HolyLandJustice.org

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”

Human rights advocates are bringing attention to the role of Christian Zionist organizations on US foreign policy.

By Azad Essa | Middle East Eye | Jul 8, 2019

‘The pro-Israel bias of the US Congress, especially on the Republican side, is more due to Christian Zionism among evangelicals than it has to do with appealing to the Jewish community in the US.’
— Jonathan Brenneman, a Palestinian-American Christian working with the Mennonite Church USA.

US-Israel relations are at the strongest point they have ever been in the two countries’ history.

That was the overwhelming message heard on Monday as the two-day, Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit kicked off at the Washington Convention Centre.

The annual Christian Zionist summit, attended by thousands of delegates from across the United States, as well as other countries around the world, is one of the most feverish platforms of support for the Israeli state.

Continue reading “Protesters rally as Christian-Zionist leaders heap praise on Trump for Israel support”

Kushner’s ‘economic peace’ plan repeatedly claims that occupied Palestine can model itself after Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. That’s certainly ambitious – but also ignorant, absurd and even dangerous.

By Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and Victor Kattan  |  Haaretz |  Jul 4, 2019

Kushner’s plan is opaque on the key question of Palestinian territorial integrity, a foundational issue for economic policy and development.

Jared Kushner’s glossy “economic peace” plan has been widely, although not universally, panned.

Critics have attacked the plan from innumerable angles: from the photographs used to promote it, culled from USAID programs whose funding had been ended by the Trump administration, to the recycling of old, largely discredited ideas, associated with previous Israeli and U.S. plans that promoted economic development before a political plan.

None of these peace plans, including those that prioritized economic development ahead of a political program, have worked.

One key claim of the plan, largely overlooked by critics, are Kushner’s case studies, which are repeatedly referenced throughout the document: Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

Continue reading “Opinion: Jared Kushner’s plan for Palestine is even crazier than you thought”

The following is an excerpt from Noura Erakat’s new book Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.

By Noura Erakat | Mondoweiss | Jul 3, 2019

Having torpedoed the possibility of a Palestinian state, Israel is now the sole source of authority from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan.

In 2018, the prospect of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state is obsolete. As of late 2015, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank numbered more than 600,000, a 200 percent increase since the advent of the Oslo peace process in 1993. Israel’s settlement enterprise carves the West Bank into more than twenty noncontiguous landmasses separating approximately three million Palestinians into as many groups that stand apart from one another, thus undermining any sense of territorial contiguity or national cohesion. In 2000, Israel began constructing a separation barrier, or wall, allegedly to halt the flow of Palestinian suicide bombers within Israel’s undeclared borders. By the time of the wall’s completion in 2020, 85 percent of its length will run through the West Bank and effectively confiscate 13 percent of that territory, conveniently where most of Israel’s largest settlement blocs are located. Israeli military law prohibits the presence and travel of Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, thereby entrenching their political and geographic fragmentation. In Gaza, Israel has securitized nearly two million Palestinians and held them captive under a land siege and naval blockade for more than a decade. Palestinians cannot freely travel to East Jerusalem, and that area’s 300,000 Palestinians are subject to an aggressive removal campaign. In the years since 1948, nearly two thirds of the Palestinian population has been driven into a global diaspora, including fifty-eight refugee camps in the Arab world, and is being denied the right to return. Having torpedoed the possibility of a Palestinian state, Israel is now the sole source of authority from the Mediterranean Sea to the River Jordan.
Continue reading “Palestinian Authority thought compliance would lead to independence, but it only strengthened Israel’s domination”