Category: News

The Palestinian legislative elections face disputes and hurdles that could prevent the vote from being held.

By Ahmad Melhem | Al-Monitor | Feb 28, 2021

“I believe that the odds of holding the elections do not exceed 50% due to the many obstacles.”
— Ghassan al-Khatib, former Palestinian planning minister

RAMALLAH, West Bank — It remains unclear whether or not the Palestinian legislative elections, scheduled for May 22, will be held in the Palestinian territories in line with the decree President Mahmoud Abbas issued Jan. 15. Doubts about the success of the elections persist within large population segments.

At the operational level, the Central Elections Commission — an independent commission tasked with organizing and monitoring the elections that was set up by a decree issued by President Yasser Arafat in 2002 — is carrying on with the preparation phases for the electoral process. Phase 1, which consisted of the voter registration process, ended Feb. 17. The commission indicated in a press statement that the total number of voters registered reached nearly 2.622 million, or 93% of the 2.809 million eligible voters, according to the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics. The three-day Phase 2, which includes claims and objections, begins March 1.

Continue reading “Despite international support, obstacles threaten Palestinian elections”

A political alignment between Likud Zionism and far-right Religious Zionism could have significant ramifications.

By Jonathan Cook | The Electronic Intifada | Mar 12, 2021

 …Netanyahu’s dependence on Religious Zionism maximizing its seat count means he will be committed to doing everything possible to push the “ticket over the threshold” in the final stages of the campaign.
— Israeli analyst

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brokered an electoral alliance that is almost certain to bring Israel’s version of the Ku Klux Klan into the Israeli parliament when elections are held later this month.

Netanyahu’s primary aim is to make sure he wins a decisive majority by shoring up the far-right bloc so that he can pass an immunity law to neutralize his current corruption trial.

Enter Otzma Yehudit, or the Jewish Power party.

Otzma Yehudit is strongly influenced by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose virulently anti-Palestinian Kach party was barred from Israeli elections more than 30 years ago.

Continue reading “Israel’s KKK on way to government?”

Right-wing lawyer David Abrams’s lawsuit against UCLA could unleash harassment on attendees of a Students for Justice in Palestine event.

By Alex Kane | The Intercept | Mar 6, 2021

“Canary Mission is well resourced and good at what it’s trying to do, which is ruin the lives of people who speak about Palestine,”
— Kanwalroop Singh, speaker at Students for Justice in Palestine conference

Kanwalroop Singh had just finished presenting at the 2018 Students for Justice in Palestine conference at the University of California, Los Angeles when a student journalist asked her for an interview.

Singh, a Sikh American who at the time was a law student at UCLA, agreed. She spoke to a student-run feminist magazine about her workshop on the Palestinian and Kashmiri struggles for justice at the conference, which brought together students from across the country to strategize on how to advance the campus movement for Palestinian human rights.

“I didn’t think about the consequences. I thought, ‘It shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a small feminist magazine,’” said Singh.

Continue reading “Pro-Israel lawyer is weaponizing public records law against Palestinian activists”

On Friday March 5, between 10,000-20,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel marched in Umm al-Fahm against police abuse and neglect, as months of violence reached a boiling point.

By Yoav Haifawi | Mondoweiss | Mar 5, 2021

In those areas that were occupied by Israel in 1948, Palestinians are officially citizens of Israel but the state still relates to them as “internal enemy”.

The combined problem of a hostile racist government and the growing prevalence of organized crime are haunting the Palestinian Arab society within the green line. The lack of personal security is multiplied by the feeling that there is no one to turn to for protection when your life is in danger. In the last few years there have been many struggles against organized crime and against the Israeli police giving free hand to the criminal gangs to terrorize the Arab population, while at the same time the police acts with excessive violence against people who are struggling for their rights or even against ordinary Arab citizens.The Israeli Police force used tools that killed and inflicted evere harm to disperse the demonstrations, which is in violation of international standards and is classified as a crime where the perpetrators must be held accountable.

On Friday March 5, I took part in one of the biggest demonstrations of this kind. It was held in Umm al-Fahm, the main Palestinian town in the northern Triangle area. The protest was a high point in a long struggle of the people of the region, led by “al-Herak al-Fahmawi al-Muwahad” – “The United Fahmawi Movement.” This movement started following the regular occurrence of violence from armed gangs against local citizens as well as the murder attempt against Dr. Suleiman Aghbaria, a former mayor and one of the leaders of the Islamic Movement, in January 2021.

Read the full article here →

The Biden administration, the International Criminal Court and the dangerous theology of American exceptionalism.

