Author: Kairos Puget Sound Coalition

Hospitals in the Palestinian territory are facing fuel shortages amidst cold weather that could be deadly for many patients.

Maram Humaid | Al Jazeera | Jan 20, 2019

We feel very concerned due to the news of fuel crisis in hospitals. It’s a disaster. If the hospital stopped, where we would go? All patient children would die, not only my child.
—Suffian Salem

Gaza’s health ministry has made an urgent appeal for help amid an ongoing fuel crisis in the coastal territory, warning of a “catastrophic situation” in its hospitals, including a children’s facility.

Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman of Gaza’s health ministry, said five hospitals in the Palestinian territory would stop operating within hours, because generators were unable to operate due to the fuel shortage.

Last week, Beit Hanoun hospital in northern Gaza stopped operating.

“The lives of hundreds of patients in Gaza hospitals are under a threat of dire consequences,” al-Qidra said.

Continue reading “Children’s lives in danger amid Gaza fuel shortage”

Israeli authorities consider the new highway a “gift” to Palestinians.

By Yumna Patel | Mondoweiss | Jan 22, 2019

People around the world were shocked by this apartheid road, but in Anata, and all across the occupied lands of Palestine, we have already been living in a reality of apartheid for so long.
— Mohammed Salameh

It was only a matter of time, 66-year-old Mohammed Salameh said, before his hometown of Anata suffered another blow dealt by the Israeli occupation.

Located in the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem, less than 10 km north of Jerusalem City, the Palestinian town of Anata has seen it all: vast land confiscations, clusters of Israeli settlements built on its land, the Israeli separation wall, home demolitions, and residents killed and arrested by Israeli soldiers.

So when more of Anata’s lands were cut off last week when Israeli authorities opened Route 4370 highway, deemed by locals as the “Apartheid Road,” Salameh and his fellow community members were forced to continue on with their lives as usual.

“We were not surprised by the opening,” Salameh told Mondoweiss in the office of Anata’s municipality, where he works as the Coordinator of Land Protection in the town. “They have been working on this road for years, so we knew it would open eventually.”

When it was opened, stark images of the eight meter wall running through the middle of Route 4730 made international headlines.
Continue reading “Israel’s ‘Apartheid Road’ brings renewed home demolitions, land confiscations for Palestinian town”

Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) thinks the “mere prospect” of Tlaib’s proposed congressional delegation is dangerous to the status quo

By Andrea Germanos | Common Dreams |  Jan 18, 2019

I don’t think AIPAC provides a real, fair lens into this issue as it glosses over the side that I know is real, which is what’s happening to my grandmother and what’s happening to my family there.
— Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)

Newly-elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) wants to offer members of Congress an alternative to the “sugar-coated” junket to Israel the American Israel Public Affairs Committee-affiliated group offers members of Congress by leading a delegation to the West Bank. For a Republican lawmaker, however, giving lawmakers a view of life in the occupied territory is an “exceedingly dangerous” plan that must be stopped.

In letters he sent Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Democratic House committee heads, Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) laid out his “extreme concern” with Tlaib’s proposal, first reported by The Intercept in December.

Unlike the rite of passage for new Republican and Democratic congress members that some dub the “Jewish Disneyland trip”—sponsored by American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF)—the proposed congressional delegation by the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress would focus on “Israel’s detention of Palestinian children, education, access to clean water, and poverty,” the news outlet reported at the time.

Continue reading “GOP lawmaker really doesn’t want Rep. Rashida Tlaib to let lawmakers know what life Is like in occupied West Bank”

Concerns about restricting free speech may have shut down current anti-BDS legislation, but important not to lose sight of BDS goals: the human rights of the Palestinian people.

By Nadia Elia | Mondoweiss | Jan 14, 2019

We must now use the national platform we have, as the Senate debates anti-BDS legislation, to make the case that solidarity with Palestine, and heeding the call for a global campaign to boycott, divest from, and impose sanctions on Israel, are the moral thing to do, regardless of whether they are a form of free speech or not.

When a delegation of pro-justice activists and community leaders met with Washington state governor Jay Inslee in 2017, to urge him not to endorse the “Governors United against BDS” letter (which, sadly, he signed onto, like every single US state governor, as well as the mayor of Washington, DC), he spoke of it as a foreign policy matter. I strategically “corrected” him, pointing out that the right to boycott was not a foreign policy issue, but one of American free speech. As a member of Washington Freedom to Boycott (which we have since renamed Washington Advocates for Palestinian Rights), I helped circulate the following call to action to thousands, asking them to tell Inslee that “whatever your views on Israel, Palestine, or the BDS movement, anti-BDS legislation is anti-freedom of speech…”

Continue reading “Beyond free speech”

Many unanswered questions about the withdrawal of human rights award to Angela Davis.

