Tag: Israel

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The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media (book review)

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Palestinians scuffle with Israeli occupation forces at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City on Dec 8, 2017. (photo: AFP)

Greg Shupak’s new book documents — and corrects — the warped media narrative on the Palestine-Israel conflict.

By Belen Fernandez | Middle East Eye | Feb 22, 2018

Shupak ably illustrates Israel’s usefulness in complementing US bellicosity and furthering imperial designs in not only the Middle East but also the wider world, describing Israel as a “garrison for US-led imperialist capitalism” as well as a convenient venue “for the US to subsidize America’s military industry” via gargantuan military aid and weapons deals.

In 1988, his final year of service as New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief before being appointed diplomatic correspondent in Washington, Thomas Friedman gave an interview to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, in which he proposed some symbolic concessions to the Palestinians in order to keep them in line.

The Palestinians must be given “something to lose,” argued Friedman, because “I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands.”

Writing shortly thereafter, Noam Chomsky wondered whether a prominent journalist might also be promoted to the post of chief diplomatic correspondent by “urg[ing] South Africans to ‘give Sambo a seat in the bus,’ or propos[ing] that Jews be granted something to lose, because ‘if you give Hymie a seat in the bus, he may limit his demands.’”

Continue reading “The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media (book review)”

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Nov 2018 Israel/Palestine Impact Trip: Informational meeting (Tomorrow)

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Do you want to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you wonder if there’s a role for Christians to play in this long-running and often violent dispute?

Date: Saturday, Feb 24, 2018
Time: 9:30 – 11:00 am
Location: Bellevue Presbyterian Church, Room S-140
1717 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, WA  98004
Information: More information here →
Event Details

Join us to hear about the Bellevue Presbyterian Church trip to Israel this November that explores the Biblical themes of reconciliation and social justice. Much of our time will be spent with Israeli and Palestinian guides and guests. We’ll listen to them share their stories with the hope we can glimpse what stands in the way of peace and reconciliation to the Holy Land. We will also visit the holy sites of Jerusalem and the places where Jesus spent time around Galilee.

Through a diverse array of tour guides and speakers — Israeli and Palestinian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, political, religious and tribal leaders, policymakers, peace builders, grassroots activists, artists, journalists, musicians, writers, and many more — this trip provides rare cultural immersion for travelers of all backgrounds and perspectives.

More information here →

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Why won’t Israel let me mourn my father?

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(image: Joao Fazenda)

After my father died in Jordan in October, it was so important for me to visit my extended family in the city of Jenin, to mourn his death with them. Unfortunately, I was prevented from doing so by the Israeli government.

By Raed Jarrar | The New York Times | Nov 23, 2017

Whether or not the Israeli government agrees with my work — and, of course, I know it doesn’t — I still should have been able to take part in those most human of activities: mourning my father and celebrating his life.

My father, Azzam Jarrar, died last month. He was a proud Palestinian, a refugee, a civil engineer, a farmer and an entrepreneur. He was also my friend and mentor. He taught me the multiplication tables on our way to school in Saudi Arabia. He taught me how to question authority when we lived in Iraq. He helped me finish my master’s degree when I lived in Jordan. Above all, though, he was the gateway to my Palestinian roots and identity.

My dad fled his home with his family in 1967, when Israeli soldiers invaded and occupied the West Bank. He went first to Jordan and then to Iraq, where I was born. I was the first Jarrar to be born east of the Jordan River since our family was established on Palestinian land centuries ago.

Continue reading “Why won’t Israel let me mourn my father?”

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Nov 2018 Israel/Palestine Impact Trip: Informational meeting (Next Saturday)

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Do you want to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you wonder if there’s a role for Christians to play in this long-running and often violent dispute?

Date: Saturday, Feb 24, 2018
Time: 9:30 – 11:00 am
Location: Bellevue Presbyterian Church, Room S-140
1717 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, WA  98004
Information: More information here →
Event Details

Join us to hear about the Bellevue Presbyterian Church trip to Israel this November that explores the Biblical themes of reconciliation and social justice. Much of our time will be spent with Israeli and Palestinian guides and guests. We’ll listen to them share their stories with the hope we can glimpse what stands in the way of peace and reconciliation to the Holy Land. We will also visit the holy sites of Jerusalem and the places where Jesus spent time around Galilee.

