New York Times’ Jodi Rudoren writes about a new Israeli film, Censored Voices, directed by Mor Loushy. The film deals with Israeli war crimes committed during the 1967 war which Rudoren describes as one in which Israel “started out fighting … for its very survival,” and Loushy is quoted as saying that “This is the story of men who went out to war feeling like they had to defend their life, and they were right, of course.” But they were not right, and nor are Rudoren or Loushy.
Last week students at Northwestern University launched NU Divest, a grassroots student campaign demanding that Northwestern divest its holdings in corporations that profit from human rights abuses against Palestinians. The campaign has received an outpouring of support from students, student organizations, alumni, and community members and the much-expected reactionary opposition, including unsanctioned acts of vigilante censorship.
In a suit filed today in federal court against the administration of the University of Illinois seeking his reinstatement as a professor at the school, scholar Steven Salaita also sued unnamed “John Doe donors” of the university for “injecting” themselves into the university hiring process and threatening “future donations” unless he was fired last summer because of the outspoken tweets he published during the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Salaita was fired a week before classes were to begin.
A video shows an unnamed man barging into the Campus Students’ Union office at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) and demanding that a poster calling for divestment from the Israeli occupation be removed from a window. The man was recording the incident on his cell phone as he threatened students and claimed the poster constituted a “hate crime.” He rips the poster from the window while ranting about valuing “Canadian lives,” Israel and seemingly justifying his anger by stating “I’m a fuckin’ Jew.” Later, he recorded himself urinating on the poster while making racist threats directed at Arabs and Muslims and/or: “Anybody who has a problem with Israel you have something in common – I’m the devil baby I don’t think you want to play games with me.”
“The gentile does not want anything, he waits to see what the Jew wants,” says a religious bus ad in Jerusalem. You might say that’s anti-Semitic!
A new independent medical fact-finding mission in Gaza has detailed Israel’s deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians in its summer 2014 attack, codenamed Operation “Protective Edge.” Acts documented in the investigation include the use of human shields, close-range murder of civilians, targeting of medics, and more.
Supporters of Israel from the White House to Foxman to J Street to Chris Matthews agree that the invitation to Netanyahu to speak to Congress and rebut Obama on Iran is damaging the special relationship between Israel and the U.S. Look for the speech to be cancelled.
Adam Horowitz interviews Norman Finkelstein on the work and legacy of Joan Peters, the author of “From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict over Palestine”. Finkelstein says, “[The Lebanon war in 1982] was big setback and [Israel’s supporters] needed something to rally the stalwarts around the cause. “From Time Immemorial” fit the bill because its essential message was the Palestinians have no legitimate claim whatsoever because the heart of their claim is false, they don’t even exist.”
Khalid Ja’ar once worked for Birthright, showing American Jews the “Bedouin experience” in the Negev. But after his son was killed by Israeli police and the town of Rahat has become a focus of Palestinian resistance, and Ja’ar’s world has changed.
While Israel’s government entered into elections over the very serious matters of economy and politics, in that order, the election season has been dominated by not so serious campaign ads. Just about every major party has produced some sort of satirical clip that would never air on U.S. television. While American ads go negative, Israel’s version of bashing an opponent’s record, or arrest history, is making fun of the other parties’ constituents.