Category: News

US secretary of state to Foreign Minister Ashkenazi: ‘Israelis and Palestinians should enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and democracy’

By AFP and TOI Staff | The Times of Israel |  Apr 3, 2021

“We believe when it comes to settlement activity that Israel should refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and that undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution,”
— Ned Price, State Department spokesman 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Friday on Israel to ensure “equal” treatment of the Palestinians as the new US administration cautiously steps up efforts for a two-state solution.

In a telephone call with Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, Blinken “emphasized the administration’s belief that Israelis and Palestinians should enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and democracy,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

Continue reading “Blinken tells Israel: Palestinians should enjoy same rights, freedoms as you do”

Biden continues to stay disturbingly close to Trump.

By Michael Brown |  The Electronic Intifada | Apr 2, 2021

Recognizing the reality of occupation, moreover, means recognizing that Israel has no sovereignty over these territories and that the Palestinians living in them enjoy essential international protections, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Last year, presidential candidate Joe Biden personally intervened to keep the word “occupation” out of the Democratic Party’s platform regarding Israel.

In doing so, he infuriated a portion of the party’s base – a group Biden and his advisers presumably figured would dislike President Donald Trump and his anti-Palestinian policies even more than they might have disliked Biden.

Now the Biden administration is trying to thread the needle on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and Syria’s Golan Heights with the State Department’s latest annual human rights report.

It is titled: “2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Israel, West Bank and Gaza.”

Continue reading “State Department buries Israeli occupation in word salad”

The damage done by the IHRA definition of antisemitism is profound.

By Barry Trachtenberg | Jewish Currents | Mar 26, 2021

Although I remain apprehensive about inadvertently reinforcing beliefs in Jewish exceptionalism, the widespread adoption and abuse of the flawed IHRA definition has convinced me that it needs outright replacement

In the fall of 2017, in my capacity as a scholar of Jewish history, I advised the US House Judiciary Committee to reject codifying into law definitions of antisemitism such as those that were contained in the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act,” which was then under consideration by Congress. I objected to the language of the bill, which was based on the definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)—a definition that equates valid criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism and has thus become a tool for the suppression of protected speech. But I was also concerned with the possibility that the legislation would inadvertently reinforce perceptions of Jewish exceptionalism: By claiming that there was a need for a set of standards that was distinct from existing civil rights legislation and which defined what could and couldn’t be said about Jews, I argued, Congress not only risked putting unconstitutional limits on free speech, but also risked reinforcing the idea that Jews are a people for whom special rules need to be made. I testified that at the core of anti-Jewish hatred rests the belief that Jews are exceptionally unique in the world, and that by making legislation that was focused exclusively on antisemitism rather than religious, racial, and ethnic hatred more broadly, Congress would be singling out Jews in a way that would run contrary to the stated goals of the legislation.

Continue reading “Why I signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism”

A federal judge has dismissed a Jewish National Fund lawsuit that targeted the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights for alleged terror connections over its support for BDS.

By Michael Arria | Mondoweiss] | Mar 30, 2021

Lawsuits like this one are frequently implemented by pro-Israel groups in an attempt to bog down Palestinian organizations and stifle support for movements like BDS.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that targeted a Palestinian rights organization for alleged terror connections.

In 2019 the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and 12 American citizens living in Israel, sued the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) for $90 million. The lawsuit alleged that USCPR had funneled money to Boycott National Committee (BNC), which was then used for terrorist activities. The USCPR was represented by attorneys at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

Continue reading “‘We will not be silenced, siloed, or stopped’: federal judge tosses lawsuit targeting Palestinian rights group”

Why the oldest hatred needs a new definition.

By Brian Klug | The Nation | Apr 1, 2021

People of goodwill look to the IHRA definition for guidance concerning a key question: When should political speech about Israel or Zionism be protected—and when does it cross the line into anti-Semitism? What they need is clarity. What they get is a matzah pudding.

Confronted with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), published on March 25, 2021, it is tempting—especially for Jews at this time of year—to ask: Why is this definition of anti-Semitism different from all other definitions?

Continue reading “The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism”

A recent Foreign Affairs article gets history wrong and obscures a robust Palestinian discourse.

By Helena Cobban | Boston Review | Mar 31, 2021

One strong concern about the Oslo Accords was that they said nothing about what would happen if, after the five-year interim period prescribed therein, the two sides failed to arrive at a final peace agreement.

It is hard to believe that it has been fifty years since I used to sit on the floor of drafty college residences in Oxford with Hussein Agha, Ahmad Samih Khalidi, Ahmad’s cousin Rashid Khalidi, and other luminaries of the Oxford University Arab Society, listening to their discussions of the then-parlous state of the Palestinian freedom movement (and voicing an occasional interjection). During the previous year, Palestinian guerrillas earlier chased out of the West Bank by Israel had proceeded to challenge King Hussein’s rule in Jordan; and during “Black” September 1970, Hussein hit back at them hard. In Spring 1971 the guerrillas were still reeling from Black September and were struggling to regroup in the extensive Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. In Oxford we eagerly read any scrap of news we could get about their achievements there.

Continue reading “How we speak about the failure of the PLO”

Palestinians mark Land Day on March 30th and it is personal.

By Yousef Aljamal | Politics Today | Mar 30, 2021

The relationship a peasant has with the land is like the relationship between a mother and her children. It is deep and interconnected in a way that a settler-colonial society can never understand.

When in 1948 Zionist militias invaded the village of Aqer, where my family is originally from, my great-grandfather was one of a few poorly equipped fighters who tried to stop the invading forces. The fighters took up posts at the village school, located nearly a kilometer from the village.

Soon after, and after some resistance, the invading militia took over the school, killing the fighters who remained inside, including my great-grandfather, who was found dead inside the building. My grandfather buried his father in the village graveyard only to become a refugee for the rest of his life in Gaza days later.

Continue reading “On Land Day in Palestine: Our home is our land”

For weeks, the coastal enclave enjoyed a lull, even as as a surge in infections shook the West Bank. But with thousands of new cases, a new wave is officially here

By Aaron Boxerman | The Times of Israel | Mar 29, 2021

“We’re in a new wave. The virus curve is rising by the day. We expect the rate of positive tests to also continue to rise,”
— Dr. Aed Yaghi, Gaza branch of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society

With cases spiking, the Gaza Strip has entered a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, health officials in the coastal enclave told The Times of Israel on Monday.

Gaza saw 891 new coronavirus cases in 24 hours, the Gaza Health Ministry reported on Monday. The total number of active infections nearly tripled over the past two weeks, from 2,291 to 6,619.

The daily rate of positive tests in Gaza has skyrocketed to 25 percent over the past 24 hours, according to Hamas health officials. The high positivity rate indicates that the virus is likely spreading widely undetected.

Continue reading “Gaza enters second coronavirus wave, with 25% of tests coming back positive”

A popular working definition adopted by the U.S. government is overly broad and politicized.

By Joshua Shanes and Dov Waxman | Slate | Mar 26, 2021

Scholars, students, activists, and even artists have been branded anti-Semites (even when they are Jewish) for opposing Zionism, advocating for a Palestinian right of return, or promoting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

During a period when far-right, white nationalist, and anti-Semitic extremists have been parading and brawling on the streets of American cities, storming and looting the U.S. Capitol, and even murdering Jews in their places of worship, debating the definition of anti-Semitism might seem to be a trivial and pedantic academic exercise. Yet it has become a hotly contested, politically controversial issue, not only in the United States, but also in other Western democracies, including Germany and the United Kingdom.

Continue reading “We need a better definition of anti-Semitism”