Tag: Israel

Northeastern’s leadership issues statement on the war between Israel and Hamas

Northeastern University has issued a statement about the war between Israel and Hamas. I’d like to share it with you:

To all Members of the Northeastern Community,

The terror and bloodshed inflicted by Hamas’s attacks on Israel are cause for the deepest sorrow and most vehement condemnation. As war now ravages Gaza and Israel, we mourn for all the innocent lives that have been lost. To the many members of our community directly affected by these horrific events, you have our utmost solidarity and support.

Three of our students who were in Israel at the time of the attacks are safe and secure. We are also in touch with students, faculty and staff with connections to the region to ensure their wellbeing in this traumatic time.

We realize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ignites strong views on all sides. As an academic institution, we welcome peaceful dialogue and debate that is inclusive of all viewpoints. But we should all be united in our condemnation of terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.

Northeastern is a global community of learning, and our fundamental values are rooted in knowledge over hate, harmony over division, and reason over brutality. These values will continue to guide us as we move forward together.

These resources are available to all who may need them during this painful time …

As we hope for a peaceful resolution to the violence and suffering, let us affirm our commitment to our shared values. Northeastern will always stand against hatred.

Sincerely,

Joseph E. Aoun
President

David Madigan
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Kenneth W. Henderson
Chancellor and Senior Vice President for Learning

Leave a comment | Read comments

With Israel and Hamas at war, here are some free reliable sources of quality news

Map (cc) 2023 via Wikimedia Commons

With Israel and Hamas now at war following Hamas’ terrorist attacks over the weekend, I’ve seen a number of laments that X/Twitter is no longer much good for breaking news and that its would-be replacements are not ready for prime time. I’ll get back to that in a moment. But it seems to me that this is the perfect moment to re-embrace quality news sources.

I’ve been following developments mainly at The New York Times, but there are reliable sources of free news as well. Here are a just a few:

Now, to get back to Twitter and its competitors: Despite Elon Musk’s having taken a wrecking ball to his plaything, if you have a good list of follows, then it remains intact. I constantly see complaints about trolls and haters popping up in people’s “For You” feed, which is controlled by algorithms, but all you need to do is switch to “Following” as soon as you log in. Twitter’s lists are still a worthwhile feature, too. Josh Marshall has put together a list of reliable accounts that is worth checking out.

These days I spend more time on Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads than I do Twitter. But though I suspect Threads, with Mark Zuckerberg’s billions behind it, will eventually emerge as the winner, it currently lacks lists and hashtags, which gives it limited value in following breaking news. Bluesky doesn’t have hashtags or real lists, either. Mastodon has lists and hashtags, but you can’t follow someone else’s lists, which means you have to start from scratch.

It seems to me that there have been two defining stories of the war so far. The first is The Wall Street Journal’s report (free link) that Iran was directly involved in planning and approving Hamas’ attack. As the Journal ominously puts it:

A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.

The second is Hamas’ horrifying attack on a music festival in southern Israel, where its fighters simply slaughtered concert-goers for no purpose except to inflict terror. The New York Times has put the number of dead Israelis at round 140. The Times of Israel has placed the death toll at closer to 250.

Readers of Media Nation know that this is an opinion blog, so let me state my allegiance here. As much as I detest the Netanyahu government, its slide into authoritarianism, and its utter refusal to seek peace with the Palestinians, I am solidly committed to Israel’s right to exist as an independent Jewish state. As President Biden said:

Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation.  My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.

The Palestinian people have a right to live in peace and dignity as well. Sadly, Hamas’ actions are likely to set back their own legitimate aspirations for a generation. Beyond that, I am at the limit of my expertise. This is a time for reading, watching and learning.

Post a comment | Read comments

A harrowing report from a bomb shelter in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv in more peaceful times. Photo (cc) 2019 by RaphaelQS.

My friend Dina Kraft, a former Northeastern colleague who now lives with her husband and two children in Tel Aviv, has written a harrowing first-person essay for the Los Angeles Times about life amid the violence that has broken out between Israel and Hamas. She writes:

I hadn’t prepared anything to take with us, such as pillows or even water. At first I (naively) thought we’d be back upstairs again within a few minutes after the Iron Dome missile-defense shield knocked down any rocket that might be overhead. This was Tel Aviv, in central Israel, considered far from the reach of projectiles from Gaza….

Someone took out a Monopoly game and some of the kids started playing. The adults tried to keep things light with nervous jokes. Neighbors swapped news from updates on Twitter and news apps. I thought about all the previous wars and tense times during which I had interviewed families in shelters on the northern border with Lebanon or along the southern border with Gaza, spoken to kids playing cards and other games, and how here I was, becoming part of that scene I had once covered.

The BBC is reporting that the fighting continues to intensify, with 119 people in Gaza and eight in Israel being killed since Monday.

 

Globe seeks false balance on Goldstone mea culpa

Richard Goldstone

I’m disappointed that editors at the Boston Globe decided they needed to balance Jeff Jacoby’s column on Richard Goldstone’s remarkable mea culpa regarding Israel’s conduct in the Gaza war with a piece arguing, in essence, that Goldstone didn’t really mean it.

