Author: KPSC

Palestinians mark Land Day on March 30th and it is personal.

By Yousef Aljamal | Politics Today | Mar 30, 2021

The relationship a peasant has with the land is like the relationship between a mother and her children. It is deep and interconnected in a way that a settler-colonial society can never understand.

When in 1948 Zionist militias invaded the village of Aqer, where my family is originally from, my great-grandfather was one of a few poorly equipped fighters who tried to stop the invading forces. The fighters took up posts at the village school, located nearly a kilometer from the village.

Soon after, and after some resistance, the invading militia took over the school, killing the fighters who remained inside, including my great-grandfather, who was found dead inside the building. My grandfather buried his father in the village graveyard only to become a refugee for the rest of his life in Gaza days later.

Continue reading “On Land Day in Palestine: Our home is our land”

A new book explores why many on the left in the US exempt Palestinians from their value set.

By Khaled Elgindy | Responsible Statecraft | Mar 22, 2021

…not only are self-styled progressives silent on Palestinian rights, but many also actively support policies that perpetuate Palestinian suffering and dehumanization.

While support for Israel across the political spectrum remains strong in Washington, the traditional bipartisan consensus in favor of unconditional support for Israel has begun to fray in recent years. More than a half century of Israeli occupation, the rightward drift in Israeli politics, and shifts in the American political landscape, have led growing numbers of Americans, particularly left-leaning Democrats, to become more vocal in their support for Palestinian rights and in their opposition to unconditional support for Israel. This trend has been anything but uniform, however, as the bulk of American liberal and progressive politicians continue to adhere to the traditional pro-Israel orthodoxy.

It is this group that is the focus of the new book, “Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics,” by Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick. “Except for Palestine” is a timely and compelling treatise on the moral failings of U.S. policy and American politics in relation to Israel/Palestine.

Continue reading “Challenging Israel’s exceptionalism in American politics”

In the fourth attempt, neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his opponents have a clear path to power. An Islamist party has emerged as a possible kingmaker.

By Patrick Kingsley and Adam Rasgon | The New York Times |  Mar 24, 2020

An independent Arab party has never been part of an Israeli government before, although some Arab lawmakers supported Yitzhak Rabin’s government from the outside in the 1990s.

JERUSALEM — After a fourth Israeli election in two years appears to have ended in another stalemate, leaving many Israelis feeling trapped in an endless loop, there was at least one surprising result on Wednesday: An Arab political party has emerged as a potential kingmaker.

Even more surprising, the party was Raam, an Islamist group with roots in the same religious movement as Hamas, the militant group that runs the Gaza Strip. For years, Raam was rarely interested in working with the Israeli leadership and, like most Arab parties, was ostracized by its Jewish counterparts.

Continue reading “Israel’s election ended in another mess. Could an Arab party break the deadlock?”

Mark Braverman on Peter Beinart, Liberal Zionism and the Battle for Palestine.

By Mark Braverman | Tikkun  | Mar 18 2021

 The “separate regimes delusion” has been a key element of the almost five-decades long “peace process” to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

In January, 2021, Jerusalem-based journalist and analyst Nathan Thrall called out the Zionist left for promoting the fiction that as long as Israel refrains from annexing occupied Palestinian land, it does not cross the line into apartheid (“The Separate Regimes Delusion: Nathan Thrall on Israel’s Apartheid,” London Review of Books January 21, 2021). “The premise that Israel is a democracy,” he wrote, “rests on the belief that one can separate the pre-1967 state from the rest of the territory under its control.” The “separate regimes delusion” has been a key element of the almost five-decades long “peace process” to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. As Israel has continued to take land and impose a system of control and fragmentation that has made the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state impossible, liberal Zionists have clung desperately to the fiction of the “two-state solution” as all that stands in the way of the now undeniable reality that Israel and its occupied territories comprise a single apartheid state. Accordingly, a storm of protest erupted in response to the Knesset’s green lighting of the annexation of an additional 30% of the West Bank in early summer 2020. It was in the midst of this controversy that Peter Beinart’s “Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine” appeared in the July 7, 2020 edition of Jewish Currents. Cutting the Gordian knot of a Jewish and democratic Israel, Beinart endorsed the idea of a single state for Jews and Palestinians.

Continue reading “The Tormented Dance of the Colonizer:”

On Friday March 5, between 10,000-20,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in Umm al-Fahm against police abuse and neglect, as months of violence reached a boiling point.

By Yoav Haifawi | Mondoweiss | Mar 5, 2021

In those areas that were occupied by Israel in 1948, Palestinians are officially citizens of Israel but the state still relates to them as “internal enemy”.

The combined problem of a hostile racist government and the growing prevalence of organized crime are haunting the Palestinian Arab society within the green line. The lack of personal security is multiplied by the feeling that there is no one to turn to for protection when your life is in danger. In the last few years there have been many struggles against organized crime and against the Israeli police giving free hand to the criminal gangs to terrorize the Arab population, while at the same time the police acts with excessive violence against people who are struggling for their rights or even against ordinary Arab citizens.The Israeli Police force used tools that killed and inflicted evere harm to disperse the demonstrations, which is in violation of international standards and is classified as a crime where the perpetrators must be held accountable.

