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Dear Senator Harris, You have been drinking the pro-Israel Kool-Aid

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Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Nov 20, 2017. (photo: Twitter)

An open letter to Senator Kamala Harris of California.

By Alice Diane Kisch | Mondoweiss | Mar 20, 2018

Senator Harris, not only have I lived in Israel, I have hundreds of family members there, most of them descended from German-Jewish immigrants to Palestine in the early 1930’s. I am in touch with many of them, and I am also in touch with many Jewish-Israeli friends who still live in Israel. I know whereof I speak.

I should also mention that three of my Jewish-Israeli family members (including a 9-year-old boy) were killed in the West Bank in July 2002; they were shot at point-blank range by, presumably, Palestinian snipers while they were traveling by automobile to a friend’s home for Shabbat. So I am not untouched by the violence afflicting Israel-Palestine.

I am an 81-year old resident of Alameda County and I have lived here for 19 years.  I grew up in the U.S. northeast and in France, and I have also lived in Scotland and Israel.  I am Jewish and I am a committed Palestinian solidarity activist.

It therefore pains me to know that you have been drinking the pro-Israel Kool-Aid.  With your international background — not to mention your law degree (I come from a family of lawyers) — I would have thought that you might have understood the brutal reality that is today’s Israel.  Your pandering March 28, 2017 speech in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was a disgrace which only reflected and highlighted your ignorance and your willful blindness to the brutal and grotesque reality that is today’s State of Israel.  Unfortunately, your recent 2018 remarks to AIPAC have not yet been made public.

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Mike Pompeo is an anti-Muslim bigot. Shouldn’t Jewish leaders condemn him, too?

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Mike Pompeo. (photo: Forward / Getty Images)

Let’s not fall into the trap of condemning bigotry when it comes toward people who look like us, but tolerating it when it comes from people who look like us. We are required to be better than that.

By Jane Eisner | Forward | Mar 20, 2018

Mike Pompeo’s own statements and record of close associations with organizations that have frequently expressed hostility to Muslims and have trafficked in anti-Muslim conspiracy theories raise serious concerns about his fitness to serve as Secretary of State.
— Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO, Anti-Defamation League

Consistency in public life is often honored in the breach. But when it crosses that thin line into hypocrisy, there ought to be consequences.

We are at that moment with Mike Pompeo, the former Congressman and current CIA director who is President Trump’s choice to be the next Secretary of State.

And whereas many self-appointed leaders of the Jewish community raised holy hell when a couple of Congressmen and one of the leaders of the Women’s March refused to denounce the anti-Semitism of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, we’ve heard precious little from those same critics about Pompeo’s well-documented anti-Muslim bigotry and his close ties with Islamophobic extremists.

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Take a side — the side of justice

Listen to Anne Baltzer’s inspiring TEDx on having the courage to take a side and take a stand.

By Anne Baltzer | TEDxOcala | Dec 8, 2017

“Equality is about treating everyone the same. Equity is about leveling the playing field.”

“I found a system of segregated roads, with nice roads for Jewish Israeli settlers and separate roads for Palestinians. And all around me I saw inspiring Palestinian popular resistance and its violent suppression by Israel, a military superpower armed by my own country, the United States.

“And I knew that Israel would pay me to move on to that Palestinian land, simply because I’m Jewish. I did not know at the time that Israel’s Jewish majority could only exist through the removal of Palestinians. . . .

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Will Israeli policies change if Netanyahu leaves office?

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Students waving Israeli flags in Jerusalem. (photo: Kristoffer Trolle / Flickr /Providence Magazine)

Regardless of Netanyahu’s political future, Israeli policies towards Palestinians will remain unchanged.

By Ramzy Baroud | Counterpunch | Mar 15, 2018

“There are places where the character of the State of Israel as a Jewish state must be maintained, and this sometimes comes at the expense of equality. Israel is a Jewish state. It isn’t a state of all its nations. There is place to maintain a Jewish majority even at the price of violation of rights.”
— Ayelet Shaked, Israeli Minister of Justice

If scandal-plagued Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, exits his country’s political scene today, who is likely to replace him? And what does this mean as far as Israel’s Occupation of Palestine is concerned?

Netanyahu, who is currently being charged with multiple cases of corruption, misuse of government funds and public office, has, for years, epitomized the image of Israel internationally.

In Israel, Netanyahu has masterfully kept his rightwing Likud Party at the center of power. Even if as part of larger coalitions — as is often the case in the formation of most of Israeli governments — the Likud, under Netanyahu, has shaped Israeli politics and foreign policy for many years.

As Israel’s Jewish population continues to move to the right, the country’s political ideology has been repeatedly redefined in the last two decades.

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Americans have a constitutional right to boycott Israel

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Growing numbers of Americans and the civil society institutions to which they belong are supporting economic action against Israel. (photo: Mike Groll / AP)

Growing numbers of Americans and the civil society institutions to which they belong are supporting economic action against Israel as a moral and nonviolent way of showing their disapproval of Israel’s oppression.

By Josh Ruebner | Al Jazeera | Mar 15, 2018

It should be a no-brainer that Americans can boycott whomever or whatever they choose without risking governmental punishment. After all, the Supreme Court ruled that states have no “right to prohibit peaceful political activity” such as a boycott, which is an “expression on public issues” that “has always rested on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) concluded its annual policy conference last week with a lobbying day on Capitol Hill. High on its legislative agenda was advocating for bills that would penalise Americans for engaging in their First Amendment-protected right to boycott for Palestinian rights.

