Author: KPSC

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”

Ilhan Omar’s tweets signaled that the conversation about Israel is changing, as disadvantaged American minorities, including blacks and Muslims, overcome a range of inhibitions — including the fear of being called anti-Semitic — and begin to speak frankly on the Israel/Palestine question.

By Adam Shatz | London Review of Books | Apr 18, 2019

A significant portion of the anti-occupation movement in the US is Jewish, notably the group Jewish Voice for Peace, staunch supporters of BDS. [It] is only partly right to say that diaspora Judaism has ceased to supply the West with a critical conscience.

Israel’s legislative elections on 9 April were a tribute to Binyamin Netanyahu’s transformation of the political landscape.​ At no point were they discussed in terms of which candidates might be persuaded by (non-existent) American pressure, or the “international community,” to end the occupation. This time it was a question of which party leader could be trusted by Israeli Jews — Palestinian citizens of Israel are now officially second-class — to manage the occupation, and to expedite the various tasks that the Jewish state has mastered: killing Gazans, bulldozing homes, combatting the scourge of BDS, and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

With his promise to annex the West Bank, Netanyahu had won even before the election was held. It wasn’t simply Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights that sped the incumbent on his way; it was the nature of the conversation — and the fact that the leader of the opposition was Benny Gantz, the IDF commander who presided over the 2014 “Operation Protection Edge,” in which more than 2,000 Gazans were killed.

Continue reading “Trump’s America, Netanyahu’s Israel”

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 (May 3)”

By Allison Deger | Mondoweiss | Apr 16, 2019

‘Israel portrays itself as the region’s only democracy, but is set to deport a rights defender over his peaceful advocacy. The decision sends the chilling message that those who criticize the involvement of businesses in serious abuses in Israeli settlements risk being barred from Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.’
— Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch

An Israeli court upheld a ruling to deport Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir on Tuesday over his advocacy calling on online booking agents to cease providing platforms for rentals in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The decision marks the first time Israel has taken steps to ban staff for Human Rights Watch from operating in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in more than three decades of monitoring work.

The Jerusalem District court said it agreed with a decision from 2018 where the Israeli government ordered to revoke Shakir’s work visa over alleged violations of a 2017 law that bans foreign nationals who support boycotts against Israel and the settlements. The measure was deeply contested at the time, passing with 46 votes in favor and 28 against. The main opponents were legislatures who take part in a boycott of settlement products and panned the law’s lack of distinction between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Continue reading “Israel court upholds deportation of Human Rights Watch director”

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 (May 3)”

lhan Omar went to Washington to shake up the status quo, so why is she adopting the discredited two-state solution, which is a fancy way of saying racial segregation and apartheid?

By Alexander Rubinstein | Mint Press News | Apr 9, 2019

Let’s be clear: the sole purpose of the so-called ‘two-state solution’ is to perpetuate Israeli apartheid by keeping ethnically cleansed Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland and birthright solely and exclusively for being the wrong religion. It’s pure racism.

Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) — Congress’ fiercest critic of the Zionist lobby and the apartheid policies of Israel — has come out in support of a two-state solution, a weak and outdated proposition that has long been doomed.

Increasingly, Palestinians are recognizing that a single secular democratic state with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis is the only way forward — and so too are advocates in the West, including American Jews. We welcome Rep. Omar to join us in this righteous cause with open arms. Continue reading “Ilhan Omar should embrace the one-state solution”

Sovereignty would almost certainly lead to a nightmare of one kind or another for Israel, like a rise in violence and international condemnation.

By David Halbfinger | The New York Times | Apr 7, 2019

If Palestinians in annexed territory are not granted citizenship, it could pave the way for the kind of apartheid state that two-state supporters have long warned against.

As Israelis get ready to go to the polls on Tuesday, a stark, fateful and long-deferred choice has suddenly reappeared to confront them after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unexpected promise to begin extending sovereignty over the West Bank if he is re-elected.

Do voters want to make permanent their country’s control over the West Bank and its 2.6 million Palestinian inhabitants? Or do they want to keep alive the possibility that a Palestinian state could be carved out there one day?

That question has been made newly urgent by Mr. Netanyahu, who is facing a career-threatening challenge from a unified centrist party headed by a team of former army chiefs. His shocking announcement about Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank appeared to be a last-ditch effort to rally his right-wing base and stay in power.

Continue reading “Netanyahu puts the future of the West Bank on the ballot”

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 (May 3)”