Arab/Palestinian – ME

Resigned acceptance of the inevitable? Why is everyone so much more upset with Trump than with Turkey? My first ‘contact’with the Kurds was when I wrote a piece about Mustafa al-Barzani for Sydney University student newspaper Honi Soit in the middle 1970s. Then, as apparently now, the response was deafening disinterest. …

FACT: An international furor erupted when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if he won the election he would assert Israeli sovereignty over parts of Area C where the Oslo Accords already grants Israel full administrative control.  This hysteria was magnified by the usual assertions that Jewish settlements in that …

“Occupation”-washing, the defense of any of the vile attitudes and actions of Palestinian Arabs by portraying them as victims of Jews living and controlling their holy land, took another turn this week as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives claimed that Arab men kill women in their families …

The first day of school was a wonderful opportunity for the 70 year-old temporary United Nations agency to show pictures of children and ask for money. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) wrote about the 532,000 UNRWA students who went back to school, part of the “5.4 million …

Racism is a form of hatred which believes that all members of a particular group are inferior and/or evil.  In itself, it is ugly but not dangerous, a localized noxious belief system based on bigotry.  Racism becomes toxic when it spreads and obtains power. Such is the state of Palestineism, …

My North African Jewish-Amazigh* grandparents came from Djerba, Tunisia, to Israel in the early 1950s. Around the same time that my father’s parents arrived in Israel from North Africa, my mother’s parents came to Israel from Baghdad, Iraq.  They were also forced out of their country.  They had been part …

Palestinian Nationality is an Entity Defined by its Opposition to Zionism, Not its National Aspirations. What unites Palestinians has been their opposition to Jewish nationalism and the desire to stamp it out, not aspirations for their own state.  Local patriotic feelings are generated only when a non-Islamic entity takes charge …

The economic component of the Trump administration’s intensely awaited plan to achieve an end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been released. Formally titled Peace to Prosperity, the proposal contains a three-pronged program of investment and reforms to transform the Palestinian economy and society through the injection …

The subway wasn’t all that crowded but I was close enough to peer over her shoulder nonetheless. Instagram pictures in rapid succession flashed by on the women’s cellphone.  A pretty girl puckering her lips with floating hearts; a cat wearing a hat; balloons on a beach. Then the images stopped.  …

On May 29, 2019, the United States team tasked with forging peace in the Middle East met with Jordan’s monarch Abdullah II.  Abdullah insisted that the so called “deal of the century” include an independent sovereign state of Palestine with “East Jerusalem” as its capital. On its face, the king’s …

The endeavor to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by economic means not only shows a grave defect in understanding its underlying causes, but inverts the causal relationship that generates & sustains it. When senior representatives of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt woke up this morning in Israel (May …

We have been hearing for a while from the Trump camp about the ‘Deal of the Century’. Last week Sunday afternoon the White House announced the first part of its Middle East peace proposal, what officials are calling an economic “workshop” to encourage investing capital in the West Bank, Gaza, …

First Published at Honest Reporting. The Hamas Charter or Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement was issued on August 18, 1988. The Charter is a comprehensive manifesto comprised of 36 separate articles, all of which promote the basic Hamas goal of destroying the State of Israel through Jihad (Islamic Holy …

In the memory of June 5th 1967, some recall defeat others celebrate victory, but very few remember the tragedy of the forgotten ones.  After the war between Israel and Egypt started in 1967, the Egyptian government took the decision to take Egyptian Jews into custody until they evacuated them from …

When you look at the facts on the ground I think it’s clear to say that the so-called ‘Palestinians’ do not want PEACE, or maybe some people do, but their leaders do not. Maybe if they do have peace it will be the end of the *gravy train for the …

MYTH Palestine was always an Arab country. FACT The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the twelfth century BCE, settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain — now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century CE, after crushing the last …

The prospect of Donald Trump presenting a future US peace plan which excludes Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees has led to a single-minded focus by Palestinians and their supporters on their Right of Return. The leader of the UK opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, has been to Jordan to reaffirm his support for …

Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen,  in January 2005  was elected as the President of the Palestinian Authority to succeed Yasser Arafat in the West Bank and Gaza, aka Judaea and Samaria. The PLO chairman and was elected for a four-year term  after which there was ‘supposed’ to be …

In recent weeks, rumours have been swirling as to the substance of the much anticipated “deal of the century”, billed by the Trump administration as a compelling blueprint for resolving the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has plagued the region for decades.  Shrouded in secrecy, it has long been held …

I puzzled for a while over the name for this posting. For I might just as easily have referred to PA hysteria, or hate, or delirium. All apply. Dr. Moti Kedar, in his recent op-ed “The Palestinian Civil War,” provides a translation of an article by one Ra’afat Mara that …