The Israeli government has approved the purchase by settlers of a house in downtown Hebron built by Palestinians. If they move in the house will become a living hell for Palestinians, and will trigger great resistance, says Badia al Dwaik of Youth Against Settlements.
Ehud Olmert has been convicted of corruption charges and may be in prison for the next J Street conference. So the liberal American Zionists have lost their champion, the rightwinger who saw the light on apartheid. Don’t worry, they’ll find another one
Andy Borowitz in The New Yorker lampoons Sheldon Adelson for buying Romney and Gingrich and trying to buy more Republicans but says not a word about Adelson’s chief interest: supporting Israel.
Proponents of divestment at University of Michigan have been portrayed as threatening and violent. Even the Forward steps up to dispel this hysteria, in a piece saying divestment may have won by losing, galvanizing the campus in a critical discussion.
From a welfare system to a liberal economy. Since the 1980s, the route taken by Israeli governments has resulted in decades of a politically weak labour force and an economic structure based on significant differences between rich and poor, men and women and ethnic communities. The Israeli form of socialism, acclaimed by Europe in the ‘60s and ‘70s, no longer exists and in its place a free market system has developed. This has contributed to Israel’s ranking among industrial nations as having one of the highest poverty rates at 21% compared to an average of 11%; and a ranking of fifth as one of the countries with the most pronounced social and economic differences between sections of the population.
The Washington Post continues to carry water for Israelis by characterizing the Israeli demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state –thereby trashing the rights of 20 percent of the Israeli population and legitimizing the Nakba as a just episode– as an impediment to peace equivalent to building settlements
Electronic Intifada publishes a history of Land Day, demonstrating the necessity to Zionism of Judaizing Palestinian land in the Galilee, as a seed of an important component of the Palestinian struggle
Liberal Zionists have likened BDS to the Ku Klux Klan and said it has no place in the Jewish community. But it has a toehold there, and boycott is gaining support even from liberal Zionists
Mahmoud Abbas, 79, is an aging president of an authority that has access to funds but no real sovereignty or political leverage (aside from what Israel finds acceptable); and Mohammed Dahlan, 52, is in exile in the UAE after his supporters were chased out of Gaza by Hamas in 2007, and then the West Bank by his own party in June 2011. But Dahlan, aided by some strong friends around the region – and of course, his old intelligence contacts in Israel and the US – is unmistakably plotting a comeback.
All heck broke loose at the Sheldon Adelson 2016 Primary in Las Vegas yesterday when Chris Christie, still immersed in the bridgegate scandal, uttered the words “occupied territory” during an otherwise enrapturing speech in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Inadvertently, he says. No worries, Morton Klein took him aside and Christie apologized for his error to Adelson
BDS is winning, says a British Jew. And: How can any normal person not be pro-Palestinian? How can any American not be outraged at what they funded, supported and received hatred for?
Ron Radosh has a cottage industry of attacking John Judis’s book on Truman, Genesis. The latest attack is hosted by the New York Times Book Review.
Reza Aslan said years ago, it’s clear who wears the pants in the Israel-US relationship, and he’s never felt so embarrassed for the U.S. as when Obama deferred to the Israeli settlement project
The Washington Post runs a readers’ opinion poll that includes a counterfactual, that the Palestinian Authority has not recognized Israel’s right to exist
The theory of the ‘clash of civilizations,’ promulgated by the late Samuel Huntington (above) and once widely taken seriously, has been destroyed by events of the past few years in The Middle East
American commentators say the Saudis don’t care about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Is that right? Shouldn’t we hear from Saudis?
The chair of the Illlinois committee on academic freedom of the American Association of University Professors has found that Columbia College violated Iymen Chehade’s academic freedom by taking one of his course offerings away from him following a student’s complaint of “bias”
Who made the bulldozers that destroyed a Palestinian building in East Jerusalem that housed apartments, a medical center, and a mosque? Is that company deserving of boycott?
Liberal Zionists like MJ Rosenberg and Prof. Yael Aronoff are the new front line against the Palestinian-led BDS movement. Aronoff exemplified this trend during the University of Michigan divestment debate, above, when she argued the Israel boycott rejects an idealistic project — the self-determination of the Jewish people.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva passed an unprecedented resolution today that calls for States and private enterprises to terminate business transaction beyond the 1949 armistice lines and warns of the probability of criminal liability for corporate complicity in breach of international law.
Why is it that after 100s or 1000s of controversial banners at the school, Barnard revises its policy against banners after one pro-Palestinian message, Law Prof Katherine Franke asks of Barnard president Debora Spar’s decision to remove a pro-Palestinian banner that upset some students
A banner showing a map of historic Palestine with the words “Stand for justice, stand for Palestine” on it was removed by the president of Barnard college. In response, the Center for Constitutional Rights sent a letter to the president, saying that the removal of the banner was an unjustified act of censorship.
In a talk at the Palestine Center on Wednesday, Shira Robinson explained that the definition of Palestinian citizenship in Israel is rooted in imperial definitions that privileged settler populations, of which Israeli Jews must be considered a living example
Ivar Ekeland, of a pro-Palestinian academic group in France, had to lecture on the banks of the Rhone River because his message was deemed too hot by the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Lyon.
African asylum seeker protest leader Mutasim Ali has filed a petition with Israel’s high court to overturn his, and thousands of other prison summons for refugees desiring status in Israel. Ali has been given 30 days to report to a detention facility