Harry's Place

Guest post by Hadar Sela
Harry’s Place readers need no introduction to MEMO; the organisation’s activities have been the subject of many a post from its Director’s signing of the Istanbul Declaration and leading of the MCB boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day to its promotion of Raed Salah and collaboration with Amnesty International UK.
The latest [...]

This is a guest post by Matt Hill
Writing about the Middle East at Harry’s Place can feel like putting your hand in a pool full of flesh-stripping piranhas – and I mean that as a compliment. One of the milder criticisms I’ve received is that I may be unduly influenced by authors with a pro-Palestinian bias. Insofar as moderate Palestinians [...]

This is a guest post by Matt Hill
In tribute to Christopher Hitchens. Incomparable secularist, humanist, polemicist. April 13, 1949 – December 15, 2011.
As this morning brought news of  the death of a great secularist and humanist, it seems apt to recall a day in September 1928, when a bloody religious dispute broke [...]

In the November/December 2011 issue of The Journal of Applied Business Research, Henry I. Silverman of Roosevelt University has presented the results of a study into Reuters’ coverage of the Middle East conflict. The article can be read in full here.
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Abstract:
This paper examines a sample of fifty news-oriented articles related to the Middle East conflict [...]

Most of you will remember the great excitement in the blogosphere over this Advertising Standards Authority adjudication, last year:
ASA Adjudication on Israeli Government Tourist Office
Ad
A press ad, for holidays in Israel, stated “YOU CAN TRAVEL THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF ISRAEL IN 6 HOURS Imagine what you can experience in 4 days … DAY 1 TEL [...]

We’re a little late with this, but it’s worth noting. Professor Alan Johnson wrote at Left Foot Forward last month:

Should British trade unions build on their links to Israeli unions or break them? Which course of action would be best for the Palestinians?
That question has been posed by the decision of the 2011 TUC conference [...]

This is a guest post by Matt Hill
In the maelstrom of blame and doomsday rhetoric that’s Israeli-Palestinian politics, dispassionate enquiries into the prospects of peace are all too rare. So I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent report from the The Atlantic called ‘Is Peace Possible’. It explores four main issues – [...]

By Eric Lee of LabourStart (cross-posted from Workers’ Liberty)
Last week’s LabourStart Global Solidarity Conference in Istanbul was meant to be an extraordinary event. Activists from the newly-independent unions of the “Arab Spring” countries were due to meet with colleagues from established unions from both developed and developing countries.
As Canadian union activist Derek Blackadder put it, [...]

This is a guest post by Matt Hill
I was worried my last piece at this site – ‘We need to have a serious talk about Israel-Palestine’ – was too blandly agreeable to provoke much comment. I needn’t have worried: my appeal for a reasonable debate about the subject led to a gratifying deluge of criticism.
A [...]

If a vociferously antisemitic musician wants to make his living performing and spouting his noxious views at private venues, I don’t see any reason to prevent him from doing so– as long as people know what he stands for.
But when his performance is paid for in part by the Lottery-funded Arts Council of England, there [...]