Politics

May 2, 2006

Hypocrisy on Palestine

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 30 April The elections for the Palestinian Authority held in the Occupied Territories earlier this year were universally certified as free and fair, an exemplary exercise in democracy, unique in the Arab world. But there was a single tragic flaw in the process, and that was the result: a victory… Read more

Apr 16, 2006

Whatever happened to the British Labour Party?

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 16 April Whatever happened to the British Labour Party? The organisation that built the welfare state and the National Health Service, that for generations provided (however incompletely) a political voice and some protection for the country’s working class majority, is now one of Europe’s most aggressive champions of neo-liberalism, the… Read more

Apr 12, 2006

Who needs to fit in?

The clash between multiculturalists and integrationists hides the hard issues of injustice The Guardian, April 12 The punch line goes like this: “Because he worked in the family business, lived at home till he was 30 and thought his mother was a virgin.” When I first heard it, that was the answer to the question:… Read more

Mar 20, 2006

Cheapening the anti-semitism charge

The Guardian (weblog), 17 March In today’s Guardian John Mann MP rightly urges us to “to differentiate between hostility to Israel and aggression against Jewish institutions and people”. But this is precisely what he himself fails to do. His article is yet another attempt to hang the “anti-semitism” tag on critics of Israel and thereby muddy the waters… Read more

Mar 14, 2006

Reasons to march

The occupation of Iraq is an ongoing disaster – and the first thing we have to do to help Iraqis is end it. “Comment is free”, The Guardian, 14 March Three years ago, at one of the huge demonstrations that preceded the invasion of Iraq, I ran into a 16-year-old friend, visibly excited by the… Read more

Mar 5, 2006

Who speaks for the Jews? Livingstone and the Board of Deputies

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 5 March The news that the elected Mayor of London was to be suspended from office for a month at the direction of an appointed tribunal startled Londoners, partly because few had any idea that there existed a body with the power to overturn their democratic preference, and partly because… Read more

Feb 19, 2006

The cartoon and the commentators

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 19 February It’s impossible not to be dismayed by the spiral of events. A witless racist cartoon is elevated into a totem of western democracy and holocaust denial becomes a symbol of resistance to imperialism. The message contained in the Danish cartoon was blunt: it drew an equation between Muslims… Read more

Feb 5, 2006

Iraq protests: three years on

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 5 February Three years ago, the world witnessed something unprecedented. On the same day, in 900 cities in forty countries north and south, east and west, thirty million people took to the streets in protest against the imminent attack on Iraq. There were demonstrations in Moscow, Karachi, Dhaka, Manila, Johannesburg,… Read more

Jan 22, 2006

Mistaken priorities

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 22 January Thanks to a minor but persistent ailment, I recently paid a series of visits to my local doctors’ surgery. As always, the waiting room was filled. The patients – mostly working-class, many from the Turkish and Kurdish communities that are prominent in the area – were calm. We… Read more

Jan 1, 2006

Beyond Chutzpah

Red Pepper, January 2006 Review: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History by Norman G. Finkelstein (Verso) When celebrity trial lawyer and Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz published ‘The Case for Israel’ in 2003, it was acclaimed by leading US opinion-makers, including The New York Times and Boston Globe, and quickly… Read more