Category: News

By Peter Beinart | The New York Times | Aug 26, 2022

Defenders of repressive governments often try to discredit the human rights groups that criticize them.

Over the past 18 months, America’s most prominent Jewish organizations have done something extraordinary. They have accused the world’s leading human rights organizations of promoting hatred of Jews.

Last April, after Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing Israel of “the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” the American Jewish Committee claimed that the report’s arguments “sometimes border on antisemitism.” In January, after Amnesty International issued its own study alleging that Israel practiced apartheid, the Anti-Defamation League predicted that it “likely will lead to intensified antisemitism.” The A.J.C. and A.D.L. also published a statement with four other well-known American Jewish groups that didn’t just accuse the report of being biased and inaccurate, but also claimed that Amnesty’s report “fuels those antisemites around the world who seek to undermine the only Jewish country on Earth.”

Continue reading “Has the fight against Antisemitism lost its way?”

Influential Jewish organizations who denounce as antisemitic the reports accusing Israel of apartheid are a “threat to freedom,” Peter Beinart writes in the New York Times.

By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Aug 28, 2022

Here’s the crucial section of Levy’s “wake-up call” speech. There’s just one state, and it’s apartheid.

It goes without saying that Jewish voices have greater weight on the Israel question in the U.S. discourse, and that Zionist voices even greater weight. Well, on Thursday and Friday this week, two leading Jewish former Zionists granted credibility to the apartheid charges against Israel– in the New York Times and at the UN Security Council — and both statements have gotten wide pickup.

The former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy gave a speech to the United Nations Security Council urging powerful nations to wake up to the fact that their dream of partition is dead. And “the increasingly weighty body of scholarly, legal and public opinion that has designated Israel to be perpetrating apartheid in the territories under its control” is gaining traction among nations around the world.

Continue reading “‘NYT’ and UN Security Council platform apartheid charge against Israel”

By Ramona Wadi |  Middle East Monitor | Sept 1, 2022

“It would be hard to explain that in addition to being reluctant to hold Israel accountable for destroying the two-state solution before our eyes, you would also oppose a positive way that contributes to saving the two-state solution, which is the official policy of the United States,”
— Riyad Mansour, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN

The Palestinian Authority is once again seeking full membership of the UN, and the US has already expressed its opposition. The two-state compromise continues to form the premise for the arguments both for and against UN membership, as presented by the PA and the US respectively. However, the PA’s political decision-making is so fragmented, that its arguments in favour of the two-state compromise only strengthen those within the international community, and in this case the US, who oppose Palestine becoming a full UN member state.

Continue reading “The two-state compromise drives arguments for and against Palestine’s UN membership”

Settler violence in Hebron exposes the true colonial face of the Zionist project, and the world cannot sit idly by while it continues.

By Mella Jongebloed | Mondoweiss | Aug 27, 2022

As Israel tries to prevent tourists from traveling to the West Bank by scaring them off, it is my duty to bear witness to what I have seen

A group of eleven young settlers pass by, aged somewhere between fifteen and eighteen. Two soldiers walk with them on foot and a military vehicle drives beside them. Along the side of the road are outposts where soldiers have their guns ready at any time. The settlers say something to us in Hebrew that we don’t understand, their faces show an arrogance that does not match their age. A few meters down the road, we see one of them spitting on a Palestinian man who sits on the staircase in front of his house. When we pass the man, we reckon he is mute. He mumbles unintelligible words, points with his arms at the settlers, seemingly upset but not able to tell what happened.

Continue reading “Illegal kings on Palestinian land”

The Israeli raid on Al-Haq left a church community in terror.

By Independent Catholic News | Aug 19, 2022

The community living inside the church compound felt unsafe during the assault: The sound of gunshots, stun grenades, and the smashing of doors caused terror among the families living inside the compound.

The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East has condemned a “shocking” raid by Israeli soldiers on the premises of their church in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, in the early hours of Thursday morning.

In the following statement released later in the day the actions of the Israeli forces involved in the incident are described as “a violation of international law and a terroristic act against the entire community”

Continue reading “Jerusalem: Diocese condemns Israeli attack on Anglican church”

Sources say report shows CIA unable to find evidence to support Israeli claim, but finding does not prompt US rebuttal.

By Isaac Scher | The Guardian | Aug 22, 2022

…“the United States should very clearly call on the Israeli government to reverse these designations, and to allow these organizations to continue their vital work,”
— Omar Shakir, Israel/Palestine director of Human Rights Watch

A classified CIA report shows the agency was unable to find any evidence to support Israel’s decision to label six prominent Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist organizations”.

In October, Israel labeled as terror groups Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International–Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

Continue reading “CIA unable to corroborate Israel’s ‘terror’ label for Palestinian rights groups”

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam תיקון עולם | Aug 10, 2022

But when Palestinian reality gives you a dead baby, you better admit something’s terribly wrong; and that you will never be able to fix it with good intentions.

Is there a solution to the conflict? I would argue, no.  Forever? No.  But for now, there is no reasonable chance to reach such a solution.  Has there been a chance over the past 70 years? No.  For the next 70 years? Maybe.

This is a tough thing to admit for someone who’s been devoted to the idea that there is a solution, and has been working for decades toward it.  But you have to look reality dead in the face without flinching, and say what you really see.  Not what you want to see.  The truth is very plain.  It’s staring us in the face.  We just hate what we see so much we don’t want to admit it.

Continue reading “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No Solutions, No Illusions”

(Video) FOSNA Executive Director Jonathan Kuttab, one of the founders of Al Haq, spoke with our National Organizer Rev. Chad Collins about last night’s raids. Watch now to get a clear understanding of what happened and what it means for human rights work in Palestine and around the world.

By Jonathan Kuttab | FOSNA | Aug 18, 2022

To label these organizations “terrorist” is to say that any documentation of or peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation is illegal and will not be allowed.

Last night, Israeli forces raided the offices of all six civil society organizations that it previously labelled as “terrorist organizations,” including Al Haq. Israel ransacked the offices and then sealed the doors by welding them shut. While Al Haq said nothing of theirs was taken, other NGOs had many of their belongings confiscated. On the doors were left notices declaring that each organization is a terrorist organization and, as such, are no longer allowed to operate. Hundreds of soldiers were involved in this operation and tear gassed everyone who approached the buildings.

Continue reading “#StandWithThe6: Statement in response to Israel’s overnight raid”

For 55 years, the Green Line has shut down our political imagination. Its disappearance gives us a chance to do things differently.

By Meron Rapoport | The Nation | Aug 10, 2022

The collapse of the Green Line, and no less important the collapse of the ability to imagine it, has set a new stage in the decades-long conflict.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL-PALESTINE—More than a year after a wave of violence, rage, and resistance swept through the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the events of May 2021 are still very much present in the minds of Israeli Jews and Palestinians. Two hundred and eighty-six Palestinians, most of them in Gaza, and 13 Israelis were killed during the 11 most intense days, but it was not only the number of casualties that left a mark. It was also the fact that the drama unfolded all over historical Palestine: in Jerusalem, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and most important, in Israel’s “mixed cities” such as Lydd, Ramle, Acre, and elsewhere, which was almost unprecedented since 1948.

Continue reading “The line separating Israel from Palestine has been erased—What comes next?”