Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Ben White
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BBC smears BDS, fails to disclose interviewee’s Israel advocacy role
A BBC report on alleged “anti-Semitism” on campus failed to disclose a key interviewee’s leadership role in the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. The report, broadcast twice on the 27 April episode of BBC Two’s “Victoria Derbyshire” show, also led to an online news item which similarly failed to note...
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Fact-checking Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev
Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, places a premium on speaking at university campuses. The context? Israel’s uphill struggle to assuage a growing sense of frustration and anger at a Benjamin Netanyahu-led government seen as a serial violator of international law and human rights. In October, Regev addressed...
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Trump and Palestine – so what now?
Before Donald Trump’s inauguration, it was a safe bet to assume that his administration’s approach to Israel and the Palestinians would either be one of relative neglect, or serve as a boost to the far-right Israeli nationalists who seek annexation of all or parts of the West Bank. Either,...
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News agencies still whitewashing Israeli forces’ lethal violence
Many media outlets are continuing to repeat important mistakes when it comes to covering the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces, errors that result in a whitewashing of the routine violence of Israel’s occupation, and ultimately, biased coverage. When I wrote about this issue last year (see here, here,...
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Sorry COGAT, infographics can’t whitewash Israel’s occupation
A key element of Israel’s military regime in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), an occupation that will complete fifty years in June, is the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit, which is overseen by the Ministry of Defence. COGAT, whose operating budget in 2015 was nearly...
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Israel embassy scandal sign of panic, as much as influence
Revelations about the activities of an Israeli embassy staff member have been headline news in the British media over the last few days. There might be more to come – the Al Jazeera Investigations programme on which the stories have been based is aired over four nights starting Wednesday....
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Elor Azaria and the Israeli army: One conviction doesn’t change systematic impunity
Israeli soldier Elor Azaria was convicted yesterday of the manslaughter of Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sharif, a 21-year-old Palestinian killed by a shot to the head as he lay wounded and motionless after an alleged attack on uniformed occupation forces in Hebron in March 2016. Azaria’s sentence has yet to be...
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What’s behind John Kerry’s speech?
A eulogy for the two-state solution? Maybe – but Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech Wednesday sounded suspiciously like yet another desperate attempt to sustain the so-called ‘peace process’. It is only possible to understand the Security Council resolution and Kerry’s speech, how to view them – their weaknesses,...
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UN report: Palestinian development impossible without ending Israeli occupation
As Israel and its advocates promote a depoliticised framework of economic improvements for Palestinians under military occupation, a new United Nations (UN) document is required reading. Late last month, the UN Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) published an extensive, 180-page report on “the state of development...
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Israeli settlements are about much more than a few houses
Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) are illegal, constituting a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions. They are also an impediment to a long-term negotiated deal, in that they eat up land, and their continued growth is a clear sign of bad faith. But Israel’s colonies in...
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How The Guardian continues to exclude Palestinians from its comment pages
This time last year, I carried out an informal survey of how The Guardian was covering the issue of Palestine and Israel in its comment pages. The results were not good. Out of 138 op-eds on the topic published by the newspaper in its ‘Comment is free’ section from...
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Gaza’s ‘terror tunnels’
Extract from Ben White’s new eBook: The 2014 Gaza War: 21 Questions & Answers Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported that State Comptroller Joseph Shapira has now submitted an “almost-final draft” of his report on “Operation Protective Edge” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A key focus of the 550-page report is...
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Millions of Brits back boycott, finds poll commissioned by Israel lobby group
Millions of British adults boycott Israeli goods, according to a poll commissioned by Israel lobby group BICOM and carried out by Populus. The survey suggests that despite efforts by pro-Israel groups and British government ministers to smear, and undermine the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, support for boycott...
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Pro-Israel activists smear student solidarity with Palestine
Israel advocacy groups and individuals are seeking to undermine Palestine solidarity activism on British campuses, using Islamophobic abuse and false accusations of antisemitism. Last Thursday, former Israeli army officer Hen Mazzig, who served in the occupied West Bank as part of the Israeli occupation authorities’ forces, was invited to...
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Why is Israel tightening the Gaza blockade?
Let us begin with the facts: Israeli authorities have, over the course of the last year, tightened the long-standing blockade of the Gaza Strip. Even before these more recent restrictions, the Israeli blockade – an illegal policy of collective punishment in the words of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon...
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Israeli embassy embraces extremists to save flagging brand
An Israeli parliamentarian has vowed there will never be a Palestinian state and rejected Palestinian identity itself, speaking to an audience in London alongside a senior official from the Israeli embassy. Member of the Knesset Amir Ohana, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, was joined at 29...
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No coverage, no accountability – Palestinian child’s brutal death at hands of Israeli soldiers
On Friday 9 September, dozens of Palestinians demonstrated next to the Gaza Strip’s border fence near the Al-Bureij refugee camp, protesting Israel’s ongoing occupation and its various crimes. Here is how Reuters reported what happened next: “An 18-year-old Palestinian was killed during a rock-throwing protest near the Gaza-Israel border...
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A year of revolt: who were the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces?
It is one year since the beginning of a Palestinian youth-driven, anti-colonial revolt characterised by protests and attacks on Israeli forces and settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), along with brutal violence and punitive measures by Israeli authorities. The timeline is not precise; by October 1, 2015, anti-occupation...
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Will Israel's friends try to ban Israeli Apartheid Week?
Will pro-Israel groups seek to block Israeli Apartheid Week events on British campuses? The possibility was hinted at recently by a director of pro-Israel legal activism group Jewish Human Rights Watch (JHRW), speaking during a meeting of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Robert Festenstein made the remarks...
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Jerusalem mayor boasts of collective punishment of city’s Palestinians
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat likes to present himself to a Western audience as the head of an open, pluralistic city, a place at ease with its ethnic and religious diversity, despite complex “security” challenges. The reality is somewhat different. As reported in Haaretz (with thanks to Ofer Neiman for...
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Increased Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza endanger two-year-old ceasefire
Israeli forces markedly increased their attacks on Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip during the second quarter of 2016, United Nations (UN) data has revealed, with concerns that such violence endangers the viability of the ceasefire that ended ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in 2014. During the period April-June, there were...
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Israel under scrutiny, as secret trial of international NGO official begins
A senior Gaza-based employee of US-headquartered charity World Vision appeared in an Israeli court on Tuesday, charged with numerous counts of ‘supporting terrorism’. According to the Israel Security Agency (ISA or Shin Bet), Mohammad al-Halabi infiltrated the charity on behalf of Hamas, redirecting tens of millions of dollars to...
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Israeli escalation in Gaza seeks to ‘change equation’ – but at what cost?
Late on Sunday night, the Israeli Air Force launched dozens of airstrikes against targets in the Gaza Strip – as many as 50, according to an official source – after a single rocket had struck Sderot earlier in the day, causing no damage or injuries. The airstrikes, which primarily...
