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By Robert B. Reich $16.50
By RJ Smith $27.50
$21
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 Flickr / thecoldwhisper
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After a crowd of Egyptians rushed the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last week, officials invoked the law to say they would use bullets to protect important buildings in the future. (more)
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 Flickr / World Economic Forum (CC-BY-SA)
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The prime minister of Turkey will visit Egypt for the first time in 15 years Monday, potentially to forge an alliance between the two countries that could ultimately isolate neighboring Israel.
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 Flickr / World Economic Forum (CC-BY-SA)
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Turkey added fuel to its smoldering relationship with Israel on Tuesday when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his nation would impose additional sanctions against its once-close ally.
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 AP / Sergey Ponomarev
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By Chris Hedges — I know enough of Libya, a country I covered for many years as the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, to assure you that the chaos and bloodletting have only begun.
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 AP / Ariel Schalit
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Israelis turned out in the hundreds of thousands Saturday night to protest high costs of living and demand social justice in the largest such demonstration the country has ever seen. (more)
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 AP
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Turkey downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel on Friday, announcing that the Israeli ambassador is no longer welcome and that it would sever military ties between the two countries. (more)
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Fifteen months ago Israeli forces raided a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying aid, killing nine civilians in the process. A U.N. report, which acknowledges that its sources are limited and its conclusions are not definitive, has found that Israel’s blockade in international waters was legal. (more)
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 Alex92287 (CC-BY)
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Fearing a mass uprising if Palestinians win statehood in the U.N. next month, the Israel Defense Forces are training settlers in the West Bank and equipping settlement security personnel with tear gas and stun grenades. The IDF is also designating a point for each settlement at which soldiers are free to shoot at the legs of protesters. (more)
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Yaakov Kirschen, Cagle Cartoons, Dry Bones —
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 AP / Hussein Malla
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By Robert Fisk — It all depends, I think, on whether criminals are our friends (Stalin at the time) or our enemies (Hitler and his fellow Nazis), whether they have their future uses (the Japanese emperor) or whether we’ll get their wealth more easily if they are out of the way (Saddam and Gadhafi).
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 AP / Adel Hana
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Nine Palestinians died and 29 were wounded in a series of Israeli airstrikes that began Wednesday and continued Thursday. The air raids were in retaliation for a recent terrorist attack that killed eight Israelis and for continuing rocket fire over the Israel-Gaza border.
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Veteran CIA officer Robert Baer speaks to radio host Ian Masters about the shifting political sands in the Middle East as the “Arab Spring” claims another dictator.
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 AP / Alexandre Meneghini
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By William Pfaff — If the U.S. had gone seriously into the war, and behaved characteristically, Libya’s revolution would not have succeeded this week.
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 AP / Khalil Hamra
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By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — Yes, Flagman—surely you’ve heard of the Egyptian superhero who scaled the 21 floors of the Israeli Embassy in the predawn hours Sunday.
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 AP / Khalil Hamra
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Israel apologized to Egypt on Saturday for killing three soldiers on Egyptian soil as it chased gunmen responsible for the deaths of eight Israelis. (more)
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Israel’s Zionism turned capitalism is getting out of hand; Postmodernism is dead, leaving many to question what it was in the first place; meanwhile, the Americas are projected to replace the Middle East as the energy capital of the world. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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 Flickr / Gigi Ibrahim (CC-BY)
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Egypt filed a formal complaint with Israel on Friday demanding an urgent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of three Egyptian security officials who were killed in Egypt during an Israeli military operation at the border.
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 Flickr / Physicians for Human Rights - Israel (CC-BY-SA)
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The Israeli Interior Ministry announced Tuesday that it will deport the 4-year-old daughter of a foreign worker despite the fact that the girl was born and attended school in Israel. (more)
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 AP / Charlie Neibergall
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By Juan Cole — A review of Michele Bachmann’s messianic and irrational foreign policy statements reveals a potential president looking for other conflicts, especially with Iran.
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 Collage from a photo by World Economic Forum / Remy Steinegger
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Israel’s Interior Ministry has approved a 1,600-unit housing complex in East Jerusalem. It’s the same complex that was announced last year, embarrassing a visiting Vice President Joe Biden, and it comes with the promise to build an additional 2,700 units of housing in the occupied Palestinian area of the city.
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America mourns the death of its political parties; printed books are going extinct as ebooks take their place; meanwhile, BlackBerry Messenger plays a significant role in the London riots. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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 Albert Sabaté
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By Mary Slosson, Albert Sabaté, and Andrew Khouri —
Israel began importing workers after the government choked off the flow of cheap Palestinian labor. Abuse and corruption are rampant as employers take advantage of a revolving-door policy meant to protect the state’s Jewish identity.
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Economic frustrations, particularly the high cost of rent, have breathed new life into the Israeli left. Residents of a tent city in Tel Aviv, constructed to protest financial woes, put Israel’s conservative prime minister on the defense, forcing him to announce a committee Sunday to look into reforms.
