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On college campuses, in state legislatures and in many other venues nationwide, the polarized debate about Israel is a familiar conflict and likely to intensify.

By David Crary | Associated Press via The Seattle Times | Mar 9, 2019

‘These laws are meant to silence and repress. But they can’t change people’s hearts and minds.’
— Rabbi Alissa Wise, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace

For Congress, the allegations of anti-Semitism directed toward Rep. Ilhan Omar have no precedent. Yet on college campuses, in state legislatures and in many other venues nationwide, the polarized debate about Israel is a familiar conflict and likely to intensify in the months and years ahead.

Fueled by a wave of youthful activists, including many Jews aligning with Muslims, criticism of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians has grown in volume and scope, with persistent calls for boycotts and disinvestment. Pro-Israel organizations and politicians have countered with tough responses, and efforts to reconcile the differences have gained little traction.

Continue reading “Growing criticism of Israeli policies”

Some accused the freshman congresswoman of antisemitism while others denounced “ugly attacks” on her.

By Tom Perkins | The Guardian | Mar 9, 2019

‘Money works both ways — donors give to those candidates they view as champions of their issues, but at the same time politicians know where their funding comes from and will likely take into account wishes of their donors when faced with a tough decision.’
— Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance expert at the Campaign Legal Center

When the Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar claimed pro-Israel lobby money influenced American politics, in the way other powerful lobbying groups do, she ignited allegations of antisemitism and sparked a furious debate in her own party. But a look at House Democrats and 2020 presidential candidates’ responses to the resulting row seems to validate her claim.

House Democratic leaders who drafted a resolution initially aimed at condemning Omar’s remarks received millions from the pro-Israel lobby throughout their congressional careers. Congressman Eliot Engel, who accused Omar of using “a vile antisemitic slur,” has taken about $1.07m throughout his career, or about $107,000 per election.

Meanwhile, some of her staunchest defenders took little or no money from the lobby. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib received no pro-Israel lobby donations during her 2018 campaign, and tweeted that she was “honored” to serve with Omar, who was enduring “ugly attacks.”

Continue reading “Did AIPAC funding influence Democrats’ responses to Ilhan Omar?”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Mideast Focus Ministry for their First Friday Film series.

	Date:	Friday, Apr 5, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	St. Mark’s Cathedral Bloedel Hall 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	Free Admission

Event Details

This is Home is an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in America and struggling to find their footing. Displaced from their homes and separated from loved ones, they are given eight months of assistance from the International Rescue Committee to become self-sufficient. As they learn to adapt to challenges, including the newly imposed travel ban, their strength and resilience are tested. It is a universal story, highlighted by humor and heartbreak, about what it’s like to start over, no matter the obstacles.

After surviving the traumas of war, the families arrive in Baltimore, Maryland and are met with a new set of trials. They attend cultural orientation classes and job training sessions where they must “learn America” — everything from how to take public transportation to negotiating new gender roles — all in an ever-changing and increasingly hostile political environment. Their goals are completely relatable: find a job, pay the bills, and make a better life for the next generation. Continue reading “Film: This is Home — A Refugee Story (Apr 5)”

Many see value in the conversation Ilhan Omar spurs and defend her right to freely raise these questions without enduring attacks herself.

By Eugene Scott | The Washington Post | Mar 7, 2019

‘We are concerned that the timing of this resolution will be seen as singling out and focusing special condemnation on a Muslim woman of color — as if her views and insensitive comments pose a greater threat than the torrent of hatred that the white nationalist right continues to level against Jews, Muslims, people of color and other vulnerable minority groups in our country.
‘It is also our view that the far greater threat to the Jewish community — to its security and its values — comes from the surge of ethno-nationalism and racism that forces on the right, including President Trump, have unleashed here and across the globe.’
— J Street statement

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.) has drawn attention — and criticism — for her statements about Israel. Many people, including top lawmakers, have condemned Omar’s comments as anti-Semitic and called on her to apologize.

