Despite a seven-year blockade, Israel’s control of movement and goods in the Gaza Strip has only strengthened the enemy Hamas and exposed Israel to global criticism. Time for a new policy.
Category: The Endless War
A century ago, those reporting on wars were little more than military puppets. Since Vietnam, journalism is freer and more complicated. Now social media is changing the equation again.
The emirate of Qatar is tiny, but it wields disproportionate power in the world, where it maintains complicated and often troubling relationships. Just ask Israel.
If you’re ever in Gaza and have the time for a museum visit, pop by the Al-Mathaf Hotel. Here in dusty glass showcases you’ll find treasures on display dating back to the days when this coastal area was still one of the ancient world’s major trade centers. Tempora mutantur (times change) — the wealth of the Philistines is well in the past: Gaza today is about misery, war and death. The Palestinian strip of coastland has become a cipher for an apparently unsolvable conflict. For decades this small scrap of land has been thrown back and forth between powers, administered […]
A view from afar on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the Jewish-American lobby looks all too much like the Cuban-American lobby.
Israel’s supporters have responded to criticism of the Gaza intervention by asking why similar anger isn’t directed at the toll in Syria. It’s a bogus comparison, for many reasons.
TEL AVIV — Last February, a court in Jerusalem ordered a seven-year prison sentence for Kifah Sarhan, a senior Hamas official based in Jerusalem, on charges of membership in a terror organization and dealing with property for terrorism. A resident of East Jerusalem and member of the organization’s advisory council, Sarhan had a key position […]
About two weeks before Israel started its Operation Protective Edge, the entire political leadership of Hamas in Gaza attended a funeral for five members of the movement’s military wing — among the attendees were former premier Ismail Haniyeh, Speaker of the Gaza parliament Ahmad Bahar and other senior figures from Hamas’ politburo. On its face, […]
Quit or double down? The risks for Israel rise in step with the number killed on both sides of the conflict in Gaza.
Protests over the weekend in major European cities to support the people of Gaza were fertile ground for a growing movement of anti-Semitism.
Both Egyptians and refugees from Gaza are living through the war that comes to them in Egypt both from across the border in Palestinian territory, and from Cairo’s showdown in the Sinai.
TEL AVIV — Don’t know where to run when you hear the sirens? Want to send a distress signal in an emergency to security forces or assure your family you’re okay with a tweet? Here is a list of the latest smartphone applications that are getting downloaded during the current military “Operation Protective Edge,” as […]
It is becoming harder and harder to even imagine an end to the cycle of anger and vengeance.
Here is a sample of how Israel’s ground offensive into Gaza was playing out on Twitter in Arabic and Hebrew. Tweets in Arabic *A young Palestinian named Mustafa Abu Zir tweeted this morning from Gaza, “the electricity has been cut to our neighborhood for 18 hours.. my laptop and phone battery died and we have […]
JERUSALEM — Nobody wanted to believe it. Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet had of course called up reservists and warned the 100,000 inhabitants of Gaza who lived near the border not to stay long. But for most Israeli political analysts, this had appeared to be mainly an exercise in communications. And everything pointed to their being right […]
Relatives of Amer Abu Aisheh, accused of abducting three Israeli teens, don’t expect to see him again. His mother’s definition of a martyr: “one who chooses to give their life to kill the Jews.”