Habib Siddiqui

Robert Fisk is a highly respectable journalist who has been writing about the Middle East for decades. No one is probably  trusted more than him when it comes to getting to the truth on a series of contentious issues on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In his latest article, posted in the Counterpunch.org., Fisk writes, "There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic. So corrosive, so vicious was this charge against any honest critic of Israel that merely to bleat the word “disproportionate” – as in any normal wartime exchange rate of Arab-to-Israeli deaths – was to provoke charges of Nazism by Israel’s would-be supporters. Sympathy for Palestinians would earn the sobriquet “pro-Palestinian”, which, of course,  means “pro-terrorist”. Or so it was until the latest bloodbath in Gaza, which is being so graphically covered by journalists that our mast...

As I stated last week, I have almost stopped watching TV news these days. It is too depressing to watch the cries of Palestinians who have lost their loved ones in a genocidal campaign launched by the rogue state of Israel. Probably by now more than 1800 Palestinians in Gaza have died – almost all civilians. Gaza officials said last week that at least 7,000 Palestinians were wounded. At that time 56 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza clashes including 3 civilians due to Palestinian shelling in Israel.   Thus, 95% of the dead Israelis are from the military – the IDF. So, no matter how the war criminal Netanyahu government tries to hide its war crimes under propaganda barrage, no one is getting fooled. Even some Israeli soldiers and pilots have refused to be part of this mayhem.   Navi Pillay, the United Nations' senior human rights official said on Thursday she believed Israel was deliberately defying international law in its military offensive in Gaza an...

Navi Pillay, the United Nations' senior human rights official said on Thursday she believed Israel was deliberately defying international law in its military offensive in Gaza and that world powers should hold it accountable for possible war crimes. Israel has attacked homes, schools, hospitals, and UN premises in apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions, Pillay said, a week after her Human Rights Council resolved to open a commission of inquiry into Israel's alleged crimes against humanity. "Therefore I would say that they appear to be defying... deliberate defiance of obligations that international law imposes on Israel," Pillay told a news briefing. "This is why again and again I say we cannot allow impunity, we cannot allow this lack of accountability to go on." She also criticized the United States, Israel's main ally, for failing to use its influence with the Jewish state to halt the carnage. "Man...

  Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University’s Department of History and the author of several books, including his latest, Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East . He has been very critical of US's role as a peace broker. In this book, Khalidi draws on his research as a historian, and on his own experience as an adviser to Palestinian negotiators, to argue that far from being an impartial broker, the United States has effectively acted as Israel’s lawyer. In March 2013, he gave an interview to Democracy Now, which was published in two parts. You can read his interview by clicking here and here .

There are many Jewish peace activists who have always been very vocal about Israel's crimes against humanity.  In New York City, a group of demonstrators recently blocked traffic by laying down in the streets outside Israel’s Mission to the United Nations. Twenty-six people were arrested after refusing police orders to disperse. The action was organized by the author and scholar Norman Finkelstein. Norman Finkelstein : "Well, I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for the past 21 days, morning and night, watching the horror unfold, and I felt I wasn’t doing enough, I wasn’t rising to the occasion, I wasn’t acting commensurate to the horror. So I decide it’s time to do something more, time to go past the computer, remove myself from the computer and get arrested."  Tuesday’s act of civil disobedience comes one day after nine Jewish peace activists were arrested protesting the Israeli assault outside the office of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizat...

Naveed Shinwari is one of four American Muslims who filed suit against the government this week for placing them on the U.S. "no-fly list" in order to coerce them into becoming FBI informants. The plaintiffs say the government refuses to explain why they were named on the no-fly list. They also believe that their names continue to be listed because they would not agree to become FBI informants and spy on their local communities. "It’s very frustrating, you feel helpless," Shinwari says. "No one will tell you how you can get off of it, how you got on it. It has a profound impact on people’s lives." Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, is seeking to remove the men from the no-fly list and establish a new legal mechanism to challenge placement on it. Shinwari and Kadidal were interviewed in the Democracy Now program in April. You can read their interview by clicking here .

Award winning author and activist Arundhati Roy needs no introduction. She was interviewed in the Democracy Now in April 9, 2014 on the subject of "Is India on a Totalitarian Path?". Parts of her interview is posted below: AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report . I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue our conversation with the world-renowned author Arundhati Roy. Voting has just begun in India in the largest election the world has ever seen. About 815 million Indians are eligible to vote over the next five weeks. The number of eligible voters in India is larger than the total population of the United States and European Union combined. Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things . Her latest book is called Capitalism: A Love Story [ sic ]. Democracy Now! 's — Capitalism: A Ghost Story . Democracy Now! 's Nermeen Shaikh and I talked to Arundhati Roy about the changes in India she describes ...