Israel/ Palestine

Israel’s settler population in the occupied West Bank increased by 4.2 percent in 2013, interior ministry figures show, as US-backed peace talks with the Palestinians falter over the settlement issue. The number of settlers living in the West Bank rose…

Barack Obama

McCain’s Mind-Boggling Hypocrisy on Crimea at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Conference

Juan Cole

John Hickman, author of Selling Guantanamo, writes in a guest column for Informed Comment That the Crimean Crisis would be exploited by Republican Congressional leaders to criticize President Obama was inevitable. Politics hasn’t stopped at the water’s edge in the United States for a very long time. What wasn’t inevitable was the shamelessness of Senator […]

Featured

Obama to Netanyahu: Israel faces Int’l Sanctions over “Permanent Occupation of West Bank”

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, D.C., this week was even more of a disaster for him than might have been expected. It did not help that the Crimea crisis had broken out, which rather cast a bad light on one country militarily occupying parts of another. Most observers in Europe […]

Human Rights

AI Calls for Int’l Sanctions on Israel over Systematic Violence against Civilians

contributors

(By Sarah Lazare) Israeli forces are killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank — including children — with "callous disregard for human life," enjoying near impunity for likely war crimes, and should be immediately cut off from arms shipments by the international community, declares a damning report released by Amnesty International on Thursday. "This is a […]

Egypt

What today’s GOP gets Wrong about Leadership: Obama & Eisenhower, Russian & Israeli Recklessness

Juan Cole

(By Juan Cole) The usual suspects have been slamming President Obama for an alleged lack of leadership. Trolls for the military-industrial complex like Charles Krauthammer, and megalomaniacs from tiny states like Sen. Lindsey Graham have constructed a narrative in which Obama willfully withdrew from Iraq, giving it away to Iran; has been insufficiently slavish in […]

Human Rights

Expelled from their homes by Israel, Palestinian Refugees in Syria’s Yarmouk Camp now Starving in midst of War

Juan Cole

Israeli negotiators repeatedly refuse to consider a right of return for Palestinians Israelis expelled from Palestine to refugee camps in the region. But refugees are without rights and open to serial catastrophes, as stateless non-citizens unwanted locally. When a civil war breaks out around the refugee camps, they can end up being besieged and starved, […]

Human Rights

This Apartheid Week, Read the Report Israel Doesn’t Want you To See

contributors

(By Ben White) This week has seen the promotion of yet more anti-democratic legislation in Israel. A new law that received final approval by the Knesset gives, for the first time, separate representation to Muslim and Christian Palestinian citizens on a national employment commission. The bill’s sponsor, Likud MK Yariv Levin, was clear about his […]

Islam

Israel Parliament debates incursion into Holy Muslim site in Jerusalem

Juan Cole

(Via AFP) Israel police, protesters clash at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque (via AFP) Israeli police clashed with stone-throwing Palestinians Tuesday in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound of Jerusalem’s Old City, ahead of a parliamentary debate on Jewish access to the site, holy to both faiths. Israel captured the Old City from Jordan during… ——- Related video: […]

Dissent

Israel’s Curb on Freedom of Speech in Anti-Boycott Law Challenged in Court

contributors

(By Bill Van Esveld) On [last] Sunday, nine Israeli Supreme Court justices heard a petition to revoke the country’s “anti-boycott law” – a law that penalizes people or groups that advocate boycotting Israeli products, institutions or individuals – because it restricts the right to freedom of expression. The anti-boycott law’s critics are as diverse as […]