Islam Today

This is a very interesting article from the point of view of an Israeli Arab on the status of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, and the lives of Arab Israelis. It is the second of a six-part series called "Tolerance and Intolerance in the Islamic World," held during the Durban Review Conference.

Today I would like to focus more on current political affairs, rather than on the threats of radical Islam. I will talk specifically about the Israeli-Arab conflict and the status of Israel's Arab citizens.

Before that I would like to tell you a bit about my background. I have been working as a journalist for the past 27 years in the Palestinian areas. My career as a journalist started by working for a PLO newspaper in Jerusalem. For the past 20 years or so I have been serving as a consultant, advisor and facilitator for most of the foreign journalists who come over there and want to go to Ramallah and Gaza and talk to Fatah and Hamas. And for the past eight years I have been also writing for the Israeli media and specifically The Jerusalem Post, reporting on Palestinian issues.

Seven Existential Threats

Rarely in modern history have nations faced genuine existential threats. Wars are waged to change regimes, alter borders, acquire resources, and impose ideologies, but almost never to eliminate another state and its people. This was certainly the case during World War II, in which the Allies sought to achieve the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan and to oust their odious leaders, but never to destroy the German and Japanese states or to annihilate their populations. In the infrequent cases in which modern states were threatened with their survival, the experience proved to be traumatic in the extreme. Military coups, popular uprisings, and civil strife are typical by-products of a state’s encounter with even a single existential threat.

FDR pushed to get Jews to safety in 1930s

Newly uncovered documents reveal that President Franklin D. Roosevelt worked quietly in the late 1930s to find havens for European Jews, contradicting the view that he ignored their plight in the years leading up to the Holocaust.