Already in its death throes after seven years of futile struggle against Israel, the Palestinian national movement suffered a fatal blow last week, when Gaza fell in the hands of Hamas. Now, instead of a state-in-the waiting, Palestine is two failed states, under two governments at war with one another.
Hamas in Gaza might still pursue its fight against Israel; and Fatah in the West Bank might still voice the rhetoric of grievance against Israel as the occupier. But the two are now locked in a deadly struggle. Anti-Zionist rhetoric has been waving the ghost of a one-state solution - implying that Israel might disappear, replaced by a united binational state comprising the West Bank and Gaza as well as present Israel. It now looks as though there will be a one-state solution after all - Israel, alongside two failed states, both Palestinian, and fighting each other.
Continue reading ‘Two Failed States’
Tashbih Sayyed was a very special human being, a friend of the Jewish people, and my friend. I first met him seven years ago when my organization, the American Jewish Committee, was launching an interfaith effort to initiate dialogue with Muslims. In our conversations, Tashbih exuded a quiet intensity, and a determination to make the world a better place. Little by little, I began to learn more about his personal experiences in Pakistan and how those experiences had shaped him into a defender of human rights in the Muslim world.
Tashbih was not only dedicated to discussing his vision of how the Muslim world could change. He was a passionate believer in the power of the press to educate the public in order to make those changes happen. He lived and breathed journalism, and more than once described his newspapers as “my life.” For him, immigrating to the United States was the opening of a new door of opportunity to express himself through his journalism, and freedom of speech was a precious gift that should not be squandered.
Continue reading ‘Tashbih Sayyed - A Remembrance’
In Let Us Prove Strong: The American Jewish Committee, 1945-2006 (Brandeis University Press, 2007), Marianne Sanua describes a telling moment in AJC history. It was John Slawson’s “Aha!” moment in the early 1960’s. Slawson, AJC’s executive vice president, was reading the latest American Jewish Year Book study by Erich Rosenthal (“Jewish Fertility in the United States,” AJYB 1961) when he “was seized with virtual terror” as he contemplated the low Jewish birthrate and Jewish “extinction.” Slawson immediately telephoned the dean of Jewish sociologists, Marshall Sklare. At the Sklare home there was background noise that sounded like half a dozen babies. Slawson was both relieved and motivated. “I found out that there is some hope….We should be concerned about Jewish population policy.”
Continue reading ‘The Jewish Birth Dearth’
A few years ago an American Indian friend phoned me, absolutely perplexed. He could not reconcile two stories in his morning paper – one in the news section, the other in sports. Both were about major Florida universities.
The first story reported universal outrage at and severe sanctions on a fraternity which had hosted an event where participants dressed in blackface. The leadership of the university spoke in strong language about not tolerating racism, the hurt of stereotypes, the psychological impact of dehumanization, and the incompatibility of such offensive behavior with the standards of a university.
The second noted, without comment, that the leadership of another Florida university (which had an Indian mascot) was encouraging students to show up at a major sporting event in red face.
Continue reading ‘Israel as the N-word’
As international news networks were reporting Hamas’s onslaught against Fatah, I began trawling the internet to see what, if anything, the various pro-Palestinian websites and blogs had to say about the brutal civil war raging in the Gaza Strip.
The short answer: not much.
Over at the Electronic Intifada (EI) commentators were undisturbed by the fragmentation of Gaza into a burning enclave reminiscent of Afghanistan or Somalia. Just at the moment when Hamas was blasting its way towards an intra-Palestinian version of the two-state solution, the talk at EI was of a single state between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
Continue reading ‘Gaza’s Agony and the Anti-Zionists’
At a recent dinner for a global environmental organization, a new Tesla was auctioned for $110,000 in ten minutes. Starting bid was $80,000, discounted from the $100,000 sticker price, and the actress emceeing that portion of the program expressed frustration that the guests filling the New York hotel ballroom were not more forthcoming in competing for this totally electric vehicle.
Tesla attracted considerable media attention when its two-passenger Roadster was introduced last year, though one might wonder what incentive there is to purchase an environmentally-friendly car that costs more than most gas-guzzling SUV models. Meanwhile, General Motors recently announced that the electric Chevrolet Volt will be available in 2010, demonstrating that even a leading U.S. automaker can be innovative.
Electric cars are a viable option to help diminish our dependence on oil from hostile nations and reduce poisonous emissions polluting the atmosphere. But the technology is hardly ground-breaking.
Continue reading ‘Viable Electric Cars’
It’s tempting to view the movement to boycott Israel as a peculiarly British affliction. The University and College Union vote marked the third time in three years that British academics have opted for a boycott policy. And that decision came barely a month after the British National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted, at its annual conference, for a boycott of Israeli goods.
The UCU boycott dents the prestige of British academia just as the NUJ boycott tars the British media. But none of that matters to the boycott activists.
They believe if they demonstrate concrete results by pushing Israelis off conference platforms and out of the pages of academic journals, other sectors with similar clout will follow. In that regard, they can point to the boycott calls issued by groups of British doctors and British architects, all of whom accuse their Israeli counterparts of, as the UCU would say, “complicity” in the supposed crimes committed by Israel.
Continue reading ‘Britain is Not the Only Battleground’