HolyLandJustice.org

A controversy at the University of Washington over donor efforts to stifle scholarly work critical of Israel raises serious questions about the role of money and academia.

By Alice Rothchild | Mondoweiss | Oct 27, 2022

It became clear…that the holder of the Benaroya chair was expected to refrain from making ‘certain political statements’ and to ‘accept the proposition that study of ‘modern Israel’ is incompatible with the concurrent study of ‘Israel/Palestine.’”

In today’s society there is awareness that the interests and demands of funders influence what topics are studied, the definitions of acceptable norms, hidden meanings of language, and sources of knowledge, and that ultimately funding may easily taint research findings. In February 2022 at the University of Washington, a controversy became public that serves as an example of just this issue as well as the wide divisions within the Jewish community when it comes to Israel/Palestine, and the disastrous but predictable consequences when these different worldviews collide.y harvested. 

Continue reading “When donor pressure threatens to erase Palestine from academia”

Soldiers were seen picking the trees after receiving permission from a settler group. When Palestinians went to harvest the next day, police prevented them.

By Oren Ziv and Meron Rapoport | +972 Magazine | Oct 19, 2022

“We have a land registration document proving that this is our land. Then suddenly they came and took it,”
— Ibrahim Sumarin, a resident of Silwan

An olive grove in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan has become the latest site of struggle between Palestinian residents, who have cultivated the flora for generations, and Israeli authorities and organizations, which have been coveting land and property in the area for years as part of their agenda of “Judaizing” East Jerusalem.

On Oct. 6, uniformed female soldiers were observed collecting olives from the trees in Silwan’s Wadi Rababa, a section of the Hinnom Valley which is part of a national park around the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Although it falls under the purview of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, the area has been designated as an “agricultural farm” and has been managed for the past two years by Elad, a settler organization that has been centrally involved in Israeli encroachments in Silwan.

Continue reading “Why are Israeli soldiers harvesting Palestinians’ olive groves?”

Stark contradictions in West’s treatment of the Ukraine war and the occupation and siege of Palestine should serve as a wake-up call.

By Jonathan Cook  | Middle East Eye |  Oct 14, 2022

Had the Palestinians openly celebrated blowing up a bridge in East Jerusalem, a territory illegally annexed by Israel in the 1960s, and killed Israeli civilians as collateral damage in the process, who can really imagine western media reports being similarly supportive?

No one took responsibility for the explosion over the weekend that ripped through a section of the Kerch Bridge that links Russia to Crimea and was built by Moscow after it annexed the peninsula back in 2014.

But it was not just Kyiv’s gleeful celebrations that indicated the main suspect. Within hours, the Ukrainian authorities had released a set of commemorative stamps depicting the destruction.

Continue reading “Westerners live in denial, convinced they’re the good guys”

Shadi Khoury, 16-year-old student at the Ramallah Friends School and grandson of Sabeel co-founder Samia Khoury, was kidnapped from his home in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem by Israeli Occupation forces.

By Alison Weir  | Israel-Palestine News | Oct 18, 2022

Shadi should not be sleeping in a prison cell. He is a child and should be home with his family.
— Samia Khoury, Sabeel co-founder

Dear Friends

In the early hours of this morning the Israeli occupation forces, consisting of a troop of around 12 persons consisting of army and secret service, stormed my son’s house after breaking the gate at the entrance of the compound in which we all live, so as to arrest his younger son Shadi Khoury, a sixteen-year-old child, a student at the Quakers Friends School in Ramallah. They beat him until he was bleeding all over the room and along the path on the way out of the house dragging him barefoot and blindfolded not allowing the parents to see where the blood was coming from. Shadi was taken to the interrogation section in the police compound called “the Russian compound”

Continue reading “From a Palestinian grandmother about what’s happening to her grandson”

The current moment of resistance across the West Bank is unprecedented. Palestinians are returning to a state of refusal of the settler-colonial reality some would have them ignore.

By Faris Giacaman  | Mondoweiss | Oct 14, 2022

The fate of this moment might end up being decided by whether Palestinian society rallies around the armed resistance groups.

Shu’fat refugee camp is under siege. The Israeli army unleashes its fury in a fervent manhunt for the fighter responsible for killing a soldier at the Shu’fat military checkpoint. In Nablus, an armed resistance group going by the name of Areen al-Usud (“the Lion’s Den”) puts out a call for a mass strike across Palestine. What’s more surprising is that several cities heed the call, despite the fact that it did not originate from any official political party, yet putting a halt to normal life in many cities all the same.