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 AP / Thierry Charlier
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Europe’s right-wing parties, many of which once had explicitly anti-Jewish messages, have expanded their hatred to Arabs and Muslims.
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 AP / Ariel Schalit
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Israeli commandos intercepted a boat full of pro-Palestinian activists bound for the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. The yacht carrying 16 people was the only vessel of a planned protest flotilla to attempt the voyage. Greek authorities had blocked the others from leaving port.
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 AP / Carolyn Kaster
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By Fred Branfman — Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected.
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 Flickr / afps14
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Israeli legislators passed a law Monday prohibiting any and all domestic boycotts against the country and its West Bank settlements as part of an attempt to oppose what they see as a global attack on the state’s legitimacy. (more)
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Robert Baer, the veteran CIA operations officer whose book was the basis for the film “Syriana,” says an Israeli attack on Iran is likely and warns that the U.S. could be drawn into yet another conflict.
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 Flickr / JerandSar Gimbel (CC-BY)
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Hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists are expected to arrive at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport Friday in a “flytilla” that the organizing campaign “Welcome to Palestine” says is simply an invitation to supporters to visit friends in the West Bank and Gaza. An ever-jittery Israeli government, however, isn’t taking any chances. (more)
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 Flickr / Zingaro. I am a gipsy too.
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The Audacity of Hope, an American ship in the defiant Freedom Flotilla 2, tried to set sail for Gaza on Friday afternoon but was stopped by the Greek coast guard shortly after leaving port. (more)
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 © 2011 Reese Erlich
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By Reese Erlich — As we walk on land ripe with eggplant and cucumbers, we can see the Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot. The farm is so close to those communities that family members use an Israeli telecommunications company to get Internet access. But the family can’t export its crops.
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Kids have a right to mock their teachers; Apple may be launching a preemptive strike against free speech; and the general’s son, Miko Peled, says Israelis and Palestinians must accept a one-state solution. Also, Tim DeChristopher, the hero who didn’t stand a chance.
Posted on Jun 22, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Kids have a right to mock their teachers; Apple may be launching a preemptive strike against free speech; and the general’s son, Miko Peled, says Israelis and Palestinians must accept a one-state solution. Also, Tim DeChristopher, the hero who didn’t stand a chance. Update: Full transcript.
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 Flickr / Takver
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In findings that can hardly be expected to generate Palestinian good will for Israel, a five-year Israeli blockade on Gazan exports has contributed heavily to the joblessness of nearly half the population and a sharp decline in real wages, according to a U.N. report.
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 AP / Muhammed Muheisen
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By Larry Gross — When I was a youngster learning Jewish history in Jerusalem’s schools, the story was clear and even simple. “A land without people for a people without land.” Well, there are several striking problems with this aphorism.
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Miko Peled, peace activist and son of a well-known Israeli general, talks about his new book, “The General’s Son,” and what he calls the “three myths” of Israeli history.
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 AP / Ariel Schalit
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For the second time in three weeks, Israeli forces opened fire on pro-Palestinian protesters, killing as many as 20 (that figure comes from Syrian television by way of the BBC, and is disputed by Israel).
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.jpg) Flickr / Marius Arnesen
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Ending a four-year blockade, Egypt has permanently reopened a border crossing at Rafah that will give Palestinians in the Gaza Strip the freedom to pass into and out of the territory much more easily. (more)
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quite a hit with his speech before Congress on Tuesday, rousing members of the House and Senate to their feet an impressive 29 times during his address about the current state of Israel and its relations with Mideast neighbors.
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.png) CNN
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Addressing the U.S. Congress, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly rebuked President Obama’s call for Israel to return to its 1967 borders, and he held his country up as a shining example of democracy in the Middle East. (more)
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Patrick Chappatte, Cagle Cartoons, Le Temps, Switzerland —
Posted on May 23, 2011
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 White House / Pete Souza
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Former “60 Minutes” producer Barry Lando imagines what the president might have said to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
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Speaking to the AIPAC conference on Sunday, the president said “The status quo is unsustainable” and “Delay will undermine Israel’s security and the peace that the Israeli people deserve.” He also softened his call in a Thursday speech for a return to the 1967 borders, which didn’t go over well with Israel’s hard-liners—like the prime minister.
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 AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Addressing the upheavals that have occurred and transformations still in progress in the Middle East (except for one notable omission), President Barack Obama put the big shifts that the Arab Spring brought in a broader context during a major speech on Thursday ... (more) Updated
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 telegraph.co.uk
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If he was indeed joking, Lars Von Trier needs to work a bit on his act, not to mention the material. The notoriously difficult Danish director shocked the crowd at France’s Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday by proclaiming, during a panel about his new film, “Melancholia” ... (more)
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.jpg) Flickr / World Economic Forum
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Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas penned an Op-Ed in Tuesday’s New York Times making the case for Palestine’s right to statehood and giving the reasons why it should be considered a legitimate member of the international community.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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While the White House is promising that President Barack Obama’s big Middle East speech on Thursday will make news, Obama will avoid the biggest story this week: the inflamed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which claimed a few more lives Sunday.
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