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60 years on......to celebrate or not

Authors David Grossman and Daniel Gavron offer competing portraits — one sad, one happy — of where Israel stands as it prepares for its 60th birthday.

Grossman, writing in Salon, paints a gloomy picture, arguing that the Jewish state has yet to truly confront that alarming existential lessons of the war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006.

On the other hand, Gavron strikes entirely different, more optimistic chord in the NY Times – which reads almost like a direct response to Grossman’s angst.

Read the different perspectives, on The Telegraph, here.

Meanwhile, over at Al Jazeera:

"Norman Finkelstein is one of Israel's fiercest academic critics and a vocal supporter of the Palestinians.

He is urging the Palestinians to break down the "segregation" wall built across the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein was an assistant professor of Political Science at Chicago's De Paul University for six years until he was denied tenure there in June 2007.

Known for his critical investigations of other scholarly works on Israel - notably his ongoing feud with Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and Israel supporter - he has published six books on the occupation and the issue of Palestine.

Finkelstein's works have earned him both praise and condemnation.

Finkelstein is working on his seventh book - A Farewell to Israel: The Coming Break-up of American Zionism - postulating that American Jewish support for Israel is beginning to wane.

Currently on an international speaking tour of Venezuela, The Netherlands, Turkey, Lebanon, Japan, the UK, Canada and the US, Finkelstein spoke with Al Jazeera about the siege on Gaza and what options Palestinians there faced."

Read the Q & A here.

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