A war of ads has begun over Palestine between Pam Geller’s Islamophobic group and Ads Against Apartheid, which asks a simple question: “When a country steals land does it really want peace? Freedom for Palestine now.”
President Obama called on Not-in-my-name Muslims to redeem their religion from radical extremists. Fair enough. But when Rev. Bruce Shipman at Yale said that Israel’s friends should urge the Jewish state not to commit atrocities because they are causing anti-Semitism, he lost his job.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs’s words are worth considering as the High Holiday season begins: “To be a rabbi is to be a moral leader. Moral leadership requires us to move beyond cheerleading to drawing on our tradition acknowledge fear, address ethical questions, offer loving critique, and inspire the hope that will move our communities toward supporting peace.” As Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, Rabbi Jacobs is a religious leader with ethics at the core of her Jewishness. She should be congratulated for her efforts. But no matter how much passion she brings to her task, there’s something essential missing from her analysis.
Activists from Scotland’s Glasgow Palestine Action scaled their way inside the perimeter fence of a Thales UK factory in Govan, Glasgow in the early hours of the morning Tuesday, blockaded multiple entrances, climbed onto the roof top and shut down the weapons manufacture for the day protesting the companies collaboration with Israeli defense behemoth Elbit Systems, currently producing ‘Watchkeeper’ drones for the Israeli military.
The Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s Emergency Session on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge held yesterday in Brussels has found evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of murder, extermination and persecution and also incitement to genocide.
Katherine Franke speaks at U of Illinois and stands with Steven Salaita in the face of well-funded campaign to shut down free speech for Palestinians in the name of civility. “Whatever else civility may be, it is not an academic norm. Rigor is an academic norm. Making arguments backed by evidence is an academic norm.”
Almost every year on college campuses it happens, the queer Jewish student group or the pro-Israel student group hosts a showing of an Israeli movie featuring two gay men, one Palestinian and one Israeli. The movie isn’t political, it’s about love triumphing over all. The most recent of these movie is Out in the Dark, directed by Michael Mayer, an Israeli based out of Los Angeles who also co-wrote the the script with Yael Shafrir.
From Steven Salaita’s firing at the University of Illinois, to Bruce Shipman’s being forced out at Yale, to Michelle Nunn’s positioning in the Georgia Senate race, to rabbis refusing to criticize Israel, pro-Israel donors play a significant role in the U.S. discourse on Israel/Palestine. Here are several stories that underline the importance of pro-Israel money and show that elites are particularly vulnerable to donor pressure. These same elites are crucial to the lobby because Israel has lost the grass-roots. In fact, there is now a battle raging inside elite opinion.
From the Jewish Journal two days ago. “David Brooks’ son is in the Israeli army.…
Middle East Monitor reports: “Along one of the roads in the city of Ariha in the north of the occupied West Bank, merchants Khaldoun and Hassan regularly receive 30 tons of dates produced in the neighbouring Israeli agricultural settlements, in preparation for their transfer to one of the packaging factories built on the outskirts of the city, Anadolu news agency reported. Inside the factory, about 13 miners are working on “screening” the dates and repackaging them in bags that read “dates of the Holy Land” in both Arabic and English and “Made in Palestine” in order to market them locally, in the Arab states and in Europe.”