Tag Archives: Israel

Bad ideas, Frontiers, Politics, Violence/Conflict

‘Boycott of Israel would not serve any useful tactical purpose’: Amitav Ghosh

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The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) and Pakistanis for Palestine amongst others have appealed to the novelist Amitav Ghosh to decline the Israeli Dan David Prize he is being given jointly with Margaret Atwood.

The BRICUP open letter to Ghosh reads:

It’s surprising to have to raise Israeli colonialism with a writer whose entire oeuvre seems to us an attempt to imagine how human beings survived the depredations of colonialism. Gosh, even the Dan David judges like the way you evoke ‘the violent dislocations of people and regimes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’.

Those making him this appeal have reminded him of his rejection of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2001.

Give below is Ghosh’s response to the appeal: Continue reading ‘Boycott of Israel would not serve any useful tactical purpose’: Amitav Ghosh →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Frontiers

Israel(i Man) seduces India(n Woman)

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Here’s how a state-owned Israeli defence firm tries to get business from India’s Defence Ministry:

The Danger Room blog said the text implied that the “Indian military is somehow like a helpless woman who needs to feel safe and sheltered.”

Rafael dismissed the criticism of its film and said that it made movies with a local theme for every international defense expo. A movie, one company source said, made for a defense expo in Brazil focused on soccer and weapons. Another movie, for a US audience, focused on football.

“We try to make the movies about the place where the defense expo is located,” the company source said, adding that in previous years Rafael had won prizes for its pavilions and marketing techniques. [The Jerusalem Post]

Politics, Right watch

Welcome Mossad!

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The bloody terror attack in Bombay, which was supposedly directed by the dreaded Lashkar-e-Toiba, has had an interesting fallout as far as Mossad – the notorious intelligence agency of Israel – is concerned. One finds its growing mention in the Indian media as well as polity as a role model supposedly for ‘being successful’ in ‘curbing the terrorist menace’ inside Israel.

Little did all such ignoramuses ranging from the Barkhas to the Arnabs bother to know the fifty plus year old trajectory of the organisation which is formally responsible for intelligence collection but basically engaged in counter-terrorism, covert operations and paramilitary activities and political assassinations.One could say that it is part of amnesia that none from the chatterati brigade wants to take a critical as well as dispassionate look at its ‘myth of success’ vis-a-vis the Palestinian militants nor do they want know the terrorist acts engaged in by the agency to stigmatise its opponents.

Continue reading Welcome Mossad! →