Articles

January 25, 2014 at 2:28 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk On 15 November, 1988, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) National Council, a body representing all Palestinians, declared an independent Palestinian state. The gesture did not change life for Palestinians under occupation or in exile, but that wasn’t the intention. The

January 25, 2014 at 2:15 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk Israel’s war on Gaza has not stopped since Palestinians exercised their democratic free will and voted for Hamas in the 2006 election. The relentless warfare has alternated between overt bloody and covert muted, but let’s clarify some distortions. Contrary to

January 25, 2014 at 2:02 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk EGYPTIAN democracy is alive and well. That is about the only positive observation on the current pro-Morsi and counter-demonstrations in major cities across the country. President Mohamed Morsi’s pronouncement on November 22 granting himself supreme powers instigated the current crisis.

January 25, 2014 at 1:59 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk A DAY after the UN vote to upgrade Palestine’s status at the UN, the right-wing Israeli government responded by adding 3,500 illegal Jewish-only homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel was blatantly defying more than two- thirds

January 25, 2014 at 1:52 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk I’m writing from Finland this week, where the omnipresence of snow and festive Christmas lights heralds another celebration of the birth of Jesus. In parallel, the descendants of the first Christians in Palestine – the “Living Stones” – are marking another

January 25, 2014 at 1:49 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk The Israel Lobby is flexing its muscles against Barack Obama’s expected nominee to be the next Secretary of Defence. Frontrunner Chuck Hagel is co-chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Committee. Hagel was a Republican Senator representing Nebraska from

January 25, 2014 at 1:35 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk SYRIAN President Bashar Al Assad has a penchant for blaming outside conspirators for the troubles in Syria. While plausible, he is mistaken in linking public demands for political reform with presumed plots against his country. His pompous speech three weeks

January 25, 2014 at 1:24 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk Egypt is an experimental democracy in progress, but when the evolution of this process turns bloody it begs the question: is it worth it? An Egyptian tourist guide who has lost his job, or a businessman affected by ongoing street

January 25, 2014 at 1:21 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk WESTERN media is obsessed with presenting a positive spin on everything related to Israel, while trivialising good and accentuating negative news on Palestine. It’s admirably free in many aspects, but when it comes to discussing Israel the Western media loses

January 25, 2014 at 1:14 am by Jamal Kanj jamalkk The Invention of the Jewish People was a book written by Shlomo Sand, an Israeli professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv. The author wasn’t probing a belief system, but Zionist fabrications of a spurious common lineage for