Changing US Mideast Policy/ More on Negotiating with Iran
November 1, 2013
The US Administration has announced a new more “modest” approach to the Middle East, heralded first by President Barack Obama in a speech at the UN last month, and laid out in more detail by National Security Advisor Susan Rice in interviews over the weekend. The new policy focuses primarily on three issues – the Iranian nuclear program, Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking and Syria. This Update includes analysis of the significance and prospects of this new policy – as a well as a new discussion of the Iranian negotiations from three senior, veteran American policy experts.
Jerusalem Arabs being treated as political pawns
October 31, 2013 | Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz
As peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians continue, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to an agreement. … The status of Jerusalem involves complex considerations of unity and division, and fiery debate on this issue has become a staple of Israeli politics. Many of these realities were brought to light in last week’s municipal elections…
The Yom Kippur War: Australian controversies of 1973
October 29, 2013 | Ahron Shapiro
This blog, the last instalment of a three-part series on the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, uses original Australian source material to obtain some insights into the Australian government’s controversial response to the war at the time, as well as the persuasive but ultimately futile arguments used by Israel’s supporters to convince Canberra to improve its response. Finally, the blog concludes with some observations about how the Australian coverage of the Yom Kippur War can tell us something about the way the Australian media views Israel today.
Attack on Jewish group in Bondi
October 28, 2013 | Sharyn Mittelman
AIJAC strongly condemns the attack on five members of Sydney’s Jewish community in Bondi, in what appears to have been one of the most severe acts of racist violence against the Australian Jewish community in decades.
Saudi Arabia’s show of temper/ Hamas’ troubles
October 25, 2013
This Update deals with some extraordinary moves from the usually diplomatically careful Saudi Arabians, turning down a UN Security Council seat in what Riyadh made clear is mainly a show of anger directed at US Middle East policy, as well as at UN impotence, and also scaling back intelligence cooperation with the US.
Arafat NOT poisoned? Media yawns
October 18, 2013 | Allon Lee
In a sane world, it would not be al-Jazeera‘s overblown boast on Saturday of supposed scientific confirmation for its 2012 ‘scoop’ that Yasser Arafat might have been poisoned by polonium-210 which would have made headlines, but instead the revelation on Tuesday of genuinely new and apparently decisive information contradicting any such theory. That’s when a senior Russia toxicologist who had access to testing of samples of Arafat’s body tissues stated that, according to these definitive tests, Arafat “could not have died of polonium poisoning.”
Toward a viable Iran nuclear deal
October 18, 2013
A round of talks in Geneva about Iran’s nuclear program Tuesday and Wednesday ended with the Western powers reporting some progress, and plans made for additional talks early next month after Iran gave a Powerpoint presentation whose exact content is unknown but which Iran described as a roadmap for resolving the nuclear issue. This Update looks at where the P5+1 powers (US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany) meeting with Iran should be looking to go from here.
Media Week – Haq journalism; Fitting farewell
October 17, 2013 | Allon Lee
An SBS radio “World News” report (Oct. 10) featured Palestinian human rights groups al-Haq and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights calling for the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel and included horrific allegations without either context or opportunity for rebuttal from Israeli sources.
More evidence concerning Hamas’ supposed moderation
October 17, 2013 | Sharyn Mittelman
In a fascinating and candid interview, Gershon Baskin, veteran Israeli peace activist and founder of the Israeli Palestinian Center for Research and Information, recounts his conversation with Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’ deputy foreign minister, where Hamad maintains Hamas’ refusal to recognise Israel.
The Yom Kippur War in Australian editorials and analysis
October 17, 2013 | Ahron Shapiro
In June, AIJAC took a look back at the coverage of the Six Day War of 1967 in two major Australian newspapers, the Age of Melbourne and the Sydney Morning Herald. Now, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, we open the archives once again to look at the coverage of that war in Australia, this time expanding the scope of our research to include the Australian, as well as touching upon the coverage of the Canberra Times, and the Melbourne Herald.
As a much longer war, there is more to take in, so the retrospective will be split into two parts. This blog will discuss the editorials and some of the in-house analysis of the period, while the second will revisit some of the on-the-spot coverage by the newspapers’ foreign correspondents covering the war. Finally, similar to our blog from June, we’ll conclude by weighing some of the key contextual facts of the Israeli-Arab conflict that were widely understood by journalists at the time but are largely absent from the narrative in the news today.
