Category: News

NGO Development Center was behind ‘Palestinian NGO Code of Conduct’ document, which ruled out any collaboration with the Jewish state.

By Cnaan Liphshiz   | The Times of Israel |  Jan 4, 2021

The French Development Agency, or AFD, which focuses on “on climate, biodiversity, peace, education, urban development, health and governance,” last year gave an 8 million euro ($9.8 million) grant to the NGO Development Center, or NDC, a Palestinian group that says it promotes good government practices in the West Bank. 

The French government has allocated about $10 million to a Palestinian organization that is a leading promoter of the boycott Israel movement.

Promoting that boycott has been found illegal in France in several high-profile cases.

The French Development Agency, or AFD, which focuses on “on climate, biodiversity, peace, education, urban development, health and governance,” last year gave an 8 million euro ($9.8 million) grant to the NGO Development Center, or NDC, a Palestinian group that says it promotes good government practices in the West Bank. It was behind the 2008 “Palestinian NGO Code of Conduct,” a document includes a rejection of “any normalization activities with the occupier [Israel], neither at the political-security nor the cultural or developmental levels.”

Continue reading “France grants $10 million to Palestinian group promoting Israel boycott”

Quds News Network slammed the move by the social media giant as politically motivated.

By MEE staff | Middle East Eye  | Jan 2, 2021

“For years, American apps, including Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp, have been deleting and deactivating the accounts of Palestinians in coordination with the Israeli government and security agencies, on the pretext of preventing Palestinian ‘incitement and hate speech'”
— Quds News Network (QNN)

A popular Palestinian news platform said that it was removed from popular social media app TikTok without any notice, in a move it claimed to be connected to news content it published.

Quds News Network’s (QNN) website and social media accounts frequently publish videos on Palestinian news that quickly go viral, including 1,200 videos on TikTok, before it was banned.

QNN’s director Ahmad Jarrar accused TikTok of being in “partnership with the occupation”.

Continue reading “Palestinian news platform QNN banned by TikTok”

The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians

By Desmond Tutu | The Guardian  |   Dec 31, 2020

There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility.

Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Part of the reason for this is to stop people focusing on Israel’s capacity to turn dozens of cities to dust. This failure to face up to the threat posed by Israel’s horrific arsenal gives its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a sense of power and impunity, allowing Israel to dictate terms to others.

But one other effect of the US administration’s ostrich approach is that it avoids invoking the US’s own laws, which call for an end to taxpayer largesse for nuclear weapons proliferators.

Continue reading “Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons”

The Church Movement for Palestine in 2021 – A message from Kairos USA.

By Mark Braverman |  Palestine Portal  |  Dec 30, 2020

“…the release of “Cry for Hope: A Call to Decisive Action” has spurred the churches on national and denominational levels to challenge Christian Zionism as theology and as political policy.”
— Mark Braverman, Executive Director

The year 2020 was pivotal for the kairos movement. One legacy of the departing Trump administration is that the veil was ripped from the illusion of the United States as standing for self-determination and the restoration of human rights for Palestinians. We report briefly below on how action by churches to keep Palestine on the agenda of the incoming administration has begun. On the global front, the release of “Cry for Hope: A Call to Decisive Action” has spurred the churches on national and denominational levels to challenge Christian Zionism as theology and as political policy. As reported previously here, the debate over Christian Zionism has begun on every continent, with dialogue with church leaders taking place in Germany, Scandinavia, and the UK and open political debate beginning in the U.S. and in South Africa. In India, West Asia and Latin America, kairos organizations and their affiliates in the churches and the human rights community are organizing in support of “Cry for Hope” and in solidarity with Palestinians. Kairos USA will continue to cover these developments in the national and global arenas.

Continue reading “A Message from Kairos USA Executive Director Mark Braverman”

A truth telling call to moral action.

By Philip Weiss  |  Mondoweiss | Dec 30, 2020

And 30 years of “peace process” later, aimed at creating a Palestinian state, the settlements continue to propagate, more than ever, engulfing Palestinian neighborhoods around Jerusalem. It’s a joke.

Dear liberal Zionist friends,

We’ve been friends for a while in a cordial but wary way, and as this tumultuous year ends, I wanted to appeal to you to change your stance. While your attitudes are well-meaning and and even idealistic, you have done nothing to change Israel’s conduct in some 40 years now; and the fact that you have not altered your messaging beyond Frustrated Wheedling with some Anger thrown in now and then is deeply disappointing to me.

The sad truth is that: You have no program at all for ending the occupation, you just hope Israel will change.

Continue reading “An appeal to my liberal Zionist friends (who have No Program for Palestinian rights)”

The impunity enjoyed by Israeli soldiers has fostered an increasingly trigger-prone policy against Palestinian children. Americans have ways to prevent it.

By Brad Parker  |  +972 Magazine  |  Dec 28, 2020

In analyzing these incidents, we discovered an alarming trend that began in 2014, in which Israeli forces have increasingly targeted Palestinian children with live ammunition to quash protests.

Earlier this month, an Israeli soldier shot and killed Ali Abu Aliya in the village of al-Mughayyer in the occupied West Bank, during a protest against an Israeli settlement outpost that was recently established on the village’s land. According to an investigation by Defense for Children International – Palestine, Ali was about 50 meters away from Israeli forces and did not present any threat when he was shot. He was struck in the abdomen with live ammunition and died shortly after in a Ramallah hospital. It was his 15th birthday.

