Month: March 2011

Source: The New Statesman

In East Jerusalem, vigilantes prowl, hunting for Jewish girls who consort with Arab men. Slavoj Žižek argues that what Israel needs is not segregation, but unity and free contact between its peoples.

In Israel, there is a growing number of initiatives – from official bodies and rabbis to private organisations and groups of local residents – to prevent interracial dating and marriage. In East Jerusalem, vigilante-style patrols work to stop Arab men from mixing with local Jewish girls. Two years ago, the city of Petah Tikva created a hotline that parents and friends can use to inform on Jewish women who mix with Arab men; the women are then treated as pathological cases and sent to a psychologist. read more

Source: SocialistWorker.org

Large and energetic demonstrations by union members and their allies against the governor’s union-busting continue in Madison, Wis., with protesters attempting to swarm into the locked-down Capitol building in evening protests on March 1 and again on March 3.

Yet each day that the battle in Wisconsin drags on, a question looms ever larger: does labor have a strategy to win? Are union leaders prepared to follow up the teachers’ sick-ins that first spurred the mass protests with larger and more audacious job actions? read more