Two relevant and interesting pieces, and one letter to the editor, relating to Israel.
First, a Letter to the Editor from Noam Chomsky in The Australian newspaper (in Australia) today:
"I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of The Australian claiming that I regard the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement's tactics targeting Israel as "pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel" and that I said BDS efforts are "inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people" (Letters, 14/12).
These tactics have enormous support among Palestinians, and the charge of anti-Semitism should be dismissed with disdain.
When Human Rights Watch "calls on the US and European Union member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law", it is advocating BDS tactics, rightly, and there is no hint of anti-Semitism.
I have personally been involved in such forms of opposition to the Israeli occupation for years, long before there was a BDS movement.
Any tactics, however legitimate, can of course be misused. But they can also be used quite properly and effectively against state crimes, and in this case regularly have been."
Second, from The Telgraph (in the UK):
"There are times in personal as well as political life when friendship involves a great deal more than the kind of genial back-slapping with which the Prime Minister treated the Israel lobby on Tuesday. The brutal truth is that Benjamin Netanyahu is leading his country down the path to self-destruction. If he is allowed to go ahead with the latest plans for settlement construction, all hopes of Middle East peace will vanish and die.
Mark Simmonds, a junior Foreign Office minister, formally acknowledged this in a revealing but unreported Commons debate just a few hours after Tuesday CFI lunch, saying: “I think that the door is beginning to close on the realistic possibility of a two-state solution.” William Hague now believes that settlement construction will render it completely impossible within two years at most.
We will then be left with a greater Israel stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river. Of course, this is a tidier geographical unit than the complicated mess which an attempt to return Israel to its 1967 boundaries would produce. But the Palestinians would suddenly find themselves in a majority. Israel would then face a choice between retaining its democracy, but ceasing to be a Jewish state, or embracing a form of apartheid in which Palestinians were refused basic rights. Judging from the rhetoric emanating from Mr Netanyahu and his unpleasant coalition allies, this is probably the choice today’s Israeli leadership would make.
On Monday night, one former British ambassador to Israel, the Hebrew-speaking Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, made an eloquent speech from which it is important to quote at some length: “I believe passionately that Israel on its present course is embarked on a pathway to assisted suicide. Suicide assisted by the Congress of the United States. The idea that the problem can be solved by walling up the Palestinians in the Middle Eastern equivalent of the Bantustans, which the South African government embarked on in the 1940s, is not only offensive morally, it is deeply out of keeping with everything we know of human history. It will not work, it cannot work, it should not work. And anyone who has a real affection for the Jewish people will want to help them to avoid this looming disaster.”
Third, from Mondoweiss on how some informed commentators in the USA are calling the so-called Two State solution dead:
"Israel's latest landgrab in the West Bank has caused several more mainstream media outlets to offer eulogies to the two-state solution-- and note that Israel has isolated the United States diplomatically."
First, a Letter to the Editor from Noam Chomsky in The Australian newspaper (in Australia) today:
"I was surprised to read a letter to the editor of The Australian claiming that I regard the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement's tactics targeting Israel as "pure anti-Semitism, aimed at the destruction of Israel" and that I said BDS efforts are "inimical to the interests of and lacking any genuine support from the Palestinian people" (Letters, 14/12).
These tactics have enormous support among Palestinians, and the charge of anti-Semitism should be dismissed with disdain.
When Human Rights Watch "calls on the US and European Union member states and on businesses with operations in settlement areas to avoid supporting Israeli settlement policies that are inherently discriminatory and that violate international law", it is advocating BDS tactics, rightly, and there is no hint of anti-Semitism.
I have personally been involved in such forms of opposition to the Israeli occupation for years, long before there was a BDS movement.
Any tactics, however legitimate, can of course be misused. But they can also be used quite properly and effectively against state crimes, and in this case regularly have been."
Second, from The Telgraph (in the UK):
"There are times in personal as well as political life when friendship involves a great deal more than the kind of genial back-slapping with which the Prime Minister treated the Israel lobby on Tuesday. The brutal truth is that Benjamin Netanyahu is leading his country down the path to self-destruction. If he is allowed to go ahead with the latest plans for settlement construction, all hopes of Middle East peace will vanish and die.
Mark Simmonds, a junior Foreign Office minister, formally acknowledged this in a revealing but unreported Commons debate just a few hours after Tuesday CFI lunch, saying: “I think that the door is beginning to close on the realistic possibility of a two-state solution.” William Hague now believes that settlement construction will render it completely impossible within two years at most.
We will then be left with a greater Israel stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river. Of course, this is a tidier geographical unit than the complicated mess which an attempt to return Israel to its 1967 boundaries would produce. But the Palestinians would suddenly find themselves in a majority. Israel would then face a choice between retaining its democracy, but ceasing to be a Jewish state, or embracing a form of apartheid in which Palestinians were refused basic rights. Judging from the rhetoric emanating from Mr Netanyahu and his unpleasant coalition allies, this is probably the choice today’s Israeli leadership would make.
On Monday night, one former British ambassador to Israel, the Hebrew-speaking Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, made an eloquent speech from which it is important to quote at some length: “I believe passionately that Israel on its present course is embarked on a pathway to assisted suicide. Suicide assisted by the Congress of the United States. The idea that the problem can be solved by walling up the Palestinians in the Middle Eastern equivalent of the Bantustans, which the South African government embarked on in the 1940s, is not only offensive morally, it is deeply out of keeping with everything we know of human history. It will not work, it cannot work, it should not work. And anyone who has a real affection for the Jewish people will want to help them to avoid this looming disaster.”
Third, from Mondoweiss on how some informed commentators in the USA are calling the so-called Two State solution dead:
"Israel's latest landgrab in the West Bank has caused several more mainstream media outlets to offer eulogies to the two-state solution-- and note that Israel has isolated the United States diplomatically."
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