30 Articles

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Federation? Why Not?
(3 comments) The more trust between the parties develops, the easier it will be to deepen the partnership and to widen the powers of the joint institutions. Perhaps, at this stage, conditions may be ripe for the founding of a wider association of the entire region, on the lines of the European Union.

Saturday, October 3, 2009
A Story of Betrayal
(2 comments) Gilad Shalit is a prisoner of war. The denial started at the first moment. The Israeli government refused to call the capture by its proper name and insisted that it was an “abduction” or even “kidnapping.”

Saturday, July 25, 2009
Mr. Obama: Yes, You Can!
(1 comments) A historic responsibility rests on the shoulders of Barack Obama: not to fold, not to give in, not to "compromise". To insist on the total freeze of the settlements, as a first and necessary step towards peace. For his sake, and for ours too.

Sunday, June 28, 2009
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran
(20 comments) In many revolutions, the decisive moment arrives when the crowds in the street confront the soldiers and policemen, and the question arises: will they open fire on their own people? When the soldiers refuse, the revolution wins. When they shoot, that is the end of the matter. When Boris Yeltsin climbed on the tank, the solders refused to shoot and he won. The Berlin wall fell because one East-German police officer refused

Sunday, June 7, 2009
The Tone and the Music; Reaction to Obama's Cairo Speech
(21 comments) Avnery, the Israeli peacenik despised and reviled by Israeli rightwingers, who is usually highly critical of Israeli and US policy, offers some surprising observations.

Monday, May 11, 2009
Does Iran Resemble Nazi Germany?
(19 comments) Like a traveling salesman offering a counterfeit product, Peres is now peddling the merchandise called Binyamin Netanyahu. He presents to the world a Netanyahu we have never known: a peacemaker, the epitome of truthfulness, a man with no other ambition than to go down in history as the founder of the State of Palestine.

Saturday, January 24, 2009
On the Wrong Side
(6 comments) Between Israel and the US, a gap has opened this week, a narrow gap, but it may widen into an abyss. Israeli leaders are now boasting about their part in the Gaza War, in which unbridled military force was unleashed intentionally against a civilian population, men, women and children, with the declared aim of "creating deterrence." In the era that began last Tuesday, such expressions can only arouse shudders.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008
King of the Planet
(2 comments) THE PRESIDENT of the United States is the king of this planet. I live on this planet. Therefore, the election of the President concerns me, too.

Saturday, March 22, 2008
TWO AMERICAS; Israeli lefty peacenik Uri Avnery on Obama
(5 comments) I spent some years struggling against Golda Meir, the worst Prime Minister Israel ever had. Almost all recent female leaders of countries have started wars: Margaret Thatcher started the Falklands War, Golda Meir bears the responsibility for the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Indira Gandhi made war on Pakistan, the current presidents of the Philippines and Sri Lanka are conducting internal wars.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Clash of Civilizations; Mother of All Pretexts
(2 comments) When I hear mention of the "Clash of Civilizations" I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. To laugh, because it is such a silly notion. To cry, because it is liable to cause untold disasters. To cry even more, because our leaders are exploiting this slogan as a pretext for sabotaging any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. It is just one more in a long line of pretexts.

Sunday, July 22, 2007
A Trap for Fools; Cowboy Philosophy in the Middle East
George Bush, who grew up on the American Western, Good Guy-Bad Guy myth, sticks to it even now, when he is the leader of the world's only superpower. In this western - or, rather, middle eastern - The good Guys are the "moderates", who are the allies of the US in the Middle East - Israel, Mahmoud Abbas and the pro-American Arab regimes. The bad ones are Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria and al-Qaeda.

Monday, July 2, 2007
The Dirty Word Never Said: Occupation
(2 comments) THERE NEVER was a darker Middle East summit meeting. The darkest there can be.

Saturday, June 16, 2007
Crocodile Tears for Gaza
(9 comments) In the eyes of Hamas, the attack on the Fatah strongholds in the Gaza Strip is a preventive war. How could the American and Israeli generals miscalculate so badly? They are able to think only in strictly military terms: so-and-so many soldiers, so-and-so many machine guns. But in interior struggles in particular, quantitative calculations are secondary. The morale of the fighters and public sentiment are far more important.

Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Bed of Sodom
Relations between the [Israeli] settlers and the Palestinians are in many ways reminiscent of apartheid; and even in Israel proper, the Arab citizens are far from real equality.

