Author: KPSC

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Mideast Focus Ministry for their First Friday Film series.

	Date:	Friday, May 3, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	St. Mark’s Cathedral Bloedel Hall 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	Free Admission

Event Details

When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a young woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family, and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. Naila and the Uprising chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh and a fierce community of women at the frontlines, whose stories weave through the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history — the First Intifada in the late 1980s.

Using evocative animation, intimate interviews, and exclusive archival footage, this film brings out of anonymity the courageous women activists who have remained on the margins of history — until now. While most images of the First Intifada paint an incomplete picture of stone-throwing young men front and center, this film tells the story that history overlooked — of an unbending, nonviolent women’s movement at the head of Palestine’s struggle for freedom. Continue reading “Film: Naila and the Uprising (Friday)”

Please join our brothers and sisters for this exciting evening with Peter Beinart.

	Date:	Thursday, May 23, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	Temple de Hirsch Sinai 1511 E Pike St Seattle, WA 98122
	Information & Registration:	Event information here →

Event Details

Join us for a discussion with Peter Beinart, a prominent columnist for The Atlantic and the Forward. He will share his thoughts on anti-semitism, the changing conversation on Israel in the Jewish community, the results of the Israeli election and more.

Peter Beinart is Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York. He is also a contributor to The Atlantic, a Senior Columnist at The Forward, a CNN Political Commentator and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He has written three books, The Good Fight, The Icarus Syndrome and The Crisis of Zionism.

Beinart has written for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, the Boston Globe and other prominent publications. Beinart became The New Republic’s managing editor in 1995. He became the magazine’s Senior Editor in 1997, and from 1999 to 2006 served as its Editor.

This event is co-sponsored by J Street, Kavana Cooperative, Temple Beth Am, Temple de Hirsch Sinai and Congregation Beth Shalom.

More information here →

The Minnesota lawmaker urged American Muslims to act like citizens, not guests. Other religious minorities should take note.

By Peter Beinart | The Atlantic | Apr 15, 2019

‘You can go to school and be a good student. You can listen to your dad and mom and become a doctor. You can have that beautiful wedding that makes mom and dad happy. You can buy that beautiful house.
‘But none of that stuff matters if you one day show up to the hospital and your wife or maybe yourself is having a baby and you can’t have the access that you need because someone doesn’t recognize you as fully human.’
— Ilhan Omar

I watched Ilhan Omar’s recent address to the Council of American Islamic Relations for the same reason most people did: to see whether she had—as Donald Trump claimed—minimized the 9/11 terrorist attacks. What I found was unexpected. In offering a vision for how to live as an American Muslim, her speech to CAIR beautifully evoked what I treasure about being an American Jew.

Omar’s core argument was simple: We Muslims are not guests here. We are as American as everyone else and, thus, we should bring our full selves into the public square. “For a really long time in this country,” she said, “we have been told that there is a privilege that we are given and it might be taken away. We are told that we should be appropriate. We should go to school, get an education, raise our children and not bother anyone, not make any kind of noise, don’t make anyone uncomfortable.”

Continue reading “Ilhan Omar’s deeply American message”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Mideast Focus Ministry for their First Friday Film series.

	Date:	Friday, May 3, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	St. Mark’s Cathedral Bloedel Hall 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	Free Admission

Event Details

When a nation-wide uprising breaks out in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, a young woman in Gaza must make a choice between love, family, and freedom. Undaunted, she embraces all three, joining a clandestine network of women in a movement that forces the world to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. Naila and the Uprising chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh and a fierce community of women at the frontlines, whose stories weave through the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history — the First Intifada in the late 1980s.

Using evocative animation, intimate interviews, and exclusive archival footage, this film brings out of anonymity the courageous women activists who have remained on the margins of history — until now. While most images of the First Intifada paint an incomplete picture of stone-throwing young men front and center, this film tells the story that history overlooked — of an unbending, nonviolent women’s movement at the head of Palestine’s struggle for freedom. Continue reading “Film: Naila and the Uprising (Friday)”

Laws penalize companies that cut ties with Israeli settlements.

By Human Rights Watch | Apr 23, 2019

‘States with anti-boycott laws are effectively telling companies that if you do the right thing and disentangle yourselves from settlement abuses, you can’t do business with us. States should encourage, not sanction, companies that avoid contributing to rights abuses.’
— Andrea Prasow, deputy US advocacy director at Human Rights Watch

Many United States states are using anti-boycott laws and executive orders to punish companies that refuse to do business with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Human Rights Watch said today. More than 250 million Americans, some 78 percent of the population, live in states with anti-boycott laws or policies.

Twenty-seven states have adopted laws or policies that penalize businesses, organizations, or individuals that engage in or call for boycotts against Israel. The laws or policies in 17 of those states explicitly target not only companies that refuse to do business in or with Israel, but also those that refuse to do business in Israeli settlements. Some states whose laws do not explicitly apply to settlements have also penalized companies that cut settlement ties. . . .

Continue reading “States use anti-boycott laws to punish responsible businesses”

The 15-year-old was detained for suspicion of throwing a stone, then shot while trying to run away.