By Alex Bollinger | LGBTQ Nation | Jan 8, 2019

Local activist Sophie Ellman-Golan said that it’s unlikely that Jewish people in Alabama forced the decision to rescind . . .

A civil rights institute is rescinding an award it was going to give to Angela Davis, possibly because of her criticisms of human rights violations in Israel.

In September, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BCRI) announced that it would give its Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award to Davis at its gala this February. That award is its highest honor and it would have been the center of the yearly event.

Davis seemed like a logical choice for the award. Not only is she one of the most prominent human rights activists in the United States — advocating for decades for the rights of Black people, workers, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, and immigrants — and she was a member of the Black Panther party, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Communist Party, but she’s also originally from Birmingham, Alabama.

Continue reading “Civil rights icon won’t be honored by civil rights group because she supports civil rights”

US officials move to recognize Israel’s annexation of territory ignores international law.

By Maureen Clare Murphy | The Electronic Intifada | Jan 8, 2019

Israel’s occupation has forced native Syrians onto just 5 percent of the land they once owned and ruined virtually all native industries except for some basic agriculture.

As the Senate considers a bipartisan defense of the Israeli government from boycotts, senior Republicans are urging the Trump administration to recognize Israel’s claims of sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights.

As recognized by international law, the Golan Heights is Syrian territory captured by Israel in 1967 along with the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from which Israel eventually withdrew.

After Israel claimed to annex the Golan Heights in 1981, the UN Security Council declared the move “null and void and without international legal effect.”

Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas issued a joint statement on Sunday referring to what Israel says are recently destroyed Hizballah tunnels along the Israel-Lebanon border, as well as Iranian forces in Syria.

“To support Israel’s right to self-defense, Washington should take the long overdue step of affirming Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” the senators state.

The two senators had introduced a resolution to Congress last year making the same demand while emphasizing the purported threat to Israel’s security posed by Iran.

Continue reading “Republicans push recognition of Israeli annexation of Golan”

Internal memo’s show that even the ADL think anti-BDS laws are bad for the Jewish community.

By  Nora Barrows-Friedman | The Electronic Intifada | Dec 31, 2018

Despite Israel’s attacks, smears and threats, boycott activists continued to make enormous gains – much to the dismay of Israeli leaders.

2018 was a year of victories by human rights activists despite heavy pressure, attacks and propaganda efforts by Israel and its lobby groups to whitewash its image.

Starting off the year, it was revealed that US President Donald Trump’s alliance with white supremacist groups and anti-Semitic figures has pushed support for Israel to a low point, especially among young American Jews.

By October, it was confirmed in another survey that support for Israel is coming primarily from Trump’s base, a hotbed of right-wing, white nationalist and Christian Zionist views, while support from other Americans continues to erode.

Continue reading “How did the Israel boycott campaign grow in 2018?”

Netanyahu brokering deal for Honduras to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in effort to boost his upcoming election.

By Adam Taylor | The Washington Post | Jan 2, 2019

If Honduras follows through with the move, it will please both Trump and Netanyahu.

Last week, the Trump administration criticized Honduras as being weak on immigration. President Trump wrote in a tweet that Honduras was “doing nothing” about a new caravan of migrants allegedly forming in the nation and threatened to cut off US aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

This week, officials from the two countries met in Brazil to hash out their differences, moderated by an unlikely figure: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu took part in the Tuesday meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. All three men were in Brazil for the inauguration of President Jair Bolsonaro, which also took place Tuesday. An Israeli official told the newspaper Haaretz that the meeting was arranged by Netanyahu at the request of Hernández, who sought the Israeli leader’s help in dealing with the United States.

In return, Honduras pledged to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in what could be another boost for Netanyahu ahead of parliamentary elections in April.

Continue reading “The unlikeliest player in Trump’s border standoff? Israel’s prime minister.”

Though Palestinian bid is doomed to fail due to expected US veto, Israeli envoy attacks Ramallah for ‘destructive policies that have encouraged recent terror ‎attacks’

By Raphael Ahren | The Times of Israel | Dec 27, 2018

“We are preparing to stop the initiative,” Israel’s Ambassador to the ‎UN Danny Danon declared, saying that his delegation will work together with the US administration on the matter.

The Palestinian Authority plans to apply for full membership at the United Nations, a move that is highly unlikely to succeed due to the opposition of the United States and other countries.

PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki on Wednesday announced in an interview his intention to ask the UN Security Council to hold a vote on the matter next month.

At least nine countries would have to vote in favor of granting Palestine full membership, and even then one of the council’s five permanent members could veto the resolution.

The vote is expected to take place on January 15 in the framework of the Security ‎Council’s quarterly discussion on the Situation in the Middle East.

Continue reading “For first time since 2011, Palestine to apply for full UN membership”