Experience should have proved that one has to be credulous in the extreme – or brainwashed by Zionism – to take seriously “rebuttals” by the Israeli army of evidence of its abuses and war crimes. But for any who still harbour suspicions that claims by the Israeli army aren’t simply self-serving deceptions, take a look at its latest report into [...]

Why are so few of us truly fearful of the impending meltdown of capitalism, stoked by global corporations’ rape and pillage? And why are so many of us passive in the face of impending environmental catastrophe? The answers, surprisingly, are to be found in a recent spoof spy blockbuster, Kingsman – The Secret Service. American Sniper [...]

Here set out in black and white in the Israeli media is a moral conundrum that western politicians, diplomats and international human rights organisations are resolutely failing to address – and one I have been highlighting since 2006. It was then that Israel implemented for the first time its Dahiya doctrine – turning Lebanon back to the Stone Age. [...]

Over many decades, Israel’s self-serving deceptions about the Nakba in 1948 have been exposed for the lies Palestinians already knew them to be. It was long accepted in the west that, as Israel claimed, Palestinians left their homes because they had been ordered to do so by neighbouring Arab leaders. The lie usefully distracted diplomats and scholars from the much more pertinent question of why Israel had refused to [...]

FIFA, world football’s governing body, is due to meet this Friday in Zurich to decide whether to back a Palestinian motion to suspend Israel for its systematic violations of Palestinian footballers’ rights in the occupied territories, including preventing practice sessions and games, arresting players, denying entry to other teams, and bombing grounds, as well as for endemic [...]

There’s much that could be said about the Conservative party’s victory today in Britain’s election. Not least David Cameron has emerged stronger: he now has a small but absolute majority in parliament, compared to his last government, in which he had to share power, a little of it anyway, with his minor coalition partners, the [...]

A Guardian front page headline today illustrates how media organisations propagandise day in, day out, even through the use (or not) of punctuation: Obama regrets drone strike that killed hostages but hails US for transparency That should have read: Obama ‘regrets’ drone strike that killed hostages but hails US for transparency The subtler the technique, [...]

Academia is far from the bastion of free thinking and free speech it would like to claim for itself, as a newly confected “row” involving the leading medical journal The Lancet confirms. Recently Southampton University in the UK caved in on hosting an important conference examining Israel and international law, following an intensive campaign of intimidation from Israeli apologists. Now some [...]

I suspect the word “occupation” – even the more precise “belligerent occupation” – fails to convey to most people the reality of daily horrors inflicted on the Palestinians. Of course, we know that occupations in general are bad and that it would be better if this particular one ended. But what does an occupation feel like [...]

There is something deeply mendacious and cowardly about this ritual leaking by European diplomats of their annual report on Jerusalem. This year they’ve chosen to deposit the “confidential” report in the hands of the Guardian. Obviously, the Europeans – and Americans – want this information about how angry they are with Israel disseminated as widely as [...]

When I and others accuse the British media of systematic and consistent bias in favour of corporate power, and point out that the media is structurally part of that system of corporate power, we typically receive emails from readers arguing that not all parts of the media are subject to such pressures. Britain, we are told, is privileged to have two “liberal” [...]

The revelations last week by the Daily Telegraph’s former chief political commentator Peter Oborne that his newspaper spiked stories that upset advertisers to avoid losing lucrative ad revenue have apparently taken most journalists by surprise. It has been especially embarrassing for the Telegraph, because one of the advertisers it apparently placated was the HSBC bank, currently at the centre of a [...]

If there is one story that encapsulates the corruption of public life at every level, it is the latest revelations about HSBC’s Swiss bank helping thousands of clients evade tax. Some £78 billion was stashed away, out of sight of the tax authorities of various countries. HSBC was praised in the UK after the banking crash [...]

I have been a critic of Jonathan Freedland before on these pages, but he – and the BBC – sank to a new low last week on the BBC’s Question Time. Question Time is a current affairs show that allows an invited audience to ask pre-agreed questions on topical issues to a panel of public [...]

I watched American Sniper the other night and it really is the most puerile propaganda imaginable. It is not even as though it is simply unfair to the “enemy” – that is, mostly ordinary Iraqis, who are shown to be ruthless and heartless killers filled with irrational hatred for the American soldiers sent to liberate [...]

Yesterday I had an idea for a short story to explain the unrelenting insanity of the occupation for ordinary Palestinians. Tell me what you think. In my story, there is a Palestinian family, let’s call them the Jaabaris, and they live next to a Jewish settlement, let’s call it Kiryat Arba, close to Hebron deep [...]