Ramzy Baroud responds to revelations about The New York Times “guidance” on language about the Israeli mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7. The New York Times coverage of the Israeli carnage in Gaza, like that of other mainstream U.S. media, is a disgrace to journalism. This assertion should not surprise anyone. U.S. media is Continue reading »
Israel / Palestine
We generally assume words carry the same meaning in the mind of speaker and listener. This enables meaningful communication and common understanding. Sometimes however words are given a specific meaning which completely changes their original intent. The words become weapons. This has happened with the word antisemitism and the word terrorist. This week the American Continue reading »
As tensions flare with Iran, the US continues to provide full support for Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip. The events of early April seem to bear out the first line of T S Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, that “April is the cruellest month”. On 10 April, on Eid al-Fitr, the celebratory end of Ramadan, Israel killed three Continue reading »
Hamas is holding 132 hostages: 130 of them were taken captive on October 7 and two were taken hostage before then (one in 2014, the other in 2015). Israel holds thousands of Palestinians as de facto hostages. According to the Israel Prison Service, 3,661 of its 9,312 “security” inmates are held without charge or trial Continue reading »
“Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law,” said Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. The United Nations’ human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperilling the enclave’s barely Continue reading »
Lies and impunity paved the way for the worst time in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hanan Ashrawi says Gaza is “worse than even the Nakba, because it is a wilful, deliberate, total genocide”. Continue reading »
As a gentile with an historical association with Israel, I must admit to being greatly puzzled by the double standard that is evident in the destruction of Gaza. In 1971-2 I spent five months at Kibbutz Misgav-am in northern Israel, situated right on the Lebanese border. I had earlier spent a year in Africa, and Continue reading »
The non-violence training to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s ships to Gaza has been intense. As hundreds of us from 32 countries gathered in Istanbul, we were briefed about what we might encounter on this voyage. “We have to be ready for every possibility,” our trainers insisted. The best scenario, they said, is that our Continue reading »
A mass grave created by the IDF has been uncovered at a Gaza hospital, where Palestinian civilians appear to have been the victims of a gruesome massacre. “Bah, that’s old news Caitlin,” you may be saying. “We already know about the massacre and mass graves which were discovered a few weeks ago at the al-Shifa Continue reading »
Former US ambassador Chas Freeman argues that Iran’s strike “changes all the rules of the game in the Middle-East”. For Ambassador Freeman, the most important factor is that: “the Saudis, the Emiratis and others informed the United States that they would not permit American operations against Iran from their territory and Iran warned those states Continue reading »