Author: KPSC

Masks help protect from COVID-19, but there is little protection from Israeli authorities.

By Yumna Patel  | Mondoweiss  | Aug 18, 2020

Despite reports from the Ministry of Health that 60% of the total cases are in recovery, the number of new cases being reported every day are still in the hundreds.

It’s been five months since the first cases of the coronavirus were announced in the occupied Palestinian territories, and Palestinians are still struggling to fight the spread of the virus.

What began as a relatively slow burn, with no more than a few hundred cases within the first three months, quickly devolved into a rapidly growing crisis with the total number of cases in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza surpassing 23,000 cases.

Despite reports from the Ministry of Health that 60% of the total cases are in recovery, the number of new cases being reported every day are still in the hundreds. Continue reading “Palestinians in Jerusalem stuck between growing COVID-19 threat, Israeli occupation”

A historic deal for some, but many see further marginalization for Palestinians.

By Mondweiss Editors | Mondoweiss | Aug 13, 2020

Trump’s press conference on ‘historic deal’ between Israel and UAE has NO PALESTINIAN VOICE (and a room full of ALL MEN) and is all about increasing the pressure on Iran. This is peace?
— Medea Benjamin, Code Pink

Today the White House along with Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced a historic deal, the UAE will normalize relations with Israel; and annexation is off the table– for now. From the announcement:

Israel will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in the President’s Vision for Peace and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim World.

The deal for a “Strategic Agenda for the Middle East” is a coup for Jared Kushner, who has been pushing for political wins for his father-in-law, and open economic relations between the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia and Israel– and thereby to shove the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the margins.

Continue reading “‘There is no change in our plan’ to annex West Bank, Netanyahu says, in applauding Israeli-UAE deal that sidelines Palestinians”

The momentum continues for young progressive people of color in the Democratic Party who are speaking up for Palestine.

By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Aug 12, 2020

‘2020 was the first election year ever in which the safe side of the issue is the side that recognizes Palestinian rights and that the US can no longer stand in solidarity with apartheid in the occupied territories and Jim Crow in Israel itself.’
— M.J. Rosenberg

It’s a big news day. Senator Kamala Harris became Joe Biden’s running mate choice yesterday afternoon, and Rep. Ilhan Omar handily defeated a challenger funded by pro-Israel groups in Minnesota last night.

Omar’s victory represents an important trend: the Democratic street is progressive on Palestine. The Israel lobby is not ten feet tall. Three times in recent weeks it has tried to defeat the pro-boycott-and-sanctions movement inside the party (BDS), and been crushed. Jamaal Bowman knocked off pro-Israel heavyweight Eliot Engel in the Bronx/Westchester in June. Rep. Rashida Tlaib handily won reelection in Michigan last week. Now Omar wins by 17 points, in a race that was all about Israel.

So the “Squad” of young progressive people of color is just getting stronger and bigger in the Democratic Party.

Continue reading “The Israel lobby has lost its power to sideline critical Dems”

The issues of inequity being seen during this pandemic are also seen by Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories who suffer from high levels of structural racism and cross generational trauma.

By Alice Rothchild | Mondoweiss | Aug 8, 2020

It can be argued that race (a predominantly social construct) is not the issue– rather, that the racism within our societies where African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other people of color live and work creates the inequities and vulnerabilities that produce the racial and ethnic differences in the data that are now obvious.

Much of the analysis of COVID-19 and Palestine examines the pandemic through a political lens. Palestinians in Israel and the territories have had less access to testing and information due to their second-class citizenship and the conditions of occupation. In the West Bank and Gaza, there are significant deficits in medical resources (such as ventilators) and trained (and adequately paid) medical staff.

In general Palestinians under occupation have high rates of diseases related to stress, poverty, smoking, and poor nutrition such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. They tend to live in environments contaminated by the detritus of war and the toxics from unregulated industries (such as Israeli industrial zones in the West Bank) with high levels of asthma and cancer. They often work in jobs that cannot be done on Zoom and that provide no labor protections– notably the construction and homecare workers who travel daily to Israel from the West Bank, waiting for hours in crowded checkpoints.

Continue reading “The pandemic’s savage political revelations, from the U.S. to Palestine”

Hellbent on crafting an umbilical cord between itself and a biblical, mythical 2000-year old past, Israel has erased the ancient history of Palestinians.

