Media Week – Go figure; Bergs of a feather; Inclement comparison; Total fiction
May 17, 2012 | Allon Lee
Go figure
An unattributed Age story (12/5) on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails stated that a “fifth of all Palestinians living under occupation – some 700,00 people – have served time in Israeli jails, according to activist groups.”
Although the article did not include the origin of the claim of 700,000, it is a number pushed by the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a Palestinian NGO, and is not credible.
Israel as a teacher of innovation
May 16, 2012 | Sharyn Mittelman
People from around the world are traveling to Israel to learn from its innovation and economic success.
Israel’s President Shimon Peres recently told a visiting Australian delegation that included Financial Services Minister Bill Shorten, that part of the secret to Israel’s economic success was that Israel had to use its brainpower to carve out a living, “We had nothing and that was our luck,” Peres said. Peres also told the group that he wanted Israel to become “the Silicon Valley of the Middle East.”
Is any deal better than no deal on Iran’s nukes?
May 16, 2012
This Update features three pieces on the nuclear talks with Iran, scheduled to resume next week after a five week hiaitus – two of them focusing on the dangers of any agreement which does not adequately block Iran’s ability to quickly build nuclear weapons whenever a decision to do so is reached.
First up is Iran scholar and recent visitor to Australia Emanuele Ottolenghi, who looks at some history related to the Iranian nuclear program to make the case that an agreement that does not take account of Iran’s past weaponisation achievements will leave Iran able to build nuclear weapons.
Israel’s Models as Role Models
May 15, 2012 | Sharyn Mittelman
Israel is the first country to formally legislate a ban against underweight models. The legislation also bans use of models who ‘look underweight’, and creators of ads must disclose whether they used Photoshop or graphics programs to manipulate images to make the models look slimmer.
Media Week – Unbelievable, because it’s wrong!; New Blood; Not so popular front
May 11, 2012 | Allon Lee
The Australian‘s John Lyons (5/5) reported on an Israeli law passed during the Second Intifada in 2003 designed to prevent terrorists exploiting family reunion laws to enter Israel.
This has meant Israeli Arab Taiseer Khatib’s wife, Lana, who is from Jenin on the West Bank, can only stay in Israel on a temporary residency visa, something Khatib denounces as “beyond apartheid”.
The newspaper offensively headlined the piece Living under the cloud of Israel’s cruel apartheid implying this was a statement of fact rather than Taiseer Khatib’s opinion. The online edition has since rectified this error.
Australia’s Budget 2012-13: Foreign Aid
May 11, 2012 | Sharyn Mittelman
The Australian Budget was announced on May 8, and in order to bring the budget into surplus the Government decided to delay its promise to raise foreign aid spending to 0.5 per cent of gross national income (GNI) by 2015/16, pushing this goal back until 2016-2017.
This blog post looks at highlights from the foreign aid budget, and also considers the case for improving the effectiveness of Australian aid in the Palestinian Territories.
There’s no debate: anti-Israel sentiment growing in Egypt
May 11, 2012 | Ahron Shapiro
Egyptian presidential hopefuls Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh held a televised debate on Thursday, but when it came to Israel, the candidates had little to argue about.
Both pledged to review the 1979 peace treaty Egypt had signed with Israel, while trying to outdo each other’s antagonism towards Israel: Abol Fotouh termed Israel an enemy, while Moussa called it an adversary.
The candidate’s caustic views were mirrored in a poll released on Tuesday, which revealed growing anti-Israel and anti-Western sentiment in the country. As Egypt continues to develop a new Constitution and readies for presidential elections on May 23 (with a likely runoff on June 16), the debate as well as the poll raise new concerns over Egypt’s direction.
Israel’s Political “Big Bang”
May 10, 2012
This Update follows up on Ahron Shapiro’s blog post yesterday on Israeli PM Netanyahu’s shock move on Tuesday night to cancel planned elections and instead form a National Unity government with Opposition Leader Shaul Mofaz.
First up to provide a general perspective on the move is Israeli political scientist Prof. Gerald Steinberg, who argues that the broad political base Netanyahu has created for himself provides a platform to deal with a series of major challenges facing Israel. He stresses the immediate trigger for the move was the court-ordered need to re-write the “Tal Law”, dealing with deferral of military service for Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox minority – which seemed insoluble within the confines of the existing coalition.
Jewish refugees – Addressing historical injustice as a key to reconciliation
May 9, 2012 | Or Avi Guy
Palestinian refugees and the claims made of “right of return” for them have long been a major issue within the debate over a ‘just solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The claimed “right of return'” is still seen as a core obstacle to overcome in any future peace negotiations. Yet the refugees question is even more complex. Palestinian refugees actually represent the smaller of the two refugees groups created by the regional conflict between the Arab countries and Israel – the larger group being Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries.
The voices of these Jewish refugees, sadly, have hardly ever been heard or are generally too quickly dismissed. Listening to these voices could potentially shed light and new perspectives not only on the refugees question, but also on the nature and history of the regional context of the conflict. It might even promote reconciliation.
Karl Marx and Jerusalem
May 9, 2012 | Tzvi Fleischer
Prof. Shlomo Avineri… has just written a fascinating little piece about how, in 1976, he used a 1854 quote from Karl Marx to counter a Soviet-led effort at the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to condemn and expel Israel for the alleged crime of “Judaising” Jerusalem – a claim which is still raised frequently today…
But there is another point in this quote from Marx which Avineri does not call attention to – and it relates to the treatment of Jews in Arab lands…