Through a diverse array of tour guides and speakers — Israeli and Palestinian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, political, religious and tribal leaders, policymakers, peace builders, grassroots activists, artists, journalists, musicians, writers, and many more — this trip provides rare cultural immersion for travelers of all backgrounds and perspectives.

More information here →

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Israeli police recommend corruption charges for Netanyahu

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Feb 11, 2018. (photo: Ronen Zvulun)

The police accuse Netanyahu of accepting nearly $300,000 in gifts over 10 years.

By David Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner | The New York Times | Feb 13, 2018

“[The Prime Minister is] up to his neck in investigations. He does not have a public or moral mandate to determine such fateful matters for the state of Israel when there is the fear, and I have to say it is real and not without basis, that he will make decisions based on his personal interest in political survival and not based on the national interest.”
— Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking about former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was forced to resign in 2008

The Israeli police recommended on Tuesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, casting a pall over the future of a tenacious leader who has become almost synonymous with his country. The announcement instantly raised doubts about his ability to stay in office.

Concluding a yearlong graft investigation, the police recommended that Mr. Netanyahu face prosecution in two corruption cases: a gifts-for-favors affair known as Case 1000, and a second scandal, called Case 2000, in which Mr. Netanyahu is suspected of back-room dealings with Arnon Mozes, publisher of the popular newspaper Yediot Aharonot, to ensure more favorable coverage.

Continue reading “Israeli police recommend corruption charges for Netanyahu”

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Nov 2018 Israel/Palestine Impact Trip: Informational meeting

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Do you want to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you wonder if there’s a role for Christians to play in this long-running and often violent dispute?

Date: Saturday, Feb 24, 2018
Time: 9:30 – 11:00 am
Location: Bellevue Presbyterian Church, Room S-140
1717 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, WA  98004
Information: More information here →
Event Details

Join us to hear about the Bellevue Presbyterian Church trip to Israel this November that explores the Biblical themes of reconciliation and social justice. Much of our time will be spent with Israeli and Palestinian guides and guests. We’ll listen to them share their stories with the hope we can glimpse what stands in the way of peace and reconciliation to the Holy Land. We will also visit the holy sites of Jerusalem and the places where Jesus spent time around Galilee.

Through a diverse array of tour guides and speakers — Israeli and Palestinian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, political, religious and tribal leaders, policymakers, peace builders, grassroots activists, artists, journalists, musicians, writers, and many more — this trip provides rare cultural immersion for travelers of all backgrounds and perspectives.

More information here →

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The new anti-Semitism

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Neve Gordon, Professor of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. (photo: ynet.co.il)

How Israel is “weaponizing” anti-Semitism.

By Neve Gordon | London Review of Books | Jan 4, 2018

The Israeli government needs the “new anti-Semitism” to justify its actions and to protect it from international and domestic condemnation. Anti-Semitism is effectively weaponized, not only to stifle speech — “It does not matter if the accusation is true.” . . . [Its] purpose is “to cause pain, to produce shame, and to reduce the accused to silence” — but also to suppress a politics of liberation.

Not long after the eruption of the Second Intifada in September 2000, I became active in a Jewish-Palestinian political movement called Ta’ayush, which conducts non-violent direct action against Israel’s military siege of the West Bank and Gaza. Its objective isn’t merely to protest against Israel’s violation of human rights but to join the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination. For a number of years, I spent most weekends with Ta’ayush in the West Bank; during the week I would write about our activities for the local and international press.

My pieces caught the eye of a professor from Haifa University, who wrote a series of articles accusing me first of being a traitor and a supporter of terrorism, then later a “Judenrat wannabe” and an anti-Semite. The charges began to circulate on right-wing websites; I received death threats and scores of hate messages by email; administrators at my university received letters, some from big donors, demanding that I be fired.

I mention this personal experience because although people within Israel and abroad have expressed concern for my wellbeing and offered their support, my feeling is that in their genuine alarm about my safety, they have missed something very important about the charge of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ and whom, ultimately, its target is.