By Sam Bahour | Mondoweiss | July 31, 2020

‘The Invention of Ancient Israel’ is not an easy read. It is one of those books that when you finish reading the last lines and look up you feel like you just emerged from a washing machine.

THE INVENTION OF ANCIENT ISRAEL
The Silencing of Palestinian History
By Keith W. Whitelam
296 pp. Routledge. £24.79

What do you get when you mix ten decades of biblical studies, an Old Testament, the ideology of Zionism, and a tablespoon of politically motivated archaeology, all mixed in a bowl of historical evidence? Author Keith W. Whitelam undertook this recipe and reports on the results in “The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History” (of 1997). The short answer to the question is that one is left with a toxic modern state, hell-bent on crafting an umbilical cord between itself and a mythical 2000-year old past. In other words, the State of Israel.

If no one were hurt during this process, one could just turn a blind eye and be content that, To each his own. But when the results of the recipe never produce a stable product, and an entire people are continuously being battered into oblivion, we each have a responsibility to step in and say enough is enough.

Continue reading “Man-made Israel (and the obsessive erasure of Palestinian history)”

Book review of Rashid Khalidi’s latest book, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

By Kaleem Hawa | The Nation | July 27, 2020

For as long as I have been alive, the barriers in the West to advocating for Palestinian rights have deterred all but the most committed people.

Here’s the script: Criminalize the boycotts, deport the human rights advocates, rebrand anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, smear the leftist Jews, infiltrate the leftist organizations, defund the aid programs, torpedo the political campaigns, fire the high school teachers and speech pathologists and network commentators, and pinkwash the occupation. The tactics vary today, but the intent remains the same. For as long as I have been alive, the barriers in the West to advocating for Palestinian rights have deterred all but the most committed people.

Often, as a result, the responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi, a professor at Columbia and a codirector of its Center for Palestine Studies, is one of the best known to have taken up this responsibility. An acclaimed historian and former adviser to the Palestine delegation during the Madrid talks in 1991, he has written about the origins of Arab nationalism, American Cold War policy in the Middle East, the construction of Palestinian identity, and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He has also played an important role in representing Palestinians in Western media and in mentoring a growing generation of Palestinian writers and academics, including Noura Erakat and Lana Tatour.

Continue reading “Present absences”

A non-profit organization that supports IDF soldiers received a $2.5 million PPP loan under the guise of a “religious organization,” but adds up to a mere pittance of the continued bonanza of American tax-payer dollars flowing to the apartheid state.

By Raul Diego | MintPress News | July 24, 2020

From aiding the wholesale dispossession of Palestinian lands by Israeli settlers to killing children with targeted headshots, the Israeli Defense Forces are anything but a boon for humanity.

A non-profit organization that “that provides for wellbeing of the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)” was awarded a $2.5 million forgivable PPP loan by the (Small Business Administration) SBA. The Friends of Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF) is the only organization “authorized to represent the IDF across the United States and Panama” where they claim to operate 20 regional offices, with a P.O. Box in New York.

The FIDF’s loan was filed under the category of “religious organization” in the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan data, despite the NPO being listed as a Y12 organization under the IRS’ NTEE classification system for non-profits: a “Mutual/Membership Benefit Organization,” which (in the case of FIDF) raises funds for issues relating to “foreign affairs and national security,” according to the tax-exempt organizations database published by ProPublica.

Continue reading “Friends of the IDF lobby group secures forgivable US COVID loans for Israeli soldiers”

The Jewish National Fund is a thriving relic of Europe’s colonial past, even if today it wears the garb of an environmental charity. As recent events show, ethnic cleansing is still what it excels at.

By Jonathan Cook | Mondoweiss | July 22, 2020

But the JNF’s expulsion activities did not end in 1948, when Israel was established through a bloody war on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland – an event Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The Jewish National Fund, established more than 100 years ago, is perhaps the most venerable of the international Zionist organizations. Its recent honorary patrons have included prime ministers, and it advises UN forums on forestry and conservation issues.

It is also recognized as a charity in dozens of western states. Generations of Jewish families, and others, have contributed to its fundraising programs, learning as children to drop saved pennies into its trademark blue boxes to help plant a tree.

And yet its work over many decades has been driven by one main goal: to evict Palestinians from their homeland.

Continue reading “Israel’s Jewish National Fund is uprooting Palestinians – not planting trees”