Israel, young Jewish men are forming vigilante groups to end interracial relationships between Arab men and Jewish women, which are occurring with increased frequency as Jewish settlements dig deeper into Arab territory. The vigilantes say Arabs lure Jewish women with money and “bad boy” personalities. (full article…)
- Something Iran and the U.S. Have in Common
Amnesty International has condemned the execution of Behnoud Shojaee, a 21-year-old Iranian, at Tehran’s Evin Prison at dawn on Sunday, for a murder he was accused of having committed when he was 17. (full article…)
- The Correct Use of Racism
Hundreds of anthropologists at the business meeting — the first official quorum in 30 years — unanimously endorsed a resolution condemning “the use of anthropological knowledge as an element of physical and psychological torture.” But one anthropologist, while sharing her peers’ condemnation of torture as immoral and ineffective, worried that some of her colleagues had [...]
- Don’t Forget That Israel No Longer Occupies Gaza
According to the United Nations Relief Web news, 3,900 truckloads entered Gaza from January to May 2007. Over the same period this year, six trucks were allowed in. These carried material for water projects, greatly in need and long awaiting completion. (full article…)
- And If This Happened to Gilad Shalit?
Yousef Abu Zuhri, a Hamas member and brother of the movement’s spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri, died in an Egyptian jail. Hamas is outraged, claiming he was tortured to death. (full article…)
- Elinor Ostrom
…is the first woman – and the first political scientist – to win the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics (incorrectly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics). Of course this doesn’t mean that I have any clue about her work… though her classic book is on my exam reading list: Governing the Commons: The Evolution [...]
- The Nobel Peace Prize in Action
President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized — and the Pentagon is deploying — at least 13,000 troops beyond that number, according to defense officials. (full article…)
- So What if We Killed Hundreds of Civilians?
The operation was aimed at the rockets and those who fired them (full article…)
- Racists Preconditions
Netanyahu: PA must recognize Israel as Jewish state for there to be peace (full article…) Didn’t he just say that there weren’t going to be preconditions? It’s not fun exposing Netanyahu’s contradictions, because they occur so frequently. I have a precondition for you… Since you are infatuated with the whole “right to exist” (something no [...]
- Heckuva Job, Barack
True, Obama didn’t ask for this. It was obvious, from his halting delivery and slightly shamefaced air last Friday, that he wishes the Nobel committee hadn’t put him in this spot. But he still wasn’t brave enough to tell it no. (full article…)
- Empty Handed
“It is hard to imagine that he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Dec. 10 and then come empty-handed to Copenhagen a week later,” she said. (full article…)
- From Lieberman’s Lips
“It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days. Members both of the coalition and the opposition are loyal friends to us, both with regard to their worldview and their estimation of the situation in everything related to the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Somalia. No other country in [...]
- Zionist Integrity
“We are facing very large challenges. The first is renewing peace talks; they should be renewed without any preconditions,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud faction meeting on Monday. (full article…) He added, “However, the peace process will not go forward unless the Goldstone Report is dropped. That’s our only precondition, even if in [...]
