Israel

There was no reason why Israel's foreign minister had to be in India at this time and at this conjuncture of history. No more inept step could have been taken by Indian foreign policy planners.

The collapse of the peace process has painfully exposed the fact that the demand for an independent state of Palestine has become utopian. Even if it could be accomplished as a formality, it would in reality be no more than a set of Bantustans, manipulated entirely by the Israeli Defence Forces and the Israeli state. And the problem of how Israel can swallow the Occupied Territories without a fatal attack of indigestion that wrecks Israel at large immediately raises 1948 all over again.

Chinese workers in Israel, brought in to meet the labour shortage caused by the Israeli government's refusal to allow Palestinians to cross the border to work in Israel, have charged Chinese labour agencies with expropriating large parts of wage payments made to them by Israeli employers and are refusing to return home for fear of harassment and prosecution. A bizarre situation created by a government which sees the citizen's work as its own property, to be hired out and taxed at will.

The mainstream western media projects Islam as inimical to civilised values. The demonising of Islam fits in well with the western geo-political interests in arms and oil Today, after the demise of communist states, when Islam is being seen as a security threat to the west, the media in the Muslim world needs to devise ways and means to reduce the dependency on western news sources.