The incoming government looks to be the most right-wing in Israel’s history, forcing Benjamin Netanyahu into a diplomatic balancing act between his coalition and Western allies. (credit: AP)
By Diana Buttu | The New York Times | Dec 13, 2022
If there is any silver lining to our grim situation, it might be that the rise of Mr. Ben-Gvir and his fellow extremists will open the eyes of more Americans.
HAIFA, Israel — As the prime minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, finalizes the formation of Israel’s most extreme right-wing government to date, I, along with other Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories, am filled with dread about what the next few years will bring.
Every day since the elections, Palestinians wake up with a “What now?” apprehension, and more often than not, there’s yet another bit of news that adds to our anxiety. The atmosphere of racism is so acute that I hesitate to speak or read Arabic on public transportation. Palestinian rights have been pushed to the back burner.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the J Street National Conference in Washington, DC, December 4th, 2022. (credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)
At the J Street Conference this past weekend, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a speech fit for AIPAC.
By Peter Beinart | Jewish Currents | Dec 6, 2022
Blinken didn’t say that settlements violate international law—another longstanding US position that Trump overturned and the Biden administration has failed to restore.
When J Street announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was speaking at its national conference, it raised the possibility that the Biden administration had finally had enough. Faced with an incoming Israeli government dedicated not merely to entrenching Israel’s control over millions of stateless Palestinians but willing to threaten those who resist with expulsion, perhaps the Biden administration finally found the contradiction between its words and its actions too great to bear. Since taking office, the president has repeatedly vowed that “human rights will be the center of our foreign policy”—even as his administration stood by while Israel criminalized Palestinian human rights groups and demolished homes in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank. Maybe when faced with the prospect of continuing to unconditionally subsidize a government that not only practiced apartheid but flirted with mass ethnic cleansing, the Biden administration would finally change course.
“Facial Recognition” by mikemacmarketing is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Despite their connections to apartheid, Israeli tech companies like Oosto continue to find support from foreign investors and governments, including the United States. The double standard towards Israeli tech perpetuates a culture of oppression targeting Palestinians.
By Jack Dodson | Mondoweiss | Dec 4, 2022
Biden’s proposed AI Bill of Rights exemplifies the double standards the U.S. government, financial, and corporate sectors employ when it comes to technology and human rights.
Bruce Reed, deputy chief of staff to United States President Joe Biden, took the stage at a press event on October 4 to celebrate a milestone for his administration. They would be releasing a blueprint for use of artificial intelligence that would guide future policies around its ethical use.
“Most Americans think Washington can be better at artificial than at intelligence, but this is a group that got it right,” Reed said, before arguing that tech should be used to strengthen democracy rather than undermine it. “We’re kicking off this work, leading by example, with real commitments from across the federal government.”
Israeli far-right Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks on his cellphone during his visit to the Al Aqsa Compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 31st, 2022. (credit: Ilia Yefimovich/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Image)
The November 2022 elections has given Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir, a follower of far-right ideologue Meir Kahane the promise of realizing ideas like the forced expulsion of Palestinians and leftists.
By Joshua Leifer | Jewish Currents | Sept 23, 2022
He represents in his person the possibility of reconciling Zionism’s ego and id, of fully unleashing the violent ethnonationalism that the rule of law both channels and represses.
Early last week, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the 46-year-old lawyer and leader of Israel’s extreme-right Jewish Power party, released a short campaign video on social media. “This is a clip you must watch to the end,” he tweeted. The video shows a succession of short quotes attributed to “B.G.,” set against grainy black-and-white footage from the early days of Zionist settlement in British Mandate Palestine. “The Bible is the soul of the Jewish People, from its beginning and for all the generations,” reads one quote. “One does not receive a land, one conquers it,” reads another. “If you put all the values in the world on one hand, and the existence of Israel on the other, I would choose Israel’s existence,” reads a third. At the end, Ben-Gvir himself appears in the frame, wearing a suit and tie, his usually conspicuous yarmulke now only barely visible on the back of his head. “I agree with every word, yet it wasn’t I who said these, but a different B.G.,” he smiles. Then, as a picture of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding leader, appears in the foreground alongside Ben-Gvir, he says, “Let’s get Israel back on track.”
Benjamin Netanyahu (credit: Amit Elkayam for The New York Times)
By Thomas L. Friedman | The New York Times | Nov 4, 2022
“What we are seeing is a shift in the hawkish right from a political identity built on focusing on the ‘enemy outside’ — the Palestinians — to the ‘enemy inside’ — Israeli Arabs,” — Moshe Halbertal, Hebrew University
Imagine you woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman.
“Impossible,” you would say. Well, think again.
As I’ve noted before, Israeli political trends are often a harbinger of wider trends in Western democracies — Off Broadway to our Broadway. I hoped that the national unity government that came to power in Israel in June 2021 might also be a harbinger of more bipartisanship here. Alas, that government has now collapsed and is being replaced by the most far-far-right coalition in Israel’s history. Lord save us if this is a harbinger of what’s coming our way.
