Category: News

A coalition of Florida organizations are calling for a boycott of Duty Free Americas over its financial support for racist, ultra-nationalist Israeli settler groups in the West Bank.

By Michael Arria | Mondoweiss | Sept 3, 2021

“The call for boycott of Duty Free Americas is especially important for us Floridians to answer because the owners of this company are our neighbors — with most of the stores located in this state — and we must hold them responsible and accountable for the millions of dollars they have donated to the ongoing Nakba,”
—  Lara Abu Ghannam CAIR-Florida’s Central Florida Regional Coordinator 

The South Florida Coalition for Palestine is calling for a boycott of Duty Free Americas over the Miami-based company’s connection to illegal Israeli settlements and the forced expulsion of Palestinians.

The Duty Free Americas chain is owned by the Falic family, who operate more 180 stores at airports and border crossings in the United States and Latin America. According to a 2019 AP investigation the Falics have donated $5.6 million to settler groups over a ten-year period. They’ve also lent financial support to racist, ultra-nationalist Jewish groups in Hebron.

Continue reading “Activists launch campaign to boycott Duty Free Americas over support for Israeli settler organizations”

Silencing political active women a tactic being used to intimidate women into submission.

By Benay Blend | Palestine Chronicle | Aug 31, 2021

“The challenge for prisoners is to transform [their] detention into a state of a ‘cultural revolution’ through reading, education and literary discussions.”
— political prisoner and Palestinian leader Khalida Jarrar

In late August 2021, Palestinian prisoner Anhar Al-Deek, who is nine months pregnant, wrote a moving letter to her family.

“What should I do if I give birth far from you? I am tied up, how can I give birth via cesarean section when I am alone in prison?” she asked, then added, “I am exhausted, and I had severe pains in the pelvis and severe pain in my legs due to sleeping on the prison beds. I do not know how I want to sleep on it after my delivery operation.”

Continue reading “On Israel’s history of targeting pregnant Palestinian women”

The new prime minister avoided the drama that tended to follow his predecessor’s visits to Washington.

By Mitchell Plitnick | Responsible Statecraft | Aug 30, 2021

The Palestinians are the big losers in this meeting.

When Benjamin Netanyahu met a U.S. president, there was always an air of tension. Whether it was caused by the rancorous relationship between Netanyahu and Barack Obama or the lovefest with Donald Trump that set Democrats’ teeth gnashing, there was always some discomfort on Capitol Hill.

New Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was determined to strike a very different tone in his first meeting with President Joe Biden on Friday. He aimed to mend the fences Netanyahu tore asunder between Israel and the Democratic Party, while also avoiding the appearance of acquiescence to Biden in areas where they differ on policy, most notably the Iran nuclear deal and the prospect of a Palestinian state. His success was unqualified.

Continue reading “Biden and Bennett tone down US-Israel relations”

15-year-old Tareq Zbeideh describes how he was kidnapped, tied, and beaten by settlers while picnicking with his friends near a settlement outpost.

By Oren Ziv and Ahmad Al-Bazz | +972 Magazine | Aug 26, 2021

Homesh [former settlement] was supposed to return to Palestinian hands, but in recent years settlers have set up a new outpost there.

For the last two weeks, Tareq Zbeideh has been lying wounded in his bed in the northern West Bank town of Silat a-Dahr for the past week, after being kidnapped and brutally attacked by Israeli settlers on July 17.

According to Zbeideh, 15, he was enjoying a picnic with friends near the former settlement of Homesh — one of the four Israeli settlements removed from the occupied West Bank during the Gaza Disengagement in 2006 — when settlers hit him with their car and tied him to the vehicle, before dragging him to an isolated area and beating him. The attack lasted half an hour, during which Zbeideh says the settlers tied him to a tree, beat him with a belt, sprayed him with pepper spray, electrocuted him, and then burned him with the car’s cigarette lighter.

Continue reading “‘I thought I would die’: Settlers abduct, brutally attack Palestinian teen”

Palestinian advocates say Israel is a laboratory for spy technology, where young recruits in the military’s most secretive intelligence units monitor Palestinians.

By Daniel Estrin | National Public Radio | Aug 25, 2021

“The defense industry and the high-tech industry are the two sacred cows of the Israeli economy.”
— Shay Aspril, Israeli journalist 

JERUSALEM — Israel takes enormous pride in its high-tech industry. But one of its star cybersecurity companies, NSO Group, is at the center of an international spying scandal that has concerned U.S. officials, and the Israeli government plays a role.

The Pegasus Project, a consortium of international media outlets, says a leaked list of some 50,000 phone numbers showed that governments around the world sought NSO’s cellphone hacking technology Pegasus to spy on people or mark them as potential targets, whether inside or beyond their own borders.

Continue reading “What to know about the spying scandal linked to Israeli tech firm NSO”

Ahead of Prime Minister Bennett’s first visit to Washington, new poll data show partisan divides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, support for a Palestinian state.

