The week in brief, 11-17 January 2010 – a summary of recent postings


January 17, 2010
Richard Kuper

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Two interesting screenings on TV – last week’s Israeli film “Defamation” by Yoav Shamir on the subject of antisemitism (you can catch it online for another day or two at least on Channel 4, and the discussion of it by Antony Lerman and David Hirsh on ‘Comment is Free’); and Panorama’s film on the battle for Jerusalem (postponed from last week) which will now be screened on Monday 18 January.

Some good news, in that Jamal Juma’ and Mohammed Othman, veteran campaigners against the Wall, were both released last week. But many others languish in administrative detention; and now Jared Malsin, chief English editor for the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency, is threatened with deportation – and may well be out of the country by the time you read this item. His crime: authoring news stories “inside the territories” and articles “criticizing the State of Israel.”…

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to stop the government taking control over the right to enforce universal jurisdiction away from the courts and is calling for support.

Aviad Kleinberg in his article “The First Hebrew Ghetto” reports Netanyahu as saying that “Eventually, there will be no choice but to fence Israel in on all directions”. The enemy this time: not terrorists, but asylum seekers from Sudan and elsewhere.

Akiva Eldar reports that Abbas’s call last year to postpone consideration of the Goldstone Report at the UN came after Shin Bet leant heavily on him. And Helga Baumgarten’s evaluation of the balance of power within Fatah suggests that someone from within the security forces in a more likely successor to Abbas than is Marwan Barghouti.

Moshe Halbertal’s article “The Goldstone Illusion: What the U.N. report gets wrong about Gaza” has become the touchstone of those who supported the war on Gaza. Following David Shulman’s (posted here on 22 December 2009), there is now a response from eight of Halbertal’s students.

Finally, Experience Travel Tours (ETT) encourages people to visit the Occupied Territories and Israel to be eye-witnesses to the situation on the ground

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