Earlier this week, I revealed that StandWithUs, a right-wing Israel advocacy group with ties to the Israeli government, had compiled dossiers on over 100 people who speak out for Palestinian human rights. The website with the dossiers, Stand4Facts.org, also had suggested questions for campus Israel advocates to pose to the speakers. It was a revealing […]
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is still one of the most powerful lobby organizations in the country, but fortunately, it is starting to lose its iron-clad grip on our policymakers. AIPAC lost the fight to stop Chuck Hagel from being confirmed as Secretary of Defense; it lost the push for the US military […]
Check out the following tweets from an Agence France-Presse Jerusalem correspondent who tweets under the handle @Johnny_Davo: Israel policeman threatens journalists, Jerusalem pic by @AFP Ahmad Gharabli #Israel #journalism #photography #media pic.twitter.com/rntf2EFqdK — John D (@Johnny_Davo) February 28, 2014 and this one from a different angle: Israeli policeman points gun at journalists in Jerusalem (photo by […]
“It was not immediately clear what, if any, direct role Russia played in engineering the tumult in Crimea, but the situation here matches in some ways a situation that previously played out in areas like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where largely pro-Russia populations broke away from Georgia, a former Soviet republic like Ukraine, to effectively […]
Since 2002, the Israeli NGO Zochrot (“Remembering” in Hebrew) has attempted to broaden Jewish Israelis’ understanding of the events that took place in the period before, during, and after the creation of the State of Israel. Inspired by the work of Zochrot, a group of educators has come together to create the Nakba Education Project […]
Hadassah Magazine scores a big get, an interview with The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, and Charley J. Levine asks her how her Jewishness affects her work. A lot. Q. How does your Jewishness impact your job? A. I came to Israel as a teen with United Synagogue Youth and the memory of that, particularly […]
Your average conscientious citizen sits down to read The New York Times today and, leafing through the first section, arrives at page 9 and a short article titled, “Palestinian Found Dead After Standoff With Israelis.” The reader glances at the first paragraph or two, which rely on the Israeli military as the source. A Palestinian […]
A couple times now we’ve reported on the brave high school students at Ramaz School in New York who’ve taken on their school head, Paul Shaviv, for barring Rashid Khalidi from speaking at the school. Shaviv has lately said that hearing Khalidi for these students would be like playing tennis with Andre Agassi, they’d be […]
Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic has lately tried to destroy his colleague John Judis’s book, Genesis, which is critical of Israel’s foundations. But Wieseltier played a different role with a pro-Israel book a few months back, Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. From Hadassah Magazine‘s interview of Shavit, by Stewart Kampel: A. What happened […]
On January 28, Naftali Bennett gave a spellbinder of a speech (see video above) at The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) annual conference. Bennett hit all the high points of current Zionist discourse. His oration seamlessly skipped from holocaust commemoration, to biblical archaeology, the centrality of Jerusalem and the temple mount to the Jewish […]
For months, in response to recent BDS successes, people have asked, “How will Zionists react?” The inevitable backlash has arrived and we have enough examples to answer the question. Specific tactics differ, but the overall strategy has been an intensive appeal to authority. The appeal to authority is reliant on the cultural and political elite and on […]
AIPAC is bragging that there will be 14,000 delegates at its policy conference starting this weekend. The White House will be sending Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Secretary of State John Kerry. And it’s a good bet your Congressperson and Senators will be there. I wanted to cover the conference, but Emily Helpern of a p.r. firm […]
The New York Times ran a piece in February about Palestinian conditions in the West Bank and referred to Atarot, a neighborhood east of the old city of Jerusalem in this way: Israel opened its first industrial zone in occupied Palestinian territory shortly after the 1967 war, in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Atarot. Now […]
Amnesty International has released a stunning report saying that the international community should cut off military aid to Israel because Israel has killed dozens of civilians at peaceful protests in the last three years “widespread impunity”– including 22 civilians last year. The human rights organization concludes It urges the USA, the European Union and the rest of […]
Leon Wieseltier Yesterday we picked up news of a vicious intellectual spat. In a letter circulating on the web, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, smeared the magazine’s senior editor John Judis as an ignorant man who has formed his Jewish identity on the basis of criticizing Jews, who have no place in […]
The following statement signed by 31 University of Hawai’i faculty members is in response to the University administration’s condemnation of the ASA resolution in support of the academic boycott of Israel: February 23, 2014 An Open Response to the UH-M Administration’s Condemnation of the ASA Boycott Resolution This month, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Chancellor […]
Last week we broke the news that Ramaz, an orthodox school on the Upper East Side of New York, had overruled a student club’s invitation to Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian scholar and former diplomat. And that the students had bridled, organizing a petition to force the school to reverse the ban (267 signatures so far). […]
This AIPAC parody video seems to have hit a nerve. An “influential” AIPAC member thinks it was created by the group Code Pink and is threatening litigation. A Code Pink press release says: On February 25th, an AIPAC member called a CODEPINK staffer threatening legal action in response to a controversial video clip that he alleges was […]
Leehee Rothschild is a rarity in Israel. She refused to serve in the Israeli army. She joins West Bank demonstrations against the occupation. And she’s a full-throated supporter of the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction the country she lives in and calls home. Rothschild is part of a small group of Israeli Jews […]
On Monday, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) launched a testimony campaign, similar to last year’s mock eviction notices, to kick off international Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). The notices, posted on Harvard undergraduate student dorm-room doors, ask the questions, “How have you experienced apartheid?” or “What does apartheid mean to you?” A variety of Harvard community members, from graduate […]
Boston University has recently become the headquarters for a new reactionary movement called “Safe Hillel,” which seeks to push back against the growing Open Hillel movement. Their stated goal is to “ensure that Hillel remains a safe place for Jews of all backgrounds to practice Judaism and a safe place for those that support Israel.” […]
Sean Penn’s wikipedia entry begins with his activism. “He is known for his left-wing political and social activism, including humanitarian work.” For instance, he has worked for the Haitian people. From the Times of Israel, by rightwing Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Sean Penn will be honored by our organization, This World: The Values Network, on 18 May, at […]
The 24-hour visit by German chancellor Angela Merkel to Israel this week came as relations between the two countries hit rock bottom. According to a report in Der Spiegel magazine last week, Merkel and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been drawn into shouting matches when discussing by phone the faltering peace process. Despite their […]
Wieseltier We are closely following the reception for John Judis’s excellent new book Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict because Judis is arousing the establishment in ways that other interventions have not. Two days ago, rightwinger Ron Radosh wrote an angry but serious review calling the book “polemics disguised as history” and saying Judis […]
The other day we ran a post by David Wilder, spokesman for the settlers in occupied Hebron, because his community plays an important role in Israeli politics but its views are not well-known in the U.S.; our mainstream press doesn’t report them. Wilder then commented on that post and directed readers who want to know […]