Category: News

Kenneth Roth, who ran Human Rights Watch for 29 years, was denied a fellowship at the Kennedy School. The reason? Israel.

By Michael Massing | The Nation | Jan 5, 2023

Sikkink was even more surprised by the dean’s explanation: Israel. Human Rights Watch, she was told, has an “anti-Israel bias”…

Soon after Kenneth Roth announced in April that he planned to step down as the head of Human Rights Watch, he was contacted by Sushma Raman, the executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Raman asked Roth if he would be interested in joining the center as a senior fellow. It seemed like a natural fit. In Roth’s nearly 30 years as the executive director of HRW, its budget had grown from $7 million to nearly $100 million, and its staff had gone from 60 to 550 people monitoring more than 100 countries. The “godfather” of human rights, The New York Times called him in a long, admiring overview of his career, noting that Roth “has been an unrelenting irritant to authoritarian governments, exposing human rights abuses with documented research reports that have become the group’s specialty.” HRW played a prominent role in establishing the International Criminal Court, and it helped secure the convictions of Charles Taylor of Liberia, Alberto Fujimori of Peru, and (in a tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Continue reading “Why the godfather of human rights is not welcome at Harvard”

By Jonathan Kuttab | Jan 7, 2023 | Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA)

When Israel determined it wanted to be a Jewish state, and further that it wanted to keep all the land of historic Palestine, the results were inevitable.

The new Israeli government started off with a bang, as Benjamin Netanyahu announced the principles that would govern it. First, and foremost, was the principle that Jews have an “exclusive and unquestionable right to all the land of Israel, including the Galilee, the Negev, Judaea and Samaria, and the Golan.” Following the “Nation-State Law” of 2018, he was articulating a view of Zionism and the State of Israel that is openly, frankly, and unabashedly racist and discriminatory, a view that totally rejects any possibility of equality or compromise with the Palestinian Arab population who compose half of the souls living between the the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Other, more extremist members of his government chimed in reminding us that they, and not him, control the government. Itamar Ben Gvir took on the Ministry of Public Security (the police) and immediately staged a provocative visit to the Haram Al Sharif, contrary to his instructions and the warnings of the entire world, particularly his friends in the US, Jordan, the UAE, and elsewhere.

Continue reading “The Great Unmasking”

By Ramzy Baroud | The Palestine Chronicle | Jan 4, 2023

Palestinians and Arab countries are rightly angry, because they understand that the new government is likely to sow more violence and chaos.

Even before the new Israeli government was officially sworn in on December 29, angry reactions began emerging, not only among Palestinians and other Middle Eastern governments, but also among Israel’s historic allies in the West.

As early as November 2, top US officials conveyed to Axios that the Joe Biden Administration is “unlikely to engage with Jewish supremacist politician, Itamar Ben-Gvir”.

In fact, the US government’s apprehensions surpassed Ben-Gvir, who was convicted by Israel’s own court in 2007 for supporting a terrorist organization and inciting racism.

Continue reading “Criticizing or Whitewashing Israel: Netanyahu’s New Government Accentuates West’s Hypocrisy”

By Yara M. Asi | The New York Times | Dec 29, 2022

The closure of the city at a time of already escalating military and settler violence was an act of violence in and of itself…

This year, during the lead-up to the Israeli elections, I returned to my hometown, Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, to work on a research project and spend time with my family there. I had received a grant to study the impact on Palestinians’ health of Israel’s restrictions on Palestinians’ movement — such as checkpoints, travel permits (including those required for medical care), the separation wall spanning the West Bank and road closures.

My previous work and the existing research done on Palestinian health and well-being gave me a good sense of what I would find: multiple burdens in access to health care and predictably high rates of depression, stress, anxiety and insecurity.

Continue reading “As a Researcher, I Study the Health of Palestinians. It’s Time to Pay Attention.”

Salah Hammouri’s deportation highlights the longstanding Israeli policy of revoking the residency rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Rights groups say it is a tool of forcible transfer.

By Ibrahim Husseini  | The New Arab | Dec 28, 2022

“Israel is working to undermine and reduce the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem,”
— Jessica Montell, the director of the Israeli Center for the Defence of the Individual, HaMoked

If you are Palestinian and a resident of East Jerusalem, then beware. Israel’s interior ministry could be watching, waiting for an opportune moment to remove you from the city or the country altogether.