On Friday March 5, I took part in one of the biggest demonstrations of this kind. It was held in Umm al-Fahm, the main Palestinian town in the northern Triangle area. The protest was a high point in a long struggle of the people of the region, led by “al-Herak al-Fahmawi al-Muwahad” – “The United Fahmawi Movement.” This movement started following the regular occurrence of violence from armed gangs against local citizens as well as the murder attempt against Dr. Suleiman Aghbaria, a former mayor and one of the leaders of the Islamic Movement, in January 2021.

Read the full article here →

The Biden administration, the International Criminal Court and the dangerous theology of American exceptionalism.

By Peter Beinart | The Beinart Notebook | Mar 8, 2021

“We firmly oppose and are disappointed by the ICC prosecutor’s announcement of an investigation into the Palestinian situation.”
— Ned Price, US State Department spokesperson

A remarkable exchange took place last Wednesday at the State Department. Asked about the International Criminal Court’s decision to launch an investigation into Israeli and Palestinian crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, State Department spokesman Ned Price began dutifully reciting his lines: “We firmly oppose and are disappointed by the ICC prosecutor’s announcement of an investigation into the Palestinian situation. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”

Price wasn’t making an argument—he never explained why Israeli security necessitates impunity for war crimes, or why the court’s investigation is unfair. He was reading a script. He sounded like a Soviet commissar delivering statistics on the wheat harvest.

Continue reading “American exceptionalism as magical thinking”

Officials recognize there is a real risk of prosecution over the deadly 2014 conflict.

By Peter Beaumont | The Guardian | Mar 3, 2021

If this conflict was different from previous wars, however, it was in the immediate recognition by some Israeli officials that there was a serious risk of investigation by the ICC that could ultimately lead to Israeli soldiers and politicians in the chain of command being investigated for war crimes

The date of 13 June 2014 listed by the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, as the starting point for its investigation into potential war crimes committed by Israelis and Palestinians is a significant one.

The day before, as that year’s World Cup opened, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by a Hamas cell on the West Bank while hitchhiking in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Tensions escalated rapidly: Israel would within weeks launch its third war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip while Palestinian militants would launch rockets into Israel.

It was one of the deadliest conflicts between the two sides in decades. On the Palestinian side, more than 2,100 people – including civilians – were killed during 50 days of fighting. On the Israeli side, 67 Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed.

Continue reading “Why Israel fears the ICC war crimes investigation”

A conversation between Peter Beinart and Ben Rhodes discussing the realities of lobbying efforts by Israeli and Palestinian groups.

By Foundation for Middle East Peace | Feb 10, 2021

Peter Beinart speaks to Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor from 2009-2017, about working on Israel, Palestine, and Iran in the Obama Administration. Rhodes draws insights from interactions with different lobby groups, presidential travel to Israel and a memorable meeting with young Palestinians in Ramallah, and talks about navigating the assumption by Israel advocates that Blackness translates into sympathy for Palestinians living under oppression. Beinart and Rhodes end the conversation with a discussion of the Biden administration and Democratic foreign policy advisors’ approaches to the IHRA definition of antisemitism and Democrats’ longstanding commitment to the concept of the two state solution. Ben Rhodes’s new book, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, will be out in June 2021.

Continue reading “Occupied Thoughts: Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes with Peter Beinart”

The Philos Project is the latest Christian Zionist organization seeking to drive a wedge between Muslim and Christian Arabs.

By Rev. Alex Awad & Haher Massis | Mondoweiss | Feb 19, 2021

As Arab Christians, we say to the Philos Project that we refuse to be swayed by an ideology that seeks to separate us from our Muslim brothers and sisters.

The Philos Project is a well-financed outfit that is repackaging a worn-out colonial missionary ideology in a revamped format. With the financial backing of well known pro-Israel donors, the organization purports to “equip a new generation of Western Christians to support … liberty and justice” in the “Near East.” It does this by organizing highly subsidized tours of Israel and some Arab countries; pamphlets, podcasts, and video documentaries; and “networking and advocacy opportunities.”

It seems targeted to younger people and minorities who are less likely to swallow a straight-up Christian Zionist ideology that is totally oblivious to any kind of “worldly” rights. Similar to some of the more sophisticated figures on the right wing of the American political spectrum, it borrows from civil rights language to advance its agenda. For example, its Facebook page features a quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr, attacking antisemitism, next to another quotation from Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Danon’s political views are well to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu’s, so much so that an Op-Ed in the Times of Israel said: “It is hard to conceive of a more short-sighted, shameful and damaging appointment than that of [Danny Danon as] UN envoy.”

Continue reading “The Philos Project: a modern version of a colonial missionary project for the Arab world”