Category: News

The policy of home demolitions undermines any prospect for a lasting peace.

By Yumna Patel  |  Mondoweiss |  Jul 22, 2019

‘They destroyed the homes in front of the people, in front of their kids eyes. If you were there you could feel that everyone, the old, the young, everyone was in despair over their homes. It was a devastating, agonizing experience.’
— Hamada Hamada, local activist

It was the middle of the night, but the residents of the occupied East Jerusalem town of Sur Bahir were not asleep. They were waiting for, dreading, the arrival of Israeli forces to demolish their homes.

At around 2:15am on Monday, the people’s worst fears came true with the sounds of military jeeps, bulldozers, and heavy machinery rolled into their neighborhood of Wadi al-Hummus, on the outskirts of Sur Bahir, right next to Israel’s separation barrier.

Locals told Mondoweiss that more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers and government workers descended upon the area, with force, and began the process of demolishing 11 buildings in the neighborhood.

Continue reading “‘Devastation and outrage’ after Israeli forces destroy Palestinian homes in Sur Bahir”

Historian Dr. Dmitry Shumsky shows that, contrary to popular belief, the forefathers of Zionism did not envision a state based on Jewish supremacy.

By Meron Rapoport  |  +972 Magazine  |  Jul 21, 2019

…the Zionist leaders envisioned the Jewish state as a multi-national one, or even as an entity within a larger framework, similar to the federalist structure in the United States.

No one was surprised when the authors of the Jewish Nation-State Law decided to write, in its opening clauses, that “The State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people,” and “the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” After all, this is precisely what every young Israeli is taught in school, whether they are Jewish or Arab. Israel, so it goes, is the “nation-state” of the Jewish people, and establishing a Jewish state was the goal of the Zionist movement since its inception.

Even those opposed to the Jewish Nation-State Law did not disagree with this line of thinking. There were those who argued that the law needs to include the principle of equality, as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, as that would be “the real Zionist” thing to do. There were others who claimed that the law only proves that Zionism was and remains a racist movement. But neither group questioned the idea that a Jewish nation-state lies at the core of Zionism. Those who suggested Israel become a state of all its citizens, or, God forbid, a bi-national state, were perceived as traitors undermining Israel and the Zionist project.

Continue reading “When Zionism imagined Jewish nationalism without supremacy”

Critics question merit of engaging with Supreme Court after it allows demolition of buildings under Palestinian control.

By Ben White |  Al Jazeera | Jul 17, 2019

…it is the court’s intervention – or lack of it – in Israel’s discriminatory planning system and associated demolition of Palestinian homes which has perhaps been most under the spotlight of late..

The demolition of Palestinian-owned buildings by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is a routine occurrence.

But in Sur Baher, a neighbourhood southeast of Jerusalem, an unprecedented mass demolition is looming – with the approval of Israel’s top court.

Ten inhabited and under-construction buildings, containing dozens of apartments, are marked for destruction, after falling foul of a 2011 Israeli military order prohibiting construction within a 100-300-metre buffer zone of the separation wall.

Continue reading “Can Israel’s courts deliver justice for Palestinians?”

Trump’s hate rhetoric should sound familiar and concerning.

By Richard Silverstein  |  Tikun Olam |  Jul 15, 2019

All this is not very far from the attitude of many Israeli Jews toward the Palestinian minority.

In his latest Twitter assault, Pres. Trump again targeted ‘The Squad’ (two of whose members are Muslim-American and two of whom are Black), the progressive Congressional women of color. His comments have taken an even more ugly twist in the past few hours, as he’s targeted Rep. Ilhan Omar claiming that she is anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and that she supports al Qaeda. Here’s what he said about the Minnesota Representative:

Continue reading “Trump’s attack on congressional women of color weaponizes hate, anti-Semitism and Israel”

 

Trump’s latest comments should give Israel some cause for concern.

By Andrew Silow-Carroll | Jewish Telegraphic Agency| Jul 16, 2019

Trump’s attacks on four liberal congresswomen of color, telling them to ‘go back’ to their ancestral countries (only one was born outside of the United States) was exactly the kind of bigotry that the summit was devoted to combating.

It would have been remarkable in any administration: a Summit on Combating Anti-Semitism with appearances by some of the president’s top guns, including the secretary of the Treasury, the secretary of Education and the FBI director. And all hosted by and presided over by the attorney general.

