by Uri Avnery MARWAN BARGHOUTI has spoken up. After a long silence, he has sent a message from prison. In Israeli ears, this message does not sound pleasant. But for Palestinians, and for Arabs in general, it makes sense. His message may well become the new program of the Palestinian liberation movement. I FIRST met Marwan in the heyday of post-Oslo optimism. He was emerging as a leader of the
by Uri Avnery A SPANISH JUDGE has instituted a judicial inquiry against seven Israeli political and military personalities on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The case: the 2002 dropping of a one ton bomb on the home of Hamas leader Salah Shehade. Apart from the intended victim, 14 people, most of them children, were killed. For those who have forgotten: the then commander of the Israeli Air
by Uri Avnery NEARLY SEVENTY YEARS ago, in the course of World War II, a heinous crime was committed in the city of Leningrad. For more than a thousand days, a gang of extremists called “the Red Army” held the millions of the town’s inhabitants hostage and provoked retaliation from the German Wehrmacht from inside the population centers. The Germans had no alternative but to bomb and shell the population
by Uri Avnery AFTER MONTHS of a tough and bitter race, a merciless struggle, Barack Obama has defeated his formidable opponent, Hillary Clinton. He has wrought a miracle: for the first time in history a black person has become a credible candidate for the presidency of the most powerful country in the world. And what was the first thing he did after his astounding victory? He ran to the conference
by Uri Avnery EVERY PEOPLE elevate the profession in which they excel. If a person in the street were asked to name the area of enterprise in which we Israelis excel, his answer would probably be: Hi-Tech. And indeed, in this area we have recorded some impressive achievements. It seems as if hardly a day passes without an Israeli start-up company that was born in a garage being sold for
by Uri Avnery THERE ARE books that change people’s consciousness and change history. Some tell a story, like Harriet Beech Stowe’s 1851 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which gave a huge impetus to the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Others take the form of a political treatise, like Theodor Herzl’s “Der Judenstaat”, which gave birth to the Zionist movement. Or they can be scientific in nature, like Charles Darwin’s “The Origin
by Uri Avnery A DETECTIVE trying to solve a crime always asks “cui bono?” (who would profit?) When we try to solve the crime called the Second Lebanon War, this question must head the list. The day before yesterday, a full year after the war, the Israeli media devoted most of their time to the retrospective analysis of the war. Hour after hour of television time, page after page of
Today I begin what I hope will be a continuous series of interviews with various participants in the conflicts in the Middle-East. The first person I “spoke” to (by email, actually) is Uri Avnery whose amazing life spans the entire history of Israel. From his political beginning as a 15 year old member of the terrorist group Irgun to becoming the founder of the most consistent Israeli peace group Gush
It is a common mistake to think that the US Neocons are somehow concered with the welfare of Israel or the of Israelis. In reality, of course, the Neocons are interested in their own power and they simply realize that by mantrically repeating “Israel! existential threat! anti-Semitism! self-hating Jews! Holocaust!” they can get away with murder, literally. Sadly, there is a Neocon clique in Israel who pretty much uses the
