Month: March 2019

The current discrimination against Israeli Jews from former Soviet states comes at a time when Israel’s discrimination against both African Jews and its Arab citizens is becoming more well-known internationally.

By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | Mar 13, 2019

With the apartheid-style discrimination against Arabs out in the open, it is hardly surprising that the ideology of a state for the ‘Jewish race’ has resulted in discrimination against certain groups within Israeli Jewry. Such is the nature of ethnic-supremacy movements, which invariably seek to push demographics toward an ideal.

Israel’s Chief Rabbi, David Lau, has openly admitted to the use of DNA tests to determine a person’s “Jewish ancestry” before allowing them to marry in Israel and be granted Jewish status. The practice, as so far revealed, has only been used on Jews from states that once comprised the Soviet Union, leading to accusations of discrimination and racism from prominent Israeli politicians, including former Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The practice was first made public in a report from religious service NGO ITIM that was published last week. The report detailed the accounts of around 20 Jewish couples who had been asked to undergo the procedure to determine whether one or both spouses were “genetically Jewish,” which is a condition of Jewish marriage registration that only the Chief Rabbinate can grant, given its control over Jewish religious rites in the country. Those who do not obtain the Rabbinate’s approval are unable to marry, as the Rabbinate, which is a part of Israel’s government, has exclusive control over religious marriages and only religious marriages are recognized by the state of Israel. . . .

Continue reading “Israel using DNA test to screen for ‘Jewishness’ before marriage permitted”

As UNHRC considers condemning Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, Netanyahu pushes the US for recognition of annexation.

By Tovah Lazaroff  | The Jerusalem Post | Mar 14, 2019

The US wants to exonerate Israel from its indisputable human rights violations, while deliberately attempting to depict the racist policies and attitudes of the Israeli government as benign, despite the fact that they deny the Palestinian people’s humanity, nationality and narrative.
—PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi

The United Nations Human Rights Council is set to condemn Israel’s “occupation” of the Golan Heights next week in Geneva as it wraps up its month-long 40th session.

The resolution was submitted by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It recalled UN Security Council Resolution 497 from 1981, which rejected Israel’s annexation of the Golan.

Israel’s decision “to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the occupied Syrian Golan was null and void and without international legal effect,” and the 1981 resolution “demanded that Israel rescind forthwith its decision,” the new resolution states.

It is one of five anti-Israel resolutions the UNHRC is set to debate on Monday and will vote on toward the end of the week.

The council annually condemns Israel’s annexation of the Golan, which it captured from Syria in 1967 during the Six Day War.
Continue reading “UN Human Rights Council set to condemn ‘occupation’ of Golan”

The prime minister has been accused of demonizing Israeli Arabs in lead-up to April’s election.

By Agence France-Presse | The Guardian | Mar 10, 2019

‘Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people — and only it.’
— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “not a state of all its citizens,” in a reference to the country’s Arab population.

In comments on Instagram, the prime minister went on to say all citizens, including Arabs, had equal rights, but he referred to a deeply controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation state of the Jewish people.

“As you wrote, there is no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel. They have equal rights like all of us and the Likud government has invested more in the Arab sector than any other government,” he said of his rightwing party.

Continue reading “Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is “not a state of all its citizens””

But strong popular resistance is foiling attempts to burn her at the political stake.

By Richard Silverstein | Al Jazeera | Mar 7, 2019

For those who need a primer in anti-Semitism, let’s talk about what it is and isn’t. It is the hatred of Jews for being Jews. It should not be confused with Israel. There is nothing wrong with criticizing Israel or advocating for an Israel that is a democracy offering equal rights to all citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish.

In the late 15^th century, as Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I pushed to conquer territories in the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule, they launched a religious tribunal which came to be known as the Spanish Inquisition.

One of its main tasks was to discover “false converts” to Christianity among the Jews and Muslims of Andalusia. The Inquisition used torture generously to extract forced confessions of “sin” from people suspected of observing Jewish and Muslim rituals or traditions in the privacy of their homes and subsequently punished them in public in what was known as auto-da-fe.

