Recent Analyses

The Strategy Behind Israel's Migrant Labor Policies - Yonaton Preminger, CounterPunch

... Clearly, Israel has easy access to willing labor, so why does Israel maintain such a large migrant labor force? The principal reason has little to do with the lack of a local workforce. The migrant workers are simply cheaper and easier to exploit...

... the issue of Israel’s labor preferences goes beyond economic calculations and concerns the identity of the workers themselves....

... The preference for migrant labor over Palestinian labor stems from something for which “security” serves as a fig leaf: Israel’s striving to reduce the Arab presence on this piece of land...

Arab Family Sues Over "Racist Incitement" Israeli School Apartheid - Jonathon Cook, CounterPunch

... A report published in March revealed that the government invested $1,100 in each Jewish pupil’s education compared to $190 for each Arab pupil. The gap is even wider when compared to the popular state-run religious schools, where Jewish pupils receive nine times more funding than Arab pupils.

There is also an official shortfall of more than 1,000 classrooms for Arab children...

350,000 Immigrants Classed as "Without Religion" Rabbis Ban Marriage for Israeli "Untouchables" - Jonathon cook, CounterPunch

... “Civil marriages are not possible in Israel,” he said. “So the rabbis get to decide who can marry and who cannot.”

Israel has passed control of all matters relating to personal status -- births, marriages and divorces, and deaths -- to rabbis belonging to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy.

... Official figures show that as many as 350,000 Jews are classified by the rabbinate as having “no religion”, and are therefore unable to marry in Israel...

Whose Acre? - Uri Avnery, CounterPunch

... In the first years of the last century Yitzhak Ben-Zvi... researched and found that the population of this country has not really changed from the earliest times. The Canaanites mixed with the Israelites, became Jews and Hellenists, and when the Byzantine empire, which then ruled this country, adopted Christianity, they too became Christians. After the Muslim conquest, they gradually became Arabs. In other words, the same village was Canaanite, became Israelite, passed through all the stages and in the end, became Arab. Nowadays it is Palestinian, unless it was wiped out in 1948...

Homewreckers and Vultures: Where are the Arabs to Stand Up for the Hanoun and Ghawi Families? - Bouthaina Shaaaban, CounterPunch

... I would like you to try and imagine someone forcing his way into your home without permission and ordering you at gun point to leave the safe home you have built through a lifetime of toil and hard work and turned into a nest for your children and grandchildren. Imagine foreign soldiers coming from the far ends of the world armed to the teeth with inherited hatred against you to expel you from your home, replace you, occupy your land, and put an end to your existence and history.....

... Where are all those hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims in the four corners of the world? Why do not they rush to our aid?...

... Despite the enormity of the crime and the tragedy, most of the Arab media limited themselves to quick news stories about the Hanoun and Ghawi families...