US President Donald Trump (L) with Middle East Senior adviser Jared Kushner. (Photo: File)
A former Swedish diplomat names the complicity of doing nothing.
By Mats Svensson | The Palestine Chronicle | Apr 29, 2020
An emptiness filled me… I felt shame for my lack of engagement. Shame over my colleagues, over my organization and their indifference, over the silence.
For a long time, the movement was slow. Small steps. Limited change, as if we had all the time in the world. The movement was clear to everyone affected, as well as the outside world, but the outside world kept its eyes closed.
The outside world consists, among others, of short term workers. Often diplomats. Sometimes working for a few months, a few years. Less often, for a bit longer. These are continuously replaced. Like an eternal marathon race, one race without a baton. I was one of these.
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanhayu meeting in Trump Tower in New York in 2016.
Recently declassified FBI documents show Israeli interest in the election on behalf of Donald Trump.
By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Apr 30, 2020
The affidavit shows that the FBI regarded these contacts as possibly criminal. The real question here is whether the American media or politicians will pay any attention to the Israeli contacts, even as the Russia hysteria mounts in advance of the general election.
Here’s a delicious story that is not likely to get any pickup from the American mainstream obsessed with Russian interference: evidence that Trump’s friend Roger Stone was in touch with high Israeli officials in the runup to the 2016 election to discuss efforts to help Trump win. One official says “we have critical intell” that can help Trump avoid “defeat.”
The declassified FBI affidavit is a smoking gun insmuch as it reveals an apparent willingness on the part of high Israeli officials, including those close to the “PM” — Benjamin Netanyahu — to interfere in the election on behalf of Donald Trump. At least one of these officials met with Trump in July 2016 at the St. Regis in New York.
A plea from the Kairos Board of Directors expressing concern for the life and future of both peoples with a firm hope for the day when both oppressor and oppressed create a new society for all the people of the land.
By Kairos Palestine | Apr 30, 2020
While we see that the equation of land for peace have lost its credibility and now look impossible for a two states solution, we at KP [Kairos Palestine] are committed for our people and churches to continue to struggle for the values that make for peace.
Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:23-24)
The board of Kairos Palestine raises an alarm regarding the consequences of the third failed Israeli election in less than a year. The resulting coalition entered on April 20, 2020, combines two of the most right-wing parties—Bennie Gantz’s Blue and White and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud—in a deal that directly threatens Palestinians’ freedom, health and human rights.
Then U.S. Ambassador Daniel Shapiro, delivering a speech to an Israeli thinktank in 2016. Shapiro now works at that thinktank. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images)
Liberal supporters of Israel warn of Jews being overwhelmed by Palestinian births.
By Philip Weiss | Mondoweiss | Apr 28, 2020
… it is ‘important’ to consider whether Palestinians are becoming a majority in the land between the river and the sea, and in Israel itself…
The “demographic” argument for a two-state solution is the expressed fear that Jews will become a minority in Israel, and so the “Jewish people” will lose a claim to sovereignty.
It is explicitly a racial argument about Jews being overwhelmed by Palestinian births, or voters, and it is one that ought to be very hard to advance in mainstream U.S. forums. The scholar Ian Lustick lately confessed his shame at making the demographic argument for a two-state solution. It was a “deal with the devil,” Lustick said. “My mother would not approve.”
Well– here are two leading American Zionist organizations that consider themselves enlightened but that have recently advanced that unseemly argument.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump posters are seen ahead of the General elections in Jerusalem on 16 September 2019. (photo: Faiz Abu Rmeleh – Anadolu Agency)
The new Israeli government arrangement means Israel is now ready to move ahead soon with annexation.
By Middle East Monitor | April 26, 2020
Netanyahu described a US peace proposal announced by President Donald Trump in January as a promise to recognize Israel’s authority over West Bank settlement land.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced confidence on Sunday that Washington would give Israel the nod within two months to move ahead with de facto annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, Reuters reports.
Palestinians have expressed outrage at Israel’s plans to cement its hold further on land it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, territory they are seeking for a state.
World Peace text printed on wall. (photo: Humphrey Muleba / Unsplash)
Please join our brothers and sisters at Nonviolence International for an interactive webinar hosted by two of the organizations founders, Mubarak Awad and Jonathan Kuttab. Additionally, there will be feature presentations from some partners and new friends including: Alex McDonald of US Boats to Gaza, Raed Schakshak of We Are Not Numbers, and Naeem Jeenah, Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre.
This is a rare opportunity for our organization along with some of our partners and friends to address the situation in Palestine in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. We will discuss important campaigns that promote nonviolence during the pandemic.
Panelists will include:
Raed Shakshak Raed writes, “In a world full of noise, I sit quietly and let the clicks of my keyboard speak for me. My name is Raed. I graduated from university with a degree in English language and literature from Al-Azhar University in Gaza. Thanks to a semester as an exchange student at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania (USA), I have developed a better understanding of our world. My current mission is to tell new, different stories from Gaza in my role as outreach coordinator for We Are Not Numbers. It’s time I step up and be the voice of the voiceless ones, including myself. I started writing. I’ll be the noise now. No one can stop me.
