THE POWER OF MASS NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE IN PALESTINE – PART 2

Part 2 of 3. The previous instalment of this article traced the impact of the First Intifada—a mass nonviolent Palestinian civil revolt that erupted in December 1987—at the United Nations. This section examines the impact of the Intifada on a second component of the international consensus which today prevails on Palestine: international human rights organisations.…

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL VS. BORIS JOHNSON

"I'm not going to hide my concerns about this."@JRug asked Foreign Secretary @BorisJohnson about British arms exports to Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/Cg1ymzWJo9 — Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) September 22, 2016 *** Amnesty International: The airstrike on Abs Rural Hospital in Yemen's Hajjah governorate on 15 August was the fourth attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)…

Norman Finkelstein on Bernie, Palestine and Politics

The great Norman Finkelstein has been interviewed on Bernie, Palestine and Politics. Among other things, he talks about how Israel has successfully defanged human rights NGO coverage of Israeli crimes: most human rights organisations sat out Operation Protective Edge (2014), while Amnesty reverted to its pre-1987 apologetics. This is an extremely dangerous development, since the human rights…

GUARDING THE GUARDIANS

I interviewed Norman Finkelstein on the role of human rights organisations in the struggle for justice in Palestine: As always in politics, the issue is not what you’d in an ideal world prefer; the issue is choosing between the givens. Of course, politics is also about transforming those givens. But I think you cannot transform a…

EXCLAMATION POINTS

Second Lebanon War (2006): [D]uring the final 72 hours of the conflict… Israel engaged in saturation cluster bombing, hitting more than 850 strike sites with millions of submunitions. According to the United Nations, 90 percent of Israel’s cluster munition strikes took place over this brief period. A commander of an IDF MRLS unit told a…

EXCLAMATION POINTS

Second Lebanon War (2006): [D]uring the final 72 hours of the conflict... Israel engaged in saturation cluster bombing, hitting more than 850 strike sites with millions of submunitions. According to the United Nations, 90 percent of Israel’s cluster munition strikes took place over this brief period. A commander of an IDF MRLS unit told a Ha’aretz…