Part of the challenge of writing for a wider public is resisting being provoked into knee-jerk responses to attacks on what you have written. Sometimes it is OK to simply let contrary viewpoints go by unchallenged, even when they are palpably ill-fou...
Often anti-Zionist and Israeli apologists when arguing about the Israel/Palestine conflict, behave like toddlers on a playground needing parental supervision. There are those who vehemently defend the actions of Israel regardless of the atrocities it...
The recent assault by Israeli commandos on a civilian flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza raised protests globally, not least here in South Africa where we have always had a substantial pro-Palestinian movement. I attended a discussio...
In perhaps his most famous anti-imperialist essay, To the Person Sitting in Darkness Mark Twain critiques the self-evident truth of American imperial policy in Africa, China and the Philippines:
"Privately and confidentially, it is merely an outsi...
Whatever the truth of the backward and forward between Judge Richard Goldstone and the Sandton Shul is, the heated words that have made it into the press speak of a major blowup behind the scenes. True to form, the community, in the guise of the Chie...
I meet Huwaida Arraf at the Palestinian Struggle and Human Spirit Film Festival held in the working class district of Athlone in Cape Town. It's a chilly evening but I request we move our conversation outside. The fake Israeli soldiers harassing patr...
In what may prove to be a groundbreaking discovery, Professor Gershon Galil of the department of biblical studies at the University of Haifa, has managed to decipher an inscription on a pottery shard which dates back to the 10th century BCE.
The a...
I am not a fan of famous professors. They are normally so caught up in their research that they're often socially starved animals; aloof and arrogant in their approach. I'd rather read their work than meet them. Some have been in the library so long ...
I honestly don't think I can stomach another indignant person imploring "the West" to "do something about Zimbabwe". This gem is usually delivered on the back of some hack thesis about the hypocritical invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to free them f...
We were the country that fought against all odds, that stood up to perpetrators of human rights though it meant lives and futures were lost. We were the freedom fighters, the reconcilers, and set ourselves as an example for revolutionaries the world ...