Goldstone, a South African judge and diplomat, headed a U.N. investigation into the Gaza war several years ago, and concluded that Israel had committed war crimes against the civilian population. The so-called Goldstone Report has been a cudgel wielded by Israel’s enemies ever since.

So it was (or, rather, should have been) big news when the Washington Post published an op-ed by Goldstone last Friday in which he says that he and his fellow investigators were way too hard on Israel and not nearly hard enough on Hamas. And he credits Israel for investigating the report’s findings while criticizing Hamas for doing nothing. Goldstone writes:

Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.

Other than a brief Associated Press story that ran on Monday, today is the first time the Globe has addressed Goldstone’s turnaround. Jacoby characterizes the original Goldstone Report — hyperbolically, though not without cause — as a “blood libel,” and writes, “The Goldstone report did incalculable damage to Israel’s good name. Breathlessly hyped in the media, it accelerated the already frenzied international campaign to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state.”

The importance of Goldstone’s turnaround can’t be exaggerated. Yet running along with Jacoby’s column today is a piece by Nimer Sultany, described as “a civil rights lawyer in Israel and a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School,” accusing Goldstone of giving in to pressure from fellow Jews and of making another Israeli incursion into Gaza more likely.

“The lingering question,” Sultany writes, “is whether Goldstone can look hundreds of Palestinian civilian victims in the eye and say he stood up for them in the face of severe Israeli and American criticism.”

Goldstone’s turnaround, of course, is not above questioning. As Sultany suggests, there have been reports that Goldstone had been ostracized by the South African Jewish community — although be sure to check out the correction at the bottom of this New York Times story. (The Times also reportedly rejected Goldstone’s op-ed before he shopped it to the Post, though Ben Smith of Politico says otherwise.)

Nevertheless, what Goldstone is saying now hasn’t received nearly enough attention from the media in general or from the Globe specifically. By running Sultany’s rebuttal on the same page as Jacoby’s column, the Globe opens itself up to criticism by those who have long believed the Globe is guilty of anti-Israeli bias.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Three local projects keep an eye on Egypt


Not the first time I’ve said this, but whenever a big international story develops, you can’t go wrong checking in on three news organizations with Boston roots that specialize in foreign coverage.

The most venerable is the Christian Science Monitor, whose commitment to serious journalism extend back more than a century. Now mostly online, the Boston-based news site has correspondents on the ground in Egypt and other stations in the Middle East. Here is a telling passage by Kristen Chick, who’s been covering the protests:

Reinforced, the crowd marched onto the bridge, gathering around two troop carriers the police had been forced to leave behind, along with several of their members. A crowd surrounded the policemen angrily, but some protesters pushed them back.

“This is a peaceful protest,” they yelled. “Don’t hurt them!”

A young policeman walked past, sobbing uncontrollably on the shoulder of a protester.

“It’s OK, you are our brother, you are with us now,” said the protester.

Reporting from Israel, the Monitor’s Joshua Mitnick finds that the Israeli government is anxiously watching what is unfolding in Arab states all around them.

You can follow the Monitor’s coverage of Middle East protests here.

Also well worth following is GlobalPost, the international news agency started by New England Cable News founder Phil Balboni and former Boston Globe foreign correspondent Charles Sennott. GlobalPost reporter Jon Jensen supplements his work with a video report (above).

In an attempt to get ahead of the story, Hugh Macleod considers whether Syria’s repressive regime could be the next to tumble. His conclusion: no, because President Bashar al-Assad has taken steps to spare his people from the grinding poverty that afflicts Egyptians.

You can follow GlobalPost’s coverage of the unfolding Middle East story here.

The most unconventional of the three is Global Voices Online, begun at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center a half-dozen years ago and dedicated to rounding up and synthesizing citizen journalism of all kinds.

Before the Twitter crackdown, Global Voices’ Ivan Sigal posted a fascinating compilation of tweets, blog posts and videos, including a harrowing scene of protesters falling off a water truck. And here is a comment from something called the Angry Arab News Service, in a piece written by Global Voices’ Amira Al Hussaini, reacting to yesterday’s speech by Egyptian President (at least as of this writing) Hosni Mubarak:

Mubarak is speaking live. He is digging a bigger hole for himself. He is insulting the protesters. HE said that he has been sympathetic to the poor all his life. Is that why billionaires surround you, you dictator?

Global Voices has put together a special section called Egypt Protests 2011.

Israel’s challenge in Gaza

Steven Erlanger of the New York Times weighs in with a must-read piece on the ethical and logistical challenges Israel faces in avoiding civilian casualties in Gaza.

The depth and nuance are striking, but what I like best about Erlanger’s analysis is his unblinking assertion that the cause of this war is Hamas’ years-long terrorist bombing strikes against Israel — something that may be obvious, but that tends to be obscured by protests against Israel’s “disproportionate” response.

Watch the accompanying video, too.

The Methodists’ anti-Israel campaign

Michael Paulson reports in the Globe that the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church is urging fellow Methodists to divest from companies that are supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

The Methodist statement begins even-handedly enough:

Despite renewed talk of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the hard reality is that Israel’s actions on the ground in the region, as well as Palestinian militant attacks on Israelis, place enormous obstacles in the way of progress toward peace.

So why does the conference propose punishing Israel alone? This is nasty business. Someone should ask Hillary Clinton, a Methodist, where she stands.