Politics & Society

Winners of Prestigious Journalism Award Afraid to Travel to U.S. to Accept It

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Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald have both won the prestigious George Polk Award for their investigative work in revealing the NSA’s mass surveillance, both at home and abroad. However, both Poitras and Greenwald, U.S. citizens who respectively live in Germany and Brazil, are afraid to accept their awards in person, fearing prosecution from the U.S. government, should they return to the U.S., for exposing documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Politics & Society

John Kerry Is an Anti-Semite?

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At a security conference in Germany this weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry noted that if the status quo persists in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, boycotts against the country will likely grow.
This objective observation from Kerry was met with blindingly offensive attacks by Israeli government officials, who tarred Kerry as an anti-Semite interested in Israel’s demise for legitimizing the international boycott movement by … noticing it exists.

General News

Scarlett Johansson vs. Oxfam

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A high-profile controversy bubbled over this week into the mainstream over actress Scarlett Johansson’s endorsement of the carbonate-it-yourself company, SodaStream. While the controversy itself is rather narrow, its meaning and implications are far-reaching, as I’ll explain in a moment. But first, allow me to explain the controversy … Johansson has become the celebrity face of SodaStream, an Israeli company which has its factory in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. This week, SodaStream made a promotional push in advance of her upcoming Super Bowl ad for the company, which considers Johansson a “brand ambassador,” going so far as to describe the relationship between the two as a “love story” between a socially conscious company and a passionate consumer.

General News

AIPAC Is Self-Destructing

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While the fate of the Senate’s Iran sanctions bill remains uncertain, one thing appears clear: AIPAC is alienating allies on Capitol Hill with its intense and self-destructive lobbying efforts. That alienation has reached peak volume as a result of AIPAC’s bitter, partisan attack against DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the lobbying outfit’s most reliable allies in the House. Why is she being attacked? Wasserman Schultz has yet to make a public pronouncement as to which way she leans with regard to the sanctions bill. And behind the scenes, it has been reported that she’s trying to dissuade Democrats from supporting the bill, which, given her appointment by President Obama to head the DNC, seems more than expected.

General News

A Nation Awakening: Boycott Against Israel Is the Top Story in … Israel

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Something remarkable has happened in the last 24 hours in Israel, with two of the country’s most popular media outlets, one television and one newspaper, making the growing effectiveness of boycotts against Israel as their top stories. Perhaps more remarkable? Neither outlet sought to demonize those leading the European and Palestinian boycott efforts as anti-Semitic, as so often happens in America. Instead, the focus was on these boycotts’ growing impact on Israeli businesses and their root causes: Israel’s settlement enterprise and continued conflict with the Palestinians. It all started on Saturday night with an in-depth, primetime expose by what is easily Israel’s most watched news program: Channel 2’s “Weekend” (סוף השבוע).

General News

When Jon Stewart and Diane Feinstein Both Blast the Israel Lobby, You Know the Game Is Changing

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This week, something unprecedented has occurred: politicians, mainstream media outlets, and political satirists have uniquely joined forces to identify AIPAC – and the ‘pro-Israel’ lobby – as the political force threatening the Obama administration’s historic, diplomatic breakthrough with Iran. Jon Stewart did so. The New York Times, in an extremely rare moment of candor, did so. Even Diane Feinstein, in a double-take-worthy address on the Senate floor, did so. How has this happened?

General News

Israel Thumbs Nose at Obama Administration – After Chiding U.S. for Bad Behavior

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With Israel set to release a new slate of Palestinian prisoners as part of U.S.-brokered peace talks, John Kerry – at President Obama’s behest – personally asked Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to hold off on announcing new settlement construction plans. Such an announcement could, in the Obama administration’s view, undermine any positive momentum generated by Israel’s prisoner release, thus poisoning the talk’s already murky waters. Today, Haaretz is reporting that Israel plans to thumb its nose at the Obama administration (as well as the EU) by announcing new housing tenders in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the prisoner release. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce Israel’s plans for new housing tenders in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem next week, following the release of the third group of Palestinian prisoners, an official in Jerusalem said Wednesday. Netanyahu did not heed the United States’ request to postpone the announcement of the new tenders and rejected warnings by the European Union which also urged Netanyahu to avoid announcing the new construction following the prisoner release.