In this modern age, it would be nice (but naive) to think that we have put behind these times. Apparently, these medieval practices are still in use in the US Congress.

Continue reading “The Democratic Inquisition has come after Ilhan Omar”

Palestine solidarity work will be most effective when done within an anti-racist, anti-white supremacist framework.

By Alice Rothchild | Mondoweiss | Mar 12, 2019

This struggle is not about Israel as a Jewish state, but about how Israel behaves as a state in the community of nations.

The recent fury and attacks on Ilhan Omar and her forthright statements exposing and criticizing the role of the Israel lobby and the Congressional requirement of allegiance to the policies of the state of Israel come at time when issues of political framing are roiling Jewish and progressive communities. It is becoming increasingly clear at this political moment that there are major generational divisions within the Democratic Party and within the general population. More people are also willing to say out loud that antisemitism is very different from critical thinking about the continued rightward plunge of Israeli politics.  For me this further clarifies my understanding that working on Israel/Palestine and doing Palestine solidarity work is most effectively accomplished within an anti-racist, anti-white supremacist framework.

So how did that strategic awareness happen for me? I came from a traditional Jewish family where our love of Israel was as uncomplicated as lighting candles on Shabbat or our pride in our roots in the tenements and sweat shops of the Lower East Side of New York. It wasn’t until the 1990s that I began to face the contradictions between my adult political self, working on issues of women’s rights, civil rights, health care justice, and my growing discomfort with Israel. At first I understood that this debate was really only of interest to Jews and Palestinians, although I quickly expanded that to some of the progressive Christian community. For us, the problem started in 1967 and our work was ending the occupation and supporting the radical notion of a two-state solution.

Continue reading “Palestine solidarity work is most effective when done within an anti-racist framework”

It should not be difficult to recognize the meaningful distinction between Ilhan Omar’s recent comments and the kind of antisemitism surging on the right.

By Joshua Leifer | The Guardian | Mar 6, 2019

Omar did not say anything that other critics have not said before: that the pro-Israel lobby enforces rigid support for the increasingly rightwing Israeli government’s policies. . . . If she were not a black, hijab-wearing Muslim woman, the reaction to her words surely would have been different.

Ilhan Omar’s most recent comments have been stripped entirely of their context, their intentions twisted and reversed. During an event in Washington DC last week, she spoke sensitively about her commitment to human rights advocacy, her experiences of Islamophobia, and her compassion for her Jewish constituents. Then Omar said: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country . . . I want to ask, why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil-fuel industries, or big pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy?”

It wasn’t long before Republicans and centrist Democrats pounced. The backlash has reached such a degree of absurdity that Omar’s own party plans to censure her for her remarks. This is something the Democrats did not do in response to baldly antisemitic statements by Republicans, nor even, as Jeffrey Isaac wisely points out, in the wake of the massacre in Pittsburgh last October — the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history, incited by Donald Trump and his supporters’ xenophobic rhetoric.

Continue reading “Ilhan Omar and the weaponization of antisemitism”

If the corruption allegations push just enough voters to the opposition bloc, Israel is most likely to get another right-leaning government — without Netanyahu.

By Gershom Gorenberg | The Washington Post | Mar 8, 2019

When political division are wide, when parties become tribes, corruption has less effect. Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has written about the flaw in human minds that makes people devalue a proposal coming from the other side in a conflict. The same applies to allegations: If you think they come from your political adversaries, you devalue them.

“You conveyed demands to post positive news items about yourself, your wife, Sara Netanyahu, and members of your family, and photographs of you . . . [and] to publish items with political messages that you desired to disseminate to the public.”

This is one snippet of Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he’s likely to be indicted on bribery and other corruption charges. The full document, released publicly, is 57 pages long, all written in stinging second person: “You . . . you . . . you.” Netanyahu’s demands, as listed by the attorney general, were directed to telecom tycoon Shaul Elovitch, whose holdings included Walla, one of Israel’s top two news websites.