Ali’s killing is disturbing, but not exceptional. Since I began working with DCI-Palestine in January 2013, we have documented 155 Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces with live ammunition or crowd-control weapons. Another 570 Palestinian children have been killed in Israeli military offensives and other attacks, according to our documentation. Growing up in a hyper-militarized context, including going about daily life near Israeli settlements and barriers, Palestinian children like Ali easily become targets.

Continue reading “US guns are being aimed at Palestinian kids. Washington can take them away”

Here is what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.

By Philip Weiss  |  Mondoweiss  | Dec 24, 2020

The United States must also take early steps to deter Israeli annexation and settlement expansion by expressing unambiguous opposition to both….As part of this approach, the United States should make clear that it will not shield Israel from international consequences it might face when it takes actions, such as settlement construction, that are contrary to U.S. policy.
— Center for a New American Security report

Happy holidays and a happy end to 2020! This is Phil Weiss and I’m filling in for Michael Arria on this newsletter this week, and the best value seemed to me to relay what the Democratic Party’s Israel lobby sees as Israel/Palestine policy under a Biden administration.

What will Biden do on the conflict? What should he do?

And there’s a consensus from Israel’s liberal supporters. Biden won’t push for a two-state solution because there won’t be a Palestinian state in the next few years (or ever!). But he will take measures that keep the idea of two states on life support. I’m a cynic about these policies; I think the two-state solution is a charade that prolongs Palestinian suffering but allows American politicians and others to maintain the claim that they stand behind Palestinian human rights. But I’m putting on my reporter’s hat here, because these are D.C. insiders.

Continue reading “Biden won’t advance ‘two-state solution’ but try to keep idea alive, somehow”

Powerful conservative Christian groups overlook the plight of Palestinian Christians to avoid criticizing Israel.

By James Zogby |  Common Dreams |  Dec 21, 2020

To most in the West, Palestinian Christians are simply invisible. To conservative Christians, they are at best a nuisance who stand in the way of their unquestioning ideological attachment to Israel.

As we enter the final week before Christmas, my thoughts turn to Bethlehem, its struggling people, and the shocking disregard for them displayed by many Christians in the West. This is not to say that that these same Christians don’t love Bethlehem. But the city they love is the one of the story that’s 2,000 years old.

In that story, we are told of how Mary and Joseph, living under Roman occupation, were required to travel to Bethlehem to enroll in a mandatory census. Because the town had become overcrowded, Mary and Joseph could not find housing and were forced to stay in a cave where Mary gave birth to Jesus.

Continue reading “Conservative Christians remain silent about suffering Bethlehem”

Raphael Warnock is the latest example of being criticized for sympathizing with the Palestinian cause and then pulling back to moderate his position.

By Peter Beinart |  Jewish Currents  | Dec 22, 2020

Year after year, decade after decade, these attacks have forced Black politicians to either mute their sympathy for Palestinians or risk losing a seat at the table. In this way, the Israel debate has helped keep American foreign policymaking disproportionately white.

In October, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is seeking re-election in Georgia, released an ad called “Birds of Prey” attacking her Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock. The title refers to a sermon Warnock gave during protests in the Gaza Strip in 2018, in which he accused the Israeli government of shooting “unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey.” In a statement accompanying the ad, Loeffler called Warnock “the most anti-Israel candidate anywhere in the country.” The next month, she unveiled a new commercial, which again denounced Warnock as “anti-Israel.” When the two candidates debated in December, she accused him of having “called Israel an apartheid state.”

Black politicians often face such accusations. In June, the Republican Jewish Coalition accused Jamaal Bowman, who ousted longtime incumbent Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional District, of supporting “anti-Israel policies.” In April, the right-wing Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner alleged that California Rep. Barbara Lee had “a clear anti-Israel voting record.” Last year, Republican congressional leaders demanded that Rep. Ilhan Omar be removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for her “anti-Israel statements.” In 2018, Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis called his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, “anti-Israel.” And in 2017, the American Jewish Congress sent letters to members of the Democratic National Committee warning that if they chose Congressman Keith Ellison as the party’s chair, it “could threaten the relationship between America and our ally Israel.”

Continue reading “How “Pro-Israel” orthodoxy keeps US foreign policymaking White”

Written towards the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is hope for a return to a new miracle afoot: a renaissance of Palestinian culture and coolness.

By Richard Morgan  | BBC  | April 7, 2020

…Bethlehemites have rewritten their narrative by reappropriating and reclaiming their uncertain, uneasy lives. ‘Tuz’ is far from apathetic resignation; rather a daring declaration of persistence along with the canny awareness both that art is the most seductive form of violence and that living well is the best revenge.

The Singer Café is like a lot of hipster haunts you might find in the nearby cosmopolitan corners of Israel: a family sharing a shakshuka brunch; a European traveller writing a screenplay on his laptop; and a dating couple getting to know each other over a sumptuous mezze platter. There’s striking local art on the walls, and the cafe’s whimsical, upbeat vibe is epitomised by a sign that reads “more espresso, less depresso”.

But Israelis are by and large forbidden by their government from visiting this particular oasis of cosy calm. That’s because Singer is in the suburb of Beit Sahour on the walking-distance outskirts of Bethlehem – itself on the outskirts of Jerusalem – in the occupied West Bank, which has been controlled by the Israeli military since the Six Day War of 1967. Singer serves arguably the best espresso con panna in any conflict zone on the planet.

Continue reading “A new side to the holy city of Bethlehem”