Author: Kairos Puget Sound Coalition

A young boy carries a Palestinian flag during a Great March of Return demonstration in Gaza, May 14, 2018. (photo: AFP)

Scores of protesting Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers during 2018. These are some of their stories.

By Ahmad Nafi and Chloé Benoistor | Middle East Eye | Dec 27, 2018

The UN General Assembly denounced Israel’s use of force against the demonstrators as ‘excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate,’ while many rights groups slammed it as illegal, ‘horrifying’ and ‘calculated.’

One of the most enduring popular movements of 2018 has been the ongoing Great March of Return in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Since March 30, thousands of Palestinians in the small coastal territory have demonstrated along the boundary with Israel, demanding the implementation of Palestinian refugees’ right of return and an end to the crippling 11-year siege of Gaza.

But such high-scale mobilization has come at a high cost: according to Middle East Eye’s calculations, 190 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces within the scope of the demonstrations between March 30 and November 30 — equivalent to one Palestinian killed every 31 hours in eight months.

The numbers exclude more than 50 victims of air strikes or other Israeli military actions when demonstrations were not taking place.

Continue reading “Gaza: The Palestinians who died during the Great March of Return”

Senators Sanders and Feinstein urging Senate leaders to not support the Israel Anti-Boycott Act legislation.

By Paul Waldman| The Washington Post | Dec 19, 2018

The bill would prohibit and penalize certain constitutionally-protected political activity aimed solely at Israeli settlements in the West Bank, thereby extending US legal protection to the very settlements the United States has opposed as illegitimate and harmful to the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace for more than 50 years.

Earlier this week I wrote about the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a piece of legislation that some Democrats and Republicans are hoping to quietly attach to a budget bill so it can be passed into law. The bill would bar American companies and individuals from participating in certain boycotts of Israel, and, though even its supporters say it would have minimal practical impact, it represents a serious attack on fundamental principles of free speech.

The bill is also part of a broad nationwide movement playing out at both the federal and state level to quash criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud government and its policies toward Palestinians, an effort that Democrats unfortunately have participated in far too often.
Continue reading “Bernie Sanders’s new plan to force a genuine debate in Congress on Israel”

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is gaining support in Congress.

By  Michelle Goldberg | New York Times | Dec 7, 2018

People with an uncompromising commitment to pluralistic democracy will necessarily be critics of contemporary Israel. That commitment, however, makes them the natural allies of Jews everywhere else.

On Monday, in an interview with The Intercept, Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who in November became the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, went public with her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to use economic pressure on Israel to secure Palestinian rights. That made her the second incoming member of Congress to publicly back BDS, after Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, who revealed her support last month.

No current member of Congress supports BDS, a movement that is deeply taboo in American politics for several reasons. Opponents argue that singling out Israel for economic punishment is unfair and discriminatory, since the country is far from the world’s worst violator of human rights. Further, the movement calls for the right of Palestinian refugees and millions of their descendants to return to Israel, which could end Israel as a majority-Jewish state. (Many BDS supporters champion a single, binational state for both peoples.) Naturally, conservatives in the United States — though not only conservatives — have denounced Tlaib and Omar’s stance as anti-Semitic.
Continue reading “Anti-Zionism isn’t the same as anti-Semitism”

Gaza health officials say Palestinians are being hit by army snipers told to aim at the lower body to avoid killing demonstrators.

By Jonathan Ferziger and Saud Abu Ramadan | Bloomberg | Dec 9, 2018

In the past nine months, about 6,500 Gazans have been shot in the leg at demonstrations, and 500 have been permanently disabled. Amnesty International said soldiers are using high-velocity weapons designed to cause maximum harm to protesters who don’t pose an imminent threat.

Shrouded in a cloud of black smoke from burning tires in the Gaza Strip, Mahmoud Malalha was hit in the left leg by an Israeli army sniper.

In the hopelessness of Hamas-ruled Gaza, Malalha’s generation of young men are taught to see their crutches as a badge of honor in the war against Israel. Back from the hospital after multiple surgeries and physical therapy, they are met by family and neighbors bearing cakes and candy, with high fives from their pals and their mothers ululating with pride. Continue reading “In Gaza, maimed legs are a badge of honor-until reality sets in”

 

The Quakers in Britain have taken time in reaching this decision advocating a different approach is needed to shift the dial.

By Robert Cohen | Mondoweiss | Nov 26, 2018

With the occupation now in its 51^st year, and with no end in near sight, we believe we have a moral duty to state publicly that we will not invest in any company profiting from the occupation.

Last week Quakers in Britain became the first Christian denomination in the UK to adopt a responsible investment policy towards the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian land. It was the first denomination but I doubt it will be the last.

Within hours of the announcement, the Board of Deputies, the body which asserts its right to represent Jewish interests in Britain, had issued a statement of rebuke from its President, Marie van der Zyl, titled “Board of Deputies condemns Quakers’ Israel divestment policy.” In a few short paragraphs, van de Zyl gathered together all of the usual anti-BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) talking points and fired them in one almighty blast at the Quakers.

The Board’s statement is worth examining in detail since it reveals so much about the Jewish establishment’s mission to set the parameters of acceptable debate on Israel to the detriment of interfaith relations.
Continue reading “British Quakers divest from occupation, and are accused of “obsessive” tunnel vision for “the only Jewish state””

 

Israel’s ambassador to the UN predicts the Trump administration will present its peace plan in early 2019.

Pamela Falk | CBS News | Nov 28, 2018

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and White House Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, have been drafting the Trump administration’s long-awaited plan for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and they have touted its preparation several times since the White House’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Dec 6 and the opening of the new US embassy there in May.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday that the White House intends to move forward with its much-anticipated Middle East peace plan early next year, before expected Israeli elections.

“We don’t know the details of the plan but we know that it’s completed,” Ambassador Danny Danon told a small group of reporters Tuesday in his office near UN Headquarters. He said the Trump administration has told the Israeli government that it is prepared to roll out the plan in early 2019.

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and White House Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, have been drafting the Trump administration’s long-awaited plan for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and they have touted its preparation several times since the White House’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Dec 6 and the opening of the new US embassy there in May. Continue reading “Israel says Trump’s Middle East peace plan to be rolled out in early 2019”

As many as 500 children are in jeopardy of losing services if the funding shortfall is not addressed.

By AFEDJ.org | Sep 2018

I am very much concerned and afraid that cutting off all American assistance, mostly in humanitarian aid, has hobbled the aid agencies that receive the funds, and more consequently, crippled the lives of Palestinians who continue to live in dire need and have fewer employment prospects now more than ever. This is unfair and beneath our compassion.
— Archbishop Suheil Dawani

Since the announcement in September that the US Government planned to cut $200 million in aid to UNRWA, the United Nations’ agency dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees, and the news the following week of $25 million in cuts in direct aid to support hospitals affiliated with the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, we have been tracking the implications of those cuts on the institutions of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, particularly Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City and the Princess Basma Center for Disabled Children in East Jerusalem.

While in recent weeks many European Union countries, as well as Japan, China, and Qatar, among others, have stepped up by pledging to address the shortfall, the impacts of the cuts could have devastating impacts on all sectors of society. Many thousands of vulnerable Palestinians, including women and children — particularly those in Gaza — are already experiencing the effects of these sweeping cuts. . . .

Continue reading “Cuts in US jeopardize healthcare services to children”