The Guardian: Amos Oz: ‘I love Israel, but I don’t like it very much’

But as much as the young Oz was enthralled by Jesus, the story of Judas irritated him. Not theologically. But rather “the little detective within me” was appalled by the Judas tale, which, Oz says, is a “vicious, ugly story”, arresting for being so badly written: had the gospels had a decent editor, he says, it would have been struck out.

Nothing about it adds up. Judas Iscariot is meant to be a rich man, yet he performs his great act of treachery for just 30 pieces of silver – “about £400 in today’s money”. A decent sum, but surely not enough to provide a motive. And why would Jesus’s pursuers need Judas to point him out via the unforgettable gesture of a kiss? The miracle-worker was already notorious in Roman Jerusalem, having caused such a commotion at the temple. None of it makes any sense, says Oz. [...]

Oz does not share the dead man’s politics – he stresses that while he may be a peacenik, he has never been a pacifist – but he knows what it’s like to be branded a traitor. He denounced the occupation of the territories Israel conquered in 1967 almost as soon as the six-day war was over, when his countrymen were still giddy with victory. A soldier in that conflict – and again in 1973 – Oz first came to prominence as one of a group of young kibbutznik writers who assembled a dissenting collection on the war just won: The Seventh Day. Long before it became a matter of international diplomatic consensus, Oz was advocating the partition of historical Palestine into two states – Israel and Palestine – alongside each other. And he was a founder member of the movement that became famous as Peace Now. [...]

Besides, he’s suspicious of those who are so insistent that the two state solution is dead. He points to the curious alliance of “the Israeli far right and the radical left in Europe, including this country [Britain]. Both are amplifying the same music, saying, ‘There’s no going back on the occupation, the only solution is to live ... in one state.’ I think this is nonsense.” He is especially impatient with the leftist vision of a single state, which he brands a kind of “kitsch”, imagining that the two peoples can forget the bloodshed and conflict of the last century and “jump into bed with each other, like in a lousy Hollywood movie”.

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Salon: Nothing left but the dog whistle: Trump, “real America” and the death of the conservative movement

But as much as political insiders and establishment leaders should have been a more savvy about the potential of a populist celebrity billionaire to throw a grenade into a presidential campaign, it was entirely reasonable for many conservative movement leaders to be shocked that a man like Trump could capture the imagination of their movement so quickly, and without any serious commitment to their cause. After all, the last we heard, the Tea Party was still running the congressional asylum. Those folks may have a flair for the dramatic, but they’re true believers in the conservative movement. There was every reason to believe that the millions of Republican voters who supported them were too.

What conservatives found out was that all those years of carefully and patiently educating their voters in the nuances of small government, traditional values and strong national defense, to the point where they could elicit ecstatic cheers by merely uttering the words “tort reform” or “eminent domain” turned out to be for naught. The voters really only heard the dog-whistles. [...]

The answer has to do with the adoption of a fairly exclusive vision of American nationalism — which sees America not only as a predominantly white country but also as a white Christian country and also as a white Christian provincial country. This is a conception of America that finds its home outside the cities, exurbs and rural areas, in what Sarah Palin called the real America. [...]

In other words, this isn’t new. The only thing that’s changed is that the people Real Americans resent — African-Americans, women, recent immigrants and LGBT folks — are now assuming positions of prominence and power, and the provincial anger, stoked for so long by the Republican Party, has finally boiled over. Donald Trump is telling those folks what they’ve been wanting to hear, exactly the way they’ve been wanting to hear it for a very long time.

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Dazed: People are protesting Russian censorship by narrating porn

Government censorship agency Roskomnadzor blocked access to the sites, and now anyone trying to access them gets an error message that says they’ve been blocked “by decision of public authorities”. Last year, the watchdog banned 11 other porn sites, citing that they were failing to protect children “from information harmful to their health”. Court rulings were able to bring in the ban due to very vague, extreme legislation based around child protection.

And although sexually explicit content isn’t necessarily illegal in Russia, “the illegal production, dissemination and advertisement of pornographic materials and objects” is.

In an act of protest, people are uploading videos of themselves to social media watching porn and narrating what happens. They can be found underneath the hashtag #rospornobzor. [...]

Another protestor, Natalia Istomina, asserted her issues with porn as a whole, while also drawing attention to the dangers of government censorship. “While mainstream pornography is abusive as fuck, we’re not talking about that right now, but about the fact that censorship is an even greater violence and the way to total hypocrisy and isolation, where no honest conversations are possible, not just about sex, but about anything at all,” she said.