Zahid Rajan Zahid is a graphic designer by profession. He has combined these skills with social activism and publishing in the realms of justice, human rights and democracy. He is the executive editor of AwaaZ magazine, director of the SAMOSA Festival, chair of the Kenya Palestine Solidarity Movement and an active participant in Kenya’s civil rights movement.
Kit Kittredge Kit is a peace activist from Washington State involved with Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign, Rachel Corrie Foundation, CodePink, Veterans for Peace and other peace and justice organizations. She is on the Steering Committee for the Women’s Boat to Gaza. She has been to Gaza Palestine six times and was a passenger on the Audacity of Hope, 2011, and the Tahrir, 2011 where passengers were kidnapped and imprisoned.
Through these timely webinars, Nonviolence International will educate, inspire, and build a strong community as we work for a better world.
Over the coming months, we will be hosting an impressive range of nonviolent activists, thinkers, and leaders. We hope that you will make our new webinar series a regular part of your week. Each week you will hear a powerful story of how people are using creative nonviolence in these difficult days.
A health worker and armed Palestinians gather under the portrait of their late leader Yasser Arafat at the Wavel Palestinian refugee camp (also known as the Jalil camp) in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, on April 24, 2020, after cases of infection by the novel coronavirus were detected there. (photo: AFP via Getty Images)
Palestinians in camps have resorted to be the frontline as community-based health workers and demonstrate the ingenuity and steadfastness that has kept Palestinian dreams for a better future alive.
By Bram Wispelwey & Amaya Al-Orzza | London Review of Books | Apr 18, 2020
The Israeli government and Palestinian security services announced that they would co-operate for the pandemic, but the actions on the ground tell a different story.
At nearly 18 per cent officially, and probably higher, the prevalence of diabetes among Palestinian refugees in the West Bank is one of the highest in the world. The official rate in Gaza is 16 per cent. Among adult citizens of Israel, it’s 7.2 per cent. The disease suppresses the immune system, among other complications, and can spiral dangerously out of control when combined with an infection, such as the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Diabetic patients with Covid-19 in China had a 1 in 14 chance of dying, more than triple that of the general population.
A Palestinian man wearing a mask as a means of protection against the coronavirus COVID-19, sits on the seashore in Gaza City on March 13, 2020. (photo: AFP)
Now that nearly half of the population of planet Earth are experiencing some form of ‘curfew’, a few suggestions on how to survive the prolonged confinement, the Palestinian way.
By Ramzy Baroud | Al-Bushra | Apr 13, 2020
Call it a ‘quarantine,’ a ‘shelter-in-place,’ a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew,’ we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily.
Now that nearly half of the population of planet Earth are experiencing some form of ‘curfew’ or another, I would like to share a few suggestions on how to survive the prolonged confinement, the Palestinian way.
Call it a ‘quarantine,’ a ‘shelter-in-place,’ a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew,’ we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily.
Personally, the first 23 years of my life were lived in virtual ‘lockdown. ’My father’s ‘quarantine’ was experienced much earlier, as did his father’s ‘shelter-in-place’ before him. They both died and were buried in Gaza’s cemeteries without ever experiencing true freedom outside of their refugee camp in Gaza.
Blue and White alliance leader and former Israeli chief of staff, Benny Gantz on 18 February 2020. (photo: Mostafa Alkharouf / Anadolu Agency)
A call for Palestinian leadership to change course on political strategy or face a very real existential threat.
By Professor Kamel Hawwash | Middle East Monitor | Apr 22, 2020
The agreement also includes the application of Israeli Law to wide swathes of the illegally-occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank while US President Donald Trump is still in office.
When it comes to Israel, the international community has once again been exposed for the double standards and hypocrisy it reserves to support the rogue state. Many so-called western democracies have fallen over each other to offer congratulations to an Apartheid state for forming a government that will entrench occupation, oppression, racism and land theft.
Settler-colonialism on steroids has thus been praised for spawning two politicians — both of whom are suspected war criminals — who have supposedly pushed personal animosity and ambition aside to form a government that will, from 1 July, begin to annex large swathes of illegally-occupied Palestinian lands in defiance of international law and conventions, aided and abetted by the US. This in itself is outrageous.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. (photo: AFP / Abbas Momani)
Aid donation to fight coronavirus given after Trump administration has cut millions of dollars of aid to Palestinians
By Reuters /Israel Hayom Staff | Apr 17, 2020
The $5 million will be international disaster assistance from the US Agency for International Development, according to the State Department’s website.
The United States is giving $5 million to the Palestinians to help them fight the coronavirus epidemic, a US envoy said on Thursday.
The donation announced by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman follows years of aid cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“I’m very pleased the USA is providing $5M for Palestinian hospitals and households to meet immediate, life-saving needs in combating COVID-19,” Friedman wrote on Twitter.
![Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump posters are seen ahead of the General elections in Jerusalem on 16 September 2019. [Faiz Abu Rmeleh - Anadolu Agency]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/20190916_2_38241876_47634577.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
![Blue and White alliance leader and former Israeli chief of staff, Benny Gantz on 18 February 2020 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/20200218_2_40916345_52286516.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
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