Abba Solomon notes this year is a year of big anniversaries for America’s chief Zionist organization.
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The responsibility of non-Zionist Jews during the ‘year of Zionist anniversaries’
Monthly Archives: May 2017
Through ‘severe pressure,’ U.S. can impose a two-state solution on Israel — Nathan Thrall
Nathan Thrall has a book out called The Only Force They Understand, arguing that Israel will only end the occupation when it is subject to “severe pressure” from the U.S., but that the U.S. is capable of applying that pressure. Thrall sees a two-state solution as the optimal outcome and says that violence on both sides has actually led Palestinians and Israelis to take steps toward such an outcome.
In first statement since end of hunger strike, Marwan Barghouti celebrates ‘the victory of the strike of freedom and dignity’
Palestinian hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti released his first statement today since an announcement that the 42-day strike ended on Sunday, bringing to a close to the longest communal protests organized by Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s history.
Why has the Occupation lasted this long?
Read an excerpt from Gershon Shafir’s latest book, “A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict,” which investigates the strategies, policies, and historical continuities that promoted Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territory. In this excerpt Shafir seeks to answer the question, why has the occupation lasted 50 years? “Israeli colonization, to paraphrase William Faulkner, is not dead; it isn’t even past. The tools of colonization, honed before 1948 to a sharp edge, and subsequently deployed within Israel’s new boundaries, were available and ready to be pressed into service in the territories newly occupied in 1967,” Shafir writes.
How Israeli moves in Jerusalem are scotching Trump’s ‘ultimate deal’
U.S. President Donald Trump faces a deadline this Thursday about whether to renew a presidential waiver to delay recognizing occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocating the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. Jonathan Cook writes, “Whether Trump signs the waiver or not on Thursday, all indications are that the US president – faced with domestic pressures and an intransigent Israeli government – is going nowhere with his ‘ultimate deal'”.
When it comes to Palestinian hunger strikers, US press exercises cruel double standard
Katie Miranda demonstrates the cruel double standard of the US press when it comes to the Palestinian hunger strike, and the US president’s visit to Jerusalem.
If it weren’t for our hubris we could learn so much
Howard Cohen visits the home of his student Noor Abu al-Qia’an in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran months after Israeli police killed his father Yakoub Abu al-Qia’an and demolished their house.
Israel practices aggressive boycott, divestment and sanctions – against Gaza
Israel’s policy of ‘economic warfare’ against Gaza makes BDS pale in comparison. But Israel would have us think BDS is extreme, and that Israeli policy is moderate.
Diaspora Jews go to Palestine to fight the occupation
Jeff Warner traveled to the West Bank with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence’s nine-day summer work camp where 133 Diaspora Jews participated in projects across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, “The very existence of the CJNV delegation, perhaps the largest group of Diaspora Jews ever to come together in Palestine to fight the occupation, makes a powerful statement to American and Israeli political leaders. It is another illustration that Jewish American and other Diaspora Jews do not support Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and are ready to stand up and fight for that principle.”
Fearless Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh defines popular protest
David Kattenburg attends the weekly Friday protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, whose spring and adjacent agricultural lands were stolen by the Israeli settlement Halamish. 16-year-old protester Ahed Tamimi tells him, “We have to be strong because if we are not like this they will kill us, and they will destroy our land. When I go to the demonstrations I feel I’m more strong.”
Israel approves plans for tourist cable cars through occupied East Jerusalem
AFP reports Israel’s cabinet passed a plan for cable cars to run over East Jerusalem, “Israel’s government on Sunday approved plans to install a cable car to Jerusalem’s Old City, a project likely to anger Palestinians and much of the international community.”
Palestinian hunger strike ends with prisoners declaring victory – but Israel claims nothing happened
Saturday, after 41 days, the Palestinian prisoner hunger strike came to what seemed to be an end. Issa Qaraqe, director of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, declared “80 percent of the demands” of the prisoners were achieved, calling it “an important achievement to build on in the future on the basis of the protection of the prisoners’ rights and dignity.” Israeli Public Security and Hasbara (propaganda) Minister Gilad Erdan countered claims that certain demands were met, saying that “there is absolutely no pledge to grant” any of the other prisoner demands, and said it “appears that this strike failed”. Jonathan Ofir says, “This should be a major source of concern, since it is the Israelis who are the jailer. If they are claiming this essentially did not happen, then there could be a real chance that they would ignore the reported agreements.”
If Trump is serious we may be seeing the most significant step in 20 years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
The Israeli media reported last week that the US government demands Israel will transfer some territory from Area C to Area B. These reports have not been confirmed yet, but they are already causing some trouble in the Israeli political system. What may be hiding behind this opaque formula may be the greatest breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 20 years.
