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POPSHaaretz editor: Israel facing existential crisis The outgoing editor of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz spoke at the London Jewish Book Week. On the 2005 Chris McGreal series that appeared in the Guardian, comparing Israel to South Africa: Landau was "outraged" by the articles at the time, but went on: "I don't feel like that any more. I don't feel that my outrage did sufficient justice to that piece of journalism because I feel that we in Israel have got ourselves into a situation in which we will indeed be facing a South African dilemma. "We will have a country in which we will become the minority and the majority will be denied their political and civil rights. When I re-read the Chris McGreal reports I no longer feel necessarily that that was totally tendentious. It might have been a prophetic piece of journalism. But the point is that the outrage which I gave voice to was an inadequate reaction. The reaction should have been: 'has he got a point?'"
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POPS'Worse than apartheid' Nablus is closed off by six checkpoints. Until 2005, one of them was open. "The checkpoints are supposedly for security purposes, but anyone who wants to perpetrate an attack can pay NIS 10 for a taxi and travel by bypass roads, or walk through the hills. The real purpose is to make life hard for the inhabitants. The civilian population suffers," says Said Abu Hijla, a lecturer at Al-Najah University in the city. In the bus I get acquainted with my two neighbours: Andrew Feinstein, a son of Holocaust survivors who is married to a Muslim woman from Bangladesh and served six years as an MP for the ANC ; and Nathan Gefen, who has a male Muslim partner and was a member of the right-wing Betar movement in his youth. Gefen is active on the Committee against AIDS in his AIDS-ravaged country.
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POPS'They've Stolen our Water, now our SEA' "The illegality of the actions and orders of the army cries out to the heavens. This is a clear case of misusing security considerations as camouflage for achieving other goals which are unrelated to security matters and unacceptable." The Association of Civil Rights (Acri) petition said.
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POPSBrandeis Student Gov Tables Resolution Commemorating Israel's 60th bday About half of the Brandeis student body identifies itself as Jewish. Brandeis, which has 3,400 undergraduates, was founded by members of the American-Jewish community in 1948, when there were quotas limiting the number of Jewish students at prestigious universities. Via Philip Weiss , who argues this portends a more critical apporach to Israel among young Jewish Americans.
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POPSWater Policy in Israel and Palestine - There's Enough Water for Both The increasing difficulties with water availability, concludes the hydrogeologist, result from Israel using the majority of water resources for agricultural purposes, although this sector today represents a very small portion of the Israeli economy. Despite this, the Israeli state remains unswervingly committed to the Zionist foundation myth, which regards the promotion of agriculture as a central tenet in the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Messerschmid, in turn, sees the priorities of Israeli water policies as fundamentally flawed, leading to a wasteful use of the precious resource. Large areas of land, for instance, are still intensively watered even during conditions of very high temperatures, although most of the water immediately evaporates. The Palestinians, by contrast, do not even have the amount of water at their disposal that was promised in the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Deutsche Fassung
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POPSBradley Burston, Haaretz.com: I want the Palestinians to win "I and the majority of the Palestinian people are ready for a historic agreement based on international decisions that will allow a Palestinian and Israeli state to coexist, side by side, in peace and stability." Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti Source: Ha'aretz, 08 April 2008 Bradley Burston is Senior Editor of Haaretz.com, the Israeli newspaper's online English language edition. __________________________________ See also Kore7 's clip Bradley Burston: Ten Ways to Make Sure That Peace Stays Dead .
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POPSWhy do Palestinians get more attention than Tibetans? Prager: "The first reason is terror. The Palestinian leadership decided, with the support of the Palestinian people, that murdering as many innocent people was the fastest way to garner world attention. They were right. On the other hand, as The Economist notes in its March 28, 2008 issue, "Tibetan nationalists have hardly ever resorted to terrorist tactics…" It is interesting to speculate how the world would have reacted had Tibetans hijacked international flights, slaughtered Chinese citizens in Chinese restaurants and temples, on Chinese buses and trains, and massacred Chinese schoolchildren." The second reason is oil and support from Arabs. The Palestinians have the unqualified support of all Middle Eastern oil-producing nations and the support of the Muslim world. The Tibetans are poor and have the support of no nations, let alone oil-producing ones.
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POPSIsrael delays treatment for Gaza toddlers Testimony of a Palestinian father whose sons have cystic fibrosis. They have to go to a hospital in Jersusalem once every month to get them treatment, but Israel is giving them a hard time by refusing to give the parents a permit to go to Jerusalem. By the way, earlier this father had another son die due to CF because the Israeli government would not let him travel to the West Bank to get a CT scan.
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POPSRacism in Israel not just confined to neo-Nazis Until Israeli society begins seriously combatting this dark racism, it will continue to regard the "neo-Nazis" as aliens who suddenly landed here. Public opinion will continue to believe that if we only send them back to the distant planet from whence they came, everything will be resolved. This is really not the case.
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POPSHow 700 settlers wrecked a town of 150,000 Palestinians International observers here say the settlers regularly toss debris and dirty water into the Arab market below, now largely shuttered in a city where unemployment stands at 60 percent. Asked whether Arabs and Jews can share Hebron, Maraga, his hair and beard a gray fuzz, looked up at the chain-link canopy. ... Hemmed in and harassed, the Palestinians are fleeing today. Nearly half the homes in and around the Israeli-controlled Old City of Hebron have been vacated, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently reported. The group also said that more than three-quarters of the Palestinian shops and restaurants in the casbah and adjacent commercial districts have been shuttered, many by military order. Via Marx Sawicky .
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POPSDePaul denies tenure to Israel critic Shameful. It looks very much like Finkelstein's views played a large role in his denial of tenure, since university officials cited his " tone " as justification to deny Finkelstein tenure. BTW, a committee of faculty from DePaul's political science department looked at Dershowitz's charges and found them to be without merit .
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POPSIsraeli 'Shin Bet involved in 1976 hijacking' 
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) may have been involved in the hijack of an Air France plane in 1976 by Palestinian terrorists, according to newly declassified British government documents released Friday. Some 100 passengers were held by hijackers at Entebbe airport in Uganda during an eight-day ordeal that concluded when General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) troops stormed the building where captives were held. Twenty-four people died in the shoot-out, including three hostages, 20 Ugandans and the commander of the rescue team, Yoni Netanyahu. The hijackers, from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the German Baader-Meinhof gang, demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners. But according to the newly released documents, the Shin Bet, and the PFLP are alleged to have teamed up in an "unholy alliance" in an attempt to change foreign policy in the Middle East. The allegation appeared in a document written by official DH Colvin at t
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POPSMedia focus on Hamas Mouse, neglect occupation As many of you are aware, the news (and Clipmarks) have been deluged with stories about a children's show produced by Hamas that features a Mickey Mouse-type character who allegedly espouses hatred toward Jews. Tom Wallace points out that the media have been ignoring the reality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.