MK Yulia Shamalov-Berkovich speaking to Tel Aviv’s J14 social protest movement, 2011. This week the minister called to round up leftist who support African migrant rights and dump them into work camps. (Photo: Lahav Harkov/The Jerusalem Post) On Tuesday during a Knesset meeting a Kadima member and advocate for Tel Aviv’s social protest movement intensified […]
Following decisions from the South African government and Switzerland’s largest supermarket chain to distinguish between products made in the occupied territories from those west of the green line, the Associated Press reports on the “Made in Israel” label. From “Made in Israel? Not a simple question“: Asked to explain the “Made in Israel” label for […]
Last night Charlie Rose asked Fawaz Gerges about the new Arab public opinion and the Israel-Palestine conflict. He said: Israel and the United States really are making a major strategic mistake, to underestimate, that deep down– yes the focus [of the Arab spring is] on domestic politics, but once the dust settles– the Palestinian conflict […]
Rae Abileah Chutzpa. That’s the word that described all three ancestral change-makers whose stories were told at “Reclaiming Jewish Activism,” a panel discussion held at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav last Thursday, May 24th, that brought together three Jewish activists, including me, to speak about our ancestors who inspire us to action. But while our ancestors had […]
A Silwan Story: Palestinian Child Arrested, Abused by Israeli Authorities and Barred From Finishing 9th Grade Someone is pounding on the door. It is 3:45 a.m. The pounding gets louder. The father goes to open the door, and immediately they enter: two men dressed in civilian clothes, flanked by police officers bearing heavy guns. They […]
I spent this morning calling friends to get their friends and their friends’ friends to go down and see the film, Five Broken Cameras. I saw it last night, and I was blown away. Anybody’s who interested in peace, justice in Palestine/Israel, has to see this movie. It’s an incredible documentary about the steadfastness of […]
Jewish Voice for Peace has started a petition following up on the last minute cancellation of a youth-led workshop on Palestinian nonviolent movements at New York’s 14th Street Y. The video above shows what went down over the weekend, and the petition reads: Dear Stephen Hazan Arnoff, Executive Director of the 14th Street Y: I […]
A friend writes: On the Times “kill list” story–has anyone asked what the hell David Alexrod was doing in the room in the Tuesday sessions when they picked the people to kill? Karl Rove was nearly indicted for picking U.S. attorneys who should be sacked; this seems far worse. From the Times story [emphasis mine]: […]
Violence / Raids / Arrests / Provocations Troops, settlers force village to recite ‘I love Israel’ JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 30 May — Israeli forces and settlers raided a village northwest of Jerusalem earlier this week, and humiliated and abused its residents, a local official said. Residents of al-Nabi Samwil were working on their land on Monday […]
Madonna meets with the founders of the Peace NGO Forum in Tel Aviv on the eve of her Israeli concert. (L to R) Wahat al-Salam, Director of the Palestinian Peace and Democracy Forum in Jerusalem Mutasem Hansna, Israeli Co-Chair Ron Pundak, Secretary General of the Palestinian Peace NGO Forum Saman Khoury, Anat Ben Nun Project […]
Two nights ago in Westchester at an event called Getting to the Tipping Point, Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace described two important organizing lessons she learned in her work for boycott, divestment and sanctions. De-privilege Jews. The first lesson came after a failed effort to get the Berkeley student senate to pass a […]
I seem to have lost my copy of Peter Beinart‘s book in the subway. If you find it, let me know, there’s a lot of great stuff in there. But Beinart makes two large spiritual errors. 1, he says, Our parents left us a beautiful Jewish democracy and we are giving our children a disastrous […]
Last weekend a media friend was gossiping to my wife and me about Bobby Kennedy’s girlfriend’s tweets in the weeks before his estranged wife Mary Richardson Kennedy committed suicide. If you read this tabloid story, it seems that the girlfriend, actress Cheryl Hines, was flaunting her relationship with Kennedy and encroaching on other relationships that […]
Palestinian man transports a sheep from Egypt to Gaza via an underground tunnel, 2009. (Photo: Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse) I’ve heard of a few different instances where desperate friends have crawled through the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, seeking to either enter after the Israeli military has shooed them away, or leave with the intent […]
Swiss food giant Migros to differentiate between products made in Israel and made in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. (Photo: Keystone) Following decisions by South Africa and Denmark over the past month to re-label items originating from the occupied Palestinian territories, today a major Swiss retailer announced it will also axe the “made in Israel” […]
New Yorkers protest in September 2010 outside the offices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (Photo: Bud Korotzer) The heated dispute over the building of a “Museum of Tolerance” by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) on top of a historic Muslim cemetery shows no signs of letting up. As work on and around the site near […]
Another sign of the burgeoning discourse: ‘Wired’ has a piece up about Flame, the “state-run” malware that is infecting computers in Iran and across the Middle East. The piece fingers Israel as a likely source of the software, but only mentions Israel twice. Not so the commenters. There are about 300 comments on the post, […]
Entrance to the City of David, 2007. (Photo: Keren Manor/ActiveStills Last week the Jerusalem municipality voted almost unanimously to bankroll a settler-managed sound and light show in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The tourist site will be located in the City of David, a biblical theme park privately administered by the rightist Elad Association, also […]
Code from Flame virus The Flame virus, which has infected thousands of computers mostly in the Middle East, is being described as the most pernicious and complex software ever developed. The existence of the malware was recently made public by Kaspersky Lab, which discovered the malicious program while investigating infected computers for the United Nations. […]
The problem with banning the phrase “Israel firster” is that it is a neat summation of an important problem, and when people bar such phrases they are really trying to shut down the discourse. And in fact Zionists themselves have used the term Israel firster when it suited their meaning. Notice how incredibly neutral Senator […]
Young, Jewish and Proud’s “Go & Learn: BDS Education in Jewish Communities” event taking place outside the 14th Street Y. (Photo: Young, Jewish and Proud) Catching up on news from the long weekend. On Saturday, Young, Jewish and Proud sent out a press release saying the 14th Street Y, a Jewish community space in New […]
Land / Property and Resource Theft / Ethnic Cleansing / Restriction of Movement Israeli gov’t funds new settlement project Ramallah, May 29 (Petra) — Israel’s municipality of Jerusalem and the Ministry of Tourism will jointly earmark more than $4 million to fund a new settlement project in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan in occupied East […]
(Click on the image below to view it larger, and visit visualizingpalestine.org for a better view. ) Image: Ahmad Barclay and Polypod, May 2012 for Visualizing Palestine
USA Today, on politics: Mitt Romney is reportedly meeting today with Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul who bankrolled the super PAC behind Newt Gingrich. The video interview above was published by the Jewish Journal in March at Tribefest, hosted by the Jewish Federations in Las Vegas. Adelson: I’m what you might call a social liberal. […]
Last week we did a couple of reports on the Senate’s unanimous passage of a rightwing Republican’s amendment that would strip millions of Palestinian refugees of their refugee status. Well neocon Daniel Pipes says he (and Steve Rosen formerly of AIPAC) helped drive Congress: The fetid, dark heart of the Arab war on Israel, I […]