Keyword: Israel

Israel/Palestine 101: An Animated Introduction to Understanding the Root Causes of the Conflict

Picture: Jewish Voice for Peace Video In 1967, Israel defeated neighbouring Arab countries in a war that lasted six days. At the end of that war, Israel had captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. The West Bank has been under a military occupation ever since. This means that the Israeli army has complete control over these areas. Gaza retained a Jewish settler population and was under total military control until the Israeli government unilaterally withdrew soldiers and some 8,000 settlers in 2005. Israel,...

Gaza & the Long History of Liberal Brutality

Picture: Boys in Gaza fenced in behind a barricade courtesy Dale Spencer/flickr Richard Pithouse - As the Israeli state rains its murder on the people of Gaza we are confronted with a stark demonstration of the ways in which there is, in so many quarters, official sanction for according radically different values to human lives. Some of us are taken as sacrosanct, others as disposable. It has often been suggested that in the case of Israel and Palestine the inequality in the value ascribed to human life can be rendered as a mathematical ratio. In this calculus there is no such thing as a...

Israel Is Captive to Its 'Destructive Process'

Picture: A young girl injured during Israel Chris Hedges - Raul Hilberg in his monumental work “The Destruction of the European Jews” chronicled a process of repression that at first was “relatively mild” but led, step by step, to the Holocaust. It started with legal discrimination and ended with mass murder. “The destructive process was a development that was begun with caution and ended without restraint,” Hilberg wrote. The Palestinians over the past few decades have endured a similar “destructive...

Norwegian Physician Treating Wounded Civilians: Stop the Bombing, End Israeli Impunity in Gaza

Picture: Democracy Now! Video Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor, joins Democracy Now! from Gaza where he has been treating hundreds of victims wounded in Israel’s ongoing assault, including young children. Dr. Gilbert says hospitals are operating without electricity, water and proper medical supplies, but adds: "As a medical doctor, my appeal is don’t send bandages, don’t send syringes, don’t send medical teams. The most important medical thing you can do now is to force Israel to stop...

A View from Gaza: We Hug the Children as the Bombs Fall

Picture: Palestinian Children courtesy Tijen Erol/flickr Mona El-Farra - GAZA – Written Between 3 am and 4 am early Wednesday morning, July 9, 2014. The Israeli warships continue shelling...It is dark. I do not know what is going on and I can hear successive bombing. I am thinking of all the people I know tonight, especially my colleagues at the hospitals who are working under severe pressure and lacking basic medical supplies. Stay strong. I heard they bombed the area around the European hospital east of Khan Younis in Southern Gaza...Then the...

Israel/Palestine: Children's Lives in the Balance - Is One Worth More Than Another?

Picture: Protest sign at Israeli consulate in Boston courtesy "The guy by the door...", a blog hosted by Harvard University. Medea Benjamin & Pam Bailey - With the news that the bodies of three missing Israeli teens had been found in a field not far from the stretch of road where they disappeared June 12, people everywhere reacted rightly with sorrow and anger. Eyal Yifrah, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, also 16, were students who lived with their families in a Jewish-only settlement near the Palestinian city of Hebron in the West Bank. The settlement and others like it have been declared illegal by the International Court of...