Settlers are seen assaulting a woman near the West Bank town of Kisan, October 18, 2022. (credit: WAFA)
By Miko Peled | MintPress News | Nov 21, 2022
The military is there to assist the settlers, not protect the Palestinian civilians who they are constantly terrorizing.
Saturday, November 19, 2022, was according to Jewish tradition Shabat Chayei Sarah – the Shabbos, or Saturday commemorating the death and burial of the biblical matriarch Sarah. In the biblical story, her husband Abraham purchased her burial plot in the ancient city of Al-Khalil. According to Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, the “commemoration” events that Al-Khalil has been subjected to over the last few decades have nothing to do with Jewish tradition, only, “Zionist Embellishments.”
Al-Khalil, or Hebron in Hebrew, is the largest city in the West Bank, with close to a quarter of a million residents. The Old City part of Al-Khalil, also known as H-2, is a beautiful place, with narrow alleyways and architecture that bears witness to the centuries of grandeur it enjoys, the fourth-holiest city in Islamic tradition. Around 25,000 Palestinians and close to 800 Jewish settlers live in the old city. The settlers are vile, racist and violent to a point where 800 of them are able to terrorize thousands of their Palestinian neighbors.
Itamar Ben-Gvir (L), Benjamin Netanyahu (C) and Bezalel Smotrich. (credit: The Palestine Chronicle)
Continued support for Israel clearly contradicts the supposed US commitment to human rights, dignity, and justice.
By Alice Rothchild | The Palestine Chronicle | Nov 17, 2022
The recent election in Israel has resulted in historically the most racist, ultranationalist, homophobic, religiously fundamentalist parties joining in a coalition to govern.
The predicted Republican tsunami now turned red puddle revealed that despite gerrymandering, voter suppression, and massive amounts of right-wing billionaire money and disinformation, US voters have major qualms about a MAGA universe engulfing the country.
On state and national levels, voters mostly rejected takeovers by election deniers and conspiracy promoters, and voiced support for abortion rights, increased wages, marijuana legalization, and candidates who have some degree of experience and qualifications rather than celebrity status and allegiance to the former president.
This election can be contrasted with one of the US’s most important allies, a country Biden and numerous elected officials have repeatedly pledged almost total allegiance to and billions in military and political support.
Democratic House candidate Summer Lee in Pittsburgh last May. (Credit: Rebecca Droke/AP)
By Ben Samuels| Haaretz | Nov 9, 2022
The biggest highlight from an American-Jewish perspective was perhaps in Pennsylvania…
WASHINGTON – Irrespective of whether they ultimately control the House and/or the Senate, Tuesday’s midterms turned out to be a major disappointment for the Republican Party. The anticipated red wave became a trickle, with extremist GOP candidates embroiled in antisemitism controversies soundly defeated across the country.
The biggest highlight from an American-Jewish perspective was perhaps in Pennsylvania, where Jewish Democrat Josh Shapiro triumphed over Donald Trump-endorsed Doug Mastriano in the state’s much-publicized gubernatorial race.
Right-wing Israeli politician Itamar Ben Gvir interacts with supporters in a Jerusalem market ahead of the general election on October 28, 2022. (credit: Ilia Yefimovich / DPA via Zuma Press / APA Images)
The fascistic messianic right declared its grip over the Israeli Jewish psyche in this week’s elections. Now, a political crisis awaits liberal Zionists and the United States
By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Nov 2, 2022
“There will be a third intifada,” — shopkeeper in East Jerusalem
It was hard not to witness the death of hope in Jerusalem on Tuesday night. Those who held out hope that the Israeli system would somehow resist the right, and exhibit tolerance — that hope was dashed by the Israeli election, in which the fascistic messianic right declared its grip over the Israeli Jewish psyche.
Exit polls show the explicitly-anti-Palestinian party Religious Zionism at 13 or 14 seats in the parliament, making it the third largest party. When official votes are released, the party will likely be in position to put the largest vote-getter, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose right-wing Likud Party polls at about 31 seats, back in the prime minister’s job after 18 months absence.
Asharaf Mahmoud Amour inspects the ruins of his demolished home in the West Bank village of Letwani (credit: David Hearst / MEE)
From the farmers of the South Hebron Hills under attack by settlers to the armed groups of Jenin Camp facing nightly raids, a new wave of West Bank resistance is building.
By David Hearst | Middle East Eye | Oct 10, 2022
“They are trying to present to the world that we are terrorists. Who are the terrorists? We are trying to stay in our homes.” — Asharaf Mahmoud Amour, Letwani villager whose house was demolished
The village of Letwani is the end of the road. Literally. Behind it lies a settler road which starts in Jerusalem and ends in the South Hebron Hills.
In front of it is the Masafer Yatta, an area of 30 square kilometres which Israel declared as a military firing zone in the 1980s.
Masafer Atta’s 2,500 residents are involved in daily pitched battles with settlers and soldiers.
The morning I arrived in Letwani, Asharaf Mahmoud Amour, aged 40, looked calmly at a pile of breeze blocks. It was the remains of his house. A bulldozer had demolished it a few hours before. To his amazement, the soldiers had left standing the shed to the left and the chicken house to the right, both under demolition orders.
“I will tell you where we are sleeping tonight – with the chickens and the goats,” Amour said.
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