The radicalization of Max Blumenthal

I have followed the work of journalist Max Blumenthal for a long time. He was a correspondent for the magazine The Nation among other publications and his forte was to document the follies of right wing politics in the US. He would often go with a camera crew to the functions hosted by various right wing political and religious groups and interview the ordinary attendees and any dignitaries he could collar and then post videos of what they said on the internet. Since the people at these events said the most ridiculous and extreme things, his videos were both amusing and disturbing.
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The one-year anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza

Today marks the first anniversary of the extremely brutal assault called Operation Protective Edge that Israel perpetrated on the people of Gaza. Glenn Greenwald interviews Max Blumenthal who has a new book out that deals with that event called The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. (You can read Greenwald’s review of the book here.)
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Liberal Zionists on the gloomy future for Israel

These have not been easy times for the group known as liberal Zionists, those who support a two-state solution and envisaged an Israel that upheld democratic values and human rights and co-existed peacefully with a Palestinian state and its Arab neighbors. There was always a latent contradiction in the fact that any state that has an official religion and makes laws accommodating it necessarily undermines democracy but liberal Zionists felt that the influence of religion could be minimized and Israel could be Jewish state the same way that England has an official chirch.
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Calling for genocide as a good career move

Last year The Electronic Intifada re-published a Facebook post by a 39-year old Israeli lawmaker named Ayelet Shaked who was first elected to parliament in 2012, in which she said that the entire Palestinian population was the enemy and Israel was at war with the “entire [Palestinian] people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure”, and made the case that their destruction was justified. She even referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes”.
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The horror inflicted by the Israel army on Gazans

The Israeli group Breaking the Silence has released a new report of testimonies given by some Israeli soldiers that reveals the depth of the atrocities inflicted by the Israeli army on the people of Gaza during its assault last year. In that operation known as Protective Edge 1,462 civilians, among them 495 children and 253 women were killed. Some may recall the infamous video of four boys being massacred as they played on a beach.
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Netanyahu’s strategy backfires

There was a time not so long ago when there were three rigid dogmas in elite US government and media circles: 1. The interests of the US and Israel were identical. 2. Anything that the government of Israel did must be given unquestioned support. 3. One must never mention even the existence of the Israel lobby, let alone its role in enforcing the first two dogmas. To violate any of these dogmas was to be prima facie guilty of anti-Semitism.
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What Iranians think about Netanyahu’s visit to the US

There has been quite a to-do about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the US and his speech today to the joint session of Congress. For the first time that I can remember, there was not universal approval in Congress and the establishment media about his blatant attempt to direct US foreign policy and undermine negotiations with Iran.
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Israel shows its power over the US again-but pays a price

There has been an unusual development in US-Israel relations. The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited by the speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner to give a speech to a joint session of Congress on February 11. This by itself is not too unusual. It is an honor given to foreign leaders and Israeli leaders have done so many times and the routine is that they are given multiple standing ovations by members who are eager to demonstrate to the Israel lobby how supportive they are of Israel.
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A bridge too far for Obama?

Jonathan Cook has a good analysis of the upcoming Israeli elections to be held on March 17, 2015 and the role that US-Israeli relations are playing in it. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be hoping to win by pandering even more than he does presently to the right wing, religious, settler, racist elements in the country. Meanwhile Cook says that European opinion is rapidly shifting towards the Palestinians.
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