That was the lineup at Monday’s all-day seminar at the Justice Department, and the turnout was appreciated by the Jewish professionals and lay leaders in the room, no matter what else they thought about President Donald Trump. Here was an entire day devoted to what that attorney general, William Barr, called “a marked increase in reported instances of anti-Semitic hate crimes.”

Continue reading “Donald Trump and the perils of loving Israel just a little too much”

 

Exposure to seeing what occupation looks like raises new questions.

By James North and Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Jul 14, 2019

‘My joy and my light shouldn’t be coming from someone else’s darkness,’
— Liyah Foye, a senior at UNC-Asheville

We are as critical of the New York Times as anyone, but we need to salute the superb report in the newspaper by David Halbfinger on a liberal Zionist trip for American Jews to see the occupation. Titled, “Touring the Israeli Occupation: Young U.S. Jews Get an Unflinching View,” the July 10 article offered horrifying glimpses of Palestinian conditions in Susiya and Hebron that left the young Jews staggered.

The article was about a very lukewarm tour of the occupation indeed, by the Zionist group J Street, which wants the visitors to engage in Israel advocacy back home, and wants to influence the more rightwing Jewish trips to Israel, notably Birthright, to stop off in Palestine.

Continue reading “Poof! One day in occupation causes young Jews on Zionist tour to question Zionism — ‘NYT’ reports”

Disappearing historical archives raises questions of historical revisionism and censorship.

By Jonathan Ofir | Mondoweiss | Jul 12, 2019

Everything is being buried, by an arm of the Israeli government.
— Benny Morris, Israeli historian

Israeli historian Benny Morris is known for his uncovering of some of Israel’s darkest secrets from the Nakba. Only a week ago, he was mentioned in detail in Hagar Shezaf’s staggering investigative report in Haaretz titled “Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs”. The piece uncovered a secret yet systematic operation by an Israeli Defense Ministry department, causing critical Nakba archives to disappear from the public eye – archives that had already been cited since the late 1980’s by historians such as Morris.

Continue reading “Benny Morris reveals more about the Israeli conspiracy to cover-up the Nakba”

The plight of Ethiopian Israeli’s share similarities to Palestinian experiences yet there is a lack of connection to the shared experiences.

By Ashraf Ghandour | +972 Magazine  |  Jul 9, 2019

Palestinians do not need to be versed in political theory to know where the Ethiopian struggle is heading.

For over a week I have watched Ethiopian Israelis conduct a loud and righteous struggle against the systematic racism that has held them down for 35 years. As a Palestinian, as a person of color, I could not help but feel empathy for their pain, along with a strange sense of bewilderment when I saw Israelis of all stripes failing to connect the just struggle of Ethiopians to those of other groups oppressed by Israel.

But Solomon Tekah was shot because he was Black, and because I am a Palestinian I had to keep listening closely.

Continue reading “Ethiopians have an opportunity at solidarity with Palestinians. Will they take it?”

Cutting-edge Israeli defense technology has become increasingly critical to American military operations

By Seth Frantzman | Tablet | Jul 9, 2019

Israel now has three of the largest defense companies in the world, Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

In April an Israeli airstrike struck an Iranian base in Syria on the road to the ancient city of Palmyra. The target, according to an Israeli report, was an Iranian 3rd Khordad air defense system. Two months later a U.S. Global Hawk drone flying over the Gulf of Oman was struck by a missile fired by a 3rd Khordad system in Iran, almost leading to war.

The two incidents highlight the shared threats faced by the U.S. and Israel, not only from Iran but also from hybrid groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Islamic State, which operate as both parastate entities and terrorist organizations. The result of these shared threats and the close political ties between Washington and Jerusalem is a uniquely close relationship between the two country’s militaries. Often the Israel-U.S. defense relationship is seen through the lens of U.S. foreign military financing for Israel, which comes to more than $3 billion a year. Far less attention is paid to the fact that since the 1980s Jerusalem has become a key supplier of advanced military technology to Washington. To name one recent example, the kibbutz-owned Israeli vehicle manufacturer Plasan supplied add-on “modular armor kits,” exterior platings that covered American military vehicles and protected U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. “That armor which was developed in Israel has saved many hundreds or thousands of lives of U.S. troops of vehicles hit by IEDs,” recalls Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador and visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.

Continue reading “Innovations in the U.S.-Israel security alliance”