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The World Bank says the economic and social situation in Gaza has been declining for over a decade but has deteriorated exponentially in recent months and has reached a critical point.

By Joe Catron | Mint Press News | Oct 4, 2018

‘Between starving to death and living humiliated and oppressed on the one hand and struggling for a better life, for freedom and independence, on the other, many choose to fight back and, if need be, die trying.’
— Refaat Alareer, a literature professor at the Islamic University of Gaza

As the Great March of Return roared past its half-year anniversary last Friday, it also seemed to reach levels of resistance and repression not seen in months.

The escalation aims to “put more pressure on the Israeli occupation authorities, hoping they meet the protesters’ demands — lifting the siege and recognizing the right to return,” a spokesperson for the Hamas movement told MintPress News.

Every Friday since March 30, the demonstration has mobilized thousands of Palestinians to a military barrier erected by Israel around the Gaza Strip.

Protesting both an 11-year closure of the Palestinian enclave imposed by Israel and Egypt, and Israel’s ongoing refusal to allow millions of Palestinian refugees — including two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s population — to return to homes from which they were ethnically cleansed by Zionist and Israeli forces starting in December 1947, demonstrators have braved the tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and live gunfire of Israeli troops.

Many have died from it, with 176 losing their lives to Israeli fire between March 30 and September 22, according to the World Health Organization.

During the same period, 20,833 were injured — including 10,762 requiring hospitalization, 5,048 struck by live bullets, and 1,200 needing reconstructive surgery on wounded limbs.

Continue reading “With little left to lose, Gaza’s Great March of Return protesters ramp up their resistance”

Since 2016, thousands of Palestinian workers from the West Bank have had their entry denied overnight, rendering them jobless.

By Middle East Monitor | Sep 27, 2018

‘It could be hundreds or thousands of people for that matter [who have the same family name]. It is as if cancelling the entry permit for someone called Cohen, when someone else called Cohen did something wrong.’
— Yoav Gal Tamir of the Advice Centre, which represents Palestinian workers

Over the past two years, more than 2,000 people have been impacted by a decision to revoke entry permits to Israel from Palestinians who share a name with someone who has carried out a resistance attack, a report by Hebrew channel Social TV has revealed.

Since 2016, thousands of Palestinian workers from the West Bank, many of whom have worked in Israel for over 20 years, have had their entry denied overnight, rendering them jobless.

When the reason for the refusal is requested, Israeli authorities state that it is due to a shared family name with a suspected resistance attacker, even if no actual familial connection exists between the two parties. The move has impacted hundreds of people with common Palestinian names.

Continue reading “Israel denies 2,000 Palestinians entry based on their family names”

US Representative Duncan Hunter is currently under federal indictment for campaign finance violations, including using campaign funds to pay his children’s private school tuition.

By Bill Tarrant | Forward & Reuters | Sep 30, 2018

“I think he’s trying to tap into dark emotions and I don’t think people will rise to that,”
— Ammar Campa-Najjar, candidate for the House of Representatives

When a Democrat with Palestinian-Mexican ancestry who had never before run for office was elected to challenge a Republican incumbent in a staunchly conservative southern California congressional district, few gave him much of a chance.

But five-term US Representative Duncan Hunter, who has been criminally charged with misusing campaign funds, is concerned enough about Ammar Campa-Najjar to issue a YouTube ad accusing his Democratic rival of trying “to hide his family’s ties to terrorism.” It was a reference to his Palestinian grandfather, who was involved in a 1972 plot to kill Israeli athletes at the Olympics and was killed the following year by Israeli commandos.

The ad, released on Wednesday, shows Hunter, a former US Marine who followed his father into Congress, dressed in camouflage and saying he approved the message.

Continue reading “GOP candidate accuses Palestinian-American opponent of hiding “ties to terrorism””

The Population, Immigration and Border Authority said entry was denied “because of boycott activity.”

By Noa Landau | Haaretz | OCt 3, 2018

[The student] was showed an photo of herself taken from the right-wing website Canary Mission, which claims to track and document ‘people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses.’

Israel prevented on Tuesday the entry of Lara Alqasem, a 22-year-old American student whose grandparents are Palestinian, despite her having recently been granted an A/2 Student Visa for her masters’ degree in the Hebrew University.

Alqasem’s visa was granted by the Israeli consulate in Miami, and is valid for a year. However, when she landed in Ben-Gurion International Airport Tuesday night, she was refused entry into Israel.

The Population, Immigration and Border Authority said entry was denied “because of boycott activity,” adding she would remain at the airport until her appeal against the deportation is heard, scheduled for 2 pm.

Continue reading “Israel denies entry to American student even though she had a visa”

Today we see the evangelization of the administration’s policy goals, accompanied by the demonization of its critics. This is not what religious liberty meant to the nation’s founders, nor should it be what it means today.

