Category: News

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”

Donor-advised funds have legal discretion to deny gifts to groups that criticize Israel.

By Alex Kane | Jewish Currents | Feb 23, 2022

“I’m not asking the Federation to debate apartheid…I’m only asking them not to defund the organizations that want to.”
— Alan Sussman

On July 26th, 2021, Alan Sussman did what he does every year: He asked the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, which manages his family’s donor-advised fund, to send grants to nonprofit groups of his choosing. The 78-year-old civil liberties lawyer wanted to donate to six organizations that do work involving Israel/Palestine: T’ruah, Rabbis for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence, +972 Magazine, B’Tselem, and, full disclosure, Jewish Currents. The Jewish Federation agreed to his funding requests, with one exception: They denied Sussman’s request to donate $1,000 to B’Tselem, the leading Israeli human rights group.

Continue reading “How the Seattle Jewish Federation blocked a donation to B’Tselem”

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”

The status of children in our respective societies is emblematic of the status we attribute to God.

By Jesse Steven Wheeler | Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA)  | Feb 24, 2022

The greatest irony to all of these so-called “holy wars” waged in the name of God (read: real-estate disputes) is that it is God himself whom we betray.

But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. —Mark 10:14 (NRSV)

The Children of Occupation

Last week witnessed the first tragic murder in 2022 of a Palestinian child, when Israeli occupation forces shot and killed 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Salah in the village of Silat al-Harithiya. Reports indicate that he posed no direct threat to the soldiers. On Tuesday this week, Israeli forces shot and killed 13-year-old Mohammad Rezq Salah in the town of al-Khader near Bethlehem. After he had been shot, local media report, “Israeli forces prevented Palestinian ambulances from arriving to the scene.”

Continue reading “Defacing the image of God”

Confusing advocacy for Palestinian rights and a truly democratic Israel with antisemitism perverts the accusation and undermines the legitimate fight against it.

By Joshua Shanes | Religion Dispatches | Feb 3, 2022

Perhaps it feels easier to cry “antisemitism” than to spell out the actual argument because there really isn’t one—or a good one, at any rate.

Amnesty International has just released a new, comprehensive report on the situation in Israel/Palestine. Like earlier reports from Human Rights Watch, Yesh Din, and B’Tselem—leading human rights groups documenting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians along with Palestinian organizations like Al-Haq and Al Mezan—Amnesty has concluded that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, a category of international law named after the old South African system but distinct from that specific case.

The basis of the accusation is widely and deeply documented. Charges include extensive and ongoing dispossession of land and property, unlawful killing and arrest, denial of basic rights and freedoms, restrictions on movement, and much more. Some of these—particularly ongoing crimes in the West Bank—are well known. Amnesty goes beyond some earlier reports, however, in documenting how Israel has been engaging in some of these crimes since its foundation. They call for Israel to reform itself to be in compliance with international law and to offer justice to its past victims.

Continue reading “Rather than attack Amnesty for labeling Israel an apartheid state critics could address the actual problems”

Visiting US lawmakers raise concern with PM about move slated to clear preliminary hurdle next month; church leaders blast plan to ‘nationalize one of Christianity’s holiest sites’

By Jacob Magid | The Times of Israel | Feb 20, 2022

“This is a brutal measure that constitutes a direct and premeditated attack on the Christians in the Holy Land, on the churches and their ancient, internationally guaranteed rights in the Holy City.”
— letter from Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theopolis III, Catholic Church Custos of the Holy Land Francesco Patton and Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem Nourhan Manougian 

Israeli officials are preparing to advance an unprecedented project to expand a national park onto church-owned lands and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem, sparking fierce opposition from local Christian leaders, The Times of Israel has learned.

The move would not strip the landholders of their ownership, but it would give the government some authority over Palestinian and church properties and religious sites, leading church officials and rights groups to characterize the measure as a power grab and a threat to Christian presence in the Holy Land.

Continue reading “In 1st, Israel advancing plan to expand national park onto E. Jerusalem church lands”

Palestinian Christians paid tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a prayer service that was held where Tutu prayed when he visited Beit Sahour in 1989.

By Jeff Wright | Mondoweiss | Feb 15, 2022

It’s not surprising, then, that three decades before the recent reports of B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Tutu had identified the situation in Palestine/Israel as apartheid.

Last week, Palestinian Christians gathered in Beit Sahour, a community adjacent to Bethlehem, to pay tribute to Nobel Peace Prize winner Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who died in December last year. The prayer service was held at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, where Tutu prayed when he visited the town in 1989.

Tutu had come to Beit Sahour during the first Palestinian Intifada. He spoke at Shepherds’ Fields in Beit Sahour, where he was welcomed by thousands of Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim. That visit wasn’t his first. As a young priest, Tutu had come to Jerusalem in 1966 to study Arabic and Greek. It’s not surprising, then, that three decades before the recent reports of B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Tutu had identified the situation in Palestine/Israel as apartheid.

Continue reading “Palestinian Christians memorialize Archbishop Desmond Tutu”

Inside the intensifying Israeli crackdown on Palestinian protest.

By Mohammed El-Kurd | The Nation | Feb 11, 2022

“The level of violence used to repress protests [in the Naqab] proved in practice, that regardless of their citizenry status, Palestinians everywhere face the raft of Israel’s security forces,”
— activist Riya Al’Sanah

The sun had not yet risen on January 21 when 30 Israeli soldiers arrested 12-year-old Ammar at his home in the Naqab. His alleged crime: protesting against the most recent push in a government-backed forestation plan—or “greenwashing,” as many put it—that would uproot thousands of Palestinian Bedouins and replace them with pine trees. Ammar was released after a few hours of detention and put under house arrest—even though, his parents said, he was at home during the protest. Al Jazeera reported that he had not spoken a word since he returned home.

Ammar’s story is but one of many like it in recent weeks. According to Adalah, a Haifa-based legal center working to protect the rights of Palestinians, 150 Palestinian Bedouins (some 40 percent of whom are minors) have been arrested and accused of “rioting” during protests against their expulsion from the area. The push is being led by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a para-public organization, and is the latest chapter in the decades-old colonial effort to “make the desert bloom.” One Israeli lawmaker vowed that the Israelis would “exert [their] sovereignty in the Negev.”

Continue reading “Israeli Law & Torture: From detained minors to a prison “Torture Room””