AIPAC conference attendees pressed their elected officials to support the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, sponsored by Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD). The original, draconian version of this bill, unveiled at last year’s AIPAC conference, proposed to jail individuals for 20 years if they advanced an international organization’s call for a boycott of Israel, or even of products from its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

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What Gaza really needs is for Israel to recognize the humanity of its occupants

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A boy scavenging bicycle parts in Gaza. (photo: Getty Images)

Israel and its supporters must separate the civilians from Hamas militants and stop the collective punishment.

By Mohammed Shehada | Forward | Mar 13, 2018

Whether you call it a crisis or call it a passing distress, names are irrelevant when you try to describe the impossibility of life in Gaza that no man could endure yet no man can escape.

On March 13, Jared Kushner and Jason D. Greenblatt held a White House summit on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with leaders from Israel, several Arab nations and Western countries — but there were no leaders from either the Palestinian Authority or Gaza in attendance.

“We all know that none of this will be easy,” Greenblatt reminded those gathered at the summit. “Everything we do must be done in a way that ensures we do not put the security of Israelis and Egyptians at risk — and that we do not inadvertently empower Hamas, which bears responsibility for Gaza’s suffering. But the situation today in Gaza is unacceptable, and spiraling downwards.”

Any plan for Gaza would be better than the status quo. But if the summit is to accomplish anything, it must acknowledge three hard truths: Life in Gaza is unbearable. Unbearable suffering is fueling Hamas’s continued reign of terror. And the only way to free Gazans from their unbearable suffering is to acknowledge Israel’s role in it.

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Why Benjamin is walking from Sweden to Palestine

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Benjamin Ladraa is walking from Sweden across Europe all the way to Palestine to raise awareness of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. (photo: Benjamin Ladraa)

Benjamin’s journey takes him to communities across Europe large and small, taking the first step towards justice.

By Benjamin Ladraa | TRT World | Mar 13, 2018

I went through the Swedish school system and came out knowing close to nothing about Palestine. I decided then that the most effective thing I could do to propel the change that was so urgently needed was to reach as many people as possible, and share the stories from Palestine with them.

The year 2017 was an auspicious one which marked the centenary of the Balfour declaration, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, 50th anniversary of the total occupation of Palestine and the 10th anniversary of the siege on Gaza.

Each one of these events represents a tragedy that is difficult to describe in words and are all a part of the gradual destruction of the Palestinian people.

Having pursued a musical career for most of my life, Palestine and Israel was not really a topic I knew much about. After meeting some Palestinians through my part-time job at the Red Cross and hearing their stories I became curious and started reading about the occupation and eventually I decided to visit.

What I witnessed left me shocked to the core.

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South Africa must stand up to Israeli apartheid

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The separation wall in the West Bank. (photo: Reuters)

A generation after South Africans won their freedom, Palestinians remain in bondage.

By Ali Abunimah | Mail & Guardian | Mar 14, 2018

Inspired by South Africa’s freedom struggle, BDS aims to mobilize people all over the world to do what governments won’t — apply pressure on Israel until it respects all the rights of the Palestinian people.

A year ago, the UN published a landmark report on Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. It found “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crimes of apartheid.”

This was no rash conclusion, but one the authors reached after meticulous analysis of the evidence and law — especially the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.

Palestinians hailed the report as a milestone in their struggle to see Israel held accountable for its brutal, decades long denial of their rights. But Israel’s powerful patrons had other plans. Immediately, the US government, Israel’s biggest arms supplier, began to threaten the United Nations.

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Knesset bars Israeli lawmaker from overseas trip sponsored by JVP

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Israeli Lawmaker Youseff Jabareen (right) in the Knesset, 2016. (photo: Olivier Fitoussi / Haaretz)

Yousef Jabareen of the Arab Joint List requested to fly abroad for a series of lectures funded by Jewish Voice for Peace, but was refused.

By Jonathan Lis | Haaretz | Mar 14, 2018

“The committee’s decision constitutes a harsh blow to my freedom of political activity as an elected official. Without funding from the group extending the invitation, I will of course not be able to travel, due to the large travel expense and the round of lectures that is planned. This is activity that is a fundamental and integral part of my role as an opposition Knesset member.”
— Yousef Jabareen, Israeli Knesset member

For the first time, the Knesset Ethics Committee has decided to bar an MK [Member of the Knesset] from traveling abroad on a trip subsidized by an organization that supports a boycott of Israel.

Knesset member Yousef Jabareen of the predominantly Arab Joint List party was informed on Tuesday by committee chairman Yitzhak Vaknin (Shas) that the committee had decided to refuse his request to fly abroad for a series of lectures in April to be funded by Jewish Voice for Peace. The group appears on a Strategic Affairs Ministry list of groups supporting BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.

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How Stephen Hawking supported the Palestinian cause

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Stephen Hawking. (photo: Getty Images / CNBC)

The late renowned scientist will be remembered not only for his work, but his support for Palestine.

By Al Jazeera | Mar 14, 2018

“I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”
— Stephen Hawking, May 3, 2013

Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned scientist who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 76, was known not only for his groundbreaking work but also for his support for Palestine.

Hawking, who had motor-neuron disease, made headlines in May 2013 when he decided to boycott a high-profile conference in Israel where he was scheduled to speak. The physicist was working at the Cambridge University in the UK at the time.

The Presidential Conference, an academic event held in Jerusalem, was being hosted by the late Israeli President Shimon Peres. In a letter Hawking sent to the organizers on May 3, he said the “policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

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