Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Thursday, July 31, 2014

White House's strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel comes as Palestinian leaders prepare for talks on short ceasefire

Thursday, July 31, 2014 No comments

Israel has come under heavy pressure from the US to curtail civilian deaths after concluding that its forces were likely to have been behind the shelling of a UN school.

In what amounted to the strongest and most explicit condemnation of Israel since the Gaza conflict began, President Barack Obama's press secretary on Thursday called the attack "totally unacceptable" and "totally indefensible". He also said the administration was urging Israel to do more to avoid civilian deaths and said US officials were taking issue with "specific military decisions" by Israel. "It is clear that we need our allies in Israel to do more to live up to the high standards they have set themselves."

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, at least 30 people, mostly women and children, were injured in what is believed to be an Israeli shelling

Thursday, July 31, 2014 No comments

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza, at least 30 people, mostly women and children, were injured in what is believed to be an Israeli shelling

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Spain's leading film stars Penélope Cruz, Pedro Almodóvar and Javier Bardem are the latest major celebrities to go public with their views on the ongoing conflict in Gaza

Wednesday, July 30, 2014 No comments

The trio are among a group of actors who have penned an open letter in a Spanish newspaper calling for Europe to condemn Israel's bombing of the Palestinian territory, which has now claimed at least 1,200 lives - many of them civilians.

The Spanish stars follow in the wake of celebrities, including singers Zayn Malik, Rihanna and Selena Gomez, and comedian Joan Rivers, who have spoken out either for or against the bombardment.
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Branding himself 'outraged, ashamed and hurt', Bardem added that he did not want tax he pays in Spain to be used to support Israeli 'barbarism', before going on to recognise the distinction between the actions of the Israeli state and the opinions of Jews, who may not support the bombings.

'...being Jewish does not automatically mean you support this massacre, just like being Hebrew does not mean you are a Zionist, just like being Palestinian does not automatically make you a Hamas terrorist. That's just as absurd as saying that being German makes you Nazi,' he said.

Bardem went on to say that he had spoken to a lot of Jewish friends in the U.S. about the conflict, one of whom he claimed had told him: 'You can't call it self-defense while you're murdering children.'

The Spanish celebrities who penned today's open letter are the latest in a long line of famous names to voice their opinion on the four-week-old conflict, many of them coming out in support of Gaza.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

UN official condemns ‘in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces’

Tuesday, July 29, 2014 No comments

Gaza: at least 19 killed and 90 injured as another UN school is hit

At least 19 Palestinians were killed and about 90 injured early on Wednesday when a UN school sheltering displaced people was hit by shells during a second night of relentless bombardment that followed an Israeli warning of a protracted military campaign.

Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, condemned “in in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces”.

He said in a statement: “Last night, children were killed as they slept next to their parents on the floor of a classroom in a UN-designated shelter in Gaza. Children killed in their sleep; this is an affront to all of us, a source of universal shame. Today the world stands disgraced.

“We have visited the site and gathered evidence. We have analysed fragments, examined craters and other damage. Our initial assessment is that it was Israeli artillery that hit our school, in which 3,300 people had sought refuge. We believe there were at least three impacts.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Satellite images of Gaza show the devastation in the tiny Palestinian enclave

Monday, July 28, 2014 No comments

Satellite images released by Unitar/Unosat show how vast tracts of the Gaza Strip have been completely destroyed over the course of the Israeli offensive, now in its 21st day.

As the death toll in Gaza passed 1,000, the US NGO distributed satellite photos of the tiny Palestinian enclave before and after the air strikes and ground assault by Israeli forces. United Nations experts have said it will take years for the Strip's civilian infrastructure to be rebuilt at a cost of at least $115 million - if the fighting ends now.

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More children than militants have been killed during the offensive, according to figures from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The death toll as of July 27 was comprised of 832 civilians - 221 of them children - and 182 armed combatants.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League; the nation's top colleges are turning our kids into zombies

Friday, July 25, 2014 No comments

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Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.

When I speak of elite education, I mean prestigious institutions like Harvard or Stanford or Williams as well as the larger universe of second-tier selective schools, but I also mean everything that leads up to and away from them—the private and affluent public high schools; the ever-growing industry of tutors and consultants and test-prep courses; the admissions process itself, squatting like a dragon at the entrance to adulthood; the brand-name graduate schools and employment opportunities that come after the B.A.; and the parents and communities, largely upper-middle class, who push their children into the maw of this machine. In short, our entire system of elite education.

I should say that this subject is very personal for me. Like so many kids today, I went off to college like a sleepwalker. You chose the most prestigious place that let you in; up ahead were vaguely understood objectives: status, wealth—“success.” What it meant to actually get an education and why you might want one—all this was off the table. It was only after 24 years in the Ivy League—college and a Ph.D. at Columbia, ten years on the faculty at Yale—that I started to think about what this system does to kids and how they can escape from it, what it does to our society and how we can dismantle it.
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Is there anything that I can do, a lot of young people have written to ask me, to avoid becoming an out-of-touch, entitled little shit? I don’t have a satisfying answer, short of telling them to transfer to a public university. You cannot cogitate your way to sympathy with people of different backgrounds, still less to knowledge of them. You need to interact with them directly, and it has to be on an equal footing: not in the context of “service,” and not in the spirit of “making an effort,” either—swooping down on a member of the college support staff and offering to “buy them a coffee,” as a former Yalie once suggested, in order to “ask them about themselves.”

