Sadly anti-semitism, in many of its usual manifestations, is once again rearing its ugly head around the world. Whether the "trigger" for that is the current Israel-Palestinian conflict, or the wider anti-Muslim fervour gripping the world or the whole situation in the Middle East, is another issue. Whatever the underlying reason [s] it is deplorable that a small group of people [now, after 6 million Jews were "lost" in the Holocaust, probably something like 13 million in the whole world!] continues to attract such enmity. Jews do not control the media, financial centres, etc etc. - contrary to the myth peddled far and wide. Jews have, it is true, made a significant contribution to medicine, technology, music and the arts generally. The London Review of Books has just published an article Benefits of Diaspora by one Eric Hobsbawn. It makes for interesting reading.
There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t
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