March of the Zealots: a report from ‘Jerusalem Day’
David Kattenburg reports from “Jerusalem Day” where ecstatic Zionists celebrating the 50th anniversary of Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem were greeted by equally passionate Jewish-American and Israeli protesters intent on blocking the zealots’ march through the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem’s old city, into the heart of the Arab quarter.
Testing nonviolence in the South Hebron Hills: Day 8 of Sumud Freedom Camp
Jodi Melamed is on the front lines of a joint Palestinian-Jewish effort to reclaim confiscated land through strategic nonviolence in the South Hebron Hills: taking back the village with a peaceful protest called the Sumud Freedom Camp.
From Manchester to Jerusalem: The limits of Trump’s terror narrative
Following the deadly attack in Manchester, England, Donald Trump used “terrorism” to avoid confronting the complicated, compromised and messy reality in which we live, especially in the Middle East. For Trump, in all the speeches he made this week in the region, terror appeared to be the only cause of the problem, and its defeat would be sure to bring peace. Robert Cohen writes, “Trump’s narrative lacked understanding, substance, and integrity. And that went for terror in Manchester as well as the Middle East.”
In groundbreaking resolution, California Democratic Party decries US support for Israeli occupation
At the California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento over the weekend Palestinian rights supporters steered to passage a groundbreaking resolution that puts California Democrats far ahead of the national and other state parties. Time will tell whether the new resolution can become a model for other Democratic Party institutions, and more importantly, whether it will help accelerate a shift in the party’s stance on Israel/Palestine.
Triumphalist light show in Jerusalem weaponizes the city walls to celebrate 50th anniversary of Jewish conquest
A lightshow in Jerusalem on the 50th anniversary of the Jewish conquest in 1967 weaponizes the walls of the city in a triumphalist expression of the glory of religious nationalism. Goosebumps or shudders, see for yourself.
Israeli police detain al-Aqsa mosque guards as 700 Israelis enter Haram al-Sharif during Jerusalem Day parade
Ma’an News Agency reports, “Three Palestinian security guards of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem were assaulted and detained by Israeli police on Wednesday, as hundreds of right-wing Israelis and settlers took to the holy site in celebration of ‘Jerusalem Day.'”
On Gaza and the horror of the siege
Haidar Eid writes from Gaza that Palestinians there fully understand that the deliberate withholding of food or the means to grow food or the access to food is yet another strategy of Israel’s occupation, colonization, and apartheid in Palestine. But, he writes, “what we in Gaza cannot fathom is: Why it is allowed to happen?”
Baby ‘Aya’ is only 2 months old, and she’s already a victim of home demolition
Every single home demolition is devastating to a family. Every single demolished family tells a unique and surreal story about the day when Israeli bulldozers rolled over their children’s schoolbooks, their grandmother’s prescription medicines, and letters from their uncle overseas. Nora Lester Murad tells the story of Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa and their four daughters — Ritaj, 9; Rimas, 7; Saba, 4; and Aya, a newborn whose Jerusalem home was demolished while they were taking Aya to an infant checkup.
From ‘Avalon’ to Madoff: What ‘The Wizard of Lies’ reveals about contemporary American Jewish identity
Back in 1990 director Barry Levinson gave us “Avalon”, his epic masterpiece on the American Jewish community. In that classic film Levinson skillfully examined the Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their often tumultuous encounter with the complexities of American culture and the assimilation process. It is this debilitating process which becomes the underlying subject of Levinson’s chilling examination of the Bernie Madoff story. In “The Wizard of Lies” we see the pitfalls of ‘making it’ in America and how the Jewish community has reconfigured itself at the end of a very tumultuous century.
Liberal Jews stage sit-in to block annual ‘Jerusalem Day’ march into Muslim Quarter
As Israelis marked “Jerusalem Day,” a commemoration of Israel’s capture of the eastern half of the city in 1967 with a parade through the Old City, a group of left-wing American Jews and Israelis blocked their path with a sit-in. Traditionally the march is accompanied by Palestinians protesting outside of the Old City walls, voicing dissent against what is regarded as a celebration of Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank. This year the parade was obstructed by liberal Jews for the first time in recent memory.
Dispatch from Gaza: Trump’s trip will bring ‘less than zero’ to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
Palestinians in Gaza cynically referred to Donald Trump as on an “elegant businessman’s” trip to Saudi Arabia, followed by less important stops to Israel and the West Bank.
The message of the Orb
Carlos Latuff offers a synopsis of Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East.