Why isn’t the New York Times telling its readers that a spring it featured in tweeting its story on Israeli water is not in Israel but occupied Palestine? And B’Tselem says that Israel has “exploited” the Palestinian resource for its own profit.
Haaretz reports: President Reuven Rivlin yesterday described academic boycotts against Israel as a “strategic threat of the first order.” During a discussion of the issue at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, the chairman of the Council of Presidents of Israeli Universities, Technion president Prof. Peretz Lavie, said it was still possible to stop the snowball effect of the movement, but warned that “we are at the 90th minute.”
Israel discriminates sorely against Palestinians in their water supply and 90 percent of the water in Gaza is undrinkable but you’d learn none of this in an article that takes up the top of the front page of the New York Times on the Israeli water miracle
Peter Beinart says that Jewish public opinion in the U.S. doesn’t matter on Israel yet because Sheldon Adelson has too much money. But the community leadership plays an important role. A look at the totalitarian nature of the Israel lobby inside Jewish life, and how it may be breaking up.
On May 28, 2015, the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the state’s anti-SLAPP law, following an appeal filed by five individuals who are suing the Olympia Food Co-op for boycotting Israeli products. The Israeli advocacy organization StandWithUs immediately hailed the decision as a “BDS Defeat,” “a major setback to the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign,” and an “overwhelming victory.” But in reality the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the plaintiffs’ case, much less on BDS.
Driving south from Bethlehem to Hebron on Route 60, a main settler road in the Occupied West Bank, is Beit al-Baraka, an old church compound made up of eight buildings built from Jerusalem yellow stone. Haaretz published last Friday that the site had been sold to Aryeh King, who was renovating the site in anticipation of moving settlers into it. Hannah Sterling and Sara Anna visited Beit al-Baraka and say the site shows the extent to which the settler enterprise will go to ensure the real identity and intentions of property purchases are hidden.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Aminu Wali apologized to Palestine for Nigeria’s crucial abstention on a UN Security Council vote to end the occupation, saying that the pressure on Nigeria amounted to a “national security threat.” The pressure came from the US and Israel
Only a few weeks into Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, the intense strain of trying to square its members’ zealotry with Israel’s need to improve its international standing is already starkly evident. While the US tries to reach a deal on Iran’s nuclear programme and revive peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel – however futile such a process may be – Israeli ministers will be in a contest to see who can make most mischief. The irony is that, just as the White House gears up for another 18 months of humiliation and sabotage from Netanyahu and his government, Obama is showering Israel with gifts, as part of its long-standing “security” doctrine.