Must Jews always see themselves as victims?

Fierce debate has been raging in 'The Independent' about Israel's conduct in Gaza. Here, one leading Jewish thinker argues that until Jews shake off their persecution complex, there can never be peace in the Middle East

By Antony Lerman

Saturday, 7 March 2009

In the wake of Israel's attack on Gaza, eager voices are telling us that anti-Semitism has returned – yet again. Eight years of Hamas rockets and the world unfairly cries foul when Israel retaliates, they say. Biased media are delegitimising the Jewish state. The Left attacks Israel as uniquely evil, making it the persecuted Jew among the nations. Even theatres keep wheeling out those anti-Semitic stereotypes, Shylock, Fagin and the "chosen people", just to torment us. If this bleak picture were an accurate portrayal of what Jews are experiencing today, who could deny that suffering is the determining feature of the Jewish condition?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/must-jews-always-see-themselves-as-victims-1639277.html

Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

One of the more disturbing developments in the Middle East is a growing consensus among Israelis that it would acceptable to expel—in the words of advocates “transfer”—its Arab citizens to either a yet as unformed Palestinian state or the neighboring countries of Jordan and Egypt.

Such sentiment is hardly new among Israeli extremists, and it has long been advocated by racist Jewish organizations like Kach, the party of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, as well as groups like the National Union, which doubled its Knesset representation in the last election.

http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan03032009.html

Durban 2 draft statement: Israel's Palestinian policy is crime against humanity

A draft of the closing statement prepared for the upcoming United Nations-sponsored conference against racism, dubbed Durban 2, states that Israel's policy in the Palestinian territories constitutes a "violation of international human rights, a crime against humanity and a contemporary form of apartheid."

The conference, to be held in Geneva next month, is a follow-up to the contentious 2001 conference in the South African city of Durban which was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery. The U.S. and Israel walked out midway through that eight-day meeting over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism - the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state - to racism.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068076.html

Israel planning 73,300 new homes in West Bank

A report by the Israeli left-wing NGO Peace Now released Monday says that the government is planning to build more than 73,300 new housing units in the West Bank.

According to the report, approval has already been granted for the construction of 15,000 housing units, while a final okay is pending for a further 58,000 units. The report states that 5,722 of the planned housing units are in East Jerusalem, and some 9,000 units in total have already been built.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068033.html

Israel's death squads: A soldier's story

The incident described by the ex-soldier appears almost trivial by comparison with so much that has happened since in Gaza, culminating in more than 1,200 Palestinian casualties inflicted by Operation Cast Lead this January. It might have been forgotten by all except those directly affected, if it had not been for the highly unusual account of it he gave to Breaking the Silence, which has collected testimony from hundreds of former troops concerned about what they saw and did – including abuses of Palestinians – during their service in the occupied territories.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israels-death-squads-a-soldiers-story-1634774.html

Jordan's King: LSD, fortune tellers, and Black September

He did not like Shimon Peres, and pushed for Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 elections - though he soon regretted it. Years before Ehud Olmert met Morris Talansky, this man already was receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in brown envelopes from Americans, though he was too noble to open them in front of his CIA handler. He warned Gamal Abdel Nasser about the Six-Day War, and Golda Meir about the Yom Kippur War, but neither listened to him.

King Hussein of Jordan died 10 years ago this month, on February 7, 1999. He was 63, and had ruled the Hashemite Kingdom for four and a half decades, since he was old enough to vote. He led an artificial strip of a country that the British had carved out of the Arabian Desert for their own needs. He started out with both banks of the Jordan and ended up with one, not including Jerusalem.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067582.html