This week's postings on JfJfP.com
The dominant themes in this week’s media, March 9th-15th, and thus in the postings, have been the Israeli election and International Women’s Day.
The commentariat is still puzzling over the bathos of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress (which is, obviously, connected to the election)
The Netanyahu pantomine
Two respected journalists comment on the bizarrely (frighteningly) rapturous reception given to Bibi by US Congressmen (sic)
It wasn’t what he said or even how he said it
Foreign Policy journal puts the blame for the continuing of the Palestine / Israel conflict firmly on Netanyahu’s shoulders as he believes that, thanks to the IDF, he can ‘manage’ the conflict indefinitely. If this judgment takes hold, the Netanyahu party is in trouble.
Best news for MidEast would be defeat of intransigent Bibi
As polls are now suggesting the Zionist Camp / Zionist Union (translations vary) is ahead of Likud, some explored what Isaac Herzog (the Labour part of Zionist Camp) stood for and what his chances were of succeeding Bibi.
Labour’s Herzog tipped as next PM
Interestingly, as many had given up hope of an Israeli Left in the last decade, definite signs of life have been spotted amongst both Jewish and Arab Israelis:
New hope for anti-racist Left in election
Although Yonatan Mendel, writing in LRB, acknowledged the importance of the Arab-led Joint List in galvanising hope and action, his is nonetheless a commentary of hopelessness and contempt for the prevailing racism:
This election is about one thing only – nothing
It has often been noted that in national liberation struggles, like Palestine’s, the first and last requirement of women is to keep quiet and support the fighting men. Palestinian women took to the streets on International Women’s Day. At Qalandia the women were attacked by Israeli security forces. Israel often boasts that, unlike Arab countries, it opposes discrimination against and maltreatment of women.
Tear gas, stun grenades, pepper spray fired at Palestinian women to mark IWD
And it is Palestinian women, bearing the responsibility for housing (destroyed in Gaza) and the health and welfare of children, who angrily protested outside the UNRWA office in Gaza:
Women in Gaza demand action on reconstruction
Women may not often make the news, but when they get attention their outstanding quality seems to be steadfastness notes in a series of beautiful photographs of older Jewish Israeli women by Active Stills:
Women of conviction
and again by Middle East Eye of Palestinian women:
Women who keep life going
And an interesting counter-story to the dominant ideas about free-market capitalism and the primary domestic/ supportive role comes from a story of young women of Gaza applying for, and gettting, funding from the Islamic university and World Bank:
Gaza’s women entrepreneurs
Continuing the theme of it’s not all macho fighting on the men’s side and quiet loyalty on the women’s is a fascinating article about a settler Rabbi and a once-firebrand Palestinian activist joining together to talk with settlers about the Palestinian experience, and commonality of bereavement. It’s worth remembering that while a good propertion of settlers are ideologically driven to rid the country of Arabs, others are in the Don’t know, Don’t want to know, category.
‘There’s a mindset in which we are blind to the existence of Palestinians as human beings’
Not so much blind as rapacious and blindly self-righteous are the organisations whose mission is to capture the whole of Jerusalem for Jews, i.e. expel the Palestinians. It’s a horrible story.
The Dispossessors
And the Signatories’ blog this week is by the most steadfast Sue Beardon, describing her experience at the Tent of Nations orchard and farm. She sets this against the propaganda of her youth that Palestine was an arid and unfarmed land until the Israelis arrived.
Digging in
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