By Juan Cole Liberal politics in the broad sense, in the tradition of Locke, Voltaire, Madison, Jefferson and John Stuart Mill, is rooted in a conviction that vigorous debate clarifies issues and makes for better public policy over time. This principle is often misunderstood by political partisans, who confuse analytical disagreement with simply being contrarian […]
Israel Still Holding Gaza Civilians Hostage, Doesn’t Get Geneva Conventions
By Juan Cole The Israeli government is saying that it will only let in building materials so that Palestinians in Gaza can rebuild or repair the some 40,000 buildings that have been damaged or destroyed if Hamas disarms. It is legitimate for Israel to seek the disarming of Hamas, but it isn’t legitimate or legal […]
Climate Change, Dirty Natural Gas, and the Gaza War
By Juan Cole Calls by Israeli politicians in mainstream positions for the Palestinians to be ethnically cleansed from Gaza in part reflect frustration over the security issue many Israelis maintain the people of Gaza pose to Israel. (If the concern were justified, you’d think the death toll for the Israeli side would be much greater […]
Q & A w/ Juan Cole on “The New Arabs”: If Elders in Mideast Can’t Get it Done, will the Youth?
by *JOSEPH RICHARD PREVILLE and JULIE POUCHER HARBIN for ISLAMiCommentary Column » By the Book “Many Palestinians see the Israelis as aggressive colonizers of Palestinian land and resources or as jailers; many Israelis see the Palestinians as irrational, violent and a ticking demographic time bomb that endangers a Jewish-majority state between the Jordan and the […]
Top 5 Ways the US is Israel’s Accomplice in War Crimes in Gaza
By Juan Cole The US State Department became a little testy with Israel on Sunday over the 6th school shelling by the Israeli military, which killed 10, saying “The United States is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling outside an UNRWA school in Rafah sheltering some 3,000 displaced persons, in which ten more Palestinian civilians were […]
Proposition 1: How to Swindle the Middle Class
By Cathy Stripe Lester On August 5, Michigan taxpayers will be asked to vote on Proposition 1, which is being presented in commercials as a way to “help small businesses and create 15,000 new jobs … without raising taxes!” If that sounds like a conjuring trick, it is – smoke’n’mirrors, my friends. And if you […]
Boycott of Israel Spreads in European Civil Society over Gaza War, Could Cost $5 bn/ yr
By Juan Cole The ill-considered and remarkably brutal Gaza war likely will give further impetus to the Boycott, Sanction and Divestment movement by Western civil society to pressure Israel on its illegal actions toward the Palestinians. A thoroughgoing such European set of sanctions could cost Israel as much as $5 bn a year and more. […]
Are Israelis and Zionists really talking about a Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem?
By Juan Cole The Times of Israel published and then removed from its site an essay by Yochanan Gordon that openly called for genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. A cached version is still on the internet as of this writing. Gordon’s logic, if one wants to dignify it with that term, is that Hamas […]
Gaza and Soweto
By Juan Cole On June 16, 1976, some 20,000 students rose up to protest in the slum of Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Here is a summary of the June 18 NYT article on the repression of the protests: “Rioting continues for 3d day in Soweto, black township outside Johannesburg, with rioters, mostly young, […]
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