But she has also received messages of support from members of the Jewish community, who are critical of Israel’s policies and worry that the blowback against Omar will stifle debate.

Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocates for Israel to pull out of the West Bank, wrote that critiques of Israel like Omar’s are essential:

“It has never been more important to be able to distinguish between the critique — even the harshest critique — of a state’s policies (Israel), and discrimination against a people (Jews),” she said. “Israel does not represent all Jews. Not all Jews support Israel. Speaking out for Palestinian human rights and their yearning for freedom is in no way related to anti-Semitism, though the Israeli government does its best to obscure that.”

Continue reading “Progressive Jews worry that criticism of Rep. Ilhan Omar will stifle debate about Israel”

All over the world, it is an alarming time to be Jewish – but conflating anti-Zionism with Jew-hatred is a tragic mistake.

By Peter Beinart | The Guardian | Mar 7, 2019

I don’t consider Israel an apartheid state. But its ethnic nationalism excludes many of the people under its control.

It is a bewildering and alarming time to be a Jew, both because antisemitism is rising and because so many politicians are responding to it not by protecting Jews but by victimizing Palestinians.

On 16 February, members of France’s yellow vest protest movement hurled antisemitic insults at the distinguished French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. On 19 February, swastikas were found on 80 gravestones in Alsace. Two days later, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, after announcing that Europe was “facing a resurgence of antisemitism unseen since World War II”, unveiled new measures to fight it.

Among them was a new official definition of antisemitism. That definition, produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016, includes among its “contemporary examples” of antisemitism “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination”. In other words, anti-Zionism is Jew hatred. In so doing, Macron joined Germany, Britain, the United States and roughly 30 other governments. And like them, he made a tragic mistake.

Continue reading “Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Rachel Corrie Foundation for a day of advocacy for Palestinian Rights.

	Date:	Friday, Mar 15, 2019
	Time:	9:00 am – 4:30 pm
	Location:	United Churches of Olympia Social Hall 110 11th Ave SE Olympia, WA  98501
	Information & Registration:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	$10 suggested donation

Event Details

Our goals during this fun, action-packed day are:

• to strengthen statewide organizing for advocacy on Palestine
• to continue to inform and educate state legislators about issues related to Palestinian rights.

Schedule

• Gathering and Socializing: 9:00–10:00 am
• Welcome and Introductions 10:00–10:05 am
• Presentations & Training: 10:05 am
• Lunch with Legislative District Groups: 11:30 am
• Walk and Transport to State Capitol: 12:15–12:30 pm
• Group Photo in Front of Capitol: 12:30–12:45 pm
• Visits and Deliveries of Materials to Legislative Offices 1:00–3:00 pm
• Return to United Churches Location: 3:00–3:15 pm
• Debriefs: 3:15–4:00 pm
• Closing and Collecting Ideas, Contacts, Evaluations, and Plans for Follow-up and Ongoing Work: 4:00 pm
• Homeward or on to dinner in Olympia! 4:30 pm

More information here →

A more sympathetic US policy toward settlements may have emboldened the extremist youths who carry out reprisal attacks.

By Loveday Morris and Ruth Eglash | The Washington Post | Mar 6, 2019

‘Among that settler ideology, there are people that look and say there is no reason why anyone should stop us. . . . There is a right-wing government in Israel and a friend in the White House.’
— Lior Amihai, executive director of Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group

Palestinians in this town woke one morning last month to find their mosque vandalized, with a Star of David painted on the exterior alongside Hebrew graffiti accusing it of preaching “incitement.”

“We are at an alarming point,” said Barakat Mahmoud, the mosque’s imam. “We’ve never had direct confrontation with the settlers in this town.”

The incident was one in a recent spate of attacks blamed on Israeli settlers that officials on both sides of the conflict say are spiking. Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, documented 295 of what it calls “Jewish terror” incidents last year, a 40 percent increase.