By Dina Smeltz and Emily Sullivan | Chicago Council on Global Affairs | Aug 25, 2021

…overall opinion divides closely on whether the United States should (50%) or should not (45%) restrict US military aid to Israel to prohibit its use in military operations against Palestinians.

In recent years, the US-Israel relationship was stewarded by Israel’s longest-serving leader, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the man whom he referred to as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” former President Donald Trump. This week, the first meeting between the two countries’ newly elected leaders, President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, will set the tone for a new era of US-Israel relations.

Continue reading “Americans split on military aid to Israel, say political status quo unacceptable”

The story of Layan Nasir’s baptism as an infant to her detention as a university student reveals the arbitrariness of the Israeli occupation.

By Fadi Diab | Mondoweiss  | Aug 23, 2021

Layan and other students are accused of belonging to an “unlawful association” at Birzeit University. The “unlawful association” is a union of students acting per the rules of their university and the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education.

Layan Nasir, a parishioner at St. Peter’s Anglican/Episcopal Church in Birzeit, Palestine, is a 21-year-old Nutrition and Dietetics student at Birzeit University. A remarkable young woman with a calm demeanor, tender spirit, and incredible potential, Layan was raised in a devout Anglican family to live her faith in the midst of the whatever challenges may come in life.

The story of Layan’s baptism as an infant embodies the Palestinian experience of faith under colonial domination. On the day of her baptism, Israeli forces blocked the road between Ramallah and Birzeit, a short 12 kilometers away. The Anglican priest in Ramallah, Fr. Samir Esaid, serving the community in Birzeit, was stopped at the checkpoint and denied passage. He explained the situation to the soldiers to no avail. So, Fr. Esaid called the Catholic priest in Birzeit, Fr. Eyad Twal. Layan and her brother were baptized in an Anglican church by a Catholic priest.

Continue reading “West Bank church stands with unjustly incarcerated parishioner Layan Nasir”

Lawmakers decry lack of clarity over what materials are allowed into Gaza by Israel, call for full reopening of border crossings.

By MEE staff | Middle East Eye | Aug 19, 2021

Israel has prevented the import of raw materials, building materials, electrical appliances and equipment, as well as wood, metal and plastic equipment into Gaza, while imposing strict restrictions on exports, allowing only small quantities of produce and fish to come out of the Palestinian territory.

More than 50 House Democrats have called on the Biden administration to work with Egypt and Israel to ensure the delivery of aid into Gaza, as the lawmakers cited concerns over the prohibition of materials entering the besieged strip months after Israel’s offensive left a devastating humanitarian toll on the country.

The group of 53 lawmakers sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday, urging him to push for a full reopening of the Kerem Shalom, Erez, and Rafah border crossings into Gaza, adding that the Rafah crossing at Egypt’s border was not enough.

Continue reading “House Democrats urge Biden to ensure aid enters Gaza from Israel and Egypt”

A retired pediatrician speaks out about the wounds of the Israeli occupation that are bloodless and invisible, but which will eventually find their way to pierce the heart.

By Harry Gunkel  | Mondoweiss  | Aug 19, 2021

But how will we calculate and honor the misery of despair, the emptiness of careers lost because of forbidden opportunities, the sadness of unrealized dreams, the ruin of relationships?

Between July 26 and 30, three Palestinian teenagers were killed by Israeli forces. During the same week, a fourth died of gunshot wounds suffered some weeks before. These four children were among the many killed in the West Bank so far in 2021, along with 66 children killed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza in May. Within hours, punctuating that week of unabashed violation of international law, human rights and morality, Israeli forces raided the Ramallah offices of Defense for Children International – Palestine in the dark early morning hours of July 29, forcing entry and confiscating computers and confidential client files. On August 16, four Palestinian young men, two of them teenagers, were murdered by Israel forces in Jenin.

More killings of Palestinians without reason, without remorse, without punishment or responsibility. No chance for families to grieve or mourn properly while scrambling to protect other children and waiting for the next assault on their neighborhood or village or city.

Continue reading “The wounds of occupation”

Scores of unarmed Palestinians, including children, have been murdered since the end of Israel’s May assault. Yet this is now so normal, the Israeli media and army barely mention it

By Gideon Levy | Middle East Eye | Aug 17, 2021

Behind all this is contempt for Palestinian lives. Nothing is valued less in Israel than the life of a Palestinian

Superficially, things are relatively quiet these days in the Israeli-occupied territories. There are no Israeli casualties, almost no attacks in the West Bank and certainly not inside Israel. Gaza has been quiet since the end of Israel’s latest offensive there, Operation Guardian of the Walls.

In the West Bank, the despair-inducing routine of daily life grinds on during this so-called period of quiet – which is precisely the irony crying out for our notice in this terrifying statistic: since May, more than 40 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.

Continue reading “In Israel, the cold-blooded killing of Palestinians is met with silence”