The criteria are fluid, and often trivial, with working or studying abroad sufficient justification to remove your residency rights. It can also include holding a foreign passport or expressing political views not aligned with the state.

Since 2018, Israeli authorities have legally been able to accuse Palestinians of ‘breached allegiance’ and revoke their permanent residency, without ever providing evidence or offering a chance to fight it in court.

Continue reading “The quiet expulsion of Palestinians from Jerusalem”

Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi hands over to his successor a ‘policing army’ that is more autonomous, settler-led, and lethal than ever.

By Yagil Levy | +972 Magazine | Dec 26 ,2022

Indeed, the cumulative record in the occupied territories irrefutably shows that the Israeli army is not just an enabler, but in many ways a sponsor, of settler violence.

Next month, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi is set to hand over the reins of Israel’s military forces to his successor, Major General Herzi Halevi. Among the many matters Halevi will be taking up — including questions around the future of Israel’s conscription model — perhaps his biggest challenge will be how the army tackles its main arena of operations, which is subject to deep disputes among Israel’s political and military echelons: the policing warfare against Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This is assuming that the signing of a maritime border deal with Lebanon holds off a potential third Israel-Lebanon war, while an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is also not expected imminently. Kochavi has not often been involved in the policing missions in the West Bank, but it seems that what happens there is liable to cast a shadow over his tenure — as shown by the furor when an Israeli soldier assaulted a left-wing activist in Hebron last month.

Continue reading “The rebellion of Israel’s second army”

By Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) | Dec 8, 2022

Building the US Embassy to Israel on stolen Palestinian refugee property would contradict previous US positions and pledges about Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian property.

ISSUE:   The United States is moving forward with plans to build a new embassy in Jerusalem on land which Israel stole from Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons, including from Palestinian Americans.

WHY IS THIS ISSUE IMPORTANT?

➡️ Building an embassy in Jerusalem on land stolen by Israel from Palestinian refugees violates the private property rights of US citizens and other Palestinians. Palestinians have clear titles to this land, which was illegally expropriated by Israel.

➡️ This plan undermines the stated position of the US opposing Israel’s ongoing theft of Palestinian land for illegal colonization. The Biden administration cannot credibly oppose Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land while doing the same thing to build a diplomatic compound in Jerusalem.

Continue reading “IMEU Policy Analysis #8: US Plans to Build Jerusalem Embassy on Stolen Palestinian Land”

By Diana Buttu | The New York Times | Dec 13, 2022

If there is any silver lining to our grim situation, it might be that the rise of Mr. Ben-Gvir and his fellow extremists will open the eyes of more Americans.

HAIFA, Israel — As the prime minister-designate, Benjamin Netanyahu, finalizes the formation of Israel’s most extreme right-wing government to date, I, along with other Palestinians in Israel and in the occupied territories, am filled with dread about what the next few years will bring.

Every day since the elections, Palestinians wake up with a “What now?” apprehension, and more often than not, there’s yet another bit of news that adds to our anxiety. The atmosphere of racism is so acute that I hesitate to speak or read Arabic on public transportation. Palestinian rights have been pushed to the back burner.

Continue reading “Israelis Have Put Benjamin Netanyahu Back in Power. Palestinians Will Surely Pay the Price”

The incoming government has prompted a new crop of teens to question their upcoming role in one of Israel society’s central tenets.

By Oren Ziv | +972 Magazine | Dec 11, 2022

There is already evidence that the army fears a wave of refusals, as recently demonstrated by the unusually severe punishment handed down to four conscientious objectors.

It didn’t take long for the incoming far-right government to announce its racist, anti-democratic plans, particularly for Palestinians and the Israeli Jewish liberal-secular public. What many are calling a “nightmare government” has prompted senior politicians from the opposing camp to call for mass “civil disobedience” in the form of protests and the refusal to cooperate with the religious fundamentalists who are about to run the country.

On the grassroots level, it seems refusal to enlist in the Israeli army, or at least to serve in the occupied territories — which has long been a marginal but high-profile form of civil disobedience in Israel — may very soon start to become more widespread. The fact that leader of Otzma Yehudit leader and presumed Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, and Religious Zionism head Bezalel Smotrich, who is about to acquire broad powers in the West Bank, will be leading political figures in Israel’s security and military establishment, crosses a red line for many Israeli Jews. Some, it seems, are beginning to second-guess their instinctive resistance to refusing the draft.

Continue reading “Israel is on the cusp of a wave of army refusal under far right rule”