By Peter Beinart | The Beinart Notebook | Mar 8, 2021

“We firmly oppose and are disappointed by the ICC prosecutor’s announcement of an investigation into the Palestinian situation.”
— Ned Price, US State Department spokesperson

A remarkable exchange took place last Wednesday at the State Department. Asked about the International Criminal Court’s decision to launch an investigation into Israeli and Palestinian crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, State Department spokesman Ned Price began dutifully reciting his lines: “We firmly oppose and are disappointed by the ICC prosecutor’s announcement of an investigation into the Palestinian situation. We will continue to uphold our strong commitment to Israel and its security including by opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”

Price wasn’t making an argument—he never explained why Israeli security necessitates impunity for war crimes, or why the court’s investigation is unfair. He was reading a script. He sounded like a Soviet commissar delivering statistics on the wheat harvest.

Continue reading “American exceptionalism as magical thinking”

Israeli spyware company is facing increased scrutiny which may be part of larger Biden shift emphasizing human rights.

By Daniel Sonnenfeld | The Media Line | Mar 3, 2021

“NSO have simply been caught a few times’ in the surveilling of activists and journalists…”
— Prof. Orr Dunkelman, director of The Center for Cyber Law and Policy

The US Department of Justice is showing renewed interest in an Israeli cyber company previously tied to the surveilling of journalists and rights activists around the world, after an FBI investigation began in 2017 was reportedly “stalled” in 2020. Israeli spyware company NSO Group is facing a lawsuit in the US filed by the messaging platform WhatsApp. The renewed efforts are part of the Biden administration agenda to increase its emphasis on human rights and crack down on the Saudis, experts say.

The Guardian reported on Monday that the Justice Department is reviving its examination of NSO Group. The report said that Justice Department lawyers had recently contacted WhatsApp for information regarding NSO Group’s alleged 2019 targeting of 1,400 users of the messaging app, which is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by WhatsApp against the Israeli company.

Continue reading “US reportedly renews investigation of Israeli spyware company NSO Group”

Officials recognize there is a real risk of prosecution over the deadly 2014 conflict.

By Peter Beaumont | The Guardian | Mar 3, 2021

If this conflict was different from previous wars, however, it was in the immediate recognition by some Israeli officials that there was a serious risk of investigation by the ICC that could ultimately lead to Israeli soldiers and politicians in the chain of command being investigated for war crimes

The date of 13 June 2014 listed by the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, as the starting point for its investigation into potential war crimes committed by Israelis and Palestinians is a significant one.

The day before, as that year’s World Cup opened, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by a Hamas cell on the West Bank while hitchhiking in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Tensions escalated rapidly: Israel would within weeks launch its third war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip while Palestinian militants would launch rockets into Israel.

It was one of the deadliest conflicts between the two sides in decades. On the Palestinian side, more than 2,100 people – including civilians – were killed during 50 days of fighting. On the Israeli side, 67 Israeli soldiers and five civilians were killed.

Continue reading “Why Israel fears the ICC war crimes investigation”

Israel’s unethical vaccination strategy risks failure at multiple levels.

By Alice Rothchild | Truthout | Feb 28, 2021

…when health care is treated as a privilege rather than a human right, individual and societal health suffer.

There is growing concern regarding the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccine, nationally and internationally. As the rollout continues, some U.S. states are allocating more vaccines to health centers, local health providers and tribal programs, focusing on vulnerable and hard-to-reach populations, and paying attention to outreach to communities of color.

There is also serious discussion of a global approach, lifting patents for vaccines that were largely developed using governmental funding. The pandemic has revealed the glaring contradictions when both public health and medical care are allocated along racial, economic and geographic lines. Addressing these issues alerts us to the fact that when health care is treated as a privilege rather than a human right, individual and societal health suffer.

Continue reading “Under Israeli apartheid, there are two different pandemics”

A conversation between Peter Beinart and Ben Rhodes discussing the realities of lobbying efforts by Israeli and Palestinian groups.

By Foundation for Middle East Peace | Feb 10, 2021

Peter Beinart speaks to Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor from 2009-2017, about working on Israel, Palestine, and Iran in the Obama Administration. Rhodes draws insights from interactions with different lobby groups, presidential travel to Israel and a memorable meeting with young Palestinians in Ramallah, and talks about navigating the assumption by Israel advocates that Blackness translates into sympathy for Palestinians living under oppression. Beinart and Rhodes end the conversation with a discussion of the Biden administration and Democratic foreign policy advisors’ approaches to the IHRA definition of antisemitism and Democrats’ longstanding commitment to the concept of the two state solution. Ben Rhodes’s new book, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, will be out in June 2021.

Continue reading “Occupied Thoughts: Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes with Peter Beinart”