Abe Hayeem: The dark side of Tel Aviv

Abe Hayeem, an architect and founding member of Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine writes about Tel Aviv and its deeply-rooted colonial history. Read more »

‘Hizbullah had better intel than Israel in 2006′

[The military researcher] also warned of the possibility that in a future conflict, the United States might not help Israel as it had in the past… Sandman recommended that the IDF ask the US to establish additional warehouses with emergency stockpiles of weaponry in Israel, even “if Israel has to pay for their maintenance.” The US already has several warehouses with weaponry in Israel. Read more »

Israeli textbook under review for giving Palestinian version of ‘nakba’

The Education Ministry will be reexamining a new Hebrew-language history textbook… [that] gives expression to the Palestinian perspective on the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), which is the Palestinians’ term for what happened to them in the War of Independence. Read more »

Uri Avnery on Amos Kenan: Lover of the country

On the morrow of the Six-day War, Amos Kenan came to my editorial office. He was in a state of shock. As a reserve soldier, he had just witnessed the emptying of three villages in the Latrun area. Men and women, old people and children, had been driven out in the burning June sun on a foot march in the direction of Ramallah, dozens of kilometers away. It reminded him of sights from the Holocaust.

IOA Editor: Kenan’s checkered past should be obvious to any reader of these pages (and Avnery’s account of history often leaves one wondering). This piece is included here because of Kenan’s role in revealing Israel’s conduct in 1967, specifically, the war crimes and ethnic cleansing that took place in the Latroun area. On this, see Imwas: occupied and destroyed by Israel in 1967, elsewhere on the IOA website. Read more »

Gideon Levy: From Sheikh Jarrah to Sheikh Munis

It is impossible to ignore the injustices of 1948 while hundreds of thousands of refugees rot in the camps. No agreement will hold water without a solution to their plight, which is more feasible than Israel’s strident scaremongers suggest. But rulings like the current one make it harder to distinguish clearly between Sheikh Jarrah and Sheikh Munis, between the conquest of 1948 and the conquests of 1967. My house stands on land stolen by force, and it is the obligation of Israel and the world to redress the injustice without creating injustice and new dislocation. Read more »

Coastal Road terrorist refuses to apologize, says peace ‘important’

“Israel must understand that to achieve quiet and security, real peace is needed. It’s true, the armed struggle isn’t the only solution, but if there’s no other solution, what choice do we have? What do you want, to build more and more settlements and for me to kiss your hand? If there is a diplomatic solution, there will be no need for violence.” Read more »

Uri Avnery: A Jeremiad

“Therefore I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons… and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel, [d]eclare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions…”

IOA Editor: Avnery’s view of history is founded largely on his own imagination: Post-1948 Israel was a natural outcome of pre-statehood, and post-1967 Israel was a continuation of earlier years. But it fits with Avnery’s retrospective view of his life in Palestine/Israel. The key question conveniently left out by Avnery, and by the Dalia youth of 1947, was “what was to become of the Palestinian natives,” once the dancing stops and the fighting begins. However, the article reflects the internal tension in certain segments of Zionism, and this is why it is of interest. Read more »

Israeli Ministers okay bill to ban state funding for Nakba events

A ministerial panel approved Sunday a bill to ban funding by the state of groups that mark the Palestinian Nakba, which commemorates Israel’s independence as a day of mourning… The bill is the revised version of a proposed law scrapped two months ago – after opposition from several ministers – that would have forbidden Israeli Arabs from commemorating the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” on Independence Day. Read more »

Noam Chomsky: The Torture Memos

[T]orture has been routine practice from the early days of the conquest of the national territory, and then beyond… Small wonder that the President advises us to look forward, not backward – a convenient doctrine for those who hold the clubs. Those who are beaten by them tend to see the world differently, much to our annoyance. Read more »

Irene Gendzier: Past Tense, Present Sense: Considering US Oil Interests and the Connection with Israel/Palestine: 1945-49

There was a revealing interlude in mid-September 2007, when the former Federal Reserve Chair, Alan Greenspan, was quoted in The Washington Post of Sept.17, 2007, as saying that “the removal of Saddam Hussein had been ‘essential’ to secure world oil supplies….” Greenspan’s statement, that “the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil,” apparently shocked the White House, leading an anonymous White House official to explain, “well, unfortunately, we can’t talk about oil.” The former Federal Reserve Chair was already on record as conceding that he was ‘saddened that it was “politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. Read more »