Although no Israeli government figures were available for January, the United Nations had recorded at least 30 incidents this year in which Israeli settlers were accused of causing casualties or damaging property, with a total of 14 Palestinians injured and one killed.

Continue reading “Attacks by Israeli settlers surge as West Bank tensions boil”

The rise of settler violence against Palestinians is likely to continue as the army, the police and Israeli society stand by passively — or even encourage attacks.

By Amira Hass | Haaretz | Mar 6, 2019

Israeli security officials have noted the rise in nationalist crime by Jews against Palestinians.

The noticeable escalation in the West Bank is firstly due to settler violence toward Palestinians. And the assumption among Palestinians must be that this escalation will only continue, as the army and police, as well as Israeli society as a whole, stand by without trying to or succeeding in halting it, in the best case, and supporting and encouraging it, in the other case.

This anxiety can be felt in everyday Palestinian conversations about what the near future might bring, in the choice of travel routes that stay as far from certain settlements as possible and in deciding not to go out to work in the field or to take animals to graze because of the proximity of violent settlements. The expected entry of avowed Kahanists into the Knesset, and with the prime minister’s encouragement yet, shows the breakdown of more barriers in Israeli society against the wish-fulfillment of those who dream of mass expulsion.

Continue reading “Analysis: There’s a different kind of escalation brewing in the West Bank”

The author recounts his travels through occupied Palestine highlighting the stark juxtaposition between the beauty of the land, and the ugliness of its occupation.

By Miko Peled | Mint Press News | Mar 1, 2019

‘We drink camel’s milk, we love it and we always had camels that we used to milk. Now, as part of the ethnic cleansing process, the Israeli authorities confiscated our camels, they give them to nearby Israeli Jewish settlements and we have to buy the milk from them.’
— Aziz from the village of Al-Araqib

The beauty of Palestine in late February and particularly after a few spots of rain is unmatched. Lush green and almond blossoms everywhere, but from Tarshiha near the Lebanese border in the north to Lakia in the Naqab desert in the south, the horrors of a relentless, oppressive regime that shows every sign of becoming more oppressive are everywhere.

Tarshiha

A jewel in the northern Galilee is lush green and beautiful with signs of prosperity all around. In 1948, Tarshiha, which had a minority Christian population, was subjected to a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign but the Christian families were permitted to return. Today, the full name of the town is Ma’alot-Tarshiha because the neighboring Israeli settlement of Ma’alot, which sits on Tarshiha lands, has taken over and the two now comprise a single — yet segregated — town sharing a single municipality. Still, with all the signs of prosperity, families remember the horrors and many are still living in far off refugee camps, unable to return to their homes and their land.

Continue reading “Two weeks in Palestine: A land as oppressed as it is beautiful”

Of all the methods Israel uses to expel Palestinians from their land, the deprivation of water is the most cruel.

By Amira Hass | Haaretz | Feb 24, 2019

I have every right as a citizen and a journalist to ask those who hand down the orders [to destroy Palestinian water pipes], and those who carry them out: ‘Tell me, can you look at yourself in the mirror?’

When I wrote my questions and asked the spokesperson’s office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories to explain the destruction of the water pipelines in the Palestinian villages southeast of Yatta, on February 13, my fingers started itching wanting to type the following question: “Tell me, aren’t you ashamed?” You may interpret it as a didactic urge, you can see it as a vestige of faith in the possibility of exerting an influence, or a crumb of hope that there’s somebody there who doesn’t automatically carry out orders and will feel a niggling doubt. But the itching in my fingers disappeared quickly.

This is not the first time that I’m repressing my didactic urge to ask the representatives of the destroyers, and the deprivers of water, if they aren’t ashamed. After all, every day our forces carry out some brutal act of demolition or prevent construction or assist the settlers who are permeated with a sense of racial superiority, to expel shepherds and farmers from their land. The vast majority of these acts of destruction and expulsion are not reported in the Israeli media. After all, writing about them would require the hiring of another two full-time reporters.

Continue reading “Under Israeli occupation, water is a luxury”