Continue reading “The new anti-Semitism”

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“It’s What We Do: A Play About the Occupation”

The play, adapted from the testimony of Israeli soldiers, was recently produced in Washington, DC.

By Pam Bailey | Mondoweiss | Feb 6, 2018

This oppression is destructive for everyone: Palestinian civilians obviously suffer daily, and the Israeli soldiers — who are told “your mission is to disrupt lives” — are forced to stop thinking and do what they are ordered to do, even when the must carry out actions that are inhumane. This is called “mind occupation,” and I’m glad that some soldiers have managed to free their minds and break the silence.

This video is a production called “It’s What We Do: A Play About the Occupation,” produced and directed by Pam Nice, a member of the Washington, DC, chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Although it is a drama, the dialogue of the soldiers is adapted from the actual testimonies of Israeli soldiers from Breaking the Silence, whose vivid memories continue to haunt them. The target audience is Jewish viewers. But several We Are Not Numbers writers, who have been “targets” of Israeli soldiers, watched the video, curious to see how far the the soldiers were willing to go in their confessions. It was difficult for many of them to watch, and their reactions varied. But they all agreed the video should be required viewing for people everywhere.

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Confederation: The one possible Israel-Palestine solution

TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY CHARLES LEVINSON
Palestinian boys playing soccer against the backdrop of the Israeli separation barrier that bisects their school playground in East Jerusalem, 2006. (photo: AWAD / AFP / Getty Images)

Talk of confederation sounds wistful in the current environment, but any talk of peace does. What’s really naïve is to suppose that only bad faith or ideological fanaticism has caused the two-state solution to fall into disrepute.

By Bernard Avishai | The New York Review of Books | Feb 2, 2018

The justification for the two-state solution is rooted, after all, in two persistent truths: first, that two separate national communities, each with a different language, historical grievance, sense of identity in the wider world, and dominant religious culture, have been squeezed by tragic events into a single small space. . . . Second, that a majority on each side prefers some form of compromise to a fight to the finish. . . . [But] moderate majorities “increasingly doubt its viability,” largely because they have grown jaded regarding the intentions of the other side, not because, in principle, they refuse the compromises two states would entail.

“The two-state solution is over,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters, responding to Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “Now is the time to transform the struggle for one state with equal rights for everyone living in historic Palestine, from the river to the sea.” As The New York Times subsequently reported, Erekat is hardly alone. The “over”-ness of “two states” — albeit with radical disagreements about the character of a hypothetical single state — has been claimed by ideological zealots, severe liberals, and exasperated peacemakers alike.

On the Palestinian side, one hears about the almost 700,000 Israeli settlers’ making annexation an established fact; on the Israeli side, about preventing recalcitrant Palestinian terrorists from firing missiles at Ben-Gurion Airport. For those of us living in Jerusalem, just speaking of two states, implying two capitals — but also, vaguely, some redivision of the city — invites skeptical, or pitying, stares from most Jews, as well as from Arabs, over a thousand of whom applied for Israeli citizenship in 2016.

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Narendra Modi is visiting the Occupied Territories this week — here’s why Palestinians shouldn’t embrace him

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Modi will visit Ramallah, where there were mass anti-Trump protests after the US recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (photo: AFP / Getty)

Many will say Modi’s visit to Ramallah is an historic moment, but India buys 41 per cent of total Israeli arms exports.

By Umar Lateef Misgar | The Independent | Feb 7, 2018

India has gradually become Israel’s largest defense customer. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2012 and 2016, India bought 41 per cent of total Israeli arms exports.

In an interview on Voice of Palestine radio station recently, Majid Khalidi, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, announced the visit of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the occupied Palestinian territories this weekend. Alongside a tour to Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah to honour the late Palestinian leader, the Prime Minister is expected to discuss issues related to information technology, tourism and health during this brief stopover on the broader Middle East tour.

Modi’s upcoming visit to Ramallah, a first for an Indian premier, is being hailed as historic by his Palestinian hosts. However, a closer scrutiny of New Delhi’s ties with Israel along with India’s own record of military control in places like Kashmir reveals an entirely different picture.

Continue reading “Narendra Modi is visiting the Occupied Territories this week — here’s why Palestinians shouldn’t embrace him”

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