Flags at Peace Now rally May 27, 2017, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv. (photo: Phil Weiss)
A truth telling call to moral action.
By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Dec 30, 2020
And 30 years of “peace process” later, aimed at creating a Palestinian state, the settlements continue to propagate, more than ever, engulfing Palestinian neighborhoods around Jerusalem. It’s a joke.
Dear liberal Zionist friends,
We’ve been friends for a while in a cordial but wary way, and as this tumultuous year ends, I wanted to appeal to you to change your stance. While your attitudes are well-meaning and and even idealistic, you have done nothing to change Israel’s conduct in some 40 years now; and the fact that you have not altered your messaging beyond Frustrated Wheedling with some Anger thrown in now and then is deeply disappointing to me.
The sad truth is that: You have no program at all for ending the occupation, you just hope Israel will change.
A Palestinian boy walks near Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron, on the first Friday of the Muslim month of Ramadan. July 04, 2014. (photo Nati Shohat / Flash90)
The impunity enjoyed by Israeli soldiers has fostered an increasingly trigger-prone policy against Palestinian children. Americans have ways to prevent it.
By Brad Parker | +972 Magazine | Dec 28, 2020
In analyzing these incidents, we discovered an alarming trend that began in 2014, in which Israeli forces have increasingly targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition to quash protests.
Earlier this month, an Israeli soldier shot and killed Ali Abu Aliya in the village of al-Mughayyer in the occupied West Bank, during a protest against an Israeli settlement outpost that was recently established on the village’s land. According to an investigation by Defense for Children International – Palestine, Ali was about 50 meters away from Israeli forces and did not present any threat when he was shot. He was struck in the abdomen with live ammunition and died shortly after in a Ramallah hospital. It was his 15th birthday.
Ali’s killing is disturbing, but not exceptional. Since I began working with DCI-Palestine in January 2013, we have documented 155 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces with live ammunition or crowd-control weapons. Another 570 Palestinian children have been killed in Israeli military offensives and other attacks, according to our documentation. Growing up in a hyper-militarized context, including going about daily life near Israeli settlements and barriers, Palestinian children like Ali easily become targets.
Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu in New Orleans in 2010. (photo: Israeli Government Press Office)
Here is what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.
By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Dec 24, 2020
The United States must also take early steps to deter Israeli annexation and settlement expansion by expressing unambiguous opposition to both….As part of this approach, the United States should make clear that it will not shield Israel from international consequences it might face when it takes actions, such as settlement construction, that are contrary to U.S. policy. — Center for a New American Security report
Happy holidays and a happy end to 2020! This is Phil Weiss and I’m filling in for Michael Arria on this newsletter this week, and the best value seemed to me to relay what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.
What will Biden do on the conflict? What should he do?
And there’s a consensus from Israel’s liberal supporters. Biden won’t push for a two-state solution because there won’t be a Palestinian state in the next few years (or ever!). But he will take measures that keep the idea of two states on life support. I’m a cynic about these policies; I think the two-state solution is a charade that prolongs Palestinian suffering but allows American politicians and others to maintain the claim that they stand behind Palestinian human rights. But I’m putting on my reporter’s hat here, because these are D.C. insiders.
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa greets young Palestinians as he arrives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, on December 24, 2018. The banner reads in Arabic reads: Occupation does not differentiate between Christians and Muslims. (photo: Hazem Bader / AFP / Getty Images)
Powerful conservative Christian groups overlook the plight of Palestinian Christians to avoid criticizing Israel.
By James Zogby | Common Dreams | Dec 21, 2020
To most in the West, Palestinian Christians are simply invisible. To conservative Christians, they are at best a nuisance who stand in the way of their unquestioning ideological attachment to Israel.
As we enter the final week before Christmas, my thoughts turn to Bethlehem, its struggling people, and the shocking disregard for them displayed by many Christians in the West. This is not to say that that these same Christians don’t love Bethlehem. But the city they love is the one of the story that’s 2,000 years old.
