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’
Cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hamas this past week served as the latest occasion for the New York Times to cover, and cover some more, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
True to form, Friday May 25th’s front-page featured prominently, for the second time in a week, a color photo of an Israeli strike against a Hamas compound in Gaza. Inside the front section, a major article detailed Israel’s crackdown on Hamas, focusing on the arrest of 33 Hamas officials in the West Bank.
The latest Israeli-Palestinian violence, as well as the intra-Palestinian violence, is certainly newsworthy.
The Times’s extensive coverage, however, overshadowed an exceptionally significant development in Lebanon: intense fighting between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam, an Islamic terrorist group.
Continue reading ‘Some News Is Fit to Print’
AJC Executive Director David Harris blogs for the Jerusalem Post. From his latest entry:
On May 11, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora had an op-ed in the New York Times.
It reminded me of a Cold War-era joke.
An American and a Soviet debated which country was more open. The American boasted that, without fear of arrest, he could stand near the White House and denounce President Nixon. The Soviet, clearly unimpressed, replied that the USSR was freer. He could stand near the Kremlin and assail the US leader, too. Not only wouldn’t he be seized, but Chairman Brezhnev would personally come out to thank him.
Saniora used the Winograd Commission report, a product of Israel’s democratic process, to criticize Israel, while failing to engage in any parallel self-reflection.
Saniora’s message falls short [JPost]
Complete list of Harris’s blogs [JPost]
Listen: [audio:101meeting/allam050407.mp3]
Magdi Allam, editor at Corriere Della Sera and commentator on Arab and Islamic affairs, was presented with the Mass Media Award on May 4, 2007 at AJC’s 101st Annual Meeting. Here he gives his acceptance speech.
Continue reading ‘Audio: Magdi Allam Accepts Mass Media Award’
To the dismay of many in the Western world, Lebanon was Terror Central in the 1970s and 1980s. The lack of a central government during the Lebanese civil war made Lebanon a very attractive place for terrorist organizations to operate. Terrorists from across the globe set up training camps and a place to meet their contacts with funding from countries that provided financial support, including the former Soviet Union, Syria, Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Terrorist organizations across the political spectrum established their headquarters and safe houses there.
Although the era of those terror organizations has come to an end, today Lebanon is plagued with a different generation of terror organizations. Chief among them is Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’i terror organization spawned by the radical Shi’a regime in Iran. Interestingly, Al-Qa’ida also maintains a presence in Lebanon – and, despite the group’s Sunni radical roots, Iran has provided safe haven to a number of its top leaders since the 9/11 attacks. Two of the most prominent Al-Qa’ida leaders reported to be in Iran are Saif Al-Adel and Saad Bin Ladin, the son of Osama Bin Ladin.
Iran’s support for both Sunni and Shi’a terrorists has been evident since the 1980s.
Continue reading ‘Terrorist Togetherness’
As the evening shadows fall upon Jerusalem, and Yom HaShoah (the memorial day for the Holocaust, according to the Hebrew date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943/5703) is ushered in, the official ceremony at Yad Vashem is never free of an internal built-in tension. It is an official, orchestrated act of the State of Israel, with all that this entails — the central role accorded to political leaders, the presence of a military guard of honor, the presentations treading the path of a well-established ritual.
Many young people find themselves somewhat alienated by the formal and forbidding proceedings. And yet there are moments of heartbreaking humanity, as the stories of the six torch-lighters — one for every million murdered — are told in their own words; as young Israelis, singers and choirs, give words and music to the agony and loss; and sometimes, when the words spoken, even by officials, do reach beyond the worn phrases and remind us of our duty to commit to what those terrible years have taught us.
This year there were important new notes in two of the central speeches.
Continue reading ‘In a Place of Shadows: Olmert’s Yad Vashem Speech’
One of the parking signs in New York City used to blare, “Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here.” Another declared, “No Parking. No Standing. No Stopping. No Kidding.” Parking has always been tough in New York, but airline travel has grown increasingly more difficult for everyone since 9/11. If going through airport security hasn’t been difficult enough, the six imams who were removed from U.S. Airways flight 300 in November are attempting to make the thought of boarding a plane even more of a hassle.
Continue reading ‘Bravo to the John Does’