by Sam Bahour | May 1, 2020 | Books, Writings
The book is a long-winded frontal attack on Palestinian refugees and reads more as a commissioned assignment from the Hasbara-hub called the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs than a truly deep analysis of the issue of Palestinian refugees. What is missing from the book is as important as what is in it—all the other references that Palestinians’ Right of Return is based on, above and beyond the single one, UN General Assembly 194, that the authors pin their entire argument around.
by Sam Bahour | January 15, 2020 | Documentaries
Acclaimed Israeli writer-director Yaron Zilberman (“A Late Quartet”) chronicles the disturbing descent of a promising law student to an intransigent ultranationalist obsessed with murdering his country’s leader, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “Incitement” is a gripping and unnerving look through the eyes of a murderer who silenced a powerful voice for peace.
by Ellen Cantarow | March 27, 2009 | Books
In 1997 Hamas offered Israel a 30-year truce. Jordan’s King Hussein delivered the offer: Israel’s response was to send Mossad agents to Jordan where they tried to kill Hamas leader Khaled Meshal by dropping poison in his ear. The incident (described by former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy in his book, Man in the Shadows), not only deeply embarrassed the King, it also failed to kill Meshal. (Other peace bids were made; all were rejected, though none, perhaps, as dramatically as this.) The 1997 assassination attempt illustrates what Zeev Maoz, in his landmark work, Defending the Holy Land, calls Israel’s “over my dead body” approach to peace.