Palestine/Israel – Page 3

May 8, 2007

“It must be the Jews…”

Jewish Socialist, Spring 2007 I was sipping tea in a darkened room in a dusty village somewhere off the Lahore-Multan road in Pakistan. My host was a rental car driver. We’d been chatting as we made our way across the flat plains of southern Punjab, beginning with cricket, and eventually, in a transition common across… Read more

Apr 17, 2007

Strange bedfellows

Palestine News, Spring 2007 During a visit to India in February, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, met with right-wing Hindu supremacist notables at the home of former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, currently leader of the BJP (the official opposition) in the Indian parliament. In the 1980s, Advani launched and led the… Read more

Mar 25, 2007

Echoes and analogies

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 25 March THE more I travel, read and study the history of peoples and societies, the more analogies I discover, and at the same time the warier I become of all analogies. History does not repeat itself exactly, but it is full of echoes. Some analogies are routinely abused, while… Read more

Feb 25, 2007

Blurred at the edges

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 25 February A reference in my last column to Moses Maimonides as a “12th century Arab Jewish theologian” has perplexed some readers. An Arab and a Jew? Can such a hybrid exist? Like all ethnic designations, both terms are problematic, blurred at the edges. But in the case of Maimonides,… Read more

Dec 3, 2006

Beyond polarities

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 3 December IN the Draa Valley, in southern Morocco, flanked on one side by an oasis densely planted with date palms and on the other by the high crumbling mud walls of what had been the Jewish quarters of an old and now abandoned village, I read about the Israeli… Read more

Aug 19, 2006

“Proud of Israel”? The Chief Rabbi talks rubbish

LEVEL PLAYING FIELD The Hindu, 20 August As a Jew, I’ve been asked if I’m ashamed at what Israel has been doing in Lebanon. And the answer I give is that I am disgusted, I am angry, I am appalled, but, no, I am not ashamed. Why should I be? I bear no personal responsibility… Read more

Jun 18, 2006

Fateful triangle: India, Israel and the US

Palestine News, July 2006 Presumably because I’m Jewish and write about India, I received an invitation to a ‘Jewish-Indian Reception’ held earlier this year at Columbia University in New York. “Did you know that Jews have lived in India for over 2000 years without any signs of Anti-Semitism?” the invitation began. “Did you know that… Read more

May 18, 2006

Who’s singling out Israel?

Comment is free, The Guardian, 17 May In breach of international law, Ehud Olmert has declared that Israel will redraw its boundaries unilaterally, incorporating the major West Bank settlements and maintaining a military presence adjacent to the Jordan. Meanwhile, the EU and the US have suspended aid to the democratically elected Palestinian authority, threatening Palestinians with a collapse of public… Read more

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

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