Rabbi Arik Ascherman barely escaped with his life from a settler attack while he was protecting Palestinians. But Progressive Zionist “protection” narratives are caught in a Zionism or Israel nostalgia.
Ghada Karmi’s new memoir, Return, about her return to Palestine from England, engages exalted themes involving the west and the Arab world. She is coming to NYU on November 2 and Washington November 5.
After violence took hold of Jerusalem at the beginning of October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged the fault fell on Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the Islamic movement of northern Israel for inciting attacks against Israelis, and spurring demonstrations across the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza that have led to the killings of Palestinian protesters. Yet the 20-percent Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel believe that it is the Israeli government, and not the Palestinian leadership that is responsible for the outbreak of hostilities, according to a survey published by the Haifa-based think tank Mada al-Carmel.
A Palestinian was shot dead Saturday after an alleged attack attempt on an Israeli security guard at the al-Jalama military checkpoint north of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army and media said.
Amid weeks of violence in Jerusalem, Israeli police and special forces raided an East Jerusalem hospital for a third day in a row on Thursday and fired tear gas, sound grenades and rubber bullets into the medical compound, injuring three patients with rubber bullets.
American Zionists must be encouraged to explain why they adhere to that ideology — so that Americans can debate Zionism at last (and Zionists can let it go)
A shocking video has emerged recording a loud verbal threat from the Israeli military to residents of Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem. As a military jeep rolls down an empty quiet street a threatening voice comes over the loudspeaker “You throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you die.”
When Alice Rothchild met Hashem al-‘Azza five years ago, he was living in hell, holding out in his Hebron home against settler atrocities. Last week he was killed by Israeli tear gas.
Waleed Othman recently returned from a vacation in Israel/Palestine where he had hoped to reconnect with his roots, visit some historical sites, and sit on the beach. But instead he had two experiences that exemplify the marginalization of Palestinians from Israeli society, and indicate the breaking point many Palestinians are reaching.
The argument by two lifelong Zionists for the boycott of Israel to save the state is courageous, Omar Barghouti says, but suffers from the same two ills that afflict all Zionist arguments: selective amnesia and deep-seated racism.
Harry Potter fan Michael Fantauzzo writes J.K. Rowling: “It is commendable you’ve been able to empathize with Palestinians through the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish. But empathy is not enough: it needs to lead to action, and BDS is the primary tool supported by the very poets, artists, and cultural workers living under Israeli military occupation.”
A student at UC Santa Barbara was attacked by another student during a pro-Palestine protest this month. Palestine Legal, a group that defends Palestinian rights activists in the U.S., says the UC Santa Barbara incident was part of a larger campaign against student activists.
‘NYT’ mentions Palestinian incitement to murder Jews on Facebook connected with the killing of Richard Lakin, 76, in Jerusalem, but leaves out thousands of Facebook posts by rightwing Israelis celebrating Lakin’s death because he was an activist for co-existence.
Settler terror and the repetition of the two-state mantra when a Palestinian state is impossible have created desperation among Palestinian youth, leading to violence that no older leaders will be able to shut down, says Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian legislator
A member of Christian Peacemaker Teams writes to author J.K. Rowling from Hebron: I want to tell you that in the city of Hebron where I have worked for the last twenty years, I have, with my own eyes, seen Palestinian children attacked, beaten, arrested—without any of the due process the civilized world grants minor children—and in general treated with utter contempt by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Ms. Rowling, you do not have to support the Academic and Cultural Boycott, but for the sake of all Palestinian children who love Harry, you do need to say their lives matter.
As Palestine takes center stage and as we continue to gain ground on the international solidarity front, with BDS and by other means, more punitive measures to silence and disrupt the justice for Palestine camp is to be expected. Case in point, is the recent passing of the bipartisan resolution in the House of Foreign Affairs Committee, entitled, “Words Have Consequences: Palestinian Authority Incitement to Violence.” Once again, the US government demonstrates its appalling hypocrisy on Israel/Palestine.
At least 64 Palestinians have been killed and over 7,200 others injured by Israeli forces since the beginning of the unrest in the West Bank and Jerusalem early October 2015, according to official figures released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
For the 30,000 Palestinian residents of Jabel Mukaber the checkpoints—and a new wall that is being constructed in the center of town, cement roadblocks suspending vehicle traffic and a border police force deployed throughout the neighborhood—have made the quiet hilltop town with a view from Tel Aviv to Jordan, a militarized enclave.
Marc Ellis: “In the abyss of Jewish history, Jews must begin again – with Palestinians. This is a sharply-focused way of understanding what I realized many years ago: That the only way to be faithful as a Jew today is to embrace the Jewish covenant, a covenant that has fled from the precincts of Jewish power. That the Jewish covenant, and thus the Jewish prophetic, reside in the Palestinians ghettos Jews have created is difficult for most Jews to contemplate. Perhaps this is why Netanyahu’s “forever” sword signals a fight within and outside Jewish history until the end.”
A day after he gets the Kristol prize at the neocon thinktank American Enterprise Institute on November 9, Israeli PM Netanyahu is to get welcomed at the Center for American Progress, a Democratic Party thinktank with close connections to Hillary Clinton. He’s back in the saddle again!
The recent wave of attacks across the West Bank and East Jerusalem is no doubt born out of a long-accumulated sense of national desperation bred by the occupation. However, disillusionment with the Palestinian Authority must not be overlooked as a factor that turned a summer of grief into the bubbling anger we are now witnessing.
While Netanyahu’s account of the Mufti-Hitler exchange has been swiftly and almost universally dismissed as fiction, there is one caveat: Though he didn’t mastermind the ‘Final Solution’, the mufti did align himself with axis leaders, including Hitler. But guess who else reached out to the Nazis looking for a partnership? A group known as Lehi, a Zionist militia that is a political antecedent of today’s Likud party.
Amazon and Walmart are selling a “Boy’s Israeli Soldier Costume” this year for Halloween. The description says: “There comes a time when your child wants to save the world the only way he knows how, by dressing as his favorite army man! Have your child step into their Jewish heritage by putting on this Boy’s Israeli Soldier Costume.”
The most creative slam of Zionism ever: Max Geller sneaks his anti-Zionism on to a Chicago TV set in an interview about Renoir paintings!
Palestinian Harry Potter fan Mia Oudeh writes to author J.K. Rowling about her opposition to the BDS movement. Oudeh draws parallels between the Harry Potter world and the Palestinian reality in order to demonstrate her confusion and disappointment in Rowling’s position.