Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

I read Haaretz because of people like Akiva Eldar, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Danny Rubinstein, Tom Segev–and Daniel Ben-Simon. No one has described Israel’s “development towns” and the everyday lives of poor Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) more eloquently than he has.

Daniel Ben-Simon: Why I’m leaving journalism for politics - Haaretz, June 13, 2008

I don’t know when it happened. Maybe on that day when the composition teacher was handing back eighth-grade essays. He went from student to student, making comments and returning graded papers. He skipped only me. We sat straight and tense, as befitted students at the Ecole Normale Hebraique boarding school in Casablanca, Morocco, considered the country’s best.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. Was the teacher about to humiliate me? And then he stood up and read my entire essay out loud to the class. It was about a classmate who had disappeared secretly from school, as if the earth had swallowed him, until I found out he had gone to the Holy Land with his family.

“I don’t know what you want to be when you grow up,” Solly Levy told me after reading my essay, “but if you’ll pardon me, I suggest you become a journalist or an author.” The idea had never before occurred to me, but after that, nothing could deter me.

Immigrating to Israel, and particularly the absorption experience, shaped my journalism, positioning me on the underside of Israeli society. I spent my first years here in the company of students whose choppy Hebrew attested to their incomplete integration. They were sent to agricultural boarding schools to acquire vocational skills. They studied welding, mechanics and farming. Only a few got to study academic subjects.

Iraq, perceived hypocrisy fuel record anti-Americanism: report, June 11, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Anti-Americanism is at record levels thanks to US policies such as the war in Iraq, and Washington’s perceived hypocrisy in abiding by its own democratic values, US lawmakers said Wednesday.

A House of Representatives committee report based on expert testimony and polling data reveals US approval ratings have fallen to record lows across the world since 2002, particularly in Muslim countries and Latin America.

It says the problem arises not from a rejection of US culture, values and power but primarily from its policies, such as backing authoritarian regimes while promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

“Our physical strength has come to be seen not as a solace but as a threat, not as a guarantee of stability and order but as a source of intimidation, violence and torture,” said Bill Delahunt, chairman of the subcommittee on international organizations, human rights and oversight.

“We have dangerously depleted what (former president Ulysses S.) Grant… identified as our greatest source of international power — our reputation for what he called conscience. I would substitute the phrase ‘moral authority’,” Delahunt added.

The report blames specific policies for falling approval ratings, notably the war in Iraq, support for some repressive governments, a perception of bias in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the “torture and abuse of prisoners” in violation of treaty obligations.