arabs
Book launch: Nahla Abdo's Women In Israel
On April 18, Nahla Abdo's new book, Women in Israel, was launched in Toronto, with a discussion by b.h. yael, Himani Bannerji, Lilian Abou-Tabickh and Amir Hassanpour. Women in Israel provides a fresh, gendered analysis of citizenship in Israel. Working from a framework of Israel as a settler-colonial regime, this important, insightful book presents historical and contemporary comparative approaches to the lives and experiences of Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Palestinian Arab women citizens. Nahla Abdo shows that no solution to the problems of the region can be found without changing existing racial and gender boundaries to citizenship.
Election 2011: Harper's attack on the Canadian Arab and Muslim community
During the Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006 -- and in the five years since -- Stephen Harper has strongly defended Israel's policies even when other allies like the United States and Britain have made the occasional criticism of Israeli policy or called for compromise between the Israelis and Palestinians. This virtually unqualified support from the Harper government for Israel runs contrary to the view held by the vast majority of the world community.
Western hypocrisy on democracy in the Middle East
The fact that the Arab world is awash with dictators has long been a key piece of evidence used to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment in the West.
Surely all those dictators are proof that Arabs don't love democracy the way we Westerners do, that they are culturally, religiously and perhaps congenitally attracted to tyrannical strongmen as leaders.
This widely held view will be difficult to sustain here now that wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Egyptian (and Tunisian) uprisings has exposed the truth: Arabs don't like tyrants any more than we do.
Mr. Cohen doesn't do Ramallah
Leonard Cohen's Ramallah concert in Palestine got cancelled last week. He had added it to a September concert in Israel. But a Palestinian group heading a broad campaign against Israel -- BDS, for boycott, divestment and sanctions -- demanded he not get away with "whitewashing Israel's colonial apartheid regime" by a "token" show of "balance." A Palestinian prisoners' club had sponsored the concert. It was unhappy but agreed to the decision.
The BDS campaign has gained backing in the West among academics, artists etc. As a supporter of Palestinian rights and a critic of much Israeli policy, I'd like to say why I find it problematic and even disturbing.
Israel, apartheid, anti-Semites
What is the sound of one side condemning? It's the media rendering of Israel Apartheid Week, now under way. B'nai Brith ran full-page newspaper ads asking universities to "prevent" it and the attendant "anti-Semitism on campus." There were no ads from organizers, so we didn't hear them being anti-Semitic in their own words -- or denying the charge.
Here's the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno: "That detestable, despicable annual campus hate-fest ... Jew-bashing cloaked in self-righteousness ... students who don't recognize racism when they're spewing it."