Israel's late 1947 -1948 "War of Independence" took six months to create a new Jewish state, excluding Arabs to the greatest extent possible. To accomplish it, widespread war crimes and atrocities were committed as about 800,000 people were brutally uprooted, ethnically cleansed, or murdered in cold blood. In addition, 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem and other cities were destroyed and erased except in the collective memories of their inhabitants and descendants who'll always consider them their rightful homes.
After a decade of elaboration on Jewish ideology and identity I came to a conclusion that Jewish identity, politics and ideology can be grasped as different manifestations of ‘self love’. The Zionist loves himself being strong and crude (Sabra), the Jewish leftist loves himself being a ‘humanist’ and ‘tolerant’, yet, for some reason, he prefers to operate in ‘Jews only’ cells (Bund, Jews for Palestine, Jews for Peace, Jews against Zionism, etc.).
I saw the possibility of a just and peaceful world last week--at a conference on a mountain in Switzerland. The (second annual) Caux Forum on Human Security was no Davos nor G-8 Summit. No media were invited. While the 300 invitees included some global VIPS, the key criterion for being there was not celebrity, but a personal history of creativity and courage in addressing public problems.
Neighbors of Daniel Boyd, a son of a Marine, are befuddled over his federal indictment on terrorism-related charges. Boyd, who attended a public high school here in Northern Virginia and who now lives in North Carolina, runs a dry-wall business in Raleigh.
At least 27 have been killed and 53 others wounded in a series of bombings near Shia mosques in and around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police have said.
The emergency rule imposed in Pakistan two years ago by Pervez Musharraf, the country's former president, was unconstitutional, the country's supreme court has ruled.
A British man wanted in the US for hacking into Nasa and Pentagon computers soon after the September 11 attacks in 2001 has lost his latest appeal against extradition.
The Israeli government has said that its war on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, that left up to 1,417 Palestinians dead, was "necessary and proportionate".
Barack Obama, the US president, has hosted a black professor and white police officer in an attempt to defuse a simmering race row that erupted when Henry Louis Gates Jr was arrested by Sergeant James Crowley.
Japan's unemployment rate has hit a six-year high as the world's second largest economy continues to battle with the fallout from the global economic crisis.
An independent inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war has opened in London, with its chairman promising to call Tony Blair, the UK prime minister at the time of the 2003 invasion, as a witness.
China has slated the middle of August for the trial of suspects its says were involved in the ethnic violence earlier this month in the western region of Xinjiang, state media has reported.
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The Israeli government has said that its war on the Gaza Strip earlier this year, that left up to 1,417 Palestinians dead, was "necessary and proportionate".