The demands seem to have been fulfilled. In return for getting a remote control over the news — so Mandelblit alleges — Netanyahu made regulatory decisions that put hundreds of millions of dollars in Elovitch’s pocket. The paeans to Netanyahu reached their crescendo on each of the past two election days in Israel. The payoffs to Elovitch were apparently meant to tip the elections.

Continue reading “Think the Netanyahu corruption allegations will change Israel? Think again.”

Omar’s fellow congressional Democrats have said little or nothing about the shameful Republican record of anti-Semitism, but many have joined the pile-on against Omar.

By Medhi Hasan | The Intercept | Mar 5, 2019

Whether or not you agree with Omar’s remarks, whether or not you were personally offended, anyone who tells you that these nonstop, bipartisan political attacks on her are about fighting anti-Semitism is gaslighting you.

So let me get this straight: The president of the United States has called neo-Nazis “very fine people”; retweeted neo-Nazis; told an audience of Jewish-Americans that Israel is “your country”; and indulged in viciously anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. While running for office, he tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton inside a Star of David, next to a pile of cash; told an audience of Jewish donors, “You want to control your politicians, that’s fine”; and put out a campaign ad that attacked three rich and powerful Jewish figures. While a private citizen, he insisted only “short guys that wear yarmulkes” should count his money and kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speeches on his bedside table.

He has never apologized for any of this. Nor has he been censured by Congress.

Continue reading “Republicans and Democrats say their criticism of Ilhan Omar is about anti-Semitism — they’re gaslighting you”

Calling for fair treatment of Palestinians does not constitute anti-Semitism.

By  Mae Elise Cannon | Religion News Service | Mar 7, 2019

While we seek and advocate for justice for Palestinians, we must also acknowledge the rootedness of anti-Semitism in Christian history, and its remnants in some of today’s Christian rhetoric.

The question of what constitutes legitimate critique of Israel as opposed to anti-Semitism is front and center in the conversation about Israel in the U.S. following the outcry regarding Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tweets about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the impending anti-Semitism resolution in the House.

In light of debates on Capitol Hill about what defines anti-Semitism and recent increased incidents of hatred toward Jews, it is particularly paramount to weed out and eradicate anti-Semitism, while also distinguishing it from legitimate criticism of Israel.

How does one criticize Israel’s policies without being anti-Semitic?

We need to listen to what the Jewish community says about anti-Semitism. While there are differences of opinion and multiple perspectives, particularly across conservative and liberal divides, commonalities also exist.

Continue reading “Anti-Semitism versus legitimate criticism of the state of Israel”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Rachel Corrie Foundation for a day of advocacy for Palestinian Rights.

	Date:	Friday, Mar 15, 2019
	Time:	9:00 am – 4:30 pm
	Location:	United Churches of Olympia Social Hall 110 11th Ave SE Olympia, WA  98501
	Information & Registration:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	$10 suggested donation

Event Details

Our goals during this fun, action-packed day are:

• to strengthen statewide organizing for advocacy on Palestine
• to continue to inform and educate state legislators about issues related to Palestinian rights.

Schedule

• Gathering and Socializing: 9:00–10:00 am
• Welcome and Introductions 10:00–10:05 am
• Presentations & Training: 10:05 am
• Lunch with Legislative District Groups: 11:30 am
• Walk and Transport to State Capitol: 12:15–12:30 pm
• Group Photo in Front of Capitol: 12:30–12:45 pm
• Visits and Deliveries of Materials to Legislative Offices 1:00–3:00 pm
• Return to United Churches Location: 3:00–3:15 pm
• Debriefs: 3:15–4:00 pm
• Closing and Collecting Ideas, Contacts, Evaluations, and Plans for Follow-up and Ongoing Work: 4:00 pm
• Homeward or on to dinner in Olympia! 4:30 pm

More information here →