Blog

As I wrote 2 weeks the revolutions in the Middle East are half-finished. The dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak of Tunisia and Egypt have departed but their regimes remain intact. Instead of Mubarak’s ‘civilian’ facade we have the naked reality of army rule. But in any revolution there is no standing still. Either the warfor…

I have written before on how Hamas represses, wherever possible, the population of Gaza. The latter post, citing as it does an important article by Haidar Eid, an Associate Professor at Gaza’s Al Aqsa University is particularly important. I was e-mailed today by someone who was previously unknown to me, one Nahida. Nahida confined her…

25 Years Fighting the Board of Deputies of British Jews I went to a meeting last night hosted by the Jewish Socialists’ Group. An excellent meeting it was on ‘Policing, Surveillance and Community Security’. Liz Davies and Kat Craig of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, who represented students in cases arising from recent demonstrations…

Mubarak Down and the Army Generals Must Be Next One can only stand in awe and admiration of the Egyptian masses for achieving the overthrow of the dictator Hosni Mubarak, former leader of the most important US client in the region after Israel. Their bravery and endurance is as remarkable as is their suffering. A…

Israel’s Knesset to Hold Debate on Cultural Boycott News comes from the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem that the Knesset is to hold its first discussion of the cultural boycott. The wave of boycotts by artists – from Santana to Elvis Costello – Israelis are beginning to get the message that the civilised world doesn’t…

Ahmad Sa’adat is a Political Prisoner Jailed for the ‘Crime’ of Resisting the Occupation Ahmad Sa’adat is the imprisoned leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in a military trial for the ‘crime’ of having led the resistance to the Israeli Occupation. Resistance is, of…

“He may be a barbarian, but he’s our barbarian”. Thus spoke John Rothmann, a former President of the Zionist Organization of America, now a talk show host for KGO radio in San Francisco. It is of course a paraphrase of FDR’s description of Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua and Israel’s good friend: ‘he may be…

It is difficult to understand the mentality of someone who deliberately destroys the access of an occupied civilian to that most basic of necessities – water. But then we know that given their Nazi-like mentality, the settlers consider the Palestinians as less than human. In this they are not alone of course. The Israeli State…

The Half-Finished Revolutions The Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt are beginning to look like half-completed revolutions. The tyrants themselves have either been forced to flee or promises not to continue in office but the structure of state power and in particular the armed forces have not so far been dismantled. That is the task of…

Puppet Palestinian Authority Security Services Stage their own Demonstration Against Al-Jazeera to Protest at the Leaking of 1,600 Documents on the ‘Negotiations’ with Israel No one is more afraid and upset by the revolution in Egypt than the Quisling Palestinian Authority and the Fateh/PLO leaders. After all, as the Palestine papers show, they were in…