Interview on Gaza and Labour Antisemitism

In October 2017, I was invited by Tom Mills and Dan Hind to their excellent Media Democracy Podcast for a discussion about the Labour antisemitism controversy. I returned this week to talk about... the Labour antisemitism controversy. Good to see the political conversation has progressed over the past year. This time around, we also spoke…

THE POWER OF MASS NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE IN PALESTINE – PART 3

Prior to the First Intifada, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (OPT) seemed, in the eyes of foreign observers, “too intimidated, divided, and politically suppressed to ever develop a coherent alternative leadership”[1] while the international resonance of the Palestinian cause was at a historic low. The “focus of attention in the Middle East is shifting,” reported…

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.…

PLUS ÇA CHANGE

[For] most Arab governments, the Palestinian issue has been supplanted by more immediate problems, indeed concern for their very survival, in the face of a number of factors including the possibility of Iranian success in the long-running Gulf war with Iraq, mounting Islamic fundamentalism, an economic crisis with severe social fall-out because of the crash…

IS NETANYAHU’S VICTORY A CLARIFYING MOMENT?

World reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu's victory has ranged from barely concealed dismay to open-mouthed horror. The New York Times published a scathing editorial, condemning Israel's likely next prime minister as 'desperate' and 'craven', his 'subversive' and 'outrageous' behaviour having 'laid bare his duplicity'. Today it publishes a column by Yousef Munayyer, arguing that Netanyahu's victory 'could actually hasten the end…