Articles

The struggle in Palestine, call it an intifada, an uprising or anything else appropriate, hurts Israel and her plans in many ways, and it should be expected to continue, given the continuation of settlement and appropriation of Jerusalem.

Dr. Azmi Bishara

What matters is that those who support dictatorship and justify genocide, must not be allowed to incite against others. Rather, these voices must be relegated to a position of desperate and unconvincing defensiveness, before those who condemn their positions.

The most prominent shared values among these proponents of the "Neo-Right" is demagogical nationalism, nostalgia for glory, and a quest for a having a powerful state.

Russia's Foreign Minister, a man with a square-shaped logic and a square-shaped rhetoric, recently summed up Russia's "grand achievement" thus: That Moscow has finally convinced Washington that Arab dictators, both those who departed and those who are alive and killing, are better than Islamic terrorism.

A long time has passed since Palestine was occupied. But one of the leading causes of the failure to resolve this just cause, even as other peoples managed to free themselves of colonialism, is the overlap with what I termed in my 2007 book "the Arab Question" and "the Jewish Question" in our region and in the West respectively.

According to liberal ideals, the state does not have specific duties beyond protecting freedoms in the broad sense, and the rights that derive from them, and providing what is needed for the exercise of these freedoms and rights.

The people's revolution in Tunisia heralds the end to this miserable last chapter. More importantly, it has given us a glimpse of the latent possibilities of the coming phase. The darkness has begun to lift and the features of the horizon have come into view.

Lately, Israeli officials have been reiterating the demand that the Palestinian National Authority recognise Israel as a Jewish state or as a state for the Jewish people. This is a significant notch up from the Israeli demand in the pre-Oslo period that the PLO "recognise Israel and renounce terrorism" as a precondition for talks. 

The revolution in Tunisia is progressing from one achievement to another. Obstacles flee in the face of the peaceful and unified grassroots movement. One barrier after the other collapses at the sound of the footsteps of the revolution as it advances. The great civilian revolution has carried the country into a new dimension and hurled it to the speed of light.