The Post-Partisan Emporium

The Evolving Battle Lines in the Middle East Tom Luongo The biggest stumbling block to analyzing what’s happening between Israel and the rest of the Middle East is dispensing with our biases and ignorance about pretty much the entire affair. I will be the first to admit to having profound ignorance about so much of the history between Israel and the Palestinians. I really wish everyone else having opinions right now would at least admit that up front versus trying to sound like another incarnation of the Newly-Minted Subject Matter Expert of the Week thanks to having read a couple of articles in the New York Times. And that’s the thing I believe we are fighting more than anything else at this point: the profound amount of propaganda and outright bullshit being slung around about every event of any significance. All it does is create confusion and cognitive dissonance. That confusion is, by the way, the goal of the propaganda, from all sides. That said, what’s abundantly clear is that t...

  The Wide, Wide World of Imprisonment Some internments are more equal than others DONALD JEFFRIES A discussion of involuntary incarceration seems appropriate at this point, as Israel continues to bombard the Palestinians who are in effect their prisoners. In 2006, Israeli senior official Giaora Eiland described Gaza as a “huge concentration camp.” That’s not a “conspiracy theorist” saying it- it’s one of our beloved allies. That same year, 2006, a much ballyhooed election was held on the West Bank in Gaza. The Americans, under the great Dubya Bush, pushed for such an election, and called it “democracy promotion.” However, as often happens, “democracy” didn’t go the way they wanted, as the dreaded bogeyman Hamas won the election. Even Jimmy Carter gave his imprimatur, declaring that it was “honest and fair.” Except that the “wrong” people won. Can’t have that in a “democracy.” So the forces of freedom, meaning America and Israel, instituted one of their notorious blockades on Gaza ...