In that story, we are told of how Mary and Joseph, living under Roman occupation, were required to travel to Bethlehem to enroll in a mandatory census. Because the town had become overcrowded, Mary and Joseph could not find housing and were forced to stay in a cave where Mary gave birth to Jesus.
Raphael Warnock addresses supporters during a rally with Jon Ossoff in Atlanta, GA, December 14th, 2020. (photo: AP Photo / Ben Gray)
Raphael Warnock is the latest example of being criticized for sympathizing with the Palestinian cause and then pulling back to moderate his position.
By Peter Beinart | Jewish Currents | Dec 22, 2020
Year after year, decade after decade, these attacks have forced Black politicians to either mute their sympathy for Palestinians or risk losing a seat at the table. In this way, the Israel debate has helped keep American foreign policymaking disproportionately white.
In October, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is seeking re-election in Georgia, released an ad called “Birds of Prey” attacking her Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock. The title refers to a sermon Warnock gave during protests in the Gaza Strip in 2018, in which he accused the Israeli government of shooting “unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey.” In a statement accompanying the ad, Loeffler called Warnock “the most anti-Israel candidate anywhere in the country.” The next month, she unveiled a new commercial, which again denounced Warnock as “anti-Israel.” When the two candidates debated in December, she accused him of having “called Israel an apartheid state.”
Black politicians often face such accusations. In June, the Republican Jewish Coalition accused Jamaal Bowman, who ousted longtime incumbent Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional District, of supporting “anti-Israel policies.” In April, the right-wing Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner alleged that California Rep. Barbara Lee had “a clear anti-Israel voting record.” Last year, Republican congressional leaders demanded that Rep. Ilhan Omar be removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for her “anti-Israel statements.” In 2018, Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis called his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, “anti-Israel.” And in 2017, the American Jewish Congress sent letters to members of the Democratic National Committee warning that if they chose Congressman Keith Ellison as the party’s chair, it “could threaten the relationship between America and our ally Israel.”
Bethlehem is best known for being the hometown of King David and the birthplace of Jesus Christ. (photo: Efesenko / Getty Images)
Written towards the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is hope for a return to a new miracle afoot: a renaissance of Palestinian culture and coolness.
By Richard Morgan | BBC | April 7, 2020
…Bethlehemites have rewritten their narrative by reappropriating and reclaiming their uncertain, uneasy lives. ‘Tuz’ is far from apathetic resignation; rather a daring declaration of persistence along with the canny awareness both that art is the most seductive form of violence and that living well is the best revenge.
The Singer Café is like a lot of hipster haunts you might find in the nearby cosmopolitan corners of Israel: a family sharing a shakshuka brunch; a European traveller writing a screenplay on his laptop; and a dating couple getting to know each other over a sumptuous mezze platter. There’s striking local art on the walls, and the cafe’s whimsical, upbeat vibe is epitomised by a sign that reads “more espresso, less depresso”.
But Israelis are by and large forbidden by their government from visiting this particular oasis of cosy calm. That’s because Singer is in the suburb of Beit Sahour on the walking-distance outskirts of Bethlehem – itself on the outskirts of Jerusalem – in the occupied West Bank, which has been controlled by the Israeli military since the Six Day War of 1967. Singer serves arguably the best espresso con panna in any conflict zone on the planet.
Suhad Saidam adjusts one of her face masks on a youth at her sewing workshop in Gaza City, Monday, Dec. 14, 2020. (photo: Adel Hana / AP)
Both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a growing gap between rich and poor countries could keep vaccines from the West Bank and Gaza as the virus surges.
By Steve Hendrix and Shira Rubin | The Washington Post | Dec 18, 2020
‘Israel bears moral and humanitarian responsibility for vaccinating the Palestinian population under its control,’ — Physicians for Human Rights appeal
JERUSALEM — Israel, like many high-income countries, is moving quickly to roll out newly approved coronavirus vaccines, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to get the symbolic first shot Saturday. But next door in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the prospects for vaccinating almost 5 million Palestinians are far less certain, as financial, political and logistical hurdles could delay inoculations against the raging pandemic for months.
