Author: Kairos Puget Sound Coalition

Challenging patriarchal notions in Palestinian society is not a separate issue from ending Zionist settler-colonialism. In fact, it has been precisely through gender violence that the colonial project has thrived.

By Tamam Mohsen | Mondoweiss | Apr 1,  2022

Putting indigenous Palestinian women at the center of analyzing the Zionist settler-colonial project aims to demonstrate the connections between gender violence and colonization in the life of Palestinian women.

By the time I am writing this piece the long-running debate flooding social media over the film Huda’s Salon has finally just cooled down.

The tense 90-minute thriller from the Palestinian director Hany Abu Asad discusses how the Israeli secret service (Shabak) recruits Palestinian women. It takes place in Bethlehem where Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi), a Palestinian young woman, is getting her hair done at Huda’s salon (Manal Awad). Reem is then drugged by Huda, who photographs her naked with a man (Samer Bishara) who is not her husband. The images are then used to blackmail Reem and coerce her into collaborating with Shabak.

Continue reading “The decolonization of Palestine demands dismantling patriarchal prejudice”

A trustee of a Jewish family foundation that has contributed to Palestinian and Israeli civil society, Dr. Rothchild raises concerns over developments that signal danger for the human rights sector globally.

By Alice Rothchild | Alliance Magazine | Mar 17, 2022

By trying to intimidate us into silence and inaction, the Israeli government is making us complicit in harming the very civilian populations that we have been charged to protect.

In recent months, the Israeli government hurled smears at Amnesty International for issuing a report concluding that Israel is imposing a system of apartheid on the Palestinian people. The government is now considering punishing the messenger by stripping Amnesty’s Israel country section of its tax-exempt status and barring Amnesty staff from entering Israel. This crackdown on nonprofits extends beyond Israel’s borders as the government’s allies push for the UK and Australia to also strip those Amnesty country sections of their charitable status. And this goes well beyond Amnesty – Israel has deported a Human Rights Watch staffer, banned Israeli human rights groups from speaking to students, and criminalized the work of six venerable Palestinian non-profit organizations, creating a chilling effect on those funding and otherwise supporting them. Israeli officials are on the record stating that the goal of designating the six Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorist’ groups is to deprive these organizations of international funding.

Continue reading “Human rights funders must support civil society in Palestine”

Silicon Valley’s decision to allow anti-Russia threats reveals it as little more than a propaganda arm of the West

By Jonathan Cook | Middle East Eye | Mar 18, 2022

Silicon Valley’s rank hypocrisy in allowing hate speech against Russia and Russians is particularly evident when compared with the special protections put in place by tech firms to block criticism of Israel and Israelis.

Silicon Valley has rammed through a series of changes over the past few days at dizzying speed, making explicit what should already have been obvious: Social media firms have rapidly become little more than propaganda arms of the United States and its allies.

That role has been increasingly difficult to conceal as western politicians and traditional media outlets have whipped up anti-Russia hysteria over the past three weeks, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Continue reading “Social media giants allow hate speech against Russia but silence Israel’s critics”

While U.S. politicians have jumped over themselves to sanction Russia back to the Stone Age, widespread anti-BDS sentiment among politicians has advocates iced out of public debate.

By Joseph Gedeon | Politico | Mar 7, 2022

“But whereas the international community mobilized swiftly to confront Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, it has done very little to roll back Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, [and the] Golan Heights. It’s exactly this lack of any real accountability or constraint on Israel, that ultimately led to the BDS movement.”
— Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute

As the prospect of a Russian invasion into Ukraine was inching closer to reality, the U.S. took proactive steps with its allies to coordinate more concentrated sanctions against Moscow. And when the war erupted, the U.S. announced it was ready to impose stiffer sanctions, including freezing U.S. assets held by Russian banks, enforcing restrictions on high-tech imports and seizing oligarchs’ homes, planes and yachts.

The tough rhetoric and swift reprisals have been embraced by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, who have called for sanctions to decimate Russia’s economy. To some longtime advocates of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement meant to target Israel’s economy amid bloody conflicts with Palestinians, those calls sound eerily familiar.

Continue reading “‘Hypocrisy’: Lawmakers fighting Israel boycott now all-in for Russia sanctions”

Read about the amazing Palestinian women resisting Israeli apartheid.

By Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) | BDS | Mar 8, 2022

One cannot stand against the oppression of women without standing with Palestinian women.

Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and here at the BDS movement want to take this opportunity to celebrate the role of women in the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

For decades, women have played a pivotal role in the popular resistance to Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism. Since May 2021, Palestinians across historic Palestine and in the diaspora have risen up in unity against Israel’s sustained, brutal attacks and ongoing ethnic cleansing. From Al-Naqab to Sheikh Jarrah to Gaza and beyond, images of brave Palestinian women resisting racist oppression and dispossession have been broadcast around the world.

Continue reading “Palestine is a Feminist Issue!”

Failure to point out hypocrisy continues to perpetuate continued colonization and oppression.

By Ilan Pappé  | The Palestine Chronicle | Mar 4, 2022

…it is not only the hypocrisy about Palestine that emerges when we consider the Ukraine crisis in a wider context; it is the overall Western double standards that should be scrutinized, without, for one moment, being indifferent to news and images coming to us from the war zone in the Ukraine…

The USA Today reported that a photo that went viral about a high-rise in the Ukraine being hit by Russian bombing turned out to be a high-rise from the Gaza Strip, demolished by the Israeli Air Force in May 2021. A few days before that, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister complained to the Israeli ambassador in Kiev that “you’re treating us like Gaza”; he was furious that Israel did not condemn the Russian invasion and was only interested in evicting Israeli citizens from the state (Haaretz, February 17, 2022). It was a mixture of reference to the Ukrainian evacuation of Ukrainian spouses of Palestinian men from the Gaza Strip in May 2021, as well as a reminder to Israel of the Ukrainian president’s full support for Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in that month (I will return to that support towards the end of this piece).

Continue reading “Navigating our Humanity: Ilan Pappé on the Four Lessons from Ukraine”

The double standard of war is revealed, again.

By Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada | Feb 28, 2022

The EU regularly lectures Palestinians that violence isn’t a solution but apparently doesn’t take its own advice.

This video circulated widely on Twitter on Sunday, purporting to be from Ukraine.

“ ‘Go back to your country’: brave little girl confronts invading Putin’s Army,” was the description that accompanied it.

Although some people clearly bought it – it has several thousand “likes” – it didn’t get very far before many Twitter users pointed out that the landscape, the weather (February in Eastern Europe is very cold) look nothing like Ukraine.

Continue reading “Ukraine, Palestine and the propaganda of war”

A book review critical of what is missing in the conversation about peace and justice in the Middle East and fails to shed light on discussion of an independent state or the right of self-determination.

By Daoud Kuttab | Washington Report on Middle East Affairs | Feb 24, 2022

…while one can argue about issues of evangelical representation, it is even harder to take Rosenberg seriously regarding peace and justice in the Middle East.

You would think that Joel Rosenberg’s own identification is enough to turn off any non-Israeli Middle East leader. He prides in his Christian Zionist evangelical ideology and boasts of his newly adopted Israeli citizenship, brought about most likely because his father is of the Jewish faith. He is similarly proud that his two sons have served in the Israeli army, one in a special unit.

Yet reading his latest book, Enemies and Allies, one is taken back by how leaders of major Arab countries, kingdoms, and emirates open the doors for him for repeated visits and audiences with their own top leaders.

Continue reading “When an American Christian Zionist can’t even say the words “occupation” or “justice”