By Yotam Berger | Haaretz | Apr 21, 2019

‘I told them [Israeli soldiers] that we have to help him or else he’ll die. Me and another guy took the boy, and others [Israeli soldiers] began shooting in the air.’
— Musa Hamid, age 50

Israeli soldiers shot on Thursday a restrained Palestinian teenager they had detained for suspected stone-throwing as he was attempting to flee, although he was blindfolded and handcuffed.

The soldiers pursued the detainee near the Palestinian village of Tekoa in the West Bank. At the time of the shooting, the suspect was blindfolded and handcuffed, while he made an attempt to flee.

The suspect was kept detained at the scene even after he had been shot, however, after clashes between soldiers and Palestinians at the scene, the Palestinians evacuated the suspect to receive medical treatment.

Continue reading “Israeli soldiers shoot handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian teenager”

In an interview with a Palestinian newspaper, the president’s son-in-law revealed himself to be either strikingly naive — or deeply cynical.

By Philip Gordon and Prem Kumar | The Atlantic | Jun 25, 2018

(Although almost a year old, this article remains well worth reading. — Eds.)

But the reality is that under present circumstances, with the current Israeli and Palestinian governments, at this point the two-state solution is itself a fantasy. Neither the Palestinian nor Israeli people, nor their leaders, are currently prepared for the compromises required for a deal, and accentuating this reality will only make things worse.

Jared Kushner, it seems, is feeling optimistic.

On Sunday [Jun 24, 2018], in his first-ever interview with a Palestinian newspaper, the US president’s son-in-law and Middle East peace envoy said that despite appearances to the contrary, “prospects for peace are very much alive” and confirmed that the administration is getting ready to release its long-awaited plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Asked how that plan is different from previous efforts, Kushner explained he has done “a lot of listening” and is convinced the Palestinian people are “less invested in the politicians’ talking points” than they are in seeing how a deal will improve their prospects for a better life.

Continue reading “Jared Kushner’s Middle East fantasy”

While Araud has been characterized for his “bluntness,” he is a member of the Western political elite that has long shielded Israeli apartheid from scrutiny.

By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | Apr 22, 2019

‘[Israel] won’t make them [Palestinians] citizens of Israel. So they will have to make it official, which is we know the situation, which is apartheid. There will be officially an apartheid state. They are in fact already.’
— Outgoing French ambassador to the US, Gerard Araud

In an interview with The Atlantic last Friday, outgoing French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud made headlines after emphatically stating that Israel is already “an apartheid state” and that the Trump administration’s so-called “Deal of the Century” aimed at resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict is “99 percent doomed.”

Araud — whose first government post was in France’s Tel Aviv embassy, and who was the French ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006 — made the claim after being asked about his views on the Israel-Palestine “peace process.” After stating that he enjoys a “close” relationship with Jared Kushner — Trump’s son-in-law who has spent the last two years drafting a “peace plan” for the Trump administration — Araud noted that Kushner’s “proposal is very close to what the Israelis want.”

This outcome has long been noted by many media outlets based on Kushner’s close ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; his family’s role in funding illegal West Bank settlements; and, more recently, statements made by those familiar with the negotiations and the fact that the Palestinians have refused to negotiate with Kushner’s team since the Trump administration decreed Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital in December 2017.

Continue reading “Outgoing French ambassador says Trump “Deal of the Century” is DOA, calls Israel an “apartheid state””

The Trump administration bars a critic of Israel from returning to America.

By Michelle Goldberg | The New York Times | Apr 15, 2019

‘People who are confident in their beliefs do not censor others.’
— Donald Trump

‘Israel is winning the far right around the world, but it is losing its moral stature.’
— Omar Barghouti

The Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, was supposed to be on a speaking tour of the United States this week, with stops at NYU’s Washington campus and at Harvard. He was going to attend his daughter’s wedding in Texas. I had plans to interview him for “The Argument,” the debate podcast that I co-host, about BDS, the controversial campaign to make Israel pay an economic and cultural price for its treatment of the Palestinians.

Yet when Barghouti, a permanent resident of Israel, showed up for his flight from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport last week, he was informed that the United States was denying him entry. When I spoke to him on Sunday, he still didn’t know exactly why the country where he went to college and lived for many years wasn’t letting him in, but he assumed it was because of his political views. If that’s the case, Barghouti said, it was the first time someone has been barred from America for BDS advocacy. He has proceeded with his public events, but he’s been appearing at them via Skype.

Continue reading “Anti-Zionists deserve free speech, too”

An open letter from JewsWithIlhan.org

By JewsWithIlhan.org

We thank Ilhan Omar for having the bravery to shake up the congressional taboo against criticizing Israel. As Jews with a long tradition of social justice and anti-racism, AIPAC does not represent us.

We are Jews who stand with Representative Ilhan Omar.

She has been falsely accused of anti-Semitism since tweeting that GOP threats against her and Representative Rashida Tlaib for criticizing Israel were “all about the Benjamins baby.” When asked to clarify who is paying members of Congress “to be pro-Israel,” Omar replied, “AIPAC!”

There is absolutely nothing anti-Semitic about calling out the noxious role of AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which spends millions each year to buy US political support for Israeli aggression and militarism against the Palestinian people. As the NYC chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace summed up: “Accurately describing how the Israel lobby works in this country is not anti-Semitic. The never-ending smear campaign against Ilhan Omar is racism and Islamophobia in action.” Continue reading “We Stand with Ilhan”