Bruce Shipman, who was forced out of his job as an Episcopal chaplain at Yale…
The U.S. is not a neutral mediator in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; it is an active participant and is guilty of the crimes being committed by Israel against Palestinians, most recently, the mass killings and destruction Israel wrought on the Gaza Strip during the summer. The reality that the U.S. is an active supporter of unimaginable suffering may very well be the motivating force behind the U.S.’s adamant attempts to block the Palestinians from using any of the internationally recognized tools of accountability to hold Israel responsible, such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. When an indigenous, stateless population is blocked access to opportunities for justice by superpowers like the U.S., something is wrong—deadly wrong.
Explaining why Edward Snowden took his momentous step, James Bamford says, “Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization.” The damage of the special relationship.
Yesterday, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a petition by Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel effectually facilitating the Judaization of more Palestinian owned land inside Israel. According to Adalah, the court’s decision holding up Israel’s Admissions Committees Law, “entrenches racial segregation; 434 small communities in Israel, or 43% of all residential areas, will be allowed to close their doors to Palestinian Arab citizens of the state.” Much of the land in question was originally confiscated from Palestinian refugees, and the court’s decision will result in the continued concentration and containment of the Palestinian population in Israel.
The University of Toledo’s Student African American Brotherhood (SAAB) and UT Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) issued a statement of joint solidarity following the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza.
Longtime journalist Barbara Erickson’s site criticizing New York Times stories for their pro-Israel bias has been up for less than a year but is gaining a reputation for clarity and insight. TimesWarp presents evidence that the NYT is Israel-centric in its coverage.
When Senator Elizabeth Warren began spouting Likud talking points– that Hamas welcomed civilian deaths and the US should not sanction Israeli settlement construction — her progressive base was shocked. That’s why they confronted her at a talk at Tufts earlier this week.
Wadi Fukin may be the smallest of the five villages threatened by Israel’s recent mass land grab, but these days it’s certainly not the quietest. Leaders in the village of approximately 1,250 have galvanized locals into organizing Friday demonstrations against Israeli occupation for the first time in years, after 4,000 dunams (nearly 1,000 acres) in the southern West Bank was declared “state land,” by Israel. Over a quarter of the confiscated land belongs to Wadi Fukin, which already lost most of its property to the still expanding Israeli settlements of Beitar Illit and Hadar Beitar in the north and Tsur Hadassah in the west after 1967.
When Episcopal chaplain Bruce Shipman got drummed out at Yale for controversial statements about Gaza, school officials surely violated the school’s Woodward Report, which says that “civility” is less important than free access to ideas, including those who “challenge the unchallengeable” and “think the unthinkable”
After a months long court battle BDS South Africa (BDS-SA) won a “precedent-setting” freedom of expression court case last Thursday, September 11. In October 2012 BDS-SA along with the Palestine Solidarity Alliance purchased advertisements on billboard’s across South Africa. With no warning South Africa’s Continental Outdoor Media removed two BDS South Africa (BDS-SA) ads prior to their contractual expiration date without giving any notice to BDS-SA or the Palestine Solidarity Alliance. A judge of the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg ruled in favor of BDS South Africa, declaring that the removal of the billboards was both “unlawful and unconstitutional” and ordering Continental to re-erect the billboards within 10 days and pay all court costs. The court also ordered the City of Johannesburg to amend their bylaws.