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When I reflect upon the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, I tend not to place so much faith in the rhetoric of change. Despite prevailing, popular attitudes here in Europe, I find it difficult to imagine anything but the most marginal change in domestic policy should Obama become President (and virtually zero change elsewhere).

We may count ourselves lucky, however, that whether it is McCain or Obama that takes the reins in November, our eight-year affair with Bush is almost at an end. No matter which “wing” from the corporatist cesspool of American government becomes President, at least we will be spared the inane remarks, the cheesy laughter, the genuine stupidity and brass arrogance of the Bush years. Perhaps I am alone, but I always felt the crimes prosecuted by the Bush junta were always compounded by the profound ignorance expressed by some of its more senior members. (more…)

May 15, 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when Palestinians were forced from their homes and ethnically cleansed en masse in a premeditated and organized campaign carried out by armed Zionist militia. Historical accounts indicate that the forced migration of Palestinians from their homeland had been planned well in advance. The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was built on the violations of the rights of the Palestinian people. After widespread massacres and killings, more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians were brutally uprooted from their homes, villages and towns, and forced to become refugees in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and surrounding Arab countries. In addition, thousands of other Palestinians were internally displaced within the land subsequently occupied by Israel.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, and after its expansion in 1967 when it forcibly occupied the remainder of Palestinian West Bank land (including occupied East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, Israel has relentlessly confiscated Palestinian land in order to build illegal Jewish settlements, erasing the history of Palestine in the process. Israel’s campaign of “Establishing facts on the ground” has consistently forced more Palestinians into exile, and the Israeli authorities continue to seek to rid the land of its original inhabitants. (more…)

In a nation as coiled and embroiled as this, with a language fraught and zip-filed as the bible, it’s only fitting that a single daily newspaper headline will often say more than the thousands of words that follow.

So it was, that on the day before Israel was to celebrate its independence, Maariv’s banner read, simply, “60 Years of Bereavement.”

In a narrow sense, the headline, stark white on a field of black, marked Israel’s memorial day for its war dead and its victims of terrorism. At the same time, the brief headline may have said more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and about Israelis themselves, and Palestinians as well - than all of this week’s floodtide of 60th anniversary punditry put together. (more…)