This Thursday, January 26, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) at the University of Michigan — Ann Arbor will be bringing renown author, journalist, and commentator Ali Abunimah for a groundbreaking lecture discussing, “Colonial Reality: Dismantling the Myths of Israeli Democracy. Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse, will address the campus community on the reality of Israel’s claim as the region’s only beacon of light, a terms it regularly assigns to itself. (Editor’s note: Event information can be found at the end of this post.)
Rhetoric surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict has continuously revolved around the argument that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Such claims are not only false and biased, but have harsh implications in terms of the public opinion regarding the question of Palestine. These falsehoods propagated by the media and other outlets have lead to the pardoning of Israel for their blatant racist, discriminatory and colonizing practices and have characterized the Israeli government as the only nation in the Middle East that has any promising future because of its democratic ideals. These falsehoods lead to the Israeli exceptionalism that we see so often. Forgetting about the war crimes, violations of international law, illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing of a people, we see figures of power praising Israel for democratic traits they do not truly possess. We hope that this event will shine light on the realities of the that most college-age students at a public university may never hear. This topic is crucial because it will, as the title suggests, dismantle the myths that have been propagating popular opinion. [Read more...]
Jerusalem Post news editor denies existence of Palestinians
Would you trust a news source if it explicitly breeds hatred and intolerance? What if it attempts to manipulate or even ignore the truth? Or how about if it justifies the oppression it has a moral duty to report on?
Deputy news editor of the Jerusalem Post Israel Kasnett is caught in a very awkward spot. It is unfortunate to see that although the public entrusts him and his staff of journalists to accurately portray the news without indulging in any bigoted ideologies, Kasnett finds it acceptable to promote his fundamentally flawed belief that “63 years ago [P]alestinians did not exist!!!”
Kasnett’s remark, published through Twitter, came as a response to Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah’s statement that after sixty-three years, Israel now has its very own “massive ghetto prison for the ethnically cleansed, called Gaza”. Kasnett’s remark also serves as the critical foundation for the denial of the Nakba in which upwards of 800,000 Palestinians were forcefully removed from their homes in 1948. [Read more...]