None of this would have been fathomable less than a year ago. In the past few days, Areen al-Usud has declared responsibility for six different shooting operations against Israeli military targets. In Jenin refugee camp, another armed group, the Jenin Brigades, continues to make a stand against the Israeli army during its incursions into the camp.  Just this morning, as the Shu’fat siege entered another day, the army launched a parallel invasion of Jenin, killing one and injuring six others in the months-long effort to stamp out the burgeoning resistance movement there.

Continue reading “The battle approaches”

From the farmers of the South Hebron Hills under attack by settlers to the armed groups of Jenin Camp facing nightly raids, a new wave of West Bank resistance is building.

By David Hearst | Middle East Eye | Oct 10, 2022

“They are trying to present to the world that we are terrorists. Who are the terrorists? We are trying to stay in our homes.”
— Asharaf Mahmoud Amour, Letwani villager whose house was demolished

The village of Letwani is the end of the road. Literally. Behind it lies a settler road which starts in Jerusalem and ends in the South Hebron Hills.

In front of it is the Masafer Yatta, an area of 30 square kilometres which Israel declared as a military firing zone in the 1980s.

Masafer Atta’s 2,500 residents are involved in daily pitched battles with settlers and soldiers.

The morning I arrived in Letwani, Asharaf Mahmoud Amour, aged 40, looked calmly at a pile of breeze blocks. It was the remains of his house. A bulldozer had demolished it a few hours before. To his amazement, the soldiers had left standing the shed to the left and the chicken house to the right, both under demolition orders.

“I will tell you where we are sleeping tonight – with the chickens and the goats,” Amour said.

Continue reading “‘Who are the terrorists?’: How a new Palestinian generation is fighting occupation”

Israel’s technological advancements have digitized its occupation of Palestine and turned the occupied territories into a testing ground for surveillance, spyware, and arms technologies.

By Jessica Buxbaum | MintPress News | Oct 5, 2022

“I’m afraid every time I pass [through this checkpoint] that this weapon is pointing at me, pointing at children, or women,”
— Issa Amro, an al-Khalil resident and founder of Palestinian activist group Youths Against Settlements

The Israeli military installed an automatic weapon at a heavily-trafficked checkpoint in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil in September. While it was initially reported that the weapon will fire a wide range of projectiles, the army now states the device is only capable of firing sponge-tipped bullets. Reiterating the remote-controlled gun will not use live fire, the IDF hopes this system will be used to test approved crowd dispersal methods. But critics assert the device is yet another example of Israel using Palestinians as guinea pigs so they can market their military technology as field-tested to governments around the world.

The weapon was placed at a military checkpoint on Al-Shuhada Street, a once vibrant center of Palestinian life in al-Khalil, but is now recognized as a symbol of Israel’s occupation. After Israeli-American settler Baruch Goldstein gunned down 29 worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994, Israel shut down the busy road and eventually declared it a closed military area where only residents can pass through. According to Issa Amro, an al-Khalil resident and founder of Palestinian activist group Youths Against Settlements, the area is home to 200 families and the checkpoint is used by around 300 families every day.

Continue reading “Israel experiments on Palestinians with AI-powered gun at checkpoints”

By Ramzy Baroud | CounterPunch | Sept 27, 2022

The Israeli superhero, Sabra, must be understood within the rational progression of the Israelification of Hollywood, a phenomenon that is surprisingly new.

The introduction of an Israeli Mossad agent as the latest Marvel movie character crosses the line, even by Hollywood’s poor moral standards. However, the Israeli superhero, Sabra, must be understood within the rational progression of the Israelification of Hollywood, a phenomenon that is surprisingly new.

Sabra is a relatively old character, dating back to a Marvel comic, the Incredible Hulk, in 1980. On September 10, however, it was announced that the Israeli character will be included in an upcoming Marvel film, ‘Captain America: New World Order’.

Continue reading “From Exodus to Marvel: A brief history of Hollywood’s justification of Israeli war crimes”

A confluence of factors over the past decade seems to be driving this shift.

By Zoha Qamar | FiveThirtyEight | Sept 22, 2022

…the Palestinian-Israeli question has become a topic that embodies an intra-party identity issue for Democrats, one that has increasingly pushed liberals to reconsider what constitutes progressive politics.

Twenty years ago, Tallie Ben Daniel was a college student wandering the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, when she came across a bumper sticker that read “Free Palestine.” Born to an Israeli family in Los Angeles, Ben Daniel had never heard the phrase before. “I had zero context for what that meant. And I didn’t understand,” she recalled. “Free Palestine from what?”

Today, Ben Daniel is an advocate for Palestinian human rights. She’s currently the managing director of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that challenges the way the Israeli government treats Palestinians. But her past confusion makes sense against the backdrop of the early 2000s.

Continue reading “More Democrats than ever support the Palestinian cause, and that’s dividing the party”