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Independent: The Czech Republic isn't called the Czech Republic anymore

Although its government approved the change in April, it’s only today that the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN) advised all Britons to start using the new term. 

It will also be known as Tschechien in German and Tchequie in French. All are translations of Cesko in Czech. The hope is that the change will improve the nation’s identity and make it easier for companies to use the new title on products, name tags and sports jerseys.

While the state will continue to be called the Czech Republic, it could not be simply abbreviated to ‘Czech’ as the word is an adjective. [...]

However, not everyone is happy with the name change. Some are worried English speakers will confuse the name with the Russian Republic of Chechnya. While others worry that it’s too close to Cheka, an earlier name of the KGB.

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Independent: Robert Fisk: For the first time, Saudi Arabia is under attack by Sunni and Shia leaders

The Saudis step deeper into trouble almost by the week. Swamped in their ridiculous war in Yemen, they are now reeling from an extraordinary statement issued by around two hundred Sunni Muslim clerics who effectively referred to the Wahhabi belief – practiced in Saudi Arabia – as “a dangerous deformation” of Sunni Islam. The prelates included Egypt’s Grand Imam, Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar, the most important centre of theological study in the Islamic world, who only a year ago attacked “corrupt interpretations” of religious texts and who has now signed up to “a return to the schools of great knowledge” outside Saudi Arabia.

This remarkable meeting took place in Grozny and was unaccountably ignored by almost every media in the world – except for the former senior associate at St Antony’s College, Sharmine Narwani, and Le Monde’s Benjamin Barthe – but it may prove to be even more dramatic than the terror of Syria’s civil war. For the statement, obviously approved by Vladimir Putin, is as close as Sunni clerics have got to excommunicating the Saudis. [...]

As Narwani points out, the bad news kept on coming. At the start of the five-day Hajj pilgrimage, the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar published online a database which it said came from the Saudi ministry of health, claiming that up 90,000 pilgrims from around the world have died visiting the Hajj capital of Mecca over a 14-year period. Although this figure is officially denied, it is believed in Shia Muslim Iran, which has lost hundreds of its citizens on the Hajj. Among them was Ghazanfar Roknabadi, a former ambassador and intelligence officer in Lebanon. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has just launched an unprecedented attack on the Saudis, accusing them of murder. “The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers...” he said in his own Hajj message.

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The Atlantic: Donald Trump and the Rise of Anti-Muslim Violence

A wide array of factors contribute to the incidence of hate crimes. Ignorance and isolation may play a role; most Americans say they do not personally know any Muslims, although those who do report positive views of Muslims in general. The nature of the threat groups of people are perceived to pose can also be a factor; prejudice catalyzed by a terrorist attack, for example, may be particularly likely to inspire hate crimes. Political rhetoric is only one ingredient in that mix, and the many messages in circulation after an attack can make it harder to determine the impact of any one particular reaction from a political leader. Before Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the country,  President Obama delivered a speech to the nation on the San Bernardino attack stressing tolerance.

Still, the report looked at daily data following terrorist attacks, and found that “a tolerant statement about Muslims by a political leader was accompanied by a sharp decline in hate crime, while a less tolerant announcement was followed by a precipitous increase in both the severity and number of anti-Muslim hate crimes.” It notes that “there have been very few incidents of actual hate crime where Mr. Trump’s name was uttered since his candidacy,” but adds that “the increase of 87.5% in anti-Muslim hate crime in the days directly following his announcement is a troubling development and worthy of concern.” [...]

Islamophobia existed in America long before Trump. Muslims have long been particularly vulnerable to backlash driven by negative stereotypes in part because they make up a relatively small slice of the overall U.S. population. But when a major-party nominee endorses and reinforces those stereotypes, researchers warn, American Muslims face serious risk of increased marginalization and outright violence. [...]

Still, some Muslim Americans have their frustrations with Clinton. When she condemned Trump’s call for a Muslim ban, she emphasized that it would play into the hands of “radical jihadists.” Advocates caution that political leaders must be careful not to inadvertently amplify potentially stigmatizing associations between Muslim Americans and terrorism. Political leaders should also make clear, they argue, that Islamophobia must be condemned because it denigrates and threatens the lives of American citizens, and not on the grounds that it threatens national security.  

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