"The American empire is going down.”

So declared history professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Joel Beinin, on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) cable television program, “Other Voices” (watch here) last week in Palo Alto.


Following an “extended leave” from Stanford University in 2006 based on what Beinin then described as the university’s “minimal institutional interest in the study and teaching of the modern Middle East,” a two–year stint as director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt, and rumors earlier this year that he was to land a position as director of the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University, Beinin is back at Stanford this Fall.

JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) ––Israel stood fast Wednesday by its decision to clamp shut cargo crossings at the Gaza Strip, brushing off pleas to ease the blockade from United Nations chief Ban Ki–moon.

SHILOH, West Bank –– Israel's West Bank settlers have been ratcheting up their violence, defying their own government and flouting international public opinion.

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday promised to release 250 Palestinian prisoners next month, making a goodwill gesture to the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank even as Israel battles militants in the Gaza Strip.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) ––An Israeli airstrike killed four Palestinian militants as they were firing mortars at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian officials said, just hours after another group of militants struck Israel in a separate rocket attack.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP (AP) – Palestinian militants attacked a major city in southern Israel with rocket fire on Friday, a serious escalation of widening violence that has all but buried a five–month–old truce.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) ––Gaza militants fired a new barrage of rockets and mortars at Israeli border areas on Thursday, prompting Israel to bar planned food and fuel shipments to Palestinian civilians hurt by the unraveling of a five–month–old truce.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP (AP) – A United Nations flour warehouse in Gaza that was full early last week now stands empty _ the guttural sounds of trucks replaced by the chirping of pigeons in the rafters.

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday pledged to continue negotiations with the Palestinians if he wins a coming general election, softening earlier hints he would abandon peace talks launched last year by President Bush.

SHARM EL–SHEIK, EGYPT (AP) – Backed by international mediators, Israel and the Palestinians pledged Sunday to continue peace talks that President Bush launched last year even though a possible deal won't be reached until after he leaves office.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (AP) – The Bush administration conceded Thursday that an Israeli–Palestinian peace deal by a year–end deadline is no longer possible.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP (AP) – Hamas militants pounded southern Israel with a barrage of rockets Wednesday, hours after Israeli forces killed six gunmen in a new violence that threatened a five–month–old truce that has brought relief to both Gaza and southern Israel.

In "Will Khalidi Displace Ayers as McCain's Favorite Prof?," Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed tries to turn the conclusion of a 2004 Campus Watch article on its head in order to exonerate Rashid Khalidi from charges that he was a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization when he lived in Beirut during the late 1970s and early 1980s—years in which the PLO was on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

Jaschik's source for these evidentiary acrobatics? Khalidi's denial of the charges as quoted by the very same authors whose article Jaschik cites—an article, by the way, that demonstrates that during his time in Beirut, Khalidi was identified by Tom Friedman of the New York Times as a PLO spokesman and that his own language from the period reinforces Friedman's claim.

JERUSALEM (AP) – An Israeli official says the government will cut off funding for unauthorized outposts in the West Bank.

JERUSALEM, Israel (AP) ––The head of Israel's internal security service said Sunday he is "very concerned" that Jewish extremists could assassinate an Israeli leader in an attempt to foil peace moves with the Palestinians.

Yasir Arafat may have shaken Yitzhak Rabin's hand in 1993 and signed solemn declarations about ending the war to eliminate Israel, but late last month, in a New York City courtroom, the Palestine Liberation Organization formally confirmed that it still sees terrorism against Israelis as legitimate acts of war.

The lawsuit, Sokolow v The Palestine Liberation Organization, brought by the intrepid David Strachman, alleges that the PLO carried out two machine–gun and five bombing attacks in the Jerusalem area between January 2001 and February 2004. The plaintiffs allege, in the words of U.S. District Judge George Daniels, that the PLO did so "intending to terrorize, intimidate, and coerce the civilian population of Israel into acquiescing to defendants' political goals and demands, and to influence the policy of the United States and Israeli governments in favor of accepting defendants' political goals and demands." The attacks killed 33 and wounded many more, some of them U.S. citizens; the victims and their families are seeking up to US$3 billion in damages from the PLO.

To this, the PLO, represented in part by none other than the appalling Ramsey Clark (who in a distant age, 1967–69, was attorney general of the United States), replied that the attacks were acts of war rather than terrorism. As Daniels summarizes the PLO argument: "defendants argue that subject matter jurisdiction is lacking because this action is premised on acts of war, which is barred under the ATA [Antiterrorism Act of 1991], and further is based on conduct which does not meet the statutory definition of ‘international terrorism'."

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (AP) – Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari says it is a disgrace that the Middle East conflict remains unresolved.

CAIRO, EGYPT (AP) – Israeli President Shimon Peres says a long–stalled Arab peace initiative could bring peace to the Middle East and resolve the Palestinian conflict.

JERUSALEM (AP) – A Palestinian assailant stabbed two Israelis in an east Jerusalem neighborhood Thursday, killing an 86–year–old man and wounding a police officer in what authorities called a "terror incident."

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli President Shimon Peres will discuss an Arab proposal for comprehensive Mideast peace when he meets with Egypt's leader this week, Peres' office said Wednesday.

JERUSALEM –– Israeli leaders are seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday.