Shay Hazkani’s “Dear Palestine” is an incredibly valuable contribution that uses meticulous archival research to upend our understanding of the 1948 war.
By opposing and prohibiting funding to many of the Israeli policies of military occupation that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, and by increasing the transparency around US weapons flows to Israel, Representative Betty McCollum’s latest bill is the boldest effort ever by Congress to ensure that the United States is no longer complicit in Israel’s denial of freedom to five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
A bipartisan group of Senators introduced a bill last week to advance the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab governments. The bill builds on the Trump administration’s cynical business deals with Arab governments to further their interests at the expense of the Palestinian people. It is highly doubtful the Biden administration will oppose it.
By attempting to scuttle international judicial efforts to hold Israel accountable for its actions, the Biden administration is continuing a bipartisan pattern that stretches back at least to the George W. Bush administration.
Republican Members of Congress are calling on the Trump administration to reclassify which Palestinians are considered refugees — a move which would constrain the Biden White House, and could fatally harm the Palestinian demand for the right of return.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered today to Israel two parting gifts of inestimable value on his farewell tour of the Middle East, the importance of which go well beyond his visit to the illegal Israeli colony of Psagot in the Palestinian West Bank. His last-minute moves to further legitimatize Israeli annexation, and delegitimatize opposition to Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people, will be difficult for the incoming Biden administration to reverse.
Earlier this month, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) introduced a bill with potentially far-reaching and unprecedented implications for Israel’s ability to nix US weapons sales to the Middle East. H.R.8494, the Guaranteeing Israel’s QME Act of 2020, would mandate the president to consult the Israeli government “for information regarding Israel’s qualitative military edge” before the selling weapons to other Middle Eastern countries.
Everything still looks solid for the Israel lobby at the top of the Democratic Party this year. But if we view the party as a pyramid, with its apex being the presidential ticket, its middle layer being its elected officials, and its bottom layer being its base, then the foundations of the Israel lobby’s hold on the party is quite evidently crumbling.
The concerns of Palestinian-American delegates to the Democratic National Convention went unheeded earlier this week during the party platform drafting process. According to a document shared with Mondoweiss, DNC delegates expressed their outrage at the exclusion of Palestinian-American voices while pro-Israel lobbyists openly bragged about their efforts to strip out language critical of Israel.
Jamaal Bowman’s apparent victory over Eliot Engel is not a setback for the Israel lobby–it is a monumental collapse. Not only does it present an opportunity to better align Democratic policy-making toward Israel and the Palestinian people with the growing pro-Palestinian sentiments of the party’s base, but it also punctures the Israel lobby’s carefully cultivated mythology of invincibility.