Category: News

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”

These meetings reflect Bennett’s desire to appear more reasonable than Netanyahu, but don’t expect any substantive changes.

By Mitchell Plitnick | Responsible Statecraft  | Aug 16, 2021

Burns’ deep knowledge of policy and his expertise in diplomacy, earned over nearly four decades in the Foreign Service, means he has the president’s ear on policy decisions in a way most other CIA directors haven’t.

In the coming weeks, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is expected to visit the White House for his first meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden. The new administrations in both countries have been working to reset the relationship between them in the wake of their personality-driven predecessors. The visit this week of Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns was a key moment in that process.

Burns brings an unusual perspective to intelligence. A career diplomat who reached the highest ranks of the State Department before taking this position, Burns comes to an allied country to discuss policy as much as intelligence and security, more so than many of his predecessors. His selection was part of Biden’s effort to reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy after it had been crippled during the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Continue reading “CIA chief Burns brings a more polite tone in Israel visit”

A new, “improved” definition of antisemitism still fails to acknowledge the history of Palestinian dispossession.

By Kathryn Shihadah |  If Americans Knew/ Israel-Palestine News | Aug 14, 2021

Proponents of justice and racial equality would do well to remember that while anti-Semitism has its victims, Zionism in the last half century arguably has had more…

The Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism (JDA) was released in March as a progressive variant of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “working definition” of anti-Semitism – a definition that, despite its wide acceptance, is deeply problematic.

Progressives agree that JDA is a huge improvement over IHRA. JDA acknowledges that support for the Palestinian cause is “not on the face of it” antisemitic; it also leaves room for opposition to Zionism, criticism of Israel (including use of the word “apartheid,” or a “double standard” framing), and even the BDS (boycott, divest, and sanction) movement.

Continue reading “Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism ignores Palestinian rights, narrative”

The ongoing protests in the West Bank village of Beita are for land rights, water rights and basic human rights.

By Ramzy Baroud | Mondoweiss | Aug 11, 2021

“Israel even controls the collection of rainwater throughout most of the West Bank and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army,”
— Amnesty International Report, 2017

There is an ongoing, but hidden, Israeli war on the Palestinians which is rarely highlighted or even known. It is a water war, which has been in the making for decades.

On July 26 and 27, two separate but intrinsically linked events took place in the Ein al-Hilweh area in the occupied Jordan Valley, and near the town of Beita, south of Nablus.

In the first incident, Jewish settlers from the illegal settlement of Maskiyot began construction in the Ein al-Hilweh Spring, which has been a source of freshwater for villages and hundreds of Palestinian families in that area. The seizure of the spring has been developing for months, all under the watchful eye of the Israeli occupation army.

Continue reading “Water wars in the West Bank”

In the first in a series on progressive US Judaism and Israel, the writer insists the American pro-Palestinian movement is not, by and large, antisemitic.

By Zvika Klein | The Times of Israel | Aug 9, 2021

“As Americans, we don’t provide $3 billion in military aid to Iran or Syria. Asad is a monster, and we are his enemies, as we should be. But without us, Israel couldn’t do everything it does.”
— Peter Beinart

NEW YORK — As we get closer to the Young Israel synagogue in the prestigious Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan, the journalist next to me pulls out his kippa from his pocket, and places it in a smooth, natural motion on his head. Then, he places his cellphone up against the monitor beside the door. Following the increase of antisemitic incidents across the United States, he explains, the synagogue has been equipped with advanced security devices, and entry is only permitted to those who have a unique ID barcode. As we cross the doorstep I can’t help but think: who would have thought I’d be davening Mincha with Peter Beinart.

Continue reading “Peter Beinart: ‘The Palestinians are suffering more than the Israelis’”

To live under forced exile in the heart of my homeland or to live in voluntary exile as a resident alien—this is my choice. Either way, to be a stranger in a strange land.

By Sayed Kashua | The New York Review of Books | Aug 7, 2021

 How can a young refugee forget his homeland if he lives with constant reminders that he is a foreign element, unwanted, even despised?

On the day my brother called, the local news reported a bear sighting in a backyard in Richmond Heights, the Missouri suburb where we live. Another round of fighting had broken out between Israelis and Palestinians, exactly seven years after the bloody cycle of 2014, which was the summer my wife and I decided to leave our home in Jerusalem. We were spurred by political despair and a loss of hope for a better future.

Continue reading “My Palestinian Diaspora”

The righteous indignation of the Ben & Jerry’s controversy is rapidly blasted in emails to prospective donors. Over and over again.

By Douglas Bloomfield | The Jerusalem Post] | Aug 4, 2021

Former US senator Carl Levin, who died last week at 87, was one of the few unafraid to speak truth to power.

Over 50 years on and around Capitol Hill, I have found Israel has many friends, but not nearly as many as those who loudly declare the love and devotion.

Like the congressman with a large Jewish constituency who portrayed himself as Israel’s greatest defender in Congress but behind the scenes worked against it. There was the time he confided in colleagues that he hated the Israeli prime minister and wanted to cut aid as punishment. After losing his argument, he sought out a favorite reporter so he could publicly declare he not only supported the current aid levels but intended to lead the fight to increase funding.

Continue reading “GOP support of Israel isn’t legislation, but fundraising – opinion”

The backlash creates a smokescreen, distracting from the moral issue of Israeli occupation.

By Toby Irving | New York Daily News | Aug 3, 2021

Unfortunately, dominant politics, both here and in Israel, are still not able to hold the nuances Ben & Jerry’s and many American Jews hold so dear. It’s all BDS to them.

The people at Ben & Jerry’s who decided to remove their products from Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories anticipated significant backlash, but I wonder if they saw all the “meltdown” puns coming. Over the last few weeks, defenders of Israeli apartheid certainly lost it reacting to one of the highest-profile corporate actions against Israeli occupation. Ben & Jerry’s decided its products would no longer be made available in settlements in the West Bank.

Settlements are violations of international law and are widely recognized as antithetical to any hope for peace. Their expansion has all but killed the possibility of a two-state solution as it entrenches apartheid into the landscape of the West Bank. Ben & Jerry’s, motivated by its longstanding values of peace and social justice and the company’s and founders’ history in Israel, is doing its part to reject endless occupation. The move is not as sweeping an economic action as the Boycott-Divest-Sanctions (BDS) movement, the international non-violent Palestinian solidarity movement which calls for boycotts of the state of Israel, would have it, but BDS advocates still consider it a success.

Continue reading “The telling Ben & Jerry’s backlash: Even a targeted economic pressure campaign against Israel’s settlements meets a vitriolic response”