By Katherine Franke | The Washington Post | Sep 28, 2018

The administration is not defending a neutral constitutional principle — religious liberty — for all people, but rather only for those who share the administration’s political perspective. In fact, this government has weaponized the notion of religious liberty, not for its own sake, but rather to advance a blatantly partisan, conservative agenda.

The Catholic sisters in the order of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ announced this month that they plan to petition the Supreme Court to consider whether their religious-freedom rights are being violated by the construction and pending use of a natural-gas pipeline on their land in Pennsylvania. They argue their faith commits them to “believe that God calls humans to treasure land as a gift of beauty and sustenance that should not be used in an excessive or harmful way.” Lawyers representing the federal government have vigorously opposed the nuns’ right to assert a religious-liberty claim in federal court.

The government’s position in the Adorers case is surprising, given that Vice President Pence announced in July that “religious freedom is a top priority of this administration.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions echoed those remarks a few days later: Under “this administration, the federal government is not just reacting — we are actively seeking, carefully, thoughtfully and lawfully, to accommodate people of faith. Religious Americans are no longer an afterthought.”

Continue reading “Religious freedom for me, but not for thee”

Israel Hayom, Israel’s most-read newspaper, deletes crucial explanations from an Associated Press article, leaving its readers with zero understanding of why Palestinians might want the world to boycott Israel.

By Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man| +972 Magazine | Sep 17, 2018

The campaign, founded in 2005, calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses, cultural institutions and universities. BDS says it seeks to end Israel’s occupation of lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war and what it describes as discrimination against Israel’s Arab minority. It calls for the ‘right of return’ for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to homes their ancestors fled or were expelled from in the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.

The Associated Press published a feature article last week discussing the impact that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement has had on the Israeli music scene as of late.

Spurred by a few high-profile cancellations at a recent music festival in Israel, most notably by singer Lana Del Rey, the article did what one would reasonably expect an international wire service covering such a story to do: it explained the phenomenon, gave some subjective views and objective facts, and, of course, explained what the BDS Movement is and what its demands are.

The article was reproduced and published by a typically large number of international news outlets, including the New York Times. One of those publications, however, the English edition of Israel’s most-read newspaper, Israel Hayom, made an interesting change to the AP article in the version it put online for its readers.

Continue reading “According to Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper, BDS has nothing to do with the occupation”

As long as the Israeli military controls every aspect of Palestinian life, no soft-power program is going to make a dent in the deep anger that comes as a result.

By Daoud Kuttab | The Washington Post | Sep 19, 2018

You can do a lot to change the perception of Israelis who have only imaginary ideas of Palestinians. But for Palestinians who see soldiers and checkpoints and witness their parents being humiliated, no coexistence program for children could ever erase such tough images.

Of all the punitive and one-sided decisions that President Trump has taken against Palestinians this year, the latest one defunding cooperation programs between Palestinians and Israelis is one that I can support.

Following the cut of nearly $300 million in support to a UN agency providing humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees and $25 million to East Jerusalem hospitals, Washington announced the end of a program bringing Israeli and Palestinian children together.

The White House cut $10 million worth of funding to a so-called coexistence program that includes joint Palestinian and Israeli soccer games, farming efforts and other reconciliation projects. The Trump administration did the right thing. It makes little sense to pretend that things are normal in Palestine and Israel. It is illogical to fund a program that brings Israeli and Palestinian children to play soccer as if there is no occupation, no walls, no exclusive settlements for Jews or no siege on Gaza.

Continue reading “What Trump gets right about cutting funding to Palestinian kids”

The “peace process,” as we knew it, is dead. To speak of Palestinian rights these days is to draw scorn, or just a big yawn. The Palestinians are yesterday’s problem.

By David Ignatius | The Washington Post | Sep 18, 2018

The peace I worked on for 35 years will not be achieved in our lifetimes. But it will happen eventually, because there is no other way.
— Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel

This month commemorates two pinnacles for the benign, naive superpower that was America, both involving our now-lost role as Middle East peacemaker. Forty years ago, President Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt; and 25 years ago, President Bill Clinton presided over the signing of the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

As we looked this week at the old photographs of beaming U.S. presidents grandly mediating between adversaries, what was happening in today’s Middle East? Russian President Vladimir Putin was cutting a deal with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to avert a catastrophe in Syria and carve up that country in a peace of the tyrants.

Russia as a Middle East bullyboy has been a nuisance for the United States. Russia as the hegemonic regional power that brokers peace deals may be a more serious problem.

Continue reading “How peace keeps receding in the Middle East”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/949052ba-5881-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b

Palestinian American human rights attorney Noura Erakat says protesters in Gaza aren’t pawns of Hamas; they are struggling for the freedom all humans want.

By Noura Erakat | The Washington Post | May 15, 2018

See the video here →