J Street had trouble finding its voice during Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza. Now after some internal infighting and desertions, J Street is back, ostensibly seizing the moment with Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land on the West Bank. Yes, back it is, but to where is the important question.
On August 23, the Los Angeles group Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) released a widely reported on statement in Billboard Magazine – “200 Hollywood Heavyweights Support Israel.” What was not reported is that CCFP is a “creative” front group for the right-wing, pro Israeli settler nonprofit StandWithUs, that has a close relationship with the Israeli government.
Israeli government ministers Yair Lapid and Tzipi Livni argue that the Israeli government’s decision to appropriate nearly 1,000 acres of Palestinian land to build settlements in the West Bank will hurt Israel internationally, but Economy Minister Naftali Bennett says “It’s 120 years that the world has opposed our construction, and we’ll continue to do it.”
The University of Illinois surely hoped the Salaita case would disappear after it fired the scholar in early August over his tweets that slammed Israel. But the case continues to make news. Emails from University chancellor Phyllis Wise show that she was frantic to meet Steven Miller, a large donor to the school and board member of Zionist organizations, even as she failed to discuss the matter with her academic team. The case has become a “catastrophe” for the school, in the words of Columbia Law Professor Katherine Franke, who cancelled a speaking engagement there but plans to participate in a forum on Salaita there. Unsurprisingly, the university is reportedly seeking to settle financially with Salaita.
Polling shows that Hamas’s popularity has spiked across Palestine with 61 percent saying the same strategy of militant resistance should be adopted in the West Bank. Israelis, meantime, have shifted right, more supporting settlements leader Naftali Bennett, who makes sitting P.M. Netanyahu look like a centrist
When Yale Episcopalian chaplain Bruce Shipman said that Israel’s actions were contributing to the growth of anti-Semitism, the backlash from Israel supporters was so fierce that he decided to move a benefit for a Gaza hospital off campus.
British M.P. George Galloway was set upon in a London street on Friday August 29th by a man wearing an Israeli army t-shirt, and badly beaten. If a pro-Israel politician had been set upon by a Palestinian there would be a national outcry. Crickets from the chattering classes
Eslam Saqqa says that he made the short film Running because in the West Bank they have electricity and can make videos, while his relatives in Gaza are always running to avoid bombs. An interview with Annie Robbins
The writer Ian McEwan was on the BBC NewsHour yesterday, and at minute 8 was…
Israel isn’t resting content with its gains in Gaza. Hence the new settlement expansion and the confiscation of land in the West Bank. So having withdrawn troops from Gaza, though still keeping its (somewhat adjusted) blockade in place, Israel is pushing the international Israel-gets-to-keep-all-it-has-taken envelope.