The death of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir confronts Israel’s supporters with a moral dilemma, whether to continue down Shamir’s path of violence begun in the dark days after World War II, or reject a future as the permanent occupiers of the Palestinian people, writes Marc H. Ellis.
As Israeli history has disappeared into a rose-color haze of pleasing propaganda, some of the hard truths are conveniently forgotten – such as the unabashed terrorism of ultra-nationalist leaders like Yitzhak Shamir, whose death has prompted eulogies that ignore his war crimes, writes Nima Shirazi.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has kept President Obama behind a hard-line strategy on Iran’s nuclear program via lobbying pressure from Congress and Washington’s neocons. But a new member of the Israeli government is complicating matters, writes Gareth Porter for Inter Press Service.
Exclusive: The U.S. Supreme Court went to the brink of striking down a major act of social legislation for the first time since the New Deal before being pulled back by Chief Justice John Roberts. But he still gave right-wingers a consolation prize by enshrining into legal precedent their false founding history, writes Robert Parry.
Since World War II, America’s wealth has sheltered the population from harsh realities that other fellow humans face. But that protection is breaking down, from the greed of the super-rich and the stubborn insistence of many Americans to stay focused on their footlong hot dogs and super-gulp drinks, writes Phil Rockstroh.
A half century ago, the Second Vatican Council charted a course for reform of the Catholic Church. But conservative popes, such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI, protected an autocratic system that failed to stop pedophile priests and even falls short on the religious needs of the faithful, says Catholic theologian Paul Surlis.
Special Report: Some activists on the Left are rejecting President Obama and the Democrats even if that means electoral victories for Mitt Romney, the neocons and the Tea Party. But Sam Brown, a veteran of a similar debate in 1968, cautions against the allure of political purity, writes Robert Parry.
The Vietnam War may seem like ancient history to many Americans, but that destructive conflict holds important lessons for the present, especially the danger of “group think” driving foreign policy and the value of insights that clash with conventional wisdom, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Recent historical discoveries about northern Palestine of two millennia ago reveal how radical Jesus’s message was, what risks he was asking his followers to take, and why he was arrested and crucified as an insurrectionist when he ventured south to Jerusalem, says Rev. Howard Bess.
President Obama rebranded the “global war on terror” the “war on Al Qaeda,” but his counterterrorism strategy hews closely to President George W. Bush’s, as the U.S. joins conflicts in Yemen and elsewhere that have little connection to the 9/11 attacks, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar writes.
Towards an Investigative 'War Chest' -- To expand our coverage of issues of war and peace, we are trying to build a $100,000 "war chest," believing honest information is the best way to avoid war.
