The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
Lauren McCauley -
During his historic trip to Bethlehem on Sunday, Pope Francis made waves after taking a surprise detour to pray at what is known as the "apartheid wall."
The stop at the barrier—which annexes Palestinian land, cutting off Palestinians from their fields, livelihood, and each other—was made on the second day of the pontiff's Middle East visit after touring Jordan on Saturday.
Describing the detour, the Guardian reports:
His route had been planned to pass...
More than 60 years after the formation of the state of Israel, successive rounds of “peace talks” have yielded no settlement that is viable for the occupied people of Palestine. But, are we entering a new era? US Secretary of State John Kerry has embraced his role with a great deal of enthusiasm striking up talks between both sides again. Nevertheless, Middle East expert, Na’eem Jeenah, says we shouldn’t place much hope on Kerry’s efforts. The Israelis are making...
Mandisi Majavu -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote that “the first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.” Modern nation states and their immigration laws are largely founded on this logic. The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was appealing to this logic when he labelled African asylum seekers, who took to the streets last month to protest against...
Brian Walt -
Massachusetts did not have a team in this year’s Super Bowl. And last week brought news that Boston-based Oxfam America would not have an Oxfam ambassador appearing in a Super Bowl commercial either. Scarlett Johansson's work for SodaStream violated the anti-settlement and anti-discrimination principles of the international Oxfam confederation. As a consequence, Johansson chose her hefty contract with SodaStream over the social justice work of Oxfam. As a rabbi...
In an interview with Democracy Now! following the death of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who died on Saturday, world-renowned political dissident, linguist, author and Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Noam Chomsky says, "There is a convention that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the recently dead, which unfortunately imposes a kind of vow of silence, because there is nothing good to say. (Sharon) was a brutal killer; he had...
On a trip to Palestine and Israel this week, French president Francois Hollande said that “Palestinians should give up on the right of return of Palestinian refugees or become flexible on the right of return” in exchange for Israel to stop building settlements in occupied Palestine.
Talking about the kind of mindset that France is adopting in relation to its foreign policy, Sher Hever, an economic researcher at the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli...