The split highlights not only the tense disparities between Israel and the Palestinian populations it effectively controls, but the growing divergence between vaccine haves and have-nots as the world enters the pandemic endgame.
The United States, Britain, Russia and other developed countries have already begun administering vaccines to health-care workers, the elderly and other priority groups. Other nations are receiving shipments now.
Abdul-Ghani and Fadwa Awawdeh are seen among the debris of an Israeli demolition in the Palestinian community of Humsa al-Fuqa, in the occupied West Bank, November 4, 2020. (photo: Ahmad al-Bazz / Activestills)
Blaming Palestinians for their own displacement, Democratic Majority for Israel is pushing back against its party’s criticism of the largest West Bank demolition in a decade, memo reveals.
By Alex Kane | +972 Magazine | Dec 16, 2020
‘It’s completely unjustifiable to be rationalizing kicking people out of their homes in the middle of a global pandemic,’ — Emily Mayer, political director of the anti-occupation Jewish group IfNotNow
When Israeli bulldozers stormed the West Bank community of Humsa al-Fuqa (Khirbet Humsa) and demolished its structures on Nov. 3, leaving 11 Palestinian families homeless, some Democrats in Washington, D.C. took notice.
Two weeks after the Israeli demolition, which took place under the cover of U.S. election day, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) and 39 of his Congressional colleagues sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticizing Israel’s actions as “a serious violation of international law” and an example of “creeping annexation.” Pocan’s letter also demanded that Pompeo examine whether Israel had utilized U.S.-made equipment during the demolition operation.
A picture dated before 1937 during the British Mandate in Palestine shows Arabs demonstrating in the Old City of Jerusalem against the Jewish immigration to Palestine. (photo: AFP)
Israel’s outrageous fabrications about the immigration of Arab Jews to Israel in the 1940s and ’50s are an attempt to mask the injustices meted out to Palestinians.
By Joseph Massad | Middle East Eye | Dec 15, 2020
Despite Israeli culpability in bringing about the exodus of Arab Jews from their countries, the Israeli government continues to blame it on Arab governments.
Israeli propaganda about the “expulsion” of Arab Jews from Arab countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s continues without respite. Earlier this month, Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, informed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he “intends to submit a draft resolution requiring the international body to hold an annual commemoration for the hundreds of thousands of Jews exiled from Arab countries due to the creation of the State of Israel”, according to a report in Ynet.
Israel’s fabrications about the immigration of Arab Jews to Israel are so outrageous that the country holds a commemoration on 30 November each year. This date just happens to coincide with the ethnic cleansing by Zionist gangs of Palestine, which began on 30 November 1947, a day after the UN General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan. The choice of date seeks to implicate Arab Jews in the conquest of Palestine, when most had no role in it.
Campaign Against Antisemitism rally against antisemitism. (photo: Jewish News)
A look into how Israel and the Jewish establishment in Europe are politicizing antisemitism to protect Israel from criticism.
By Jonathan Cook | Jonathan Cook Blog | Dec 11, 2020
If those who support human rights and demand an end to the oppression of Palestinians find themselves labelled antisemitic, it will become ever harder to distinguish between bogus (weaponised) “antisemitism” on the left and real Jew hatred from the right.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has run a fascinating long report this week offering a disturbing snapshot of the political climate rapidly emerging across Europe on the issue of antisemitism. The article documents a kind of cultural, political and intellectual reign of terror in Germany since the parliament passed a resolution last year equating support for non-violent boycotts of Israel – in solidarity with Palestinians oppressed by Israel – with antisemitism.
The article concerns Germany but anyone reading it will see very strong parallels with what is happening in other European countries, especially the UK and France.
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