EDITOR—In a series of extraordinary interviews with both Palestinians and Israelis, John Pilger weaves together the issue of Palestine. He speaks to the families of suicide bombers and their victims; he sees the humiliation of Palestinians imposed on them at myriad checkpoints and with a permit system not dissimilar to apartheid South Africa’s infamous pass laws. He goes into the refugee camps and meets children who, he says, “no longer dream like other children, or if they do, it is about death.”
PALESTINIANS
-
-
AL JAZEERA—Exclusive video and images obtained by Al Jazeera this morning show bodies piled up inside the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in the al-Faluja area, west of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Witnesses said a number of people including women, children and babies were killed execution-style by Israeli forces while sheltering inside the school.
-
Congress jawbones university presidents to compel compliance with Israeli propaganda. They fold without a fight.
7 minutes readEDITOR—A few days ago Congressional inquisitors dragged three Ivy League university presidents before a special committee with the squalid purpose of jawboning them into compliance with restrictions on free speech in the name of protecting Jews from an imaginary genocide when a real one, but of Palestinians, is actually being conducted by the Israelis in broad daylight. The interrogation of the university administrators was uniformly rude, cynical, and McCarthyesque, but no one seemed to note, and no one, including the humiliated uttered a single word in defense of the First Amendment, which the political hacks conducting the inquisition were clearly running roughshod over.
-
SAYED HASAN—Norman Finkelstein refuses to accept that the people of Gaza, or Hamas militants themselves, are “legitimate targets” of extermination. “It is so appalling, it’s not just the despiriting, it’s so appalling, the reaction of all of these cowards and careerists and scum who use their microphones called Twitter to just denounce the Hamas attack. Most of the Hamas militants, probably the ones who broke through the fence, it’s their first time out of Gaza because you assume they’re mostly in their 20s. The blockade has gone on now for 18 years. They grew up in a concentration camp. They want to be free…”
-
DAVID EDWARDS: Contrary to the belief of some of our critics, we don’t hate to see positive examples of this kind that appear to contradict the thesis that state-corporate media function as a propaganda organ for powerful interests. In fact, we are only too pleased, because we have hoped for two main outcomes from our work. While our key aim has always been to increase public awareness and participation empowering progressive alternatives to ‘mainstream’ journalism, we have also hoped to encourage ‘mainstream’ journalists to improve their performance as far as they are able within the severe limits set by state-corporate media.