Saturday, January 13, 2007
Murder in Broad Daylight; Manara Square, Ramallah
(1 comments) As always, the place was teeming with people. Manara Square is the heart of Ramallah, full of life, both walking and driving. When people realized what was going on, they started to throw stones at the soldiers. These responded by shooting wildly in all directions. Four bystanders were killed, more than 30 wounded.

Saturday, November 25, 2006
An Evening in Jounieh
The one way Israel can win a war in Lebanon. DURING THE first Lebanon war, I visited Jounieh, a town some 20 km north of Beirut. At the time, it served as a port for the Christian forces. It was an exciting evening. In spite of the war raging in nearby Beirut, Jounieh was full of life. The Christian elite spent the day in the sun-drenched marina, the women lounging in bikinis, the men slugging whisky...

Sunday, October 29, 2006
Who is Afraid of the Iranian Bomb?
(1 comments) The nuclear genie is out of the bottle, and is spreading throughout the world.

Monday, October 16, 2006
The Great Experiment
(1 comments) How can a population that is starving, that lacks the basics for its primitive hospitals and is bombarded by attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out?

Thursday, October 5, 2006
Peace with Syria - Lunch in Damascus
(1 comments) Once while, traveling in a taxi, I had an argument with the driver--a profession associated in Israel with extreme right-wing views. I tried in vain to convince him of the desirability of peace with the Arabs. In our country, which has never seen a single day of peace in the last hundred years, peace can seem like something out of science fiction.

Thursday, September 28, 2006
A Leadership Vacuum and the Threat of Fascism
Calls in Israel for a more US-style government, with a President with a four year term, who cannot be voted out by Parlaiment are based on a feeling of defeat, a climate of distrust and are really a disguised call for an all-powerful leader. Vigilance is necessary to prevent fascism.

Monday, September 25, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI in the service of George W. Bush
(7 comments) Muhammad's sword; There have been times when Emperors and Popes have been at peace, or have been antagonists. Now is a time when a wonderful harmony exists between George Bush, II and Pope Benedict XVI. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a worldwide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "clash of civilizations". Here's a bit of history to pu the Pope's words in context.

Saturday, September 16, 2006
Help! Peacemongers!
GUESS WHOSE words these are: "Starting this war was a scandal...It was possible to solve the problem of the missiles in South Lebanon by diplomatic means...The offensive of the last two days of the war, in which 33 soldiers were killed after the cease-fire resolution had already been accepted, was a spin of the Prime Minister...The Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense and the Chief-of-Staff must resign..."

Monday, September 4, 2006
When Napoleon Won at Waterloo
(1 comments) Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo. The German Wehrmacht won World War II. The United States won in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Zealots won against the Romans, and Ehud Olmert won the Second Lebanon War. You didn't know that?

Saturday, August 26, 2006
America's Rottweiler
(1 comments) IN HIS latest speech, which infuriated so many people, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad uttered a sentence that deserves attention: "Every new Arab generation hates Israel more than the previous one." Of all that has been said about the Second Lebanon War, these are perhaps the most important words.

Saturday, August 19, 2006
The 155th Victim
WITH A few words, a Lebanese army officer destroyed, the day before yesterday, the illusion that Israel had achieved anything in this war.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006
For Middle East, Try Something Else
(1 comments)

Sunday, August 13, 2006
What the hell has happened to the Israeli army?
(1 comments) Defeat can be a great blessing for an army. Even a strong army cannot defeat a guerilla organization, because the guerilla is a political phenomenon. Our conflict - in the North, the Center and the South - is a political conflict, and can only be resolved by political means.

Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Who? Me?
This war is being fought on the backs of the weak, who cannot afford to "evacuate themselves" from the rockets' area. The rich and well-to-do have got out long ago - in Israel as well as in Lebanon. The poor, the old, the sick and the handicapped remain in the shelters. They are the main sufferers.

Wednesday, August 2, 2006
The Knife in the Back
(1 comments) THE DAY after this new mideast war will be the Day of the Long Knives. Everybody will blame everybody else. The politicians will blame each other. The generals will blame each other. The politicians will blame the generals. And, most of all, the generals will blame the politicians.

Tuesday, August 1, 2006
A Nice Little War Gets Out of Hand
(6 comments) It is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt. The same thing happens in the biggest gamble of all: war. The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud.