World Water Day is an annual United Nations observance day held on 22 March that highlights the importance of fresh water.
By Al-Haq – Defending Human Rights | Mar 22, 2022
Israel’s control over all aspects of water in the OPT renders the Palestinian economy captive and entrenches an apartheid regime of discriminatory and segregating laws and policies.
Water Day, the annual United Nations day of observance on the importance of freshwater, draws attention to the billions of people around the world who are denied their basic human right to live with clean, accessible, and affordable water. This year, Water Day focuses on groundwater and the critical importance of cooperation in managing transboundary groundwaters.
Peter Beinart speaking at Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Seattle, Washington, May 23, 2019 at an event sponsored by J Street (CC by Joe Mabel via Wikimedia)
The analogies between Ukraine and Israel are problematic.
By Peter Beinart | The Beinart Notebook | Mar 21, 2022
The message is clear: Since Israel faces its own existential foes, it too needs bipartisan support.
On Friday, AIPAC—the influential pro-Israel lobbying group—issued a statement I suspect historians of American Jewry will scrutinize for decades to come. It argues that in order to preserve US support for Israel’s ability to rule undemocratically over Palestinians, AIPAC must support politicians who seek to rule undemocratically over Americans. Authoritarianism there requires authoritarianism here.
At the time, I was surprised and gratified at how quickly the story was picked up by other news outlets and how easily attention was brought to my sincere concerns. In a matter of days, I was appearing on cable news, and a social media debate raged for weeks.
Israeli soldiers confiscated computer equipment and client files in a dawn raid on Defense for Children International – Palestine’s main office in Al-Bireh on July 29. (Source: DCIP)
A trustee of a Jewish family foundation that has contributed to Palestinian and Israeli civil society, Dr. Rothchild raises concerns over developments that signal danger for the human rights sector globally.
By Alice Rothchild | Alliance Magazine | Mar 17, 2022
By trying to intimidate us into silence and inaction, the Israeli government is making us complicit in harming the very civilian populations that we have been charged to protect.
In recent months, the Israeli government hurled smears at Amnesty International for issuing a report concluding that Israel is imposing a system of apartheid on the Palestinian people. The government is now considering punishing the messenger by stripping Amnesty’s Israel country section of its tax-exempt status and barring Amnesty staff from entering Israel. This crackdown on nonprofits extends beyond Israel’s borders as the government’s allies push for the UK and Australia to also strip those Amnesty country sections of their charitable status. And this goes well beyond Amnesty – Israel has deported a Human Rights Watch staffer, banned Israeli human rights groups from speaking to students, and criminalized the work of six venerable Palestinian non-profit organizations, creating a chilling effect on those funding and otherwise supporting them. Israeli officials are on the record stating that the goal of designating the six Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorist’ groups is to deprive these organizations of international funding.
Facebook recently made a sharp about-turn in its policy on hate speech (credit: AFP)
Silicon Valley’s decision to allow anti-Russia threats reveals it as little more than a propaganda arm of the West
By Jonathan Cook | Middle East Eye | Mar 18, 2022
Silicon Valley’s rank hypocrisy in allowing hate speech against Russia and Russians is particularly evident when compared with the special protections put in place by tech firms to block criticism of Israel and Israelis.
Silicon Valley has rammed through a series of changes over the past few days at dizzying speed, making explicit what should already have been obvious: Social media firms have rapidly become little more than propaganda arms of the United States and its allies.
That role has been increasingly difficult to conceal as western politicians and traditional media outlets have whipped up anti-Russia hysteria over the past three weeks, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, October 30th, 2018. (credit: Juergen Schwenkenbecher /AP)
The Citizenship and Entry Into Israel law impacts thousands of families.
By Alex Kane | Jewish Currents Tuesday News Bulletin | Mar 15, 2022
“We’re talking about a law that basically tells Palestinians, ‘You are not equal.’ It tells them, ‘You cannot gain citizenship. You don’t have the privilege that we grant Jews coming from abroad.’” — Adi Mansour, an attorney for Adalah- The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
On Friday, Israel’s Knesset approved a law reauthorizing a ban on giving Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens permanent residency status. Passed with 45 Knesset members in favor and 15 opposed, the Citizenship and Entry Into Israel law impacts thousands of families, though the exact number is unclear. It bars Palestinians living in the West Bank or Gaza who are married to Israeli citizens from gaining the legal benefits foreign spouses typically receive in liberal democracies. (The law also applies to citizens of so-called “enemy states”—Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—but in practice it mostly impacts Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza.)
Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, along with Rep. Cori Bush, remain among only a handful of BDS supporters in federal office. (credit: Adam Bettcher / Getty Images)
While U.S. politicians have jumped over themselves to sanction Russia back to the Stone Age, widespread anti-BDS sentiment among politicians has advocates iced out of public debate.
By Joseph Gedeon | Politico | Mar 7, 2022
“But whereas the international community mobilized swiftly to confront Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, it has done very little to roll back Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, [and the] Golan Heights. It’s exactly this lack of any real accountability or constraint on Israel, that ultimately led to the BDS movement.” — Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute
As the prospect of a Russian invasion into Ukraine was inching closer to reality, the U.S. took proactive steps with its allies to coordinate more concentrated sanctions against Moscow. And when the war erupted, the U.S. announced it was ready to impose stiffer sanctions, including freezing U.S. assets held by Russian banks, enforcing restrictions on high-tech imports and seizing oligarchs’ homes, planes and yachts.
The tough rhetoric and swift reprisals have been embraced by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who have called for sanctions to decimate Russia’s economy. To some longtime advocates of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement meant to target Israel’s economy amid bloody conflicts with Palestinians, those calls sound eerily familiar.
Please join our brothers and sisters at the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice on the 19th year anniversary of the day Rachel Corrie was killed protesting the demolition of Palestinian housing in Gaza. Amnesty International recently published a report calling “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.” We would like to invite the community to attend a zoom webinar on “Holding Israel Accountable,” featuring voices and perspectives from the Palestinian Diaspora, solidarity groups, and current actions being taken in the United States and internationally. Co-hosted by the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.
Hatem Abudayyeh, son of Palestinian immigrants, Executive Director of Arab American Action Network (AAAN) and part of US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN)
Lubna Alzaroo, Lecturer at the University of Washington currently researching the connections between settler colonial infrastructure, necropolitics, and the environment in the U.S. and Palestinian context
Josh Ruebner, Director of Government Relations, Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and adjunct lecturer in Justice and Peace Studies at Georgetown University
Vladimir Putin speaks at a televised press conference broadcast in Ukraine, February 25th, 2022. (credit: Igor Golovniov / SOPA Images / Sipa USA)
The arguments Russia’s government deploys to dehumanize Ukrainians are strikingly similar to the ones Israel’s government uses to dehumanize Palestinians.
By Peter Beinart | Jewish Currents | Mar 8, 2022
Official Russian and Israeli discourse differs in at least one important way. Putin argues that Ukrainians are really Russians, who must be dominated and absorbed. Meir and Netanyahu never argued that Palestinians are really Israelis or Jews.
In the days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians and their supporters have been lionized for the same forms of resistance to oppression for which Palestinians are routinely condemned. Western television networks have approvingly broadcast video of Ukrainians assembling Molotov cocktails. Governors who signed legislation penalizing boycotts of Israel have promoted boycotts of Russia. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced last month that he would join a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council because “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscores the Council’s mission to promote human rights and respond when they are violated or abused,” the Palestinian American writer Yousef Munayyer noted that the US had left the Council because it “didn’t want to see accountability for human rights abuses and violations of law committed by Israel.”
Read about the amazing Palestinian women resisting Israeli apartheid.
By Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) | BDS | Mar 8, 2022
One cannot stand against the oppression of women without standing with Palestinian women.
Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and here at the BDS movement want to take this opportunity to celebrate the role of women in the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.
For decades, women have played a pivotal role in the popular resistance to Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism. Since May 2021, Palestinians across historic Palestine and in the diaspora have risen up in unity against Israel’s sustained, brutal attacks and ongoing ethnic cleansing. From Al-Naqab to Sheikh Jarrah to Gaza and beyond, images of brave Palestinian women resisting racist oppression and dispossession have been broadcast around the world.
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