Here’s a riddle: when is a campaign for equality not really about equality? When it’s in Israel, it seems. Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel – those belonging to the small Druze religious sect – staged a protest in Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv. They were joined by large…
Is it any of Canada’s business whether Saudi women have the right to drive? Well, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland just made it her business. Repeatedly denouncing Riyadh’s arrest of women’s rights advocate Samar Badawi, Freeland has driven the two countries close to a break in diplomatic relations. “Reprehensible” said Riyadh of Freeland’s tweeted attack. Canada…
The expulsion of the Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, along with the freezing of trade relations between the two nations, is a dramatic development in the normally sleepy month of August. The Saudis were angered by perceived interference in their sovereignty, after Canada’s foreign ministry on Friday tweeted: “Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests…
Year on year the world’s economic divisions and sub-divisions deepen and the associated social ills increase: the rich, comfortable, and the very extremely rich keep getting richer, and the rest, well, while some may be raised up out of crippling poverty into relative poverty, the majority of people continue to live under a blanket of…
Last week, the International Criminal Court announced it would commence the pretrial phase of a war crimes case brought by the Palestinian Authority (PA) against Israel. An Israeli news report called the move “almost unprecedented”. A three-judge panel has been appointed to hear the case: Peter Kovacs (presiding judge), Marc Perrin de Brichambaut and Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou. The…
On Thursday, the Israeli government formally passed the “Jewish nation state”law. With the Knesset’s summer recess on the horizon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to pass the law ahead of the break. “This is a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the history of the state of Israel,” Netanyahu told the Knesset after…