Instead of service, how about service work? That’ll really give you insight into other people. How about waiting tables so that you can see how hard it is, physically and mentally? You really aren’t as smart as everyone has been telling you; you’re only smarter in a certain way. There are smart people who do not go to a prestigious college, or to any college—often precisely for reasons of class. There are smart people who are not “smart.”

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Read rebuttal article: Send Your Kid to the Ivy League! The New Republic article against elite education is destructive to my students

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Israeli Artillery Hits U.N.-Run School In Gaza

Thursday, July 24, 2014 No comments

A United Nations-run school sheltering civilians in Gaza has been hit by Israeli artillery, the U.N. says. More than a dozen people have been killed, according to Palestinian officials.

Reuters quotes Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, as confirming that the shelter in Beit Hanoun was hit.

The Associated Press reports that "Gaza health official Ashraf al-Kidra says the dead and injured in the school compound were among hundreds of people seeking shelter from heavy fighting in the area."

Reuters says:

"Laila Al-Shinbari, a woman who was at school when it was shelled, told Reuters families had gathered in the courtyard expecting to be evacuated shortly in a Red Cross convoy.

" 'All of us sat in one place when suddenly four shells landed on our heads ... Bodies were on the ground, (there was) blood and screams. My son is dead and all my relatives are wounded including my other kids,' she wept."

In 16 days of an Israeli offensive in Gaza, more than 700 Palestinians and 30 Israelis have been killed. Israel launched the ground operation in response to cross-border rocket attacks by Hamas.

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Brazil Condemns Israel Offensive in Gaza, Recalls Ambassador

Thursday, July 24, 2014 No comments

On July 10th, just two days after Israel launched Operation Protective Edge (the largest attack on Gaza in several years) President Obama released a statement in which he “reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.” With a death toll now over 550, it is important to look beyond U.S. government sources for information and perspective. Foreign policy among the countries in Latin America conforms to the long-standing, overwhelming international consensus that opposes Israeli aggression and occupation, but it also reflects the region’s “second independence.” Over the last 15 years, most countries in Latin America have increased their ability to pursue a foreign policy agenda separate from the goals of the U.S. State Department. In the vast majority of cases, reactions to the latest hostilities are fundamentally at odds with the U.S. position, but they are also varied: many governments directly criticize Israel, using words like “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” to describe recent events; other official statements limit themselves to calling for a ceasefire and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Some of the strongest statements were issued by left-leaning governments in South America, including those of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela. The government of Argentina issued a statement “strongly condemn[ing] that Israel -- defying calls by the Security County, by the Secretary General and by the many voices of the international community – has decided to escalate the crisis by launching a ground offensive.” President Evo Morales of Bolivia announced that he had petitioned the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR) to consider a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “crimes against humanity” and “genocide.” (Bolivia broke diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009 over Israel’s Operation Cast Lead assault on Gaza.) The statement from Brazil reads in part:[1]

The Brazilian Government vehemently condemns the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, with disproportionate use of force, which resulted in more than 230 Palestinians dead, many of them unarmed civilians and children. It equally condemns the firing of rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel.

Iraq leader Nouri al-Maliki 'rejected Iran's pressure to step down'

Thursday, July 24, 2014 No comments

Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki rejected an attempt by Iran to persuade him to step down, senior Iraqi politicians said Wednesday, underlining his determination to defy even his top ally to push for a third term in office and further exacerbating the country's political crisis.

Al-Maliki has for weeks been resisting growing pressure for him to step aside, including from former Shiite political allies and from Iraq's top Shiite spiritual authority. His critics see the Shiite prime minister as too divisive to form a government that can win support from the Sunni minority against the militant-led Sunni insurgency that has seized control of a large swathe of the country.

But the recent meeting between al-Maliki and Iran's pointman in Iraq, senior General Ghasem Soleimani, was the first sign that Iran also believed he should go. Iran was crucial for al-Maliki in winning a second term four years ago, when Tehran used leverage over Shiite parties to ensure their backing for him during gruelling negotiations over a government at the time.

Al-Maliki's rejection of the Iranian pressure puts Tehran in an unclear position, effectively posing it the choice of relenting to his remaining in the post or of hiking up pressure.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Casualties of war on Gaza in perspective

Wednesday, July 23, 2014 No comments

Casualties of Gaza War, after 17 days:

To put things in perspective, if Israel were attacking the U.S. (whose population is about 300,000,000) instead of Gaza (whose population is about 1,816,000), the casualties, excluding the injured, would be…